CHAPTER ONE
Minority as the Protagonists
Revisiting Ru ć (Confucians) and Their Colleagues under Emperor Wu (141â87 BCE) of the Han1
Students of Chinese history probably are all familiar with a well-known narrative, easily summarized as âthe victory of ruâ in the Han. In this narrative, the Warring States period, when the Hundred Schools flourished, has usually been depicted as the distant background, while the short-lived Qin 秊 dynasty (221â207 BCE), which is said to have cruelly oppressed scholars and their teachings, has played the overture. The early Han court, commonly described as dominated by Huang-Lao é»è thought, has become a proscenium. Through dramatizing the struggles between followers of Huang-Lao thought, represented by Empress Dowager Dou ç«ć€Șć, and supporters of ru learning, represented by Emperor Wu, this thesis portrayed the elevation of ru as a theater piece.
Over the past decades the occasional voice has openly challenged the idea that Han ru routed their court rivals.2 For example, some scholars contend that Emperor Wu failed to promote pure ru learningâhe too embraced Huang-Lao doctrines and Legalist teachings.3 Some recognized that few of Emperor Wuâs political policesâeconomic, military, even religiousâbore the stamp of Confucianism.4 Recently, Michael Nylan and Nicolas Zufferey have demonstrated that in the Han there was no distinctive group called Confucians with a distinguished ideology. Instead, those who called themselves ru in Han times were a heterogeneous group with varying intellectual orientations; some were not even followers of Confucius.5
But if we cannot define ru according to a shared doctrine or moral code, why did Sima Qian classify some of his contemporaries into one group, call them ru, and define them as the followers of Confucius, and thereby set them apart from the rest of the officials of the day? What was the implication of such a category in social terms?
In order to answer these questions, I will look beyond the contentions between different intellectual discourses, beyond the materials strictly relevant to ru. This chapter will investigate the social origins and intellectual orientations of eminent officials during Emperor Wuâs reign to assess the positions those called ru occupied in the power hierarchy. It will demonstrate that ru, the protagonists in the dominant narrative, were in fact a small minority on the political stage during Emperor Wuâs rule. Based on these observations, I will proceed to ask why the conventional wisdom has habitually devoted full attention to these few ru, who occupied a tiny fraction of the high-level posts, and therefore mistakenly claimed the triumph of ru. I will further demonstrate that traditional perception and representation of Emperor Wuâs reign are profoundly shaped by two chapters of the Grand Scribeâs Records (Shi ji ćČèš): namely, the displaced chapter âThe Basic Annals of Emperor Wuâ (Xiaowu benji ćæŠæŹçŽ) and âThe Collective Biographies of Ruâ (Ru lin lie zhuan ćæććł).6
RU, A MINORITY GROUP
Several famous stories are often cited by scholars dealing with the political and intellectual history of Western Han. For example, Dowager Empress Dou, a faithful follower of Huang-Lao thought, tried to punish Yuan Gu èœ
ćș, a ru, because she disliked the ru learning. Emperor Wu employed Zhao Wan è¶ç¶° and Wang Zang çè§, two ru, to implement certain ritual practice, and promoted Gongsun Hong ć
Źć«ćŒ, an expert on the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu æ„ç§) (hereafter, Annals) from humble circumstances to prominence. Rather than looking only at the activities of these ru officials, I would like to ask who were the colleagues of Gongsun Hong, Zhao Wan, and Wang Zang; what features characterized the high officials who directed the state apparatus; what factors contributed to their success in the officialdom.
In âA Chronological Table of Famous High Civil and Military Officials since the Founding of the Hanâ (Han xing yilai jiangxiang mingchen nianbiao æŒąè仄äŸć°çžćèŁćčŽèĄš) of The Grand Scribeâs Records, appear the names, terms of appointment, and dates of death or dismissal of the Chancellors (Chengxiang äžçž), Commanders-in-chief (Taiwei ć€Șć°; later the title was changed to Dasima 性ćžéŠŹ), and Grandee Secretaries (Yushi dafu ćŸĄćČ性怫), known collectively as the Three Dukes (Sangong äžć
Ź). The latter were employed between the establishment of the Han dynasty (206 BCE) and the middle of the reign of Emperor Yuan ć
ćž (20 BCE).7 This information is supplemented by the chapter âA Table of the Hundred Officials and Dukesâ (Baiguan gongqing biao çŸćźć
ŹćżèĄš) of The History of Western Han (Han shu æŒąæž), which provides, in addition to information regarding the Three Dukes, the names and dates of the appointments and deaths or dismissals of the Nine Ministers of the State (Jiuqing äčćż), noted generals, and senior officials of the metropolitan area.8
With power second only to the emperorâs, the Three Dukes occupied the apex of the Han bureaucracy. The Nine Ministers constituted the second highest stratum.9 The senior officials of the metropolitan area, as the candidates for the positions of the Nine Ministers, enjoyed status equal to or slightly lower than the Nine Ministers.10 In addition to their administrative titles, officials in the Han court were also ranked in terms of bushels of grain, ranging from 10, 000 bushels to 100 bushels. It is said that the Three Dukes were ranked ten thousand bushels, while the Nine Ministers and senior officials of the metropolitan area fully two thousand bushels. These three groups comprised the most eminent officials of the imperial bureaucracy.11
During the fifty-four years of Emperor Wuâs rule, 141 people reached these eminent positions. Collecting information scattered throughout The Grand Scribeâs Records and The History of Western Han, it is possible to identify seventy-seven peopleâs social origins, career patterns, intellectual orientations, and social networks; these are illustrated in table 1.1 (see also chart 1.1).12 An analysis of the above information provides us a clear picture of who was operating the state apparatus on a daily basis.13
BACKGROUNDS OF EMINENT OFFICIALS
Under Emperor Wu there were twelve chancellors. Among them, three belonged to empressesâ families or the imperial family proper; six were descendants of high officials.14 Of the latter six, four were either the sons or grandsons of men who helped establish the Han and four were ennobled because of their military accomplishments. The remaining three men were Li Cai æèĄ, Tian Qianqiu ç°ćç§, and a famous paragon of ru, Gongsun Hong. Li Cai came from a military family: one of his ancestors had served as a general in the Qin state, and one of his cousins was the famous general Li Guang æ滣. Tian Qianqiu had been a Gentleman-attendant serving at Emperor Gaoâs shrine (Gaomiao qinlang é«ć»ćŻąé)âhis social origin is not clear.
Chart 1.1 Unknown and Identifiable High Officials under Emperor Wu
Table 1.1. High Officials under Emperor Wu (141â87 BCE) æŠ ćž (ć
Ź ć
ć 141â87) äž æ äž ć
Ź äč ćż ç”± èš
Compared with the chancellors whose families had occupied a place near the top of the power pyramid for decades, Li Caiâs and Tian Qianqiuâs backgrounds were modest. But compared with Gongsun Hong, they stood high. According to Sima Qian, Gongsun Hong had been dismissed from a clerkship he had held in a prison at Xue (Xue yuli èçć); so poor was he in his youth that he had herded pigs.
By and large, family background dictated oneâs future in Han China, and this was especially true of high officials. We know little about how Chancellor Liu Qumao ćć±æ° climbed to the top of the imperial bureaucracy; the record tells us only that he was the son of Liu Sheng ćć, a half brother of Emperor Wu. Chancellor Tian Qianqiuâs path to glory must have struck his colleagues as eccentric. Pleased by a one-sentence memorial from a Gentleman-attendant at Emperor Gaoâs shrine, the seventy-year-old emperor promoted Tian Qianqiu from his lowly post to the office of Grand Herald (Dahong lu 性鎻è)âthereby making him one of the Nine Ministers. A few months later Wu appointed Tian Chancellor. Ban Gu reported that on hearing this story, the leader of Xiongnu ćć„Ž, entitled Chanyu ćźäș, derided the Han court for not employing a worthy fellow.15
Seven of the men who served as Chancellor had held illustrious positions and exerted considerable influence in court long before Emperor Wu succeeded the throne. Xu Chang èš±æ, Xue Ze è柀, and Zhuang Qingdi èéçż had all inherited their grandfathersâ noble status during the reign of Emperor Wen æćž in the early 160s BCE. Dou Ying ç«ćŹ°, Tian Fen ç°èĄ, Li Cai, and Shi Qing had ascended to official positions ranked two thousand bushels, the second-highest rank, during the reign of Emperor Jing æŻćž. Because his father had served the throne with distinction, Zhao Zhou è¶ćš had been ennobled in 148 BCE. Gongsun He ć
Źć«èł, whose father was once ennobled as marquis of Pingqu ćčłæČ because of military achievement, served as a retainer of Emperor Wu when the emperor was still a crown prince and was appointed Grand Coachman, one of the Nine Ministers, in 135 BCE.
Not expected to have outstanding performance, innocent descendants of meritorious officials of previous courts, especially of the founding father, naturally served as candidates for Chancellor. This practice had been followed by Emperor Wu, as Sima Qia...