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International Mevlana Symposiuın Papers International Mevlana Symposiuın Papers ,. Birleşmiş Minetler 2007 Eğitim, Bilim ve Kültür MevlAnA CelAleddin ROmi Kurumu 800. ~um Yıl Oönümü United Nations Educaöonal, Scientific and aoo:ı Anniversary of Cu/tura! Organlzatlon the Birth of Rumi Symposium organization commitlee Prof. Dr. Mahmut Erol Kılıç (President) Celil Güngör Volume 3 Ekrem Işın Nuri Şimşekler Motto Project Publication Tugrul İnançer Istanbul, June 20 ı O ISBN 978-605-61104-0-5 Editors Mahmut Erol Kılıç Celil Güngör Mustafa Çiçekler Katkıda bulunanlar Bülent Katkak Muttalip Görgülü Berrin Öztürk Nazan Özer Ayla İlker Mustafa İsmet Saraç Asude Alkaylı Turgut Nadir Aksu Gülay Öztürk Kipmen YusufKat Furkan Katkak Berat Yıldız Yücel Daglı Book design Ersu Pekin Graphic application Kemal Kara Publishing Motto Project, 2007 Mtt İletişim ve Reklam Hizmetleri Şehit Muhtar Cad. Tan Apt. No: 13 1 13 Taksim 1 İstanbul Tel: (212) 250 12 02 Fax: (212) 250 12 64 www.mottoproject.com 8-12 Mayıs 2007 Bu kitap, tarihinde Kültür ve yayirı[email protected] Turizm Bakanlıgı himayesinde ve Başbakanlık Tamtma Fonu'nun katkılanyla İstanbul ve Konya'da Printing Mas Matbaacılık A.Ş. düzerılenen Uluslararası Mevhiııfı Sempozyumu bildirilerini içermektedir. Hamidiye Mahallesi, Soguksu Caddesi, No. 3 Kagıtlıane - İstanbul The autlıors are responsible for tlıe content of tlıe essays .. Tei. 0212 294 10 00 Form and meaning in Chinese-language Islam Sachiko Murata 1 USA MUSUMS went to China in the first century of Islam, and by the tenth century of the Common Era, communities of Chinese-speaking Muslims had been established. For many centuries Islamic learning was transmitted by means of Persian and Arabic, and at the same time there was plenty of inter­ change with the central Islamic lands, especially Persia. It was not until the seventeenth century that the Chinese Muslims decided that it was necessary to write books for their fellow Muslims in Chinese. The first exposition of Islamic teachings in that language appeared in the year 1642. 1 Gradually a series of Muslim scholars established a school of thought in the Chinese language that played a major role in shaping the Muslim world view for the next two hun­ dred years.2 What differentiates this Chinese-language approach from other approaches was precisely the Chinese language. Muslims writing in other languages, such as Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and English, have always made use of Arabic terminolo­ gy drawn from the Koran and the Hadith in order to explain their ideas. In con­ trast, the peculiar nature of the Chinese script made it almost impossible to employ Arabic terminology. Scholars had to rely on the words and terms of the Chinese tradition. That meant talking about Islam by using concepts drawn from Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. 1 This was by Wang Daiyu. See Sachiko Murata, Chinese G/eams ofSufi Light (Aibany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 2 See Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, The Dao of Mu hammad: A Cu/tura/ History of Muslimsin Late lmperial Ch ina (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). 1382 On the Arabic and Persian side, the tradition of Islami c learning from which these scholars drew was heavily influenced by Sufism. Over this two hundred year period, only a handful of books were translated into Chinese. The first and most influential of these was Mirsad al-'ibad by Najm al-Din Razi (d. 1256), which was published in the year 1670 and is stili taught in some Chinese \ madrasahs. Razi was a contemporary of Mawlana and they are said to have met. In many ways, his long, Persian exposition of Islamic teachings expresses the same teachings that are found in the Mathnawi. Among Chinese authors, probably the most influential was Liu Zhi, who published many books over the first half of the eighteenth century. The most ambitious of these appeared in the year 1704. It was called Tianfang xingli, w hi ch can be translated as "The Philosophy of Islam," or "Islamic Thought," or even "Islami c Confucianism." In this bo ok, Li u Zhi expounds a visian of the nature of things that appears, at first glance, to be a treatise on Confucian phi­ losophy. In fact, however, it is based firmly on Islamic teachings about God, the cosmos, and the human being. It draws heavily from the works of three schol­ ars: the already mentioned Najm al-Din Razi; the Sufi and philosopher 'Aziz al­ Din Nasafi, who was also a contemporary of Mawlana; and the great poet and student of Ibn Arabi's school, Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492), who was a devo­ tee of Mawlana. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Liu Zhi's book is that the basic text is rather brief, but then he explains the core teachings by eı:p.ploying seventy diagrams, sixty of which he explains in detail. We willlook at three of these diagrams shortly.3 BEFORE I do this, however, you no doubt want to know if Mawlana was known in China. So far, I have not found any evidence in the Chinese writ­ ings of Muslims that they w ere fa mili ar with Mawlana, but this do es not m ean 3 For a translation of Liu Zhi's book, see S. Murata, W. C. Chittick, and Tu Weiming, The Heavenly Learning of Liu Zhi: lslamic Thought in Confucian Terms (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). Sachiko Murata Fonn and meaııiııg in Clıiııese-laııguage Islam that he was unknown, simply that no one attempted to discuss his works in Chinese. He was probably known in China, not least because Persian was the basic language of learning for Chinese Muslims. It is hard to imagine that Mawlana would not have been known. At the same time, only a handful of Islamic texts were translated into Chinese, and the translators often skipped the poetry, no doubt because its appeal depends so much on the Persian lan­ guage itself. Moreover, many Muslim scholars wrote poetry of their own in the Chinese style. In short, so far there is no evidence that Mawlana was influential in the Chinese writings of Muslims. Nonetheless, there is overwhelming evidence that the world view that Mawlana represents, that of the Sufi tradition, was present in these Chinese writings. Moreover, that world view, considered in its totality, was not much different from the world view of Confucianism. The Chinese-speaking Muslims, many ofwhom were indistinguishable from other Chinese except in terms of their religious practices, were at ease with the basic elements of Chinese thought. They fo und in Confucian writings all the can­ cepts and nations that are needed to explain the Islamic view of God, the uni­ verse, and the human saul. They did not need to import such nations from out­ side of China. They simply rewrote the ideas to b ring out certain aspects of the Islamic world view that were not clearly present in China. Moreover, they want­ ed to explain why Muhammad was the last of the prophets and the best guide to human perfection. Although the concepts that Muslims needed were already present in the Chinese language, they expanded on many of them to show how the Islamic position differed from that of Confucianism. For example, the Confucian tradi­ tion has very little to say about the afterlife, but, as is well known, maad or "the Return to God" is one of the principles of Islamic faith. Hence Muslim scholars spent a great deal of time explaining the nature of the Return. It is in fact no accident that the most influential Islamic book translat­ ed into Chinese was the already mentioned texi: by Razi. Its full title is "The Path of the Servants from the Origin to the Return" (Mirsad al-'ibad min al­ mabda' ila'l-maad), and the theme of the Return to God is basic to the whole bo ok. 1384 V V V V TODAY, the specific issue that I want to address is "form and meaning" surat wa mana). This is a distinction that is essential to Mawlana's writings, and \ indeed, to much of Sufism. Generally, form is the appearance of a thing, and m eaning is its hi d den reality. Ma w lana us es this set of terms as a synonyrn for several other sets, such as outward and inward (zahir wa batin), and spirit and body (i in wa tan). One could quote hundreds of verses from Mawlana's poetry that mention form and meaning in order to make various points. On e exam­ ple can suffice: Pass beyand form, escape from namesi Flee titles and names toward meaning/4 The question I want to address today is how Liu Zhi discussed the issue of "form and meaning." What role di d the distinction between these two play in his teachings? The answer is that it played a fundamental role not only in his teach­ ings, but in the whole Chinese tradition from ancient times. It was only neces­ sary for Liu Zhi to adopt pre-existing terminology to make the distinction. Moreover, just as Mawlana uses several sets of terrns to differentiate between appearance and reality, so also does Liu Zhi. Here I will provide one example, that of the Chinese word li, w hi ch is typ­ ically translated as "principle." This is one of the most basic nations in Confucian thought. The word designates the reality, pattern, or underlying order that determines the nature of things. For the Confucian philosophers, it is the key concept in discussions of the Supreme Reality, which is often called the Dao or the Great U1timate (taiji). The faremost Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi, often identifies Principle with the Supreme Reality.
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