Ritendiskussionen am Hof der nördlichen Song-Dynastie (1034–1093): Zwischen Ritengelehrsamkeit, Machtkampf und intellektuellen Bewegungen (review)

This book, a revised version of the author’s 2003 dissertation at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, is a thorough and groundbreaking study of Northern Song Dynasty debates on state rituals. It marks a major contribution to the fields of Song history and Song intellectual history.

As Christian Meyer makes clear in a series of methodological reflections at the beginning of his book (pp. 33–39), ritual discourse is a particularly important feature of the Song Dynasty. Availing himself of the conceptual tools of Michel Foucault and “ritual studies” scholars such as Catherine Bell, Meyer underlines the social and contextual nature of Confucian rituals (li 禮). Such rituals are best seen as “discursive practices;” while the power center (the court) always tried to exercise and increase its power by imposing its vision of ritual hierarchy, it became engaged in a dialogical interaction with its subjects, who in turn were able to enter into a process of “negotiation” about these rituals and, thus, exercise power and articulate subjectivity. Thus, Meyer is less interested in the performative aspects of Confucian rituals and more in the questions of how the various interpretations of Confucian rituals were negotiated among the political actors of the day, and how rites functioned as a “medium,” the meaning of which was constantly being elaborated and contested in the struggle for symbolic power.

In the next five chapters, Meyer offers rich material evidence to fill in this interesting methodological framework. In many ways, the famous “Debate on (the Prince of) Pu” 濮議 (1064–1067) is at the core of this book. As is well known, after Emperor Renzong’s death in 1063 and the ascension of his adopted son, Zhao Zongshi 趙宗實, to the throne as Emperor Yingzong, the court officials and the literati elite faced the problem of how to deal with the paradoxical situation of the newly enthroned ruler having two fathers: the deceased Emperor Renzong and the imperial Prince of Pu, his natural father. In the following months and years, court officials disputed such issues as which title Emperor Yingzong should bestow on the Prince of Pu, how he should relate to him, and how his burial site should be designed. In his extensive discussions (in chapters II, III, and IV), Meyer analyzes the different positions held by the various actors involved in this debate, their interests, and the theoretical underpinnings of their arguments. He thereby demonstrates that the participants used this debate not only for the articulation of ritual expertise but also for power bargaining.

But Meyer aims at much more. Based on analyses of court debates about sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, as well as court music and controversies surrounding the correct mourning ritual for the deceased Councilor Sima Guang (chapters II and III), he provides us with a comprehensive overview of the discourse on ritual questions between 1034 and 1093. He builds up a strong case for the argument that these debates were central to the identity of the literati elite, and to intellectual and social cohesion within this privileged class (pp. 315–317). Meyer’s perspective is a welcome addition to recent scholarship focused on political factionalism.¹ In tracing the development of the ritual discourse over a period of sixty years, the reader comes to understand the fundamental continuity of these debates; even Wang Anshi was unable to change the relative independence of this field, which seems to have become politicized only after 1086 (pp. 453–455). Meyer’s selection of primary sources is extremely careful; still, a critical reader may question whether his decision to limit himself to debates on imperial rituals may not have made him overlook other ritual issues crucial in the Song Dynasty (for example, the various discussions on the restoration of the “descent-line system” zongzi fa 宗子法 and the “instructions of the Imperial...