by Ying-shih Yü
author intends his book to be. He tells us that Jiao Hong lived in a period cor-
responding to a crucial phase in Chinese social and intellectual history when
Chinese society witnessed the activation of “new forces on several levels,” and
when Chinese thought experienced a “near revolution” (32). Except for this brief
reference, however, he has made no eff ort to place the thought of Jiao Hong in the
context of late Ming social and intellectual history. The author refers to himself
as a “historian of ideas” (26), which seems to indicate that he is after the style of
Arthur O. Lovejoy. At any rate, this study may well be characterized as a “search
for shifting confi gurations of eternal ideas, as expressed by the most refi ned phil-
osophical minds” 8 or, more likely, he has followed the “archaeological” method
of Michel Foucault, especially in the latter’s attempt to divorce discourse from
its social setting and to discover the structural rules governing discourse
alone.9 What ever the case may be, it seems fair to say that intellectual history
for the author is a self- closed universe in which only abstract ideas interact with
one another.
S O M E F A C T S A B O U T J I A O H O N G ’ S L I F E
The author’s failure to take intellectual history seriously as a reconstruction of
the past comes from a chapter where it is least expected. In chapter 2, “The
Man,” he examines mainly three aspects of Jiao Hong’s intellectual life to-
gether with a description of his “po liti cal involvement.” To identify Jiao Hong as
a member of the Taizhou school, a Wild- Chanist, a court offi
cial, and a critical
scholar is, of course, not wrong, but fails to do full justice to “the man.” In his
lifetime, Jiao Hong was equally, if not better, known as a prose writer. All the
“prefaces” to his Danyuan ji
(Tranquil garden collection; Collected Works
of Jiao Hong) and Danyuan xuji
(Tranquil garden second collection;
Collected Works of Jiao Hong, vol. 2) by his friends and disciples, for example,
stress emphatically his great achievement in literary art ( wen
or wenzhang
). His best friend, Li Zhi
(1527–1602), even praised him as “The Su
Shi
[1036–1101] of our day,” referring specifi cally to his “immortality” as a
literary artist.10
t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed 325
In reconstructing Jiao Hong’s life, the author generally relies on the two bio-
graphical sketches in the Mingshi
(History of the Ming Dynasty) and
Huang Zongxi’s
(1610–1695) Mingru xue- an
(Scholarly Cases
of Ming Classical Scholars), which often prove to be inadequate or inaccurate.
No attempt seems to have been made by the author to search for con temporary
sources. For example, Zhu Guozhen’s
(1557–1632) Yongchuang xiaopin
(Yongchuang Essays) contains a great deal of information about Jiao
Hong’s activities, including their conversations. Zhu and Jiao passed the jinshi
examination in the same year and knew each other well, but the author does
not seem to be aware of the existence of this impor tant source. In his discus-
sion of the case concerning Jiao Hong’s Yangzheng tujie
(Historical
exemplars with pictures on cultivating correct be hav ior), the author, following
the History of the Ming Dynasty, mentions that this work aroused the jealousy and
opposition of Jiao Hong’s fellow lecturers, who felt that he compiled the book as
a gimmick to “buy reputation” (52). In fact, the case was far more complicated
than the brief account given in the History of the Ming Dynasty. According to Zhu
Guozhen, under circumstances that were beyond Jiao Hong’s control, printed
copies of his book were presented to the throne through the intermediary of the
power ful eunuch Chen Ju
(1539–1608). This unexpected turn of events
aroused the suspicion and resentment of some top- ranking offi
cials at the court
who thought that Jiao Hong was seeking an appointment in the Inner Cabinet
( neige
) by irregular means. Doubly unfortunate for Jiao Hong, the suspi-
cion was deepened by a preface he had written earlier for Lü Kun’s
(1536–
1618) “Guifan” (Regulations for women’s quarters). It happened that Lü was
also accused of trying to fl atter the imperial consort Zheng with his compila-
tion. As a result, Jiao Hong was immediately demoted and exiled to Fukien for
a false and totally unrelated reason in 1597.11 This setback practically ended his
offi
cial career. It seems odd, to say the least, that an event of singular importance
in Jiao Hong’s other wise uneventful public life is virtually ignored in a section
dealing with his “po liti cal involvement.” As a result, the author’s account of Jiao
Hong’s demotion and retirement is also unsatisfactory (59).
The author twice appeals to the authority of Huang Zongxi for support when
he discusses Jiao Hong’s diffi
cult personality (34) and his characterization of Li
Zhi as a kuang person (41). Actually, in both cases, Huang Zongxi’s source is
the Yongchuang Essays. In the case of Li Zhi, the author says that Shen Defu’s
(1578–1642) remark that Jiao Hong “extolled him as a sage” was fl atly
contradicted by Huang Zongxi, who said other wise (40–41). However, the origi-
nal source runs as follows: “Jiao Ruohou (Hong) extolled Li Zhi to the utmost.
Each time when he talked to me about him, I refused to respond. One day,
Ruohou asked me, ‘Are you not satisfi ed with him?’ Even if he were not a sage, he
may well be considered as a person who could bear on his shoulders the word
kuang (‘wild’), and who might sit next to a sage.”12 It seems clear that Jiao Hong
prob ably did extol Li Zhi as a sage. It was only because of Zhu Guozhen’s strong
326 t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed
disapproval that he rather reluctantly moved from the level of “sage” to that of
kuang. The author was obviously misled by Huang Zongxi’s paraphrase in
Scholarly Cases of Ming Classical Scholars. Being a ju nior con temporary, Shen
Defu, after all, knew better. Methodologically, it is also not permissible for the
historian to give greater weight to second hand evidence than to a contempora-
neous one. Moreover, in the case of Jiao Hong’s personality, Huang Zongxi
specifi cally named Zhu Guozhen as his source.
The author’s interest in “reconstruction” goes only as far as it serves his “dia-
logue.” He focuses on three aspects of Jiao Hong’s intellectual life: as a phi los-
o pher of the Taizhou school, a Wild Chanist, and a critical scholar. These three
aspects, it may be noted, correspond to the three broad issues in the late Ming
with which this book is concerned: Neo- Confucian syncretism, the controversy
between the Cheng- Zhu and Lu- Wang schools, and the emergence of “evidential
research” ( kaozheng) as a formation (1). When his “reconstruction” is out of step
with his “dialogue,” ho
wever, the author feels quite free to reshape the former to
bring it into conformity with the latter. The following in ter est ing example is
worth examining. Discussing Jiao Hong’s relationship with Buddhism, he
writes:
After he had obtained his jinshi as zhuangyuan, Chiao Hung wrote a
letter to a monk named Lu-an in which he stated that he had “cultivated
karma” ( xiuye
) for twenty years, “more than half of which time he
had spent at Lu- an’s temple under Lu- an’s care.” The term xiuye as used
in this letter can mean either “cultivation of karma” or “study for the civil
ser vice examination.” I have chosen to render it as “cultivation of karma”
because the twenty- year period indicated in the letter could not possibly
have corresponded with the length of time which Jiao Hong spent prepar-
ing for the civil ser vice examinations. He began his study for the exami-
nations at least as early as 1555, and would have been engaged in such
study for at least thirty- six years by the date of this letter, which was writ-
ten in 1589. (42)
The term xiuye in this context can only mean “study for civil ser vice examina-
tion,” not “cultivation of karma.” The latter is an impossible translation. Anyone
who knows anything about the concept of karma knows that it is not something
to be “cultivated.” Nor can it be interpreted as “study of sûtras.” This is an ex-
treme case showing that the silent “partner” cannot supply the context when the
“dialogue” goes wrong. The author has taken a sentence completely out of the
context of the letter in which it was originally written. Jiao Hong wrote this letter
to Lu-an with the sole and explicit purpose of expressing his deep gratitude for
the monk’s support during much of the twenty- year period of preparation—
support that had, in his own words, “exceeded what could be expected from a
family member.”13 The twenty- year period is a nonproblem because it refers to
the period between 1564, when Jiao Hong passed his juren examination, and 1589,
t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed 327
when he fi nally succeeded as a zhuangyuan. It was a common practice in tradi-
tional China to use round numbers in such informal writings. Elsewhere, Jiao
Hong explic itly referred to the period of his repeated failures in jinshi examina-
tions between 1564 and 1589 as “twenty years.”14 Moreover, one of Jiao Hong’s
texts clearly states that when he was in his twenties, he was staying at both
Tianjie and Bao-en monasteries in Nanjing and pursuing his “metropolitan
examinations studies” ( gongju ye
).15 There cannot be the slightest doubt
that the term xiuye is an abbreviated form of xiu gongju ye. It seems that the
author is so uninterested in “reconstruction” that he did not even have the im-
pulse to check his basic sources when he needed to determine the precise
meaning of a key term used by Jiao Hong.
This is not a matter of simple misreading, however. On the contrary, the
author has chosen the impossible interpretation to serve an impor tant purpose
in his “dialogue” with Jiao Hong. He has deci ded that Jiao Hong must have
already been a confi rmed Neo- Confucian for several years before he turned to
Buddhism “not as an alternative, but as a further elaboration.” The author fur-
ther speculates, though without any basis in fact, that Jiao Hong made this move
because “prob lems arising from his study of Confucianism compelled him to
look into Buddhism, which, he said, could best clarify ‘the cardinal meaning of
the teachings of the sages and worthies’ ” (42). As we shall see below, this line of
argument is of vital importance to the central thesis of this book that Jiao Hong
successfully accomplished a creative synthesis from a Neo- Confucian base. Ac-
cording to the author, on the one hand, Jiao Hong’s synthesis was “not indis-
criminating lumping” (189), but, on the other hand, Jiao Hong remained “a
good Confucian in spite of his deep involvements in the study of Buddhism and
Daoism” (235). To support such an interpretation, the author obviously needs
some evidence from Jiao Hong’s intellectual life showing that this was indeed
the case. The author makes this abundantly clear in the following passage:
Jiao Hong’s interest in Buddhism as a serious intellectual undertaking
seems to have begun relatively late. There are in his writings a few frag-
mentary references to his studying at the vari ous temples in Nanjing
shortly after he came of age. However, we do not know whether he stud-
ied there to pursue his interest in Buddhism or to prepare for the civil
ser vice examinations. Moreover, these were the years before he “set his
mind on learning.” Therefore, what ever he might have read in Buddhism
during this period was not likely to have produced a deep imprint on his
mind; and he prob ably did not begin to study Buddhism seriously until
he was in his late twenties or early thirties. (41–42)
In other words, Jiao Hong’s early exposure to Buddhism must be explained away
to make room for the point that he “came to Buddhism via Confucianism” (42).
Thus, to interpret xiuye as “cultivation of karma” serves the author’s thesis
perfectly.
328 t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed
It is also very revealing that with regard to Jiao Hong’s “references to his
studying at the vari ous temples in Nanjing,” the author says, “we do not know
whether he studied there to pursue his interest in Buddhism or to prepare for
the civil ser vice examinations.” Here we have reason to believe that the author
may not be telling the whole truth, for the very fi rst of the texts cited in the
footnote (295, n. 72) is the reference to Jiao Hong’s pursuing “metropolitan ex-
amination studies,” as mentioned earlier. The author is prob ably caught in a
dilemma: on the one hand, to relate Jiao Hong’s studying at the vari ous monas-
teries to Buddhism would make the case too early for his “via Confucianism”
theory. On the other hand, however, to relate it to examinations would directly
contradict his interpretation of xiuye as “cultivation of karma.” What ever the
case may be, one thing is quite certain: the author’s inability to determine Jiao
Hong’s early relations with Buddhist monasteries reveals his lack of interest in
historical “reconstruction.” It does not seem to have ever occurred to the author
that his case can be greatly helped by examining the secular functions of Bud-
dhist monasteries in the late Ming.
It was a long- established practice since the Tang dynasty for examination
candidates to study in monasteries, but the practice was particularly widespread
in the late Ming. Travelers (such as the famous Xu Xiake
, 1586–1641)
visiting Buddhist monasteries could rarely fi nd one without some candidates
studying for examinations there.16 The eminent monk Deqing
(1546–
1623), a friend of Jiao Hong’s, was fi rst attracted to Buddhism because he re-
ceived his early Confucian education in a Buddhist monastery.
As late as
1562, he was still pursuing Confucian studies for examinations at Bao-en
Monastery in Nanjing.17 It is impor tant to bear in mind that major Buddhist
monasteries in both Beijing and Nanjing were placed under the direct control
of the Board of Rites during the Ming Period. The abbot was to be appointed
by the board on the basis of an examination in which knowledge of Buddhist
sûtras was tested, but its very form was none other than the eight- legged es-
say.18 As a result, monks in these monasteries (such as the above- mentioned
Bao-en Monastery in Nanjing) studied the art of the eight- legged essay no less
assiduously than candidates for civil ser vice examinations.19 The fact that Jiao
Hong spent many years in his late twenties in the two major Buddhist monas-
teries of his native city— Bao-en and Tianjie
— can be easily understood
in this light.
J I A O H O N G ’ S S Y N C R E T I S M I N
H I S T O R I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E
The prob lem of the “ union of the Three Teachings in one” ( Sanjiao heyi) fi gures
prominently in the author’s discussions of Jiao Hong’s “syncretism,” “synthe-
sis,” or “pluralism.” Inspired by Judith Berling’s observation that Lin Zhao-en
(1517–1598) refused to see the Three Teachings in terms of “compart-
t h e in t e l le c t ua l wor l d of j i ao hong r e v isi t ed 329
mentalization” of the Dao or Way,20 the author has made excessive use of the
idea of “noncompartmentalization” to argue that “a notable change occurred in
the syncretic situation of late Ming” (14). Based on the two isolated cases of Lin
Zhao-en and Jiao Hong, he claims to have detected the emergence of “an ex-
pression in the altered structure of the syncretic logic” (14). Both Lin and Jiao,
according to the author, no longer viewed Confucianism, Daoism, and Bud-
dhism as three separate and diff er ent teachings, each confi ned to a compart-
ment of the Dao. Instead, the Three Teachings were now conceived as “one” in
the sense that “they had the fused integrity of a single entity and were mutually
identifi ed and indistinguishable” (119). The author is, of course, not wholly un-
aware of the diffi
culties of his theory. Lin Zhao- en’s temple was segregated into
three diff er ent chambers and Jiao Hong also, from time to time, “reverted to