by Chen Jack W
A different, much more elaborate version of the same speech is re-
corded in the Zhenguan zhengyao:
At the start of the Zhenguan reign, Taizong made an announcement to
his attending officials, saying, “In undertaking the sovereign’s way, it is
necessary first to preserve the common people. If one harms the common
people in order to serve one’s own body [ shen], this is like slicing one’s
thigh in order to feed one’s stomach; the stomach might be full but the
body would be destroyed.64 If one wants to pacify the empire, it is necessary
first to rectify one’s own body. It has never been the case that the body is rectified but the shadow crooked, or those above ordered but those below in chaos. Each
time We consider what might injure Our body, [We find that] it is never exter-
nal things, but rather the disasters that are produced from Our lusts and desires.
If We are addicted to lusting for mouthwatering flavors and take heedless pleas-
ure in beautiful sights and sounds, then as We desire more, the harm arising from
it becomes greater, and this will both obstruct the affairs of governance and dis-
rupt the lives of the people. Moreover, if We let slip a single dissolute word, then the myriad surnames [of the common people] will lose their cohesive unity [literally, “break apart the body”], and once their resentment is stirred up, then rebel-
lion will arise. Whenever We consider this, We dare not be carelessly complacent.
—————
64. The phrase gegu 割股 refers to the radical practice of slicing off one’s own thigh meat in order to feed a hungry lord or parent. This was practiced throughout Chinese history, though it was generally not condoned by the state. For an early reference, see Zhuangzi jishi, 29.998. The term shen 身 commonly means “person,” but in the context here of corporeal appetites, I have translated it as “body,” while cognizant of the semantic ambivalence encapsulated in shen. Note the occurrence of shen as body in the following (thematically related) passage from the Zuo zhuan, in which Zichan 子產 tries to persuade the state of Jin not to make excessive demands for gifts: “Would it not be better to have other men to say of you that, ‘You truly nurture me,’ than to say of you that, ‘You take from me in order to nurture yourself’? The elephant’s body [ shen] is destroyed as a result of having tusks; this is because of gifts” 毋寧使人謂子，子實生我，而謂子浚我以生乎？象有齒以
焚其身，賄也. See Zuo zhuan, Duke Xiang, 24th year / Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, pp.
1089-90.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
79
Grand Master of Remonstrance Wei Zheng replied, saying, “In the ancient
past, sagely and wise rulers all ‘near at hand, took them [referring to patterns in-
herent in world] from their own persons [ shen], and faraway, embodied them
based on things.’65 In the past, the king of Chu employed Zhan He and asked
him what was the critical issue in governing the state. Zhan He replied with, ‘The
technique of cultivating one’s body.’ The king of Chu asked further, ‘How would
you go about governing the state?’ Zhan He said, ‘I have never heard of a situa-
tion in which the ruler’s body was governed and the state was in chaos.’66 What
Your Majesty has illuminated is truly the same as these principles of antiquity.”
貞觀初，太宗謂侍臣曰：“為君之道，必須先存百姓；若損百姓以奉
其身，猶割股以啖腹，腹飽而身斃。若安天下，必須先正其身，未有
身正而影曲，上理而下亂者。朕每思傷其身者，不在外物，皆由嗜欲
以成其禍；若耽嗜滋味，玩悅聲色，所欲既多，所損亦大，既妨政
事，又擾生人。且復出一非理之言，萬姓為之解體；怨讟既作，離叛
亦興。朕每思此，不敢縱逸。”
諫議大夫魏徵對曰：“古者聖哲之主，皆亦近取諸身，故能遠體諸
物。昔楚聘詹何，問其理國之要，詹何對以‘脩身之術。’楚王又
問：‘理國何如？’詹何曰：‘未聞身理而國亂者。’陛下所明，實
同古義。”67
The version in the Zhenguan zhengyao embeds the passage about self-
cannibalism in a larger context of moral self-cultivation. Taizong does not
begin with a description of the interdependencies of the political order,
but instead speaks more generally about the necessity of honoring the
lives of the common people. More interestingly, he substitutes the ideo-
logically charged phrase gegu 割股 (“slicing one’s thigh”) for the more
general phrase gerou 割肉 (“slicing one’s flesh”), a change that marks an
important difference in how Taizong is presenting the sovereign’s body.
The problem of the radical gesture of gegu is that it violates the stricture that no self-harm should be inflicted on the body, which is, after all, a gift
from the parents. Arguments against this practice thus tend to place the
blame on the children, who violate one rule of filiality in order to uphold
another. Yet Taizong blames the sovereign whose desire to satiate his ap-
—————
65. This is an allusion to the “Commentary on Appended Phrases” in the Classic of Changes; see Zhou yi zhengyi, 8.74b, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 86. It refers to the formation of the trigrams by Fuxi. The allusion is discussed in more detail below.
66. For the anecdote about Zhan He, see Liu An 劉安 (d. 122 bc), comp., Huainan honglie jijie, 14.466.
67. Zhenguan zhengyao, 1.3.
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80
On Sovereignty and Representation
petites forces his subjects to commit the act of gegu. The issue, as pre-
sented above, is that the sovereign mistakes his shen as a private thing and fails to see that his body and the bodies of his subjects together form the
single collective body of the empire.
At this point, Taizong goes on to reframe the argument through the
rhetoric of self-cultivation, a moral reminder that Wei Zheng also picks up.
The problem of popular suffering can be solved through the rectification of
the personal body, the shen. If there is no boundary that truly separates the shen of the sovereign from those of his subjects, then once the sovereign’s
desires are regulated, the empire can know peace. Underlying this argu-
ment are earlier philosophical passages from the late Zhou that discuss the
ritualized body, such as the following, from the Analects: “If his [the sov-
ereign’s] body is rectified, he need not give the order but it will be carried
out; if his body is not rectified, although he gives the order, it will not be
carried out” 其身正，不令而行；其身不正，雖令不行.68 If the sov-
ereign’s person or body is regulated, then he need not even issue the
command but the command will be obeyed. This is a wuwei vision of rul-
ership, one that is only possible in a perfectly harmonious sociopolitical
order.
Wei Zheng’s response begins with an allusion to the “Commentary on
Appended Phrases” 繫辭傳, in which Fuxi observes patterns throughout
the world in order to create the trigrams.69 Wei Zheng is praising Taizong
for his wisdom and ci
rcumspection at the outset of the new reign and dy-
nasty, and comparing him to Fuxi, whose invention of the trigrams can be
said to have embodied the very translation of the natural order into the
human world. It is probably not coincidental that the phrase zhenguan 貞
觀, which would serve as the name of Taizong’s reign, appears in the pas-
sage just before the one on Fuxi. The bulk of the minister’s response is
taken up by a recounting of a conversation between the famous angler
Zhan He and the King of Chu. Wei is praising Taizong for already under-
standing what the King of Chu on his own could not, thus obviating the
—————
68. See Lunyu 13.6 / Lunyu jishi, 26.901.
69. This is a close paraphrase. The actual line in the “Commentary on Appended Phrases”
reads: “Near at hand, he selected [patterns] from his own person; faraway, he selected
[patterns] from things” 近取諸身，遠取諸物. See Zhou yi zhengyi, 8.74b, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 86.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
81
need for Wei Zheng to play the role of Zhan He. Taizong, in fact, is rep-
resented as surpassing even the kings and lords of the Zhou, as encom-
passing the very principles of sagely antiquity.
“The Golden Mirror”
The most important statements on sovereignty within Taizong’s literary
collection are his two essays on imperial sovereignty. The first of these
two compositions is “The Golden Mirror,” which Taizong wrote shortly
after taking the throne.70 As Denis Twitchett has pointed out, “The
Golden Mirror” should not be taken merely as “cynical window-dressing
to present his power in a favorable light.”71 Extending Twitchett’s obser-
vation, I will argue that this work should be understood in terms of what
Stephen Greenblatt has termed “self-fashioning,” which is to say, in terms
of Taizong’s attempt to create himself through reference to the moral
ideals of sagely rulership.72 Taizong may have an ulterior reason for doing
so, though the representation that he constructs is one to which he can-
not but adhere.
I turn now to the beginning of “The Golden Mirror”:
In our days of leisure from the king’s business, We let roam our mind through the prior histories. We crane our neck at the lofty customs of the Six Ages and
gaze at the remaining traces of the hundred kings—in this way, it is possible to
speak about the cycles of historical rise and decline. Every time I think of the ef-
fortless rule of Xuan[yuan] and Hao, or of the perfect government of Tang and
Yu, I repeatedly sing their praises, unable to stop myself.73 And as for the latter
ages of the Xia and Yin or the tyrants of the Qin and Han, these make one fearful
and cautious, as if stepping on rotted wood or thin ice.
—————
70. For the text of “The Golden Mirror,” see Wenyuan yinghua, 360.1845–47; Li Fang et al., comps., Taiping yulan, 791.2790a–92a; Quan Tang wen, 10.126–29; and Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu, pp. 125–36. The composition of the “Golden Mirror” is mentioned in Cefu yuangui, 40.450; this fascicle is missing from the Song edition. The essay has previously been translated in Twitchett, “How to Be an Emperor,” pp. 18–33.
71. Twitchett, “How to Be an Emperor,” p. 18.
72. This is defined in Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, pp. 1–9.
73. “Xuan” refers to the Yellow Thearch. Xuanyuan 軒轅 is the name of the hill where the Yellow Thearch was born and serves as his toponym. This is mentioned in Shi ji, 1.10.
“Hao” is Shaohao 少昊 (also written 少皞), the son of the Yellow Thearch, sometimes
included among the ranks of the Five Thearchs 五帝. “Tang” 唐 is the toponym of the
sage-king Yao, and “Yu”虞 is the toponym of Shun.
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82
On Sovereignty and Representation
朕以萬機之暇日，遊心前史，仰六代之高風，觀百王之遺跡，興亡之
運可得言焉。每至軒昊之無為，唐虞之至治，未嘗不留連贊詠，不能
已已，及於夏殷末世，秦漢暴君，使人懍懍然兢懼，如履朽薄。
These opening words figure the act of reading historical texts within the
metaphor of roaming ( you 遊). Here, Taizong is making an allusion to
the Analects, in which Confucius says, “My aims are set upon the Way, I
accord myself with virtue, I rely upon benevolence, and I roam in the arts”
志於道，據於德，依於仁，游於藝.74 Some commentators have as-
sumed a sequence or prioritization in these four actions, and that by plac-
ing his enjoyment of the arts last, Confucius is prescribing that this activ-
ity belongs to the time after the more serious tasks of moral cultivation.75
The six gentlemanly arts are, of course, worthy pursuits, and what this
passage implicitly argues is that the gentleman’s self-refinement is never
done. Roaming is taken by Confucius in a metaphorical sense; it is not his
body that roams, but his mind, when it is in a state of relaxation from the
discipline of morality. The roaming mind is still engaged in self-
cultivation, since proficiency in the arts will allow the gentleman to mani-
fest his cultural learning. This is also the case for Taizong. Thus, even in
his leisure-time, Taizong claims that the sovereign is occupied with reflec-
tion on the lessons of history. To put it another way, for the sovereign
there can be no true experience of leisure. As Stephen Owen has written,
“The ruler was always supposed to be on duty,” citing the example of the
Duke of Zhou, who “was said to have spat out his food when eating and
wrung his hair dry when washing whenever the arrival of worthy guests
was announced, so anxious he was to win them over.”76
At this point in the essay, Taizong raises the question of why prior dy-
nasts have not been able to preserve their legacy in the generations that
followed. His answer: “They skimped on self-examination and would not
heed words that grated upon their ears; for this reason, they met with ex-
tinction and ruin. To the end of their lives, they were unenlightened—
could they not have been fearful?” 蓋短於自見，不聞逆耳之言，故
至於滅亡。終身不悟，豈不懼哉. As we have seen in previous anec-
—————
74. Lunyu 7.6 / Lunyu jishi, 13.443. The “arts” ( yi 藝) refer to ritual study, music, archery, chariot-driving, calligraphy, and calculations.
75. See, for example, Zhu Xi’s comments in Lunyu jizhu, in Sishu zhangju jizhu, 4.94.
76. Owen, “Difficulty of Pleasure,” Extreme-Orient, Extreme-Occident, p. 13.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
83
dotes and examples, Taizong is arguing against autocratic styles of ruler-
ship and pointing to the necessity of a strong and capable court that can
offer the sovereign good, if sometimes painful, advice. The employment of
worthy men is, in many ways, the central point of the essay, though it is
sometimes lost in a style heavy with historical allusions, examples, and
supplementary comments. Taizong’s concern with employment is not
surprising, since the newly founded dynasty faced a serious problem in
terms of regional rivalries. Not only did social prestige remain concen-
trated in the hands of the “Four Clans of Shandong” 山東四姓, certain
regions (such as Hebei) viewed the Tang house with great suspicion.77
The practical needs of staffing the government therefore also served an
ideological end, one that had to do with the composition of empire itself.
In the rhetoric of merit-based recruitment, we may hear echoes of the
Mohist argument for “esteeming the worthy” ( shangxian 尚賢). However,
whereas the Mohists advanced their arguments based upon a consequen-
tialist calculation of benefits, Taizong actually conceives the thesis in a
moralizing language. This becomes clear when Taizong writes,
Rulers facing danger will each take their subjects as advisers. If they achieve self-enlightenment [through this], how could there be the ruinous overturning of the
altars of earth and grain? This [ruin] especially stems from the ruler not keeping
his mind on the employment [of worthy officials], but instead setting his will on
pleasurable roaming—how could this not be tragic? If he were to take as pleasur-
able roaming the employment of worthy officials, and take the employment of
worthy officials as pleasurable roaming, how could this not be good?
臨危之主，各師其臣，若使覺悟，社稷安有危亡之覆？特由不留心於
任使，翻屬意於遨遊，豈不哀哉？若以遨遊將為任使，以任使將為遨
遊，豈不善哉？
Taizong speaks once again of roaming, though here it is the imperial act
of roaming—a problematic activity since the ruler should be engaged in
the business of governing the state, and not excursions, which were both
time-consuming and often expensive. Taizong contrasts the pleasure of
roaming ( aoyou 遨遊) with the employment of worthy officials ( renshi 任
使), two activities that do not generally belong to the same discourse.