Unit 11 · The Classics Through History

The Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) gave Confucian learning official support. Officials were expected to know the Five Classics. The scholar Dong Zhongshu described the emperor as a link between Heaven, Earth and humanity. Disasters, he taught, could be signs from Heaven that a ruler was going wrong.

The Han also made filial piety, respect and care for parents, a public value. Officials were sometimes recommended for office because of their devotion to parents. The short Classic of Filial Piety became widely taught.

Historians describe this as state Confucianism: the government using Confucian ideas to support its rule. Some Confucians welcomed it. Others worried that serving the state could bend the teaching. Han law still owed much to Legalism.

Buddhism began in India with the Buddha, around the 400s BCE. Monks and merchants carried it to China along the Silk Roads. Chinese tradition dates its arrival to the first century CE and links it to the White Horse Temple near Luoyang.

At first, translators used Daoist words to explain Buddhist ideas. Over time Buddhism grew into a major Chinese religion, with monasteries, schools of thought such as Chan (Zen), and millions of followers. Some Confucians criticized it, since monks left their families.

By the Tang dynasty (618–907), people often spoke of the three teachings: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. Emperors sometimes favored one over another. Many ordinary people drew on all three. A popular saying held that the three teachings are one.

The Sui dynasty began exams for officials around 605 CE. The Tang used them, and the Song (960–1279) expanded them greatly. Printing made books cheaper, so more families could prepare. Exams became the main road to office.

By the Ming and Qing, there were several levels. Candidates passed local exams, then provincial exams held every three years, then the metropolitan exam in the capital. The best faced a palace exam before the emperor. Few reached the top degree, the jinshi.

Candidates sat in tiny cells for days. Graders copied essays so handwriting could not reveal names, to prevent favoritism. Cheating still happened. Some candidates wore undershirts covered with tiny copied classics, which museums preserve today.

Neo-Confucianism is a modern name for the renewed Confucian thought of the Song and later dynasties. Its thinkers answered Buddhism and Daoism with their own big picture of the universe. Zhu Xi (1130–1200) was its greatest systematizer.

Zhu Xi taught that everything has li, principle, the pattern that makes it what it is, and qi, the stuff or energy of which it is made. Human nature is principle and is good, he said, as Mencius taught, but cloudy qi can hide it. Study of things and self-cultivation clear it.

In 1313, the Yuan government made Zhu Xi’s commentaries the exam standard. This lasted to 1905. Later, Wang Yangming (1472–1529) challenged Zhu Xi, teaching that principle is found in one’s own mind and that knowing and acting are one.

Confucius taught, in Analects 15.38 (15.39 in some editions), that in teaching there should be no distinction of classes. The exams were praised as open to talent. In practice, many people could not take them.

Women were barred from the exams for their whole history. Sons of some groups, such as actors and certain hereditary servants, were also excluded. Poor farm families rarely could spare a son for years of study or pay a teacher. Most passing candidates came from families with land or learning.

Historians still debate how much the exams allowed social mobility, the chance to rise from one’s birth. Some studies find a real share of degree-holders had no recent ancestors with degrees. Others stress how exclusion limited the system.

Ban Zhao (c. 45–c. 117 CE) was one of the most learned people of the Han. She helped finish the History of the Former Han that her brother Ban Gu had begun, and she taught at the imperial court.

Around 100 CE she wrote Lessons for Women (Nüjie), advice for the young women of her family. It teaches humility, hard work and obedience to husbands and in-laws, following the Confucian idea of the five relationships. It became a standard text for girls for centuries.

Readers have taken it in different ways. Many modern critics see it as teaching women to accept a lower place. Others note that Ban Zhao argued girls, like boys, should be taught to read, and that her own life showed a woman as a scholar. Historians read it in its Han context.

In Korea, the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) made Neo-Confucianism its guiding philosophy. The national academy, Seonggyungwan, trained scholars. Thinkers such as Yi Hwang (Toegye) and Yi I (Yulgok) debated Zhu Xi’s ideas of principle and qi in depth. Ancestral rites spread widely.

In Japan, the Tokugawa shoguns (1603–1868) supported Confucian scholars such as Hayashi Razan. Japan did not use exams to choose officials, since rank was mostly hereditary. Still, Confucian ideas shaped schools and samurai ethics.

In Vietnam, the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, founded in 1070, honors Confucius. Stone tablets on the backs of stone turtles list doctoral laureates from the 1400s onward. Vietnam held classical exams until 1919.

After 1905, many young reformers blamed Confucian tradition for China’s weakness. In the May Fourth Movement of 1919, writers such as Lu Xun criticized family rules and the treatment of women. A popular slogan called for overthrowing the "Confucian shop."

Under Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) attacked old traditions. In 1973–74, a political campaign called "Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius" denounced Confucius. Red Guards damaged temples and tombs, including at Qufu, in 1966.

Since the 1980s, interest has returned. The Qufu temple was restored. Scholars in China, Taiwan, Korea and the West study "New Confucianism." Some welcome the revival; others worry that governments use it to promote obedience. The debate continues.

Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest. He arrived in China in 1582 and settled in Beijing in 1601. He learned to read and write classical Chinese and dressed as a Confucian scholar.

Ricci believed that early Confucianism was compatible with Christianity. He argued that the ancient classics spoke of a supreme Lord on High (Shangdi) and that ancestor rites could be understood as honoring, not worshiping. He made friends with scholars such as Xu Guangqi, who became a Christian.

Ricci’s approach is sometimes called accommodation: adapting to local culture. It sparked the Chinese Rites controversy. In 1715, Pope Clement XI ruled against allowing Chinese Christians to take part in ancestor and Confucian rites. The Kangxi emperor then restricted missionaries.

Jesuit scholars spent decades translating Confucian texts into Latin, the shared learned language of Europe. In 1687 they published Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese) in Paris.

The book included Latin versions of the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean and the Analects, with a life of Confucius. Its editors, including Philippe Couplet and Prospero Intorcetta, presented Confucius as a wise moral philosopher who taught by natural reason.

The book shaped how Europe first saw Confucius. It also shows how translation carries the translator’s aims. The Jesuits wanted to show that China’s ancient wisdom fit with Christian belief. Later translators made different choices.

In the 1700s, European writers of the Enlightenment questioned kings and church authority. Some found in Confucius a teacher of ethics based on reason rather than revelation. The philosopher Leibniz praised Chinese moral philosophy and corresponded with Jesuits in China.

Voltaire admired Confucius and is said to have kept his portrait in his study. He praised China as a land governed by learned officials. Some scholars see this admiration as a way to criticize France. Others note that the Enlightenment picture of China was often idealized.

By the 1800s, Western views of China had turned harsher, as European powers fought the Opium Wars. Historians study both the praise and the scorn as mirrors of Europe’s own concerns.

James Legge (1815–1897) was a Scottish missionary with the London Missionary Society. He worked in Malacca and then in Hong Kong from 1843. He decided that missionaries needed to understand the classics deeply.

His series The Chinese Classics appeared from 1861 to 1872. It included the Four Books, the Book of Documents, the Songs, and the Spring and Autumn with its Zuo commentary. Each page printed the Chinese text, Legge’s English and extensive notes.

Legge had help. Wang Tao (1828–1897) contributed research on commentaries and worked with him in Hong Kong and Scotland. Scholars today stress that the translations were a joint achievement, though only Legge’s name is on the title pages.

In 1876 Legge became the first Professor of Chinese at Oxford University. He kept translating into his seventies. His students were few, but his books reached readers far beyond Oxford.

The scholar Max Müller edited a series called the Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910), 50 volumes of Asian religious texts in English. Legge wrote six volumes. They included the Classic of Filial Piety, the Book of Changes, the Book of Rites, and, in 1891, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi.

Legge’s translations are now in the public domain in the United States, so anyone may copy them. That is why this course quotes them. Scholars also note their limits: old-fashioned English, Victorian spellings like Tao Teh King and Kwang-ze, and some Christian assumptions.

After Legge, English versions of the Daodejing multiplied. Scholars count well over a hundred. Some are careful scholarly translations. Others are loose interpretations by writers who do not read Chinese and work from earlier English versions.

Each type serves a purpose. Scholarly versions note manuscript differences, such as the Mawangdui and Guodian copies. Popular versions may speak to modern readers about calm or leadership. Critics warn that some popular versions change the meaning a great deal.

Students can compare versions carefully. Ask: Does the translator read Chinese? Which Chinese text did they use? Where do they add their own ideas? A good citation names the translator and year.

In the 1840s, the New England writers called Transcendentalists read Asian texts in translation. Their magazine, The Dial, printed selections of Confucian sayings in 1843. Ralph Waldo Emerson admired Confucius as a moral teacher.

Henry David Thoreau quoted Confucius several times in Walden (1854). He drew on the Analects and the Great Learning to support his ideas about simple living and self-improvement.

These writers read the classics through their own interests. Historians note they often mixed Confucian, Hindu and Buddhist sources. Still, they introduced many Americans to Chinese thought.

Chinese immigrants came to the United States in large numbers from the 1850s. They worked in gold mines, built the western part of the first transcontinental railroad, and opened businesses. Many faced violence and unfair laws.

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. It barred most Chinese laborers from immigrating and blocked Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens. It was the first U.S. law to ban immigration by a specific national group. It was repealed in 1943.

Chinese Americans built communities anyway, including Chicago’s Chinatown. Families kept festivals, temples, churches and family associations. Historians note the irony: the same years that Americans praised Confucius, Chinese people were shut out.

Today, American students may read the Analects or the Daodejing in world history, philosophy or literature classes. Universities teach classical Chinese. Scholars compare Confucian ethics with Aristotle, and Daoist ideas with other traditions.

Students also learn from living communities. Chinese American, Korean American and Vietnamese American families keep festivals and values linked to the classics. Some families are Christian, Buddhist or have no religion, and still honor Confucian ideals of family and learning.

Studying the classics well means using good sources, naming translations, and attributing ideas. It also means listening to the many people, in Asia and in America, for whom these books are part of their heritage.