A Concise Reader of Chinese Culture by Chunsong Gan

Author:Chunsong Gan
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9789811388675
Publisher: Springer Singapore

3.2.2 The “Study of the Classics” in the Former and Later Han Dynasties

Harried by the tyranny of the Qin, the country was pushed to the brink of ruin, and it was not until the early Han that it embarked on recovering. The Han court’s policy of rest and rehabilitation allowed the thought of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi that advocated tranquil life and non-action to move into the center, but as the thought of the Daoists was predisposed to oppose transformation through moral education, and dodge social responsibilities, they could not provide a feasible ideology for a unified country, while the Confucians , after absorbing the yin-yang masters’ cosmological principles and the thought of the Daoists, Legalists, and Terminologists , through a process of digestion and development, gradually moved onto the center stage in the arena of ideas. That Emperor Wu gave an approving nod to the “Responses” submitted by Zhongshu Dong marks the ascendance of Confucianism to the state ideology of the Han dynasty, and the designation of the “Erudits of the Five Classics” in 136 BCE indicates that Confucianism has sailed into its phase of canonization.

Among all these forays, the study of the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals played a crucial role. The Han dynasty was ruled by the commoners, and in the early years of the dynasty, it followed the Qin in most of its institutions. Only after Emperor Wu ascended the throne did there appear some signs of change, the most noticeable of them being Zhongshu Dong ’s three “Responses on heaven and man” to Emperor Wu’s queries, in which he made an endeavor to change with Confucian ideas the policy pursued since the early Han of following the thought of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi, calling for “adhering to Confucianism alone” to establish it as guiding principles, and replacing the obfuscated Erudit system since the Qin with the “Erudits of the Five Classics.” In this process of reform, the tradition of the Gongyang Commentary played a crucial role. “On the one hand, they aimed to reform the old system of the Qin, banning the one hundred schools of thought, and on the other, restored the ancient tradition, extolling the Six Choice Works alone and the learning of the court in antiquity. In the meantime, there was the new law created by the emperors of the Han dynasty, differing greatly from the learning of the court in antiquity. In spite of that, as a matter of fact, only Confucius’s Spring and Autumn Annals was what was newly created, not belonging to the old learning of the court, but a new learning of the court created to provide support for the Han in establishing its government system. So the appointment of the ‘Erudits of the Five Classics’ by the Han court brought unwittingly to the front as the main brain of the time the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals.”12

The flourishing of the “study of the classics” in the Han dynasty was

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