Change_and_Progress_Barrett

Numen, Vol. XXZX, Fasc. 2 CHANGE AND PROGRESS IN UNDERSTANDING CHINESE RELIGION* (Reuiew article) In the West, and especially in North America, the 1960s, the decade in which I myself reached university, witnessed the start of a remarkable upsurge of interest in the religions and philosophies of the East. The influence of this unforeseen extension of religious pluralism upon the religious life of the United States has been ex- plored to some extent already by Harvey Cox1, but its wider effects may be traced much further than the world of the exotic imported cults themselves. In academic circles, where the enthusiasms of youth confront the requirements of scholarship, a somewhat more pallid reflection of the change in society at large may be seen in the expansion since that decade of the teaching of Eastern thought and Eastern religion. In its turn, one effect of this expansion has been the establishment of the study of Chinese religion as a recognized area of religious studies and of sinology. This development may be measured by a number of indicators: the creation of a Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, which "is formally related to the Association of Asian Studies as an "Affiliated Group", and con- stitutes the "Chinese Religions Group" of the American Academy of R e l i g i ~ n " ~ ; the production of bibliographies of past scholarship3; the appearance of review articles surveying new developments4; and the translation into English from other European languages of important writings in the field dating from the first half of the cen- tury. * Apropos of: Richard Wilhelm (tr. Irene Eber), Lectures on the I Chzng, Constancy and Change (Bollingen Series XIX:2, Princeton University Press, 1979), xxiii + 187 pp., $9.75, and Iulian Konstantinovich Shchutskii (tr. William L. Macdonald and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa with Hellmut Wilhelm), Researches on the I Ching (Boll- ingen Series LXII:2, Princeton University Press, 1979), lxvi + 257 pp., $12.50. T. H. Barrett The origins of this last practice may be taken back to as early as 1951, when the first English edition of Max Weber, The Religion of China, translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth, was published by the Free Press in Glencoe, Illinois. But despite the addition of a thirty-one page introduction by C . K . Yang to the 1964 edition, bringing it closer in format to the translations now appearing, this volume may perhaps best be seen as marking a stage in the develop- ment of sociology rather than of the study of Chinese religion as such. Both sociological and sinological concerns are prominent in Maurice Freedman's 1975 translation of Marcel Granet's early work on Chinese religion5. Here, however, Freedman's statement that the "decision to undertake the translation was made as a result of a few week's work in Paris towards the end of 1972 when I was collecting material upon Granet in connexion with a study of the Western perception of Chinese r e l i g i ~ n "~ , and some more extended remarks in an earlier publication which attempted to survey the contributions of pioneering figures like Granet and de Groot7, show that a close relationship existed for Freedman between the progress of his own thinking about China and the translation of a book already half a century old. Thus his volume differs markedly from earlier translations of books by Granet produced during his lifetime, where no attempt was made to add introductory material commenting on the original8. Implicit in Freedman's introductory essay (and quite explicit in his earlier paper) is a desire to take stock, to place Granet in the context of his own times so as better to be able to understand the distance between his perceptions and con- temporary Western thinking on Chinese religion. Frank Kierman J r . ' s translation of the writings of Henri Maspero on Taoism and Chinese religion, for which I was asked to provide an introduction, was prompted by a more immediate need: that of presenting to college students not at home in the French language a classic study frequently cited in later scholarshipg. This work formed a natural sequel to Kierman's earlier translation of Maspero's writings on early China, which contains a substantial introduction by D. C . TwitchettlO. Though not the product of quite the same process of reexamination that inspired Freedman's work, Twitchett's introduction also characterizes Maspero as a man of his times and provides a clear and useful outline of the changes that 241 Change and Progress have taken place in our understanding of early China since those times. The introduction to Kierman's translation of Maspero's writings on Taoism accordingly attempts a similar survey of developments in Taoist studies. Richard Wilhelm died in 1930, long before Granet and Maspero. In 1951 it was possible for C . G . Jung and Cary F. Baynes to write the "Foreword" and the "Translator's Note" respectively to the latter's translation of Wilhelm's German rendering of the I Ching without making any reference to differences between Wilhelm's understanding of the I Ching and interpretations current at the time of publication'l. Irene Eber, however, supplies with her translation of some essays on the I Ching by Wilhelm dating from the late 1920s an introduction of fifteen pages much more like those prefacing the Granet and Maspero volumes; one notes also the explanation in the "Translator's Preface" (p. vii) that the translation was first under- taken for the benefit of fellow graduate students who did not know German well. The introduction itself contains, after some preliminary remarks, a brief but informative sketch of Wilhelm's life, noting especially the influence upon him of Lao Nai-hsiian and C . G. Jung. His position on the relationship between Chinese and Western culture, a sort of affirmation of pluralism coupled with a rejection of cosmopolitanism, is then compared with that of Joseph R . Levenson (1920-1969). Although the comparison is not inap- propriate, the differences between the two men are also worth observing. Levenson, writing out of a very different background and set of circumstances, has much less of the self-assured tone of Wilhelm, and one wonders whether he would have expressed himself entirely happy with the results of Wilhelm's elevation of the I Ching to the status of a world classicL2. But a more serious problem emerges when Eber reaches her ac- count of scholarship on the I Ching since Wilhelm's time. For in the first paragraph of this outline (p. xxi) we read "Among recent ar- chaeological finds, hitherto unknown portions of I Ching materials have come to light". These materials, recovered from a tomb of the second century B.C. at Ma-wang-tui, near Ch'ang-sha, are of such importance that we would appear to be trembling on the brink of a complete revolution in our understanding of how the present text of the classic came into beingL3. A full edition and study of the I Ching 242 T. H . Barrett finds has not yet appeared, but when this does happen it will be just one part of a process of reassessing early China as a result of a startling series of recent archaeological discoveries, many of which serve to provide a much broader context in which to see the emergence of the I Chinp as a classic than has hitherto been possibleL4. Eber's remark (p. xxii) that "Western scholarship on the I Ching has not been plentiful" no longer holds good, now that the open-minded young people of a decade ago have become the struggling junior academics of today. For example after the ap- pearance of her translation the journal Philosophy East and West published an article on the I Ching in each of its quarterly issues from October, 1979, to October, 1980, except for the third quarter of 1980, in which however such an article did appear in the Journal of Chinese P h i l o s o ~ h y ' ~ . Yet in so far as any of these articles relate to the early history of the I Ching they are all liable to be instantly vitiated by the publication of the results of research into these new sources But of course many of them do not concern themselves with history, and in a sense Wilhelm was as little concerned with history as it is possible to be. As Eber makes admirably clear, he was much more interested in the living tradition of the I Ching, which he saw as just as important to the West as to China. His meditations on its meaning, though exemplifying the spirit of the late traditional Chinese approach to the text, are not part of an attempt to under- stand Chinese thinking, but rather an attempt to participate in such thinking, not necessarily with a direct reference to China at all. It follows that if there have been advances in this direction since Wilhelm's day they have nothing to do with the study of Chinese religion 1 6 . Since Eber does not make this consequence explicit, but rounds off her introduction with a paragraph apiece on revisionist Chinese scholarship of the twenties and thirties, Hellmut Wilhelm and C . G. Jung, plus a quotation from the poet T ' ao Yiian-ming, the difference in approach between this volume of translation and those already discussed above is somewhat obscured by the similari- ty in format. Of course Eber's work has, and will have, its own uses, not only to those of the same mind as Richard Wilhelm, but also to anyone interested in the history of sinology. But what does need to be stressed is that though at first glance this book would ap- 243 Change and Progress pear to provide material for taking stock of our progress in understanding Chinese religion by measuring our perception against his, in fact Wilhelm was engaged in an exercise which makes such comparison impossible. A more convenient base-line to take might be the work of Iulian K. Shchutskii (1897-1937), who awards full marks to Wilhelm (p. 224) for his "interpretative translation from the point of view of the present oral tradition", but otherwise quotes with approval Alfred Forke's remark that Wilhelm "lets go too freely the rein of his fan- tasy" (p. 45). Though Shchutskii's writings show him to have something of a free spirit himself-as it turned out, far too free a spirit to be allowed to remain alive in Stalinist Russia-his aims and methods were very much the same as the majority of academic students of Chinese religion then and now. His work on the IChing, as translated into English, does nonetheless constitute something of an anomaly. The original was completed in 1935, but cir- cumstances did not permit its publication in Russia until 1960. Thus despite a lengthy and sympathetic review by Paul Demie'ville, published in 196317, it can hardly be said to have been regarded in its day as a recognized milestone in early twentieth century sinology. Partly as a result of this slow progress to recognition the names of no less than half a dozen other scholars appear together with Shchutskii's on this volume. Not only has the process of translation involved the work of three professors; the final result is preceded by prefatory material from three separate hands: an "In- troduction to the English Edition" (pp. vii-xlviii) by Gerald W . Swanson, an "Introduction to the Russian Edition" (pp. xlix-lxiv) by N . I . Konrad and a "Biographical Sketch" (pp. lxv-lxvi) by N . A . Petrov. Shchutskii's text itself, together with bibliography and index, does not amount to four times this length. But there is little duplication of effort between these introductions; for example both Swanson and Konrad provide material to supplement Petrov's sketch, but the former is naturally more frank concerning the brutal and tragic circumstances of Shchutskii's death. Konrad is also distinctly summary in dealing with research in the I Ching between Shchutskii's time ad his own: he simply adds to Shchutskii's bibliography some forty or so references, minus any comment. Swanson is much more conscientious, mentioning less 244 T.H. Barrett than a dozen of the most useful studies, but together with his own assessment of their value. His "Appraisal of Shchutskii's work" (pp. x-xxxvi) also brings to bear later (and earlier) scholarship wherever he feels that it has anything of significance to add to Shchutskii's conclusions. He does not, however, say anything about the discovery at Ma-wang-tui or its implications. For both Swanson and Konrad are as much exercised to explain Shchutskii's neglect of a great deal of well-known earlier scholarship on the I Ching as to update his work. This neglect does not extend to Western scholarship-Shchutskii has a pleasantly wicked survey of the shortcomings of his predecessors in his first chapter-but rather applies to the majority of the most highly regarded works on the I Ching written during the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-191 1). Konrad finds a sound political reason for this, and concurs in Shchutskii's omis- sion; Swanson, unconvinced in any case that Konrad has divined Shchutskii's motives correctly, rectifies it by including a survey of the most eminent Ch'ing I Ching scholars and their publications. Swanson himself concludes (p, xlii) that Shchutskii narrowed the scope of his selection of Ch'ing I Ching studies so as to treat only scholarship congenial to his criticisms of the accepted attribution of the text to Confucius 18 . Though this would seem true enough, one can entirely sym- pathise with Shchutskii. He was, in fact, well aware (as p. 196 makes clear) that the Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu tsung-mu, a standard bibliography of earlier Chinese literature compiled in the late eight- eenth century, already listed "about five hundred works devoted in one way or another to the Book of Changes", and that even this number excluded works written by Taoists and by scholars in Japan. Faced with the prospect of having to trudge through this (for the most part) distinctly arid terrain, Shchutskii seems to have decided instead to triangulate from a limited number of salient points, mostly on the periphery of his chosen t e r r i t ~ r y ' ~ . For the purposes of his own translation in particular he explicitly states (p. 225) that he bases his understanding on the commentaries of Wang Pi (226-249), the Japanese It6 T6gai (1670-1736), and the Buddhist referred to by him as "Wan I (1598-1654)". Now these choices are noted by both Swanson and Konrad (pp. xxxi, lviii). The latter construes them as a selection of one Taoist, Change and Progress 245 one Confucian and one Buddhist, and so is obliged to devote a couple of pages to advancing possible reasons for the choice of a Japanese Confucian rather than a recognized Chinese figure. But if I have guessed Shchutskii's reactions to the superabundance of traditional I Ching studies correctly, he may rather have been un- consciously or consciously looking, inter alia, for commentators on the edge of that tradition. Wang Pi, it must be said, certainly became central to the tradition as it developed, but in his time, as initiator of the philosophical approach to understanding the I Ching, he marked a very sharp break with a line of commentators stretch- ing back through the Han dynasty to the period when the text was first accepted as a classic20. And It6 Togai, whose obvious appeal to Shchutskii was that he was the first commentator not to treat the various layers of the text as a monolithic unity, was undoubtedly a Confucian, but one so far removed both physically and mentally from Chinese preconceptions as to be almost an outside critic. Finally "Wan I", the first commentator to attempt a translation not simply into another language but into the terminology of another system of thought, adopts such an unorthodox approach to the text that one fears he may have actually led Shchutskii (who was certainly deluded as to the correct pronunciation of his name) rather far astray. For neither Konrad nor Swanson appear to have pinned down the identity of this most mysterious member of Shchutskii's trinity. Swanson's ignorance is mildly surprising, since "Wan I" had not escaped the indefatigable erudition of Demie'ville, in whose review he stands exposed as none other than the great Buddhist master Ou-i Chih-hsii (1599-1655)21. Even Demie'ville seems not to have consulted any actual copy of Chih-hsii's work, the Chou-i ch'an- chiehZ2,since he is content to repeat the conflicting bibliographical information on it found in reference works. Though a complete ac- count of the editions of the Chou-i ch'an-chieh would be out of place here, it is worth noting that it was completed in two stages (in 1641 and 1645)23, that it was included in the supplement to the seventeenth-century "Chia-hsing" (or "Ching-shan") edition of the Buddhist canon, and that it is available as part of a series of photolithographic reproductions of that canonz4. Moreover, a reading of the Chou-i ch'an-chieh does not by any means justify 246 T. H. Barrett Shchutskii's claim (p. 225) that "Buddhist terminology, in view of its great precision and mastery within European Buddhological literature and Japanese Buddhnlogical lexicography, makes possi- ble an understanding of Wan 1's commentary without allowing the slightest ambiguity". For example, to judge by the translation of a portion of Chih-hsii's remarks on pp. 205-6, Shchutskii has misconstrued references in his text to the "two vehicles" as meaning "Hinayana and Mahayana". This is one possible value of the term, but here the context shows that it indicates the vehicles of the Sriivaka and pratyekabuddha, and so stands for the less spiritually advanced forms of Buddhism taken as a whole. But the ambiguities in the text are not simply confined to one or two points of terminology; rather, they permeate the work from beginning to end. Chih-hsii, despite his title, does not simply "translate" the I Chin,g into the ter- minology of Ch 'an (Zen)-a task which would scarcely have been possible in terms of Ch'an as it had been understood in earlier times in China. For in his attitude towards Buddhist doctrine he was a thoroughgoing syncretist, espousing a variety of Ch'an less con- cerned with the paradoxes of the great Chinese patriarchs and easier to reconcile with the doctrines of other schools. Hence in his commentary we find not one consistent scheme of interpretation linking the I Ching with a particular system of Buddhist thought but a confusing mixture of standard Buddhist terminology with technical terms drawn from T'ien-t'ai, Hua-yen or other sources peculiar to specific Chinese schools of Buddhism. Furthermore his work is not even consistently Buddhist: Shchut- skii is closer to the mark on p. 198, when he describes him as having produced "a synthesis of the Sung school and Buddhism", and on p. 223, when he speaks of him having come "to recognize the Book of Changes as a philosophical text, which in the skilful hands of the adept could play a role in the introduction to Buddhist philoso- phy". Even this last sentence is not entirely correct: Chih-hsii does speak in his preface of aiming to lead Confucians to understand Ch 'an , but equally declares that he is using Ch'an to approach Confucianismz6. H e is not simply using a Confucian text as a primer for illustrating Ch 'an ideas; rather he sees the I Ching as a manifestation of exactly the same thing as Buddhism, though a 247 Change and Progress manifestation of an inferior sortz7. He is not simply "writing in the terms and expressions of Buddhist philosophy" but rather finding Buddhist as well as Confucian meanings to the text itself, like a Christan reading Vergil's poetry as both a pagan document and an adumbration of the