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From Song to Ming: the Establishment of a New Tradition I (Mid-10Th Century to the End of the 16Th Century)

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From Song to Ming: the Establishment of a New Tradition I (Mid-10Th Century to the End of the 16Th Century) Chapter 9 From Song to Ming: The Establishment of a New Tradition I (Mid-10th Century to the End of the 16th Century) Prologue: China Before the Birth of the Neo-Confucian School of Principle For some twenty years in the second half of the tenth century, the Song emperors Taizu (Zhao Kuangyin, 927–976, r. 960–976) and Taizong (Zhao Kuangyi, 939–997, r. 976–997) recovered or pacified the states of Northern Han, Southern Tang, Wuyue, Southern Han, Later Shu, and so on. Except for the Liao Khitan dynasty (916–1125) in the north and the Xi Xia Tangut state (1038–1227) in the north west, the constantly changing situation of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907–960) and the land seizures of the Regional Commanders since the Mid-Tang dynasty were basically brought to and end. With the establishment of the Song dynasty (Northern, 960–1127; Southern, 1127–1276), China again entered an era of “unity” (yitong 一統). With the Liao and the Xi Xia occupying a very large piece of land formerly controlled by the Tang empire, however, this “unity” was far from perfect. Under pressure from the border regions, the disdainful attitude of Chinese emperors toward “All Under Heaven” was subtly transformed. At the beginning of the Song dynasty, the celebrated official Zhao Pu (922–992) consoled himself by saying that “the five stars and twenty-eight constellations along with the five sacred mountains and the four great waterways are all in China and not with the four barbarians (siyi 四夷).”1 On the one hand, they felt somewhat at peace by limiting their borders to the area of China occupied by the Han people, but on the other hand they were quite worried because they now knew that this China was no longer a tianxia; it no longer represented “All Under Heaven.” Precisely because they were facing foreign countries, besides resisting the threat of alien peoples, the Song dynasty of the Zhao family also had to empha- size the legitimacy of their government (state, guojia) and demonstrate the reasonableness of their culture. They felt a profound and pressing anxiety, and this anxiety was the starting point for Song cultural awareness. These were 1 “Guan huixing,” Song wenjian, 1992, j. 41, 619. According to XZZTJCB, 1979, j. 30, 685, this memorial was submitted in 989. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004281349_004 From Song to Ming: The Establishment of a New Tradition I 97 the feelings both of the emperors and the high officials. After the loss of state authority and the increasing intellectual chaos of the Late Tang and the Five Dynasties period, these urgent feelings of apprehension were conspicuous among many intellectuals both at court and in the society at large. Both the menace of foreign enemies and internal divisions represented a crisis of legiti- macy for the government (the state) and the social order. Re-establishing state authority and intellectual order were both rather thorny problems. This was especially so at the beginning of the Song. Having experienced the chaos of the end of the Tang and the Five Dynasties, the mili- tary revolt of 960 that brought Zhao Kuangyin to power and then his sudden death leading to the suspicion that Zhao Kuangyi murdered his elder brother to usurp the throne, how could people be convinced that this was a legitimate and reasonable political regime? In traditional China where a new regime always had to prove that it had “received and was carrying out the Mandate of Heaven,” it required more than just political and military power. It also seemed to need a series of cultural policies to support its legitimacy. On this account, the following actions of the early Song court were quite significant. First, they re-established a ritual system and tried to validate the legitimacy of Heaven’s gift of power to them by means of a series of ceremonies. Second, they progres- sively established an authoritative and efficient bureaucratic system and re- established political, economic, and cultural order. All this was well received by the general public. Finally, step by step they re-established the efficiency of the world of knowledge, thought and belief, employed education and exami- nations to foster a hierarchical intellectual class, and re-established a well ordered cultural support system in order to re-affirm intellectual order. After about forty or fifty years, due to the signing of the Chanyuan Treaty of 1004 with the Liao Khitan state, external threats to the Song dynasty were temporarily eliminated. By the reign of Zhenzong (Zhao Heng, 916–1122, r. 997–1122), the legitimacy of the state and its power had become generally accepted. Since it had established an authoritative governmental system and restored political, economic and cultural order, the Zhao Song dynasty was also acknowledged and accepted by the scholar class. The dynasty also began a process of re-establishing intellectual order using a strategy of reigning in the military and developing the civil institutional system, rehabilitating the world of knowledge, thought and belief, and using education to foster a hierarchical intellectual class. No matter how much the state re-established its legitimacy and gained the acceptance of the scholar class, however, the crisis of the world of knowl- edge, thought and belief still persisted. This was because the successful re-establishment of governmental authority and national (minzu) confidence .
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