5.3: Confucians at the Han Imperial Court

Scholars used to believe that the Han established Confucianism as its state orthodoxy. But it was beginning only in the reign of Yuandi (48-33 BC) that officials frequently quoted Confucius and the dynasty adopted the Mandate of Heaven as a legitimating model. The first imperial edict that invoked Confucius was issued by the Grand Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun, in AD 1. There was no state cult to Confucius until after the fall of Han. Even the most basic practice of filial piety – mourning parents for three years – was not required of officials (let alone anyone else), or even encouraged during the Former Han.¹⁰

Confucius had promoted ritual correctness and opposed changes in inherited status, but as Confucians fought for a place in the legalist state, they underlined that those who inherited power were responsible for the people’s livelihood, and they underlined meritocratic recruitment as their own way to power. They defined “merit” as filiality and book-learning.

Still, famous Han Confucians gained little influence in their lifetimes, and are known now for their writings. Emperor Wen brought Jia Yi, famous for his rhetorical attack on Qin, to court as a Classics master, but disregarded his policy recommendations, preferring to heed his Daoist consort, Empress Dou. Sima Qian’s father Tan, as Grand Astronomer, was responsible for the calendar and for recording court events, but Emperor Wu treated him disrespectfully, “like a jester or entertainer,” as his son put it. Daoist fangshi took his rightful place at the imperial rituals at Mt. Tai, and he died of chagrin. Qian himself was castrated, and his history regarded by the Han court as subversive.

Another now-eminent Confucian, Liu Xiang (77 – 6 BC), joined a faction trying to rein in the consort families of his time; he was kept out of office for 15 years, until Chengdi (r. 33-7) came to the throne, began collecting scholars, and set Liu Xiang to working on the first Han library project. As he catalogued its holdings, he also compiled stories from various sources to create the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Strategies of the Warring States, and Biographies of Exemplary Women.

Finally, Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BC) constantly advised Emperor Wu to cut his military spending, and to support small families by measures such as limiting the amount of land any one person could own. Wudi ignored him, and Dong Zhongshu had to accept a low-ranking government position. He spent his time teaching and writing. Nevertheless, his work had a lasting effect. For he was the key creator of a systematic anti-female strand in Confucian thinking.

When Wudi became emperor, he was only a teenager, and his grandmother, Grand Dowager Empress Dou (d. 135 BC) was still politically active. Empress Dou blocked the appointment of scholars who openly promoted Confucianism, and required the emperor and all the members of her own family to study Daoism. She wished to make it the official doctrine of the government, and many copies of the Dao De Jing and related texts have indeed been found in burials from her reign.

To counter-attack, Dong Zhongshu reworked old concepts. One example is the yin-yang pair. In the Book of Odes and other early sources, yin and yang referred simply to dark and light, shade and sun, in the natural world. The diagram represents how the seed of each force grows within its complement; nature goes through transformations just as day gives way to dusk and night to dawn. The natural alternation, which was acted out (by the way) in the game of kickball, did not map to “male” and “female.” In Han theories of health, yin and yang were two complementary types of qi (energy), both present in both men’s and women’s bodies, which should balance harmoniously within each person’s body for good health, naturally waxing and waning. It was Dong Zhongshu who wrote that “yin and yang can be called male and female.” To underline that point, Dong proposed that in a drought, men should stay inside and women should go out in public. The specific proposal was new, but it made sense within correlative cosmology.

The next step was to denigrate the yin, making it the worse of the two, instead of yang’s equal complement. Dong Zhongshu identified yang (now meaning men) with the Confucian virtue of humaneness or benevolence (ren 仁), and yin (women) with emotion and greediness. He turned the complementarity of yin and yang into a hierarchy: yang, the active force, the force of sunlight and maleness was and ought to be superior. Harmony of equals (和) was replaced with unity enforced by the superior (合). Yin, which Dong labelled inferior and female, had to be kept under control or the cosmos would go haywire. In order to attack imperial and palace women who competed with them at court, Confucians need not speak of specific persons, but could talk loftily of cosmic forces. They could say they feared too much yin at the capital, where the emperor was holding the cosmos together.

The Five Classics (see Chapter One) were taking their final form in Han times, so new ideas were embedded in supposedly old texts: for instance, the Record of Ritual (Li ji) claimed that if women disobeyed men, lunar eclipses and other disasters would result.¹¹ Mencius had spoken of five reciprocal human relationships: parent and child shared affection, ruler and minister interacted with propriety, husband and wife had different parts to play in the family, elder and younger brother observed age order, and friends shared good faith. Dong spoke instead of the “Three Bonds.” In the “Three Bonds” formulation, command by the superior and obedience by the inferior replaced complementarity and reciprocity. Initiated as a way for Confucians (Ru, meaning “the weak ones”) to attack rivals at court, the formula demanded absolute obedience and sacrifice from the child (and daughter-in-law), loyalty-to-the-death from the minister (and subject), and fierce devotion of the wife (or widow), with no reciprocal obligations on the part of parents, rulers, or husbands. Dong’s anti-woman rhetoric was ideological – a way for Confucians to compete for against imperial women. We will see below how far removed from most Han people’s reality it was.