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8. Myth and the Making of History: Gu Jiegang and the Gushi bian Debates
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Chapter 8 Myth and the Making of History: Gu Jiegang and the Debates* Brian Moloughney 曰 :遂古之初誰傳道之? Who passed down the story of the far-off, ancient beginning of things?1 For most of Chinese history, the received wisdom was that Confucius was the one who had done this; he had transmitted the literary legacy of that “far-off, ancient beginning of things,” and in doing so he created the body of texts that became the canon—the classics. But this received wisdom came under concerted attack in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It began with the work of the New Text critics, particularly Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), but reached its peak with the iconoclasm of Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893–1980) and his colleagues involved in the Gushi bian 古史辨, or Disputing Antiquity movement. Not only did they seek to deny the role of Confucius in the transmission of the literary legacy of the past, they also sought to prove that these texts were not in fact a product of that earlier “far-off, ancient beginning of things,” but rather that they were created, not transmitted, a product of the Warring States period (c. 463–221 BCE) or later. This revisionism was part of a wider process of trying to rethink the inherited body of theory and practice relating to the construction of * I would like to thank those involved in the project on the formation and development of academic disciplines in China for feedback on various versions of this chapter, and especially John Makeham for initiating the project. 242 · Brian Moloughney historical knowledge and thereby to lay the foundations for a new form of disciplinary practice. Critiquing these inherited beliefs about the nature of antiquity was an integral part of the process of establishing history as an academic discipline. For Gu Jiegang, the methodological approach that appeared to be most fruitful in order to achieve this was summed up by the phrase “scientific method” (kexue fangfa 科學方法), and an important component of this was the task of “putting in order the nation’s past” (zhengli guoguo 整理國故). By examining the inherited textual tradition, sifting out the authentic from the inauthentic, Gu and his colleagues sought to place the study of Chinese history on a more reliable foundation . This idea that the creation of modern historical practice was conditional on putting in order the nation’s past was something that Gu Jiegang had taken from Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), who had returned to China from Columbia University and was by the early 1920s the leading figure in the National Studies (guoxue 國學) movement.2 Hu Shi was primarily focused on rethinking the philosophical and literary aspects of the textual tradition, whereas Gu Jiegang sought to explore what these ideas and methodologies might mean for those who were trying to help shape the “new historical studies” (xin shixue 新史學).3 For Gu Jiegang, putting in order the nation’s past meant overcoming the powerful historicizing tendency that had dominated Chinese thought for centuries. He argued that through a process of reverse euhemerization , legends and myths had been transformed into history.4 In introducing the Gushi bian collection, Gu made this very clear: The reader must not imagine that I have a special predilection for mythological interpretations, that in our ancient history there was originally nothing of a mythological character, or that mythology is restricted solely to short stories and other uncanonical literature. He must realize that if these mythological features have not survived in our ancient history, it is because those elements have long ago been stripped from them.5 To put in order the nation’s past, and in the process to help construct a new, scientific form of historical practice, Gu argued that it was necessary to recognize this tendency to historicize the mythical and to reexamine the textual basis of Chinese knowledge in order to reveal the mythical nature of stories that had long been held to be historical, stories that were at the heart of received understandings about the origins of the Chinese people. Only when this was done, he argued, would it be possible to get at the “true face” of the past. [34.236.152.203] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:51 GMT) Myth and the Making of History · 243 Discourse about myth had emerged in China at the same time as ideas about history as a scientific discipline began to take root. To begin with there was some linguistic confusion, with the terms “myth” and “legend” often being used...