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11-2014 Spirits and the in Confucian Ritual Discourse Thomas A. Wilson Hamilton College, [email protected]

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Journal of Chinese Religions 42 (November 2014) 2: 185-212 DOI: 10.1179/0737769X14Z.00000000013 © Society for the Study of Chinese Religions 2015

SPIRITS AND THE SOUL IN CONFUCIAN RITUAL DISCOURSE

THOMAS WILSON

Hamilton College, New York, USA

As early as the Tang 唐 (618–907), Confucian scholars drew from classical sources to articulate a conception of spirits and the soul that provided a canonical foundation for imperial sacrifices performed by members of the court and bureaucracy to the end of the Qing 清 (1644–1911). Contrary to modern accounts, imperial-era commentaries on the Analects 論語 disclose the figure of as committed to pious sacrifices to gods and spirits. In commentaries on the Record of Rites 禮記 in the imperial edition of the Five Classics (Correct Meaning of the Five Classics 五經正義, 653), Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–648) propounds a detailed conception of spirits, ghosts, and the soul based on statements attributed to Confucius. Confucians from the 宋 (960–1279) through the Qing, including Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) among others, built on this and other classical sources to formulate feasting rites 祭祀 devoted to gods and spirits. Confucian ritual discourse conceived of the soul as constituted by anima (hun 魂), which animated the body in life, and corporeal soul (po 魄), which constituted the physical senses. As a yang 陽 entity, anima was released from the body upon death and floated upward, whereas the yin 陰 corporeal soul decomposed into the earth. By realizing a state of ritual purity defined by integrity of will, inner reverence and piety, the filial descendant communed with the spirits by means of a process of his affection and the spirits’ response.

SACRIFICE AND THE CONFUCIUS OF THE CANON In spite of their reputation for reticence on matters of spirits, Confucian officials nonetheless performed sacrifices to spirits throughout imperial times until the early twentieth century. The emperor, court ministers, and civil officials followed a strict calendar of rites devoted to scores of gods1 and spirits at altars and in the capital and throughout the empire. This essay

1 Chinese liturgical sources do not consistently distinguish between gods and spirits. The deity venerated at ’s Altar 天壇 was formally called 昊天上帝 (Heaven-God) and was often referred to

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examines uses of the Classics in Confucian ritual discourse to establish the foundation of the imperial cults and ancestor veneration.2 I begin with statements on spirits in the Analects 論語 and follow the tracks of an imperial-era hermeneutics in which Confucius expounds upon gods, spirits, and the human soul in such works as the Record of Rites 禮記 and Book of Filial Piety 孝 經. Many Confucian liturgists and commentators wrote on what the Master said about spirits; here I focus on two, Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574-648) of the Tang (618-907) and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) of the Song (960-1279), who greatly influenced the direction of these discussions conducted primarily at the imperial court.3 An examination of classical commentaries and critical essays spanning no less than 1500 years divulges a remarkably consistent conception of spirits and the rites to venerate them. The history of Confucian discourse on ritual practice discloses subtle if important shifts in emphasis on what rites accomplish, yet the reverent sacrificing to the spirits never ceased to play a definitive role in the lives of men and women steeped in Confucian culture. Recent research on the modern fate of rites to venerate gods and spirits under the onslaught of Republican reforms underscores the importance of examining Confucian discourses on these matters before the advent of secular-modern thinking in .4 Confucians held no monopoly on rites to spirits and ancestors, yet their insistence upon adherence to particular canonical authority as promulgated by the court in their ritual practices distinguishes their ritual procedures from Daoist or popular forms of veneration, even though they arguably shared ideas about the nature of spirits and the soul. The Confucian conception of spirits and the soul revolves around the basic assumptions that spirits linger after the death of the body and that they must be nurtured through pious feasting rites of cult sacrifice. The Master and his later interpreters rarely spoke directly about the nature

as 天神 (Heaven-spirit). I use “spirit” to refer to an array of numinous agents and essences and use “gods” to refer to the most exalted deities venerated at imperial altars. 2 For detailed discussions of the liturgy of sacrifice to Confucius, see Wilson, “Sacrifice and the Imperial Cult of Confucius”; “The Cultic Confucius in the Imperial and Ancestral ,” in Nylan and Wilson, Lives of Confucius, 165-191 and Wilson, “The Ritual Formation of Confucian Orthodoxy and the Descendants of the Sage,” 577-578. For the liturgy of the imperial cult of Heaven- God, see “Confucianism: The Imperial Cult,” in Encyclopedia of Religion 2nd Edition, 3: 1914-1916. 3 I also discuss Kong Anguo 孔安國 (d. ca. 100 BCE), Bao Xian 包咸 (6 BCE-65 CE), Xuan 鄭 玄 (127-200 CE), Zuyu 范祖禹 (1041-98), and Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610-1695). 4 See especially Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity and Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China.

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of spirits outside of the specific ritual contexts in which spirits and human agents interacted according to strict guidelines prescribed by the court. Imperial-era commentaries on the classics elaborated on the Master’s description of two components of the soul – a yang hun 魂 spirit and a yin po 魄 ghost – and the rites, devised by the sages of remote antiquity, to venerate them properly. Classical commentaries well before the Tang and throughout the longue durée of Confucian ritual discourses on spirits and the soul stressed the moral effects on those who purify themselves and participate in such rites personally. By situating Confucius’s statements on spirits found in the Analects within the larger corpus of canonical works, I depart from the perception of the Master as bounded by the singular confines of the Analects, in which he purportedly expressed a rational attitude toward spirits and so reserved judgment on them.5 I focus instead on what I call the “canonical Confucius,” who speaks as the consummate authority on the ritual feasting of spirits in several canonical works. For the purposes of this analysis, I distinguish the canonical Confucius from what modern interpreters regard as the historical Confucius – the figure who speaks in sources that date roughly to the time when he lived.6 In contrast to the latter, classical commentators and court officials who oversaw rites to venerate the gods at imperial altars accepted the authenticity and authority of the words attributed to Confucius in classical texts to fashion a foundation on what the Master said. The canonical Master’s pronouncements on ritual feasting of gods and spirits are dispersed throughout the Rites, including the Constant Mean 中庸, doubly canonized in the Four Books 四書, and Filial Piety. The canon, as interpreted by such imperial-era commentators as Kong Yingda and Zhu Xi, yields a protean figure that intersects with a range of historical, liturgical, and philosophical concerns. In this essay I discuss the classical filaments of the Master who spoke on matters of spirits and who was repeatedly invoked as a preeminent authority in the formation of cults patronized by imperial courts devoted to Heaven-God 昊天上帝 and other celestial, terrestrial, and ancestral gods and spirits. Confucian officials formulated and performed

5 Fung Yu-lan, for example, maintains that Confucians “displayed a rationalist attitude [toward spirits], making it probable that there were other superstitions of his time in which he did not believe” (A History of 1:58 and Feng Youlan, Zhongguo zhexue shi 1:84). 6 Two classic examples of this approach are Gu Jiegang, “Chunqiu shidai de Kongzi he Handai de Kongzi” and Zhu Weizheng, “Lishi de Kongzi yu Kongzi de lishi.”

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the liturgies of the imperial cults based on principles enunciated by the canonical Master that would remain essentially intact for the duration of late imperial China.7

SACRIFICE IN THE ANALECTS An anonymous voice in the Analects declaims, “the Master did not speak of strange powers and chaotic spirits” 子不語怪力亂神 (7.21).8 Although the Confucius of the Analects says little about the nature of spirits themselves, he presupposes an understanding of them in Book Three where he repeatedly stresses the necessity of sacrificing to them properly. He laments, for example, a powerful family’s usurpation of rites appropriately performed only by royalty (3.1-2) and wonders if a mountain spirit will decline to partake in that family’s sacrifice offered in violation of the rites (3.6).9 Confucius insists that animals kept especially for a long-neglected but necessary sacrifice remain penned to serve as a reminder that there was once a time when rites were performed assiduously. When a disciple wanted to use the sheep for another purpose, the Master retorted: “You loathe to part with the cost of the sheep, I am loathe to dispense with the rite!” 爾愛其羊，我愛其禮 (3.17). 10 He rejects the adage that it is better to curry favor with the stove god that feeds you than attend to one’s ancestors by saying, “Having offended against Heaven, one has no one to pray to” 獲罪於天，無所禱也 (3.13). The Analects entreats, “sacrifice [to ancestors] as living; sacrifice to spirits as living. The Master said, ‘If I do not

7 For an examination of ways that doctrinal and sectarian interests account for fundamental shifts in the criteria of enshrinement (congsi 從祀) into the Confucius Temple (kongmiao 孔廟), see Wilson, Genealogy of the Way. In contrast, my emphasis here considers conceptions of gods and spirits articulated by liturgies of ritual feasting, which were subject to much less change. 8 Following Li Chong’s (27-c. 100) reading in Lunyu zhushu 7.2483. Zhu Xi explains that the Master refrained from speaking about such matters because they are incomprehensible: “strange matters, brazen use of strength, and transgressive chaos are improper principles, certainly matters about which the Sage did not speak. Ghosts and spirits are the traces of creative transformations; even those that are not improper [fei bu zheng 非不正] cannot be apprehended through exhaustive investigation of principle. The Master did not speak of them lightly because they are not easy to understand.” Lunyu jizhu 4.98. Elsewhere Zhu states, “Kongzi did not speak of bizarre manifestations of natural traces that violate the constancies of principle.” Zhuzi yulei 3.37. 9 Lunyu jijie 論語集解 2.2a. Zhu Xi later repeats this position: “The spirit won’t partake of an erroneous rite” ( buxiang feili 神不享非禮) (Lunyu jizhu 2.62). Gardner says this alludes to a passage in the Ancient Text Documents (Legge, The Shoo King, pp. 209-210). Gardner, “Ghosts and Spirits in the Sung Neo-Confucian World,” 609). 10 This rendering follows Zheng Xuan’s and Bao Xian’s reading in Lunyu jijie 3.4a-b and Lunyu zhushu 3.2467. Zhu Xi also stresses the disciple’s view that keeping livestock for a rite that was no longer performed is wasteful (wang fei 妄費). Lunyu jizhu 2.66.

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participate in the sacrifice personally, it is the same as not sacrificing at all’” 祭如在。祭神如神

在。子曰: “吾不與祭如不祭” (3.12).11 According to the text’s commentaries, the passage “sacrifice to spirits as living” encapsulated Confucius’s urgent sincerity in performing sacrifice correctly and personally. The Western Han commentator Kong Anguo (d. ca. 100 BCE) fills in the elliptical wording of this passage by borrowing Confucius’s phrase in the Constant Mean (Zhongyong 19): “Serve the dead as one serves the living” 事死如事生 (the verb “to serve” 事 is often synonymous with “to sacrifice to” 祭 in liturgical texts).12 A later commentator elaborates: “The meaning of ‘sacrifice as living’ is to extend one’s reverence when sacrificing in the ancestral hall, just as when one’s parents were alive. This passage means, serve the dead as one serves the living” 祭如在者謂:祭宗廟必致其 敬如其親存。言事死如事生也.13 They understand Confucius as insisting that one serves living and deceased parents in the same way. Proper rites to ancestors further hinges upon the filial son’s inner subjective state: Bao Xian of the Eastern Han says, “If Kongzi leaves home or is sick and does not sacrifice personally, but sends a surrogate instead, then he does not realize solemn reverence [sujing 肅敬] in the heart, which is the same as not sacrificing at all” 孔子或出或病而不自親祭,使攝者為之,不致肅敬於 心,與不祭同.14 More than a millennium later, Zhu Xi reiterates this concern for the interior effects on one’s own moral disposition: “If I do not sacrifice personally and someone else acts for me, even if the surrogate has supreme reverence and integrity, my own heart will forever be deficient because I have not personally attained the integrity [that one gains when one] ‘sacrifices as living’” 吾不與祭，而他人攝之，雖極其誠敬，而我不得親致其如在之誠，此心終 是闕然.15

11 This follows Kong Anguo’s and Bao Xian’s understanding of zai as living (Lunyu zhushu 3.2467), which is its meaning in Analects 1.11 (父在,觀其志;父沒,觀其行), where it is juxtaposed to “deceased” (mo 沒), and Analects 4.19 (父母在,不遠遊), where it refers to one’s living parents. This felicitous if somewhat awkward translation most directly captures the classical sense of this statement according to imperial-era commentators. A more cumbersome rendering might be “sacrifice to ancestors in the same way as they were “when living.” 12 Zhongyong zhangju 中庸章句 in Sishu zhangju jizhu, p. 27. According to Puett, Confucius argues against performing sacrifice in order to influence spirits to serve one’s own interests (To Become a God, 97-101). 13 Lunyu jijie 3.3a; Lunyu zhushu 3.2467. 14 Lunyu jijie 3.3a; Lunyu zhushu 3.2467. 15 Zhuzi yulei 25.619.

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Elsewhere Confucius admonishes a disciple, “To attend to one’s duties to the people and revere ghosts and spirits while observing a respectful distance from them may be called wisdom” 務民之義，敬鬼神而遠之，可謂知矣 (6.22).16 The nineteenth-century Protestant missionary glosses “distance” as “to keep aloof” of spirits in his translation. He explains, “The sage’s advice therefore is – ‘attend to what are plainly human duties, and do not be superstitious.’”17 Classical commentators in imperial times, however, consistently juxtaposed “distancing” with improper contact with spirits, not with “superstition.” The Eastern Han commentator Bao Xian explains the passage by saying that one must “revere ghosts and spirits so as to not despoil them” 敬鬼神而不黷.18 “These ghosts and spirits,” Zhu Xi much later points out, “refer to those that receive proper sacrifice, such as those in the ancestral hall and Mountains and Streams. Those that should receive proper sacrifice should also be revered and not despoiled through improper intimate contact” 此鬼神是指正當合祭祀者。且如宗廟山川，是合當祭祀底， 亦當敬而不可褻近泥著. Zhu continues, the passage “‘revere ghosts and spirits’ are the ghosts and spirits that should be revered appropriately; ‘to revere while observing distance from them’ means that they cannot be despoiled or flattered” through improper rites 他所謂“敬鬼神,”是敬正

當底鬼神。“敬而遠之,”是不可褻瀆，不可媚.19 Zhu Xi quotes Cheng Yi’s (1033-1107) comment on this passage as a warning to strike a balance between deception and disbelief: “Excessive faith in ghosts and spirits is deceptive and yet disbelievers are incapable of revering them. To revere and maintain a distance can be called wisdom” 人多信鬼神，惑也。而不信者又不能敬。

20 能敬能遠，可謂知矣. Disbelievers lack the capacity to revere ghosts and spirits, which, Cheng Yi suggests, fails to abide by the Master’s admonition. Imperial-era commentaries on the Analects emphasize that the sacrificer’s purity and reverence draw the spirit near. It is useless, therefore, to speak of spirits with those who have yet to learn how to serve the living properly, let alone the spirits, as the Master’s rebuke of Zilu’s query on serving ghosts expresses: “As yet unable to serve the living, how can you serve ghosts?

16 Lunyu jijie 3.7a; Lunyu zhushu 6.2479. Wang Chong construes “one’s duties to the people” specifically as “working for the moral transformation of the people 化道民.” As we see later, in the Liji the people’s moral transformation entails the “Supreme Teaching” of joining ghost to spirit for sacrifice established by the sages, which begins with proper sacrifice to one’s ancestors. 17 Confucian Analects, 191n20. C.f., Brooks, The Original Analects, 36. 18 Lunyu jijie 3.7a; Lunyu jizhu 3.89-90. Waley, effectively conveys this sense (The Analects, 112). 19 Zhuzi yulei 32.818. 20 Lunyu jizhu 3.89-90.

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. . . As yet unable to understand the living, how can you understand ghosts” 未能事人,焉能事

鬼. . . 未能知生,焉能知死 (11.12)? Some modern translators ascribe to this passage a skeptical attitude toward serving ghosts, which they subordinate to what they presume to be the more important task of serving living men.21 This would, however, effectively insinuate a rupture between the living and postmortem soul. As I discuss later, the continuity of life and death expressed here and in Analects 3.12 establishes the very grounds upon which a successful rite is possible. Commentaries on Analects 11.12, moreover, often focus on serving spirits and say virtually nothing about the living. They stress, rather, that to serve or know the living is easier than to serve or know ghosts; learn to serve the living first, then one is prepared to undertake the more difficult task of serving one’s ancestors. Chen Qun (d. ca. 236) explains that Confucius’s response was intended to put a stop to Zilu’s query since his disciple did not yet understand how to serve the living: “Because ghosts, spirits, and matters of the dead are difficult to understand, to speak of them would not benefit him, and so he didn’t answer” 鬼神及死事難明，語之無益，故 不荅.22 Qing (1644-1911) scholars such as Gu Yanwu (1613-82) and Liu Baonan (1791-1855) situate this passage among others concerned almost exclusively with the urgency of performing sacrifice properly and which say little about serving the living.23 Zhu Xi sees in this passage an affirmation of the necessity to sacrifice as living achieved by extending the inner integrity that one applies to the living in one’s service of the dead: “Serve one’s lord and parents by exhausting the heart of integrity and reverence, then transfer this heart to serve ghosts and spirits. Then one can ‘sacrifice to ancestors as living, sacrifice to spirits as living’” 事君親盡誠敬之心，即移此心以事鬼神，則“ 祭如在，祭神如神在.” 24 Ever the

21 See for example Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 1:58. Chan says of this passage, “A most celebrated saying on humanism” (A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 36). E. Bruce Brooks and Taeko Brooks comment, “it represents a rejection of the belief in the unseen world on which the validity of sacrifice rests…. We have here something like agnostic humanism, bent on life, not on death” (The Original Analects, 158). By contrast, James Legge notes, “The service of the dead must be in the same spirit as the service of the living. Obedience and sacrifice are equally the expression of the filial heart” (Confucian Analects, 241n11). Slingerland cites Huang Kan’s (488-545) reading of this passage as focusing on this world rather than on death (Confucius Analects, 115). Makeham, however, argues that Huang’s criticism of Confucius for this reason was motivated by his Buddhist leanings (Transmitters and Creators, 84). 22 Lunyu zhushu 11.2499. 23 Gu Yanwu, Rizhi lu jishi 6.21a-23b; Lunyu zhengyi, Liu Baonan comp., 11.243. 24 Zhuzi yulei 39.1011-1012. Emphasis added. Xing Bing makes the same argument in his explanation of a passage in Xiaojing zhushu (8.2559) discussed later. Liu Baonan inventories a compendium of relevant passages from other classical works in Lunyu zhengyi 3.53-54.

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consummate gradualist in all matters of learning, Zhu Xi instructed his students to proceed from the simple and known to the esoteric and unfamiliar while never denigrating the latter. “Life and death, beginnings and endings,” he says in his commentary, “are initially not of two principles. But learning has a sequence. One cannot skip over stages, and so the Master instructed Zilu in this way” 蓋幽明始終，初無二理，但學之有序，不可躐等，故夫子告之如此. He quotes Cheng Yi’s emphasis on the continuity of knowing and serving the living and the dead: “Dawn and night are the Way of life and death; know the Way of life then one will know the Way of death; exhaustively serve the living then exhaustively serve the dead. Life and death, man and ghost: the two are in fact one and the same” 晝夜者，死生之道也。知生之道，則知死之道；盡事人之道 ，則盡事鬼之道。死生人鬼，一而二，二而一者也.25 In conversations with students, Zhu Xi said that understanding spirits is difficult because they lack form and so must come later in one’s learning. He illustrates this point by quoting Analects 11.12: “As yet unable to serve the living, how can you serve ghosts,” then remarks: “This says it all. This is a reasonable approach to understanding, at which point ghost and spirit will become evident on their own” 此說盡了.此便 是合理會底理會,將間鬼神自有見處.26 In Master Zhu’s Categorized Conversations (Zhuzi yulei 朱 子語類), the most widely-read anthology of Zhu Xi’s teachings, the section on ghosts and spirits follows the first section on principle 理 and , which effectively marks this topic’s importance to generations of Zhu Xi’s followers. The section begins with Zhu’s remark, “matters of ghosts and spirits are themselves to be attended to second” 鬼神事自是第二著, which alerts the reader that one must attend to principle and qi before grappling with formless things.27 Song dynasty commentators on the Analects concurred with their Tang predecessors on what the Master says about ghosts and spirits. They discerned an enlarged figure of Confucius by tracing the Master to other canonical works, particularly the Record of Rites, where he spoke on such matters in considerable detail. This canonical Confucius – the voice of the Master speaking throughout the official canon – they believed, propounded a moral foundation for cult sacrifice that was by Song times practiced by broad segments of China’s population due to fundamental

25 Lunyu jizhu 6.125. 26 Zhuzi yulei 3.33. 27 Zhuzi yulei 3.33. My interpretation differs from that of Kim, The Natural Philosophy of Hsi, 100 and Tillman, “Zhu Xi’s Prayers to the Spirit of Confucius and Claim to the Transmission of the Way,” 490-491.

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social changes between the ninth and eleventh centuries.28 Fan Zuyu’s (1041-98) comment on the sacrifice as living passage in Analects 3.12 explains that spirits reveal themselves to the living once the latter have realized inner purity. “When the gentleman sacrifices,” says Fan, alluding to the Record of Rites, “he observes seven days of abstinence and three days of purification, then ‘he certainly sees the object of his sacrifice.’29 This is the supreme realization of integrity,” he says, alluding to the Constant Mean’s repeated references to supreme integrity 君子之祭，七日戒，三日齊，必見所祭者，誠之至也. Zhu Xi, who quotes Fan’s remark in his edition of the Analects, adds, this passage “records Master Kong’s gaining integrity of will during sacrifice” 祭祀之誠意. Multiplying the inter-textual traffic converging on this passage,

Zhu Xi here alludes to the Great Learning 大學 to establish sacrifice as a means to rectify the heart-mind (zhengxin 正心), itself a necessary step in the process of self-cultivation according to Zhu Xi’s reading of the text. “Thus,” Fan Zuyu continues, “it is Heaven’s spirit that arrives at the suburban sacrifice, and the ghosts of men that partake of the feast at temple sacrifices.30 These are realized from the self who offers [sacrifice].” The actual arrival of Heaven’s spirit at the round terrace altar and successful feasting of one’s ancestors depend upon the moral integrity of the person who offers sacrifice. “He who has integrity, has the spirit,” Fan Zuyu continues. “Without integrity, there is no spirit” 是故郊則天神格，廟則人鬼享，皆由己以致之也。有其誠則 有其神，無其誠則無其神.31 The inner subjective state of solemn reverence and integrity enables one to see the spirit that is to receive sacrifice; it amounts to a necessary precondition for the arrival of the spirits. Spirits never appear, Fan Zuyu suggests, unless they come for the ritual feast offered them by pious men and do not answer the summons of the deceitful. This discussion so far yields four observations. (1) Commentators in imperial times read the Confucius of the Analects inter-textually, not in isolation or based exclusively on the Analects alone. This imperial-era hermeneutics of the canonical Master may produce different results from a modern historical reconstruction of a purportedly original Confucius, but this inter-textual reading constituted an enduring hermeneutic of how readers of these classical texts imagined

28 The publication of vernacular ritual manuals beginning at least as early as the sixteenth century attests to the popularization of Confucian culture among non-elite sectors of society not schooled in the classical language. Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China. 29 A passage in the “Meaning of Sacrifice” chapter of the Rites, discussed below. 30 This paraphrases the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli zhushu 18.757) according to the commentary in Shang shu zhengyi 9.170. 31 Lunyu jizhu 3.64-65.

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Confucius in imperial times. (2) Commentarial readings of the Confucius of the Analects on the question of ghosts and spirits in particular divulge a figure who is intensely concerned that they are served – sacrificed to – properly by pious men of reverence who alone are able to invoke spirits to the rite by sheer force of inner integrity. (3) Commentators see life and death as continuous, which constitutes the grounds upon which pious sacrifice is possible. (4) Late imperial commentators locate the “sacrifice as living” passage in the Analects at the intersection of other moral and liturgical tracts that establish for the act of sacrifice a key role in self- cultivation. They situate this passage in the eight stages of cultivation described in Zhu Xi’s version of the Great Learning and describe the supreme realization of one’s inner state of heart- mind during sacrifice – a state characterized by Supreme Integrity – in terms found in the Constant Mean, effectively establishing connections among these works of the late-imperial canon.

MIDDLE-IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN CONCEPTIONS OF SPIRITS AND THE SOUL While the Confucius of the Analects provides little instructions on how exactly to “sacrifice to spirits as living,” imperial-era commentaries link this passage to liturgical texts in the Record of Rites that describe detailed purification and fasting procedures, which produce the inner state of reverence necessary to see the formless spirit during the ceremony in order to serve it properly. In this section I examine commentaries on passages on purification rites observed before entering the temple, the manner of offering cult properly, and an elaborate theory of the soul in the Tang edition of the classics called Correct Meaning of the Five Classics (Wujing zhengyi 五經正義); commentaries attributed mainly to its principal editor, Kong Yingda. Court scholars in the Tang drew from this version of the classics to systematize liturgies of imperial sacrifice to gods and spirits, which imperial courts patronized until the first decade of the twentieth century. Scholars continued to debate and refine various details of these cults throughout the imperial era – explicitly picking up debates where previous dynasties had left deliberations centuries before – but the organization and essential liturgical procedures remained relatively constant until the end of the Qing.32

32 Before the Tang codified a three-tiered imperial cult system with Heaven-God 昊天上帝 at its pinnacle, earlier dynasts patronized different configurations of cults with other gods situated at the pinnacle. See Loewe, Crisis and Conflict in Han China, 166-170 and Puett, To Become a God, chapter six. I discuss the formation of the cults of Heaven-God and the imperial ancestors in “An Explanation of the Di Sacrifice,” Confucian Gods and the Rites to Venerate Them (book manuscript).

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Canonical sacrifices begin with purifying the self, an essential process that enables the person who makes the offering to see and make contact with the spirits invoked at the rite. The “Meaning of Sacrifice” 祭義 chapter of the Rites explains, During the days of purifications, think of their [one’s ancestors’] daily activities, think of their smile, their life ambitions, pleasures, and routine diversions. After three days of purifications, [the gentleman] sees what he purifies himself to see. When he enters the shrine on the day of the sacrifice, faintly, he certainly catches glimpses [of the spirits] at their seats. At every point during the rite until he turns to leave, solemnly, he certainly hears their murmuring. He listens after leaving the hall and, indistinctly, he certainly hears the spirits sigh. In this way the filiality of the former kings was such that they never forgot the sight of [their ancestors’] visages, or the sound of their voices.33 齊之日，思其居處，思其笑語，思其志意，思其所樂，思其所嗜。齊三日，乃見其所為齊者。 祭之日入室，僾然必有見乎其位。周還出戶，肅然必有聞乎其容聲。出戶而聽，愾然必有聞 乎其嘆息之聲。是故先王之孝也，色不忘乎目，聲不絕乎耳。 Ritual purity requires the living descendant’s devotion to the ancestors. One ponders particular details about one’s ancestors as thinking, laughing, flesh-and-blood kin who were driven to accomplish life ambitions and who found solace in calligraphy, poetry, or some other diversion; in a word, the ancestors were seen as living. Seeing the invisible spirits requires an act of will, which the filial son can induce after observing purification rites in the days before the ceremony.34 Kong Yingda explains that during the course of these observances one initially devotes oneself to the spirits’ general features and over the course of one’s preparations gradually focuses on more specific activities of each person when he or she lived. “After the strict purifications,” Kong says, “one remembers the ancestor clearly and with detailed familiarity. When he first enters the temple before dawn, the filial son must subtly, faintly see [the spirit]” 致齊思念其親精意純熟. . . 初入室陰厭時,孝子當想象僾僾髣髣見也. Then, in an early instance of inter-textual reading, Kong remarks, “To see is to see them at the spirit tablet. Thus, the Analects says, ‘Sacrifice as living’” 見如見親之在神位也。故論語云祭如在.35 One gains a mental image of the spirit by immersing oneself in memories of his activities and preoccupations and eventually sees him as he was in life, not as just any flesh-and-blood living person.

33 Liji zhengyi 47.1592. 34 For a reconstruction of the purifications and ceremony from the perspective of the principal celebrant, see Nylan and Wilson, Lives of Confucius, 165-191. Bokenkamp compares this passage with early Chinese revelatory techniques of visualizing the dead, in Ancestors and Anxiety, chapter one. 35 Liji zhengyi 47.1592.

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Seeing the invisible spirit in the temple, while fleeting and subtle, is emotionally draining. Kong Yingda describes the filial son as “trembling and halting” 悚息 when performing the sundry ritual acts “just as when he hears the sound of his kin moving about” 如聞親舉動容止之聲 .36 The Record of Rites goes on to describe the manner in which the sages served the dead: “In his sacrifice, King Wen served the dead as he served the living. In remembering the dead, it seemed that he no longer wanted to live” 文王之祭也，事死者如事生，思死者如不欲生. Kong Yingda explains that “when he remembered the dead, King Wen wanted to follow them in death; it seemed that he wished not to continue living” 文王思念死者，意欲臨之而死，如似不復欲生 .37 Later in this chapter, a puzzled disciple queries the Master about ghosts and spirits. With no apparent reluctance to speak of such matters, the Master describes the composition of the soul and the primordial origins of the ancestral cult, which he attributes to the ancient sages who devised the correct procedures for serving ancestors. The Master said, “Qi is the fulfillment [sheng 盛] of spirit [shen 神], corporeal soul [po 魄] is the fulfillment of ghost [gui 鬼]. To join the ghost to the spirit is the Supreme Teaching. All living creatures must die and return to the earth when they do so; this is called ghost. Bones and flesh decompose in the ground and darkly become the fields. Its qi rises up and radiates brilliantly 昭明 above, its odor and rising vapor saddens those who sense it.38 This is the essence 精 of all living creatures; the issuance of spirit. On the basis of the essence of things, [the sages] brilliantly devised the exalted names ‘ghost’ and ‘spirit’ as the basis for [sacrificial] regulations followed by common folk. Everyone held [ghosts and spirits] in awe and was compelled by these appellations. But the sages regarded these regulations as incomplete and so built temple halls and provided separate rooms to distinguish close kin from distant ancestors. They taught the people to return to their [ancestral] origins and never forget the [parental] source of their birth. And so the people were persuaded by this and abided by these instructions with urgency.”39 子曰：“氣也者，神之盛也。魄也者，鬼之盛也。合鬼與神，教之至也。眾生必死，死必歸 土；此之謂鬼。骨肉斃于下，陰為野土。其氣發揚于上，為昭明，焄蒿悽愴。此百物之精也 ；神之著也。因物之精，制為之極，明命鬼神，以為黔首則。百眾以畏，萬明以服。聖人以

36 Liji zhengyi 47.1592. 37 Liji zhengyi 47.1593. 38 Zhu Xi adduces this passage to explain the passage on the ancestors’ effect on all people and the sense of their being everywhere in Constant Mean 16 (Zhongyong zhangju, 25) discussed on pp. 24-25 below. 39 Liji zhengyi 47.1595. Wuli tongkao 58.6b-7a also quotes this passage along with collected notes. Puett analyzes this passage as an account of the sages who devised the rites as a means to domesticate perceived hostile cosmic forces in order to make them work in favor of human interests. “The Offering of Food and the Creation of Order, 82-84.

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是為未足也，築為宮室，設為宮祧，以別親疏遠邇，教民反古復始，不忘其所由生也。眾之 服自此，故聽且速也。” In this dense passage the Master describes two components that comprise the human soul: the corporeal soul called po (also translated as “white soul”), which manifests as ghost and decomposes into the earth after death, and the numinous, animating spirit called qi, which radiates above upon death. The Master also states that the “Supreme Teaching” rejoins ghost and spirit so that the ancestors may receive cult. The Confucius of the Analects refrained from speaking of the nature of spirits in such detail. A modern philologist might rightly argue that these passages in the Rites date to a period after Confucius and that the historical Confucius might well have never uttered these words. My argument hinges on another reading; one that asserts that the “historical Confucius” is itself a modern reconstruction, but that Confucian readers from at least as early as the Tang and to the Qing invested their faith in another figure composed of passages in the larger corpus of canonical works. This canonical Confucius enunciates the principles that would underlie the Confucian conception of spirits and the soul throughout late imperial times. These passages share at least three striking features with early texts of the Confucian canon. (1) The attribution of the prescience to ancient sages to offer sacrifices to gods and spirits without divine revelation, which finds its classic formulation in the “Canon of Shun” of the Documents where, in a series of canonizing acts, Shun offers sacrifice to regional gods during his tours of inspection.40 Confucian “humanism” thus lies not in an opposition between gods and living men and women, but in the capacity of the ancient sages to apprehend the Dao without divine revelation and to translate its truth to all under Heaven in canonical rites that bring about the moral transformation of the people. (2) The act of sacrifice is irreducibly moral in that the descendant must become ritually pure before entering the hall, at which point his reverence and filiality enable him to faintly though with certainty catch glimpses of the spirit. (3) Numinous spirits presumably existed independently of human interaction with them at altars and temples, but Confucius and his followers consistently refrained from conjecture about their nature in abstract theological terms. The spirits are intelligible to humans largely through the act of sacrifice. Ritual, then, constitutes a mode of knowledge in that the purified celebrant sees and hears the spirit in the hall.

40 Legge, The Shoo King, 33-37.

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Kong Yingda in the Tang builds upon the Master’s account of ghosts and spirits in the Rites to develop an ontology of the human soul: “Spirit is the qi of human life. Qi is the supreme fulfillment of man . . . corporeal soul [po] is the supreme fulfillment of ghost” 神是人生有之氣。

氣者是人之盛極也 . . . 魄者鬼之盛極也. The etymology of the word translated as “fulfillment” (sheng 盛) evokes the image of filling a sacrificial vessel to the brim, which is its meaning in liturgical tracts: man’s spirit brimming with qi suggests that qi constitutes the essence or full potential of spirit.41 Kong Yingda continues, qi itself lacks such basic attributes as nature and consciousness, but when it fills one’s spirit, qi produces them. While he links qi and spirit, Kong distinguishes them by associating qi with consciousnesses and spirit with nature: “There is consciousness with qi and none without it, thus consciousness is produced by qi. The nature comes and goes with spirit and so constitutes man’s essential spiritual efficacy [jingling 精靈] and is called spirit.42 [Zheng Xuan] says ‘corporeal soul is the perception of the ears and eyes’: it is the corporeal body [po ti 魄體]. Without ears and eyes the physical body would have no perception” 有氣則有識，無氣則無識，則識從氣生。性則神出入也，故人之精靈而謂之神。 云 ： 耳目之聦明為魄者， 魄體也。 若無耳目， 形體不得為聦明. 43 Kong Yingda also distinguishes qi from spirit on grounds that qi constitutes a shapeless or malleable primordial essence that precedes spirit. In life, qi-breath produces consciousness, whereas nature is tied to – is coeval with – spirit and constitutes man’s essential animating force. The corporeal body constitutes a physical vehicle for the senses. Upon death, qi-consciousness as numinous spirit ascends upward, whereas the corporeal body becomes the ghost and darkly decomposes into earth and fields. Kong Yingda’s elaboration of the human soul might be represented in the following diagram:

41 See also a similar use of sheng in the Constant Mean 15. Zheng Xuan identified qi as “that which circulates as breath” and corporeal soul as “the cognition of the ears and eyes.” 42 The term jingling might also be rendered as “refined efficacy,” but Yü Ying-shih shows that ling was often interchangeable with hun in early sources. “‘O Soul, Come Back!,’” 393-394. 43 Liji zhengyi 47.1595.

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Spiritual Essence Corporeal Body Qi 氣 [hun 魂; yang 陽] fills 盛 Spirit 神 Po 魄 [yin 陰] fills 盛 ghost 鬼 in life: | ears and eyes: perception (the originally without consciousness 識| tied to nature 性 senses) but produces it 識 | post-mortem: rises up, shines brilliantly decomposes into the earth

The Supreme Teaching that the canonical Confucius outlines in the Rites amounts to a practical ritual solution to the separation of ghost and spirit upon death. He tells us that the filial son’s inner reverence produces the very means by which ghost and spirit are rejoined and then nurtured through ritual feast. Kong Yingda adds greater specificity to this formulation: “A man’s spirit departs from the physical body when he dies and goes off separately. The sages united the spirit and body of the person as he was in life. Even though the self-body was dead, [the sages] collected the ghost and spirit of the person just like the living man [siruo shengren 似若生人] and sacrificed to it” 人之死,其神與形體分散各別.聖人以生存之時神形和合.今雖身死,聚合鬼神似若生 人而祭之.44 The likeness of the living corporeal body assumes greater urgency or at least more precision in Kong Yingda’s understanding of the Supreme Teaching than in the canonical Master’s own formulation. The passage on catching “faint glimpses of the spirit when entering the shrine and a gentle sense of their murmuring”45 quoted earlier instructs the son to induce a mental image of the spirit through memory of his ancestor’s acts while alive. Kong Yingda focuses on the physical likeness of the deceased, perhaps to emphasize or verify the vividness of the corporeal figure of the ancestor during the rite.

LATE-IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN CONCEPTIONS OF SPIRITS AND THE SOUL The liturgical traditions that would by the Tang dynasty come under the purview of Confucian scholars who oversaw court sacrifices revolved around the Supreme Teaching described in the “Meaning of Sacrifice” chapter of the Rites. These rites aimed to nurture deceased that were believed to gain for the person of the supplicant salutary effects of “attaining solemn reverence in the heart.” Song scholars such as Zhu Xi integrated pious sacrifice into self-cultivation practices by identifying it with “gaining integrity of will [chengyi

44 Liji zhengyi 47.1595. Italics added. 45 Liji zhengyi 47.1592.

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46 誠意].” In his influential Ming-dynasty commentary on the Rites Xu Shizeng 徐師曾 (1517- 1580) propounds an important explanation of post-mortem qi. Identifying the qi that animates the body as a yang power, Xu Shizeng says, Yang qi is anima [hun 魂]; it attaches to the physical body and the person is born. When the flesh and bones decompose below, the qi has nothing to attach itself to and so it issues forth and flies upward. Some qi shines brilliantly, some qi is mildly odorous vapor, and other qi is solemnly mournful. Yang qi is for the most part light and pure and so rises upward and floats due to its yang [quality].47 陽氣為魂，附於體貌，而人生焉；骨肉斃於下，其氣無所附麗，則發散飛揚於上。或為朗然 昭明之氣，或為溫然焄蒿之氣，或為肅然淒愴之氣。蓋陽氣輕清，故昇而上浮，以從陽也. Xu Shizeng elaborates on two key details of post-mortem qi: First, due to its yang-like lightness, animating qi is bound to earth only so long as the weighty corporeal body still lives. Second, not all qi is alike in that it exhibits distinct characteristics after death: some qi shines brilliantly above, some is vaporous, and still other qi induces sadness. In the seventeenth century, Huang Zongxi (1610-95) employs a familiar metaphor to elucidate this conception of the soul: “Likened to a candle, its wick is form [or body], its flame is the corporeal soul [po], and its light is anima [hun]. Zichan said, ‘The beginning transformation of human life is called po [corporeal soul]. Once po [qua body or form] is born, yang is called anima.’48 This is human life: first there is the corporeal soul, then there is anima” 譬之于燭，其 炷是形，其焰是魄，其光明是魂。子產曰: “人生始化曰魄。既生魄，陽曰魂。”是人之生，先有魄 而後有魂也. Huang then appeals to canonical authority to argue that “there are cases when the corporeal soul has already departed but anima remained, such as when King Mu of Chu had King Cheng killed [by means of self-strangulation]. King Mu first gave him the title of ‘Ling’ [ 靈 efficatious, numinous], but his eyes did not shut, so he called him ‘Cheng’ [成 complete], and

46 Zhuzi yulei 138.3285. 47 Quoted in Gu Yanwu, “You hun wei bian” 游魂為變, Rizhi lu jishi (1.18b) based on Xu Shizeng, Liji jizhu 禮記集註 (1575). Xu’s explanation was adopted with minor word changes and some elaborations in Rijiang liji jieyi 日講禮記解義 50.18a-18b. Zhu Xi similarly identifies consciousness as the movement of yang-hun and the physical body as the movement of yin-po (Zhuzi yulei 3.37). 48 Duke Zhao’s seventh year, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正義 (Shisanjing zhushu ed.) 44.2050. Huang’s conception of life as form 形, body 身體–both embodiments of corporeal soul 魄–and anima 魂 closely follows the Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi commentary. C.f., Legge, The Ch’un Ts’ew, 618; Yü, “O Soul, Come Back!,” 372; Brashier, “Han Thanatology,” 148-149.

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his eyes closed” 有魄已落而魂尚未去者，如楚穆王弒成王，謚之曰靈，不瞑，曰成，乃瞑. 49 No mere physical fluttering light, anima for Huang manifested itself in one’s most personal attributes: spirit, thought, and will.50 The lingering efficacy (ling) of King Cheng’s powerful anima as will intriguingly reveals itself in the simple rendering of his post-humus name of “Ling.” 51 The lingering power of the spirits, according to Huang Zongxi, depends upon one’s accomplishments when living. “Consider most people of the world. The essential spirit of a man grows weak when sustained by his last remaining breath. When a man still lives, his anima already seeks to disperse. How could it condense again after death” 試觀天下之人,尸居餘氣,精神

懵懂.即其生時,魂已欲散.焉能死後而復聚乎?52 But not all souls perish, Huang continues. The dispersal of most peoples’ anima brings certain death, whereas “the spirits of sages and worthies linger for a long time in Heaven and Earth. How could there be the principle of dispersal” 聖賢之 精神長留天地，寧有散理? For example, “the ghosts of Yao and Shun crisscross Heaven and Earth” 堯舜之鬼綱維天地. He quotes the Odes: “‘King Wen ascends and descends and surrounds High God’ [Mao 235]. How can there not be such things; the poets have sung of them” 文王陟降

，在帝左右。豈無是事而詩人億度言之邪)? Huang cites other examples of long-lingering spirits, such as the and Fu Yue, who purportedly climbed the constellations and became a star himself.53 “The resolute and good men of later generations transformed the lands where they

49 Huang, “Lun hun po,” 1: 196. The Song-Yuan xue’an also includes this essay after the section on ghosts and spirits in Zhu Xi’s chapter, 48.1516. Twelfth month of Duke Wen’s first year (626 BCE), Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi 18.1837; Legge, The Ch’un Ts’ew, 230. 50 Huang, Poxie lun 1:196; Song-Yuan xue’an, 48.1516 51 Conceptions of hun and po are pervasive throughout Chinese history and endure in a variety of forms to the present. Confucian ritual discourse distinguishes between the yang-like propensity of qi/hun as spirit and the yin-like propensity of po as ghost, even as the Supreme Teaching seeks to rejoin them for the purpose of sacrifice. Yü Ying-shih argues that these constituted a dualism in early sources (“O Soul, Come Back!,” 363-395), whereas Seidel shows that early mortuary practices evidence a more complex relationship in “Tokens of Immortality in Han Graves,” 1: 79-114 and Brashier argues that early mortuary practices and medical texts treat them as a complex and dynamic entity in “Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls,’” 125-158. 52 Huang, Poxie lun 1:196-197; Song Yuan xue’an 48: 1517. 53 Huang cites the “Metal-Bound Coffer” in the Documents as brilliantly announcing the Duke of Zhou’s continuing spirit presence. He does not list a source for Fu Yue’s Ji and Wei, the sixth and seventh constellations of the Chinese zodiac, but one account may be found in “Da zong shi 大宗師 6,” jishi 莊子集釋 4:3A.247.

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traversed and certainly left residual spirit.54 They can pluck out the people from ruin with their benevolence and earnestness. These are certainly no parasitic spirits that can be exorcized. How can one not believe in death without annihilation” 凡後世之志士仁人，其過化之地，必有所存之 神。猶能以仁風篤烈拔下民之塌茸，固非依草附木之精魂可以誣也。死而不亡，豈不信乎?55 The long-lingering spirits of sages and worthies act as agents of redemption in Huang’s view as they transform the world and can deliver common folk from ruin. The rising importance of the Constant Mean (Zhongyong) in the Song dynasty sheds further light on the continuing concern for serving spirits properly and the moral power that spirits exert on their living descendants. As a chapter in the Record of Rites, the “Constant Mean” rarely attracted particular attention among classicists before the Song dynasty, but Zhu Xi drew from Song commentaries to produce his critical edition of this work included among the Four Books.56 As early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the court promulgated Dao Learning and the Four Books as the basis of imperial orthodoxy, primarily through publication of imperial editions of Dao Learning writings and commentaries on the Confucian classics. Deposited at all state schools, these works set the core curriculum that educated men who sat for civil examinations were expected to master.57 Confucian readers understood the Constant Mean as a cogent validation of the ethical foundation of sacrificial rites described elsewhere in the Record of Rites. We have already seen Zhu Xi’s explanation of “sacrifice as living” as an instance of attaining the integrity of will described in the Great Learning. Consider a key passage in the Constant Mean, which situates the purification rites one observes before sacrifice within the quest for human perfection central to moral self-cultivation techniques taught by Dao Learning masters beginning in the Song dynasty. We find in the Constant Mean the figure of the canonical Master once again certainly not chary of speech concerning ghosts and spirits: The Master said, “The spirits’ and ancestors’ exercise of their moral power is pervasive [sheng 盛] indeed. Look for them and they cannot be seen; listen for them and they cannot be

54 Paraphrasing of Mencius 7A.13. 55 Huang, Poxie lun 1:197; Song Yuan xue’an 48.1517. 56 The bibliographic treatises in the official histories and the Siku quanshu list sixty-nine published commentaries on the Zhongyong compiled from the Song through the Qing apart from those included in collections on the Four Books and four before the Song. 57 The Xingli daquan 性理大全 and Wujing Sishu daquan 五經四書大全.

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heard. They give birth to all living creatures and are thus indispensable 體物而不可遺.58 They induce people everywhere to fast and purify themselves and to don proper garb in order to continue the sacrificial rites.59 Spirits abound as though above us, as though to our left and right. [Zhu Xi inserts a passage from the “Meaning of Sacrifice”: “‘Its qi rises up and radiates brilliantly above, its odor and rising vapor saddens those who sense it. This is the essence of all living creatures; the issuance of spirit.’ This is exactly what this means.”60] The Odes says, ‘When spirits come cannot be fathomed, and yet we tire of them not.’ When the indistinct [spirits] appear, integrity cannot be suppressed!”61 子曰: “鬼神之為德，其盛矣乎！視之而弗見，聽之而弗聞，體物而不可遺。使天下之人齊明 盛服，以承祭祀。洋洋乎！如在其上，如在其左右。［孔子曰: “其氣發揚於上，為昭明焄蒿 淒愴。此百物之精也，神之著也”，正謂此爾。］詩曰: ‘神之格思，不可度思！矧可射思！’夫 微之顯，誠之不可揜如此夫。” Early commentators remark on two interrelated points in this passage. (1) While the spirits lack form, they nonetheless produce tangible moral effects of reverence and integrity among the living. “When spirits come,” the second-century commentator Zheng Xuan says of the Odes passage, “their appearance cannot be fathomed or known. We simply know to serve them with utmost reverence. How could we tire of them? . . . The spirits are without form and yet are manifest, they silently attain integrity” 神之來，其形象不可億度，而知事之盡敬而已。況可 厭倦乎? . . . 神無形而著,不言而誠. In the seventh century Kong Yingda likens the salutary effects of ghosts and spirits on the living with the Mean as an ontological reality itself, rather than as a title: “The Way of the Constant Mean is like that of ghosts and spirits,” he says, “it manifests through imperceptibility and silently rectifies itself” 中庸之道,與鬼神之道相似,亦從 微至著不言而自誠也. He continues, “the way of ghosts and spirits gives birth to and nurtures all creatures. It extends everywhere so that nothing is omitted” 鬼神之道生養萬物，無不周徧 而不有所遺. (2) Commentators also stress that ghosts and spirits have this effect because they animate – literally give birth to – all creatures: “All creatures are born of the qi of ghosts and spirits” 萬物無不以鬼神之氣生也, says Zheng Xuan. “Because ghosts and spirits can give birth

58 Following Zheng Xuan’s gloss, the transitive verb ti, which typically means “to give body to,” or “to give substance to,” is translated here as “to give birth to.” Given that ancestral spirits are the subject of ti and their descendants its object, ti should be construed as procreation. 59 The word shi often means to be dispatched by a superior, but the context leaves open a certain degree of volition on the part of those who fast and purify themselves, so I translate it as “to induce.” 60 Liji zhengyi 47.1595. See note 39 above. 61 Zheng Xuan’s (Liji zhushu 52.7a) and Zhu Xi’s (Zhongyong zhangju, 25) readings agree on this passage’s meaning.

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to and nourish all creatures,” says Kong Yingda, “everyone under Heaven fasts and dons proper garb to continue the sacrifices” 鬼神能生養萬物，故天下之人齊戒明絜盛飾餘服以承祭祀. Their effects resonate with the moral caliber of those who invoke them: Kong says, “The good invoke them and gain blessings, the evil invoke them and incur disaster” 善者必降之以福；惡 者必降之以禍.62 In his commentary on this passage in the Constant Mean, Zhu Xi quotes his Dao Learning predecessors who see ghosts and spirits as fundamental natural forces that drive the universe. “Ghosts and spirits are the innate potential of the two qi [yin-yang]” 鬼神者，二氣之良能也, he quotes Zhang Zai (1020-77). “Ghosts and spirits are the functions of Heaven and Earth and the traces of [Heaven and Earth’s] creative transformations” 鬼神，天地之功用，而造化之跡也, he quotes Cheng Yi. Zhu Xi adds, “Speaking of them as two qi, ghosts are the efficacy of yin and spirits are the efficacy of yang. Speaking of them as a single qi, spirits extend outward to the limit and ghosts return. They are in fact a single thing” 以二氣言，則鬼者陰之靈也，神者陽之靈 也。以一氣言，則至而伸者為神，反而歸者為鬼，其實一物而已.63 In his influential essay on the religious and philosophical dimensions of this work, Tu Wei- ming, downplays the role of spirits and ancestors as catalysts for moral perfection. Where the text speaks concretely of pious sacrifice to ancestors, Tu employs a semiotic framework to portray such acts as “symbolic exchange.”64 He characterizes “Confucian attitudes toward spirits and ghosts” as “basically humanistic,” by which Tu means that “sacrificial practices such as those employed in ancestor worship are often manifestations of ethical concerns.” 65 The “humanistic” orientation in Confucian discourse on spirits described in the Record of Rites, its later commentaries, and Zhu Xi’s comments on the Analects and Constant Mean, however, lies not so much in a tension between humanistic ethics and pious sacrifice, than in grounding knowledge of spirits upon human liturgical interactions with them and in the ethical foundation of the act of sacrifice, which expects that persons who perform Confucian rites observe purification procedures in order to realize inner integrity and solemn reverence in the heart-mind. Kim Yung Sik and Daniel Gardner show that Zhu Xi, and, I would add, most Confucians, held three conceptions of gui-ghost and shen-spirit: (1) cosmic forces of the natural world; (2)

62 Liji zhengyi 52.7a-8a. 63 Zhongyong zhangju 25. 64 Tu, Centrality and Commonality, 41-49. 65 Tu, Centrality and Commonality, 45-46.

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improper, depraved ghosts; and (3) spirits and ancestors who respond to prayers of entreaty (dao 禱) and requite prayers for good harvest (qi 祈).66 All three of these conceptions can be found in some form in classical sources and Confucian writings before the Song. The Record of Rites adumbrates the first idea of ghosts and spirits as cosmic forces in its tripartite linkage of ghost- yin-returning and spirit-yang-rising discussed above.67 Daniel Gardner persuasively argues that modern scholars tend to see in Zhu Xi’s endorsement of these views an expression of natural philosophy, which they oppose to a belief in spirits. This suggests, Gardner observes, “an analytical opposition or distinction that would have been lost on [Zhu Xi] himself. In the West the natural and spirit worlds have rather distinct boundaries, but no such boundaries, it would seem, obtain in traditional China.”68 Cheng Yi and Zhang Zai build on this idea in the passages quoted by Zhu Xi in his commentary, although, as Gardner makes clear, modern scholars tend to emphasize the cosmological functions of gui and shen without delving into other senses in much detail.69 The Confucius of the Analects (7.20), according to Li Chong’s and Zhu Xi’s readings, acknowledged the second notion of “improper ghosts” (or “chaotic spirits”) by declining to speculate about them.70 While Zhu Xi is perhaps more vocal about improper ghosts, he nonetheless dismisses them as unworthy of pious attention and admits, as we see presently, that one cannot apprehend them by means of the investigation of principle. In the seventeenth century, Huang Zongxi reinforces this view by loathing po as distinct from hun: “The fireflies at battlefields and the howling of dark rains are entirely the workings of unrequited ghosts; the actions of po [corporeal souls or ghosts] which have nothing to do with hun [anima]” 凡戰場之燐 火，陰雨之哭聲，一切為厲者，皆魄之為也，魂無與焉.71 The third notion of “responsive” spirits and ancestors remains the central focus in the Confucian conception of spirits construed as numinous agents worthy of “proper sacrifice” 正當合祭祀.72 As the remainder of Zhu Xi’s comment on this passage in the Constant Mean exemplifies, the cosmic gui-shen (sense one) routinely overlapped and intermingled with the proper ghosts and spirits (sense three). Drawing from the explanation of the soul described in the Record of

66 Kim, “Kuei-shen in Terms of Ch’i’” 154-158; Gardner, “Ghosts and Spirits,” 599-600. 67 Liji zhengyi 2.1595, quoted on p. 16 above (“Its qi rises up and radiates brilliantly…”). 68 Gardner, “Ghosts and Spirits,” 601. 69 Gardner, “Ghosts and Spirits,” pp. 598-599, especially n2. 70 Lunyu zhushu 3.2467; Zhuzi yulei 3.37. See footnote 8 above. 71 Huang Zongxi, “Lun hun po,” 1: 196; Song Yuan xuean 48: 1516-1517. 72 Zhuzi yulei 32.818.

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Rites, Zhu Xi continues, “ghost and spirit show no form nor emit any sound, but all things result from the condensation and dispersal of [ghost and spirit]. This is the essence [ti 體] of being a creature and why they [ghosts and spirits] are indispensable” 鬼神無形與聲，然物之終 始，莫非陰陽合散之所為，是其為物之體，而物所不能遺也. Zhu then quotes from another passage in the Rites to explain the purification rites that everyone under Heaven observes at the spirits’ behest: “To purify what is disorderly is to make it orderly” 齊之為言齊也，所以齊不齊而 致其齊也. The spirits “instill awe and reverence,” Zhu says, so that people “continue the sacrifices.” That the ghosts and spirits “can manifest brilliance in this way verifies that ‘they give birth to things and are indispensable.’ [In the “Meaning of Sacrifice”] Master Kong said, ‘Its qi rises up and radiates brilliantly above, its odor and rising vapor saddens those who sense it. This is the essence [jing 精] of all living creatures; the issuance of spirit.’ Master Kong’s statement is exactly what this passage means in the Constant Mean,” says Zhu 能使人畏敬奉承，而發見昭著 如此，乃其體物而不可遺之驗也。孔子曰: “其氣發揚於上，為昭明焄蒿淒愴。此百物之精也，神

之著也,”正謂此爾.73 Qi, which I have fastidiously avoided translating, is conventionally rendered as “material force” in modern discourses on “Neo-Confucianism,” in which Li assumes the primary role as the underlying principle of all things. Itself inherently dynamic, qi is the force that animates particular things. In Confucian conceptions of ghosts and spirits, including those of Zhu Xi, the meaning of qi is not derived from its contingent relation to a more primary li/principle, but via a complex relationship with corporeal (po) ghost. As a shared spiritual essence transmitted among males of a patriline, the qi invoked in Confucian treatises on ghosts and spirits might best be construed as “seminal spirit.”74 In fact, late imperial Confucians tend to speak of “pure” or more literally “seminal qi” (jingqi 精氣) and “seminal spirit” (jingshen 精神) more or less synonymously. They concur with Zheng Xuan’s remark, “All creatures are born of the qi of ghosts and spirits,” and ascribe to qi patrimonial qualities of seminal spirit. Zhu Xi once said, “When speaking of Heaven and Earth, there is only one qi. When speaking of a person, my qi is the qi of my ancestors, here too there is only one qi. Therefore, when [the descendant] affects, [the ancestor] always responds.” 自天地言之，只是一箇氣。自一身言之，我之氣即袓先之氣，亦

73 Zhongyong zhangju p. 25; Liji zhengyi 2.1595. 74 Bokenkamp, among others, suggests “pneuma,” which means breath and spirit in ancient Greek. Stephen Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (California, 1997), 15-20.

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只是一箇氣，所以才感必應.75 This comment, taken from the thirteenth-century anthology Master Zhu’s Categorized Conversations carries all the more weight because compilers place it first under the heading “On Sacrificing to Ancestors and Spirits” in the imperial compilation Great Collection of Nature and Principle promulgated by the court in 1415 along with its edition of the Five Classics and Four Books. Zhu Xi went to great lengths to reconcile the canonical pronouncement that the qi of ghosts and spirits gives birth to all creatures with Dao Learning’s more recent doctrine that essential, immutable principle gives form to all things. While Zhu can be found expounding upon a number of different explanations of the relationship between principle and qi, the qi of spirits presents a conundrum because it does not fit neatly into principle’s cognitive grid and thus resists human comprehension. In his comment on Analects 7.21 discussed earlier, Zhu admits that the investigation of principle cannot apprehend the transformations of proper ghosts and spirits 鬼神， 造化之迹，雖非不正，然非窮理之至, which is why the Master did not speak of them lightly.76 In a lengthy response to a disciple’s query on the principle of life and death, ghosts and spirits, Zhu Xi first affirms his oft-stated cosmological view that principle precedes qi, and then shifts to what appears to be a parallel explanation of human life: “When people obtain principle there is life,” he says, and then adds, “People obtain life by means of the condensation of seminal qi” 人 所以生，精氣聚也. In an argument that figuratively anchors principle on top of qi, he continues later, When a man is about to die, his mature qi rises upward – this is called anima rising – while the lower body grows cold – this is called the corporeal soul descending. This is why with life there is always death, with a beginning there is necessarily an end. Qi condenses and disperses while principle merely secures a mooring on top of qi, so that they are not initially bound together as a single entity. The principle in each person’s allotment is proper and cannot be spoken of as condensing and dispersing. When a man dies, [his qi] will ultimately disperse, but before it has completely dispersed there is the Principle of affective resonance [gan’ge 感格] during the sacrifice. We cannot know whether the qi of relatively distant generations of ancestors is present [youwu 有無], but since the person who offers sacrifice is their descendant who certainly shares this single qi, there is the principle of affective communication [gantong 感通].77

75 Zhuzi yulei 3.47; Xingli daquan 28.23a. C.f., Gardner, 607. This roughly repeats an expression in Kong Yingda’s commentary in Zhouyi zhushu 7.81. 76 Lunyu jizhu 4.98. 77 Zhuzi yulei 3.36-37; Xingli daquan 28.10a-10b.

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人將死時，熱氣上出，所謂魂升也；下體漸冷，所謂魄降也。此所以有生必有死，有始必有 終也。夫聚散者，氣也。若理，則只泊在氣上，初不是凝結自為一物。但人分上所合當然者 便是理，不可以聚散言也。然人死雖終歸於散，然亦未便散盡，故祭祀有感格之理。先袓世 次遠者，氣之有無不可知。然奉祭祀者既是他子孫，必竟只是一氣，所以有感通之理。 According to Daniel Gardner, Zhu Xi makes at least two distinct claims about qi in this passage. On one hand, Gardner characterizes Zhu’s belief that spirits “survive in some dispersed, inchoate form, capable, through resonance of ancestral sacrifice performed by blood descendants, of consolidating as the responsive ch’i of ancestral spirits.” On the other hand, Zhu’s remark possibly constitutes an ontological claim that after death, qi ceases to exist in an absolute sense: “the ancestral spirit gains its existence from the sacrificer’s state of mind: ‘The existence or non- existence of the spirit depends on whether the mind is fully sincere or not.’”78 The long history of Confucian canonical commentaries provides overwhelming support for the first claim, whereas Zhu Xi elsewhere explicitly rejects the second as subjective. The passage from the Constant Mean quoted above attributes to spirits the capacity to affect the living, as their moral power “induces people everywhere to fast and purify themselves.” Spirits act as agents that possess the efficacy to make us good. The relationship between the living and the dead, though, is mutually sustaining. The Supreme Teaching in the “Meaning of Sacrifice” chapter of the Record of Rites requires the filial son to invoke the spirit’s presence at the rite by joining the corporeal soul with the deceased’s anima, which the latter seems unable to accomplish on its own, thereby giving to the pious man the signal capacity to feast and nurture the souls of the dead. It is unclear whether the term youwu in the passage above denotes the absolute existence versus non-existence of spirits, which, as qi, must eventually disperse. Alternatively, Confucian questions about the spirit’s presence (you 有) at the rite revolve around the difficulty of establishing contact with spirits due either to the latter’s genealogical distance or the supplicant’s lack of the requisite reverence and integrity. As Zhu Xi makes clear in his discussions of the “sacrifice as living” passage, proper, canonical sacrifice establishes contact with the spirit: “When the sacrificial rites have integrity of will [chengyi 誠意], the living and the dead will commune 幽明便交, without it there will never be any contact 都不相接.”79 Zhu Xi himself rejected as subjective (siyi 私意) an interpretation of Analects 3.12 as merely a matter of

78 Gardner, “Ghosts and Spirits,” 608-609. 79 Zhuzi yulei 25.620.

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conjuring the spirit up in one’s mind 自家心裏以為有便有. This “would indeed be subjective,” Zhu retorts, “Under such circumstances, one would lack his [integrity of will]. One would just be vacantly sacrificing. If one’s will lacks integrity, then it would be exactly like one never sacrificed” 若只據自家以為有便有，無便無，如此卻是私意了。這箇乃是自家欠了他底，蓋是自 家空在這裏祭，誠意卻不達於彼，便如不曾祭相似.80 This remark adds an important layer of meaning to the Master’s remark; Zhu suggests that one might physically participate in the rite, but, if one who does so lacks integrity of will, it would be the same as not having sacrificed at all. Pressed again to affirm the possibility that one conjures the spirit out of thin air (虛空之氣), Zhu Xi replies that it comes from “one’s own qi because one’s ancestors’ qi is continuous with one’s own” 只是自家之氣，蓋祖考之氣與己連續.81 Zhu Xi’s willingness to restrain the cognitive reach of his purportedly universal doctrine of the investigation of principle is striking. He cannot – or at least he does not – identify the principle of the protean spirits themselves because they condense and will ultimately disperse, whereas principle, itself immutable, cannot change in this way. In the Dao Learning formulation, qi is always after or within form (xingerxia 形而下) and yet everyone has long agreed that spirits have no form (wuxing 無形), which is why we look for them but see them not. Rather than apply his doctrine of the investigation of principle directly to spirits as such, Zhu resorts to the position that unchanging “principle merely secures a mooring on top of the qi” of spirits, thereby maintaining a certain distance from their condensing and dispersing, and identifies the moral constant of “affective resonance” – facilitated by the integrity of will – between the living and the dead as the relevant principle that can be apprehended. Ritual interaction with spirits based on one’s inner moral disposition exemplifies principle, but spirits themselves resist his explanatory framework. Classical sources and their Confucian commentaries consistently affirm continuities between life and death through the filial son’s contact with ancestors. Crossing and interpenetrating all philosophical distinctions and the barrier separating the living and the dead is “affection” (gan

80 Zhuzi yulei 25.620. Zhu may intend negative connotations with “siyi” or that this is a personal or private meaning that does not apply to all cases. 81 Zhuzi yulei 25.620-621. Zhu’s interlocutor used “xukong” to refer to something like thin air rather than vacuity or absolute emptiness.

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感). “When [the descendant] affects,” Zhu Xi said, the ancestors “always respond.”82 The filial son harnesses his patrimony of seminal spirit by means of affection to draw his ancestors near. In response to a student’s confusion over the ghost that departs and the spirit that comes to the rite, Zhu Xi explains, “The expression ‘come and respond’ generally refers to the spirit. We say it this way because my own seminal spirit affects [gan] their seminal spirit. Basically all rites of sacrifice work this way” 所謂來格，亦略有些神底意思。以我之精神感彼之精神，蓋謂此也。祭 祀之禮全是如此. Zhu then lists the celestial, terrestrial, and ancestral gods and spirits venerated at altars patronized by the court as examples of rites that work through the efficacy of the supplicant’s affection and the spirit’s response: “When the Son of Heaven sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, or when the feudal lords sacrifice to Mountains and Rivers, all are matters of one’s seminal spirit, which awaits the spirit to pass by and then affects it so that it comes” to the rite 皆 是自家精神抵當得他過，方能感召得他來.83 Spirits may differ in composition and status, but the means of communion with them through rites remains constant. “Wherever the descendant’s body-self is,” Zhu Xi continues, paraphrasing a remark by Xie Liangzuo (1050-1103), “the ancestor’s qi is also there. They have a blood artery connection. Thus ‘the spirit does not accept an offering from anyone not of its own kind, and people do not sacrifice outside the patriline;’ this is because there is no connection of qi” 子孫這身在此,祖宗之氣便在此。他是有箇血脈貫通。

所以“神不歆非類,民不祀非族,”只為這氣不相關.84 In a comment on the Analects where Confucius expresses his concern that the mountain spirit should decline an offering that violates the rites (3.6) discussed earlier, Zhu Xi speaks in a similar vein to stress the importance of connection and of belonging in a successful proper rite. He quotes the Record of Rites, “The Son of Heaven sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, the feudal lords sacrifice to the mountains and rivers of their own states.” Then he continues, “It is because [the spirits] belong to me that I am able to sacrifice to them. If they do not belong to me, then my qi will not resonate [xianggan 相感] with the spirits.

82 The Changes describes the interaction between yin and yang as affect and response (Zhouyi zhushu 4.46). A number of scholars have written insightfully on gan as resonance in correlative cosmology. See e.g., Henderson, The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology, 22-28; Sangren, History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community; Zito, Of Body and Brush, 104-106, 202; von Glahn, The Sinister Way, 14-15. The sacrificer’s practice of affection and the spirit’s response may indeed draw from correlative resonance between two agents, but the imperial sources on sacrifice rarely allude to such explanations. 83 Zhuzi yulei 3.47; Xingli daquan 28.23a. 84 Zhuzi yulei 3.47; Xingli daquan 28.23b. Allusion to Zuozhuan zhushu 13.1801 (Duke Xi, tenth year).

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How could I sacrifice to them?” 天子祭天地，諸侯祭其國之山川，只緣是他屬我，故我祭得他。 若不屬我，則氣便不與之相感，如何祭得他.85 The constancy of communion with the dead, even for Zhu Xi, inevitably comes down to mutable, protean qi – seminal spirit – pulsing through each patriline. That Zhu Xi seems disinclined to cite the constancy of qi as a principle alerts us to his insistence that Li is more than the constant pattern of things, but an immutable, creative power itself. All sacrifices work by means of affection, and yet ancestors in particular preoccupy Confucian writing about gods and spirits more than any other. Even in general discussions of gods and spirits, Confucian ritual texts almost invariably focus on ancestors as the principal object of cult veneration. One’s ability to “sacrifice as living” hinges upon inducing an inner state of filiality, reverence, and integrity by concentrating on the ancestor’s daily activities and smile. The Confucius of the Analects dissolves any distinction between the filiality toward one’s ancestors and reverence toward other spirits: in all cases, one must sacrifice to the spirit as living. Zhu Xi says, “Sacrificing to ancestors is based on filiality, sacrificing to other spirits is based on reverence. Although filiality and reverence are not the same, the heart of ‘[sacrificing] as living’ is one” 祭先主於孝,祭神主於敬,雖孝敬不同,而“如在”之心則一.86 Canonical gods of the imperial pantheon, such as Heaven and Earth, Mountains and Rivers, ostensibly govern semi-discrete spheres of the cosmos, but the compartmentalization of a spirit’s discrete authority over the cosmos begins to break down in actual cult practice. Or rather, ancestors, in particular, cross reputed administrative divisions depending upon the supplicant and the patrimony of he who performs the rites. The ancient sages’ supreme teaching “taught people to return to their ancestral origins” in Zheng Xuan’s reading of the “Meaning of Sacrifice” of the Rites endorsed by most commentators ever since, and “never forget the parental source of their birth.”87 Recall the Master’s response in the Analects to the adage, “It is better to curry favor with the stove god that feeds you than attend to one’s ancestors.” “It’s not right,” he said, “Having offended against Heaven, one has no one to pray to” (3.13). By suggesting that failure to observe rites to one’s ancestors constitutes an offense against Heaven, the Master links ancestors and Heaven, and the rites to venerate them. Speaking in a similar vein, the canonical Master may also

85 Zhuzi yulei 25.612. The Rites passage is “Wang zhi,” Liji zhushu 禮記注疏 12.1336. 86 Zhuzi yulei 25.619. 87 Liji zhengyi 2.1595; quoted on pp. 16.

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be heard in the “Affect and Response” [ganying zhang 感應章] chapter of the Book of Filial Piety, where he draws a connection between one’s forebears and Heaven and Earth through sacrifice: “The Master said, ‘The brilliant kings of yore served their fathers with filiality and so served Heaven with brilliance, they served their mothers with filiality and so served Earth with discernment’” 子曰：昔者明王，事父孝，故事天明，事母孝，故事地察. The Ancient Text commentary explains the king’s service of his parents in this passage as “generous offerings of sacrifice in the ” 立宗廟，豐祭祀也. Much like the way of the gentleman in the Constant Mean, the brilliant king here must “be able to extend his filiality toward his father and mother to his service of Heaven and Earth without losing his Dao so that all the spirits will be thoroughly attended to” 能追孝其父母，則事天地不失其道. 不失其道，則天地之精爽明察矣.88 In sum, late-imperial Confucian ritual discourse developed conceptions of spirits and the soul on the basis of classical sources. Xu Shizeng observes that animating qi is bound to the physical body in life, but rises upward upon death due to its yang propensity toward lightness, which elaborates upon what the Master said in the “Meaning of Sacrifice” of the Record of Rites.89 The ancient classics and later Confucian commentators concur on the central fact that spirits linger after death, but spirits apparently do much more. Huang Zongxi observes that anima, the hun soul, of powerful men continues to animate the body after death and the spirits of the extraordinary sages can “pluck out the people from ruin with benevolence and earnestness.” The ancient classics and later Confucians also concur that spirits, though lacking in form, continue to have tangible moral effects of reverence, piety, and integrity among the living. Due to an essential seminal bond that runs through the patriline, living men who observe purification rites can commune with spirits of their deceased ancestors at proper altars due to the underlying principle of the sacrificer’s affection and the spirit’s response, which testifies to the quintessentially moral fiber linking the living and the deceased.

CONCLUSION

88 Guwen xiaojing Kongshi zhuan; Xiaojing zhushu 8.2559. Li Gonglin’s illustration of this passage in the Xiaojing depicts the son conducting sacrifice with his wife. Richard M Barnhart, Li Kung-lin’s Classics of Filial Piety (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993), pp. 144-145. Lu Miaw-fen describes mystic uses of purification as a means to commune with spirits by syncretic thinkers in the late Ming. “Religious Dimensions of Filial Piety.” 89 Liji zhengyi 47.1595

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At least as early as the Tang, Confucian scholars drew from classical sources to articulate a conception of spirits and the soul that provided a canonical foundation for an imperial cult system; a cult system that gave great weight to ancestors and which informed all canonical rites devoted to gods and spirits performed by generations of Confucians both at home and at imperial altars and temples. Commentaries on the Analects, Record of Rites, and Book of Filial Piety disclose a persistent understanding of Confucius as profoundly committed to reverent services of gods and spirits. Confucians during the imperial era propounded a detailed explanation of spirits, ghosts, and the soul largely based on statements attributed to the canonical Confucius. Many of the ideas attributed to Confucius in these sources proved remarkably resilient throughout imperial times. In spite of differences over liturgical details, Confucians assumed that spirits lingered after death and were sustained by ritual feasting. They embraced ritual practices revolving around a conception of ritual purity defined by integrity of will, inner reverence, and piety that enabled the filial son or descendant to commune with the spirits – archetypally understood as ancestors – by means of a process of his affection and the spirits’ response. Zhu Xi stated that this act of communing with ancestral spirits exemplifies principle, and yet the evidence discussed here suggests that the Dao Learning doctrine of the investigation of principle, which repositioned the status of qi qua “material force” in Confucian metaphysical speculation, had relatively little impact on the status of qi as the seminal, animating spirit in Confucian discourses on spirits and the human soul, even at the expense of bending principle’s purportedly capacious cognitive grid that presumably underlay all things. This conception of spirits and the principles of ritual veneration of them is fully consistent with the voluminous documentation that attests to the utter seriousness with which Confucians performed sacrificial rites in imperial times. The persistence of the figure of the canonical Master’s cult devotion to gods and spirits and the liturgies observed by imperial courts until the demise of imperial China would be difficult to reconcile with an alleged rupture between a purportedly agnostic Confucius and an unexpectedly pious Zhu Xi deeply engaged in cult sacrifices. Zhu Xi is sometimes portrayed as breaking with the Confucian tradition to confront the rival systems of and Daoism in order to find a place for ghosts and spirits in his

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philosophical system.90 I have endeavored to show that, to the contrary, he delved deeply into the rich liturgical practices, which he traced through the commentarial literature back to the canonical Master himself. This neither ignores nor diminishes Buddhism’s impact on China or its profound imprint on Confucian doctrine, ritual practice, or spiritual cultivation. It necessitates, rather, careful scrutiny of the voice of the canonical Confucius, the centuries of classical exegesis on statements attributed to him, and the liturgies of cult veneration of the gods and spirits of the imperial pantheon patronized by imperial courts at least as early as the Tang to the last emperors of the Qing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank participants at venues where I presented earlier drafts of this essay: the Mellon Seminar on Confucius (University of Wisconsin, 2007); the International Symposium on Sacrifice Between Life and Death (Katholische Akademie, Weingarten, 2008); and the Neo- Confucian Studies Seminar (Columbia, 2009).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnhart, Richard M. Li Kung-lin’s Classics of Filial Piety. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993. Bokenkamp, Stephen. Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China. Berkeley: California University Press, 2007. Bokenkamp, Stephen. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: California University Press, 1997. Brashier, K.E. “Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls.’” Early China 21 (1996): 125-158. Brooks, E. Bruce and A. Taeko Brooks. The Original Analects. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Chan, Wing-tsit. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正義. Compiled by Kong Yingda 孔穎達, et al. Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 ed. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Ebrey, Patricia. Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writing about Rites. Berkeley: California University Press, 1991. Feng Youlan 馮友蘭. Zhongguo zhexue shi 中國哲學史. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan 商務 印書館, 1934. Fung, Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952- 1953.

90 Kim, “Kuei-shen in Terms of Ch’i,” 160 and The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi, 100; Hoyt Tillman, “Zhu Xi’s Prayers to the Spirit of Confucius and Claim to the Transmission of the Way,” 491- 492.

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