Good Confucianism book (pdf) - Department of Physics

134 The Han Dynasty, 206 BCE–220 CEThe Classics in the HanWhatever the truth about the First Emperor ’ s orders to destroy books, bythe time of the Han scholars believed that the textual tradition had beenbroken. They thought that the texts they had were incomplete and so theirfocus was on restoring, preserving, and interpreting these texts. Sima Tan(d.110 BCE) and his son, Sima Qian (145 – c .86 BCE), wrote the Shi Ji , theRecords of the Historian , a history meant to restore what had been lost inthe Qin. Liu Xiang (79 – 78 BCE) and his son, Liu Xin (46 BCE – 23 CE),imperial librarians, rewrote the texts in the imperial library into the standardcharacters of the time. They took the material they had and divided itinto books, further subdividing these books into chapters. They also deletedsome material. The result was the form of the texts that we use today. 7Confucians of the Han dynasty should be seen less as a school than asscholars of the classics. They saw themselves as interpreters of the FiveClassics, and these five classics were problematic. The Spring and AutumnAnnals is a prime example of their problems. Confucius had said that hisreputation stood on the text. But, as we have seen, the text consists of tersenotes of events in the state of Lu. During the Warring States period theZuo Zhuan was written as a commentary on it. By the time of the Han,Confucian scholars were left with a cryptic classic, the Annals , and itscommentary, the Zuo Zhuan , neither of which seemed to reflect Confucius ’teachings very much. How could this be?The New Text SchoolIn the Han dynasty, Confucians disagreed about what versions of the classicsto use and how to understand them. The dominant group is called the“ New Text ” School. Their name is based on their use of the new style ofwriting begun in the Qin and used by the Han. Their versions of the classicswere written in that style, they used the yin - yang and five phases theoriesto interpret the classics, and they understood Confucius to be a very specialkind of person. The New Text School ’ s was the dominant interpretation ofthe five classics in the Han dynasty.The most well known of the New Text scholars is Dong Zhongshu( c .179 – 104 BCE). His thought is systematized in the marvelously named textThe Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals . 8 Dong Zhongshu ’ sinterpretation was based on two theories that we find throughout the NewText School: the yin - yang theory and the five phases theory. These theorieswere used by the New Text School to find the hidden meanings in the classics,especially in the more obscure texts like the Spring and Autumn Annals .