Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 7, 2023

 

The Meng Old Text Yi Jing and the Han Controversy over the New and Old Texts of the Confucian Classics

(Abstract)

 

Wu Yangxiang

 

In the preface to the Shuowen, Xu Shen said that the seven Confucian texts, i.e., the Meng version of the Yi Jing, the Kong version of the Shang Shu, the Mao version of the Book of Poetry, the Zhou officials’ Li Ji, the Zuo Zhuan, the Lunyu and the Classic of Filial Piety were “all old texts.” Here what Xu refers to is the text nature of the classics cited in the Shuowen. However, many doubts arose in the Song and Ming dynasties, complicating the case of Confucian classical studies. Qing Confucianists and Republican scholars interpreted the phrase “all old texts” in a different way. Duan Yucai and Wang Guowei point out that “old texts” refers to the style or the school, which are wrong; Hong Yixuan, Song Xiangfeng and Ma Zonghuo interpret the attribution of the Meng Yi Jing to being “old text” on the basis of its content, which is also mere conjectural. Yang Shuda sought the true meaning directly from the texts, but the question why Xu Shen refers Meng’s version as old text, which actually is not, remains unanswered. Song Xiangfeng then argued that the Han Yi Jing was old text, but the notes were new text, which unexpectedly uncovers the mystery of the new text/old text controversy over the Meng Yi Jing. With reference to the combined new text/old text pattern of Meng’s work, we analyze the transmission of the seven Confucian classics in the Han dynasty. We find that their transmission in the Han was not polarized into the new texts and the old, but rather a diverse ecosystem where both coexisted in an embedded way. Once the mystery of the new and old text of the Meng version of the Yi Jing is uncovered, the controversy about Confucian scholarship in the Han dynasty is naturally resolved.