Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

The third of the canonical books is the Schi-king or Book of Songs, already referred to. This presents the selection made by Confucius of the hymns, ballads, and folk-songs collected from the earliest generations. The fourth is the Tschun-tshien, or Spring and Autumn Year-Book, which is ascribed to Confucius. It is a brief chronicle of events covering a space of 240 years. The fifth is the Li-ki, or Book of Ritual, or of Conduct. This gives detailed instructions concerning the proper ceremonials for all events of life, from the cradle to the grave.

With these classics should be grouped certain books prepared by the followers of Confucius, the most important of which, the Lün-yü, or Conversations, is a record of the instruction given by Confucius to his pupils in the form of talks. In these conversations we find questions shaped in a method quite Socratic. With this should be grouped the Mengtsze, the record of the work of the philosopher Mencius. His instruction seems, like that of his great forerunner, to have been very practical in its character. Associated with the earlier teachings of Confucius, the instruction of Mencius was accepted as the basis of the moral and the educational system of the nation.

The enormous respect which the Chinese have given to the works produced during their classical period is believed by authorities like Williams and Wade to have exercised an influence on the whole detrimental to the development and to the originality of their later literature.

The first active literary period preceded Confucius, 500 B.C. From this period have been preserved the classics already referred to. The next important epoch is that of the “interpreters,” the counsellors and the lawgivers, extending from Confucius to Mencius, 350 B.C. They were followed by a long line of annalists and commentators, whose work came to an abrupt close with the reign of the Emperor Che Hwang-ti, 221-226 B.C. Hwang-ti was evidently a man with opinions of his own. He objected to what seemed to him an exaggerated and mischievous reverence for the “good old times,” and he proposed to discourage the laudator temporis acti. He issued an edict directing all books to be burned excepting those treating of medicine, divination, and husbandry. This index expurgatorius (possibly the earliest in history) included all the writings of Confucius and Mencius, comprising both their original work and their compilations and editions of the earlier classics. It was further ordered that any one who dared to mention the Book of History or the Book of Odes should be put to death. Any one possessing, thirty days after the issue of the edict, a copy of the books ordered destroyed, was to be branded and put to labor for four years upon the great wall. This is probably the most drastic and comprehensive policy for the suppression of a literature that the world has ever seen. Fortunately, like similar attempts in later centuries, it was only partially successful. While the destruction of books was enormous, and while, of long lists of works, it is probable that all existing copies actually did disappear, the texts of the most important, including the specially obnoxious Book of History and Book of Songs, were preserved. According to one tradition, a large number of the songs were saved only by having been retained in the memory of public reciters and their hearers. After the death of the Emperor Che, the text of these was taken down and again committed to writing. This instance is, one recalls, fully in line with the methods by which in Greece, before the general use of writing, the earlier classics were preserved in the memories of the rhapsodists and their hearers.

It is the opinion of Dr. Williams that the command of the Emperor Che for the destruction of all books was so thoroughly executed that “of many classical works not a single copy escaped destruction. The books were, however, recovered in great part by rewriting them from the memories of old scholars.... If the same literary tragedy should be enacted to-day, thousands of persons might easily be found in China who could rewrite from memory the text and the commentary of their nine classical works.”

Williams is also my authority for the statement that not only were the books destroyed as far as copies could be found, but that nearly five hundred literati were burned alive, in order that no one might remain to reproach in his writings the emperor for the commission of so barbarous an act.[11]

One of the most celebrated female writers in China was Pan Whui-pan, also known as Pan Chao, the sister of the historian Pan Ku, who wrote the history of the Han dynasty. She was appointed historiographer after the death of her brother, and completed, about A.D. 80, his unfinished annals. A little later she wrote the first work in any language on female education, which was called Nü Kiai or Female Precepts, and which has formed the basis of many succeeding books on female education. In the writings of this and of other Chinese authoresses, instructions in morals and in the various branches of domestic economy are insisted upon as the first essentials in the education of women, and as more important than a knowledge of the classics or of the annals.[12]

1050 A.D. Wang Pih-ho, of the Sung dynasty, compiled for his private school a horn-book or manual of education, entitled the San-tsz’ King. The manual is interesting not merely as giving a general study of the nature of man and the existence of modes of education, but because it includes a list of books recommended for the student, a list which gives an impression of the extent of the education and literature of that date.[13]

The golden age of Chinese literary production is fixed by Sir Thomas Wade at the period of the Tang dynasty, 620-907 A.D. In 922 A.D. an edition of the classical writers was printed and published under the instructions of the Emperor. The tendency of writers since the tenth century has been to devote their energies to commentaries on the ancient works, and to analyses and interpretations of these rather than to original production. The writing of historical annals has, however, gone on with great regularity, and the series of Chronicles of the Kingdom is very comprehensive in its completeness.

The rewards of authors are given in the shape of official appointments and preferments, and of honors and honorariums bestowed directly by the state. It seems probable that in modern as in ancient times the writers of China could look for no direct returns from the circulation of their productions. It is nevertheless the case that from the time of Confucius to the present day, that is for a period of two thousand four hundred years, the direct influence of scholars, thinkers, and writers has been greater in China than in any other part of the world. The state as a whole and the individual citizen, from the Emperor down, have, as a rule, been ready to recognize and accept the authority and the guidance of literary ideals and of intellectual standards. The case would be paralleled if the French Academy had existed from the time of Charlemagne to the present day, if the counsellors and rulers of the state had always been appointed from the forty, and if the remaining officials of all grades had been selected by competitive examinations, instituted and supervised by the forty. The parallel would not be complete, however, unless the Academy of to-day were still basing its examinations on a codex of Charlemagne.