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REMONSTRANCE IN HISTORIOGRAPHY Author(s): David Schaberg Source: Early China, Vol. 22 (1997), pp. 133-179 Published by: Society for the Study of Early China Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23354245 Accessed: 29-03-2017 08:21 UTC

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This content downloaded from 218.106.182.161 on Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:21:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms REMONSTRANCE IN EASTERN ZHOU HISTORIOGRAPHY*

David Schaberg

Despite the extraordinary care which went into their composition, the speeches of the Zuozhuan have generally attracted less schol arly attention and appreciation than the narrative passages which frame them. The terse, rugged language of Zuozhuan narration appealed to later stylists, particularly to those who entertained archaist sympathies. But the more expansive rhetoric of the longer speeches, a rhetoric which these speeches share to varying degrees with historiographical works like the Guoyu H g§ and the Zhanguoce PJ W., and with some of the Warring States philosophical writings, was not considered the work's distinctive strength.1 The Zuozhuan's immense importance as a source for the history of the may also discourage scrutiny of speech rhet oric and of the relation of speeches to surrounding narrative. Because it is the earliest work to provide historical details for all of the years included in the Chwiqiu scholars have long treated it as a largely accurate record of events during that period; accounts which differ from the Zuozhuan version—like some in the Guoyu, the Shiji jfeSB, and such collections as the Shuoyuan —are regularly compared with it

* This paper is a development of ideas first presented in my dissertation, "Foun dations of Chinese Historiography: Literary Representation in Zuozhuan and Guoyu" (Harvard University, 1996). I warmly thank Lothar von Falkenhausen, Donald Harper, and two anonymous reviewers for Early China for their very precise and helpful comments on the manuscript. 1. Zuozhuan references in this article are to Bojun |§{0|lEfo Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu rev. ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1990), in the form Zuozhuan, Xiang 14.3 (Yang, 1009), which indicates the third section of the Zuozhuan's entry for the four teenth year of Duke Xiang's ft i'; rule, the relevant passage appearing on p. 1009 of Yang's work. Guoyu references are numbered as in the Shanghai guji edition (Shang hai: Shanghai guji, 1978), which includes 's if:Hp commentary: Guoyu, 1.7 (550), is the seventh entry in the first juan & of the three juan devoted to Chu and the passage in question appears on p. 550 of that edition.

Early China 22, 1997

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and judged to be inaccurate. Certainly there is much about the work that argues for its accuracy: it is generally correct in matters that can be confirmed scientifically like eclipses and other astronomical events;2 it contains a profusion of detailed information that would have been diffi cult or impossible to transmit without the help of writing; and in a number of cases archaeology has succeeded in corroborating its reports about early Eastern Zhou objects, practices, and places. It is possible that the Zuozhuan's accounts of both events and speeches, while marred in places by later interpolations, were composed for the most part on the basis of records made and preserved throughout the Spring and Autumn period. The Chunqiu itself and the Zhushu jinian Y\ U Id /rf- show that scribes in more than one state kept accurate annalistic records of important events.3 As for speeches, the Liji ijijifB mentions two officials who were responsible for keeping records, the "scribe of the right" (youshi tl <£) recording words (jiyan |HU) and the "scribe of the left" (zuoshi fr^l) recording events (jishi IB (I); the Hanshu Mlt mentions the same institution, though it reverses the duties of the two scribes.4 No pre-Han text mentions the youshi, and we never catch the zuoshi in the act of taking notes, but it is not impossible that during the Spring and Autumn period scribes attended court occasions and more private gatherings, writing down speeches and comments as they were made. Bernhard Karlgren's analyses showed that the Zuozhuan, while closest to the Guoyu among all early works, preserves some unique lin guistic features which indicate a relatively early date of composition.5

2. For a demonstration that the Chunqiu and corresponding passages in the Zuozhuan contain accurate records of eclipses, see William Hung WrM, "Introduction," Combined Concordances to Ch'un-ch'iu, Kung-yang, Ku- and Tso-chuan, Harvard Yenching Index no. 11 (1937; reprint, Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966), vol. 1, i-v. 3. Edward Shaughnessy has advanced convincing arguments for the accuracy and authenticity of the received text of the Zhushu jinian. See his "On the Authenticity of the ," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46 (1986), 149-80. 4. See A Concordance to the Liji, ed. D.C. Lau and Fong Ching (: Commercial Press, 1992), "Yuzao" 3£iS, 80; and Hanshu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1970), 30.1715 ("Yiwenzhi" fS3t/i>). Youshi is not attested in either the Zuozhuan or the Guoyu. For references to zuoshi, see Zuozhuan, Xiang 14.3 (Yang, 1009), Zhao 12.11 (Yang, 1340), Ai 17.4 (Yang, 1709); Guoyu, Chu 1.7 (550). Other types of scribe include the Zhou neishi |?3 StJ, Guoyu, Zhou 1.12-14 (29-44); and the heroic taishi of H and ^ at Zuozhuan, Xuan 2.3 (Yang, 662) and Xiang 25.2 (Yang, 1099) respectively. 5. Bernhard Karlgren, "On the Authenticity and Nature of the Tso chuan," Geteborgs hogskolas drsskrift 32, no. 3 (1926), 3-65. William Boltz argues forcefully for derivation, at least of certain sections of the texts, from a shared third written source; see Boltz, "Notes on the Textual Relation between the Kuo yti and the Tso chuan," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53 (1990), 491-502. Comparison of the two texts

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Further, oracle bones, bronze inscriptions, and recently excavated examples of writings on bamboo slips and silk show that events and speeches (of several distinct types) were often recorded in some detail as early as the beginning of the .6 However, in an era when philologists have located the origins of the Homeric epics and of Biblical narratives in oral traditions, and theorists of diverse schools have emphasized the importance of literary elements such as narrative structuring in even the most self-consciously scientific historiography,7 it is important that we maintain some skepticism, if not about the narration of events, then about the notion that the Zuozhuan's speeches as we have them are word-for-word transcriptions of utter ances made during the Spring and Autumn period. The historiographers of the Zuozhuan, unlike Thucydides, never tell us that they have recon structed speeches to fit remembered circumstances (in fact they make no methodological remarks at all about their own work), but readers have long remarked that Zuozhuan speeches involving prediction always come true, and that they must therefore have been composed or revised in the light of later events.8 Further, the scribes depicted in the Zuozhuan and other early works write only brief Chunqiu-style notations of events;9

has suggested to me a fluid, not entirely literary transmission of the two proto-works in a single milieu before separate transcription and composition; see Schaberg, "Foun dations of Chinese Historiography," 262-77. 6. For a strong and erudite argument for early dating of the Zuozhuan speeches, see the work of Yuri Pines, including his article in this issue of Early China. 7. The works which introduced this view of historical writing are by now canonical. They include, among others: Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), especially "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact"; and Paul Ricoeur, Narrative and Time, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 8. See the comments of the OKIiirit editors in their entry on the Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi "Predictions of disaster and blessings re corded in the Zuozhuan are without exception fulfilled; likely they could not avoid post facto joining and matching" (Wang Yunwu 3E.SS, chief ed., Heyin siku quanshu zongmu tiyaoji siku weishou shumu jinhui shumu (r @ @ [Taipei: Shangwu, 1971], 516). See also the lively remarks of Qian Zhongshu fSfitir in Guanzhuibian (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979), 164-66. 9. See, for example, Zuozhuan, Xuan 2.3 (Yang, 662-63) and Xiang 25.2 (Yang, 1099). In the first passage, Dong Hu MM (praised as a "good scribe" by Kongzi JL~f) writes the core of one Chunqiu entry for that year, "Zhao Dun killed his ruler." In the second, unnamed scribes of Qi die in their insistence on recording another assassination, "Cui Zhu killed his ruler"; again the words become the core of the Chunqiu entry on the matter. Note too that mentions of historical writing as a commemoration of misdeeds imply no more than a simple, Chunqiu-style record

This content downloaded from 218.106.182.161 on Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:21:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 136 REMONSTRANCE IN EASTERN ZHOU HISTORIOGRAPHY on the rare occasions when they are shown transcribing speeches, the event is marked in such a way as to suggest that it was not a common practice.10 Kamata Tadashi, in the most comprehensive study to date of the sources of the Zuozhuan, puts the compilation of the work at the end of the fourth century b.c.., demonstrating that speakers in the make correct predictions about events occurring before then, but get later events wrong.11 Kamata's observation is certainly useful in isolating the era when the contents of the Zuozhuan became immune to revision and even inaccu rate predictions were preserved. But his focus on predictions has a more general significance for the understanding of speeches in the work. As readers of the Zuozhuan will recall, a large proportion of the utterances in the work, even those which are not predictions, share that hidden access to future events which makes predictions possible in narrative. Brief comments, questions, and the misguided remarks of men on the verge of moral failure may be excluded, but speakers who say more than a few sentences regularly betray a post facto knowledge of later plot developments. In scores of instances future catastrophe or success is predicted on the basis of an observed physiognomic feature or word or gesture; in episodes of remonstrance like the ones examined below, the advice is always relevant and correct in light of the coming, as-yet unknown events, and all rulers who fail to heed remonstrances suffer disaster as a result; even ordinary good counsel turns out on reflection to have been suspiciously prescient and pertinent. This unlikely fit of speeches and events might be explained in at least two ways. If speeches were being transcribed as they were delivered, then the Zuozhuan per haps results from a radical selection of the speeches which turned out to have been wisest. Alternatively, if scribes wrote down events but not speeches, as the Zuozhuan itself indicates, then the prescience of so many Zuozhuan speeches and the fact that the text shows signs of developing throughout the fourth century might result from an oral or semi-oral situation not unlike the one described by in the earliest account of the composition of the Zuozhuan: instructed his disciples with the help of a written version of the Chunqiu, but all of the ancillary explanatory material which would become the Zuozhuan was

of names and events (see, for example, Zuozhuan, Wen 15.2 [Yang, 609], and Cuoyu, 1.2 [153]). 10. See Guoyu, Lu 1.9 (170), and Lunyu !§!§ (Zhuzijicheng^^p^fS, ed.), 335 (Lunyu 15.6); in both cases, the decision to transcribe a speech is presented as extraordinary. 11. Kamata Tadashi If BH IE, Saden no seiritsu to sono tenkai iEfll © fc ® SI IS (Tokyo: Taishukan, 1963), 305-27.

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for a long time transmitted by word of mouth.12 There are letters and other documents in the Zuozhuan which could well have come down to the compilers in written form, and it is unlikely that the work ever existed solely in oral form as claimed by Sima Qian.13 Perhaps we should imag ine an incremental transcription, in many places and over many years, from oral traditions closely tied to the teaching of written annals like the Chunqiu; the numerous individuals involved in a transmission and transcription of this sort would be the "historiographers" referred to in the following pages. Such an incremental process would explain both the highly detailed content of Zuozhuan narrative and the prognostic character of its speeches. It may seem that our best and most detailed history of the Spring and Autumn period is thus compromised, its structure of more or less plausible reportage decorated with speeches which are often more strik ing for their epideictic dazzle than for their veracity. But oral or semi oral transmission has its own implications. If we set aside for a time the question of fact and focus instead on the characteristic rhetoric of the Zuozhuan speeches, on their relation with the material that surrounds them, and on the means by which represented events are endowed with significance, these speeches can tell us a great deal about the intel lectual milieu in which the Zuozhuan was composed. The composition of a historical text, like any literary endeavor, is an intellectual act which has its initial significance in a particular context. Social, historical, philo sophical, and even personal relations define this context, which leaves traces on the literary works that emerge from it; and though these works may also belong to enduring traditions of writing, the particular liter ary forms they exhibit tend to show variations on tradition which are themselves to be interpreted in the light of a historical context. Literary analysis can serve intellectual history by showing how formal features of texts relate to specific contexts. In what follows I investigate a special group of speeches in the Zuo zhuan and Guoyu, the remonstrances (jian W-, zhenjian or zhen J^), and relate their characteristics to the rhetorical features of other speeches in these works.14 In particular, I examine the rhetorical techniques by

12. Shiji jiiiEl (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 14.509-10. 13. For some examples of letters, see Zuozhuan, Wen 17.4 (Yang, 625-27), Cheng 7.5 (Yang, 834), Cheng 13.3 (Yang, 861-65), Xiang 24.2 (Yang, 1089-90), Zhao 6.3 (Yang, 1274-77), and Guoyu, Jin 7.3 (438); for a treaty, see Zuozhuan, Xiang 11.3 (Yang, 989 90); Zhao 26.9 (Yang, 1475-79) includes a proclamation sent to a number of rulers. 14. For the purposes of this investigation I group the two works together as ex amples of a single mode of historiography distinct in style and philosophical bent

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which a few distinct types of inherited language were applied to problems of policy in the context of these speeches. Though it is a commonplace in discussions of Chinese philosophy that Traditionalists15 and other thinkers of the regularly reasoned from ancient example, the problem bears a more detailed examination. Reasoning from the ancients is not a simple task of logic or rhetoric; nor must it be foregrounded in the words of a speech in order to be influential. Yet it can be shown to underlie much of the quoted speech (whether marked as remonstrance or not) and narration which make up the Zuozhuan and Guoyu. An interdependence of speech and narrative, rather than narrative alone, emerges as the most striking literary feature of these historio graphical texts. Remonstrances, like almost all of the longer formal speeches, are remembered for the sake of vindication: with rare excep tions, who speaks well is a good man, and the resources of narration will be exploited to show how his caution was warranted, his prediction accurate, or his complaint justified. Such consistency suggests a highly selective representation of the past, a narration in which unerring hind sight has found ways to demonstrate the virtue of men and women whose stated values are given implicit sanction by the historiographers. Moreover, beyond this general partiality for characters whose values we would describe as Traditionalist, remonstrances reveal a very specific conception of the ideal society, of the circulation of speech in such a society, and of the significance of literary activity in such a society. This conception, which sets the Zuozhuan and certain parts of the Guoyu apart from other Warring States writings, further defines for us the philosoph ical underpinnings of these works and the specific intellectual context in which historiography took shape.

The Circulation of Speech and Remonstrance Quoted speech in the Zuozhuan takes many forms. It can involve a single exchange of remarks, as when a short question sparks an epigram

from canonical collections (e.g. Shangshu fnfir), chronicles (Chunqiu and Zhnshu jinian), other bodies of anecdotes (e.g. Zhanguoce), and ordered philosophical treatises which include anecdotes (e.g. Liishi chunqiu S JS#W 15. 1 use "Traditionalist" instead of "Confucian" not because the latter would be anachronistic—indeed I take it for granted that this historiography came into being partly among thinkers who considered themselves followers of Kong Qiu fifr—but because I wish to emphasize exactly the continuity with the past that the Sage him self prized. "Traditionalist" is also a better rendering of Ru fH (see Zuozhuan, Ai 21.2 [Yang, 1718], where the term has a distinctly pejorative connotation).

This content downloaded from 218.106.182.161 on Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:21:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DAVID SCHABERG 139 ma tic answer16 or a long speech;17 two speakers can trade speeches,18 or a long speech can win only a brief response.19 It can involve an extended series of exchanges, as when one person, usually a feudal lord, questions another, usually a minister, at length about a particular subject.20 One person can utter several separate comments on a single ongoing perfor mance;21 several people can remark briefly on a single topic.22 In what should be considered a highly specialized form of diplomatic dialogue, ministers can sing to each other, with or without responses in the form of spoken comments.23 A group of speakers can trade long speeches in a debate or conference on a single topic.24 Finally, as most often happens, an anecdote may include a single speech, representing one observer's response to narrated events. Whether it is brisk conversation or formal address, direct discourse

16. For an example of the epigrammatic answer, see Zuozhuan, 23.6 (Yang, 405), where the Jin H prince Chonger H 5 (later says the follow ing to his Di %k. wife before leaving his Di exile for Qi ff: "Wait for me for twenty-five years. If I don't come back, then remarry." She replies: "I am twenty-five now; if after twenty-five more years I remarry, I'll be in my coffin. I'll wait for you." At Guoyu, Jin 4.23 (386), Duke Wen of Jin asks Guo "In the beginning I thought it was easy to rule the state. Now it's difficult." He replies: "Difficulty came because you thought it was easy. Now that you think it difficult, it will become easy." See also Guoyu, Jin 4.3 (344-45), 4.22 (386). 17. E.g. Zuozhuan, Zhao 1.12 (Yang, 1217-23), Zhao 7.7 (Yang, 1289-90); in both passages the great §|5 minister Zichan -f- cf; is consulted about an illness that the Jin duke is suffering from and gives long explanations. 18. E.g. Zuozhuan, Xiang 14.4 (Yang, 1013-14), where the Lu fj}- duke sends an envoy to express his sympathy with Wei Hj after the Wei ruler has been driven into exile; a Wei minister responds to the formal speech with an equally formal speech. 19. E.g. Zuozhuan, Yin 5.1 (Yang, 39), Zhuang 20.1 (Yang, 215-16), and Zhao 6.3 (where Zichan responds to a letter; Yang, 1274-77). 20. E.g. Zuozhuan, Min 1.5 (Yang, 257), Wen 1.7 (Yang, 514-15), Xiang 9.1 (Yang, 963-64), Zhao 3.3 (Yang, 1234-37), Zhao 20.6 (Yang, 1415-18), Zhao 20.8 (Yang, 1419 21), Zhao 26.11 (Yang, 1480-81; the last four all involve Yan U® and Duke Jing of Qi Zhao 12.11 (Yang, 1338-41). See also Guoyu, Zhou 1.12 (29-34), Jin 4.8 (352-55), Jin 8.17 (473-76), Chu 1.4 (534^1), Chu 2.6 (578-79), Chu 2.9 (583-90). Addi tional examples may be found in the Qi and Zheng sections as well as the second section of the Guoyu. 21. E.g. Zuozhuan, Xiang 29.13 (Yang, 1161-67), where Gongzi Zha :&-ptL of comments on a performance of traditional dance and music, including what may have been the entire Shijing |#H corpus. 22. E.g. Zuozhuan, Wen 13.2 (Yang, 594-95), Xiang 27.4 (Yang, 1131-32), Zhao 1.1 (Yang, 1202-4); Guoyu, Jin 3.8 (333-35), Jin 5.4 (397-99), Jin 6.1 (409-13), Jin 8.5 (455-58). 23. E.g. Zuozhuan, Xi 23.6 (Yang, 410), Xiang 4.3 (Yang, 932), Xiang 8.8 (Yang, 959 60), Xiang 27.5 (Yang, 1134-35), Zhao 16.3 (Yang, 1380-81); Guoyu, Jin 4.10 (360-61). 24. The most impressive example is Zuozhuan, Xuan 12.2 (Yang, 721-28), where Jin ministers confer in a series of long speeches before the battle of Bi Jjf).

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in the Zuozhuan tends to take place in one characteristic sort of situation and to employ a rhetoric appropriate to that situation. The established habits of narration seem to have ensured that this one type of occasionality would underlie the many different forms of direct dis course. The setting is a royal or ducal court or a court-like space (which may be on the battlefield, in the home of a minister, or beside a road). There, superior and inferior confront each other and exchange words. As in the scenes of investiture which are the usual subject of longer Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, court is where authoritative injunc tions are articulated, transmitted, and dedicated to memory. But in the typical occasion of the Zuozhuan, the long-standing political and ritual hierarchy is juxtaposed with another hierarchy, that of knowledge and traditionalism. Instead of a king who urges his vassal to maintain the obedient ways of his ancestors, we most often find the political supe rior—usually the ruler of a single feudal state—in the position of auditor; it is his inferior, a minister, who speaks at length and who argues the case for obedience to past examples. To be sure, there are examples both of eloquent rulers and of deceitful speeches, in which an inferior makes a good argument for a bad policy,25 but these are rare exceptions; long and short speeches in the Zuozhuan mostly show how the men who surround political leaders (and sometimes the women who surround these men) attempt to convince their superiors not to stray from the ritually proper ways of their forefathers. The characteristic rhetoric of Zuozhuan speeches is appropriate to the occasionality I have described. In almost every anecdote, a speaker must demonstrate that a particular policy decision is best made in the light of inherited wisdom. A speech thus typically includes four types of material:26

25. At the end of Zuozhuan, Xuan 12.2 (Yang, 744-47), just after his victory over Jin at Bi, King Zhuang of Chu Je ft IE delivers the most eloquent and canonically in formed speech attributed to any state ruler in the Zuozhuan or Guoyu. In an example of specious speech, II46, the treacherous wife of Duke of Jin U&R2J-, has her henchmen convince the duke to lodge his elder sons in border cities (Zuozhuan, Zhuang 28.2 [Yang, 239-41], Guoyu, Jin 1.6 [270-71]). 26. Relatively little work has been published on literary aspects of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, and almost nothing on the rhetoric of speeches. See, however, Liu Zhiji's ff'J&IISI Shitong especially his remarks on speeches in the essay "Yanyu" 15 §§ (Shitong tongshi Sfejlalf?, ed. Pu Qilong [Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1988], 2.1-4); Ursula Heidbuchel, "Rhetorik im Antiken China: Eine Untersuchung der Ausdrucksformen Hofischer Rede im Zuo zhuan, Herzog Zhao" (Ph.D. diss., Wilhems Universitat Westfalia, 1993; I thank Christoph Harbsmeier for this reference); Ronald C. Egan, "Narratives in Tso chuan," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37 (1977), 323-52; Ronald C. Egan, "Selections from Tso-chuan: Translation and Analysis" (Ph.D. diss.,

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1. A judgment, often tersely stated (e.g. bu nj, "[the policy pro posed] is not practicable"), which the rest of the speech will justify. 2. Some mention of the details of the matter under deliberation, which in most cases has been explained in the narrative preced ing the speech. 3. One or more general principles or maxims, which can derive from a wide variety of sources and which I will class together as "inher ited words." I identify four types of inherited words: (a) very often they are direct quotes from named collections of texts which were acquiring canonical status during the Warring States period and before, especially the Shi and the U (speakers also cite from a wide variety of more obscure works); (b) aphorisms of named and anonymous former worthies also appear in speeches as unimpeachable statements of general truth, as do some sayings of less exalted and even popular provenance; (c) brief or lengthy descriptions of past events, whether recent or ancient, can pro vide speakers with precedents that imply principles of conduct; (d) finally, general references to such systems as ritual propriety (li fpg) and the administration of former kings (xianwang zhi zhi Hi^fj?!]) yield similar principles. 4. The texture of the speech. Since inherited words can rarely be applied directly to historical particulars, large portions of speeches are devoted to the verbal manipulations by which the relevance of principles is demonstrated. Certain characteristic figures of Zuozhuan rhetoric would appear to originate in this process of adaptation. A speaker shows that lines from one or more poems, cannily interpreted, perfectly explain the incident he has observed and prefigure its outcome; or he may start with a general state ment, elaborating it with a subtle tendentiousness until it is seen to account tidily for the details under consideration. Such tech niques, examples of which are to be found below, encourage an orderly, even symmetrical rhetoric. In the grandest examples, chains of inference and whole webs of carefully developed equiva lences bind inherited truths and contemporary incident together in intricate structures which are both intellectually compelling and

Harvard University, 1976); John C.Y. Wang, "Early Chinese Narrative: The Tso-chuan as Example," in Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. Andrew Plaks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 3-20; Zhang Gaoping SSHEfF, Zuozhuan zhi wenxuejiazhi (Taibei: Wenshizhe, 1982); Zhang Gaoping, Zuozhuan wenzhangyifa tanwei 3CM8 (Taibei: Wenshizhe, 1982). For rhetoric in the Zhanguoce, see J.I. Crump, Jr., Intrigues: Studies of the Chan-kuo Ts'e (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1964), 47-75.

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beautiful.27 By a process of literary weaving,28 speeches establish that canonical citations and other statements of principle, used properly, can reveal the logic of observed events.

Remonstrances29 resemble most of the other speeches in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu in that they are deliberative; people speak not for the sake of verbal brilliance, but in order to influence policy decisions.30 But remonstrances are set apart from other speeches first by having a generic name of their own and second by being delivered under special circum stances of crisis. Speeches carry out the Traditionalist project of bringing the present in line with the past, but remonstrances assert inherited truths when they are most endangered, as when a ruler indulges destruc tive passions or takes foolish military risks. Like other speeches, remon strances can use the verbal and literary techniques noted above, finding prescriptions for present behavior in inherited standards. But a few remonstrances go beyond verbal means of expression; critique is con veyed indirectly in dramas which depend upon the assumption that performers and audience share those inherited standards. These two types of remonstrance, the direct and the indirect, show how the voice of tradition speaks the truth when tradition is in peril; more generally, they indicate the set of assumptions which guided the historiographers of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu in their presentation of quoted speech. The Zuozhuan and Guoyu present their own vision of the origin and meaning of remonstrances and similar speech practices. Four passages

27. A.C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1989), 24, acknowledges the importance of these chains of inference or "sorites" in the rhetoric and reasoning of pre- philosophers. 28. For one extraordinary example of the rhetoric of weaving, see Guoyu, Zhou 3.2 (94-101), analyzed at length in Schaberg, "Foundations of Chinese Historiography," 284-311; there is a clear connection there between the patterns of rhetorical structure and the connotations of wen SC, "cultured patterning" and "literary activity." 29. This rendering of jian U, used by both Legge and Couvreur (remontrance) in their translations of the Zuozhuan, has been standard at least since the Reverend Morrison compiled A Dictionary of the (1815; reprint, Shanghai: London Mission Press, 1865). 30. Applied to early Chinese texts, the traditional tripartite division of Greco-Roman oratory collapses, largely because occasions of speech in the Chinese works are almost exclusively deliberative. The forensic, to the extent that it exists, takes place in the same institutional setting as the deliberative, while those who deliver the display pieces of epideictic oratory almost always do so on the pretext of some deliberative occasion. One brilliant exception is Mo's HSJ discourse on dragons at Zuozhuan, Zhao 29.4 (Yang, 1500-1504), where the only occasion for the speech is the appear ance of a dragon; compare Guoyu, Lu 1.9 (165-71), where the appearance of a strange seabird brings a policy decision which prompts the learned and critical speech.

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(all of them speeches, as one would expect) recount ancient and highly schematized official arrangements by which excellent verbal construc tions (speeches, songs, etc.) were circulated upward and toward the center, where one man, the ruler of the world or of a particular state, would be the ultimate audience.31 The exact terms of these systems are less important than the general depiction of communication. Histori ography does seem to include instances of some of the named practices other than remonstrance; recitation (whether called f|j, fu or wei shi ^f#) certainly survives in the Zuozhuaris depiction of Spring and Autumn period diplomatic ceremony. But the elaboration of terms, which varies slightly in the several versions, is very possibly a result of rhetorical schematism rather than a reflection of actual early bureau cratic procedure. From these schemata we reconstruct a contemporary understanding of what communication (and, a fortiori, remonstrating) could be in a correctly ordered society: a verbal or non-verbal perfor mance designed to remind the ruler of inherited standards and alert him to any discrepancies, however slight, between those standards and his day-to-day behavior. The four schemata set out the ideals which lie behind individual instances of remonstrance. Let me now translate and discuss the four relevant passages.

1. Zuozhuan, Xiang 14.6 (Vang, 1016—18)32 Shi Kuang the renowned music master of Jin, is asked by his lord, Duke (r. 573-558 b.c.e.), about the recent expulsion of the ruler of Wei from his own state. The music master responds with an account of the architecture of communication that links the model ruler with members of his state and court:

o tsisim > mm &Z.' tommm ° > mmmrn»mmmm > ' ISA - x - m -m. ^» ° #U*2l' £ ° g

31. It should be noted here that the legacy of these idealized visions also survives outside of historiography, and in some way reflects Warring States practices. The Mozi 11-p, for instance, refers to the activities of the travelling philosopher/persuader as "reciting the way of the former kings" IS7fc3Ej2.il (Mozi xiangu 3 -p Oil [Zhuzi jicheng ed.], 13.287). The word song Jjl "recite" will be prominent in all four of the passages translated below. See below for Han echoes of the language circulation schemes. 32. Yu Jiaxi ifeMWh, "Xiaoshuojia chuyu baiguan shuo" in Yu Jiaxi lunxue zazhu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963), 265-79, discusses this passage and several related texts as evidence for the origins of fiction in China.

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s&T&wxft? ° £i§» » mnm »us® m ' ' ±f*H ' fttAW ' SlfffJ' HIM 0 WCW. *E3 : r®A&*gff0j£l& ' WffiM » I$A®*^§fi ° j IE I! :£# ' ° Heaven brought forth the people and set up lords over them to serve as their supervisors and pastors and to keep them from losing their essential character. Once there was a lord, [Heaven] made helpers for him to serve as his teachers and protectors and to keep him from exceeding proper measures. Thus the Son of Heaven has his dukes, the feudal lords have their higher ministers, higher min isters have their clan members, lower ministers have their family members,33 retainers have their friends, and commoners, artisans, merchants, laborers, slaves, herders, and ostlers all have relatives and intimates to help them. When they are good they reward them; when they err they correct them; when they are in trouble they rescue them; and when they fail they help them reform. From the king down, everyone has fathers, brothers, and sons to redeem errors and attend to details in his administrative acts. The scribes use their writings, the blind musicians use their poems, the artisans34 recite their remonstrances, the lower ministers correct and instruct, the retainers pass on words, the commoners criticize, the merchant travellers [speak] in the marketplace,35 and the many artisans present the products of their skills. Thus the Writings of Xia say, "So people would take a wooden clapper and go openly along the roads.36 Officials and masters

33. The distinctions among helpers here are somewhat unclear; see Yang Bojun's note on Zuozhuan, Huan 2.8 (Yang, 94), a passage comparable to this one. As for the difference between higher ministers' and lower ministers' helpers, schematization sometimes necessitates divisions which do not necessarily correspond to actual dis tinctions; we will see other cases below. 34. Lothar von Falkenhausen, noting the reappearance of gong X later in the pas sage, has suggested that the text here might be emended to gong i;- being the higher ministers in the royal court (personal communication, September 23,1996). Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1972), 1172a, 1173a, gives identical archaic reconstructions (*kung) for the two characters. Both readings are supported by later text parallels: Da Dai liji, I MM 1$ (A Concordance to the Dadai liji, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992], 20; , ' ["OS) i^PiPIEIS (A Con cordance to the Huainanzi, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commer cial Press, 1992], 80); and Liishi chunqiu, (A Concordance to the Liishi chunqiu, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1994], 133). 35. Yang, 1017, argues that the verb for the clause should be supplied from the preceding text.

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would correct one another, and the artisans would take up their crafts as a means of remonstrance." In the first month, the first month of spring, this would take place; it was a way of remon strating about the loss of norms.37

Remonstrance (called zhenjian MM) here has an intermediate position in the schema. First in the official order come the scribes and blind musicians, who by "composing" writings and poems (weishu flfj, weishi for the sake of correction play the critical role envisioned for them by later interpreters.38 The originality of their compositions is circum scribed. Inasmuch as they belong to institutionalized genres, the works have a necessary connection to past verbal productions. Given the reg ular use of the Documents (shu ||) and Odes (shi f?f) in speeches and philosophical writings, it is even possible that the terms weishu and weishi include not only the composition of original writings and poems but also the citation of existing works from such sources.39 After the remonstrators come the lower ranks with their bits of lan guage, gossip, and criticism, which in keeping with their social origins are almost entirely topical and apparently lack connections with the elite legacies of literary composition. Like these speakers, the remon strators must offer corrections of the ruler's activities and must find a

36. The quoted material is now found in the "Yinzheng" ML IE section of the Shangshu (Gu Jiegang ig aSBIJ, Shangshu tongjiati fnJUjiiM [Beijing: Shumu wenxian, 1982], 5); but it would appear that the late forger's source for these lines was this Zuozhuan passage. relates duo ff "bell" or "clapper" to the word yi jp "transmit" and adduces other clues about the supposed early practice of language-collection. See Zhang Binglin, Zhang Taiyan quanji ed. Wang Youwei M (Shang hai: Shanghai renmin, 1986), 497-98. 37. Shi Kuang concludes by remarking that Heaven cherishes the people too much to protect the disgraced ruler of Wei. This passage is clearly related to, if not the source of, the later legends concerning poetry-collecting. See Liji, "Wangzhi" HIS1! (A Con cordance to the Liji, 32); Hanshu, 24.1123 ("Shihuozhi" 30.1708 ("Yiwenzhi"). See also Guoyu, Jin 6.1, discussed below. The first of the two Hanshu passages is the earliest explicit mention of caishi in received texts; the author paraphrases a part of Shi Kuang's Xiashu citation and adds the words yi caishi "in order to collect poems." The passage from the "Yiwenzhi," though based on echoes of the Liji, "Wang zhi," adds a claim that the ancient government included an officer in charge of poetry collection (caishi zhi guan 351^,2. W) 38. See Zuozhuan, Xuan 2.3 (Yang, 662-63) and Xiang 25.2 (Yang, 1099), cited in n. 9 above. Later commonplaces about the critical function of literary composition occur in Mengzi (Zhuzi jicheng ed.), 6.271 (Mengzi 3B.9; Confucius's work on the Chun qiu), in all three commentaries on the Chunqiu, and in the Mao tradition of Shijing interpretation, with its emphasis on historically situated occasions of ci $IJ "criticism." 39. The normal term for the new composition of a text (such as a poem) is zuo fH rather than wei.

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topical justification for speaking. But as the last use of the word jian in the passage indicates ("it was a way of remonstrating about the loss of norms" W.til), remonstrance is a matter of pointing out divergences from the norm. And since the preeminent embodiment of norms in early China was inherited words, the remonstrators' recitations might be ex pected to include reference to wise words of the past.40 A part of this vision of constant new production of critical language is the sense that criticism involves a reproduction of old language, which becomes the basis of criticism under new and changed circumstances.

2. Guoyu, Zhou 1.3 (9-10)

Remonstrating with King Li of Zhou )Sl JH EE (r. 857/53-842/28 b.c.e.41), the Duke of Shao SPfi- is made to present a vision of the good king's solicitation of speech from his inferiors; having compared popular criti cism to rivers, which cannot be obstructed without risk of disastrous flooding, he outlines the correct system of hydraulics:42 mM ' ' Mtffi ' £«R* ' Mm, ' mm' mm»> seta > su$ts£ » * - ' m ^ »itissm° Thus when the Son of Heaven attends to policy matters, he has everyone from the highest ministers down to the many retainers present poems; the blind musicians present tunes and the scribes present writings; the masters admonish, the blind expound, the sightless recite,43 and the hundred officials remonstrate; commoners

40. Song H is the recitation either of known poems (Zuozhuan, Xiang 14.4 [Yang, 1011], Xiang 28.9 [Yang, 1149]) or of new compositions (Zuozhuan, Xi 28.3 [Yang, 458], Xiang 30.13 [Yang, 1182]) with the intention of praising or blaming the listener. 41. See Edward Shaughnessy, Sources of Western Zhou History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 272-86, for the issues surrounding the dating of King Li's reign. 42. Many speeches and narratives demonstrate the danger of suppressing words. See, for example, Guoyu, Jin 1.5 (266-67), where a ruler who lacks remonstrating min isters is marked for ruin, and Chu 2.6 (578-79), where it is said that the doomed King Fuchai of Wu zE H "gives free rein to transgressions and suppresses remon strances" ISiilffffHlS- Since the free flow of critical words to and from the center is often related to the economic arrangements by which property circulates and tribute reaches the court, one might consider Yu's ,®j sagely efforts at flood control a manage ment both of watercourses and of other means of communication. 43. In these idealized passages there are several distinct types of vision impairment among the sage's officials. The blind musicians above (gu ff) are characterized by their activity. The "blind" (sou ill) and the "sightless" (meng SI) are distinguished, according to Wei Zhao, by the cause of their impairment: the former lack pupils entirely, while the latter have eyes but cannot see.

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pass along remarks, personal servants present all sorts of corrections, and relations redeem errors and attend to details; the blind musi cians and the scribes present teachings; the tutors and instructors refine [these teachings]; and then the king makes his considerations [on the basis of these teachings].

The duke goes on to complete the analogy between the words of the people and water, arguing that the people's speech, like the rivers and mountains of the realm, is a resource; it should not be repressed, but must be called forth to yield all its riches. The king ignores the advice; after three years of enforced popular silence, the release of accumu lated pressure washes him into exile.44 Once again the remonstrators occupy an intermediate position in a hierarchy which starts from practitioners of recognized literary genres and extends downward to the occasional remarks of the lowest ranks. As in the first passage, the words for literary performance (xian fu K, song fi) could include reproduction of old texts along with the com position of new ones.

3. Guoyu, Jin 6.1 (410)

When the Jin nobleman MS comes of age, he calls on vari ous Jin statesmen, who offer words of praise and advice. One, Fan Xie lES?, speaks of the dangers of arrogance: ° ami* ° ' im§Mf% ' ' BM »®nat«m • nm' °

Now you may start to use caution. The wise are all the more cautious when favor has come to them; the incapable grow arro gant on account of favor. Thus kings who are on the rise reward their remonstrating ministers, while errant kings punish them. I have heard that when the kings of old had perfected their virtue in administrative matters, they listened to the people: they had the performers recite remonstrances in court, had the officials present poems so that they would not remain hidden,45 listened to

44. My figure of speech is supported by the idiom which the Guoyu here puts to clever use: "After three years, they expelled the king to Zhi." 45. The word dou 95 does not yield sense here. Wang Yinzhi 3E? I2l understood it as a mistake for gu (JfJ "to hide, to cover over"; Zhang Yiren supports this view (Guoyu jiaozheng Hfg#4 H [Taibei: Taiwan Shangwu, 1969], 254-55). Chen Zhuan

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the words of travelers in the wind of the marketplace,46 discerned the baleful from the auspicious in ditties, investigated the hundred affairs in court, and asked about criticism and praise along the roads. They corrected whatever was out of line. That was the tech nique of complete caution. The former kings worried about this arrogance.

4. Guoyu, Chu 1.7 (550-51) While reminding his aging colleague Ziwei, Lord of ^ E, of the proper uses of old age, the Chu minister Yixiang fuftS47 describes the final years of Duke Wu of Wei (r. 812-758 b.c.e.): bp' it/II 111 ' 0 :

; H--21W ' ' mfiwa ° J MM t^a' M ' o ' M¥$: IS ' m\W2.' B&WMMSM ° RMI' !S£#S 3S^° Formerly, when Duke Wu of Wei was ninety-five years old, he still sought criticism and warnings from the state. He said, "From the highest ministers down to the lower ministers and retainers, no one who is in court must think me aged and therefore give up on me. Everyone must show the utmost reverence in court and correct me with warnings day and night. Anyone who has heard even one or two sayings must recite their normative content and present them so as to edify and guide me."48

WJ%-, writingin the first half of the nineteenth century, suggested that dou is a loan for dou n§, defined in Shuowen jiezi |as "speaking many words" (duoyan #H"); see Guoyu yijie |H!§1IS¥ in Guangya congshu If JtiS(r (ed. Shaoqi [Guang zhou: Guangya, 1920], vol. 406,5.3b-4a. Dou 5H does not appear in Axel Schuessler's A Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), and though it is listed among the characters of Crammata Serica Recensa (117a), Karlgren unaccountably gives no gloss for it. 46. Another peculiar phrase. The word feng J®, resonates with the whole legend of poetry-gathering, which is without question related to the issue we are discussing here; but in glossing the word as cai 5)5 "to gather," Wei Zhao stretches the possibilities of grammar and usage. Chen Zhuan, Guoyu yijie, 5.4a, argues that lu/*lio it is a loan for lii/*glio M, meaning shanglii MM "travelling merchants" (see Karglren, Grammata Serica Recensa, 69r, 77a). 47. Yixiang is a zuoshi Tr'Sfc "scribe of the left" (see n. 4 above), and thus is perhaps uniquely qualified to represent both the past and the practices of representing the past. 48. For the translation of the term zhi ^ as "normative content" rather than the

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When he was in his palanquin he had the admonitions of his guards; in his official place at court he had the canons of the head officials; while reclining he had the remonstrances of the reciters of teachings; when in bed he had the expostulations of his per sonal servants; when attending to affairs he had the guidance of the blind musicians and scribes; and while banqueting he had the recitations of the masters and artisans. The scribes did not fail to write, the blind singers did not fail to recite, and they served him with lessons. Thus he made the "Yi" admonition to caution himself.49 When he died, he was named "The wise and sage Duke Wu."

Here there is little question of topical criticism; the duke, himself beyond reproach, institutionalizes the continuous performance of corrective texts. Through the choice of the word xun §l|, strongly associated with inherited teachings,50 as well as of such words as dian iffj- and shu d, both of which refer to writings (here being used orally through reading aloud), this speech classes remonstrance securely with practices involv ing the repetition of the words of old. The word song fit, which denotes either singing or a non-melodic chanting, can hardly designate the mere reporting of commoners' criticisms or the formal presentation of officials' critiques; speech that can be recited or sung is special speech, and while customary "ambition" or "intent," see Schaberg, "Foundations of Chinese Histori ography," 184-87. It is important to recall that zhi, in addition to denoting the central message or lesson of a text, is a name for certain kinds of historical texts, which seem (on the basis of passages cited from them) to have been written or unwritten collec tions of aphorisms well adapted for citation. See the following passages for citations: J&., Zuozhuan, Xiang 4.4 (Yang, 935), 25.10 (Yang, 1106), Zhao 1.12 (Yang, 1220), Zhao 3.8 (Yang, 1242), Ai 18.2 (Yang, 1713); j|Lt>, Zuozhuan, Xi 28.3 (Yang, 456), Xuan 12.2 (Yang, 739); MS?/ Zuozhuan, Wen 6.8 (Yang, 552-53), Cheng 15.1 (Yang, 873); Zuozhuan, Wen 2.1 (Yang, 520); Zuozhuan, Xiang 30.10 (Yang, 1175; Zhong Hui ftp]® was a minister to Cheng Tang JjSciSr, founder of the Shang—his words [i/an fj] are cited at Zuozhuan, Xuan 12.2 [Yang, 725] and Xiang 14.9 [Yang, 1019]); Guoyu, Jin 4.9 (358). For the illuminating use of zhi at Guoyu, Wu 1.3, see the discus sion below. 49. Wei Zhao identifies this "Yi" admonition with Shijing, Mao 256 ("Yi" ftfl), which the Mao preface attributes to Duke Wu of Wei. Reconstructions of Archaic Chinese offer Wei Zhao some support; ftp is * pk, while 1$ is *jed (Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa, 915a, 395d). 50. The origins of xun and the mimetic associations of these teachings are exempli fied in the "Gu ming" ||np chapter of the Shangshu: "We succeeded to and preserve the great teachings of Kings Wen and Wu" SnlxFJtS^ill and "Extol in response the luminous teachings of Kings Wen and Wu" (Gu Jiegang, Shangshu tongjian, 21-22). The latter phrase of course recalls the mimetic formulas of the bronze inscriptions.

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there are tales of popular songs which gave voice to the discontent of the masses,51 it is more likely that the text at hand has in mind the repre sentation of old speech. The considerations of the moment may make their appearance in the "one or two sayings" which the duke wishes to have passed on to him, but even they are caught up in ambiguities which point to the past. On the model of gossip and popular complaint, which is mentioned in the other passages I have translated, these "sayings" might be taken as "remarks" or "rumors." But speech-makers throughout the historio graphic tradition adduce "sayings" (yan 3) as sources of authority, assigning them the same weight and rhetorical function as is normally granted to citations from the Shijing and Shangshu. Instead of a salutary openness to contemporary popular dissatisfaction, the text may be envis ioning a constant recirculation of old words of guidance which will keep the duke from arousing any complaints at all among the classes he rules. According to a very old conception of the best governments' methods for discovering the sentiments of their subjects, officials go out into the land and solicit criticisms, which come in the form of literary texts like those found in the "Guofeng" H M section of the Shijing. The earliest justification for this legend of poetry collection (caishi 7RI#) would appear to be Shi Kuang's citation from the Writings of Xia in the first passage translated above. But this reading of Shi Kuang's system re quires a distortion. Though all four of the translated passages allow for the use of inherited language in criticism, and though such language regularly turns up in actual examples of remonstrance, the legend of poetry-collection sets aside this connection to the past; criticisms now seem to be gathered fresh from the mouths of the people, who respond directly and naively to the errors of their rulers. The presumption of originality, which was in place by the Han,52 makes it difficult to see that a different model of literary activity operates in the Zuozhuan's and Guoyu's depictions of court communication. Critical speech in early China derives its power not from the social identity of the speaker but from the demonstration that observed behavior is interpretable in light of received models. These models are introduced into speeches by way of citations of inherited language, to which we now turn.

51. For examples of songs as expressions of popular sentiment, see Zuozhuan, Xi 5.8 (Yang, 310), Xi 28.3 (Yang, 458), Xuan 2.1 (Yang, 654), Xiang 4.8 (Yang, 940), Xiang 17.6 (Yang, 1032), Xiang 30.13 (Yang, 1182), Zhao 25.4 (Yang, 1460), Ding 14.8 (Yang, 1597), Ai 5.3 (Yang, 1631). 52. See the Liji and Hanshu passages cited above, n. 37.

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Remonstrance as Inherited Speech As we saw above, remonstrance in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu is sometimes called zhenjian /HIS,53 or simply zhen fM-54 The latter term can designate the instruction a filial son correctly gives his father in accordance with ritual propriety,55 or the lessons a good king teaches his people.56 The Chu government also includes a zhenyin or "remonstrator."57 While these examples attest to the prominence of re monstrance, they tell us nothing about the content of a zhen or about the general importance of inherited speech therein. For that we should proceed from the schematic visions of speech circulation discussed above to the examination of deliberative speeches, and remonstrances in particular, in order to identify examples of the application of inher ited speech to contemporary crises. The use of citations within remon strance will show exactly how rhetoric handled the problem of traditional knowledge. Further, if Shi Kuang and the other speakers quoted above were referring to the recitation of existing texts, then we should expect to find remonstrances themselves remembered and used in the context of other speeches. In fact there is one extraordinary speech in the Zuozhuan in which remonstrance itself is the object of commem oration and citation. The speaker is Wei Jiang |f £$, whose own remon strance centers on his citation of the "Game Warden's Remonstrance." The episode involving Wei Jiang both raises the question of remonstrance's power and demonstrates the close association between criticism in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu and the authority of remem bered language. When a chief of one of the Shan Rong [_L| tribes sends an envoy with tiger and leopard pelts to seek a treaty of peace between Jin and all the

53. See Zuozhuan, Xiang 14.6 (Yang, 1017). 54. See Guoyu, Zhou 1.3 (10), Chu 1.7 (551). The latter passage also contains the compound MM "remonstrate and admonish." 55. Zuozhuan, Zhao 26.11 (Vang, 1480). Yanzi S^p, speaking here of the relation between and criticism, foreshadows the Han interest in remonstrance within the family (see discussion below). 56. Zuozhuan, Xuan 12.2 (Yang, 731), where Luan Shu HU of Jin describes how King Zhuang of Chu ® has instructed his people in the lessons of their humble past and enjoined them saying that the people's livelihood depends on their willingness to work hard. 57. See Zuozhuan, Xuan 4.3 (Yang, 683), Ding 4.3 (Yang, 1545), Ai 16.5 (Yang, 1704). In Zuozhuan, Ding 4.3 (Yang, 1545), the character is M rather than M, but the named individual is the same as in Ai 16.5, and there is no doubt that the same office is intended. See also Zuozhuan, Zhao 4.7 (Yang, 1255), where different editions have iJjj ^ or for

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Rong tribes, Duke Dao is inclined instead to mount an attack. His minister Wei Jiang warns him against the move:58 mmB: rmimm » mmmn»mmtm ° mm » mm ° s» Mijisic ° mmtm > > &&&&&>jtmg&fe«mm>& ffi ° 5% > o ' &7ir*nr¥? HillH"£0 : rWi! faWj J &B : ^fswmu?j Wei Jiang said, "The allies have only recently submitted, and Chen has newly come seeking peace; they will be observing us. If we have virtue,59 then they will stick with us; if not, then they will become alienated. If we exert our army among the Rong, and Chu should then attack Chen, we will not be able to mount a rescue; this would amount to abandoning Chen. The states would no doubt turn from us. The Rong are beasts. If we capture beasts while losing the Hua, is that not unacceptable? "In the Lessons of Xia it says, 'Youqiong Hou Yi—"'60 The duke said, "What about Hou Yi?"

Wei Jiang then recounts the history of decline in the early Xia and the usurpation of Hou Yi. Hou Yi loves nothing more than hunting, and is negligent of the business of government. His minister Hanzhuo murders him as he returns from the hunting grounds one day; Hou Yi's sons die rather than eat their father's flesh. The Xia line is restored when Shaokang {pff. and his forces defeat Hanzhuo's sons. The usurper Youqiong Hou Yi and his usurping successors fail because they have "lost the people" (shiren 5^ A); that is, they have ceased to devote proper attention to the court and commons. Wei Jiang recalls also that the example of Hou Yi has been used before for admonitory purposes:

o : r2r£:®i$'>' liii'J'H ' ° Sfl ~ ; mm ' °> ithc® > ' mjs m»j mm ' ? j »tkmmRZ ° "Formerly, when Xin Jia of Zhou was grand scribe,61 he commanded

58. Zuozhuan, Xiang 4.7 (Yang, 936-39). 59. See discussion of de below. 60. A rare instance in Chinese of interrupted speech, and apparently not the result of textual mutilation. See Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhuibian, 211-13. Here one function of the interruption is to change Wei Jiang's intended citation into a paraphrase; from the Lessons ofXia we get no more than those four characters. 61. Vang, 938, cites the Shiji ji jie HIS? commentary on the "Zhou benji" where Pei Yin USS quotes a passage from 's §fij [n] Bielu JjiJif: identifying Xin

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the hundred officials that they, as officials, should remonstrate with the king over his shortcomings. In the 'Game Warden's Remon strance' it says, 'Far stretched the tracks of Yu, as he marked off the Nine Regions, ordering and opening the Nine Ways. The people had their dwelling chambers and their temples, the beasts had their brush and grass; all had their place to stay, so that their attainments did not come into conflict. When it was the time of Yi Yi [Hou Yi], he gave himself over to the plain and its beasts, forgetting concern for his state and thinking instead of the does and stags. Let your armed hunting expeditions not become onerous, as that was why he could not become great in the house of Xia.62 As a minister of the beasts, supervisor of the hunt, I presume to proclaim this to the servants [of the king].' If the 'Warden's Remonstrance' says this, must we not take heed?" At this time the Lord of Jin loved the hunt; that is why Wei Jiang touched on it.

This example of the zhen is fascinating for its literary form, for its lan guage, and for the glimpse it gives us of the Zuozhuan historiographers' historical imagination. One must note first that this somewhat unruly anecdote should be understood as a remonstrance, though unmarked, against excessive or ritually improper hunting, whether the prey be four footed or "human" beasts.63 During the long central account of Xia tur moil the speech seems to leave its deliberative occasion behind; but the narrators assure us in the final line that Wei Jiang had intentionally tailored his speech to the duke's recent pleasures or failings. Duke Dao is a good ruler, and he finally follows Wei Jiang's advice both by accepting the Rong envoy's plea for peace and by restricting his own hunting to the proper season.64 Like most remonstrances, Wei Jiang's speech includes sentences of inherited language which embody principles relevant to the case at hand: the account of Xia history (initiated as a citation, continued as plain narra tion) constitutes one type of inherited language, and the "Remonstrance"

Jia as a minister of the last Yin king Zhou . He remonstrated seventy-five times with his ruler before switching his loyalties to King Wen of Zhou IS^TT. 62. Here I follow the interpretation of Takezoe Shin'ichiro ttMsifl—SIS, Saden kaisen iifif llril (1911; reprint, Taibei: Mingda, 1986), 1010. 63. Note that in the game warden's text, wu jeSJ must refer to the hunting expedi tions which were conducted with the instruments of, and as exercises for, war. 64. The significance attributed by the Zuozhuan authors to this speech and the re sulting policy is apparent from Zuozhuan, Xiang 11.5 (Yang, 993), where Duke Dao credits Jin's lasting international success to the Rong treaty here advocated by Wei Jiang.

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constitutes a second type. The literary form of the latter may explain why it is one of the very few examples of remonstrances quoted verba tim within speeches. Unlike the incidents of remonstrance, successful or not, which are sometimes cited as evidence in the course of later remonstrances, "The Game Warden's Remonstrance" is rhymed, largely tetrasyllabic, and as suitable for recitation or singing as any poem in the Shijing. From the point of view of Wei Jiang, and perhaps of system atizes like Shi Kuang, the text owes its literary form to an author—the game warden who, along with King Wen's other officials, presented his admonition in response to Xin Jia's command. For us, however, the attri bution of authorship is as tentative as any of the legendary accounts of Shijing composition. This zhen, like the poem "Changdi" (Shijing, Mao 164),65 may well have been composed not by the author of record, but by the educated community who kept possession of the memories of early Zhou history, and among whom the classics developed. The "Game Warden's Remonstrance," though envisioned as an origi nal composition, thus has the character of inherited language, and Wei Jiang cites it as such. At the same time, the "Game Warden's Remon strance" does what almost all remonstrances do by itself drawing on the authority of inherited language, here the tale of Hou Yi and his disastrous hunting. Wei Jiang takes his place in a nested structure of citation and admonition: the game warden, called on to critique the king, cited the case of Hou Yi; Wei Jiang, desiring to critique Duke Dao, cites the game warden's remonstrance. And the pattern is not inter rupted here, at the confrontation of text and reader. Readers in the Han and afterward will use texts like the Zuozhuan as sources of admonitory examples; we may suspect that the very meaning of historical discourse in these texts lies in the constant juxtaposition of intelligible examples with contemporary circumstances that await interpretation.

A Typical Remonstrance: Gong zhi Qi and the Duke of Yu

As we would expect from the depiction of remonstrance as we have seen it so far, speeches which are explicitly introduced as remonstrances (jian Hi) in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu tend to make the past an author

65. According to traditional attributions, "Changdi" was composed either by the (Guoyu, Zhou 2.1 [45]) or by Duke Mu of Shao Sfjl:& when he saw that the Zhou house was going into decline (Zuozhuan, Xi 24.2 [Yang, 423]). The Mao preface does not specify an author, but dates the poem to the time of the early Zhou rebellions, supporting the Guoyu attribution; see Shijing (Shisartjing zhushu \~ SMtfiJSL ed. Ruan Ijijt [1815; reprint, Taibei: Dahua, 1982]), 407. Like all but a

This content downloaded from 218.106.182.161 on Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:21:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DAVID SCHABERG 155 itative model. But the rhetoric of remonstrance is more interesting than mere recitation of inherited language would be. The minister who is charged with dissuading his ruler from disastrous error does not simply repeat the relevant material from a book of principles or code of behav ior. Instead (with the silent help of the historiographers who told his story), he uses the space of the speech to weave inherited language together with observed particulars, thereby upholding the authority of Traditionalist learning and rendering historical events intelligible in Traditionalist terms. As noted above, the inherited words that are woven into the texture of remonstrances are of four types: citations from one of the named texts—the Shu, the Shi, and others—which are the past's legacy to the present;66 aphorisms, something "heard" (wen fjfl), often attributed to the men of old;67 remembered incidents which demonstrate behavior to be followed or avoided in the present;68 or remembered social practices or organizational schemes.69 It will help to examine how one fairly typical remonstrance makes use of these types of inherited words. In 655 b.c.e., according to the Zuozhuan, (r. 676-651 b.c.e.) asked the ruler of the small neighboring state of Yu $| for permission to cross its territory in order to attack the state of Guo W,', a debate followed in the Yu court:70

few Shijing poems, including the famous "Chixiao" S.|f| (Shijing, Mao 155) attributed to the Duke of Zhou in Shangshu fpJlf, "Jinteng" this piece shows no clear signs of individual authorship. 66. For examples see Zuozhuan, Xi 24.2 (Yang, 423-24), Xuan 2.3 (Yang, 657); Guoyu, Zhou 1.1 (1), Zhou 2.1 (45, 51), Zhou 3.3 (109-10), Jin 4.7 (349-50), Jin 9.20 (502-3), Chu 1.8 (556). 67. For examples see Zuozhuan, Yin 3.7 (Yang, 31), Zhuang 24.1 (Yang, 229), Xi 23.6 (Yang, 408), Xi 24.2 (Yang, 420), Wen 7.7 (Yang, 563), Xiang 23.4 (Yang, 1077); Guoyu, Jin 1.9 (279), Jin 4.7 (349), Yue 1.1 (633), Yue 2.6 (652). 68. For examples see Zuozhuan, Huan 2.2 (Yang, 89), Min 2.7 (Yang, 272), Xi 24.2 (Yang, 420-24), Xuan 12.5 (Yang, 748), Zhao 30.2 (Yang, 1508); Guoyu, Zhou 1.1 (2-3), Zhou 2.1 (48), Zhou 3.3 (103-9), Jin 4.7 (350), Jin 9.20 (502-3), Chu 1.8 (554-56), Wu 1.3 (597-99), Yue 2.7 (656). 69. Many remonstrances appeal to the example of the past without recounting historical particulars; see Zuozhuan, Yin 5.1 (Yang, 43), Min 2.7 (Yang, 268; both refer to "the system of times past" cilf flj); Guoyu, Zhou 1.6 (15-22), Zhou 1.9 (24-26), Zhou 3.3 (101-3), Lu 1.2 (153), Yue 1.1 (634). References to precedent (gu ife) involve a similar use of the past, as do discussions of li H "ritual," a concept of immense im portance for the construction of historiographical speech and narrative (Zuozhuan, Zhuang 23.1 [Yang, 225-26] shows how li can be used in remonstrance without other sorts of citation). For an example of gu in remonstrance, see Guoyu, Jin 1.9 (279); and see Guoyu, Lu 1.4 (156), where a duke claims falsely that it is his prerogative to make precedent. Note that gu }$!_ "precedent" is probably related at its origins to gu "the past."

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mmmmnmmm, ° 0: rm»mzmm; » 7g^nJSi° -iiii' m rMM' ®tiij m' nm - «£am& »jSh: rf'§lfe-aSSi?jlf0: r*f6 - Jiff" *i£03 tii; ° «# - w,ml »; gji »± ' iftis' ° mmmm»m«« ? a«tgn ' e - ' Mfg ¥ ? mumis' ' ?ms¥ ? j &b: r^?iiesii?» m&mm ° j sts: rEK^»m»#A*gi»ttisjiflc° kji (r0 : rMAM ' filial! ° J XB : Tmmm > m ° J XB : ' tfMS3B8l0 J M m' ° wmsns' ° ' mmmtm if' mna±z¥? j The lord of Jin again71 asked for permission to cross Yu in order to attack Guo. Gong zhi Qi72 remonstrated, "Guo is a shield for Yu. If Guo succumbs, then Yu is sure to follow. Jin must not be aroused: expeditionary forces must not be treated lightly. That you permitted it once may be called excessive. Can you then repeat it? Perhaps the adage that says 'The cart and its props hold each other up, and when the lips are gone the teeth grow cold' refers to cases like that of Yu and Guo."73 The duke said, "Jin is a family relation of ours. How could they harm us?" He replied, "Tai Bo and Yu Zhong were sons of the Grand King. Tai Bo did not comply and thus did not succeed to the throne.74 Guo Zhong and Guo Shu were sons of Wang Ji.75 As officials of

70. Zuozhuan, Xi 5.8 (Yang, 307-10). 71. Jin first attacked Guo across Yu in Zuozhuan, Xi 2.2 (Yang, 281-83). There Duke Xian of Jin was at first unwilling to ask Yu for permission, but one of his ministers argued that this action would make Yu a dependent and that Gong zhi Qi, though wise, would not be able to remonstrate forcefully enough to save Yu. 72. The zhi £ in Gong zhi Qi's name functions as it does in such names as Jie zhi Tui (Zuozhuan, 24.1 [Yang, 417-18]) and Meng zhi Fan Jx (Lunyu, 123 [Lunyu 6.15]). See comments of Yang Bojun and Liu Baonan on the passages cited. 73. The adage on lips and teeth is also found at Zuozhuan, Ai 8.2 (Yang, 1647-48) and in a number of other pre-Qin works. 74. Yu Zhong founded Yu. The better-known version of the Tai Bo legend includes no failure of compliance; he is said to have yielded to his younger brother Wang Ji and retreated to the barbarian territory which would later become the state of Wu ^ (see Zuozhuan, Ai 7.3 [Yang, 1641]; Shiji, 31.1445). 75. Guo Zhong and Guo Shu were founders, respectively, of eastern and western Guo; see Yang, 308. To summarize this family tree: The Grand King (Tai Wang) begat

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King Wen they rendered great service to the royal house, [records of which services] are stored in the treasury of covenants.76 Now that [Jin] is going to destroy Guo, why should it care about Yu? "Further, can Yu be a closer intimate [of the Jin duke] than the clans descended from Huan Shu and Zhuang Bo were? Though he did care about them, what crime was it of the Huan and Zhuang clans that brought about their extermination?77 Was it not simply that they had become a threat? If [Jin], treating them as relatives, could still consider them a threat because of the favor they received, and could even harm them, then what will they do to another state?" The Duke said, "Our sacrificial banquets are sumptuous and pure. The spirits will stand by us." He replied, "I have heard that the ghosts and the spirits do not favor individuals; what they stand by is virtuous attainment. So the Writings of Zhou say, 'August Heaven has no intimates; it aids only virtuous attainment.' They further say, 'Millet does not smell sweet; only clear virtuous attainment smells sweet.' And they fur ther say, 'People cannot change the sacrificial offerings; it is virtuous attainment itself which is the sacrificial offering.'78 Therefore with out virtuous attainment, the people are not in harmony and the spirits do not consume the sacrificial banquets. What the spirits stand by is virtuous attainment. If Jin takes Yu, and then presents the savor of its sacrifices with clear virtuous attainment, will the spirits spit it out?"

Tai Bo (who went to Wu), Yu Zhong (who founded Yu), and Wang Ji, who succeeded his father. Wang Ji in turn begat King Wen (who succeeded him) and Guo Zhong and Guo Shu (founders of Guo). Note that Guo Zhong and Guo Shu are thus nephews to Yu Zhong and brothers of King Wen. Jin was founded by Tang Shu Hf®, a son of King Wu jH3£3E. 76. This "treasury of covenants" (mengfu f) seems to have been a place for the storage of certain writings. Records of services rendered to the throne would have been found in the investiture texts which court officials sometimes present to casters in the bronze inscriptions. See Yang, 308; Takezoe, Saden, 379; and Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 43-50. 77. Huan Shu was father of Zhuang Bo; both ruled in the Jin city of Quwo fj{i tji Their line ruled Jin starting in Zuozhuan, Yin 5.2 (Yang, 44; 718 b.c.e.); Duke Xian, himself a member of this line, exterminated the other branches in Zuozhuan, Zhuang 23-25 (Yang, 226-33; 671-669 b.c.e.). See Yang, 309. 78. For these difficult lines I follow Yang, 309-10, but see also Bernhard Karlgren, "Glosses on the Tso chuan," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 41 (1969), 26: "The people are not careless about the wu quality (in their gifts), but only the virtue—that it (Heaven) (considers as quality:) estimates."

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Disregarding Gong zhi Qi's warnings, the duke allowed the Jin forces to cross Yu territory for an attack on Guo. Gong zhi Qi left the state with his family and property, predicting doom. By the end of the year Yu fell in a surprise attack by Jin forces returning from the defeat of Guo; the duke was taken prisoner and Yu territory became part of greater Jin. Gong zhi Qi's remonstrance includes the types of inherited language mentioned above. From the past he draws specific information relevant to the judgment at hand; he also cites fragments of language, both sayings and canonical tags, whose implicit truth-value derives at least in part from their ancient provenance. He combines these sources of authority or principle with another sort of authority, a kind of theoreti cal generalization, which we will have cause to discuss in greater detail below, in connection with specifically military remonstrances. In the opening of the remonstrance, theoretical generalization is joined with the authority of inherited language. Gong zhi Qi presents the situ ation in a series of phrases which outline the physics of international politics. Guo is an outer cover or shield for Yu; the destruction of the former necessitates the demise of the latter. In the next pair of phrases, it is difficult to discern theory from inherited language: by granting Jin passage, the Yu duke will be treating foreign armies lightly, but one does not know whether that military precept is a matter of contempo rary common sense or could be associated with inherited military wis dom. Similarly, the tone of stark prohibition in the second phrase (tS^F nJSjt "expeditionary forces cannot be treated lightly") may indicate that it was an accepted truth with the force of a commandment.79 Remon strances on military matters, as we will see below, often leave out explicit citation and focus on a logic of war, virtue, and retribution. Having chal lenged this logic once, the duke will be foolhardy to try it again. In the conclusion of this first section, Gong zhi Qi completes his descrip tion of the situation by summing it up with marked fragments of inher ited speech, the "adage." The perfect correspondence of the preceding material, and especially of the opening of the speech, with this pair of sayings, suggests that these words were the covert goal all along; as in the "pointed" style of certain Latin authors, a paragraph is written for the sake of the sententia which caps it. The first saying, on the cart and its props, no doubt corresponds to the geographical situation with which the speech began, while the more familiar second saying, on lips and teeth, emphasizes the inevitability with which Yu's fall must follow Guo's.

79. The idea is implicit in Zuozhuan, Zhao 5.4 (Yang, 1267-69; a Chu minister's ar gument against the mutilation of Jin envoys) and Ai 1.2 (Yang, 1605-6; Wu Zixu's fH speech on the necessity of destroying Yue JS).

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The duke next appeals to the ties of kinship as protection against the threat Gong zhi Qi fears, arguing that Yu is safe because the ruling houses of Jin and Yu are related through the early Zhou kings. But here too his minister is prepared with the words of the past, though they appear in a form quite different from that of the saying or the com mandment. The duke's mention of family relations prompts a learned disquisition on historical facts and the theory of kinship. Gong zhi Qi first answers the references to kinship by giving a precise account of the position of the three states' founders in the Zhou family tree. The founder of Yu was a brother of the Jin founder's great-grand father, while the founders of Guo were brothers of his grandfather. This proximity suggests to the minister that any harm Jin inflicts upon Guo it will also willingly inflict upon Yu. Gong zhi Qi adds one more fragment of historical knowledge to the genealogical calculation: Guo's claim to immunity is strengthened by its service to King Wen, records of which are preserved in official archives and thus formally acknowledged. Jin will act against the bonds of kinship and against the old order of merit upon which the Zhou polity was established. Gong zhi Qi next introduces a new historical fact which should extin guish the duke's kinship hopes. It has not been many years since the Jin ducal line destroyed two powerful noble families, the Huan and Zhuang lines, which shared with the duke descent from the Quwo rulers who usurped control in Jin. These families were closer by far to the Jin dukes than any other state could be, yet they were annihilated. Kinship will not save Yu. In this part of his remonstrance, Gong zhi Qi does not cite common sayings or passages from the classics, but he does demonstrate an asso ciated form of knowledge. Details of history, both from the early Zhou and from more recent times, can be adduced and made relevant to con temporary events, and in this sense they function as a form of inherited language. Unlike citations, however, historical knowledge is not fixed in texts, and can take a verbal form specially adapted to the particular deliberative context in which it is to be used. Citations necessitate a measure of implicit or explicit exegesis, which occupies a part of the speech. Any new theoretical notions the speaker or the historiographers are introducing tend to disappear behind the authority of the cited work. But in the use of other types of inherited language, including historical knowledge, theory plays a more obvious role. In Gong zhi Qi's speech, it is an implicit theory of kinship that makes historical details relevant to the case at hand. Kinship is a continuum, the theory says, and given varying degrees of affinity between states or families, there is a threshold above which military action is precluded. If Jin can exterminate the Huan

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and Zhuang lines and attack Guo, then it will not shrink from attacking Yu. This notion of kinship is one of many theories that speakers in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu call on, indirectly or directly, in their organization of historical details and contemporary observations.80 While these theories can at times be expressed through or with the help of inherited language, including citations from canonical texts, their significance lies less in their connection with the past than in their reflection of later Zhou intellectual trends. That form of historical discourse which allowed accurate predictions to be inserted everywhere in these texts, and which thus rendered great swaths of narrated history intelligible in Tradition alist terms, must also have permitted constant theoretical adjustment. It is clear that such adjustment occurred as part of the telling of history, as is evident in the recollecting (reconstructing, constructing) of speeches which could be both good and true. But it must also have taken place in response to intellectual developments within the group of Traditionalists who taught these texts, and one suspects that conflicts with other schools of Warring States thought would also have affected the way these schol ars retold history. His arguments on kinship in the human world refuted, the duke falls back on his state's influence in the world of spirits. Here inherited lan guage in the form of canonical citations allows Gong zhi Qi to correct his lord's ignorance. He begins by extending the terms of the previous section to the relation between humans and spirits. Even at the outset he appeals, if only in the most general terms, to transmitted speech: he has heard, he says, "that the ghosts and the spirits do not favor indi viduals; what they stand by is virtuous attainment" (j§HfI«I » A WIH ' fInherited speech often takes the form of the "heard," and what the remonstrating minister has heard is not mere gossip, but an aphorism which carries authority and gains in value from citation and application. Gong zhi Qi immediately bolsters his first claim with three roughly parallel citations from the Zhou shu IS] U (Writings of Zhou.).8* Each of these passages declares that de i§ "virtuous attainment" is the under

80. For an account of some of the cosmic, political, moral, and rhetorical theories which speakers in historiography are made to advance, see Schaberg, "Foundations of Chinese Historiography," 327-465. 81. None of the three quotations appear in that portion of our Shangshu which is called the Zhoushu (or in the Yi Zhoushu jUM] U). As noted above, citation is no guar antee that either speakers or historiographers knew these texts through reading, and it is entirely possible that the the only written versions which ever existed are the fragments found in historiographical speeches.

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lying cause and significant factor in all relations with Heaven and the spirits. Heaven has no special affection for particular humans; the spirits enjoy de, not the savor of the sacrifices; only de, not human decision, brings about changes in political and sacrificial orders. Virtue here is not mere compliance with an ethical code, or even repro duction of the ancestors' services to the Zhou court, though it probably includes those things: it is a much larger category of attainment in which political power has a prominent part. The state that is ascendant—be it Zhou just before and after the conquest or Jin during this period—pos sesses de IS*, a charismatic force which has its roots in devotion to the spirits and to the ancestors and their teachings, but which designates more specifically the momentum of a state on the rise.82 Part of historiography's business is to conflate the de that is virtue with the de that is momentum and thus to explain why Heaven has helped states like Jin to grow through annexation of their neighbors and relatives.83 Military success, culminating in sacrifices to the spirits of conquered territories, gives evidence in retrospect that de was not merely the momentum of power, but also virtue. Assessments of de depend covertly on completed narratives. The histo rian who speaks of the de of a state or individual speaks in sure posses sion of the successful end of the story; in narrating earlier events he draws secretly on this knowledge and colors them with a moral excel lence that can then be adduced as a cause for success. The doubleness of de, its combination of moral characterization and the momentum which generates power, makes it a fine token of all other Traditionalist values which historiographical narratives vindicate. In the retelling, the moral aspect of de overshadows the power aspect, and final success appears to be the result rather than the cause of virtue.84

82. For more on the concept of de, see Peter A. Boodberg, "The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts," in Selected Work s of Peter A. Boodberg, comp. Alvin R Cohen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 26—40; and Vassili Kryukov, "Symbols of Power and Communication in Pre-Confucian China (on the Anthropology of De): Preliminary Assumptions," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 58 (1995), 314-33. 83. See Zuozhuan, Xiang 29.11 (Yang, 1160), for more on the rise of large states at the expense of small states. 84. Prince Chonger of Jin is the best example of this process, which underlies the construction of narratives of all sorts. During the period of exile which precedes Chonger's triumphant return to Jin as duke (posthumously named Wen), and then again during the early years of his rule, he accumulates a de which makes Jin militarily invincible (see the Chu king's speech and junzhi citation in Zuozhuan, Xi 28.3 [Yang, 456-57]). Working backward from known outcomes, the narrators construct stories that show the power of virtue.

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The process of moralizing explanation, which underlies much of the narration in the Zuozhuan, is especially relevant in the case of remon strance. Gong zhi Qi, like other remonstrating ministers, must speak with certainty about the results of aberrant action. He must possess an ability to read situations in accordance with inherited values and make correct predictions about outcomes. Such an ability depends less on the genius of the historical Gong zhi Qi than on the skills of the histori ographer whose work animates the literary Gong zhi Qi. Traditional learning and inherited language profit from their employ ment in the creation of the knowledgeable remonstrator. Gong zhi Qi sees beyond the duke's trust in the spirits by recalling and applying one adage and three citations from the Writings of Zhou. Only the nar rating historian can know that these maxims will account perfectly for the triumph of Jin over Yu. Their validity is subtly dependent on the narrative frame. But placed prominently in the midst of a speech of warning, these inherited utterances lay claim to a much broader valid ity. Behind the overt exemplarity of the narrative, its tale of military folly and rising virtuous attainment, there is another much more im portant lesson: that of the minister who, equipped with Traditionalist learning, is freed from the blindness that time imposes. The arguments of the minister pose as Traditionally inspired responses to a contempo rary situation, but they are arranged to show that learning gives one access to truths hidden in the future. Learning, vindicated in innumer able anecdotes of this sort, surreptitiously asserts its power.

Exceptional Remonstrances The consistency with which speeches marked as remonstrances in clude reference to historical details, sayings, and texts from the past is an indication of the role inherited language plays in historiography's narrative defense of Traditionalist learning. Yet there are exceptions, remonstrances which lack any explicit reference to the past or to speech inherited from the past. These texts show that inherited speech and the authority of the past could be used very subtly. In one group of remon strances, those concerning military matters, appeals to inherited lan guage are nearly obscured by arguments from expediency. In certain other remonstrances speakers cite inherited or aphoristic language with out identifying it as such: tradition poses as contemporary common sense. Finally, in the most interesting of all remonstrances, the author ity of the past is invoked not in a formal speech, but by means of a partially non-verbal ritual performance, and specifically through a varia tion from expected ritual performance. Historiography perhaps took it

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as a given that remonstrance involved the correction of the present against the past; what we learn from these three groups of exceptional remonstrances is that it was not always necessary to emphasize the source of models or even to speak at all. The exceptional remonstrances suggest that an old performative aspect of recitation (idealized in the four schematizing passages discussed above, with their crowds of offi cials employed in presenting various types of speech) survived in a kind of theatrical, non-oratorical remonstrance. Let me begin with the military remonstrance, which commonly does not involve explicit citation of the language of the past. More than half of the marked remonstrances which do not cite inherited speech in the Zuozhuan are of this type.85 Thus, for instance, ministers from the states of Lu and Wei, having aided Jin in a punitive mission against Qi, re monstrate with the Jin general Xi Ke §[$]£, who wishes to fight on until Qi submits to a humiliating treaty. Their remonstrance is relatively simple:86

m - mms : ° ° »e a^S°«§? ' IIJXM3R? ' a^ffitil' ffi£?S£ it ' O « , ? J Lu and Wei remonstrated, saying, "Qi is already perturbed about us. Those who have died were all family members and intimates. If you don't grant [peace], Qi will consider us great enemies. What more can even you seek [from this expedition]?87 Now that you have won the treasures of their state, and we too have won some territory, if we release them from difficulties, there will be a great deal of glory. Whether it is Qi or Jin [which finally gets power] depends on the gift of Heaven; why is it certain that it will be Jin?"

85. Zuozhuan, Yin 6.4 (Yang, 50), Cheng 2.3 (Yang, 799; see below), Cheng 6.11 (Yang, 830), Zhao 21.6 (Yang, 1430), Zhao 22.1 (Yang, 1432), Ding 9.3 (Yang, 1573). Re monstrances which do not cite inherited speech and which have nothing to do with military matters are found at Zuozhuan, Huan 18.3 (Yang, 154), Xuan 9.6 (Yang, 702), Zhao 28.4 (Yang, 1496-97), Ding 10.5 (Yang, 1580), Ai 20.2 (Yang, 1715). All of these are discussed below except Xuan 9.6, which is a borderline case: its appeal to public appearances is couched in language reminiscent of Shijing, Mao 235 ("Wen Wang" 3t£). The Guoyu includes seven remonstrances which do not cite inherited speech. Only two of them (Guoyu, Jin 1.7 [271-72], Jin 3.6 [327]) bear on military matters; in others one may trace principles either related to venerable ancient practices (Guoyu, Zhou 1.7 [22], Lu 1.16 [183]) or indirectly related to military action (Guoyu, Wu 1.2 [595]). Guoyu, Yue 2.1 (641) and Jin 9.6 (488-89; corresponds to Zuozhuan, Zhao 28.4), are discussed below. 86. Zuozhuan, Cheng 2.3 (Yang, 799).

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Much depends on the implicit truths of Zuozhuan morality and world order. Thorough humiliation of a powerful state is dangerous because the enmity which it inspires can lead to a concerted effort for recovery and revenge. Military action may have punishment as a goal, but it stops short of extermination in cases like this, which call for glorious achievement rather than total war. Above all, Heaven, with its concern for virtue, may not support Jin in its attempt to degrade one of the few states which are its peers in the international order. The remarks of Lu and Wei representatives, like Gong zhi Qi's analysis of kinship, seem to imply a historiographical theory, in this case a set of accepted beliefs concerning the inevitabilities of warfare. These beliefs would appear to belong to the speakers (and to the historiographers behind them); they do not appear to result from the testing of the occa sion against language inherited from the past. Like the speech to Xi Ke, military remonstrances are generally short, sharp appeals to the logic of battle and of international relations. The theory presented in that speech, that the humiliation of an offending party should go only so far as to ensure the glory of the punishing party, shows up again when three ministers of Jin convince their general not to do battle against the Chu allies Shen ^ and Xi over the state of Cai ^:88

' hm ° > x&sw »»si

° j Zhi [Xun Shou lull], Fan Wenzi [Shi Xie dr®], and Han Xianzi [Han Jue If M] remonstrated, saying, "That will not do. We came to rescue Zheng. The Chu army withdrew from us, and it was thus that we came this far [to Cai]: this is transferring the pun ishment. If we punish without ceasing, and also arouse the anger of the Chu army, then there is no doubt that we will not prevail in battle. Even if we did prevail, it would not be a good thing. What glory would there be in mustering the army for an expedition just to defeat two dependents of Chu [Shen and Xi]? And if we cannot defeat them, that would be too great a disgrace. It would be better to retreat."

87. According to Zuozhuan, Xuan 17.1 (Yang, 771-72), when Xi Ke once visited Qi on a diplomatic mission, the Qi ruler had his mother hide behind a curtain in court so that she could observe Xi Ke's limp. Xi Ke heard her laughing, was infuriated, and vowed to undertake the attack which has here resulted in Qi's defeat. 88. Zuozhuan, Cheng 6.11 (Vang, 830).

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As in the previous example, the point of the speech is to enumerate the results of bad military policy. With Chu, as with Qi, one must refrain from provoking a lasting anger. Military action, as a rule, is to be con tinued only as long as it contributes to the glory of the warring state. Making the point about anger even more concisely, a @ general fruitlessly urges his ruler not to engage an invading Qi army:89

° j The ruler of Ju wanted to do battle, but Yuanyang Muzhi remon strated, saying, "The Qi general is of low birth and he does not demand much. It would be better to surrender to him: one must not arouse the anger of a great state."

The ruler ignores this advice, the Qi army is defeated, and in the follow ing year the duke is deposed by his people with the help of Qi.90 In another very brief remonstrance, a Qin minister sets up a similar set of logical alternatives as he tries to convince fjif% not to do battle with Duke Hui of Jin fT ffifr91

ISrfnMiU ° 11^1. Hffff W > «5gf§ ? j Gongsun Zhi entered and remonstrated, saying, "Back then when you did not put the ducal son Chonger in power, but put the [current] Jin ruler in power, you were not setting up the virtuous one, but setting up the submissive one instead. If you attempt to set him up and do not succeed, then attack him and are not victorious, what are you going to do about the laughter of the other state rulers? Why not wait for [the duke's demise]?"92

Two final examples suggest that the theory behind military remon strances, so often presented in brief, succinctly reasoned speeches, is nevertheless in some cases ultimately based on an appeal to inherited language. In a remonstrance with Duke Xian of Jin,93 Shi Wei dtlS argues that the designated heir, fcf3 should not be put in charge of an expedition against f?:'. The duke has divided his forces into

89. Zuozhuan, Zhao 22.1 (Yang, 1432). 90. Zuozhuan, Zhao 23.4 (Yang, 1444-45). 91. Guoyu, Jin 3.6 (327). 92. According to Wei Zhao (327), the Jin ruler's self-destruction is inevitable, and Duke Mu can simply await it. 93. Guoyu, Jin 1.7 (271-72). The remonstrance does not appear in the Zuozhuan, but see Shi Wei's speech at Zuozhuan, Min 1.6 (Yang, 258-59).

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two, himself acting as general of the first or "upper" army, while his son leads the second or "lower" army on campaign. Shi Wei argues from ancient example (gu zhi weijun "the ancient way of managing armies") that the army should be divided into left and right detachments which campaign together and aid each other; the heir's single army will fail through lack of timely reinforcement.94 And when a Qi minister remonstrates with his duke against lending military aid to a Lu rebel, his major military consideration is the perfect harmony which obtains between ruler and subjects in the state of Lu; while he does not appeal directly to ancient precedent or injunction, the remonstrator observes in Lu the very image of old-style order.95 While military remonstrances seem less dependent than other remon strances on the explicit citation of inherited language, they too can involve implicit appeals to an authority with ties to the past. In characteristi cally brief military remonstrances, the lesson may be embodied in a single theoretical principle, such as "One must not arouse the anger of a great state." But the evidence supporting such principles, if stated, would have to be historical; and the longer remonstrances bearing on military matters do not differ from other remonstrances in their refer ences to the excellent arrangements of past times. Next, remonstrances can contain inherited speech without in any way marking it as such. When the Jin heir Shensheng, whom we encoun tered above, is sent to make war on a Di tribe, his aide Hu Tu M?*I argues that he should refrain from doing battle, and thus retain the favor of his troops; in the course of his remonstrance he cites an incident of three decades earlier as support for his case:96 ' umms : r^0j° : rF*3l# fs' ^si-jR' if mm ' *spis m» ° j tE ' tkmm ° 4-SL^f^ ' ' mwz '

94. For a similar remonstrance, with a similar appeal to military and administrative tradition (fei gu ye "It is not according to precedent," says the remonstrator), see Guoyu, Jin 1.9 (279). As it happens, Shensheng is victorious in all of his campaigns against Jin's barbarian neighbors. But critics of the duke's policies are right in predict ing doom for Shensheng, who finally commits suicide (Zuozhuan, Xi 4.6 [Yang, 399]; Guoyu, Jin 2.1 [292]). 95. Zuozhuan, Ding 9.3 (Yang, 1573). It is a commonplace that de in a state or ruler translates into military power. See, for instance, the line King Cheng of Chu E cites from the Junzhi'lfi.ijij; as he justifies his reluctance to attack Jin under Duke Wen: "The one who has de cannot be rivaled" W til # "I I® (Zuozhuan, Xi 28.3 [Yang, 456]). 96. Zuozhuan, Min 2.7 (Yang, 272). Compare the account in Guoyu, Jin 1.7 (271-72), mentioned above, where the state of Huo, not a Di tribe, is the object of Shensheng's campaign.

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The heir was ready to do battle when Hu Tu remonstrated. He said, "You cannot do this. Formerly Xin Bo addressed Duke Huan of Zhou [Heijian], saying, 'When a favorite in the inner chambers is made equal to the queen; when a favorite in the outer chambers [the court] is allowed to have equal control over the administra tion; when a son by a consort is made to match sons of the blood; and when a large city is permitted to rival the capital: these are sources of turmoil.' The Duke of Zhou did not heed him, and thus he ran into trouble. Now that these 'sources of turmoil' have already taken shape, can you insist on being installed [as heir]? Be filial and give the people peace. Consider it: [it is better than] endangering youself and exacerbating the charges against you."97

Hu Tu's remonstrance (jian) resembles most others in containing a form of inherited speech—here a recent historical example—which is relevant to the situation at hand. Like Duke Huan of Zhou JUtH£>, Shensheng must beware the power of usurpers. Xin Bo's -^it\ own remarks (identi fied not as jian but as shen |f "to address" or possibly "to remonstrate forcefully"98), include nothing marked as inherited speech; the speaker presents an abstract principle in a series of well-balanced four-character phrases. As it happens, the Zuozhuan includes an entry for the incident to which Hu Tu refers. Surprisingly, this account differs from the one attributed to Hu Tu both in the characterization of the speech and in the content of the speech. Duke Huan of Zhou has been executed for his part in a plot to assassinate the reigning Zhou king and to install his younger brother in his place. The narrators recount Xin Bo's remonstrance in an analepsis or flashback introduced by the word chu ffl "formerly":99 ffl ' ?° #{01^0 : r?fjn - E M - M®:- SIS ' h ° j Formerly, Ziyi100 enjoyed favor with King Huan, and King Huan entrusted him to the Duke of Zhou. Xin Bo remonstrated, saying, "Making a consort equal to the queen; making a son by a consort equal to sons of the blood; allowing two men to have equal control

97. It will be better for Shensheng to avoid battle, both so that he can show his filiality by saving himself from possible injury and so that he can keep the soldiery safe. By fighting he will put himself in danger and aggravate his father's and step mother's animus. Hu Tu does not mention the problem of disobeying a father's orders, presumably because it was unjust for the duke to make his son a general in the field in the first place. 98. See Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi (Shisanjing zhushu ed.), 1789. 99. Zuozhuan, Huan 18.3 (Yang, 154).

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over the administration; letting another city match the capital: these are sources of turmoil."

Instead of the four-character phrases Hu Tu recalled, the narrators recount Xin Bo's speech in an even more compressed series of two-character phrases covering the same principles in a slightly different order. And though it is here explicitly called a remonstrance (jian), nothing in this elegant exposition indicates that the truths expressed—which are guar anteed by the duke's death after his failure to heed the remonstrance— owe anything to inherited language. As in Hu Tu's version of the speech, the symmetry and beauty of the structure strongly suggest that the state ment will be proven true, as most remonstrances are, but that is a matter of historiographical rhetoric rather than a clue about sources of authority. Perhaps Xin Bo's remonstrance is another case, like the military remonstrances, in which the critic can do without the support of inher ited speech. The rhetorical force of verbal patterning itself might, in the view of the historiographers, lend the speaker sufficient critical authority. As for the differences between the two versions of the speech, the histo riographers might have correctly recorded both Xin Bo's speech and Hu Tu's misquoting of it; or they might have worked from multiple sources which varied in their account of the speech.101 But I would argue that Xin Bo's remonstrance does constitute a type of inherited speech and that the difference between the Zuozhuan's two versions of the speech reveals something about the nature of historical knowlege in this work. The historiography of the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu is a moral izing historiography; as noted above, the unerring predictions and delib erative recommendations which speakers are permitted to make (with the benefit of the historiographers' hindsight) tend to uphold values which we would recognize as Traditionalist. In remonstrances which draw on the evidence of recent history, we glimpse the process that could produce such a historiography. Before returning to Xin Bo, let us look at a longer but simpler example. In the middle of one of his many recorded remonstrances with King

100. Ziyi was Wangzi Ke EE~F]nL, younger brother of King Zhuang ;ft£, successor to their father King Huan 101. Historiography never records the same material twice in the same way, and the discrepancies in the account of Xin Bo's speech are typical. There is always some variation in the account of an incident or a speech. For instance, Guoyu, Jin 1.9 (281), records Hu Tu's remonstrance, including several identical phrases and similar ideas, but omits the citation of Xin Bo's words. More generally, Zuozhuan and Guoyu taken together include scores of speeches remembered with slight differences. One could add the numerous Warring States and Han anecdote collections, which include more variants of some of the same speeches.

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Fuchai of Wu Wu Zixu iTL^jrW reminds the king of the fall of King Ling of Chu Jggi:102 r£fii^lKA ' te®tK ° a o 73 »hues? • mm » ° si^@ a ' MPIt ^ m° ' StltSMM ' =MB a - - m ° ° s mm ft' » £0MfiiAi° 0: j w^Mii'ityy&JasM&Jfe°» ° ' mm ^Fffi ' ° 2S ' m ° jttM' mmzw ? j Certainly you should make a mirror of men, Your Highness, and not of water. Formerly King Ling of Chu did not act as a ruler should, and his ministers' remonstrances were not accepted. Thus he built a pavilion at Zhanghua, excavating a stone moat around it and damming up the Han River in imitation of the Emperor Shun.103 He exhausted the state of Chu in awaiting an opportunity to take Chen and Cai.104 Without managing the territories within the Square Wall,105 he overstepped the states of Xia descent (Chen and Cai) and plotted against the states of the east, spending three years at Ju and Fen in order to secure the submission of Wu and Yue.106 His people could not bear the torment of hunger and exertion, and the three armies mutinied against the king at Ganxi.107 He went on all alone, wandering lost among the mountains and forests, until after three days he saw his Housekeeper Chou. The king called out to him and said, "I have not eaten for three days." Chou hurried for ward and the king, resting his head on [Chou's] thigh, lay down on the ground to sleep. When the king fell asleep, Chou left him, pillowing his head on a clod of earth. Seeing nothing when he

102. Guoyu, Wu 1.3 (598). The rise and fall of King Ling are narrated in exquisite detail in Zuozhuan, Xiang 26-Zhao 13 (Yang, 1114-353), culminating in his suicide at Zhao 13.2 (Yang, 1347); cf. Guoyu, Chu 1.5-1.8 (541-57). See discussion in Schaberg, "Foundations of Chinese Historiography," 471-521. 103. Here I follow Wei Zhao's interpretation of these lines. The Zuozhuan anec dotes on the Zhanghua Pavilion (Zuozhuan, Zhao 7.2 [Yang, 1283-85], Zhao 7.3 [Yang, 1285-87], Zhao 7.6 [Yang, 1289]) do not include these details. 104. Chu annexes Chen in Zuozhuan, Zhao 8.6 (Yang, 1304-5), and Cai in Zuozhuan, Zhao 11.8 (Yang, 1327). 105. See Zuozhuan, Zhao 11.10 (Yang, 1327-29), in which this neglect is dramatized. 106. Wei Zhao refers the reader to Zuozhuan, Zhao 6.9 (Yang, 1279-80), but see also Zhao 5.8 (Yang, 1270-72). 107. Zuozhuan, Zhao 13.2 (Yang, 1346).

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woke up, the king crawled on and was going to enter the gate of Ji, but the gatekeeper would not admit him, so he entered the care of the yuyin Shen Hai. After the king hanged himself, Shen Hai took his body back and buried him in soil at his home. This normative record—how can it so quickly have disappeared from the ears of the state rulers?

The details of the King Ling story correspond in many places with the tale as the Zuozhuan tells it, but small discrepances indicate that the narrators of the Guoyu are not simply following a Zuozhuan text. Instead, for the narrators as for Wu Zixu, the story has become a zhi a record or anecdote, but one which embodies a normative message.108 As in Hu Tu's remonstrance and the recollection of the "The Game Warden's Remonstrance," the scene of remonstrance presents a nested structure of citation and criticism: King Ling's advisors remonstrated repeatedly, appealing to traditional authority, but were not heeded; now Wu Zixu remonstrates, citing the zhi of King Ling, and is destined not to prevail. All the anecdotes of King Ling's rise and fall, materials which we could not have classed as inherited language in the context of ordinary third person Zuozhuan narration, are framed by the occasion of Wu Zixu's remonstrance and transformed into inherited language. Wu Zixu's use of the events of King Ling's life in his remonstrance makes it clear enough that those events had a meaning for the historiog raphers, if not for Wu Zixu himself. The long series of Zuozhuan anecdotes about King Ling includes numerous predictions from observers who see that the king's ambition will lead to disaster; the king's whole career, including his fall, is remarked upon by contemporaries who explain his failure as the result of unrestrained ambition and the violation of such Traditionalist tenets as li H "ritual propriety."109 This narrative may differ from Wu Zixu's precis in certain details and in the sheer copiousness of its narration, but the lesson it conveys is exactly the lesson Wu Zixu hopes to teach Fuchai: refusing remonstrance and indulging a desire for international dominance only leads to disaster for local rulers, partic ularly the kings of semi-barbaric southern states. No reinterpretation of the historical events is required; the story already implies a particular lesson. Wu Zixu's remonstrance exploits a didacticism already present in the material he has chosen to cite. But King Ling's tale is not the only histor

108. See the discussion above, n. 48, of the term zhi and its connection with apho rism collections. 109. See, for example, the comment attributed to Confucius at the very end of Zuozhuan, Zhao 13.2 (Yang, 1341).

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ical episode cited in remonstrance, and it is certainly not the only series of Zuozhuan anecdotes to teach a lesson about correct behavior. Narra tives in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu reflect on the proper behavior of men and women in public life. They support a loosely-defined set of stan dards by demonstrating what successses follow from obedience and what disasters follow from transgression. This habit is especially clear in such famous cases as those of King Ling, King Zhuang of Chu EE, and of Duke Wen of Jin § jiCjt*; but even under more complicated circumstances, like the rise of the Chen Pit family and the decline of the ducal house of Qi H, characters like Yan Ying HH continually propose moralizing interpretations of events.110 Morally ambiguous narratives are rare in this historiography. When recorded in complete narratives rather than Chunqiu-style notations, the past generally proves to be intelli gible as the dramatization of the importance of a familiar set of standards. In this sense, historiography in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu is the record ing of the sort of material which would be useful in remonstrance. It may only be coincidence that historiography serves the needs of the remonstrator, and that the bulk of China's early narratives concern ing the Spring and Autumn period could be used as Wu Zixu used the tale of King Ling. But the impulse to historiography is not a given in human beings, and in any case the first attempts to make sense of the past in any culture must meet particular local needs. The form of early Chinese historiography must tell us something about the first uses to which it was put and the occasions for which it was designed. The main use of detailed historical narratives for which we have genuine early evidence is a deliberative use which corresponds closely to remon strance. Shi Kuang implied as much in the speech translated above, where it was the duty of all members of the official hierarchy to present speech continually to their ruler in order "to keep him from exceeding proper measures." Even earlier than the Zuozhuan, texts like the Shijing poem "Dang" H declare that the disasters of the past, properly under stood, are a guide to the crises of the present.111 In the presence of an emerging classical tradition which constantly exhorts the living to uphold the standards of their forebears and to avoid the pitfalls of deviance, decisions made in court had to be tested against the prestigious texts themselves (Shijing, Shangshu, and other cited bodies of inherited lan guage) and against known incidents in which inherited language had proven its worth.

110. See Zuozhuan, Zhao 3.3 (Yang, 1234-37), Zhao 20.6 (Yang, 1415-18), Zhao 20.8 (Yang, 1419-21), Zhao 26.11 (Yang, 1480-81). 111. SSHT^is ' -ftSEJcf^ltS "The mirror for Yin was not far; it was in the age of Xia"; Shijing, Mao 255 (Shisanjing zhushu ed.), 554.

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Accounts of history used in remonstrance depend upon an existing body of historical knowledge. But the didactic habits of historiography in China indicate that historical knowledge was well adapted to delib erative uses; the body of knowledge and its use developed together. Rather than imagining among the early Chinese a sudden and inexpli cable urge to make accurate records of words and deeds, with later speakers happening upon these records and using them in their remon strances, we must recognize that the stories in the earliest forms we know are already informed by the lessons they teach. It is significant that these lessons have to do almost exclusively with the behavior of men in public office as it relates to the stability and prosperity of their states; that subject is also the subject of remonstrance and of court delib eration in general. That the moralizing tendency of narrative in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu made their tales suitable material for remonstrance is clear enough. In my judgement, however, we need to investigate the possibility that remonstrance and court debate in general were the very origin of his torical discourse, and that the didactic force speakers needed from their narratives influenced the presentation of history long before standards of accuracy and objectivity could have had any meaning. In this view, remonstrance came before historiography. Long before the Zuozhuan narrators laid out, year by year, the events of King Ling's rise and fall, speakers like Wu Zixu were citing these events for the truths they dem onstrated. To be sure, despite the frequent mention of recent history in deliberative speeches in Zuozhuati and Guoyu, neither work could be used to demonstrate that the historical information they contain was first presented in the context of deliberative oratory. But then, the Zuo zhuan and Guoyu record only a fraction of the speech uttered in courts of the Spring and Autumn period, if they can be said to record any of it. And when we look outside of the works we have designated as historiog raphy, historical knowledge is meaningful and useful almost exclusively as a source of evidence for deliberative positions. is a late example, but the most illuminating; his highly self-conscious presenta tion of the historical anecdotes a speaker may retell to support his argu ments is the epitome of historical discourse during the Warring States period.112 Closer to the putative time of the Zuozhuan's composition, the Lunyu !$} §§, the Mengzi and the Mozi treat history as a treasury of examples, all of them with readily identifiable didactic import. One might argue that a tendentious use of historical information is only fit

112. See especially the "Waichushuo" sections; Chen Qiyou PJliffHan jishi (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1974), 611-790.

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ting for philosophers (zi T'), but the philosophers themselves could hardly have perceived the distinction as we do, and to separate histori ography from philosophy only on the basis of a later system of classification is sheer anachronism. The narration of the past in Zuozhuan and Guoyu has as much didactic content as the tales retold by Han Fei and the others; the difference is that it is not, at least in its current pre sentation, framed by explicit statements of the arguments it supports. Indeed, I would speculate that historical narration as we have it in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu is the product of deliberative and argumentative situations not unlike the ones represented in the philosophers, and that in the course of the compilation of the two works the historical anec dotes were removed from all particular polemical contexts and arranged according to chronological and geographical divisions. In this recon struction of the prehistory of these texts, remonstrance would be the beginning of historical knowledge. This speculation is tentative, but it does point to an explanation of the unusual features of Xin Bo's remonstrance, with its variant versions and its lack of inherited speech. Readers of the Warring States and Han writers who draw on historical evidence are accustomed to seeing differ ent versions of the same anecdote. Direct, verbatim citation is the excep tion rather than the rule, and it is often clear that writers have drawn on a rich field of historical gossip. If history regularly served polemical needs, it is to be expected that different and sometimes outlandish ver sions of old stories would develop. The tale of Xin Bo's remonstrance would have been useful in counselling any ruler against moves that would threaten the structure of an official hierarchy. The four elements of the brief speech indicate possible specific applications; a speaker might mention Xin Bo to a ruler who loved a concubine, a favorite, or a lesser son too well, or who allowed any city to become larger than the capital. The same general story, used by various individuals in various circum stances over a period of time, would generate multiple forms, unless all users checked their knowledge against a fixed source like a written text. The Zuozhuan's two versions of Xin Bo's speech are multiple forms of this sort. The straight historical account clearly does not originate in the remonstrance given by Hu Tu, since if it did we would expect no variation in the wording of Xin Bo's speech. It may be that Hu Tu's wordier version of the speech is an expansion of a lapidary original, or that the terser version is a distillation which renders the speech more aphoristic. Given the nature of human speech, it is more than likely that both versions improve upon a less symmetrical original. Circula tion of the story and use in the context of remonstrances and other discussions of policy would account for the variation in versions and

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the elegant gnomic form of both versions. Finally, if citation of inher ited speech is a common feature of remonstrance, frequent use of Xin Bo's speech in deliberations would explain why it can be called remon strance even though it contains no citations or historical knowledge. The tale itself is no longer simply an example adduced in support of a more abstract case, as in Hu Tu's speech. Instead, when Xin Bo speaks, his own words already have the character of inherited speech, both because of their formal balance and, more importantly, because of the use to which they have been put by all the speakers who, in the histori ographers' own time, have cited them.113 We should mention here two cases in which the content of the re monstrance is nothing more than the expression of the tradition-based interdiction which most remonstrances have in common. A Lu minister, arguing against a particular choice of heir for the Shusun family, remonstrates "forcefully" (gu jian @U), but his only recorded words are bu ke nj, "It is not permissible."114 Shortly before Yue's conquest of Wu, a Wu prince remonstrates "repeatedly" ( jian WW) with his father, King Fuchai; his speech is recorded in four characters: bu gai bi zvangsfUfc'j&Cl, "If you do not change, you must certainly perish."115 All remonstrances point out what is impermissible; all remonstrances assure the ruler that should he fail to heed the speaker, he will suffer disaster.116 The narratives in which remonstrances are framed almost invariably support the speaker's contention, granting success to the ruler who re forms himself and demonstrating the deserved fall of the unrepentant. In these, the most basic of all spoken remonstrances, inherited language is not explicitly invoked, but it nevertheless retains its force. The implicit standard of permissibility and of proper self-reform is tradition, and if these two remonstrances were to be amplified, we must suspect that they would come to include exactly the sort of citations and precedents we find in our other examples. As we have seen, a remonstrance can be summarized in as few as two characters. At that level of simplicity, only the central message common to most remonstrances is expressed: reform your ways in accordance with tradition or you will perish. But the same message can be pre

113. Note that the language of Xin Bo's remonstrance (in Hu Tu's version), if not the narrative frame, is closely echoed by Han Fei; see Chen Qiyou, Han Feizijishi, 932, cited by Yang, 154, who also notes a more remote parallel in the Guanzi Hf -p. 114. Zuozhuan, Ding 10.5 (Yang, 1580). 115. Zuozhuan, Ai 20.2 (Yang, 1715). 116. Duke Ling of Jin implies as much when he tries in vain to forestall an immi nent remonstrance by saying, "I know how I have erred, and I will change it" (Zuozhuan, Xuan 2.3 [Yang, 757]). He is lying about his intention to change, and is dead within the year.

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sented by means of ritual performances in which verbal explanation is only supplemental to the main act of communication. The Zuozhuan includes one example of this wordless type of remonstrance, a kind of moral pantomime based on the common awareness of ritual propriety. As we shall see below, the Han especially prized anecdotes concerning this sort of remonstrance, terming it fengjian JK, (IS) and claiming that Confucius valued it most among five types of remonstrance.117 The criticized party, the chief minister of Jin, Wei Shu M£I', is intended to see and understand a coded critique of an improper action he is con templating. Inherited speech plays only a minor part in the anecdote, and is repeated not by the remonstrators but by Wei Shu himself:118 #' mmxm > ° mzm » wt §£ ° mit8SN& - mh : mm a ' mum o ° j mm ° Mm»mm ° m A ' »J±g ' ° SE* ' M ° m-s : ' IIS: rnt*^S° j = M?j NffM b : ° ' mtm ° j RWtZ m' »iiiB°s?ss§a » In the winter, certain people from Gengyang were involved in a lawsuit which Wei Wu,119 unable to reach a judgment, had passed on to his superiors. The head of the [litigating] family offered a bribe of female musicians, which Wei Zi [Wei Shu] was prepared to accept. Wei Wu said to Yan Mo and Ru Kuan,120 "The head of our house [Wei Shu] is well known among the feudal lords for not taking bribes. There could be no case of bribery greater than accepting [the gift of] the people from Gengyang. You two must remonstrate with him." They both assented. When [Wei Shu] returned from court, they were waiting in his atrium. When supper was served, he summoned them. While [the food] was before them, they sighed three times.

117. See Shuoyuan jiaozheng e

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After they had finished eating, he had them sit with him. Wei Zi said, "I have heard from the elders that the adage says, 'When you eat you forget your troubles.' Why is it that while the food was before you you sighed three times?" They answered together with the same words, saying, "[Last night] someone invited us, lowly as we are, to drink, and we did not have an evening meal.121 When this meal first arrived, we were worried that it might not be enough, so we sighed. In the middle of the meal, we blamed ourselves, saying, 'How could there not be enough when it is the general who is feeding us?'122 So we sighed again. When the meal was over, we wished that the bellies of the lowly could become the heart of the gentleman, and that he would stop at what was sufficient." Wei Zi declined the offer of the people from Gengyang.

Why do the actions of Yan Mo and Ru Kuan fulfill Wei Wu's request? Why is their performance a remonstrance? A preliminary explanation lies in Wei Shu's citation of the adage. In his own hermeneutic percipi ence, he has noted in his men's behavior a divergence from such norms as are preserved in the saying. It is clear from their sighing that they have not forgotten their troubles. But this piece of inherited speech plays only a secondary role in the anecdote, and is not directly effective in correcting Wei Shu's intentions. A better explanation lies in the theatrical setting and directing of the episode. Noting that Wei Shu is entertaining thoughts of a divergence from his customary righteousness, his son pro duces a performance for his edification. The actors, who also script and direct the piece, count on just the sort of talent for normative observation which their audience of one shows in his citation of the adage. Sigh by sigh, they act out greed, then self-correction, then a desire for others to correct themselves, all the while avoiding direct criticism. That they act in unison—an unlikely possibility in spontaneous behavior—is a sign for the knowing that this is action with meaning rather than the thought less sighing of the "lowly" men. The narration suggests that even their lines are scripted, as they must be if they are to be spoken in unison. Though the cited adage is central to the design of the anecdote,123 it is

121. It is unclear why drinking precluded eating a complete dinner. Takezoe, Saden, 1764, suggests that they were (or are claiming to have been) too drunk to eat. 122. Wei Shu is the head of Jin's center army. 123. If one does not insist on the literal truth of all Zuozhuan anecdotes, one may even believe that the adage prompts the sighing rather than vice-versa: explaining Wei Zi's change of heart, the narrators designed an anecdote in which he noticed a divergence from the norm of eating (as expressed in the adage) and was thus taught a lesson.

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as a theater piece that the actors' performance constitutes remonstrance. In the schematized visions of the circulation of speech which we exam ined at the beginning of this article, remonstrance, like all the other forms of past or common speech which were presented before the ruler, was to take place in the theatrical space of court. While most speeches which are introduced as remonstrances in Eastern Zhou historiography foreground the customary reliance on paradigmatic words of the fore bears, all remonstrances are necessarily staged in the theatrical situation which the Wei Shu anecdote emphasizes. Further, something of the nature of all narrative in this historiography is manifest in the remonstrance of the three sighs. Actions are observ able, and are narrated in order to be observable. Characters within the narratives as well as readers of the narratives learn to observe and inter pret actions, to see hidden intents, likely consequences, and inevitable outcomes. For all of them this constant hermeneutic activity depends on being well-read in the sense that Wei Shu is well-read: one must note differences, failings, anomalies, the beginnings of decline. Whether one got one's Traditionalist knowledge through recitation and memori zation or through reading, one used it to render past and contemporary events intelligible. The present was to be tested constantly against the past, as the good rulers of old constantly measured themselves against the standards recited for their benefit by a whole schematized bureau cracy of reciters. When the present fell short of past standards, it had to be corrected, or it would correct itself automatically; and if this correction was not always the outcome immediately observable in reality, the Tradi tionalist storytellers were adept at composing stories in which their values triumphed.124

Conclusion

Interest in remonstrance continues through the Warring States pe riod, into the Han, and beyond. Certain anecdotes, like the Gong zhi Qi remonstrance discussed above, become standard examples, repeated with variations in texts of every sort.125 The Remonstrator (jianchen it

124. One set of narratives in which the Traditionalist values seem to fail is the grand tale of late Spring and Autumn period usurpation and ducal decline. I have argued ("Foundations of Chinese Historiography," 622-33, 730-61) that the narrators here shift their work of narrative vindication to a new level, justifying the rise of "Confu cianism" or Traditionalism as a school of thought rather than a body of governing practices. 125. For some examples of Gong zhi Qi's remonstrance, see Zhanguoce (A Concordance to the Zhanguoce, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992], 162), Xinxu (A Concordance to the Xinxu, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching

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H§, jianyi dafu and the like) becomes a member of the court bureaucracy, his duties connected with the flow of information to and from the ruler.126 Echoes of the old schema of language circulation appear here and there,127 and a new five-part categorization of remonstrances arises.128 There is a new interest in the problems of remonstrance within the family.129 But as the practice of remonstrance is caught up in the new system of government, with its new ways of managing events, and of recording and interpreting them for posterity, inherited language ceases to be a defining feature of the form. Already with KJ J-, remonstrance is merely a matter of presenting words of some sort (yan H, otherwise unspecified) to the aberrant ruler.130 Later, the Kongzijiayu ?L~Pl^in retells the story of a remonstrance for King Ling of Chu in the last year of his life, and expands Confucius's comment as recorded in the Zuozhuan, with a final remark on the use of poetry in remonstrance as if it were something novel.131 Now that a changed form of remon strance has found its place in the new administrative system, the prac tice requires constant real encounters with the powerful. Criticism of

[Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992], 47), Huainanzi (-4 Concordance to the Huainanzi, 189), Liishichunqiu (A Concordance to the Liishichunqiu, 82), and Chunqiufanlu (A Concor dance to the Chunqiufanlu, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commer cial Press, 1994], 18). 126. See Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), nos. 787, 831, 836, 865, 5582, etc. 127. Most interesting is the one found in Liishichunqiu (A Concordance to the Liishichunqiu, 133), in which the tale of the remonstrance before King Li of Zhou (Guoyu, Zhou 1.3 [9-12]; discussed above) is retold (note the thorough rewriting of the Guoyu's depiction of language circulation; and compare Huainanzi [A Concordance to the Huainanzi, 80]). See also the schema which includes a drum that the minister beats when he will presume to remonstrate (i£M^LsS.) in Da Dai liji (A Concordance to the Dadai liji, 20), in Liishichunqiu (A Concordance to the Liishichunqiu, 156), and in Jiayi Xinshu (A Concordance to the JiayiXinshu, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1994], 36). The Zhouli refers to office of the Remon strator (sijian W] jjjjt; A Concordance to the Zhouli, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1993], 16, 25), but perhaps significantly leaves the work of singing and poetry recitation (feng song shi |®|i|#) to the blind musicians (A Concordance to the Zhouli, 42); the division of labor is quite different from that envi sioned in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu. 128. See references in n. 117 above. The only term the various versions have in common is Confucius's favored type, feng jian MM 129. See Xiaojing (Shisan jing zhushu ed.), 2558. 130. Xunzijijie (Zhuzi jicheng ed.), 167 ("Chen dao"). 131. Confucius is made to say » IB Sic "How smoothly it works when one refers to a poem in the course of remonstrating" (A Concordance to the Kongzi ]iayu, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992], 76); the remark does not occur in the Zuozhuan, Zhao 12.11 (Yang, 1341), version of Confucius's comment on King Ling's fall.

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the powerful is dangerous, as the case of Sima Qian shows, and a new value accrues to indirection both in current and in remembered remon strances.132 The remonstrance of the three sighs has its posterity in the many later accounts of ingenious indirect criticism.133 But the remonstrances of the earlier works are different. There is safety in the distance that separates the narrators from the events narrated, and indirection is less important in these anecdotes than is the eloquent assertion of inherited language and its authority amid the disruptions of Spring and Autumn period life. If such eloquence is offensive, and arouses murderous thoughts in a ruler,134 that does not mean that remon strators must learn to speak subtly. Most remonstrances in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu are forthright assertions of the validity of inherited standards, whatever the danger the speaker faces. Because they are recounting events of the past, rather than prescribing contemporary administrative practice, the narrators are free to emphasize the way that remonstrance in all its various forms demonstrates the relevance, even the indispens ability, of Traditionalist learning. Remonstrance appears to have originated as one among several types of textual practice which had the object of preserving inherited lan guage of various sorts and presenting it as a guide during policy delib erations. We have examined one example of a rhymed remonstrance (called zhen /H) which legend says was solicited by a minister of King Wen for recitation. The practice of poetry recitation and shared inter pretation, so common in the diplomacy of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, might be another survival of older uses of texts. In historiography, how ever, remonstrance is not primarily the verbatim repetition of inherited language, but the rhetorical exercise by which passages of that language are shown to be relevant in moments of historical crisis. Speakers and historiographical narrators alike cherish their memories of traditional learning and its successes; as remonstrances are nourished on inherited texts, new remonstrances are nourished on older ones, new speeches on older exempla. The result is a historiography in which justice, success, heroism, eloquence and meaning are rooted in a devotion to the words of the past.

132. Hence the several accounts of Confucius's esteem for feng jiati M.W- "indirect remonstrance." 133. Evidence thatfengjian resembles the theatrical remonstrance of Zuozhuan, Zhao 28.4, is to be found in the Wu Yuechunqiu 'X (A Concordance to the Wuyuechunqiu, ed. D.C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching [Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1993], 24), where the Wu heir performs a remonstrance for his father, King Fuchai. 134. As, for instance, in the famous case of Zhao Dun |§/ii and his repeated remon strances (zou jian WAW) with Duke Ling of Jin (Zuozhuan, Xuan 2.3 [Yang, 655-59]).

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