Table Of ContentStatecraft and Classical Learning
Studies in the
History of Chinese Texts
Edited by
Martin Kern, Princeton University
Li Ling, Peking University
Ding Xiang Warner, Cornell University
VOLUME 1
Statecraft and Classical Learning
The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History
Edited by
Benjamin A. Elman
Martin Kern
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
This volume received support from the “New Perspectives in Chinese Culture and Society”
program, which is made possible by a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for Inter-
national Scholarly Exchange to the American Council of Learned Societies.
On the cover: Nie Chongyi (cid:20510)(cid:11439)(cid:20305) (10th century), Xinding Sanli tu (cid:13656)(cid:11074)(cid:7601)(cid:18774)(cid:9918) (AD 962).
Song woodblock edition from 1175, repr. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Statecraft and classical learning : the Rituals of Zhou in East Asian history /
edited by Benjamin A. Elman, Martin Kern.
p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Chinese texts ; 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17749-9 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Zhou li. 2. China—Politics and government. 3. East Asia—Politics and government.
I. Elman, Benjamin A., 1946- II. Kern, Martin. III. Title: Rituals of Zhou in East Asian
history. IV. Series.
PL2468.Z7S73 2010
299’.51282—dc22
2009045591
ISSN 1877-9425
ISBN 978 90 04 17749 9
Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
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CONTENTS
Introduction……………………………………………………………1
Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern
I. Early China
1. The Zhouli as Constitutional Text…………………………………33
David Schaberg
2. Offices of Writing and Reading in the Rituals of Zhou……………64
Martin Kern
3. The Many Dukes of Zhou in Early Sources……………………….94
Michael Nylan
4. Centering the Realm: Wang Mang, the Zhouli, and
Early Chinese Statecraft…………………………………………129
Michael Puett
5. Zheng Xuan’s Commentary on the Zhouli.………………………155
Andrew H. Plaks
II. Medieval China
6. The Role of the Zhouli in Seventh- and Eighth-Century
Civil Administrative Traditions…………………………………181
David McMullen
7. Wang Anshi and the Zhouli………………………………………229
Peter K. Bol
8. Tension and Balance: Changes of Constitutional Schemes in
Southern Song Commentaries on the Rituals of Zhou…………. 252
Jaeyoon Song
vi CONTENTS
III. Early Modern East Asia
9. Tokugawa Approaches to the Rituals of Zhou: The Late Mito
School and “Feudalism”…………………………………………279
Kate Wildman Nakai
10. Yun Hyu and the Search for Dominance:
A Seventeenth-Century Korean Reading of
the Offices of Zhou and the Rituals of Zhou……………………..309
JaHyun Kim Haboush
11. The Story of a Chapter: Changing Views of
the “Artificer’s Record” (“Kaogong ji” !"#)
and the Zhouli……………………………………………………330
Benjamin A. Elman
IV. Modern China
12. The Zhouli as the Late Qing Path to the Future…………………359
Rudolf G. Wagner
13. Denouement: Some Conclusions about the Zhouli.……………..388
Rudolf G. Wagner
Bibliography…………………………………………………………397
Index…………………………………………………………………423
INTRODUCTION
Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern
The Rituals of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮, hereafter Rituals) became one of
the nine (later thirteen) Confucian Classics during the Tang dynasty
(618–907). A late Warring States (480–221 BCE) or very possibly
imperial Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) text, it had reached its final
form by the time of Zheng Xuan’s 鄭玄 (127–200) commentary. Writ-
ten in early classical Chinese, the text is divided into six sections,
the “offices” (guan 官) of Heaven, Earth, Spring, Summer, Autumn,
and Winter, corresponding to the government Ministries of
State, Education, Ritual, War, Justice, and Works, respectively. Its
listings of 366 offices in these sections are arranged hierarchically,
specifying the duties and staff members of each position and
altogether presenting the structure of a six-part government with
clearly divided responsibilities. While the first five sections of the
received text are likely of pre-Han origin, the sixth, the “Artificer’s
Record” (“Kaogong ji” 考工記), is a Western Han (202 BCE–9 CE)
substitution for a purportedly lost earlier chapter (see chapter 11 in
the present volume). The Rituals is an idealized blueprint for govern-
ment organization that appears to include very ancient—indeed,
Western Zhou (ca. 1046–771 BCE)—knowledge side by side with
Warring States/early imperial political thought and government
organization.
In Han times (202 BCE–220 CE), the text was known as Zhouguan
周官, a title possibly better understood not as Offices of Zhou but
as Comprehensive Offices, with the word zhou 周 used in its meaning
of “comprehensive” rather than referring to the earlier dynasty (see
chapter 1 in the present volume). The Rituals was special among
the Classics in that the text at no point alludes to any particular his-
torical frame of reference. The line that opens each of the six divisions
of the text, wei wang jian guo 惟王建國, is most likely to be taken
as a generic and timeless formulation that “it is the king who estab-
lishes the state” rather than “it was the (Zhou) king who established
the state.” Moreover, it was apparently only with the appearance of
2 INTRODUCTION
Zheng Xuan’s commentary that scholars attributed the text to the
sagely regent of the early Western Zhou, the Duke of Zhou (Zhou
gong 周公; r. as regent 1042–1036 BCE). Like no other text among
the Chinese Classics, the Rituals enjoyed a dual reception, first in im-
perial China and then across East Asia: on the one hand, it was cher-
ished as a work of canonical learning; on the other hand, it was on
several occasions applied to the actual administration of the state.
The text is said to have been first employed for political ends by
the Han minister Liu Xin 劉歆 (46 BCE–23 CE) in an effort to legiti-
mize the short-lived Xin 新 dynasty (9–23) that Wang Mang 王莽 (45
BCE–23 CE) had established in a coup. While the full extent to which
Wang Mang used the Rituals is difficult to pinpoint (see chapter 4),
the text did become a blueprint for the structure of government when
the Northern Wei dynasty 北魏 (386–534) designed their administra-
tion following the listings of offices in the Rituals and, in 398, con-
structed their new capital at Pingcheng 平城 (modern Datong 大同,
Shanxi Province) according to the precepts of the “Artificer’s Rec-
ord,” the sixth and final section of the Rituals. Between 491 and 495,
in a series of somewhat symbolic moves, the royal ancestral temple
and at least some of the palace halls, along with the official measures
of length and capacity, were brought into accordance with the Ritu-
als.1
Beginning in 546, the subsequent Western Wei 西魏 dynasty (534–
557) created its own government layout on the basis of the Rituals,
with Yuwen Tai 宇文泰 (506–556), a military general who had be-
come the highest official at court, being the driving force. In 556—a
year before the official end of the dynasty—the central administration
was reorganized according to the six ministries outlined in the classi-
cal text. In 557, following an act of usurpation, Yuwen Tai’s son Yu-
wen Jue 宇文覺 (542–557) established his new dynasty—now pro-
grammatically named the Northern Zhou 北周 (557–581)—and inher-
ited the administrative system initiated by his father. In the process, he
declared himself the new “Duke of Zhou” and elevated his father with
the title of “King Wen” (Wen wang 文王) in imitation of the revered
progenitor of the ancient Zhou, King Wen (who likewise had passed
away shortly before his son founded the Zhou dynasty).
1 Pearce 2001. In addition to Pearce’s valuable article, our account here and below
on the Northern Dynasties is informed by comments that Lu Yang (University of
Kansas) presented during our final conference and later in writing.
INTRODUCTION 3
It must be noted that the Northern Wei 北魏 (386–533), Western
Wei, and Northern Zhou were all non-Chinese dynasties, with their
royal clans coming from the northern Xianbei 鮮卑 people (the North-
ern Wei was founded by the Tuoba 拓跋 clan; the Western Wei and
Northern Zhou by the Yuwen 宇文). In contrast to their appropriation
of the Rituals, outlined below, the Northern Zhou rulers highlighted
Indian motifs in the Buddhist sculptures they sponsored in northwest
China to augment their religious identities as a non-Han people.2
Yet their leaders also invoked the Rituals, and with it the founding
heroes and purported institutional framework of the Zhou dynasty, to
provide their non-Chinese dynasties, now ruling over key parts of
northern China that in high antiquity had been the heartland of the
Zhou dynasty, with classical precedent and Confucian legitimacy.
Their attempts to put the idealized bureaucracy of the Rituals into ac-
tual political practice were embedded in a larger program of classical
learning—complete with a royal academy (taixue 太學) and officially
appointed “erudites” (boshi 博士)—which was focused on the ritual
canons and strived to exploit the perennial ideal of “antiquity” (gu 古).
It was perhaps because of the use of the Rituals first by the
“usurper” Wang Mang and then by non-Chinese clans that neither the
Sui (581–618) nor the Tang dynasties followed suit. Although classi-
cal scholarship on the Rituals continued (see chapter 6), the actual po-
litical use of the text declined. It was only during the Northern Song
(960–1127) period that literati scholars such as Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–
1107) argued once again that fathoming the Classics empowered rul-
ers and officials to legislate according to the institutional model pro-
vided in the Offices of Zhou. Thereafter, Wang Anshi 王安石 (1021–
1086), as chief minister under Emperor Shenzong 神宗 (r. 1068–
1085), used the Rituals to authorize the ill-fated New Policies of
1069—undoubtedly the most infamous attempt throughout Chinese
imperial history to put the text directly into governmental practice.
Many later literati accused Wang Anshi of having politically ex-
ploited the Rituals in a manner that reminded them of its alleged ear-
lier manipulations by Liu Xin and Wang Mang. As a result, Wang An-
shi’s unprecedented statecraft repertoires were thought to have harmed
the empire and impaired the clear fathoming of the Classics. For the
state examinations of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912)
dynasties, official examiners frequently asked the candidates for the
2 See Dien 1962, 2–3, and Lu Haimo 2008.
