Contributions to the Study of Yang Xiong’s 揚雄 Fayan 法言 Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Heidelberg vorgelegt von: Nicolae Cristian Statu aus Bukarest, Rumänien Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Rudolf G. Wagner. Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Michael Lackner. Datum: 16.11.2015. Contents Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 4 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 5 1.1 Yang Xiong and the Fayan .......................................................................... 5 1.2 The contributions of the present study ...................................................... 10 2. THE TRANSMISSION OF THE Fayan ......................................................... 14 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 14 2.2 Records of Fayan editions .......................................................................... 21 2.3 Southern Song extant editions ................................................................... 26 a) The Directorate text from the Zhiping era .............................................. 26 b) The 1181 Taizhou edition by Tang Zhongyou ......................................... 31 c) The Huzhu edition of the Jianyang shufang ................................................ 35 d) The Wuchen edition by Mr. Yu of Chengzhou (basis of the Shidetang Liuzi text) .................................................................................................... 38 e) The Wuchen leiti edition from the Shaoxing period (1131-1162) .................. 41 2.3 The 11th century Northern Song text ......................................................... 42 2.4 The text before the 11th century ................................................................ 60 2.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 69 3. THE EXEGESIS OF THE Fayan ................................................................... 71 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 71 3.2 Li Gui’s Eastern Jin Commentary ............................................................. 78 3.3 Sima Guang’s 1081 Commentary ............................................................. 112 3.4 Wang Rongbao’s 1933 Fayan yishu ......................................................... 134 4. THE COMPOSITION OF THE Fayan ........................................................ 148 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 148 4.2 The text in context .................................................................................. 158 - 2 - a) The title ................................................................................................. 159 b) The preface ............................................................................................ 164 c) The status of the author ........................................................................ 168 d) The challenge and the task of the text .................................................. 175 e) The Lunyu as a model ............................................................................ 181 f) The historical context (Sitz im Leben) ................................................... 187 4.3 The internal articulations of the text ....................................................... 192 a) The use of formulaic language ............................................................... 194 b) Implied meanings ................................................................................... 199 c) Chapters as units ................................................................................... 204 d) The matrix of the text ........................................................................... 225 4.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 230 5. BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................... 232 5.1 Fayan editions .......................................................................................... 232 5.2 Traditional scholarship on the Fayan ...................................................... 234 5.3 Fayan Translations .................................................................................. 236 6. REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 238 6.1 Primary Sources ....................................................................................... 238 6.2 Secondary Literature ................................................................................ 239 7. APPENDIX ................................................................................................... 248 Critical text of chapters six and seven of the Fayan ..................................... 248 - 3 - Acknowledgments My research over many years, including the research that went into the present study, has been made possible by the generosity of several individuals and institutions, to whom I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude. First and foremost to Professor Rudolf G. Wagner, who, ever since I started making unreasonable demands on his time and attention, has offered unwavering support and guidance in matters large and small, administrative and scholarly, financial and professional, going well beyond the call of duty. He encouraged me to come to Heidelberg and stay in Heidelberg – and offered me the means to do so, including several jobs and support instrumental in obtaining funding for a joint research project. Thorough and sustained critical attention is certainly a rare gift to receive, but it is the privilege of observing a master at work that is truly priceless. A Fulbright scholarship allowed me to spend a wonderful year at Harvard conducting research under the congenial supervision of Professor Michael Puett and a DAAD stipend covered the costs of my first two years in Heidelberg. Professors Mueller-Saini and Michael Lackner offered me excellent teaching positions in Heidelberg and Erlangen respectively and gave me the freedom to pursue my interests unhindered. Dirk Meyer invited me to the wonderful workshops he organized in Leiden and Oxford, where I could learn about subjects and meet people I wouldn’t otherwise have chanced upon. I had the opportunity to present my research on the Fayan and receive feedback at two conferences, the EACS conference in Lund in 2008 and the AOS conference in Boston in 2012, for which I thank the organizers and the panelists, in particular Joachim Gentz and Mathias Richter. At the Karl Jaspers Center for Transcultural Studies in Heidelberg I had the opportunity to exchange ideas on a wide variety of topics ranging from theory to classical exegesis with a number of likeminded scholars. I particularly thank Joachim Kurtz for his generous interest in my research and for his encouragements and Martin Hofmann for taking time from a busy schedule to go through an early version of this work at a critical time. Last but not least I thank Monica Toma for her unfailing and continuing help and encouragement. - 4 - 1. INTRODUCTION The present work offers several contributions to the study of the Western Han 漢 thinker Yang Xiong 揚雄 and in particular of his work entitled Fayan 法言. Completed in the first years of the first century AD, most likely in AD 9, the work presents a series of short aphorisms and dialogues modeled on the famous Analects of Confucius, Lunyu 論語. Yang Xiong’s ideas and particularly this text have enjoyed wide circulation in the following centuries and helped shape the emerging orthodox version of Confucianism as well as the traditional conceptions of historiography and classical exegesis. The last century and in particular the last few decades have seen a renewed interest in Yang Xiong’s work, with numerous studies and translations dedicated to the Fayan. Against this background the present study takes up three issues which have received comparatively little attention despite their importance: the textual history of the Fayan; the three major commentaries that have shaped and continue to shape its reception; and the logic of the text’s composition and the way this was perceived in the Han dynasty. 1.1 Yang Xiong and the Fayan Yang Xiong (53 BC – AD 18) is the most important intellectual at the end of the Western Han and one of the most important thinkers involved in the formation of Confucianism in the Han. His life, his oeuvre, and his reception all present interesting, even unique characteristics. Yang Xiong was born in Shu 蜀 (in present-day Sichuan 四川) of a family which, by his own account, had immigrated from the north first to Chu 楚 and then to Chengdu 成都1. It is difficult to date precisely his move to the imperial 1 Cf. for a short biography Loewe 2000. His biography is in Hanshu 漢書 87. A translation in Knechtges 1982. - 5 - court in Chang’an 長安, but it occurred undoubtedly relatively late in his life2. Little is known about the intellectual life of Sichuan at the time, but Yang Xiong himself evokes in his writings several intellectuals with whom he studied, including, notably, two important Daoist masters, Zhuang Zun 莊遵 and Li Zhongyuan 李仲 元3, both associated with several themes that were