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A Study of Prophecy and Apocrypha in the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties

Zhang Fengyi

The ideas of “prophecy” and “apocrypha” experienced a process from separation to integration in the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties. Ancient and modern scholars tend to discuss “prophecy and apocrypha” of Han in general, which does not conform to reality. The idea of prophecy fulfillment originated from the ancient times, and had been lasted till the late Han without interruption. In the early Han Dynasty, there occured new change in prophecy with the rise of the studies of Confucian classics to assist and interprete the classics. This phenomenon started in the reign of Emperor Wendi, and existed till the late Han. After Emperor Mingdi and Emperor Zhangdi of the Eastern Han, mutual interpretation of Confucian classics and prophecy was established as the orthodox thought with the symbol of “Comprehensive Discussions in the White Tiger Pavallion,” which actually originated from the early Han. And the so-called “apocrypha” emerged in the late Eastern Han was just “prophecy.” The popular proposition that “prophecy and apocrypha began in the reigns of Emperor Aidi and Emperor Pingdi” does not only distort Zhang Heng’s exposition, but also confuse the concepts of prophecy and apocrypha; and moreover, it is not in accord with the ideological reality in the Western Han Dynasty.

A Query of “Official Ranks of the Wei Dynasty” and “Official Ranks of the Jin Dynasty”

Zhang Jinlong

The “official ranks of the Wei Dynasty” and “official ranks of the Jin Dynasty” recorded inTongdian(ComprehensiveInstitutions) are the most complete extant records of the official ranks of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, yet it is hard to find the sources of those records in extant historical documents. The “official ranks of the Wei Dynasty” were not compatible with the actual institutions of the Wei Dynasty.StatuteofOfficialRanksof the Wei Dynasty should be revised in the reign of Emperor Mingdi, andStatuteofOfficialRankscompiled by Jia Chong and others should beStatuteofOfficialRanksoftheJinDynasty. Both of them were not official ranks of the Wei Dynasty recorded inTongdianIt can be judged only from the general titles that official ranks of the Wei Dynasty recorded inTongdianfailed to reflect the real official system of the Wei Dynasty, and differed in many ways from the official system of the early Jin Dynasty, so the records are unworthy of being called as “official ranks of the Wei Dynasty.” The records of “official ranks of the Jin Dynasty” also showed great gap between the real system of the Western or Eastern Jin Dynasty, so it can be concluded that the records was not the original text ofStatuteofOfficialRanksin a certain period of the Jin Dynasty. There is a brief appendix table of official ranks to “Treatise on Government Offices” in theBookofSongwritten by Shen Yue, which records the official system of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and also coincides with the official systm of the Liu Song Dynasty. As an earliest table of official ranks in extant literature, we cannot exclude the possibility that it is the chief source of “official ranks of the Jin Dynasty” recorded inTongdian.

The Two-dimensional Structure System of Confucian Ethics

Zhang Jun

“The mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain” is the program of Confucian ethical system. This proverb reveals the two-dimensional structure of Confucian ethics, i.e. the relation of harmonious coexistence between elite ethics and civilian ethics, or between virtue ethics and utilitarian ethics. From its origin of Confucius’ moral theory, Confucian ethics just gave consideration of both moral idealism and moral realism. The tradition of Mencius, especially the Neo-Confucianism, ignored Confucius’ proposition of balancing righteousness and profit, and denied the legitimacy of pursuing profit, thus slided to the extreme of moral idealism. Although this kind of absolute virtue ethics improved the moral realm of Confucianism, it also lost moral and humane concern of the “mean man” or secular society for ignoring the original civilian ethics or bounded utilitarian ethics of Confucianism. So this tendency was inclined to one dimension of the ethic theories or system of Confucianism. By constrast, Xunzi argued that “owning both rightousness and gain”, and “restraining profit with rightousness” from the perspective of natural human nature, who was the genuine inheritor of Confucius’ ethic spirit. Through combining moral realism and moral idealism, the tradition of Xunzi kept an academic vein of utilitarianism in the system of deontology for Confucianism. This integrated and harmonious two-dimensional structure system does accord with the rationalistic ethical choice in modern society, so it can better adapt to the modern transformation of Chinese social ethics than the ethics of Mencius and Neo-Confucianism which explain only deontology.

“Rule by Law” and the Confucian Tradition on Principle of Governance since the Song Dynasty

Ren Feng

Confucianists since the Song Dynasty grasped the strong characteristics of legislation in social and political changes, and presented a typical generalization of “rule by law.” The concept “law” they often used covers rites and music, government decree and punishment, as well as legal institutions. “Law” was considered as a rule cluster reflecting public practical reason based on heavenly principles and human relationships, and a set of idea of legal history was derived from the experience of civilization evolvement, showing the mechanism of inheritance, gain, and loss on traditional roots from the tension between the laws of the Xia, Shang, Zhou Dynasties and laws of the later ages. The legal tradition of Confucianism represented by Ye Shi and other scholars strengthened the interpretive dimension of social theory, and advanced reflections of social orders and rule of government decree and punishment. According to the relation between rule by law and rule of man, the Confucianists admitted the objectivity of “rule by law,” emphasized the positivity of “rule of man” from the double subjectivities of rite-law and shared rule, and kept aware of bias of “depending on law.” Centered on law and based on rite-law, this Confucian theory of govenance principle pursued a fine form of rule by law, which provides an important perspective for reunderstanding China’s sources of rule of law, and will also be beneficial to clear the myth generated by one-sided understanding of rule of law in modern China.

WaterMarginand the Temple Institution of Zen Buddhism

Xiang Yurong

Growing out of speaking art,WaterMarginpreserves much vivid cultural views of Zen Buddhism in the Song-Yuan period. There are various narrations on the temple institution of Zen Buddhism, mainly including how the temple economy was operated, divisions and grades of duty system in temples, preciseness and orders of temple rites, and etc. A secularistic tendency of the temple system and culture can be observed by exploring the evolvement of these rites. The descriptions in Water Margin mutually corroborate and complement with the Zen documents in the Song-Yuan period such asTheCommandmentsofBuddhistTemple,Baizhang’sCommandmentsbyMasterHuaihai, andSelectedWorksofFiveRecordsonTransmissionoftheLamp. Yet the books on Buddhist commandments are too sterile, and the Zen quotations only mention the commandments incidentally. Instead, the popular fictionWaterMarginamiably presents scenes of religious life seemingly covert in a way of vivid demotic perception. The Zen culture becomes a kind of “holographic cultural scene” with unique value on aesthetics inWaterMargin, which demands revaluation of this fiction on its value in cultural inheritance.

Appreciating together and Construction: The Kangxi Emperor’s Activities of Bestowing Calligraphy

Chang Jianhua

The Kangxi Emperor was very fond of the art of calligraphy. His calligraphic activities had certain relation to his power, in which contained a “packaging mechanism”, i.e. his image was “fabricating” through bestowing calligraphy to some extent. The Kangxi Emperor bestowed his calligraphic works to the Jiangnan Imperial Silk Manufactory, the Infantry Commander-generals, the Imperial Commissioners, the Imperial Princes, and the Imperial Clans as a symbol of treating them as his cronies. The liegemen felt flattered to receive the works, and they established close relationships through appreciating the works together. By bestowing calligraphic works on diplomatic occasions or in cultural places such as educational institutions, ancestral temples, and scenic spots, the Kangxi Emperor not only expressed his veneration of Confucianism as orthodox ideology, but also implied his legitimacy of ruling the empire.

The Studies ofTheCommentaryofZuoand the Origion of the Style of “Jishi Benmo”

Ge Huanli

“Jishi Benmo” (history presented in separate accounts of important events) is one of the three historiographical styles in ancient China along with annalistic style and annals-biography style. Its historical source lies in the compilation recording events in the studies ofTheCommentaryofZuo. Due to the “abruptions” in the narratives ofTheCommentaryofZuo, there emerged series of works to classify the events recorded byTheCommentaryofZuoin the studies ofTheCommentaryofZuopopular in the period from the Six Dynasties to the Song Dynasty. In the trend of drawing lessons from studying history in the early Southern Song Dynasty, those works were combined with the growing studies ofComprehensiveMirrorinAidofGovernance, thus generated Yuan Shu’sHistoricalEventsoftheComprehensiveMirrorinTheirEntirety, which was regarded as the canonical and pioneering work of the style of Jishi Benmo by scholars at the Academy forCompleteLibraryinFourSections, andCollectedAccountsoftheTreatieswiththeNorthunderThreeReignscompiled by Xu Mengshen was also affected by it. Hereafter, historiography in this style became a tradition. Since the works to classify the events recorded byTheCommentaryofZuoformed earlier, it should be a misrepresentation that Yuan Shu’s work “creating the style of Jishi Benmo.” Yet in the field of historical works, Yuan Shu’s book can be regarded as an initiating masterpiece in the style of Jishi Benmo.

Some Important Issues and Revision Status of New Edition ofRecordsoftheGrandHistorian

Zhao Shengqun

Sima Qian, the author ofRecordsoftheGrandHistorian, was born in 135 B.C., and the final date of his records should be 101 B.C.. Not long after the work was completed, ten chapters of it were lost, and afterwards, busybodies made many supplements.RecordsoftheGrandHistorianadopted the comprehensive style combining annals, biographies, treatises, and tables for historical narratives. It covered diverse material areas, and was highly valued for its historical materials. The deeds of Su Qin and Zhang Yi recorded by Sima are credible.RecordsoftheGrandHistorianhas numerous editions, and the spread status of it was quite complicated. The revised edition published by Zhonghua Book Company refers to various precious texts such as the Jingyou edition, the Shaoxing edition, as well as the Huang Shanfu’s edition, and widely uses multiple methods of proofreading. This edition makes an overall review of annotations of the Three Experts, about 3500 pieces of collating notes, and more than 6000 corrections of punctuation.

History of the Six Dynasties “in Mountains”

Wei Bin

The cultural landscape in mountainous areas had taken dramatic changes in the Six Dynasties. At the beginning of the third century, major mountainous cultural landscapes in south of the Yangtze river included the worship of Yushun and Dayu in Mountains like Xiang, Jiuyi, Kuaiji as well as sacrifices for numerous little-known mountain deities. At the end of the sixth century, along with existence of the traditional worship, some new sacrificial contents such as the “Stele to Mount Guo” had emerged, but the most remarkable phenomenon among them was the mountain temples and abbeys built in large number together with the relevant system of transcendental cavern abodes setting up in certain areas. In the meantime of the upsurge of building mountain temples, “in mountains” has become a particular cultural site while various types of narratives concerning mountains have been accumulated and thus affected the knowledge classification of the encyclopaedias in medieval China. Religious beliefs combining political power have been shaping such landscape differentiations and cultural variations. Both Buddhism and Daoism have been expanding their practices into mountains resulted in the landscape differentiations while the latter could be attributed to the new political geography centering on Jiankang. This joint influence brought about the characteristic cultural and geographical manifestations of the “in mountains” which was closely related to the history of the Six Dynasties.

The Impacts of the Huang Chao Rebellion on the Shape of Late Tang Provinces

Hu Yaofei

After the Huang Chao Rebellion, the shape of Late Tang Dynasty had had a great challenge. Before the Huang Chao Rebellion, there are seven kinds of Provinces (Fanzhen), such as Long-term Independent of Heshuo, Short-term Independent of Heshuo, Short-term Independent (or Prevention) of Zhongyuan, Long-term Prevention of Zhongyuan, Long-term Defensive of Northwest, Short-term Defensive (Finance) of Southwest, and Long-term Finance of Southeast. After the Huang Chao Rebellion, in consideration of district, power, politics, background, and ethnic, the shape of Provinces can be divided into five: Henan, West, Hedong, Heshuo, South. We can illustrate the process from three ways: civilians made great concessions to Militaries, “eunuch militaries” became involved into Provincial politics, and local forces became seize the power of Provinces. Within these process, the Tang Court played a weak role of taking charge of fair.

Capitalism, Globalization, and Involution of Democracy: Based on the Trump’s Election

Liu Guangli, Deng Xize

Involution is a common phenomenon, which is also found in politics. Democracy is showing the characteristics of involution, namely, diminishing marginal returns. Trump was elected president of the United States by the social mood of populism, which indicate the process of the democracy involution. Trump’s election upends the conventional historical view of the development trend of history and its significance has not yet been revealed. The laws of capitalist economy reveals that the gulf between the rich and the poor is continuing to widen, meanwhile, globalization is exacerbating the disparity between the rich and the poor, that's exactly why populism is rising. The structural contradictions between democracy and capitalism determines Trump is unable to meet the requirements of populism, and it also makes the fundamentally solving the problem of democracy involution even more unlikely.

The Retreat of Liberalism in the United States: An Analysis Based on the Data of Defense Litigations on the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Wang Fang

Liberalism is the foundation and belief of the United States. In its political system, the value of rule of law lies in protecting individual freedom and rights to confronting the infringement from government and public power. Yet the 911 Incident acted as a turning point of the development of liberalism. Through the defense cases on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, it can be observed that, the “security value” gradually obtained an absolute advantage on the levels of both the country and the public after 911, and judicial rationality also responded cautiouly to the wave of security. Liberalism presents a tendency of retreat in the political area of the United States today.