We've looked at Daoism, we've looked at Buddhism, we move on now to the third of the so-called <i>sanjiao</i>, or three teachings, Confucianism. And we're going to do it in exactly the opposite order that we followed for Buddhism, where we first looked at self-cultivation and then looked at ritual. We're going to do it in reverse order with Confucianism. But first we have to look at a little bit of political history in order to understand the drama that is unfolding and to which Confucianism is very much responding during this period. And for that we're going to be making use of two books: one by Peter Bol, who teaches at Harvard, called <i>Neo-Confucianism in History</i>, and the other by Hoyt Tillman called <i>Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi's Ascendancy</i>. And we're going to just go through a few key dates so that we understand this context, this historical, political context, which is unique in Chinese history. So the Northern Song is founded in the year 960 and will last until 1126, when the Jin will invade and conquer the Northern Song and the government has to flee to the south, eventually establishing its capital in Hangzhou, which is today in Zhejiang province, and that will then be the beginning of the Southern Song, from 1127 to 1279. So the Northern Song is established in 960 after a period of about a half century of divisions called the Wudai 五代, the Five Dynasties. And very shortly after its founding, it is forced into signing a treaty in the year 1004, so 44 years into the dynasty, this is under the emperor Zhenzong. They signed a treaty with the Khitan Liao dynasty. The Liao dynasty lasts from 907 to 1125 and will eventually then be replaced by the Jin. Just four years after, there's a very famous "Heavenly Document" incident where, as a "Heavenly Document" suddenly appears from Heaven and is seen as a proof that the Song has the Heavenly Mandate and Zhenzong then goes to Taishan 泰山 to perform the sacrifices, the <i>feng</i> and <i>shan</i> sacrifices of political legitimacy, claiming that they have the <i>tianming</i> 天命. But, pretty much everyone agrees that the "shameful" treaty with the Liao was the background for what we can refer to as the "Heavenly Document" hoax. Why? Why was it shameful? And how does this impact the entire history that we're going to be talking about? This treaty with the Liao involved the Song recognizing that the Liao ruler was Son of Heaven, that is to say there are two Sons of Heaven. This is unprecedented in Chinese history and, even worse, that the Son of Heaven of the Liao was the "elder brother" of the Song Son of Heaven. It also required annual payment of 200,000 bolts of silk and 100,000 ounces of silver to the Liao. So this completely reverses the traditional relationship between China and its periphery. China always saw itself as the central country, as <i>tianxia</i> 天下, and all the other smaller countries around it were bringing tribute, all the way back to the Han dynasty, this is the way it envisages its relationship to the countries that surround it. And here, the roles are reversed. And we'll see that this plays directly into the politics and the ideology of Neo-Confucianism or New Confucianism as it is called—the Confucianism of the Song dynasty. So the great "Heavenly Document" hoax and the resulting <i>feng-shan</i> sacrifices of the year 1008 were clearly meant to compensate for the legitimacy the Song had lost in signing its treaty with the Liao. Forty years later, it signs another treaty, this time with the Tangut Xi Xia, Western China. The dates of the Xi Xia are 1038 to 1227. So we see here that the map of what we think of today as China is very much divided by rival empires. By virtue of this treaty of 1044 with the Xi Xia, the Song agreed to pay them half the amounts paid the Liao on an annual basis. So now the Song is paying tribute to two rival empires. In 1104, who's reigning? Song Huizong, the great Daoist emperor, that we've talked about when we talked about Daoism. And we also talked about how Huizong carried on the policies of giving titles to local gods, the policies of the emperor Shenzong— Shenzong, whose Chief Counselor was Wang Anshi 王安石. We have to remind ourselves of these facts in order to understand the significance of the fact that in the year 1104, under Huizong, Wang Anshi is given a place in the temple to Confucius. And when we go forward, to 1241, when Song adopts Daoxue 道學 as orthodoxy, Wang Anshi is removed. Let's come back. So 1104, Wang Anshi is placed for worship in the Confucius Temple. In 1115, the Jurchen Jin, whose dates are 1115 to 1234, rises. In 1127, we've already mentioned it, the Southern Song is formed and eventually makes its capital in Hangzhou. The very beginning of the Southern Song, from 1138 to 1155, there is an official ban on Cheng learning, that is to say in fact Daoxue learning. And those dates correspond with the time under the emperor Gaozong, when the Chief Counselor was a certain Qin Gui 秦檜, who has been hated from the time he was Chief Counselor right down to the present by the historians who are influenced by the Daoxue, the Neo-Confucian stance with regard to Chinese political history. We already talked in fact about this event when we looked very briefly at the relationship between the Chan monk Dahui and the Confucian Zhang Jiucheng 張九成. And his exile in fact coincides with the ban on Cheng learning, under Chief Councilor Qin Gui, underscoring what we have already said of this learning, this Daoxue, as that of the "war party." The "war party" means no to peace with the Jin and the Liao, no to the inferior status. And this will then feed into a very key distinction between political and moral authority which is radically new in Chinese cultural and philosophical history. 1161, there's a new invasion by the Jin, this time of the Southern Song. And in 1164, a new treaty with the Jin. From 1195 to 1202, Daoxue—the teaching of the Way, Neo-Confucianism—is proscribed. Zhu Xi will die in the year 1200, so when he dies the movement that he helped to create and of which he gives the defining orthodox form is under proscription. So we can see here that there are tensions which are both political and philosophical in nature. That's the background within which we have to understand Confucianism as it is transformed in this critical period of the Song. 1202 is the end of prescription. Ten years later, 1212, the Song dynasty accepts Zhu Xi's commentaries on Confucius and Mencius, two of the so-called Four Books, the <i>sishu</i> 四書, which will become in effect the new canon as defined by this teaching of the Way, Daoxue. In 1227, the Mongols destroy Xi Xia, and the Song accepts Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the other two of the Four Books, namely the <i>Zhongyong</i> 中庸, the <i>Treatise on the Mean</i>, and the <i>Daxue</i> 大學, the <i>Great Learning</i>, which are in fact two chapters excerpted from the <i>Book of Rites</i>, the <i>Liji</i>. That's the Four Books. 1234, the Mongols destroyed the Jin dynasty and establish in fact the Yuan dynasty. Just four years later, 1238, the Yuan— the dates of which are usually given as 1260 to 1368; we just saw that the Southern Song ends only in 1279, so 1260 is the date of really consolidation of its power and founding of its dynasty in North China and then by 1279, so some twenty years later, it controls all of what we think of as China today and then right down to 1368, when the Ming dynasty is founded. So, in 1238, before the formal founding of the dynasty in 1260, the Yuan founds a Taiji Academy. And in this Taiji Academy, it places people that we're going to be hearing a lot more about in a few minutes: Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤, the brothers Cheng— Cheng Hao 程顥 and Cheng Yi 程頤, Zhang Zai 張載, and Zhu Xi 朱熹. All have their <i>shenwei</i> 神位, their divine seats placed in this Taiji Academy. That's 1238. And 1241, three years later, the Song adopts Daoxue as orthodoxy and guess what? All of the above, from Zhou Dunyi to Zhu Xi, have their seats placed in the Confucius temple and Wang Anshi is removed. So this makes very clear that the association that we've already seen between Shenzong and Huizong— one not at all identified with Daoism, the other very much identified with Daoism, but both of them identified with in fact a strong central state and that's the meaning lying behind —the political meaning lying behind— Huizong's policy and Shenzong's policy of giving titles, recognition to local gods as a way of interacting between the center and the localities, and we'll see that the approach of Daoxue is very much the opposite. We could call it a localist approach as opposed to a statist approach. So who gets their seat in the Confucius temple is not just a sort of anodyne haphazard decision, as we can imagine. In the year 1313, the Yuan restores the exams and requires knowledge of Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Four Books. Although the Song had already accepted Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Four Books by the year 1227 as we just saw, they in fact became required knowledge only when the Yuan restored the exams in 1313. And all of this is extremely important for understanding the key role played in the definition of this Daoxue, which starts being frequently proscribed and ends up becoming the state orthodoxy, particularly from the Ming dynasty on— that in fact this policy of making Daoxue state orthodoxy was set in place really by the Yuan, the foreign dynasty, the Mongol dynasty.
