Search Results (11)

The veneration of the Southern and Northern Dippers stands at the heart of the Daoist tradition of astral worship, and the compilation of the Nanbei dou jing (Scriptures of the Southern and Northern Dippers) during the Northern Song dynasty marks a defining moment in the codification of this belief system. Over the course of their transmission, however, the texts accumulated errors while their exegetical tradition fell into increasing neglect. During the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns of the Qing dynasty, local literati in Yunnan employed the practice of spirit-writing to compose the Beidou jing chanwei and the Nandou jing chanwei in succession, with the twin aims of reconstructing the canonical texts and reviving their interpretive tradition. This article examines these two commentaries along three axes—textual character, philological value, and religious thought—and argues that they are at once liturgical handbooks of the Dongjing Association and the most significant Qing-dynasty annotations of the Nanbei dou jing known to date. Philologically, they preserve variant readings of considerable value for the reconstruction of the textual history of both scriptures. Doctrinally, the commentators fused Daoist astral worship with Buddhist karmic cosmology, Confucian ritual cultivation, and the discourse of inner alchemy, yielding a form of three-teachings syncretism distinctively shaped by its regional context. Through these rare sources, this article seeks to open new perspectives on Daoist textual production, inter-religious exchange, and ritual practice in Qing-dynasty Yunnan. Full article

This article argues that the reconstruction of modern knowledge in late Qing China was not merely the result of the passive importation of Western disciplinary categories, nor simply the natural collapse of the traditional Sibu 四部 system. Focusing on Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 (1863–1924), it shows how Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhist reading traditions and classificatory logic, functioned as an indigenous epistemological resource in the reordering of knowledge. Through an analysis of Xia’s personal reading lists and handwritten catalogues, including Shengping Suoxue 生平所學 and his Handwritten Catalogue of Collected Books 手抄藏書書目, this study demonstrates that Xia organized his books in the sequence of Buddhist works, newly translated Western works, and indigenous Chinese texts. This arrangement reversed the Confucian-centered hierarchy of the Sibu system, in which the jing 經 category occupied the privileged position. By comparing Xia’s classificatory practice with those of Shen Zengzhi 沈曾植 (1850–1922), Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), Xu Weize 徐維則 (1867–1919), and Yang Renshan 楊仁山 (1837–1911), the article argues that Xia did not simply adopt Western systems of knowledge. Rather, he used Buddhist textual order, cross-sectarian Mahayana learning, and Buddhist epistemological assumptions to relativize classical authority, accommodate Western learning, and construct a new reading horizon. Buddhism in this case was not only a matter of personal faith or religious revival; it became a conceptual and classificatory tool through which modern knowledge could be made intelligible. The article therefore contributes to the study of religion and modernity by showing that the formation of modern Chinese knowledge was not a purely secular process, but a religiously mediated transformation. Full article

This paper argues that the central thesis of Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State is that traditional Islamic cultures as shaped by Sharīʿa did not abide by a fact-value distinction. Hallaq’s incisive account of traditional Islamic socio-political culture has relevant repercussions beyond the Islamic context from which he draws his conclusions. The importance of Hallaq’s project stems from how it reconstructs a specific tradition—Islam—to contest logics presented as modern and universal. His central argument, that the modern (Western) state is ultimately organized around a fact-value distinction, bears crucially on analyses of the historical Chinese state and its “modernization.” As this paper shows, the Chinese were the first to invent the modern bureaucratic state that Hallaq problematizes in his account of post-feudal European “modernity.” The critique that Hallaq makes of this modern bureaucratic state finds resonance throughout the millennia of Chinese history. Historically, the Confucians argued against the proponents of a similar fact-value distinction in political life—the “legalist” (fajia, 法家). Philosophically, the Confucians had conclusively won the debate against the legalists in dynastic China and the historic Chinese state and its political culture disavowed of the kind of fact-value distinction championed by the legalists. However, in contemporary times, due to the attempt by Western knowledge production to globalize the “modern” state, there has been a revival of legalism by Western scholars. This paper situates the revival within the context of Hallaq’s powerful critique, which frames the West’s attempt to globalize its political models as a form of epistemic colonization. Full article

As a major proponent of the Buddhist revival movement in the late Ming dynasty, Yunqi Zhuhong authored works such as Jieshu fayin, Jiesha wen, and Fangsheng wen, which had a profound impact on lay Buddhism. Using the Buddhist six realms of rebirth as a theoretical foundation, he combined doctrinal analysis with narratives of spiritual efficacy to systematically expound upon the Buddhist ethics of refraining from killing, releasing life, and compassionately protecting living beings. During the same period, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci had come to China and wrote his book Tianzhu shiyi with reference to Catechismus Japonensis and Tianzhu shilu. A comparison of the contents of these three missionary works reveals that Ricci paid particular attention to the Buddhist doctrine and practice of abstaining from killing, and for the first time, he listed it in a missionary work and offered a targeted critique. Afterward, Ricci wrote Jiren shipian, which also included content on “The True Purpose of Fasting and Abstinence Does Not Arise from the Prohibition of Killing”. Relevant letters prove that Zhuhong had already read both of these works by Matteo Ricci as early as the 36th year of the Wanli era (1608), yet he did not immediately offer a direct refutation. At first, it was his disciple Yu Chunxi who wrote articles such as Tianzhu shiyi shasheng bian, initiating a preliminary direct debate with Ricci. As the influence of Catholicism gradually grew and expanded between 1608 and 1615, Zhuhong, after seven years of silence, wrote the three essays of Tianshuo and Tianshuo yu to offer a direct response to Catholicism. When expounding on the doctrine of abstaining from killing and releasing life, Zhuhong adopted new argumentative strategies, both to defend Buddhism and to remind and persuade Confucian intellectuals not to turn to Catholicism. Full article

This paper offers the first English-language philosophical treatment of Master Liu (Liuzi 劉子)—a treatise that gives a unique insight into the intellectual life of sixth-century China. Most probably written by Liu Zhou (d. 565) and known at the Tang court, the work was later neglected due to its eclectic label. This article argues that Liuzi integrated Confucian moral philosophy with selected Daoist ideas and responded to post-Buddhist transformations of key categories of Chinese thought in a manner that anticipates many solutions characteristic of neo-Confucian lixue. This includes an innovative understanding of such categories as spirit (shen) and heart-mind (xin), feelings (qing) and desires (yu), and, finally, reliability (xin) and balancing (quan). Full article

Yaodi Pao Zhuang (Monk Yaodi Distills the Essence of the Zhuangzi, 藥地炮莊), written by Ming dynasty scholar Fang Yizhi (1611–1671), was one of the greatest annotations of Zhuangzi 庄子 in the late Ming dynasty. However, the Buddhist thought in Yaodi Pao Zhuang has scarcely been examined. Drawing on the revival of the consciousness-only (vijñaptimātratā, 唯識) theory during the Ming dynasty, this study discussed how Fang Yizhi transformed the theory to annotate Zhuangzi in Yaodi Pao Zhuang through literature comparison and logical analysis. Meanwhile, from a speculative viewpoint drawing on Yi studies (studies of the Yi Jing, 易學), Fang Yizhi demonstrated that “storehouse consciousness” (alaya-vijnana, 阿賴耶識) could have contrasting properties of defilement (samklesa, 染) and purity (suddha, 淨). Moreover, he proposed “consciousness is wisdom” to replace the consciousness-only view of “transforming consciousness into wisdom” prevailing in the Tang dynasty, thus providing the conditions for the interpenetration of the consciousness-only doctrine into Zhuangzi. This study’s results highlight the positive implications of Fang Yizhi’s mutually supportive interaction model of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism for addressing contemporary cultural conflicts. Full article

From the Yuan to the mid-Ming period, the people of Huihui (回回人) in mainland China gradually Sinicized in terms of their languages, family names, marriages, costumes, and ethical values. There was close interaction between these Muslims and Confucian scholars in China. Most of the mosque inscriptions in this period were written by Confucian scholars, who were the first to try to interpret Islam in Confucian terms. Around the mid-Ming period, the Chinese language became the lingua franca of Muslims in mainland China, and the teaching of Arabic and Persian classics in Chinese became an urgent need at this time. It was at this time that the Confucian academies were revived with the government’s permission. Thereupon, the Muslim scholar Hu Dengzhou (胡登洲) founded a rejuvenated educational system known as Jingtang education (經堂教育), which produced a group of Muslim scholars who wrote in Chinese. Islam thus entered the historical arena of interaction with traditional Chinese religions. During the middle and late Ming period, changes in political and economic structures led to changes in the general mood of society. The rise of Wang Yangming’s Mind Study (心學) brought a lively academic atmosphere and a relaxed cultural environment to intellectual circles. The concept of “The same mind and the same principle of the sages in the East and the West” advocated by Lu Jiuyuan (陸九淵) and Wang Yangming (王陽明) was taken seriously by Muslim scholars and became a crucial theoretical reference in their writing process. In the late Ming and early Qing periods, the classical learning of the Shandong school and the Jinling school of Jingtang education focused on the study of Xingli (性理學). The theory of Sufism shared many common ideas with the Three Teachings (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism) which showed a tendency towards confluence in the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods. Chinese Muslim scholars, known as Huiru (回儒), drew intellectual resources from all of these traditions to construct their study of Xingli. Full article

This article focuses on two examples of Confucian early childhood education in contemporary Taiwan and Japan. Based on fieldwork conducted by the author in 2015, it contrasts the use of Confucianism in a grass-roots community early childhood educational setting in suburban Taipei with attempts to create elite Confucian “kids’ seminars” in central Tokyo. The study reveals the roles of gender, elitism, religious plurality, and modern early childhood pedagogy in the contrasting ways Confucianism manifests in these urban Taiwanese and Japanese settings. In doing so, it looks to contribute to wider discussions about the roles of modernity and tradition in contemporary religious revival in East Asia. Full article

Throughout the twenty-first century, Confucian education has rapidly expanded among the grassroots in China. This study focuses on the most influential style of Confucian education, dujing (classics reading) education, and on a very understudied group, the students, in the Confucian education system. Using data collected at a Confucian school, this study aims to elucidate dujing students’ genuine thoughts and feelings toward their plans for future education. The findings suggest that dujing students exhibit an individualistic outlook, which is characterized by their personal aspirations, self-determination, independence, and self-pursuit, as well as a reluctance to pursue further Confucian studies. Their self-identity is further strengthened by resistance to the authoritarian discourse circulating in the domain of dujing education and by a shifting relationship with imposed parental expectations. This study argues that the development of Confucian individualism in students’ dujing experience must be understood within the broader social contexts shaping Chinese individualisms and subjectivities. Full article

Since Koreans do not consider Confucianism to be part of religion, conventional religious identification questions cannot accurately capture the number of Confucians in Korea. Using the Korean General Social Survey and other data sources, we aim to describe the identification, beliefs, and practices related to Confucianism, especially ancestral rituals, and to examine whether these beliefs and practices differ across religious groups. Contrasted with 0.2% of the adult population identifying their religion as Confucianism in the 2015 Korean Census, 51% considered themselves as Confucians when asked, “(Regardless of your religious affiliation) do you consider yourself a Confucian?” If we consider those who think that rites for deceased family members are Confucian, the proportion was 44%. Considering those who conduct ancestral rites at a gravesite as Confucians, the proportion was 86%, but was only 70% when we count those who perform ancestral rites at home as Confucians. We also found substantial differences among religious groups. In general, Buddhists were most likely and Protestants were least likely to identify with Confucianism, believe in the power of ancestors, and perform ancestral rites. Perhaps most telling is the result of religious none falling in the middle between Buddhists and Protestants in terms of identification, beliefs, and rituals of Confucianism. The differences of religious groups appear to reflect religious syncretism and the exclusivity of religion. It is overstating to declare a revival of Confucianism, but it is reasonable to say that Confucianism is not a dying tradition in Korean society. Full article

Open claims to Confucian values, often associated with cultural traditionalism and a larger revival of Confucianism among the Chinese population from the 2000s onwards, have gained momentum in the world of entrepreneurs. The intensity of this phenomenon can be explained by a wide variety of motivations, among which a desire to establish a belief, a sort of xin 信 towards traditional values, has emerged from within the “Confucian” company. Based on fieldwork carried out between 2017 and 2018 at TW, a private company located in Dongguan (Guangdong), this paper aims to analyze the efforts undertaken by “Confucian” managers to use the spiritual guidance role of Confucianism. Our work is organized into three sections. First, we analyze the main modalities of proselytizing within TW. Then, based on the personal experiences of three employees of this company, we try to understand how they live the jiaohua and to what extent this “educational” experience inspired by Confucianism has allowed them to reorient themselves towards a new way of perceiving the world. Finally, by placing it in a broader context, that of contemporary Chinese society’s crisis of values, we question the role Confucianism can play in the foundation of a population’s beliefs. Full article