A view of Confucian canonical scholarship under the Tang dynasty

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• Professor David McMullen (St John's College, Cambridge)
• Tuesday 25 February 2014, 17:00-19:00
• Armitage Room, Queens' College.

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Organized by the Cambridge Chinese Classics Society/剑桥中国传统文化研习社. Free to all!

This lecture will aim to provide an overview of the main developments in canonical scholarship (Jingxue 經學) in the Tang period (618-907), emphasizing the changing role of the state. At the start of the dynasty, the official scholar community formed a cohesive community centred on the educational agencies of the government at Chang’an 長安. Under Taizong 太宗, (reigned 626-649) they were involved in determining a correct or orthodox text (Ding ben定本) of the Wu jing 五經. A compendious official sub-commentary, the Wu jing zheng yi 五經正義 or Wu jing shuyi五經疏義followed. Under the emperor Xuanzong 玄宗（reigned 712-756), there was debate about the value of commentaries and a growing volume of unofficial writing by individual scholars. But after the An Lushan安錄山 rebellion of 755, the official scholarly world lost its former cohesion. Individual scholars, sometimes away from the capital, started independent initiatives reinterpreting certain canonical texts. Their motives varied from a strident anti-Buddhism to a search for contemplative, Buddhist-influenced values from within the Confucian canon. They paid more attention to the Mencius (Mengzi 孟子) than scholars had hitherto done. The lecture will end with an assessment of these revisionist initiatives and their influence on the direction of Confucian scholarship in the post-Tang period.

David McMullen is Emeritus Professor of Chinese at St John’s College, Cambridge. He read Oriental Studies (Chinese Studies) at St John’s from 1959 to 1962, after National Service in the Royal Air Force. He researched for the doctorate under Professor E G Pulleyblank at Cambridge, with periods of study at Taiwan National University and at Harvard University. From 1968, he served in the Faculty of Oriental Studies (now the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies), as an Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer. From 1989 until retirement in 2006, he was Professor of Chinese. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994, and also served as President of the British Association for Chinese Studies from 1985 to 1987.

His research interests are in the intellectual, institutional and religious history of the Tang dynasty in China (618-907). He has published State and Scholars in T’ang China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and just under twenty long articles on aspects of Tang history, as well as shorter articles, encyclopaedia entries and book reviews.

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