He Yanran and Chu Guofeng: Confucius Sages and the Generation of Confucian Sacrificial Families in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

The author is the director of the Youth Project of the National Social Science Fund "Research on Confucian Ancestors Sacrifice in Ming and Qing Dynasties", and an associate professor of the Department of History of Southeast University; Postdoctoral and research team member of Philosophy Department of Sun Yat sen University (Zhuhai)

Confucian sacrificial system and sacrificial activities are important components of Chinese traditional sacrificial culture. In recent years, with the in-depth promotion of the research on Chinese excellent traditional culture, the research on the sacrificial family of Confucianism in the Ming and Qing dynasties is becoming a new focus. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the central court attached great importance to the worship of Confucian sages, and gradually established a worship system characterized by "direct descendants worship the temple". Those descendants of Confucian sages who were awarded the title of Five Classics Doctor or sacrificial student became the official representatives bearing the responsibility of sacrificing in the ground. Around the status of worship, the Confucian worship family gradually formed. They rely on the maintenance of genealogy and sages' temples, fully carry out the family worship strategy, and bear the social responsibility of inheriting the sages' family style. Among them, the Confucian worship families who worship the disciples of Confucius account for a considerable proportion, which is quite representative. Analyzing the qualification, evolution and internal relations of the Confucian sages' worship families will help deepen the understanding of the relationship between Confucian culture and local society in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Identification of the legitimate descendants of Confucian sages

The seventy-two sages of the Confucius Clan had gone through many dynasties. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was not easy to find a large number of legitimate sons of the sages. Since the reign of Jingtai in the Ming Dynasty, the court has gradually formed a conciliatory policy that combines the duty of worship, family facts and family ethics in order to identify the legitimate descendants of Fengci. During the Zhengde period, the imperial court was blocked in its search for Zengzi's descendants because of the "long history and no genealogy". During the Jiajing period, a Si Fang found Zengzi's descendants in Nanfeng to avoid chaos and emigrate to the south. He was anxious to grow up in the south and was not happy to emigrate to the north. Therefore, the court transferred Zeng Zhijing, the 57th generation grandson of Zengchen, who lived in Jiangxi at that time, to return to Jiaxiang County, Yanzhou Prefecture to worship the Holy Ancestral Temple and Tomb. This case shows that the duty of worship has gone beyond the blood line and become an important consideration factor for a company to select descendants of worship. This is a double affirmation of duty and family ethics, which further emphasizes the principle of hometown worshipped by Confucian sages. The phenomenon observed by the academic circles in the process of the late Ming descendants of Shao Yong and Zhang Zai, Song Confucians, moving back to worship is similar, that is, they all regard the worship in the original hometown as the basis for the inheritance of duties, ethics and even academic vein. By the late Ming Dynasty, the principle of hometown worship had gained a firm foothold in policy and ideology.

Compared with the Five Classics Doctor of the Imperial Academy who was in the eighth grade, as a special type of sacrificial student, he seemed to be relatively tolerant of the requirements of the direct descendants. However, the tradition of sacrificing in the hometown has long influenced the identification of the descendants of sacrificing. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, when you wrote a preface to the genealogy of the Fan family in Chongming, you lamented the unknown situation of Fan Chi's northern descendants. In the 48th year of Qianlong's reign, when Zhao You, the scholar of Shandong, learned that Youzi, a disciple of Confucius, was worshipped far away in Chongming, he severely criticized the officials of the original village for their inaction: "The Confucius family is the world's leader and the general leader of all kinds of museums. They are close and far away, seeking Qingzhou, and even Jiangnan. They are confused and wandering, and their behavior of worshipping students is bold and indiscriminate." Therefore, the early Qing Dynasty strictly controlled the behavior of worshipping students across provinces and asking for supplement. The Xuezheng Quanshu and other books contain many cases in which the Qing Dynasty's request to add sacrificial descendants was refuted. The official documents of the official reply usually advocate "sacrificial worship at the old site", and eliminate "supplement from other provinces".

However, with the migration of families, it was a common phenomenon that the descendants of Confucian sages lived in other provinces during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Since Qianlong's reign, Yansheng Mansion's management power over the worship of Confucian ancestors has shrunk, local governors have become active roles in petitioning for the acquisition of descendants of Confucian worship in various regions. In addition, because of the complicated procedures involved in inheriting the worship, the family's economic and social forces also define the ethnic branch relationship in practice. The situation that the Shandong family gave way to the more powerful northern and southern families in the actual worship activities due to its poor strength occurred in the families of descendants of Confucius sages such as Zengzi and Youzi. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Zeng family in Hunan even played the role of the de facto patriarch of the clan without obtaining the identity of worship certified by the Ministry of Rites. These flexible strategies of worshiping family activities show us the deviation of the system in practice.

Changshu Yanzi Temple (photographed by He Yanran)

The expansion of the worship family

The rulers' Confucian worship and cultural policies in the early Qing Dynasty further promoted the expansion of the sacrificial family. The establishment of dedicated temples for local sages outside the Five Classics and Doctrines has flourished since then. There were more than 700 people worshipped by the ancient sages and Confucians of the Qing Dynasty in Xuezheng Quanshu, of whom the descendants of the ancient Confucians accounted for about a quarter. The setting up of the ancestors to worship the students mostly took place in the Yongqian period. In the second year of Yongzheng's reign, the imperial court stipulated that "the sages have ancestral temples, identify their own descendants, and give them seals to worship the people". This has established two basic requirements for the establishment of the descendants of worship in policy, namely ancestral temple and pedigree. Family building based on this standard is widely carried out in Shandong and Jiangnan. On the one hand, the temples, tombs, academies and other architectural landscapes involving Confucian sages were rebuilt in a large number during the reign of Emperor Yongzheng and Emperor Qianlong; On the other hand, the genealogy compilation, genealogy combination and reconstruction activities to prove the identity of the direct descendants are also gradually becoming large-scale.

During the period from Yongzheng to Qianlong, the construction of temples, tombs, academies and other buildings of Confucius' sages changed the Confucian landscape in Jiangnan and other places to a certain extent. The Confucian context represented by Taibo and Yanzi in the south of the Yangtze River suddenly added a group of followers. Fan Lai's Record of Rebuilding the Dantai Ancestral Temple discusses the significance of Confucius' disciple Dantai's journey to the south to destroy the Ming Dynasty, and emphasizes the orthodoxy of the Dantai Tomb Temple in Yuzhang. Gu Cheng wrote a "Record" for Renzi Temple in Tongli, saying: "There are Yanzi in Wu and Renzi in Chu, which are really the ancestors of Confucianism in the south." Based on the sacrificial purpose of responding to the sacrificial policy, this kind of rebuilt or newly built buildings especially emphasize the construction and maintenance of the sacrificial space. Changshu Yanzi Literature Academy, Cemetery, and Former Residence, which are equipped with worshippers, ultimately focus on the management of worshippers' space. Zhu Xi's descendants of Songshan Academy in the Golden Chamber, not far away, are more like Buddhist temples. No wonder Kong Jifen, a descendant of Confucius, once sighed when examining the Queli Academy: "The Academy was originally set up for lecturing in the Spring and Autumn Period. Today, although the worship is solemn, the sound of string chanting is inaudible, which is so cruel!"

The genealogy compiled by the descendants of Confucian sages, in order to show or verify the identity of the direct descendants, generally has a similar compilation structure: tracing back the genealogy of the sages to prove the identity of the direct descendants; Collect imperial edicts and archives of previous dynasties to fix the preferential exemption qualification of this dynasty; Collect the deeds and arts of the ancestors to shape the family cultural identity. Among them, people who have newly acquired the status of sacrificial descendants are often regarded as "Zhongxing ancestors". The newly established sacrificial family often invites local officials and local sages who support the sacrificial identity petition to endorse the genealogy, and even compiles the deeds of their ancestors in addition to the genealogy. For example, the Zong Sheng Zhi compiled by Zeng Zi's descendants, the Lu County Manual compiled by Youzi's descendants, Ren Zi's Family Tree and Ren Zi's Remaining Book compiled by Ren Zi's descendants, etc. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, there were about 40 kinds of family chronicles reorganized by the newly established Confucian sages and worshipping families.

In this process, controversial temple construction and genealogy compilation occasionally occurred. The political power corresponding to the status of the Five Classics Doctor and the sacrificial students and the local economic support that the semi official temple may win made the Confucian sage sacrificial family once focus on practical purposes. For example, the fact that descendants of Youzi Chongming changed their surname from "Yu" to "You" in order to inherit the worship not only aroused dissatisfaction within the family, but also aroused suspicion from officials such as Zha Qichang, the magistrate of Chongming County, and Peng Yuanrui, the minister of the Ministry of Rites. It is not uncommon for ethnic groups to obtain the qualification of worship in the small clan identity. There are even a few sacrificial buildings that are virtual on the paper just to strive for the identity of sacrificial students, and have never been implemented. This kind of family building strategy was a phenomenon under the trend of expansion of Confucian sacrificial families in the early Qing Dynasty, leaving a lot of historical facts to be clarified.

Cooperation and competition between the southern and northern Confucian sages' worship families

In addition to a few of the seventy-two sages of Confucius who were born in the south, most of them were concentrated in Shandong, the hinterland of Confucianism, and the adjacent northern regions. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the development of the system of worshipping the ancestors and the revival of the family since the late Ming Dynasty, more worshipping students were added, especially in the south of the Yangtze River. From the perspective of the number of students to be worshipped by each province in the "Great Qing Festival" and other books, Jiangsu alone has reached the total number of students in the northern provinces outside Shandong. The development of the southern Confucian sages' worship families not only reflects the characteristics of regional economy and culture, but also forms a differentiated development model of Shandong families with the support of Yansheng Prefecture and Shandong Government. The northern and southern families carried out regional cooperation and competition around the worship qualification, which roughly showed the competition and cooperation between the southern families represented by Jiangnan and the northern families represented by Shandong.

Before Qianlong, this cooperation was mainly manifested in the close communication between local families and Yansheng Mansion, including system, education, friendship and other aspects, maintaining the worship family structure centered on Yansheng Mansion. After Qianlong, with the contraction of the power of Yansheng Mansion, the regional cooperation between the ancient families outside Shandong gradually strengthened. For example, the Yan family, which rose earlier in the south, has become a new core of local through marriage and social efforts, and can provide a model development model similar to Yansheng Mansion for surrounding families. The Zhuansun, Min and Zhong families of the ancestors in Xiaoxian County and Suzhou, Anhui also maintained close family relations. Even if they cannot be listed in the list of sacrificial students, imitating the narrative and family style of descendant families is also an activity that the sages are keen on. Sometimes, local ethnic groups can participate more firmly in the behavioral logic as descendants of sages by combining with the families of worshipping descendants. From this, the court's attitude of worshiping Confucianism not only went deep into the descendant families of Confucian sages, but also into the wider local families holding the identity of the descendant of the sages.

In the case of limited number of people to worship, the descendants of Shandong Confucian sages, who were supported by Yansheng Prefecture and local officials, inevitably had disagreements with the southern families in addition to cooperation. Shi Zhichang, a disciple of Confucius in Jiangyin, offered sacrifices from south to north under the intervention of Yansheng Mansion, who had offered sacrifices to the descendants of Shi in Yutai County, Shandong Province for several times. Another example is the battle between Chongming, Jiangsu, and Feicheng, Shandong, for descendants who had sons to worship during the Qianlong period, which is an example of the southern families relying on family strength to fight against the Shandong government and the Yansheng government. In this kind of competition, compared with the northern families, the southern families seem to be more active in economic and social activities. However, due to the lack of cooperation of the Yansheng Prefecture, local officials and other political forces, it is not uncommon for worshippers to encounter obstacles in inheritance. The complexity of the competition between the northern and southern families is one of the important reasons for the rise and fall of the Confucian sages who worshipped the families outside Shandong since Qianlong.

It can be seen that the Confucian culture represented by the Confucian sages has gradually become a part of the socialization process of Confucianism through the local construction of the worship family, which has affected the construction of the Confucian tradition in ancient China. The Confucian worship policy of the central court also further affected the local society through this channel. This was a desirable way for the Qing government, which was committed to integrating Taoism and governing Taoism. Even in the case of the gradual decline of some sacrificial families in the late Qing Dynasty, the tradition of ancestor worship was still quietly fixed in the genealogy and ancestral hall. The synergy between family building, family tradition inheritance and the court's cultural policy continued through the mutually beneficial channel of ancestor worship, which has always affected the family narrative and cultural inheritance of some families today. The study of Confucian worship families can add new types of cases to the known family studies of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The complex interaction between the court, local officials, Yansheng officials and local families involved in the worship of Confucian sages is also an effective window to study the relationship between central and local governments in the Ming and Qing dynasties.