K'ung-ts'ung-tzu: A Study and Translation of Chapters 15-23 with a Reconstruction of the Hsiao Erh-ya Dictionary (review)

348 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 Yoav Ariel. K'ung-ts'ung-tzu: A Study and Translation ofChapters 15-23 with a Reconstruction ofthe Hsiao Erh-ya Dictionary. Sinica Leidensia, vol. 35. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996. x, 204 pp. Hardcover, isbn 90-04-09992-1. The book under review is the second and concluding part ofYoav Ariel's study and translation of the Kong cong zi. In the earlier volume (henceforth "Ariel A"), published in 1989 by Princeton University Press, Ariel provided the reader with a detailed introduction to the history ofthe text and a translation (in English) of chapters 1-10 and 12-14.1 In the present volume ("Ariel B"), the author offers us a translation of chapters 15-23, a reconstruction of the ancient "dictionary" Xiao er ya that makes up the eleventh chapter, and a new introduction in which he attempts to isolate and typify the main philosophical issues that occupied the author of the Kong cong zi while he was composing his text. In the introduction to Ariel A, the author concluded that the Kong cong zi is a third-century forgery, probably by Wang Su (a.d. 195-256) or someone ofhis circle. While pretending to be a genuine record of the fortunes and misfortunes of Confucius and his descendants down to the twenty-first generation (the Kong cong zi ends with the death ofKong Jiyan in a.d. 124), and of the way the members of the Kong family tried to defend and define their family's intellectual heritage through conversations with interlocutors, the Kong cong zi would in fact have been fabricated by the high-ranking official Wang Su in order to back up his own position in the third-century political and intellectual world. Thus, Ariel claims, the Kong cong zi can teach us more about Wang Su and his circles than about Confucius and his descendants (as Ariel notes somewhere, the author of the Kong cong zi has no knack for dating where it concerns the Warring States period) and, as a result, more about the particularities of Confucianism in the third century than about the Confucianism of earlier periods. Several reviewers ofAriel A have signaled their approval of the main tenets of Ariel's conclusions, but at the same time have expressed some reservations. Most of these concern the question of whether Ariel's conclusion that the Kong cong zi is a forgery (which Zhu Xi had already said in the twelfth century) automatically entails that it should be read only as a third-century document. A. C. Graham, for example, maintains that the Kong cong zi, "like other forgeries from the Old Text Documents onwards, draws heavily on still extant sources and surely also on oth-© 1998 by University ers nowlost »2 R p Kramers> who published on the Kongzijiayu, presumably a later forgery by the same Wang Su, believes Ariel goes too far in merely constructing the Kong cong zi as "a third century Confucian response to the new 'Neo-Taoistic' developments," and states that one should not neglect the fact that ofHawai'i Press Reviews 349 Wang Su in compiling the Kong cong zi was basically editing previously existing text material assembled by pious members ofthe Kong clan.3 Ofcourse, one cannot blame a translator for leaving the investigation of sources outside the scope ofhis study, especially as many sources are no longer available to twentieth-century readers. Still, given Kramer's and Graham's remarks , one would have expected more sensitivity to the issue of sources from Ariel in his second book. The impression one gets from reading the translation and notes in Ariel B (in the introduction the issue is not discussed at all) is that Ariel's conviction that the Kong congzi should be read as a document ofthirdcentury developments is so strong that it prevents him from acknowledging that a double-track approach is possible and might be fruitful. At least an attempt should have been made to separate those elements in the Kong congzi that bear directly upon third-century political matters from elements that the forgers "borrowed " from earlier materials...