Confucius and pregnant women: an investigation into the intertextuality of the Lunyu.

• Author: Weingarten, Oliver
• Position: Critical essay

1. INTRODUCTION: CONFUCIUS AND THE LUNYU

"Master Kong" (Kongzi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], latinized Confucius (trad. 551-479 B.C.), is certainly one of the most important figures in Chinese intellectual history. Given his outstanding prestige, however, and the looming influence exerted for over two millennia by the mythicized image of Confucius the Sage, reliable knowledge about Confucius the man remains surprisingly scarce.

Ancient historiographical sources such as Zuozhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or Guoyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] offer only fragmentary and, in some respects, conflicting images. (1) The earliest transmitted record of Confucius's life that approaches the format of a biography is Sima Qian's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 145-86 B.C.E.) "Hereditary House of Master Kong" (Kongzi shijia [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. But this vita, though still widely referred to by scholars, is generally considered problematic and unreliable. (2) The one text commonly regarded as the most important repository of the Master's words and teachings, Lunyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the "Sayings" or "Analects," only consists of roughly five hundred predominantly short paragraphs, grouped in twenty chapters. These passages mainly record single enunciations by the Master and elliptical snippets of dialogue. (3) Their language is frequently opaque to the degree of being almost impenetrable, and one often senses that the individual paragraphs were once part of a larger context that is now missing, a further impediment to a deeper understanding of the text.

In addition to the obscurity of its language and much of its contents, the origins of the Lunyu as a compilation, as one "book," are not yet very well understood. Traditionally, it is believed to consist of records prepared by Confucius's disciples. The first explicit references to its existence, however, do not predate the second century B.C.E., (4) while the earliest known characterization of the text as a faithful transcription of Confucius's words produced by his disciples was only written down at the turn of the eras. (5) For these reasons, some scholars, most notably the contemporary historian Zhu Weizheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and John Makeham, believe that the book was compiled only at the time of the first explicit citations, by editors who drew their material from a larger pool of textual sources about Confucius. (6) If this hypothesis is valid, the textual material found in the received Lunyu may have originated anytime between Confucius's death in the early fifth century B.C.E. and the second century B.C.E., or even later in the case of interpolations.

This cautious assessment of the status and source value of the Lunyu is at odds with the view supported by most scholars, particularly since the Song dynasty, who have valued the Lunyu more highly as a source of insight into the Master's teachings and personality than other writings. This was a result of the book's canonical status, but it is also partly due to the stronger emphasis on Confucius as an exemplary, almost saintly figure in Song Confucianism. In recent scholarship, the Lunyu is still considered the main source about the historical Confucius. (7) Because of its prestige, it was not generally subjected to critical readings comparing it with other works that similarly date from the time up to the Western Han. However, even when comparisons were made, information encountered in non-canonical sources was usually not allowed to override the contents of the Lunyu lest this undermine its scriptural authority. (8) Even critical philological studies ultimately aim to identify the kernel of authentic material supported to be hidden in the book. (9)

Contrary to this practice, standards of scholarly inquiry suggest that the Lunyu is best not read in isolation. Given what is known about its textual history, there is no compelling reason to share the a priori belief in its authenticity. As in other fields of historical or philological studies, where the sources consulted to address a particular problem are not usually narrowed down to only one or two especially favored items, it appears much more promising to contextualize the Lunyu by reading it against the widest possible array of relevant materials.

It is well known that the Lunyu shares a sizable number of textual parallels with other writings, matching passages that are phrased so similarly that the resemblance is unlikely to be due to happenstance. (10) While some sort of genetical relationship will pertain between such parallels, they do not always fall neatly into the categories of influences or quotations from the Lunyu, as is often assumed. In some instances, the direction of textual borrowing is far less clear than the supposedly ancient origin of the Lunyu suggests. There is good reason to think that it is sometimes the Lunyu itself that quotes from pre-existing materials. (11)

The notion of textual fluidity and intertextual borrowing fits well into recent developments in classical Chinese philology as embodied in the works of William Boltz, Edward Shaughnessy, and Matthias Richter. These insights encourage an understanding of ancient writings as textual mosaics assembled from smaller, movable textual units which tended to be repeatedly re-embedded and re-interpreted in various different contexts. (12) The history of such textual units is often difficult to reconstruct and further obscured by the lasting influence of prevalent conceptions of chronology, biographical dates, and textual prestige. (13) In a recent article, Paul Fischer has presented the first systematic study of the intertextuality of a Warring States text, the Shizi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (14) However, so far intertextual relationships have rarely been pursued in order to explore the nature of the Lunyu. (15) Rather, parallels have been used as supplementary source material in order to elucidate problematic Lunyu passages.

The aim of this article is to help redress the balance, with a case study that serves a twofold purpose. Firstly, it gathers materials that provide additional information for the interpretation of two Lunyu passages. Secondly, it is intended to illustrate the fruitfulness of a systematic inquiry into parallels as a way to understand the interconnectedness of the Lunyu and other canonical as well as non-canonical writings from pre-imperial and early imperial China. The strength of such contextualizations lies in the fact that they encourage a dynamic, multidimensional analysis instead of more static, text-immanent interpretations. From such an angle, texts appear more as records of ongoing conversations or, indeed, impassioned debates than as self-sufficient pieces of expository prose. The principle of textual compositionality, if applied as an analytical paradigm, will, in the long run, change the way early texts are read and interpreted.

The main part of this article is devoted to two sentences in Lunyu 10.8 and 10.12. (16) On the basis of selected commentarial statements, I will sketch out how these sentences have historically been interpreted and how a different understanding can be reached by relating them to other texts, instead of analyzing them as self-contained statements about Confucius. I will argue that a comprehensive exploration of the Lunyu's intertextuality is very likely to alter perceptions of individual passages. Eventually, it is likely to pave the way for a new interpretation of the Lunyu as a whole and to yield a new paradigm for the reading of classical Chinese texts that is grounded in the advances which have so far been made in textual criticism and manuscript studies.

While Lunyu 10 is one of the less typical parts of the book, the mechanisms of intertextuality that can be uncovered on the basis of these materials are far from uncommon. The sentences in question--statements taken to refer to Confucius's sense of etiquette and culinary habits--have the additional advantage of forging links to texts with unexpected thematic concerns. They illustrate how even short phrases can act as links between seemingly disparate spheres of discourse. Pursuing them helps to recreate a sense of interconnectedness that transcends the boundaries between individual texts. (17) This approach contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural background of individual texts, but also, as we will see, to a deeper appreciation of conflicts and friction, of inherent ambiguities and instances of irony.

2. LUNYU 10: A COLLECTION OF MATERIALS ON RITUAL

   The tenth chapter of the Lunyu deals almost exclusively with examples of ritually correct behavior. Confucius is named in the initial sentence, and one of the following paragraphs records a piece of direct speech that is expressly attributed to him. There are indications in other texts, such as Mengzi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] that certain parts of Lunyu 10 were explicitly associated with Confucius, and Sima Qian quotes parts of it in his biography of Confucius. Yet, explicit internal references to Confucius are scarce, and parallels that mention Confucius could have been influenced by the Lunyu itself. (18)

   As Arthur Waley has pointed out, Lunyu 10 is probably not a genuine description of the Master's demeanor. More likely, large swathes of text that are now part of Lunyu 10 were culled from ritual regulations and rules of etiquette reminiscent of those gathered in ritual compendia such as the Liji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or Yili [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (19) Furthermore, a significant number of textual correspondences exist between Lunyu 10 and these works.

   The phrase "the guest does not turn back" (bin bu gu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] which marks the end of a description of the rituals accompanying an official visit, occurs in Lunyu 10.3 and Yili, twice in "Pin li" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN...