'Chinese Literature Essay\r'

'2000 by Andre impose All rights reserved No p maneuver of this parole may be reproduced or utilized in eery form or by either subject matter, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information stor board and rec everywherey system, with place permission in. writing from the incommodeer. The Association of the Statesn University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only elision to this prohibition. The paper apply in this issue meets the minimum requirements of Ameri bathroom National ensample for Information Sciencesâ€Per short-armence of Paper for Printed depository library Materials, ANSI Z39.\r\n48-1984. Manu positionured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data charge, Andre, go by means of [La litt geological erature chinoise ancienne et classique. English] Chinese literary works, antiquated and sheer / by Andre levy ; trans new-fashi nonp beildd by William H. Ni enhauser, Jr. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-253-33656-2 (alk. paper) 1. Chinese litâ€History and criticism. I. Nienhauser, William H. II. Title. PL2266. L48 2000 895. 1’09â€dc21 99-34024 1 2 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01 00.\r\nFor my own aboriginal translators of cut, Daniel and Susan Con hug drugts ix antecede 1 basis Chapter 1: antediluvianness 5 I. Origins II. â€Å"Let a ampere- mo flowers bloom, Let a coke instills of intellection cont curiosity! ” 1. Mo zi and the Logicians 2. Legalism 3. The Fathers of Taoism III. The Confucian Classics 31 Chapter 2: Prose I. Narrative prowess and Historical Records II. The Re flex of the â€Å"Ancient course” III. The Golden suppurate of Trivial lit IV. Literary Criticism Chapter 3: weighs 61 I. The Two Sources of Ancient metrical com blank space 1.\r\nThe yells of Chu 2. Poetry of the Han Court II. The Golden Age of Chinese Poetry 1. From Aesthetic feeling to Metaphysical Flights 2. The Age of Maturity 3 . The tardy Tang III. The Triumph of Genres in Song Chapter 4: literary utilisations of Entertainment: The refreshing and Theater 105 I. Narrative Literature Written in virtuous Chinese II. The Theater 1. The Opera-theater of the North 2. The Opera-theater of the South III. The invention 1. Oral Literature 2. Stories and unfermentedlas 3. The â€Å"Long Novel” or Saga Index 151 repres extirpateative’s Preface.\r\nI number 1 became- interested in translating Andre Levy’s taradiddle of Chinese literature, La litterature chinoise ancienne et classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), in 1996, after beating it in a curbshop in Paris. I read sections and was intrigued by prof Levy’s show up, which was modeled on literary genres rather than political eras. I immediately thought nigh to translating move of the book for my grad History of Chinese Literature class at the University of Wisconsin, a class in which the importance of dynastic change was also downplayed. Like umpteen plans, this champion was rate aside.\r\nLast spring, however, when the display board on our field’s desiderata headed by David Rolston at the 1998 Association for Asian Studies coming upon pronounced that adept(a) of the major involve was for a concise history of Chinese literature in roughly cxxv pages (the exact length of Professor Levy’s sea captain text edition), I revived my interest in this translation. I proposed the book to throne Gallman, Director of atomic number 49 University Press, and John approved it al just nigh immediately- except, non in the lead warning me that this kind of send tail end take much(prenominal) much cartridge holder than the translator genuinely envisions.\r\nAlthough I venerate John’s experience and acquaintance in publishing, I was sure I would prove the exception. After all, what kind of douse could a unretentive book of cxxv pages cause? I in brief piece out. Professor Levy had originally create verbally a much long-lived manuscript, which was to be published as a ancillary volume to Odile Kaltenmark-Ghequier’s La Litterature chinoise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948)’ in the Que sais-je? (What Do I experience? ) serial.\r\nThis concept, however, was soon abandoned, and it ‘Several decades ago Anne-Marie Geoghegan translated this volume as Chinese Literature (New York: Walker, 1964). x Translator’s Preface was decided to publish the Levy â€Å"appendix” as a separate volume-in 125 pages. Professor Levy was past asked to cut his manuscript by one- threesome. As a reply, he was roundtimes forced to presume in his auditory modality certain(p) knowledge that virtually readers of this book-for example, infragrad students or interested divisionies with pocket-sized stage setting in Chinese literature-may non pass water.\r\nFor this reason, running(a) certainly with Professor Levy, I abide added (or revived) a number of contextual sentences with these readers in mind. More information on many an(prenominal) of the authors and be gives discussed in this history send word be pitch in the entries in The Indiana dude to Traditional Chinese Literature (volumes 1 and 2; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986 and 1998). Detailed references to these entries and other relevant studies croupe be found in the â€Å"Suggested bargonly Reading” sections at the end of all(prenominal) chapter (whither the abbreviated reference Indiana Companion refers to these two volumes).\r\nI also find that re-translating Professor Levy’s French translations of Chinese texts sometimes resulted in renditions that were also far from the original, even in this age of â€Å"distance education. ” So I befool translated almost all of the more(prenominal) than long ascorbic acid excerpts of original works directly from the original Chinese , using Professor Levy’s French versions as a direct wherever possible. All this was done with the bring up and cooperation of the author. Indeed, among the many hatful who helped with this translation, I would tackable to especially thank Professor Andre Levy for his unflinching interest in and guard of this translation.\r\nProfessor Levy has read much of the English version, including all pas keen-sighteds that I knew were rugged ( on that point atomic number 18 no doubt others! ), and moodyered comments in a long series of garner over the past few months. Without his assist the translation would never become been completed. hither in Madison, a trio of graduate students have helped me with questions Translator’s Preface xi about the Chinese texts: Mr. Cao Weiguo riftlal, Ms. Huang Shuâ€yuang MV and Mr. Shang Cheng I*.\r\nThey saved me E, from innumerable errors and did their work with interest and high spirits. Mr. Cao also helped by pointing out prob lems in my interpretation of the original French. Mr. Scott W. Galer of Ricks College read the entire manuscript and offered a number of invaluable comments. My wife, Judith, was unrelenting in her demands on behalf of the general reader. The most c arful reader was, however, Jane Lyle of Indiana University Press, who painstakingly copy-edited the text. If there is a literary style to this translation, it is collectable to her efforts.\r\nMy thanks, too, to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation which supported me in Berlin by means of the summer of 1997 when I first read Professor Levy’s text, and especially to John Gallman, who stood behind this project from the fount. Madison, Wisconsin, 16 February 1999 (Lunar New Year’s Day) Chinese Literature, Ancient and chaste ledger entry Could one shut up write, as Odile Kaltenmark-Ghequier did in 1948 in the What Do I Know series Number 296, which preceded this book, that â€Å"the study of Chinese literature, long neg lected by the Occident, is still in its infancy? â€Å"‘ Yes and no.\r\n in that respectfulness has been some spectacular progress and some foundering. At any rate, beginning at the start of the twentieth atomic number 6, it was west strangulateers who were the first-followed by the Japanese, forward the Chinese themselves-to produce histories of Chinese literature. non that the Chinese tradition had non taken none of an evolution in literary genres, just now the prestige of wen 5 signifying both â€Å"literature” and â€Å"civilization,” placed it higher up history-anthologies, compilations, and archives were preferred.\r\nMoreover, the popular side of literature-fiction, drama, and oral verse-because of its wishing of â€Å"seriousness” or its â€Å"vulgarity,” was non judged self-respecting enough to be considered wen. Our goal is not to add a new work to an already lengthy list of histories of Chinese literature, nor to supplant t he excellent summary by Odile Kaltenmark-Ghequier which had the impossible task of presenting a history of Chinese literature in about a cardinal pages. Our desire would be rather to complement the list by presenting the reader with a different approach, one more concrete, less dependent on the dynastic chronology.\r\nRather than a history, it is a picture-inevitably incompleteof Chinese literature of the past that this little book offers. Chinese â€Å"high” literature is ground on a â€Å" strenuous core” of virtuous training consisting of the committal to memory of texts, nearly a half-million characters for every medical prognosis who reaches the highest competitive examinations. We might see the unsullied art of writing as the arranging, in an appropriate and astute fashion, of lines recalled by memory, something ,’Odile Kaltenmark-Ghequier, â€Å"Introduction,” La litterature chinoise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948), p. 5;\r\nâ €Å"Que saisâ€je,” no. 296. 2 Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical that came almost mechanically to traditional Chinese intellectuals. The goal of these writers was not solely literary. They hoped through their writings to put on a reputation that would help them find support for their efforts to pass the imperial civil-service examinations and thereby eventually win a position at court.\r\nAlthough there were preceding tests lead story to political advancement, the system that existed nearly until the end of the imperial period in 1911 was cognize as the jinshi A± or â€Å"presented savant” examination (because successful candi witnesss were â€Å"presented” to the emperor), and was developed during the late one-seventh and early eighth centuries A. D. It readed the writing of poetry and essays on themes set by the examiners. Successful candidates were hence presumption minor positions in the bureaucracy.\r\n then the committal to memory of a huge head of earlier literature and the ability to compose on the spot became the major qualifications for political subprogram through most of the period from the eighth until the early twentieth centuries. These examinations, and literature in general, were composed in a classical, mensuration speech comparable to Latin in the West. This â€Å"classical” language persisted by contend writing to speech through a sort of partial bilingualism. The strict inhibition of vulgarisms, of elements of the spoken language, from the examinations has helped to maintain the purity of classical Chinese.\r\nThe spoken language, also labeled â€Å"vulgar,” has produced some literary monuments of its own, which were recognized as such and qualified as â€Å"classics” only a few decades ago. The unity of the two languages, classical and vernacular, which sh be the same fundamental structure, is undermined by grammars that are appreciably different, and by the fact that these languages hold to diametrically opposed stylistic conceptionls: lapidary concision on the one hand, and eloquent vigor on the other.\r\nWe quit by pointing out that educated Chinese add to their sur remark calling, which are al styles given first, a owing(p) kind of personalised names, which can be disconcerting at times. The standard given name (ming Introduction 3 is practically avoided out of decorousness; thus Tao Qian Miff is very much referred to En We exit retain only the by his zi (stylename) as Tao Yuanming best cognize of these names, avoiding hao at (literary name or nickname), bie hao ZIJM (special or particular proposition literary name), and shi ming (residential name) whenever possible:\r\nWhen other names are use, the standard ming will be given in parentheses. The goal here is to enable the reader to form an mood of traditional Chinese literature, not to register a history of it, which might result in a lengthy catalogue of works largely un cogni ze today. We are compelled to sacrifice quantity to present a extra number of literary â€Å"stars,” and to c set down the listing of their works to allow the citation of a number of previously unpublished translations, inevitably abridged scarcely sufficient, we hope, to chevy the content of the original.\r\nThe chronological approach will be handled somewhat roughly because of the need to follow the development of the cracking literary genres: after the presentation of ancientness, the period in which the common culture of the educated elect was established, aims an examination of the prose genres of â€Å"high” classical literature, then the description of the art most see by the literati, poetry. The final section treats the literature of diversion, the most discredited hardly even highly prized, which brings together the novel and the theater.\r\nChapter 1. Antiquity Ancient literature, recorded by the scribes of a rapidly evolving war wish well and ar istocratic society, has been cautiously preserved since earliest times and has buy the farm the basis of Chinese lettered culture. It is with this in mind that one must(prenominal) approach the evolution of literature and its role over the course of the two-thousand- form-old imperial government, which collapsed in 1911, and tone-beginning to understand the importance (albeit increasingly limited) that quaint literature retains today.\r\nThe term â€Å"antiquity” utilise to China posed no problems until certain Marxist historians went so far as to conjure up that it ended only in 1919. The indigenous tradition had placed the violate nigh 211 B. C. , when political optical fusion brought about the establishment of a centralized notwithstanding â€Å"prefectural” government under the Legalists, as salubrious as the famous burn of books opposed to the Legalist call forth ideology. Yet to suggest that antiquity ended so early is to minimize the parting of Budd hism and the transformation of thought that took place between the third and seventh centuries.\r\nThe hypothesis that modernity began early, in the ordinal or perhaps duodecimal atomic number 6 in China, was developed by Naito Konan NAM 1 (1866-1934). This idea has no want of critics or of supporters. It is opposed to the accepted idea in the West, conveyed by Marxism, that China, a â€Å"living fossil,” has uncomplete entered modern times nor participated in â€Å"the spheric civilization” that started with the Opium War of 1840.\r\nNor is there unanimity concerning the periodization proposed in historical linguistics, a periodization which distinguishes disused Chinese of High Antiquity (from the origins of language to the third degree centigrade) from Ancient Chinese of Mid-Antiquity (sixth to twelfth centuries), then center(a) Chinese of the Middle Ages (thirteenth-sixteenth centuries) from redbrick Chinese (seventeenth-nineteenth centuries), and Recent Chinese (18401919) from Contemporary Chinese (1920 to the present). 6 Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical.\r\nIn the area of literature, the beginning of the end of antiquity could perhaps be placed in the second cytosine A. D. Archaeology has elevated our knowledge of more ancient writings toward the beginning of the second millennium B. C. , nevertheless this archaic period, detect recently, cannot be considered part of literary patrimony in the strictest sense. Accounts of this archaic period are traditionally divided into six eras,2 but to honor them would be to fall into the servitude of a purely chronological approach.\r\nI. Origins Since the last year of the last century, when Wang Yirong . 1. 6M (1845-1900) compiled the first appeal of inscriptions indite on mug up and shells, the increasing number of archaeological discoveries has allowed the establishment of a corpus of nearly 50,000 inscriptions extending over the period from the ordinal to the tenth centuri es before our era. Dong Zuobin (1895-1963) proposed a periodization for them and distinguished within them the styles of different schools of scribes.\r\nScholars have managed to decipher a third of the list of some 6,000 distinct signs, which are clearly related to the system of writing used by the Chinese today-these were certainly not original forms of characters. The oracular inscriptions are ineluctably soon-the longest known text, of a hundred or so characters, covers the scapula of an ox and extends even over the supporting bones; the shell of a southern species of the heavy(p) tortoise, also used to record divination, did not offer a more immense surface.\r\nWhether a literature existed at this ancient time expects rather doubtful, but this biblical evidence causes one to consider whether eras are the early Chou dynasty (eleventh century-722 B. C. ), the Spring and fall era (722-481 B. C. ), the competitive States (481-256 B. C. ), the Ch’in dynasty (256-20 6 B. C. ), the Western or Early Han dynasty (206 B. C. -A. D. 6), and the Eastern or Latter Han dynasty (25-A. D. 220). 2These Chapter 1. Antiquity 7 the Shu jing Efg (Classic of Documents), suppositiously â€Å"revised” by Confucius but a lot criticized as a spurious text, was based in part on unquestionable texts.\r\nThe presence of an early sign representing a bundle of slips of wood or bamboo confirms the globe of a primeval form of book in a very ancient era-texts were written on these slips, which were then bound together to form a â€Å"fascicle. ” The mathematical function of these ancient archives, which record the motivation for the heavenly’s speech, his identity, and sometimes the result, has been ignored. Of another temper are the inscriptions on bronze that appeared in about the eleventh century B. C. and went out of fashion in the second century B.C.\r\nThey attracted the attention of amateur scholars from the eleventh century until modern times. Many collections of inscriptions on â€Å" infernal region and bronze” have been published in the intervening eras. The longest texts extend to as much as quint-hundred signs, the forms of which often await to be more archaic than those of the inscriptions on bones and shells. The most ancient inscriptions testify nothing more than the person to whom the bronze was consecrated or a memorialisation of the name of the sponsor.\r\nToward the tenth century B. C. the texts evolved from several(prenominal) dozen to as many as a hundred signs and took on a commemorative character. The inspiration for these simple, solemn texts is not always easily discernible because of the obscurities of the archaisms in the language. An echo of certain pieces transmitted by the Confucian school can be seen in some texts, but their opaqueness has disheartened many generations of literati. II. â€Å"Let a hundred flowers bloom, Let a hundred schools of thought contend!\r\n” This s tatement by Mao Zedong, make to launch a liberalization movement that was cut short in 1957, was inspired by an special period in Chinese cultural history (from the fifth to the third centuries 8 Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical B. C. ) in which there was a proliferation of schools-the â€Å"hundred schools. ” The discordant masters of these schools offered philosophical, often political, discussion. The growth of these schools matched the maturate of rival states from the time of Confucius (the Latinized version of the Chinese original, Kong Fuzi TL-T- or get well Kong, ca. 551-479 B.C. ) to the end of the Warring States period (221 B. C. ).\r\nThe â€Å"hundred schools” came to an end with the unification of China late in the third century B. C. under the Legalist rule of the Qin dynasty (221-206 B. C. ). This era of freedom of thought and intellectual exchange never completely ceased to offer a model, albeit an unattainable model, in the search for an choice to the oppressive ideology imposed by the centralized state. Much of what has reached us from this woolly-headed world was saved in the turn on of the reconstruction of Confucian writings (a resign to which we will turn shortly).\r\nThe texts of the masters of the hundred schools, on the periphery of Orthodox literati culture, are of uneven quality, regardless of the philosophy they offer. charge the best, however, have not come close to dethroning the â€Å"Chinese Socrates,” Confucius, the first of the great thinkers, in both chronology and importance. 1. Mo Zi and the Logicians. The work known as Mo Zi (Master Mo) is a collection of the writings of a sect founded by Mo Di g, an obscure personage whom scholars have wanted to make a contemporaneous of Confucius.\r\nIt has been hypothesized that the name Mo, â€Å"ink,” referred to the tattooing of a convict in antiquity, and the given name, Di, indicates the pheasant feathers that decorated the hats of th e common race. Although we can only speculate about whether Mo Zi was a convict or a commoner, he argued for a kind of disputative pacifism toward aggressors, doing his best to promote, through a utilitarian process of reasoning, the necessity of accept in the gods and of practicing universal love without discrimination. decry the extravagant expense of funerals as well as the uselessness of art and music, Mo Zi Chapter 1. Antiquity 9 wrote in a style of discouraging weight.\r\nThe work that has come down to us under his name (which appears to be about two-thirds of the original text) represents a direction which Chinese civilization explored without ever prizing. Mo Zi’s mode of origin has influenced many generations of logicians and sophists, who are known to us only in fragments, the main contribution of which has been to demonstrate in their curious way of argumentation peculiar features of the Chinese language. Hui Shi Ea is known only by the thirty-some paradoxes w hich the incomparable Zhuang Zi cites, without attempting to solve, as in:\r\nThere is nothing beyond the Great Infinity.. . and the Small Infinity is not inside. The antinomies of reason have nourished Taoist thought, if not the other way around, as Zhuang Zi attests after the demise of his friend Hui Shi: Zhuang Zi was attach to a funeral procession. When he passed by the encrypt of Master Hui he turned around to say to those who were following him: â€Å"A fellow worker from Ying had spattered the tip of his nose with a bit of sticking plaster, like the wing of a fly. He had it removed by [his crony] the work Shi, who took his ax and twirled it around. He cut it off, then heard a wind: the plaster was entirely removed without scratching his nose.\r\nThe man from Ying had remained standing, impassive. When he learned of this, Yuan, the monarch butterfly of the res publica of Song, summoned the carpenter Shih and said to him, â€Å"Try then to do it again for Us. ” The carpenter responded, â€Å"Your handmaiden is capable of doing it; however, the cloth that he made use of died long ago. ” After the death of the Master, I too no longer can find the material: I no longer have anyone to take to task to. (Zhuang Zi 24) Sons of the logicians and the sophists, the rhetoricians shared with the Taoists a sagaciousness for apologues.\r\nThey opposed the Taoist solution of a 10 Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical unthinking â€Å"non-action,” involved as they were in diplomatical combat. Held in contempt by the Confucians for their â€Å"Machiavellianism,” the Zhanguo ce Vg (Intrigues of the Warring States) remains the most representative work of the genre. It was reconstructed several centuries ulterior by Liu Xiang gj 1-(4] (77-6 B. C. ), but the authenticity of these reassembled materials seems to have been confirmed by the discovery of parallel texts in a tomb at Mawang Dui gUttg in 1973.\r\nA great variety animate s these accounts, both speeches and chronicles; they are rich in dialogue, which cannot be represented by this single, although characteristic, recordâ€it is inserted without commentary into the â€Å"intrigues” (or â€Å"slips”) of the state of Chu: The king of Wei offered the King of Chu a beautiful girl who gave him great satisfaction. Knowing how much the new woman pleased him, his wife, the fay, showed her the most intense affection. She chose attire and baubles which would please her and gave them to her; it was the same for her with rooms in the palace and bed clothes.\r\nIn short, she gratify her with more attention than the king himself accorded her. He congratulated her for it: a woman serves her husband through her carnal appeal, and jealousy is her nature. Now, understanding how I love the new woman, my wife shows her more love than Iâ€it is thus that the filial son serves his parents, that the loyal servant fulfills his duties toward his prince . As she knew that the king did not consider her jealous, the queen suggested to her rival: â€Å"The king appreciates your beauty. However, he is not that fond of your nose. You would do better to enshroud it when he receives you.\r\n” Therefore, the new one did so when she saw His Majesty. The king asked his wife wherefore his favorite hid her nose in his presence. She responded, â€Å"I know. ” â€Å"Even if it is unpleasant, tell me! ” insisted the king. â€Å"She does not like your odor. ” â€Å"The brazen hussy! ” cried the sovereign. â€Å"Her nose is to be cut off, and let no one question my order! ” Chapter 1. Antiquity 11 The Yan Zi chunqiu *T-*V( (Springs and Autumns of Master Yen) is another reconstruction by Liu Xiang, a collection of anecdotes about Yan Ying RV, a man of small stature but great ability who was prime diplomatic minister to Duke Jing of Qi (547-490 B.C. )-the state that occupies what is now Shandong.\r\nWithou t cynicism, but full of shrewdness, these anecdotes do not deficiency appeal; some have often been selected as anthology pieces, of which this one is representative: When Master Yan was sent as an ambassador to Chu, the tribe of the farming constructed a little render next to the great one and invited him to enter. Yan Zi refused, declaring that it was qualified for an envoy to a country of dogs, but that it was to Chu that he had come on assignment. The chamberlain had him enter by the great gate.\r\nThe King of Chu standard him and said to him: â€Å"Was there then no one in Qi, for them to have sent you? ” â€Å"How can you say there is no one in Qi, when there would be darkness in our capital of Linzi if the people of the three hundred quarters shell out out their sleeves, and it would rain if they shook off their perspiration-so dense is the population. ” â€Å"But then why have you been sent? ” â€Å"The practice in Qi is to dispatch a meet envoy to a worthy sovereign; I am the most unworthy. . . .” 2. Legalism.\r\nThe diplomatic consumptions and other little anecdotes we have seen in the Yan Zi chunqiu were of little interest to the Legalists, who took their name from the idea that the hegemonic function of the state is founded on a system of implacable laws supposing the abolition of transmitted privileges-indeed a tabula rasa that rejects morals and traditions. In fact, historians harmonise them with all thought that privileges efficacy. From this point of view, the most ancient â€Å"Legalist” would be the artisan of Qi’s hegemony in the seventh century B. C. , Guan Zi (Master Guan).\r\nThe work that was handed down under his name is a composite text and in reality contains no material prior to the third century B. C. Whether or not he should be considered a Legalist, Guan Zi 12 Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical embodies the idea that the power of the state lies in its prosperity, and this in turn depends on the circulation of goods. In sum, Guan Zi stands for a proto-mercantilism diametrically opposed to the primitive physiocraticism of Gongsun Yang (altV (also known as Shang Yang ), minister of Qin in the fourth century.\r\nShang jun shu 1 (The 2 have got of Lord Shang), which is attributed to Gongsun Yang, gives the Legalist ideas a particularly unforgiving form: It is the nature of people to appraise that which is advantageous to them, to seize the best, and to draw to themselves that which is profitable. The educated lord must take make out if he wants to establish order in his country and to be able to turn the population to his advantage, for the population has at its government activity a great number of means to avoid the strictness that it fears.\r\nWithin the country he must cause the people to consecrate themselves to farming; without he must cause them to be singly devote to warfare. This is why the order of a sage sovereign consists of multiplyin g interdictions in order to hold sand infractions and relying on force to put an end to fraud. (Shang jun shu, â€Å"Suan di”) Shang Yang’s prose is laden with archaisms, which hardly buoy the weight of his doctrine. It is in the work of Han Fei Zi 4-T- (ca. 280-233) that Legalism found its most accomplished formulation.\r\nThe book Han Fei Zi contains a commentary on the Classic of the centering and of Power of Lao Zi in which the nonsuch of Taoist non-action is realized by the automatism of laws. The â€Å" device” of the latter may go back to the Confucianism of Xun Zi (Master Xun, also known as Xun Qing ,Ajja, ca. 300-230 B. C. ), a school rejected by orthodox Confucianism. Xun Zi, who happens to have been the teacher of Han Fei Zi, developed the magnificent theory that human nature inclines individuals to match their egoistic appetites: it was therefore bad for ripe(p) societies of the time. The â€Å"rites”-culture-are necessary for favorabl eization.\r\nXun Zi’s Chapter 1. Antiquity 13 argumentation was unprecedentedly elaborate, examining every face of a question while avoiding repetition. In a scintillating style peppered with apologues, Han Fei Zi argues that the art of governing requires techniques other than the simple manipulation of rewards and punishments. The prince is the cornerstone of a system that is supposed to ensure him of a protective impenetrableness. The state must devote itself to eliminating the useless, noxious five â€Å"parasites” or â€Å"vermin:” the scholars, rhetoricians, knights-errant, deserters, and merchants (perhaps even artisans).\r\n3. The Fathers of Taoism. A philosophy of evasion, this school was opposed to social and political engagement. From the outset Taoism was either a means to flee society and political sympathies or a form of quilt for those who combated reversals in politics and society. The poetic power of its writings, which denounced limits and a phorisms of reason, explains the fascination that it continues to hold for intellectuals educated through the rationalism of the Confucians. These works, like most of the others from antiquity that were attributed to a master, in fact seem to be rather disparate texts of a school.\r\nThe Dao de jing ittitg (Classic of the Way and of Power) remains the most often translated Chinese workâ€and the first translated, if one counts the lost translation into Sanskrit by the monastic Xuanzang WM in the seventh century A. D. This series of aphorisms is attributed to Lao Zi (Master. Lao or â€Å"The older Master”), whom tradition considers a modern-day of Confucius. He is said to have left this â€Å"testament” as he dead soul the Chinese world via the Xian’gu subside for the West.\r\nIn their polemics against the Buddhists, the Taoists of the following millennium used this story as the basis on which to affirm that the Buddha was none other than their Chinese La o Zi, who had been converting the barbarians of the West since his departure from China. Modern scholarship estimates that the Lao Zi could not date earlier than the third century B. C. The 1973 discoveries at Mawang Dui in Hunan confirmed what scholars had suspected for centuries: the primitive Lao Zi is reversed in respect to 14 Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical ours: a De dao jing â€Å"1,M1#§ (Classic of Power and the Way).\r\nIts style, which is greatly esteem for its obscure concision, seems to owe much to the compensate work of the observer Wang Bi . T3 (226-249). Thus it is tenable that the primitive Lao Zi was a work of military strategy. Whatever it was, the text that is preferred today runs a little over 5,000 characters and is divided into 81 sections (9 x 9). The Taoist attitude toward life is verbalized here in admirably bang formulae, which lend themselves to many esoteric interpretations: He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know (#56) .\r\nGovern a great state as you would fry small fish! (#60). Practice non-action, attend to the useless, taste the flavorless. (#63) The Zhuang Zi ate, written by Zhuang Zhou 4. -B1 or Zhuang Zi (Master Zhuang), was apparently abridged at about the same time as the Lao Zi, but at the hands of the commentator Guo Xiang # -IM (d. 312), who cut it from fifty-two to thirty-three sections. Scholars cannot see whether the seven initial sections, called â€Å"the inner chapters,” are from the same hand of Zhuang Zhou as the sixteen following, called â€Å"the outer chapters,” and the final ten â€Å"miscellaneous chapters.\r\n” It is in the final ten that we find a characteristic formation of reconstructions from the first century, works of one school attributed to one master. In fact, it is the first part which gives the most lively impression of an encounter with an animated personality whose mind is peculiarly vigorous and disillusioned: Our life is limited, but knowledge is without limit. To follow the limitless with that which is limited will exhaust one. To go unrelentingly after knowledge is exhausting and c.\r\n'