Warring States Project | Current Research

America was settled from Europe, by people who were chiefly anxious to get away from Europe. European high culture came with them, but remained something foreign, the possession of an elite few. Its languages were French and German (plus, for musicians, Italian); no Americans contributed anything of note to its inventory of notable works, whether Orientalist or operatic. The study of Biblical antiquity, requiring Greek and Hebrew, was cultivated in both England and in America for traditional church reasons, but neither country had a leading position in those fields. The general American population wished not to be involved with, or even much aware of, Europe; still less with places further away. China was regarded as quaint to the point of unreality. Curiosity about the strange "pictographic" writing system (it is actually logographic, which is not the same thing) appeared in children's books. Textbooks even at the college level (notoriously, the Creel series, from 1948) retained, to the detriment of their students, that fundamental misunderstanding. As for the tonal spoken language, it was regarded as not only unintelligible but even unpronounceable.

There were exceptions, but of a special kind. (1) Individuals whose inner spiritual needs were not met by the world around them sometimes turned to Eastern Religions, chiefly Buddhism. An early example was Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy movement (1875); a recent version is Transcendental Meditation (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1950's and still current). This climate of thought made the Dau/Dv Jing popular; the first important translation being that of Paul Carus (himself an advocate for Buddhism as the true philosophy, 1927), followed by many, including Arthur Waley (1934) and the bicultural Lin Yutang (1948). In the wake of the DDJ there came the satirical Jwangdz, and following both, an openly religious Dauism. There has been a steady effort, with Livia Kohn as one recent leading figure, to prove that religious Dauism (which appeared only in the Eastern Han Dynasty, eighty years after the introduction of Buddhism into China) was earlier than, and thus more authentic than, the "philosophical" Dauism of the DDJ - which, as these people seem not to know, was itself a development straight out of 05th century Indian Buddhism. (2) The Sundz "Art of War" has its own group of fans, who apply its methods not merely to war, but also to peace, and even to business, or the reader's personal love life. (3) Third, personal fortune-telling in its many forms, all involving some sort of contact with a divinity, has been popular in all cultures since high antiquity. Those of that persuasion took up the Yi Jing, chiefly in the version of Richard Wilhelm, (1924; English translation by Cary Baynes, 1950), leading to involvement with the thought of Carl Jung and the annual "Eranos" meetings at Ascona, Switzerland (since 1933).

In this climate of opinion, boring texts like the Analects did not get much notice, save perhaps as part of some college acquaintance course like that later designed by Theodore de Bary at Columbia, where the straight Ju Syi interpretation is followed even more consistently than by James Legge long before, an interpretation which sees the Analects and the other Confucian texts through the veil of what was in effect a religious rereading of the entire Confucian canon. Taking it straight, as cultural and even political history, has had little appeal to the American sensibility. As for the Gwandz, which contains the design for the classical, and also (should one be interested) the modern Chinese state, no one of consequence reads it (or its translation by Rickett, 1985-2001). If we ask, What is the difference between the Spring and Autumn (Chun/Chyou) and the Warring States (Jan-Gwo) periods, international Sinologues will tend to look blank, and at least one modern Chinese scholar has said, "There is no difference." This is not a recipe for the understanding of the sober parts, and thus for any part, of the classical Chinese world.