Competing Systems 3
An Example
Let me give just one example of how distinguishing text strata can clarify text problems, and how analyzing those text strata can enlarge our understanding of the thought of the period.
In the Analects, which in the traditional view reflects the words of Confucius, there are many passages which have exact counterparts, whether quotations, echoes, or allusions, in other texts. Those other texts must for various reasons be later in date than Confucius himself. The implied situation is thus impossible: the historical Confucius could not have heard of these texts, or have been in contact with those ideas. What shall we do?
I will here list the chapters of the Analects (Lun Yw; LY) in order, omitting the first three, which have special problems, and ignoring passages in the others which can be shown on formal grounds to be interpolations. Opposite each I will mention the other work with which material in that chapter resonates. We then get this pattern:
LY 4
LY 5
LY 6
LY 7
LY 8
LY 9
LY 10
LY 11
LY 12 Gwandz 1, 2, 3, 7 LY 13 Gwandz 1, 2, 3, 7 LY 14
LY 15
LY 16 Dau/Dv Jing 43 LY 17 Mwodz 48 LY 18 Jwangdz 4, 9, 12, 25 LY 19
LY 20
If we abandon the assumption that the Analects sayings must all be the words of Confucius, since on the evidence that cannot be, how shall we understand this pattern?
First, we may make some divisions in the text, following the work of previous scholars. (1) Hu Yin, in the Sung Dynasty, first suggested that the latter half of the Analects, or LY 11-20, was later in date than the first half; this theory was further developed by Ito Jinsai. (2) Tswei Shu has suggested that LY 16-20 were late within the Hu/Ito layer. We may call this segment the Tswei Shu late layer. The rest of the Hu/Ito section, LY 11-15, becomes a middle layer, and the preceding chapters are then the earliest layer. This is a simplified first approximation, offered as a working model for present purposes.
Let us now attempt to date these three rough divisions. (1) Tsuda Sokichi notes that there are problems with all the Analects chapters, but his list of obvious anachronisms includes nothing from LY 4. That chapter is unique in the work for the brevity of its sayings, and their lack of narrative elements. Though Tsuda himself did not draw this conclusion, LY 4 might then be the closest of all the Analects chapters to the thought of Confucius, who died in 0479. Again, LY 8:3 portrays the death of Dzvngdz, for which the traditional date is 0436. These 05c dates frame the chapters of our early layer, and suggest that its material may be of roughly 05c date. (2) The Gwandz chapters with many verbal parallels in LY 12-13 are attributed by Rickett to the 04c. Again very roughly, our middle segment might then be of 04c date. (3) It is almost universally agreed that the Dau/Dv Jing (DDJ) is earlier than the Jwangdz. We know from the Gwodyen Tomb 1 extracts from the DDJ, which do not quote from the last one-sixth of that text, that the DDJ was probably not quite complete as of the date of that tomb, which on general archaeological grounds is likely to be in the vicinity of c0288. The Jwangdz is extensively quoted in the Lw-shr Chun/Chyou of 0239, but not in any firmly dated earlier work. It thus seems to be not only later than the DDJ, as noted above, but more specifically to be a work of the middle 03c. These inferences suggest that the Tswei Shu layer is, by and large, the 03c portion of the Analects.
These conclusions look like this:
EARLY LAYER: 05c LY 4
LY 5
LY 6
LY 7
LY 8
LY 9
LY 10
MIDDLE (Hu/Ito) LAYER: 04c LY 11
LY 12 Gwandz 1, 2, 3, 7 LY 13 Gwandz 1, 2, 3, 7 LY 14
LY 15
LATE (Tswei Shu) LAYER: 03c LY 16 Dau/Dv Jing 43 LY 17 Mwodz 48 LY 18 Jwangdz 4, 9, 12, 25 LY 19
LY 20
Of the Analects text interactions, we may now make the following observations and draw the following inferences: (1) There are no text interactions in the 05c layer of the text. In this period, the Analects school would seem to have operated in a sort of philosophical isolation. (2) Halfway through the 04c, the Analects comes into contact with rival philosophical schools, first of all the Legalist authors of the Gwandz. This, given its association with the name of the Chi minister Gwan Jung, must be a Chi work, and the Hundred Schools phase of the Warring States period seems to be strongly associated with Chi thinkers. In general, then, we seem to have here the beginning of the Hundred Schools debate, and we note that the Analects as well as the Gwandz seems to have participated in that debate. (3) The Analects, as Tswei Shu noted, becomes somewhat disorganized in the 03c, but it still maintains its identity as a text, and it continues to engage other schools of thought, our examples being from the Mician and Dauist schools.
This result is developed in detail in The Original Analects (see especially Appendix 1), but even in this simple form, we seem to be able to establish some dates for Warring States intellectual history, and we seem to find that the Analects, far from being a simple mirror of the historical Confucius, is continuously engaged with other strands of that history, as they appear in turn.
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24 Sept 2000 / Contact The Project / Exit to Lectures Page
