Kung Tzu-chen [龔自珍 and the Redirection of Literati Commitment in Early Nineteenth Century China

Kung Tzu-chen ^E m 3^ an¿ the Redirection of Literati Commitment in Early Nineteenth Century China Judith Whitbeck University of Texas at Dallas in the months after the removal of the recently deceased Ch'ien-lung emperor's favorite Ho-shen ¿G >-t , formal debate began within the prestigious Hanlin Academy concerning the appropriate direction for the reform mandate of the Chiach 'ing emperor who had commenced his rule in fact as well as in name upon the death of his father in early 17 99. On one side stood the new emperor's trusted tutor. Chu Kuei ^ jfcf. (1731-1807) , recently called back to the capital to serve as President of the Board of Civil Office in charge of supervising the metropolitan examinations that spring. On the other stood two of Chu Kuei 's proteges: the Hanlin compiler '¦%. IL -è Hung Liang-chi 7/-^ 1JC & (1749-1806) and Hung ' s younger Ch'ang-chou ^p ??? landsman Chang Hui-yen ^-fe- J§ 3 2 (1761-1802) . Hung had passed the metropolitan examination with second highest honors in 1790. Until that time he had served for nearly twenty years as a private secretary, distinguishing himself as a k'ao-cheng 7*j "5.^£" scholar associated with the Imperial Manuscript Library (Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu gi7 m 1SiS" ) project sponsored by Chu YUn ^. JzJ (1729-1781) and his younger brother Chu Kuei. Like several other officials who addressed the question of Ho-shen' s abuses and the need for reform in 17 99, Hung had begun to formulate his critical views on contemporary conditions privately in 1793, and as early as 1796 had traced the recent outbreak of sectarian rebellion in the western provinces to the corruptive effects of Ho-shen' s long dominance of the bureaucracy. Whereas Hung can be considered representative of a group of scholar-officials based in Peking who began as an offshoot of the north-scholar patronage network of Chu Kuei and Weng Fang-kang m ^ i?^ (1733-1818) , Chang Hui-yen represented a younger generation of Ch'ang-chou scholars who grew to maturity as Chuang Ts'un-yu 7*^ & -TX , the undisputed doyen of Ch'ang-chou learning, was becoming increasingly disenchanted with what he felt to be the narrow focus of philological scholarship on the classics and had begun to urge his students to synthesize and draw explicit conclu4 sions about the texts retrieved and authenticated. At the time Chang passed the metropolitan examinations in 17 99, he was already highly respected as a classicist and poet. In both roles, he infused his writing with morally-inspired political purpose. His efforts to transform tz 'u ~%$ into a vehicle for allegorical commentary on contemporary 5 events launched a new school of poetry. His exegetical work on Yu Fante «^^interpretation of the Book of Changes, which stressed the importance of "hidden meanings in subtle language" (wei-yen ta-i 7/^X. ä A- á/ ' · testified to Chang's filiation with the Chuang family tradition of scholarship, with which Ch'ang-chou learning came to be identified. Typical also of his training in Ch'ang-chou was Chang's interest in ancient ritual and the emphasis he placed on the crucial role of ritual in maintaining a humane society: "To destroy a country, to shatter a family, to ruin human beings, one must first eliminate rituals." Chang's interest in the Classic of Rites was shared by other textualist scholars who saw in ritual (li^f^ ) a more dynamic and inclusive alternative to their understanding of Sung neo-Confucian principle (Ii 2Jf ) . But Ch'ang-chou scholars went further in emphasizing the integrative role of ritual as a means for establishing a new basis for the world-ordering Confucian project. Chang's was a very broad concept of ritual as institutions ensuring a morally ordered world. He argued that order was created in antiquity by having officials and elders join with the common people in ceremonies that were ritually specific so that the people learned hierarchy in the practice of them and society was not broken up into separate entities. The reason moral order had not been achieved since the three dynasties, according to Chang, was because these rituals...