Xuande

Chapter 12 The Controversy Between Modern and Ancient Chinese

The dispute between modern and ancient prose is an interesting thing. Around the dispute between modern and ancient prose, Confucian scholars in the world are generally divided into schools of modern literature and schools of ancient literature, and they are constantly fighting with each other.

For Liu Bei, it doesn't matter what the battle between modern and ancient prose is about, what matters is that they are "fighting".

Where there are competitors, there will be benefits. The dispute between modern and ancient Chinese prose has injected inexplicable vitality into the stagnant academic environment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and thus provided a glimmer of life for some people with low social status but trying to climb up.

From the time he started studying with Lu Zhi, Liu Bei set his sights on the debate between modern and ancient prose, trying to understand the nature of the academic struggle throughout the Han Dynasty.

To put it simply, the source of the dispute between modern and ancient Chinese can be traced back to Qin Shihuang.

Brother Yingzheng, the survivor of Fen VI, relied on the legalist reform to abolish the six countries and unify the whole country. He was the most hard-core and ruthless man in the world at that time, a peerless macho, very staunch, so he was very unimpressed with the chattering Confucianism.

Moreover, the era at that time was in the period when the county system was first established and the enfeoffment system was still in power. People all over the world had many opinions on whether the Qin State should be enfeoffed or counties after the unification of the world.

At that time, a group of Confucian scholars opposed the system of prefectures and counties, advocated the system of enfeoffment, pursued the ideals of Confucius, and demanded restoration, which was not tolerated by Ying Zheng's elder brother and Prime Minister Li Si, which led to the burning of books.

In essence, there is no difference between the burning of books and the dismissal of hundreds of schools by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. They are all for the unification of thinking. As for the subsequent "pitting of Confucianism" and the burning of books, there is no direct relationship.

But no matter what, the eldest brother dug a hole, lit a fire, and burned a batch of bamboo slips, disrupting the inheritance of Confucianism.

It is impossible to break it. There are many students of the Confucian school, and the bamboo slips are gone. Some old Confucian scholars have tried their best to recite the sage's articles, and they are forced to carry them, waiting for Yingzheng to die.

When Yingzheng got rid of his braids, the Han Dynasty was established, and the restricted area of ​​Confucian thought and speech was loosened, a group of surviving old Confucianists rose up.

They dictated articles to their disciples by memory, and the disciples recorded them on bamboo slips, restoring the physical inheritance of Confucianism and returning to the stage of history.

This is the origin of Jinwenjing and Jinwen School.

The origin of the ancient literature school is more interesting.

According to their own accounts, the origin of the ancient texts was discovered by Liu Bang's son, King Lu, in the wall of the Kong family's old house in Qufu when he was repairing his palace.

It is said that when the King of Lu tried to tear down the old house of Confucius, he heard a pleasant melody for no reason, and immediately dared not invade the old house of the Confucius family, and turned to be very respectful to the old house of the Confucius family.

After the ancient Chinese classics were discovered from the wall, they had been hidden in the inner treasury of the Han Palace. From the beginning of the Han Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty, there was no news at all, until they were discovered by Liu Xin, a member of the royal family who was in charge of editing the books.

Because the scriptures were written in the Warring States Period, according to Liu Xin's deduction, these scriptures were preserved by a group of Confucian scholars with courage and wisdom who risked their lives during the Qin Dynasty.

Isn't this more classic and true than the scriptures dictated by those old Confucian scholars?

I, Liu Xin, have reason to suspect that what you guys are passing on are all second-hand, counterfeit and shoddy products!

Who is orthodox?

This is orthodox!
After Emperor Ai of the Han ascended the throne, Liu Xin wrote to Emperor Ai of Han, requesting to add academic officials to the ancient texts, and further seek to replace the modern texts.

Of course, he didn't succeed.

Since Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty, Jinwen Confucianism has always been an official orthodox academic study. Now a bunch of inexplicable books of unknown origin have sprung out from nowhere, and dare to call themselves saints?

Don't you ask what kind of situation we will face after we lose our orthodox academic status, relying on the superiority and inheritance of Jinwen classics?
What you lose is the ancient scriptures and the infinite possibilities of the future, what we lose are real benefits!
Of course, those with vested interests who have achieved academic and political achievements do their best to oppose the ancient Chinese scriptures being placed in the hall of elegance.

Under the system dominated by the Jinwen School, non-vested interests who cannot obtain higher benefits naturally surround the ancient Chinese classics with ulterior motives, regard the ancient Chinese classics as their life-saving straw, and try to achieve cornering overtaking.

This is where the struggle between the two sides begins.

Although both parties claim that the scriptures they have learned are the real sage writings, at its root, the Jinwen School is the official orthodox school.

Even since Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, a series of policies formulated by the imperial court were all based on the content of Jinwen Jing as theoretical guidance.

Many things that modern people take for granted were unknown in that era. This is mainly because the period of history from the end of the Warring States period to the end of the Qin State was too short, so that the Qin Dynasty had many things that should be done that were not completed or were not completed at all. Just didn't do it.

Said to be the first feudal dynasty in Chinese history, the Qin Dynasty also did a lot of things, but they didn't do more things. They left a mess to the final winner Liu Bang, which made Liu Bang extremely troubled.

For example, because the eldest brother Yingzheng did not have a queen, so that after Liu Bangli Lu Zhi became the queen, everyone did not know where the queen's responsibilities and authority were. His power is boundless.

She can say one thing - my power as queen is unlimited.

Because there is no pioneer, no one knows what the result will be, so everyone can only cross the river by feeling the stones, take one step, count one step, keep the good ones, and find a way to eliminate the bad ones.

Some things that seem unbelievable now could not be corrected at the time, because no matter how smart people are, they have no future vision.

Most of the founders of the Han Dynasty came from humble backgrounds and lacked manners. They didn't respect Liu Bang after he became emperor.

Liu Bang was very troubled and didn't know what to do. At this time, the earliest masters of Jinwen Confucianism sensed an opportunity.

A Confucian scholar named Shusun Tong approached Liu Bang and told Liu Bang that although Confucian scholars can't help you conquer the world, they can help you manage. They are management talents.

Liu Bang asked Shu Suntong to try it.

Shusun Tong made a set of etiquette plans, how to eat food, how to drink wine, how to walk on the road, how to meet the emperor, and if the officials do not abide by it, they will be punished by law.

So the ministers did not dare to be rude to Liu Bang again, Liu Bang happily said "I don't know how cool it is to be an emperor until today".

At that time, Shu Suntong's method only involved Liu Bang's personal troubles, but when zoomed in on the entire Han Empire, it can be found that the Han Empire urgently needed a set of mature theoretical guidance that could govern the country at that time.

Before Liu Bang, the people who governed the country were nobles for generations, and everyone had their own family traditions to govern the country, but how could Liu Bang and his comrades have such a background?

Now the Modern Literature School came into being at this time, in response to the needs of the Han Empire, and provided the Han Empire with a set of theories.

Although they were not fully adopted at that time, they gained a firm foothold in the Han Dynasty.

After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Jinwen Confucianism officially became the official development guiding theory at the national level of the Western Han Empire.

Since then, no matter how unimaginable and strange the court's decisions are, such as the thought trend of passing on the country and changing surnames in the late Western Han Dynasty, the root of it is that it is endorsed by the classics of today's scriptures. Endorsed.

Confucius is also miserable.

It stands to reason that after the Western Han Empire had a set of mature state governance theory guidance, there should be no twists and turns. thing.

The theorists of Jinwen Confucianism have never designed a set of "Han Rites" similar to Zhou Rites for the Han Empire.

Among the Confucian classics, for the state and the emperor, the two classics "Li" and "Spring and Autumn" are the most important. The former is theory, and the latter is practice.

What the rulers of the Han Empire needed was a set of "Emperor Rituals" to rule the four poles, but the "rituals" in the theory of Jinwen Confucianism are actually the rituals of scholars. What they can do according to this set of theories is 【Push Shili to the Son of Heaven】.

This also means that, in the ritual theory of Jinwen Confucianism, there is no essential difference between the emperor and the scholars. What the emperor can enjoy, the scholars can also enjoy. .

Not to mention the Gongyang Spring and Autumn School, which once flourished during Emperor Wu's time. This school is more direct, saying that "the emperor is overlord, the princes are over the emperor, and the officials are over the princes". What people do is wrong, so the emperor must lead by example.

The core idea is that if the emperor makes a mistake, he has no right to blame the people below for making mistakes against him.

If this set of ideas is extended a little bit, it will be the theory of the prisoner of heaven... Hey, I dare not think about it.

Could this satisfy the needs of the rulers of the Han Empire?

Qin has changed the emperor to the emperor, and the emperor is completely different from the Zhou emperor in terms of status.

My lord, times have changed.

This is the source of the ruler's dissatisfaction with Jinwen Confucianism and Jinwen School.

It was under such a background that ancient Chinese Confucian classics and ancient literary school "turned out".

Compared with the Jinwen School and the Jinwenjing, the Ancient Literature School and the Guwenjing are more inclined to cooperate with the rulers and actively adapt to the needs of the rulers to create theories that meet the needs of the rulers.

They also have their own set of theoretical guidance methods, using "Zhou Guan Li" to oppose the "Yi Li" of the modern literature school, claiming that "Zhou Guan Li" was written by Zhou Gong.

In terms of practice, they used "Zuoshi Chunqiu" to oppose the "Gongyang Chunqiu" respected by the Modern Literature School, and also claimed that all the examples recorded in "Zuo Zhuan" were also written by Zhou Gong.

Anyway, it is to use the title of Duke Zhou to suppress Confucius, trying to win the battle between modern and ancient Chinese.

Of course, they did not succeed, because Jinwen Confucianism developed earlier and had a deeper foundation, and it was pure hard power that could not compete.

Unable to compete with hard power, the ancient literature school tried to find another way, conforming to the trend of thought of passing on the country and changing surnames created by the modern literature school at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, and supporting Wang Mang to go back to the ancient times, which once made the ancient literature school flourish.

As a result, Wang Mang lost his way of playing retro games.

The ancient literary school also failed because of this.

Therefore, in politics, the Jinwen School has always been dominant, and the academic officials appointed by the imperial court—doctors have always been monopolized by the Confucian scholars of the Jinwen School, and the officially recognized Five Classics and Fourteen Schools of Law are all Jinwen Jing.

During the period of Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, out of political needs, he established the "Zuoshi Chunqiu", which was considered to be an ancient literary classic, as an official school, and established a doctorate. The ancient literature school seemed to see the dawn.

As a result, in order to unify academic cognition and thinking after the Baihuguan Conference during the Han Zhang Emperor's period, "Zuoshi Chunqiu" was deposed as an official school, the ancient literature school was hit hard, and the semi-officialization process that had just begun was also interrupted.

Since then, the ancient literature school can only continue to develop among the people.

But the so-called fortune and misfortune depend on each other, and the ancient literature school is forced to become an opposition school, which is not without benefits, at least inheritance is no longer a problem.

In order to attack the seemingly unbreakable fortress of the Jinwen School, and at the same time to prevent being completely crushed by the Jinwen School, they chose to take the path of academic downgrading.

Beginning in the early Eastern Han Dynasty, the School of Ancient Literature gradually opened up part of its academic knowledge to the middle class of society, and while absorbing fresh blood from the middle class of society, it also harbored the longing for more ants to kill the elephant.

The academic inheritance of the Jinwen School, which dominates the academic circle of the Han Dynasty, is only oriented internally, with blood and in-laws as the main contact method, and is rarely open to the outside world.

Although they maintained their status as official schools, they became increasingly rigid and cumbersome, and lost their ability to innovate. They also combined with the theory of prophecy and became mysterious and unpredictable.

As a result, some of the more enlightened scholars of the Jinwen School even felt that the Jinwen Jing was not as good as the Gu Wen Jing, and instead began to actively learn from the Gu Wen Jing, which contributed to a certain degree of integration of modern and ancient texts in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

With the destruction of the political stability of the Central Committee of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the gradual decline of the official Taixue, the academic circles of the Eastern Han Dynasty also began to change.

After the Eastern Han Dynasty, the emperors were generally young, and their relatives came to the political stage to dominate politics. After the emperors became adults, they would try their best to regain power. Therefore, the political stability of the Eastern Han Dynasty began to be severely challenged.

With the disappearance of political stability, academic stability, which is highly bound to political stability, has also been challenged and destroyed.

Taixue gradually fell into disrepair, doctors no longer gave lectures, and scholars all over the world gradually no longer regarded Taixue as an academic authority. The academics of the Eastern Han Dynasty began to change from unity to division, and changed from Luoyang Taixue as the core dissemination of scholarship to family as the core dissemination of scholarship.

Without the strong support of the central government, coupled with the fact that it has become more closed and conservative, the decline of the Modern Literature School is inevitable. The family inheritance of the Five Classics and Fourteen Family Laws is more like a political inheritance than an academic inheritance.

In contrast, in order to survive and transcend, the School of Ancient Literature chose to teach ancient classics to a wider range of social groups and unite the vast landlord and powerful classes.

A group of bigwigs from the school of ancient literature open classes to recruit students from the society, and the threshold for accepting apprentices is not to say very low, at least it can be seen, and there are no hidden conditions such as blood relationship or in-law relationship.

Therefore, there is an endless stream of scholars. The foundation of the ancient literature school is far broader than that of the modern literature school.

Coincidentally, Lu Zhi, a world-renowned Confucian, was born in the study of ancient Chinese classics.

No matter how coincidentally, he is also from Zhuo County, Zhuo County, and Liu Bei is his little fellow. In this era when the county was the country, the connection between the two naturally has an advantage.

On this point, Liu Bei is not unlucky.

(End of this chapter)