Five divine lords or one (human) emperor? A problematic passage in the material on Dong Zhongsu.

• Author: Arbuckle, Gary

For much of Chinese history the Former Han Confucian philosopher Dong Zhongshu [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] has had the credit - or blame - for having introduced Yin-Yang [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] and Five Forces [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] ideas into the mainstream of Confucian thought. The elucidation of his supposed contribution in this area is central, even dominant, in most presentations of his philosophy. Nevertheless, Dong's reputation is here doubly undeserved. First, he was no pioneer in the Confucian utilization of Yin and Yang. The Xinyu [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED], written by Lu Jia [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] in late 196 or early 195 B.C.,(1) demonstrates that Dong's use of Yin-Yang cosmology was hardly novel, even within the Chunqiu interpretative tradition, and the Huang-Lao [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] texts excavated in 1973 at Mawangdui have underlined the derivative nature of many of his cosmological concepts. The "decoding" of Chunqiu disasters and anomalies by means of stimulus-response theories based on the balance of Yin and Yang, the identification of Yang/summer/moral-power [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] and Yin/winter/punishment [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED], the skewing of the natural cycle to give preference to Yang and moral power over Yin and punishment: all these were part of the philosophical scene even before Dong arrived at the court of Emperor Jing [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] around 152 B.C. to serve as Gongyang [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] erudite.(2)

Was he perhaps a pioneer in the use of the Five Forces in his own tradition, at least? The answer to that question is that not only was he not a pioneer, he does not appear to have used the cycle of the Forces at all. This proposal, startling at first sight but solidly backed by Han-dynasty sources, was first made by Keimatsu Mitsuo [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] in 1959, and independently rediscovered by Dai Junren [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] in 1968. An ill-reasoned but impassioned attack by Xu Fuguan [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] delayed serious consideration of the implication of Dai's and Keimatsu's findings,(3) but their essential veracity is becoming more and more plain to scholars in the field of Han thought.(4) Before long, we may expect that it will be considered no more acceptable to take the Chunqiu fanlu as an accurate representation of Dong's thought than it would be to base a study of the early Shangshu teacher Fu-sheng [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] on an uncritical reading of the Shangshu dazhuan [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED].

Although each contributed a somewhat different arrangement of supporting arguments, both Keimatsu and Dai based their conclusions on one gross anomaly in the corpus of material on Dong Zhongshu: the material concerning the Five Forces is found nowhere outside the Chunqiu fanlu. The very considerable mass of texts by and about Dong found scattered through other Han works, notably the Hanshu [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED], by Ban Gu, [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] and the Lunheng [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED], by Wang Chong [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED], never link Dong with the Forces in any way. This is negative evidence, and as such theoretically questionable, as an argument from silence; but it is about as strong as negative evidence ever can be. As both Keimatsu and Dai point out, if Dong wrote on the Forces, why didn't Ban Gu quote any of his opinions in the Hanshu "Wuxing zhi" [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] ("Treatises on the Five Forces")? His name is found there - over eighty times - but always in connection with the Yin and Yang. Of Forces theorizing there is not a word, and it is inconceivable Ban Gu would have deliberately edited it out. The only plausible conclusion is that the Five Forces-influenced chapters of the Chunqiu fanlu either did not exist in Ban Gu's time, or they were known to be from another hand than Dong Zhongshu's.(5)

Now, it is evident that the strength of the Keimatsu/Dai thesis derives from the consistency of the evidence supporting it. Were we able to find some allegedly Han text that did link Dong with the Forces, even indirectly, it would constitute a serious challenge. Such a text is the subject of this paper, but I hope to be able to demonstrate the challenge it appears to pose is a phantom that dissolves on serious examination.

The Han jiuyi [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] (Old Rites of the Han) is a book written by Wei Hong [UNKNOWN TEXT OMITTED] around the second...