The Power of an Alleged Tradition - CHINA Buchservice

The rivalry between ru and fangshi and the spectacular discovery of 113 B.C.
The idea of a rivalry between the ru and the fangshi may strike the reader at fi rst
sight. In fact, the Shiji seems to contradict itself in that it sometimes deals very critically
with the fangshi while elsewhere it compares them straightforwardly to the ru,
as if the ru in the fi nal analysis were no better advisers than the intriguing fangshi.
(This, indeed, was probably also the purpose of the author of the Shiji.) 7 As it is
beyond the scope of this article to further penetrate into the relationship between
the ru as they would have defi ned themselves in the time of Emperor Wu and the
perception of them by individuals such as Sima Tan or Sima Qian, we will have
to focus here primarily on the perception of the Shiji account itself. 8 Given this
premise, the major events that preceded the arrival of Gongsun Qing at the imperial
court according to the Shiji account (and rewritten in the Han shu) will now be
roughly summarized. 9
As the reader learns from the opening lines of chapter 28 of the Shiji, all the
high dignitaries at court (jinshen zhi shu�����) already in the early days of the
reign of Emperor Wu expected that this emperor would soon proceed to perform
the Feng and Shan sacrifi ces, the most solemn of imperial rites, and also that he
would take a step toward “correcting the standards,” an expression that usually refers
to the measures taken by the Qin emperor when he unifi ed the empire, but which
here primarily seems to denote the installation of a new calendar. 10
At that time, the Shiji account continues, the emperor favored the arts of the
ru, those scholars who called Confucius their teacher and who based their judgment
and advice solely on the six (and after the grand reform, corresponding to the then
honored number, Five) canonical texts, the Classics. 11 Some of those men were summoned
to the imperial court and ordered to deliberate on the establishment of the
7 A telling example of the way in which, according to the Shiji account, both fangshi and ru failed to give the
emperor any satisfactory advice precisely how the sacrifi ces should be performed, see Shiji 28/1398; 12/475,
where the Shiji author depicts the emperor’s growing weariness of their advice and fi nally proceeds to perform
the sacrifi ces without relying much on either of his advisers, very much the same, by the way, as it is described
with regard to the First Qin Emperor shortly before in the same chapter. See Shiji 28/1366.
8 The author’s critical attitude, especially during the times of Emperor Wu, toward the ru becomes clearly visible
in many places. An example in which not only a critical but even a cynical and disdainful attitude is displayed
toward the ru is the passage in Shiji 15/686 where the competence of the ru in matters related to the dynastic
cycles is likened to someone who uses his ears to eat, but still claims to know something about taste – as the
Suoyin commentary elucidates.
9 Cf. Shiji 28/1384–1393; 12/452–467 and the parallel account in Han shu 25A/1215–1226. See also the translations
of the chapter by Édouard Chavannes, Les Mémoires Historiques de Se-ma Ts’ien, vol. III (Paris: Angers,
18951905), 461–485, and Burton Watson, transl., Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, revised edition,
vol. II (Hongkong, New York: Columbia University Press 1993), 3–35.
10 � �������������������� Literally, the expression jinshen zhi shu����� denotes “those
who stick the offi cial tablet into the girdle,” a metaphor for the highly decorated and distinguished dignitaries.
Cf. the character variants in Shiji 12/452 (jianshen zhi shu�����) and Han shu 25A/1215 (jinshen zhi shu�
����). For a detailed description of the Feng and Shan sacrifi ces see esp. Lewis, “Feng and Shan sacrifi ces,”
and Bujard, Sacrifi ce au ciel, chap. 8 (“Le sacrifi ce jiao dans le Shiji”). Only recently, Michael Puett took a fresh
look at the cosmo-political aspect of the Feng and Shan sacrifi ces as they are depicted in chap. 28 of the Shiji
by subsuming them into the sacrifi ces that order the world. See Michael L. Puett, To become a God: Cosmology,
Sacrifi ce, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2002), 300–307.
11 There are several passages in the Shiji in which the request proclaimed by the ru that solely the “Classics” were
to be taken as an acceptable source of evidence is refl ected critically, by formulations such as “[the ru] were
restrained by the old texts of the Odes and the Documents and did not dare to gallop freely ���������
���.” See Shiji 28/1397; 12/473.
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DOROTHEE SCHAAB-HANKE
BMFEA 74 · 2002