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Overview
Originally published in 1986.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691610931 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2014 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #76 |
| Pages: | 472 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Han Yü and the T'Ang Search for Unity
By Charles Hartman
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1986 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06665-3
CHAPTER 1
The Life of Han Yü
But we must remember, for one thing, that we tend to think of an Age in terms of the man whom we take as representative of it, and forget that equally a part of the man's significance may be his battle with his age. — T. S. Eliot "Goethe as the Sage"
I Ancestry
Fragments of an official genealogy compiled during Han Yü's lifetime trace the origin of the Han surname to the feudal principality of Han, which became independent when the hegemony of Chin was partitioned in 376 B.C. The Ch'in empire conquered and incorporated the Han statelet into its Ying-ch'uan prefecture in 230 B.C. The earliest Han ancestor listed in this genealogy is Han Hsin, whom Liu Pang enfeoffed as King of Ying-ch'uan in 202 B.C. for services rendered in the epic struggle against Hsiang Yü. Han Hsin later defected to the Hsiung-nu, but Han forces eventually captured and executed him in 196 B.C. His sons finally submitted to the Han in 168 B.C. One can only surmise what Han Yü thought about Han Hsin as his official progenitor.
Han Yü himself claimed descent from one Han Ch'i, a native of An-ting in Kansu, who defected in A.D. 409 from the Hunnish kingdom of Ho-lien P'o-p'o to serve Emperor Ming-yüan of the T'o-pa Wei dynasty. His son, Han Mao (d.456), caught the attention of the emperor and established the fortunes of the family when he distinguished himself in battle against the Ting-ling at age seventeen by holding his standard high in the air on a windy day. He was present at the destruction of the Hsia kingdom in 431 and was ennobled as King Huan of An-ting. The official history of the Wei dynasty recorded that Mao "was both resolute and straightforward. Although he was without literary knowledge, his opinions were rational. As a general, he excelled in providing for the populace. He was the bravest man of his time and was praised at court."
Han Yü's grandfather, Han Jui-su, served as chief administrator in the government-general of Kuei-chou, where, in Han Yü's words, "he brought civilization to the South." He had four sons; Han Yü's father, Han Chung-ch'ing (d.770), was the oldest and probably entered government service through the yin or hereditary privilege available to the son of a mandarin of the fifth degree or above.
Almost the only source of information about Han Yü's father is the "Inscription Commemorating the Departure of Magistrate Han of Wu-ch'ang" by the famous poet Li Po (701-762). Wu-ch'ang county, part of the prefecture of O-chou situated at the confluence of the Yangtse and the Han rivers in modern Hupei province, had rich deposits of iron, silver, and copper ores, which were used to mint coins. In addition to being the site of a major mint, O-chou was also the collection point for tax revenues from the South destined for Ch'ang-an via the Han River valley. Han Chung-ch'ing had apparently just been appointed magistrate of Wu-ch'ang when the An Lu-shan rebellion broke out on December 16, 755. The fighting soon closed the Pien Canal, the main transportation link to the South, and the Han valley route via O-chou became crucial to the government's continued access to its southern revenues. To further complicate matters, refugees from the North tripled the population of the O-chou area by 757.
Under these difficult circumstances, Han Chung-ch'ing eliminated corruption and improved the organization of the Wu-ch'ang minting operations, forwarding the increased output to the beleaguered government-in-exile northwest of Ch'ang-an. In recognition of these services, the Prime Minister Ts'ui Huan (730-791) recommended him for a special citation and transferred him to the magistracy of P'o-yang county in Jao-chou, also the location of a government mint.
Li Po ascribes to Han Chung-ch'ing that fragile combination of severity and compassion so cultivated by the civil servants of traditional China. "When he arrived to begin his appointment as magistrate of Wu-ch'ang, before he descended from his carriage, the people feared him; but as soon as he had descended, they liked him. His kindness was like a spring breeze, and in three months there were major reforms. The rapacious officials were held at bay, and the powerful families eyed him askance."
There is some evidence that Han Chung-ch'ing also had literary inclinations. According to a legend current in later times, the famous poet Ts'ao Chih (d.232) once appeared to Han in a dream and requested that he write a preface for Ts'ao's collected works. Although neither this preface nor any of Han Chung-ch'ing's other writings survive, the father of Han Yü finished his career as a secretary in the imperial library, obviously a post requiring some literary ability.
It is worthwhile noting that several features of Han Yü's ancestry probably influenced his thinking on social, cultural, and literary matters. First, there is the question of race. Ethnically, the T'ang was easily the most heterogeneous state in China before the Yuan (1260-1368), and, as we shall see, much of Han Yü's political and social thought attempted to establish a cultural unity in the face of this ethnic diversity. It is thus useful to remember that Han Yü was not descended, as were many of his contemporaries such as Yüan Chen (779-831), from the non-Chinese, mainly Turkish, settlers of northern China. Han Yü's lineage was Chinese, dating as fact from the early fifth century and as legend through a founder of the Han dynasty back to the mythical beginnings of Chinese civilization itself. Second and just as important, Han Yü's forefathers were northerners, and northern traditions of classical commentary and literary expression played an important part in the revitalization of latter eighth-century T'ang letters. We should also note the military origins of Han Yü's lineage. Throughout his life, Han Yü worked with the professional military in a variety of capacities and prided himself as a military strategist. This pride was apparently not unfounded: he was entrusted late in his career with a number of sensitive missions demanding a considerable understanding of late T'ang politico-military realities.
Finally, Han Yü's entire background, his ancestry and early life, identify him as a member of a chün-wang or "locally prominent clan." Although these clans were not among the elite aristocracy of the T'ang, they were part of a "much larger and more fluid group of lineages whose ... social and political influence was essentially provincial rather than national."
The provincial base of Han Yü's family was located in the area directly north and east of Lo-yang. The family owned land on both sides of the Yellow River, and its ancestral tombs were located on the northern bank of the river, slightly over three miles west of the modern city of Meng-hsien in the Huai-ch'ing district of Honan province. In the T'ang, this area was Ho-yang county, under the jurisdiction of the prefectural authorities at Lo-yang. The northern bank of the river around Ho-yang was a frequent battleground during the T'ang due to its strategic location on the northern approaches to Lo-yang. More than once, invasion forces from the separatist provinces in the northeast attempted to cross the Yellow River via the famous Ho-yang Bridge and capture Lo-yang. In the summer of 756 the great general Kuo Tzu-i made a desperate defense of the city here, and the old woman in Tu Fu's "Recruiting Officer at Shih-hao" offered to go herself to "answer the urgent call from Ho-yang." To prevent a repeat of this tragedy, the special military district of Ho-yang san-ch'eng was created in 781. Its military governor used the tax revenues of Ho-yang and neighboring counties for the support of a standing army in the area, although the prefect of Honan in Lo-yang still handled civil matters.
2 Early Life
Han Yü was born in 768, probably in the eastern capital of Lo-yang where his father seems to have had a house either in the city or on the family's lands to the northeast. A poem written in 807 relates that on the evening of his birth the moon was in the constellation of Sagittarius. According to T'ang astrological lore, people born on this day were fated to suffer unduly during their lifetime from slander and calumny.
Two months after his birth, Han Yü's mother died. When his father died two years later in 770, the orphan was taken in by his older brother Han Hui (739-780?), then aged about thirty, and his wife, nee Cheng (d.794). Since Han Hui was in mourning for his father, the next several years were probably spent at home in Lo-yang. Han Yü described these early years and the importance of his sister-in-law:
My birth was not auspicious. I was orphaned at two and raised by my older brother. But it was actually my sister-in-law's kindness that rescued me from death to life. Before I was seven, my brother received a government post, so we left Lo-yang to live in Ch'ang-an. When I was cold she clothed me,. when I was hungry she nourished me, so that neither illness nor misfortune befell me.
Since most knowledgeable scholars agree Han Hui and his uncle Han Yün-ch'ing exerted a strong personal influence on Han Yü's early intellectual and literary development, it is important to understand as much as possible about their backgrounds and thinking.
Five works by Han Yün-ch'ing survive, all of them stele inscriptions dating between 761 and 777. Writing in 759-760, Li Po already mentioned Han Yün-ch'ing's renown as a man of letters. There is little doubt this renown was the beginning of the Han family's literary reputation. Han Yü himself wrote:
My uncle's writings were esteemed at court during the Ta-Ii period (766-780). All who wanted to engrave the merits of their ancestors so as to have them believed by later generations repaired to the Han family.
In the wake of the An Lu-shan rebellion, most of the Han family seems to have fled its northern homestead along with many other intellectuals of the time and taken refuge in the region south of Yang-chou. Some, Uke Han Shen-ch'ing, another of Han Yü's uncles, found local employment. But others like Han Hui seem to have used the forced leisure to develop intellectual and potentially useful political contacts. Typical was the group known as the "Four K'uei" active about 765 in Shang-Yüan county of Sheng-chou (modern Nanking):
Ts'ui Tsao, Han Hui, Lu Tung-mei, and Chang Cheng-ts'e were friends, all living temporarily in Shang-Yüan. They liked to discuss plans for managing the world and allowed that they themselves could serve as ministers to princes. Their contemporaries called them the "Four K'uei."
K'uei was the legendary director of music whom the sage-emperor Yao entrusted with the task of educating his "descendent sons" through the use of poetry. Thus when another text claims that Han Hui's prowess at "singing" made him the leader of this group, this implies that he was capable not only of serving as a minister but also of fulfilling the ancient ideal of making literature an instrument of political reform. This ideal is also implied in Han Yü's own statement that Han Hui's "virtue, his actions, and his words were models for the age."
More difficult to gauge is the extent of the Han family's relations with other leading literary figures of the period. One of Han Yü's own poems shows that in his youth he knew Hsiao Ts'un, son of Hsiao Ying-shih. Han Yü also had a much deeper acquaintance in his early Ch'ang-an days with Li Kuan (766-794), son of Li Hua. But, given the lack of contemporary evidence, there is no way to substantiate the contacts the Sung sources allege between Han Hui and Han Yün-ch'ing on the one hand and Li Hua, Hsiao Ying-shih, Tu-ki Chi, and Liang Su on the other.
The "Four K'uei" caught the attention of Li Hsi-chün who early in 768 was appointed regional inspector of Che-hsi with headquarters at Jun-chou. Li entered the Censorate in 771 and recommended Ts'ui Tsao (737-787), who later indeed became prime minister. In 774, the mourning period for his father now completed, Han Hui was appointed diarist of activity and repose, probably also on the recommendation of Li Hsi-chün. There is no question that during these years in Ch'angan Han Hui belonged to the faction surrounding the powerful prime minister Yüan Tsai (d.777), the dominant figure at court during the reign of Emperor Tai-tsung (r.763-779). Unfortunately, the historical sources are so biased against Yüan Tsai it is difficult to form an accurate assessment of his policies. It is certain, however, that strong dictatorial control over the central bureaucracy and open patronage of Buddhism were central to his administration. Han Hui's participation in this faction embarrassed the Sung historians and is probably why they excluded him from the New T'ang History. When Yüan Tsai fell from power in the spring of 777, Han Hui was exiled with the rest of the Yüan party.
Han Yü was eleven when his brother arrived to assume his post as prefect of Shao-chou. He had begun to read and memorize the classics at the age of six when his family first moved to Ch'ang-an, and even then "he was fond of study and could compose orally." It was during these several years in Shao-chou that the young scholar began to compose serious compositions and to participate in adult literati society. It is certainly significant that Han Yü spent this important period of intellectual puberty at Shao-chou, the legendary site of the preaching of the Platform Sutra by the sixth Ch'an patriarch Hui-neng and a major Ch'an center in later years.
Han Hui died in late 780 or early 781, and his widow, now in charge of the family, undertook the arduous journey north to bury her husband in the ancestral cemetery at Ho-yang. This task completed, Madame Cheng apparently hoped to settle on the Han lands east of Lo-yang. The outbreak of hostilities between the court and the separatist provinces of the northeast, however, forced her to abandon this plan. Once again, the Han family headed south of the Yangtse, this time to an estate in Hsüan-ch'eng county of Hsüan-chou, probably acquired by Han Chung-ch'ing or Han Hui following the An Lu-shan rebellion.
The next four or five years were probably among the most tranquil of Han Yü's life. While warfare raged across the northern plains he lived in the secluded security of the Anhwei countryside and concentrated exclusively on his studies. He later wrote of these years that "carrying forth the work of my forefathers, I knew not the burden of weapons or plowshares, but I read and I wrote." And so it continued, year after quiet year until Han Yü was eighteen and ready to leave for the capital in pursuit of an official degree. In 786 the prospects for such a move probably looked bright. The central government had come to terms with the separatists, and Tsui Tsao, Han Hui's old friend from the "Four K'uei," had indeed become a prime minister. And Han Yü was ready, too. The period of adolescent memorization and preparation was over; the search for meaning and the hard road toward intellectual and literary maturity were about to begin. But large parts of what was later to become a program for reform of the national letters had already taken shape in Han Yü's mind, or so some scholars conclude from the following enigmatic lines from the "Fu on Renewing my Purpose," composed over ten years later in 797:
Because there were troubles on the central plains,
we went south of the River to live,
and there I began solely to focus on study,
putting my mind only to the precepts of the ancients.
I spied the traces these former spirits had left behind
and rose high and alone to search out their depths.
When once I saw my road, I pulled swiftly ahead,
never realizing I lacked the strength.
Probing the raiment of the ancients,
lamenting the dull garb of the moderns,
suddenly I forgot my lack of worth
and thought I could pick from the highest posts:
brightest are those who know themselves
and so the reason for my own delusions.
A good day chosen, I headed west
and in time arrived at the capital city.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Han Yü and the T'Ang Search for Unity by Charles Hartman. Copyright © 1986 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- CONTENTS, pg. vii
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. ix
- Orientations, pg. 1
- CHAPTER ONE The Life of Han Yü, pg. 16
- CHAPTER TWO : The Politics of Empire, pg. 119
- CHAPTER THREE : The Oneness of the Sage, pg. 173
- CHAPTER FOUR: The Unity of Style, pg. 211
- NOTES, pg. 277
- BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 374
- INDEX OF HAN YÜ'S WORKS, pg. 405
- GENERAL INDEX AND GLOSSARY, pg. 422