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Abstract
Early accounts describe heavenly omens surrounding the birth of Confucius, claim that his body exhibited forty-nine supernatural features, and attribute extraordinary abilities to him. Later, he became the focus of an official cult that expressed religious veneration through regular sacrifices at government-funded temples. Located in administrative centers all over China from the Tang period onward, these temples housed figural icons until a major ritual reform in 1530 replaced them with spirit-tablets inscribed with names and titles. However, many schools and private academies displayed a three-quarter standing portrait of Confucius. Usually incised on stone tablets, such portrayals reproduced a seemingly miraculous prototype that had become famous in the hinterlands of fourteenth-century Yuan China. According to a 1326- or 1327-dated inscription, this tablet had been placed facedown in a stone bridge near Jiangling, in western Hubei. When the prefect’s horse reared up and refused to cross the bridge, the tablet was discovered and taken to the local Daoist temple. Only later was it identified as Wu Daozi’s portrait of Confucius and moved to the Jiangling prefectural school, where rubbings were used to make replicas for other schools. The supernaturally tinged account of its discovery suggested that the image had a numinous aura, which could be spread elsewhere through reproductions that shared its efficacy and were similarly associated with uncanny phenomena. Another set of miracle tales concerns wooden votive figurines of Confucius and his wife, which were treasured by his descendants and allegedly protected by divine forces during the flight from Qufu to escape the Jin invasion. Such stories reveal little-known religious aspects of the veneration of Confucius in China.
Confucius is often characterized in secular terms, but traditions concerning miraculous images (in a variety of media) and supernatural events attributed to the presence of his spirit suggest that his veneration shared elements and practices with China’s more commonly recognized religions, broadly defined.[1] Certain aspects of his cult that have received little scholarly attention reveal surprising similarities with the worship of Buddhist, Daoist, and popular gods. For example, early accounts of his life describe heavenly omens surrounding his conception and birth, as well as his unusual physical features, and several anecdotes testify to his uncanny abilities as an adult. After his death he became the focus of a sacrificial cult that eventually spread throughout the realm, with a network of official temples and a systematized liturgy. Portraits of Confucius were repeatedly replicated for display in schools and private academies, and some figured in tales of supernatural occurrences. Stories are also recorded about his images and personal relics that moved on their own or revealed themselves through flashing lights or other paranormal manifestations, and unusual phenomena in nature were ascribed to his spirit’s presence. Some accounts even associate Confucius with prognostications of events that occurred long after his lifetime. Such themes suggest common conceptions underlying Chinese religious expression that are more readily recognized in Buddhist, Daoist, and popular religious contexts. Their appearance in connection with Confucius, who is typically associated with a purely mundane, secular realm, calls attention to underlying conceptions of the numinous.
Miraculous Beginnings
One straightforward reason for an image to have miraculous properties might be because it portrays a figure associated with supernatural powers. Hagiographical accounts of the lives of Chinese gods and sages typically claim that their births and early years were extraordinary in certain ways, and the earliest biography of Confucius, in Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (145–86 BCE) Shi ji 史記 (Historical Records), alludes to unusual details concerning his origins and childhood.[2] His parents were an odd match—an elderly man who was related to the Shang royal house, and a young woman with whom he “joined in the wild” (ye he), apparently without formal marriage rites.[3] Confucius was born after an offering was made on Ni Hill (Ni qiu 尼丘).[4] His head was oddly shaped, with sides that rose higher than the center, so he was given the name “Hill” (Qiu 丘) and later took the style Ni (尼), after the mountain. As a young boy he often engaged in a non-childlike form of play, arranging sacrificial vessels (zudou 俎豆) as if performing a ritual. In recounting the events of Confucius’s adult life, Sima Qian does not mention anything overtly paranormal, but he notes that Confucius was exceptionally tall, at nine chi and six cun (nearly seven feet!), and that people called him “Tall Man,” finding him extraordinary. Concluding his account, Sima Qian declares that despite Confucius’s lack of a feudal title, he had been venerated for ten generations by rulers, princes, and all who discussed the Six Arts. Thus, he could be called the Ultimate Sage (zhi sheng 至聖), a transcendent being who comprehended the patterns of Heaven and used them to benefit the world.
Supernatural elements associated with Confucius’s conception and birth take far more blatant forms in Han and post-Han apocryphal texts (weishu 緯書) and anomaly tales (zhiguai 志怪).[5] Wang Jia’s 王嘉fourth-century Shiyi ji 拾遺記 (Recorded Gleanings) describes a series of fantastic events that followed the prayer on Ni Hill, which his mother is said to have offered at a shrine to the spirit of the mountain. First, she received a visit from a qilin, the auspicious mythical beast whose appearance heralded the arrival of a sage-ruler.[6] The creature delivered a jade tablet bearing a prognostication, “The child of the essence of water will succeed the declining Zhou and become the Uncrowned King” (shui jing zi ji shuai Zhou er wei su wang 水精子繼衰周而為素王).[7] Then, a pair of dragons appeared over her house on the night before his birth. As he was being born, gods in the form of five old men hovered in the sky, and a troupe of heavenly musicians played in celebration. The baby’s chest bore a propitious inscription, “Sign [of the one who] will create regulations to order the world” (zhi zuo ding shi fu 制作定世符), marking him as a godlike sage, sent by Heaven. As an adult, Confucius sometimes exhibited mysterious powers, such as an uncanny ability to identify ancient relics and interpret obscure portents.[8] When he finished writing and editing his books and offered them to Heaven, the Northern Dipper (Bei dou 北斗) sent down a red rainbow that turned into a jade tablet. According to the Han “modern text” (jinwen 今文) school, led by Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (ca. 179–ca. 104 BCE), Confucius’s ability to communicate with Heaven enabled him to transmit the Way of the Ruler (wang dao 王道) in the coded language of the Chunqiu 春秋 (Spring and Autumn Annals), a chronicle of events in his home state of Lu 魯.[9]
These stories were not only passed down but also embellished further by the descendants of Confucius, the Kong lineage, who included them in genealogical compilations.[10] Starting in the Han period, the Kongs received privileges and material benefits for maintaining sacrifices to Confucius, and assertions of his divine nature helped to justify their special treatment. A passage describing his appearance claims that his body bore forty-nine supernatural marks (the Buddha had just thirty-two) and many extraordinary features as an adult, resembling those of sages in ages past. These marvelous details became more widely known when the passage was quoted in Yuan and Ming woodblock-printed editions of Shilin guangji 事林廣記 (Extensive Records of the Forest of Matters), a late Song compilation of useful information for the aspiring literatus (fig. 1).[11] Some of the illustrated accounts of Confucius’s life that were created in the Ming and Qing periods also included supernatural events and allusions to his superhuman powers.[12] Scenes relating to his birth are particularly noteworthy for depicting the kind of spectacular special effects associated with gods (fig. 2).
In addition to hagiographical stories and Kong family lore, the official cult of Confucius represented him as the sage who transmitted the Way and established the ideological foundations of rule by ritual. Long after his death, he received a series of posthumous titles and honors from Han through Qing emperors. By 739 he was canonized as the Exalted King of Culture (Wenxuan wang 文宣王), and in 1008 Song Zhenzong added “Dark Sage” (Xuan sheng 玄聖) to the kingly title, alluding to Confucius’s supernatural nature and powers.[13] Starting in 195 BCE with the Han founding emperor Gaozu, successive dynasties also supported sacrifices to Confucius (fig. 3).[14] Initially held only in Qufu, his hometown, and then also in the capital, the rituals eventually came to be performed throughout the empire at government-funded temples on a regular schedule. In the second months of spring and autumn, officials and local scholars made major offerings to his spirit, sacrificing three large animals (pig, ox, and sheep), and in other months they presented a vegetarian offering. With the exception of a brief hiatus at the end of the Qing dynasty, the ceremony has continued in modified form, although now its timing coincides with Confucius’s birthday in late September.[15]
Until the middle of the Ming dynasty, official Confucian temples associated with prefectural and county schools typically displayed an iconic image of Confucius, often in sculptural form, and highly scripted sacrifices were performed in its presence. The enshrined figure represented Confucius with the attributes and emblems appropriate to his posthumous noble rank as the Exalted King of Culture. Like similarly ennobled Daoist and popular gods, he wore a crown and held a scepter, and his robes exhibited regal symbols. However, the 1530 ritual reform changed his kingly title to Ultimate Sage and Former Teacher (Zhisheng xianshi 至聖先師), shifting the emphasis to his transmission of the Way and better reflecting his status in life. At the same time, inscribed tablets replaced figural icons in the sacrificial halls of official temples, in order to return the rites to a supposed classical form and purge them of presumed Buddhist influence. The temple in Qufu was allowed to retain anthropomorphic icons because it also served the ancestral cult of the Kongs, who preserved a regal image of Confucius adorned with emblems of power (fig. 4). Elsewhere, ritual halls became aniconic spaces, but there was no prohibition on visual representations of Confucius in non-sacrificial contexts, such as in school buildings. Such arrangements continued until the end of the imperial era, and, after a hiatus and with some modifications, under the Republic. By contrast, many restored Confucian temples in the People’s Republic now display sculptures or paintings of Confucius that visitors may worship as they would a Buddhist, Daoist, or popular deity.[16] Some of these images are recent iterations of an iconography associated with a fourteenth-century miracle tale.
Miraculous Portraits
In the middle and late imperial period, an approximately life-size portrait of Confucius standing in three-quarter profile was often displayed in the schools connected with official temples in China’s administrative centers, as well as in private academies in a variety of locations.[17] Usually either a rubbing or an incised stone tablet, the portrayal depicts him late in life, wearing an unadorned robe and the simple cloth cap of a scholar-recluse. Wide-eyed and large-eared, his heavily bearded figure appears slightly stooped with age. He stands with hands clasped in front of his chest, and his sword juts out behind him. In contrast to the formal temple icons and the austere spirit-tablets that replaced them, this naturalistic image of Confucius as a gentle old man is intimate and approachable. Often, a seal-script title calls the image a “left-behind likeness” or “remaining trace” (yi xiang 遺像), implying that it had been transmitted from the end of his own lifetime. In seeming contradiction, the notation “Brush of Wu Daozi” (Wu Daozi bi 吳道子筆) also typically appears along one side, often in the lower section (fig. 5), associating the heirloom portrait with a Tang master of legendary prowess.
This archetype became associated with variations on a curious story that is sometimes transcribed or more briefly referenced in the inscriptions that accompany replications of the image. The fullest recorded version of the tale comes from Chen Hao 陳澔 (zi Keda 可大, 1260/61–1341), who composed a somewhat convoluted account in 1326 or 1327 to inscribe on one of the many examples.[18] Chen was a follower of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) and lectured a decade later at the White Deer Grotto Academy (Bailudong shuyuan 白鹿洞書院) in Nanchang, Jiangxi, which Zhu had revived and made famous in the late twelfth century. Chen’s Li ji jishuo 禮記集說 (Collected Commentaries on the Ritual Classic) gathered Cheng-Zhu interpretations of this core Confucian classic and became an official edition in the early Ming; the Qing canonized Chen himself as a Former Scholar (Xianru 先儒) in the Confucian temple.[19] Although in 1326 he still was only an obscure Instructor (jiaoyu 教諭) at the Huangmei 黃梅 District School in Huangzhou 黃州 Prefecture (eastern Hubei),[20] his later renown may have facilitated the wider circulation of the remarkable story that he told in his inscription.
Chen Hao begins by describing an extraordinary event that had taken place some years earlier, which he had heard about from a colleague, Secretarial Assistant (muzuo 幕佐) Tao Jingshan 陶景山.[21] A circuit official named Luo Feng 羅封 was traveling near Jiangling 江陵 (now Jingzhou 荊州, in western Hubei) when he came to a stone bridge. Suddenly, his horse reared and refused to cross, despite whipping and prodding. Sending an underling to investigate, Luo discovered that one of the stone slabs was incised with a figure. He had it removed and taken into Jiangling, where it was installed in a Daoist temple, the Xuanmiao guan 玄妙觀. Some time later, in 1323, a local magistrate named Jin Shuliang 靳叔良 happened to visit the Xuanmiao guan while in Jiangling on official business.[22] Seeing the stele, he immediately recognized the figure as the portrait of the Former Sage (Confucius) at leisure (Xian sheng yan ju zhi xiang 先聖燕居之像) by the Tang master Wu Daozi (ca. 689–after 755), who was renowned for marvelous paintings of Buddhist and Daoist deities. When Jin asked the Daoist priests why it was there, they told him the remarkable story, which he related to his colleagues. One of them was none other than Secretarial Assistant Tao Jingshan, who suggested petitioning to transfer the tablet to the Tower of Revering Culture (Chongwen ge 崇文閣) in the Jiangling Prefectural School.[23] The stone was duly moved, and rubbings were made to take back.[24] Soon after Chen Hao arrived at his post at the Huangmei District School in 1326, he obtained a rubbing of a portrait of Confucius from the Li Hefu Family School (Li Hefu jiashu 李和甫家塾).[25] When he showed it to the Huangmei magistrate, Mr. Li of Jingshan 景山李氏,[26] the latter was overjoyed, exclaiming that the spirit of the Former Sage was illustrious and bright, and his left-behind portrait was itself a supernatural thing (Xian sheng zhi ling zhaozhao hehe, yi xiang suo zai, zi you shen wu 先聖之靈昭昭赫赫, 遺像所在, 自有神物). Accordingly, Magistrate Li ordered a new stone carved to reproduce it for the Huangmei District School and requested that Chen Hao write an inscription. Although the story of the auspicious discovery was not directly relevant to Huangmei, which was a long way from Jiangling, Chen used the opportunity to record and spread the inspiring tale.
The details of Chen Hao’s narrative are reminiscent of stock elements in tales about images that display paranormal signs of their heavenly efficacy. Miracles typically are attributed to a deity’s response to reverential action on the part of devotees.[27] However, the auspicious portrait of Confucius required a response from the natural world to alert clueless human beings. In this case, it took a horse to bring attention to the mistreated stone bearing the portrait of a sage. A Daoist temple evidently was the most appropriate place for such a manifestly potent image to be lodged. Moreover, Wu Daozi was renowned as a painter-sage (hua sheng 畫聖) who had created Daoist (and Buddhist) pictures that exhibited marvelous agency.[28] Even if the tablet were recognized as a portrait of Confucius, an image by Wu would not have been out of place in a Daoist temple.
The story may imply that the stone tablet did not bear an identifying title, or, if it did, that perhaps the writing was in archaic seal script and not easy to read. The stone’s incorporation into a bridge, and the failure of the official who found it to recognize the figure portrayed, might even be construed as an allegory for the decline of the Way in the early Yuan. The Mongol conquest had brought unsettling changes, interrupting the recruitment of officials through Confucian civil examinations and causing members of the educated elite to avoid serving. In the early fourteenth century, however, Yuan emperors partially reinstated the examinations and elevated Confucius’s title to Great Completer, Ultimate Sage, and Exalted King of Culture, Master Kong (Dacheng zhisheng wenxuan wang Kongzi 大成至聖文宣王孔子). If only symbolically, these changes suggest propitious conditions in which his portrait could be recognized and taken from the Daoist temple to its proper place in the Jiangling Prefectural School.
It is not clear whether Chen Hao believed (or was told) that the Li Hefu School rubbing was made directly from the miraculous image in Jiangling. Strictly in terms of iconography, it would not have mattered, as versions of this image had already circulated widely throughout southern China during the Southern Song and Yuan periods. Many schools and academies had portraits of Confucius that traced back to a common source, an image allegedly transported to the South by Kong descendants who had fled from Qufu during the Jin invasion of 1126–27. The Kongs may well have brought from their family temple in Qufu the portrait that their Song genealogy describes as the oldest and “most true” (zui zhen 最真), a small picture of the Former Sage “in leisure clothing, with Master Yan [Yan Hui 顏回] in attendance” (衣燕居服, 顏子從行), said to date nearly to Confucius’s own lifetime.[29] Before succeeding to the title of forty-eighth-generation Duke for Perpetuating the Sage (Yansheng gong 衍聖公), Kong Duanyou 孔端友 (1078–1132) had already copied the composition onto an incised stone tablet in Qufu in 1095 (fig. 6), and it was replicated elsewhere in the late Northern Song, sometimes with an attribution to Wu Daozi.[30] This image seems to have been the source for a life-size portrait-stele at the Kong Southern Lineage Family Temple in Quzhou, Zhejiang, where Song Gaozong awarded land and facilities to re-establish ancestral sacrifices to Confucius in the late 1130s. The large stele depicts Confucius alone, under the title Legacy Portrait of the Former Sage (Xian sheng yi xiang 先聖遺像) (fig. 7). A small note at lower right says that it was erected by Duke Kong Duanyou and his uncle, Kong Chuan 孔傳 (1065–1139), who had compiled the family genealogy.[31] Although this portrayal gives Confucius slightly different headgear than he wears in the small heirloom portrait with Yan Hui, his stance and garments are otherwise similar, suggesting that the large image could well be based on the small one.[32] The stele currently installed in the Quzhou temple is a replacement for an earlier version and may date to around 1520, when the temple was rebuilt in its present location.[33] However, Yuan and Ming editions of the encyclopedia Shilin guangji include a portrait with the same title and similar visual features, and the image is framed between a quotation from Kong Chuan’s genealogy and Gaozong’s 1144 encomium to Confucius (see fig. 1). These disparate pieces of evidence suggest that the Ming portrait-stele in the Quzhou temple is a reasonable surrogate for the putative Southern Song original. In recent times, details concerning this complicated historical situation have become simplified into an assertion that Kong Duanyou brought a large painting of Confucius by Wu Daozi from Qufu and had it copied onto a stele in Quzhou.[34]
Life-size—and lifelike—portraits of Confucius served as sites of his presence, not only in the Quzhou Kong family temple of the Southern Lineage but also—especially—at Southern Song and Yuan private academies imbued with the ethos of spiritual transmission from master to disciple that was associated with the Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學). Zhu Xi himself is said to have led students in offering daily greetings to a portrait of Confucius at the Cangzhou Academy 滄州書院 in northern Fujian.[35] The stone tablet that was found in the bridge near Jiangling might plausibly have come from such an academy or school. Southern Song academies that had suffered during the dynastic transition were revived all over southern China in the last few decades of the Yuan, and portraits of Confucius were again being installed to inspire students and officials. A case in point is the image obtained by Chen Hao at the Li Hefu Family School, which Magistrate Li had replicated for display in the Huangmei District School. Writing a commemorative inscription for it gave Chen a chance to record the amazing story he had heard from Tao Jingshan. His own reputation as a scholar of commentaries on the Ritual Classic and his supernaturally tinged account of the discovery of the Jiangling tablet may have brought attention to the paranormal efficacy of the lifelike portrait of Confucius and helped increase its appeal for replicating elsewhere.
Often, the texts on later portrait-steles simply focus on the astounding tale of the horse that would not step on an unseen image of the ancient sage. For example, a Yuan military official, Sengjianu 僧家奴, erected a portrait-stele at the Guangzhou Prefectural School in 1345, and his inscription recounts the discovery of the incised stone in the bridge without identifying Jiangling as the place where the marvelous event happened or mentioning Chen Hao’s commemorative text.[36] Instead, he writes that he had a stone tablet carved from a rubbing he had acquired in 1341 in Qufu, an indication that Mongol rule may have facilitated the spread of the image as well as the tale. Sengjianu’s sponsorship of the portrait-stele seems to have impressed the Ming literati who copied it, perhaps taking it as a sign that even non-Han people venerated Confucius and might benefit from his presence. Among other examples, Sengjianu’s text is quoted on a 1440-dated stele replicating the Guangzhou stele for the Huating 華亭 District School in Songjiang 松江 Prefecture, and that stele in turn was copied for the Suzhou Prefectural School in the 1860s (fig. 8).[37]
A variation on the stock theme of a stone incised with a Wu Daozi portrait of Confucius, lying hidden and forgotten until a horse alerted humans to its presence, appears in a story about the Yellow Stream Academy (Huangxi shuyuan 璜溪書院), in a mountainous area of northern Guangxi. The incident took place during the school’s previous incarnation as the Great Ultimate Academy (Taiji shuyuan 太極書院), which was founded in the late twelfth century and destroyed at the end of the Southern Song.[38] According to the tale, a Southern Song general was passing by with his troops, on the way to quell a rebellion in Lingnan, when he came to a pond, where his horse suddenly knelt down and refused to go further. After his men drained the pond, he discovered a stone incised with a portrait of Confucius and took it to the nearby academy; the pond became known as Pond of the Sage (Shengren tang 聖人塘). Recently, at the former site of the Yellow Stream Academy, a badly damaged portrait-stele was found, with enough detail preserved to show the image and the notation “Tang Wu Daozi bi” in the lower left; the longer inscription at right is too effaced to be legible (fig. 9).[39]
The tale of the horse that knelt down to pay homage to a hidden image of Confucius is clearly a variation on the story of a steed refusing to tread on the portrait stone.[40] The common element is that an animal recognizes and responds to the presence of the Sage, eventually causing people to restore him to his proper place, physically and perhaps metaphorically. However, specific details surrounding the wondrous incident can be changed, as in the case of an early Qing copy of the Huangmei portrait, which was erected in Chenzhou 郴州, Hunan, on the orders of acting prefect Deng Yuanjian 鄧源瀳 (fig. 10). Despite paying homage to the stele that bore Chen Hao’s text, Deng’s 1656 inscription on Chenzhou’s copy says that the horse knelt down in reverence rather than rearing up in protest, and the location of the paranormal event is different. Deng begins by observing that Huangmei had an incised-stone portrait in its Confucian temple, while others had only wooden tablets inscribed with names and titles.[41] Previously, when Deng had been magistrate of Huangmei, he had learned of the stone’s remarkable provenance, which he proceeds to relate: five li north of town,[42] there formerly was a bridge with a stone on top, long weathered by wind and water, which no one had ever investigated closely. When a horse knelt before it, the rider realized that there must be something supernatural, so he had the stone raised and washed, revealing the seal-script title Zhi sheng yi xiang and Wu Daozi’s signature along the side. The stone was removed and installed in the Confucian temple, which “stored it without effect” (cang zhi wei guo 藏之未果). Deng does not say when these events occurred, whether he had any part in them, or what kind of “effect” was lacking. However, when he was later serving in Chenzhou, his colleague Hu Yusun 胡虞孫 brought a rubbing of the Huangmei portrayal, and Deng rejoiced that the Sage’s Way was now present in the South. Accordingly, he ordered a stone carved to perpetuate it, so that the Sage’s efficacious energy (ling qi 靈氣) would stimulate Chenzhou’s cultural and educational attainment.[43]
A different kind of supernatural event is associated with a mid-Ming replica of the Huangmei portrait-stele (fig. 11). Dated autumn 1547, the stone is housed in the Confucian temple of present-day Jian’ou 建甌, Fujian, which was formerly the temple for Jianning Prefecture 建寧府.[44] At right a brief inscription reads, “Legacy Portrait of the Ultimate Sage stele in Huangmei County, brush of Wu Daozi” (Zhi sheng yi xiang, Huangmei xian bei, Wu Daozi bi 至聖遺像, 黃梅縣碑, 吳道子筆). At left, another note identifies the sponsor of the copied image as Fu Yan 符驗 of Huangyan, Zhejiang 浙江黄岩, and gives the date. The portrayal is undoubtedly based on a rubbing from the Huangmei stele that was copied onto a new stone tablet in 1547. However, the terse inscription does not recount the miracle tale. Instead, an entrenched local tradition in northern Fujian claims that the stone itself flew from Huangmei to Jianning in 1547, when the latter’s Confucian temple was being rebuilt after a fire and did not have an icon. Preceded by flashes of lightning and thunder, torrential rain, and wild wind, the stone mysteriously and suddenly appeared in the temple. Accordingly, it is known locally as “The Stele That Flew Here” (Feilai bei 飛來碑). The story thus embodies several common tropes in tales about miraculous images in Buddhist, Daoist, and popular religion. One concerns the image that moves on its own to another location, exercising agency to achieve its own purposes.[45] Another is the revelation of the image amid unusual lights and other celestial displays, a theme also prominent in apocryphal stories about the conception and birth of Confucius (see fig. 2). Also worth noting is that a Confucian temple being rebuilt in 1547 should not have enshrined an image at all, according to the Ming ritual reform of 1530, so the tale calls attention to a continuing desire to “see” Confucius in the sacrificial hall. Finally, the fact that Wu Daozi is named in the terse accompanying text underscores his association with numinous figures that have mystical capabilities. Since the late Tang period, Wu had been celebrated as a genius who wielded the forces of Creation, “profoundly creating marvels, as if intuiting them within his nature, not something not achievable by accumulated study” (shen zao miao chu, ruo wu zhi yu xing, fei ji xi suo neng zhi 深造妙處, 若悟之於性, 非積習所能致).[46]
Votive Figures with Divine Protection
In contrast to large portraits of Confucius, which existed in considerable numbers and were relatively well known in the circles of the late-imperial educated elite, a pair of small pistache-wood (kai mu 楷木) statues depicting Confucius and his wife, Madame Qiguan 亓官, was worshiped only by Kong descendants at the Southern Lineage temple in Quzhou (fig. 12).[47] As cult images for ancestral veneration in the family temple, they were not shown to outsiders, and even lineage members usually saw them only on ritual occasions. According to family traditions recorded in later sources, the figurines had been carved by Zi Gong子貢, the devoted disciple who had kept a six-year vigil at his master’s grave in Qufu.[48] Confucius is portrayed with an unusually large head, big ears, expressive eyes, and a long, tapering beard. Wearing an official headdress, he sits with slender hands clasped in front of his chest. His wife wears a voluminous robe, and her hands are hidden inside her joined sleeves. Duke Kong Duanyou is said to have brought the figurines from Qufu to the South during the Jin invasion, and eventually to Quzhou.[49] At some point they were installed in the Kong Southern Lineage Family Temple, along with the life-size portrait-stele (see fig. 7) in the Hall (later Pavilion) for Thinking of Lu (Si Lu tang / ge 思魯堂 / 閣), a name that refers to Qufu.[50] The votive figures became more widely known after being photographed for an updated edition of the Kong genealogy that was published in 1937. The Nationalist government subsequently took an interest in ensuring their safety and had them removed from the temple and hidden in various spots during the Japanese invasion.[51] The seventy-fourth-generation head of the Southern Lineage, Kong Fanhao 孔繁豪 (1891–1944), installed copies of the precious figurines in the niche. When the originals returned safely in 1946, the Southern Lineage Temple in Quzhou burned the copies and celebrated a grand rite coinciding with Confucius’s birthday that year, with high-level government officials and hundreds of spectators in attendance.
A late eighteenth-century commemorative account, Feng Shike’s 馮世科 “Record of the Shrine to the Mountain Gods of Lu” (Lufu shanshen ci beiji 魯阜山神祠碑記), describes supernatural forces that protected the votive statues on their perilous journey from Qufu to Quzhou.[52] Based on information given to him by Kong Guangbiao 孔廣杓, the seventieth-generation title-holder of the Kong Southern Lineage in Quzhou, Feng composed an account of a shrine that had allegedly been erected by Kong Duanyou to worship three Qufu tutelary deities, who had manifested themselves at a crucial moment to keep the statuettes safe from the Jurchens. According to the story, the boat with the figurines on board had docked for the night at Zhenjiang 鎭江 when it became swamped by surging waves. Suddenly, three gods appeared, pushed the waves back, and conveyed the statuettes to the riverbank. When Kong Duanyou burned incense in gratitude, the smoke formed the characters “Lu fu shan shen” 魯阜山神 (Mountain Gods of Lu), so he knew that deities from his homeland had protected the precious effigies. He later established a shrine to them in Quzhou.
According to the modern scholar Wei Shuguang 魏曙光, this legend has recently been embellished by the current head of the Southern Lineage, seventy-fifth-generation descendant Kong Xiangkai 孔祥楷 (b. 1938).[53] The expanded version adds colorful details to the story, claiming that the exhausted and starving Kong refugees had gone up on shore to rest when the Jin army suddenly swooped down on them. Just as the soldiers were about to seize the votive statues, a wild wind blew up and overturned the boat. Thinking that their prize had sunk out of reach, the Jin soldiers withdrew. As Kong Duanyou was sending someone to try to retrieve the figurines, he saw three gods riding on auspicious clouds above the water, bringing them safely to shore. After he burned incense and saw the four characters form, he honored the three gods by founding a temple called the Sanshen miao 三神廟 (Temple of the Three Gods)—also known as Keyang miao 柯陽廟, from the name of the local district.
During the past few decades, the miraculous story of the votive figurines’ journey to Quzhou has been illustrated as part of the larger history of the Southern Lineage of Kongs, supporting their claim to be the senior lineage of Confucius’s descendants. After a thorough renovation of the family temple and mansion in the late 1990s, a set of stone tablets was installed along one of the corridors, depicting major events in a self-consciously archaistic and somewhat whimsical style. In the second scene, the two votive statuettes stand inside a curtained compartment that is borne aloft on a scrolling cloud (fig. 13). Cloud swirls on either side of the niche form an approximation of the characters “Lu fu” 魯阜 and “shan shen” 山神, and tiny figures kneeling on both shores of the river below gesture or point upward. Rocky hills rise behind the broad river, where boats carry members of the senior lineage to safety in the South, accompanied by waterbirds and oversized fish. By contrast, a more recent set of colorful paintings downplays the paranormal elements and presents the events in a melodramatic, cartoonlike mode.[54] Painted by Zhang Jixin 張繼新, an artist associated with the Southern Lineage Family Temple, the story has gained additional episodes to make it seem more realistic. One scene shows high waves buffeting the refugees’ boats, followed by another in which men are searching the water with lanterns. The next depicts the dejected party sitting on the riverbank, just at the moment when an attendant spots the statuettes floating toward them on the waves. The climactic scene portrays the grateful Kongs bowing and burning incense before the figurines, which now stand safely on the shore (fig. 14). The billowing smoke wafting toward the distant mountains forms four yellow clusters, but characters have not quite taken shape.[55]
Ironically, the effigies of Confucius and his wife no longer reside in the Quzhou family temple. Once the Japanese invasion was over, they were brought back to Quzhou and welcomed with great ceremony; however, after the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, the statuettes were moved to the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou. In 1959, the Qufu temple borrowed them for an exhibition celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic and never returned them.[56] Instead, facsimiles were sent to the provincial museum in 1963. After the Southern Lineage Family Temple was restored in the 1990s, these were transferred to Quzhou (fig. 15). Now they are now enshrined in the Pavilion for Thinking of Lu, where they are treated respectfully and kept out of the sight of visitors. Enough time has passed that the distinction between original and replica is lost on most people.[57] As for the original statuettes, in a sense they have gone home to Qufu, after more than eight hundred years. However, they have been largely ignored there and have played no role in the contemporary revival of Confucius and Confucianism on the mainland.[58]
Concluding Remarks
Although Confucian traditions are generally presumed to differ completely from those of Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religion, stories about extraordinary events connected with visual representations of Confucius suggest that there are common elements, and they call attention to shared conceptions of the numinous in China. Phenomena such as flashing lights and auspicious clouds typically herald or accompany a supernatural occurrence, which is often connected with an image or relic. As John Kieschnick has observed, the worship of images and the attribution of special powers to them were important aspects of Buddhism’s impact on China.[59] Exposure to Buddhist miracle tales surely stimulated the evolution of stories about marvelous images of all types. Such stories are premised on a belief that an efficacious spirit (ling 靈) is present within the image, and representations of Confucius are no exception. As is now becoming apparent, examples of miraculous deeds connected with him have been recorded for centuries, and China’s populace seems increasingly inclined to accept them.
However, a few differences are worth noting. In Buddhist miracle tales, it is typically the actions of devotees that evoke a sympathetic response (gan ying 感應) from an sculptural or pictorial icon, while stories involving portraits of Confucius suggest that the response goes the other way. In other words, it is the efficacy of the Sage himself, present within the image, that provokes a response from the human or natural world. Another difference is that nothing has to be done to infuse Confucius’s spirit into the image or to enliven it in some way. There is no ritual associated with dotting the eyes of his portrait, nor a ceremony performed to consecrate it. Furthermore, while life-size portrayals of Confucius are the most likely of his representations to figure in a tale of a supernatural occurrence, no specific portrait was notably more favored than others for replication. Not even the Huangmei stele gained such ascendancy, although Chen Hao’s inscription gave it a certain stature. By contrast, in devotional Buddhism, the Bodhgayā Buddha was valorized for replication and transmission through copies, as Dorothy Wong’s article in this volume describes. If anything, it is Wu Daozi’s supposed signature, “Brush of Wu Daozi,” that is faithfully maintained from one portrait of Confucius to another. Often called the “Sage of Painting” (hua sheng 畫聖), Wu was said to wield the forces of Creation itself. This characterization suggests an inspired approach with Daoist overtones, which adds a mystical dimension to his representation of Confucius. In some respects, Wu’s association with the life-size portrayal is almost as important as its depiction of Confucius himself. A slightly different version of Wu’s alleged composition has supplanted the “legacy” portrait during the last century, and its reproductions are now ubiquitous (fig. 16).
Perhaps some of the differences are due to the fact that Confucius was not generally regarded as a boon-granting deity who performed miracles in response to prayers and vows or provided assistance with devotees’ personal concerns.[60] Instead, he had transmitted the Dao of the ancient sages and inspired a system of governance pervaded with ritual, and so his visual representation connected him more tangibly with the present. By means of an image, he could go anywhere and “bring the Dao” for the benefit of the local community. Dedicatory inscriptions for stone stelae that reproduce his portrait often speak of “seeing” him, or they quote a famous passage characterizing him, from the point of view of someone experiencing him in person: “The Master was affable and yet stern, imposing and yet not intimidating, dignified and yet at ease” 子溫而厲, 威而不猛, 恭而安。(Analects [Lun yu 論語 ] 7.38).
In fact, visual images of Confucius made his presence more concrete than some people believed was necessary or desirable. It is not difficult to find texts arguing that depictions are not needed because he is everywhere, like the sun and moon. Elite scholars aspired to form and maintain a mental image of Confucius, and portraits seemed to be a shortcut, too easy to be beneficial for one’s self-cultivation. Confucian fundamentalists tended to associate images with Buddhism and thought that they encouraged people to treat Confucius like a god who would respond to private supplications. And indeed, these critics may have been prescient: at restored Confucian temples in China, the addition of portrait icons since the 1990s has inspired people to worship Confucius as a deity who can assist them with their personal concerns. Contemporary visitors of both sexes now pray to him for all kinds of good fortune—success in examinations, good health, long life, children, and so forth. Donation boxes and incense burners often stand near statues and paintings of Confucius to make it convenient to present offerings (fig. 17), and some temples also provide racks for hanging votive placards.[61] Perhaps one or more of these contemporary images will inspire a miracle tale for our time.
Julia K. Murray, PhD (Princeton University), 1981, is professor emerita of Art History, East Asian Studies, and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Before entering academe, she worked in curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, and the Harvard University Art Museums. Her publications include Mirror of Morality: Chinese Narrative Illustration and Confucian Ideology (2007), Ma Hezhi and the Illustration of the Book of Odes (1993), Last of the Mandarins (1987), A Decade of Discovery (1979), and numerous articles on Chinese pictorial art and didactic narrative illustration. In 2010 she served as the guest curator and catalogue coauthor for the exhibition Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art at the China Institute Gallery in New York, organized jointly with the Shandong Provincial Museum. Her current research focuses on the visual and material culture associated with the veneration of Confucius, particularly portraits and illustrations of his life. E-mail: jmurray@wisc.eduNotes
Many scholars have written about the beliefs and practices of ordinary people and simple clerics under the rubric of Chinese religion; for representative readings, see Donald S. Lopez Jr., ed., Religions of China in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); and David W. Chappell, ed., Buddhist and Taoist Practice in Medieval Chinese Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987). See also (among others) Glen Dudbridge, Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); B. J. ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992); B. J. ter Haar, Guan Yu: The Religious Afterlife of a Failed Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Henri Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion, trans. Frank A. Kierman Jr. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981); and Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 3rd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2007). A useful overview of mainland scholarship is Daniel L. Overmyer, “From ‘Feudal Superstition’ to ‘Popular Beliefs’: New Directions in Mainland Chinese Studies of Chinese Popular Religion,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 12 (2001): 103–26.
Sima Qian, Shi ji (Records of the Historian), Beijing University punctuated and annotated edition (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), juan 47, 1905–47 (https://ctext.org/shiji/kong-zi-shi-jia). I discuss extraordinary events connected with conception, birth, and young childhood as standard hagiographical elements in “The Childhood of Gods and Sages,” Arts Asiatiques 55 (2000): 81–97 (http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/arasi.2000.1447).
A further hint of illegitimacy is that Confucius’s mother would not speak of his father’s burial site. Only after her death did Confucius learn its location from others, enabling him to bury his parents together. See Sima Qian, Shi ji, juan 47, 1905–7, or sections 1 and 2 (https://ctext.org/shiji/kong-zi-shi-jia). A later and more partisan source counters suggestions of ritual impropriety by claiming that his mother agreed to marry at her father’s request and feared only that she might not bear a son in time; see Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語 (Master Kong’s Family Sayings), benxing jie 本姓解, section 1 (https://ctext.org/kongzi-jiayu/ben-xing-jie).
Sima Qian, Shi ji, juan 47, 1905 (https://ctext.org/shiji/kong-zi-shi-jia). Although the wording is ambiguous, most commentators and translators assume that Confucius’s mother offered the sacrifice to pray for a son, as the Kongzi jiayu says explicitly (see note 3). A more common name for Ni Qiu is Nishan 尼山 (Mount Ni).
For details, see Wang Jia 王嘉, Shiyi ji 拾遺記 (Recorded Gleanings), reprinted in Baibu congshu jicheng 百部叢書集成, vol. 9 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1966), juan 3, 4–5. The anecdotes pertaining to Confucius’s birth are given a more elaborate telling in Kong Yuancuo 孔元措, Kongshi zuting guangji 孔氏祖庭廣記 (Expanded Record of the Kong Lineage, 1242), reprinted in Baibu congshu jicheng, vol. 65 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1967), juan 8, 1b–2b.
This explanation is specifically related to Confucius in the Gongyang commentary to the Chun qiu 春秋公羊傳 (Spring and Autumn Annals); see Year 14 of Duke Ai (哀公十四年) at https://ctext.org/gongyang-zhuan/ai-gong-shi-si-nian.
The inscription refers to ideas known as the Five Phases or Five Elements (wu xing 五行), which prescribed an ordered sequence of correlations among such things as the cardinal directions, seasons, colors, materials, and political regimes. According to these correlations, the Shang dynasty was associated with water and the Zhou dynasty with wood, which overcomes and thus succeeds water. Because Confucius’s ancestors were related to the Shang rulers, his essence was water. Water cannot overcome wood, so Confucius could never become king.
E.g., Wang Jia, Shiyi ji, juan 3, 4–5.
For further discussion, see Mark Csikszentmihalyi, “Confucius and the Analects in the Han,” in Confucius and the Analects, ed. Brian van Norden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 134–62; Thomas A. Wilson, Genealogy of the Way: The Construction and Uses of the Confucian Tradition in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 29–32; Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), Introduction, 205–13, 240–41; and On-cho Ng, “Kongzi as the Uncrowned King in Some Qing Gongyang Exegeses,” in A Concise Companion to Confucius, ed. Paul R. Goldin (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2017), 286–303.
For example, see Kong Chuan 孔傳, Dongjia zaji 東家雜記 (Miscellaneous Records of the Eastern House, 1134), reprinted in Kongzi wenhua daquan 孔子文化大全 (Ji’nan: Shandong Youyi shushe, 1990), juan shang上, 2a–b (31–32) and juan xia下, 3b (108); and Kong Yuancuo, Kongshi zuting guangji, juan 8, 4a (51).
Shilin guangji evolved in successive Yuan and Ming editions after its initial compilation in 1269 by Chen Yuanjing 陳元靚 and publication in Fujian; for details, see Hu Daojing 胡道靜, “Yijiuliusan nian Zhonghua shuju yingyin ben qianyan” 一九六三年中華書局影印本前言 (Foreword to the 1963 Zhonghua shuju Facsimile Edition), and Morita Kenji 森田憲司, “Guanyu zai Riben de Shilin guangji zhuben” 關於在日本的'事林廣記' 諸本 (Concerning Several Editions of Shilin guangji in Japan), reprinted in the Zhonghua shuju edition of Shilin guangji (Beijing, 1999), 559–65 and 566–72, respectively.
I discuss the development and varieties of illustrated biographies of Confucius in “Illustrations of the Life of Confucius: Their Evolution, Functions, and Significance in Late Ming China,” Artibus Asiae 57, no. 1–2 (1997): 73–134 (http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3249952); and “Varied Views of the Sage: Illustrated Narratives of the Life of Confucius,” in On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Temple of Confucius, ed. Thomas A. Wilson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 222–64. Kong Deping 孔德平 provides a table with basic information about numerous examples in Kongzi zaoxiang yanjiu 孔子造像研究 (Research on Images of Confucius) (Ji’nan: Shandong youyi chubanshe, 2015).
There may well be a connection between the Daoist-sounding title given to Confucius and Song Zhenzong’s well-known Daoist inclinations, but the title was changed to Zhisheng 至聖 (Ultimate Sage) in 1013, when the character Xuan 玄 became taboo as part of the personal name of a Song royal ancestor. Confucius also was called Former (or First) Sage (Xian sheng 先聖) or Exalted Sage (Xuansheng 宣聖). For successive stages of canonization and titles, conveniently summarized by Thomas A. Wilson, see “Canonization of Confucius” at http://academics.hamilton.edu/asian_studies/home/CultTemp/sitePages/canon.html.
For detailed discussions, see Thomas A. Wilson, “Sacrifice and the Imperial Cult of Confucius,” History of Religions 41 (2002): 251–87.
See “Autumnal Sacrifice to Confucius: A Study of Confucianism’s Sacrificial Tradition: A Video Walk-through,” on Thomas A. Wilson’s website, http://academics.hamilton.edu/asian_studies/home/autumnalsacrifice/pages/videos.html. This performance of a 1998 sacrifice in the Tainan, Taiwan, temple of Confucius is divided into its separate stages, with brief explanations and translations into English.
I have written in more detail about this phenomenon elsewhere, e.g., “The Sage’s New Clothes: Popular Images of Confucius in Contemporary China,” in The Sage Returns: The Confucian Revival in Contemporary China, ed. Kenneth Hammond and Jeffrey Richey (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015), 157–93; and “‘Idols’ in the Temple: Icons and the Cult of Confucius,” Journal of Asian Studies 68, no. 2 (May 2009): 371–411 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20619732?seq=1).
For some examples, see rubbings reproduced in Beijing tushuguan cang huaxiang taben huibian 北京圖書館藏畫像拓本匯編 (Pictorial Rubbings in the Beijing Library), comp. Beijing tushuguan shanben bu jinshi zu (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1993), vol. 1, plates 97, 102, 132, 174. Local gazetteers and epigraphical compendia preserve numerous inscriptions for portrait stelae that no longer survive.
I have consulted three versions of Chen Hao’s commemorative inscription to paraphrase here. (1) Lu Jun 盧濬, a prefect of Huangzhou in the late fifteenth century, transcribed it under the title Xuan sheng yi xiang 宣聖遺像 (Legacy Portrait of the Exalted Sage) in his book of poems on Huangzhou’s traces of the past (guji 古蹟); see Gu Huang yiji ji 古黃遺蹟集 (Collected Remaining Traces of Old Huangzhou, ca. 1490), in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu 四庫全書存目叢書, Ji bu 集部 vol. 292 (Ji’nan: Qi Lu shushe, 1997), 292/744–45. (2) Wang Shizhen 王士禛 recorded a slightly variant version from a stele he calls Fuzi shike xiang 夫子石刻像 (Portrait of the Master, Carved in Stone), which he saw in 1684 at the Bailudong shuyuan 白鹿洞書院 (White Deer Academy, where Chen Hao lectured in 1337 and perhaps donated a rubbing of the Huangmei stele); see Huanghua jiwen 皇華紀聞 (Chronicle of a Grand Age), in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, Zibu 子部 vol. 245, juan 4, 19b–20b (245/234–235). (3) The modern catalogue entry for the rubbing of an unidentified stone, titled Zhi sheng yi xiang 至聖遺像 (Legacy Portrait of the Ultimate Sage) (i.e., fig. 5), transcribes Chen’s inscription again differently and dates it to 1327; see Zhongguo meishu quanji, huihua bian 中國美術全集, 繪畫編 (Complete Collection of Chinese Art, Painting) (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1988), 19:24–25, notes to cat. 70. Su Cheng’ai 蘇成愛 has collated Wang Shizhen’s transcription with two in the modern compilation Quan Yuan wen 全元文 (Complete Yuan Literature); see “Quan Yuan wen suo jian chongchu Chen Hao yiwen kaojiao”《全元文》所見重出陳澔佚文考校 (Comparing the Versions of Chen Hao’s Lost Text That Appear in the Complete Yuan Literature), Wenjiao ziliao文教資料 29 (October 2008): 74–76. For the two versions, see Li Xiusheng 李修生, comp., Quan Yuan wen (Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe, 2004), ce 22, juan 698, 379–80 and ce 54, juan 1673, 592.
Chen Hao’s compilation was part of the orthodox Sishu wujing daquan 四書五經大全 (The Complete Four Books and Five Classics), promulgated by the Yongle emperor in 1417, and Chen himself was added to the Confucian temple in 1721. For his biography, see Wang Deyi 王德毅, comp., Yuanren zhuanji ziliao suoyin 元人傳記資料索引 (Index to Yuan Biographical Materials) (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1979–1982), 2:1296; also Cheng Nianping 程年平, “Duchang lishi mingren: Yuan zhuming jiaoyu jia Chen Hao” 都昌歷史名人—元著名教育家陳澔 (Famous People in Duchang’s History: The Eminent Yuan Educator Chen Hao) at https://web.archive.org/web/20190127220353/http://www.duchang.gov.cn/zjdc/dcen/201708/t20170811_532862.html.
There seems to be some ambiguity about the location of Huangmei; scholars variously place it in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, or Anhui, perhaps because of changes in provincial boundaries. In any event, Huangmei was definitely some distance east of Jiangling 江陵 (now Jingzhou 荊州, western Hubei), which figures in Chen Hao’s tale.
There is virtually no biographical information on the minor officials named in this story or its variations. An anonymous reviewer suggests that “Jingshan” sounds rather Daoist.
Chen Hao’s inscription identifies Jin Shuliang as assistant magistrate (bu 簿) of Jingling 景陵 in Mianyang 沔陽, located in central Hubei between Jiangling and Huangmei. Other versions of the story call him Jin Liangshu and date his discovery of the tablet in the Xuanmiao guan to 1322 because his 1326 arrival in Huangmei was “about four years later.”
Buildings of this name were standard features of government schools and typically sited at the rear of the campus, housing the Confucian classics and other canonical texts.
The wording in Wang Shizhen’s transcription, ren hui da bei xiang yi gui 任回打碑像以歸, suggests that rubbings of the image were made to take back after the completion of official duties in Jiangling. It is possible that this comment refers specifically to Tao Jingshan, who may have been the secretarial assistant to Jin Liangshu and would have traveled to Jiangling with him. Other versions just say da bei xiang yi gui 打碑像以歸.
This Li Hefu may be the friend to whom Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045–1105) sent two poems in 1083, while serving as magistrate of Taihe county, Jizhou 吉州太和 (or 泰和) 縣 (Jiangxi); see https://web.archive.org/web/20201120195704/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%A5%89%E7%AD%94%E6%9D%8E%E5%92%8C%E7%94%AB%E4%BB%A3%E7%AE%80%E4%BA%8C%E7%BB%9D%E5%8F%A5/5953748. Another Li Hefu is recorded as magistrate of Jincheng county 晋城縣 (Zezhou 澤州, Shanxi) in 1296; see Wang Deyi, Yuanren zhuanji ziliao suoyin, 1:529. While lacking further information about either man, I presume that the school bearing his name was located somewhere in the vicinity of Huangmei.
This may or may not be Li Jing 李京 (zi Jingshan), a native of Hejian 河澗 (Hebei), recorded primarily as a military commander who pacified southern territories in the first decade of the 1300s; see Wang Deyi, Yuanren zhuanji ziliao suoyin, 1:460–61.
Michelle Wang discusses ways that Buddhist deities may display a sympathetic response (gan ying 感應) through their effigies as a result of the devotee’s action; see “Early Chinese Buddhist Sculptures as Animate Bodies and Living Presences,” Ars Orientalis 46 (2016): 13–38 (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/ars/13441566.0046.002?view=text;rgn=main).
See Hans-Georg Mueller, Daoism Explained: From the Dream of the Butterfly to the Fishnet Allegory (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), especially 115. For early biographies of Wu Daozi, see Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠, Lidai minghua ji 歷代名畫記 (Record of Famous Paintings of Successive Dynasties), in Yu Anlan 于安瀾, ed., Huashi congshu 畫史叢書, vol. 1 (repr., Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1974), juan 9, 108–9 (overall 112–13); and Zhu Jingxuan 朱景玄, Tangchao minghua lu 唐朝名畫錄 (Record of Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty), in Yu Anlan 于安瀾, ed., Huapin congshu 畫品叢書 (Shanghai: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1982), 74–76.
In a section titled “Xian sheng xiao ying” 先聖小影 (Small Portrait of the Former Sage), probably repeated from Kong Zonghan’s 孔宗愿 earlier edition of 1085, Kong Chuan’s genealogy describes four pictures of Confucius in the family temple (jia miao 家廟), which was separate from the official temple in Qufu; see Kong Chuan, Dongjia zaji, juan xia, 4a (109); also repeated and illustrated in the next edition, Kong Yuancuo, Kongshi zuting guangji, juan 8, 3b (51) and tu ben 圖本, 1 (6), respectively. For detailed discussions, see my “Heirloom and Exemplar: Family and School Portraits of Confucius in the Song and Yuan Periods,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 41 (2011): 227–66 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sys.2011.0021); and “Pedagogue on the Go: Portraits of Confucius as an Itinerant Teacher,” in Bridges to Heaven: Essays on East Asian Art in Honor of Wen C. Fong, ed. Jerome Silbergeld, Dora C. Y. Ching, Alfreda Murck, and Judith Smith (Princeton, NJ: Tang Center for East Asian Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2011), 1:283–306.
Kong Duanyou’s small stele reproducing it still exists in the Shengji dian 聖蹟殿 (Hall of the Sage’s Traces) at the Temple of Confucius in Qufu. Above the picture are transcriptions of imperial encomia to Confucius by Song Taizu (962) and Song Zhenzong (1008). Other late Northern Song replicas of the two-man portrait were made for schools, including Gaoping 高平 (1088), Dizhou 棣州 (1088), and Shaoxing 紹興 (1124); a second one was made for the Qufu temple (1118). I discuss them further in “Pedagogue on the Go” and “Heirloom and Exemplar.”
Kong Chuan completed a genealogy titled Queli zuting ji 闕里祖庭記 (Record of the Queli Ancestral Court) (preface dated 1124) before leaving the North, and a second edition in the South, titled Dongjia zaji (Miscellaneous Records of the Eastern House) (preface dated 1134). Only the latter survives, but both are recorded in the official Song history; see Toqto 脫脫, comp., Song shi 宋史 (Song History) (1345; repr., Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), juan 203, 5122.
I discuss evidence for this hypothesis in “Heirloom and Exemplar” and add further observations in “Song Paintings of Confucius,” Zhejiang University Journal of Art and Archaeology: Supplementum 1: Proceedings of the International Conference on Song Painting (2017): 260–314. The change to the simple cloth cap highlights Confucius as a teacher transmitting the Way, having abandoned his quest for office. It is conceivable that the original Quzhou stele depicted him wearing the slightly more formal cap seen in the Qufu two-man portrait, and that the reconstructed stele modified the portrayal to make it more congenial and relatable for students.
A temple record by Hu Han 胡翰 (1307–1381) describes the destruction of the Quzhou temple in fighting at the end of the Southern Song; see (Kangxi) Quzhou fu zhi (康熙) 衢州府志 (Gazetteer of Quzhou Prefecture), comp. Yang Tingwang 楊廷望 (1711; repr., Liu Guoguang 劉國光, 1882); Zhongguo difangzhi jicheng: Zhejiang fuxian zhiji 中國地方志集成 : 浙江府縣志輯, vol. 55 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1993), juan 7, 4a–6b (153–54). A recorded inscription by fifty-third-generation descendant Kong Lian 孔濂 (1254–1322) states that the original portrait-stone had been destroyed over one hundred years after its erection, and that a replacement was made in 1282 from a version brought from Qufu, presumably a rubbing; see Kong Lian’s inscription for a replica of the Quzhou stele that he made sometime between 1282 and 1294 at the government school in nearby Xinzhou 信州; Li Xiusheng, Quan Yuan wen, vol. 11, juan 374, 103–4. Quzhou’s early Yuan stele, in turn, was probably destroyed in the late Yuan along with the Quzhou temple, which was rebuilt in different places before its grand expansion in 1520–21 at its current location; see commemorative inscription by Xie Qian 謝遷 (1449–1531) in (Kangxi) Quzhou fuzhi, juan 7, 8b–10b (155–56) and the line-drawing in juan 7:2b–3a (152–53). A plan of the temple’s 1521 layout also appears on the back of the portrait stele; see Quzhou shi bowuguan 衢州市博物館, comp., Quzhou muzhi beike jilu 衢州墓誌碑刻集錄 (Collected Records of Grave Epitaph Stelae in Quzhou) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin meishu chubanshe, 2006), 80–81. The temple has been rebuilt several times since the mid-Ming, however, so a precise date for the portrait stele cannot be determined.
Numerous recent Chinese scholarly articles and blog posts take for granted that Kong Duanyou brought such a painting from Qufu, while questioning whether the portrait-stele was first erected in Quzhou or in Chenzhou 郴州, Hunan, where he briefly held office before dying in 1132. Careful parsing of historical evidence suggests that he never actually went to Quzhou, however, and common belief to the contrary may stem from a carelessly worded inscription written in 1254 by Zhao Ruteng 趙汝騰 and appended to Kong Chuan’s genealogy, Dongjia zaji; see Wei Shuguang 魏曙光, “Yanshenggong Kong Duanyou nandu kao” 衍聖公孔端友南渡考 (Investigation of Duke for Perpetuating the Sage Kong Duanyou’s Crossing to the South), Chifeng xueyuan xuebao: Hanwen zhexue shehui kexue ban 赤峰學院學報: 漢文哲學社會科學版 / Journal of Chifeng University: Soc. Sci. 37, no. 8 (August 2016): 30–31. Deng Xiaoquan 鄧曉泉 suggests that the Chenzhou stele (discussed below) is inscribed with a note saying that Kong Duanyou erected it in 1130, but available rubbings do not show such a note; Deng also cites an inscription by Wang Maoyue 王茂悦 (on rebuilding the Chenzhou Confucian temple in the Jingde era, 1260–64) that mentions the stele-portrait as extant in 1131 but lost in a rebellion in 1161; see “Fasheng zai Chenzhou de lishi xuanyi xiaoshuo Shiluo de diling” 發生在郴州的歷史懸疑小說《失落的帝陵》(A Historical Suspense Novel That Takes Place in Chenzhou, Lost Mausoleum) at https://web.archive.org/web/20190122144703/http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_13dffd3250102vl0d.html. I have not found a reference to Wang Maoyue’s inscription elsewhere, nor any information on Wang himself.
Li Jingde 黎靖德, comp., Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類 (Master Zhu’s Sayings, Categorized) (repr., Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984), juan 107, 2674. Linda Walton translates the relevant passage in Academies and Society in Southern Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 39.
Sengjianu’s inscription starts by crediting “Magistrate Jin from Jingling” with transmitting the story of the miracle. A rubbing of the Guangzhou stele, titled Legacy Portrait of the Exalted Sage (Xuan sheng yi xiang 宣聖遺像), is reproduced in Luo Chenglie 駱承烈 and Kong Xiangmin 孔祥民, Huaxiang zhong de Kongzi (Confucius in Pictures) (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 2003), 27. The inscription is transcribed within a longer passage at https://web.archive.org/web/20190127223511/http://cloudtranslation.xmu.edu.cn/cgi-bin/qq.cgi?showpos=094D3D4835040706505D10756321001D170C0F633B0107261C1525130A524600585C45461D7C535B575C541667504F2F52464C475A514E041D1A531B127F47055940291876502A662E46.
For a rubbing of the Huating stele, see Beijing tushuguan cang huaxiang taben huibian, 1:97. Another Ming stele apparently copied from Sengjianu’s 1345 version was erected in Yunnan in 1520; for a rubbing in the Musée Guimet, Paris (MG 720), see https://web.archive.org/web/20190127224302/https://www.efeo.fr/estampages/detfich.php?estamp_id=759&table=est_Musee_Guimet&pageCrte=0.
A commemorative stele from 1347 by Zeng Bing 曾昺 for the Huangxi shuyuan, built in the 1330s, attests that its main hall enshrined a portrait stele titled Xian sheng yi xiang 先聖遺像 (Legacy Portrait of the Former Sage). Zeng also mentions that there was a portrait of Confucius at leisure in the previous academy, Taiji shuyuan, but he does not explicitly connect it to the existing stele. Another commemorative stele, from 1486, refers to a portrait-stone as Xuan sheng yi xiang 宣聖遺像 (Legacy Portrait of the Exalted Sage), an alternative title that may suggest it was a replacement. For the story and partial transcriptions of both texts, see the anonymous “Tanxun Quanzhou jiaoyu xingsheng zhi yuan, faxian Song Yuan shuyuan Kongsheng shibei” 探尋全州教育興盛之源，發現宋元書院孔聖石碑 (Exploring the Source of Quanzhou’s Educational Prosperity, Discovering a Song-Yuan Academy’s Stone Stele of Confucius), posted in 2018 on iFuun Quanqiu quwei zixun 全球趣味資訊 at https://web.archive.org/web/20190127224520/http://www.ifuun.com/a201801058585034/.
The image apparently is titled Xuan sheng yi xiang, although available photographs do not show the title. For additional photographs of the portrait stone, commemorative steles, Sage Pond, and views of the area, see https://web.archive.org/web/20190127224520/http://www.ifuun.com/a201801058585034/. Aerial photographs clearly reveal the outlines of the former academy.
Barbara Herrnstein Smith has argued that all versions of a story are “variations,” none more primal than others, and that all are constructed in relation to other versions, for various specific purposes, and within particular social contexts; see “Afterthoughts on Narrative,” in On Narrative, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 209–232. Nonetheless, even among vastly different versions there is a core element—in this case, the horse responding to Confucius.
Despite the 1530 injunction against displaying figural images in the Confucian temple, the prohibition seems to have eased over time. A Jiaqing-era gazetteer noted that the Huangmei portrait-stele was displayed in the main sacrificial hall of the Confucian temple, on the wall behind Confucius’s tablet; see Su Cheng’ai, “Quan Yuan wen suo jian chongchu Chen Hao yiwen kaojiao,” 75. Deng Xiaoquan cites a 1907 inventory listing the stele on the back wall of the temple; see “Chenzhou Wenmiao Kongzi shike xiang, Zhi sheng yi xiang lüe kao” 郴州文廟孔子石刻像, 至聖遺像略考 (The Incised-Stone Portrait of Confucius in the Chenzhou Confucian Temple, a Brief Study of the Legacy Portrait of the Ultimate Sage) at https://web.archive.org/web/20190127224712/http://wenshi.chenzhou.com.cn/14986.html.
Here the British Museum rubbing and various online transcriptions all indicate that a specific place-name has been effaced, probably a sign that the story came from elsewhere.
The inscription is transcribed in “Zhuixun Kongmiao Shengxiang bei” 追尋孔廟聖像碑 (In Pursuit of the Sage’s Portrait Stele in the Confucian Temple); see https://web.archive.org/web/20190127225626/https://www.gdjyw.com/gdfc/chenzhouwenshi/3092.html. A few words differ from the text on the British Museum rubbing, and some key characters are evidently effaced in both renditions, including the name of the place that was five li from the bridge with the portrait-stone.
Fang Zhiwei 方志委 and Lai Shaopo 賴少波, “Xishuo dongnan weiguan Jianning fu Kongmiao de chuanqi gushi” 細說東南偉觀建寧府孔廟的傳奇故事 (A Detailed Discussion of Legends of the Confucius Temple in Jianning Prefecture, the Magnificent Sight in Southeast China), posted on “Min yuan Jianzhou” 閩源建州 at http://www.jodfz.com/a/fangzhishijie/2013/0929/614.html on September 29, 2013 (accessed January 19, 2019, but unavailable on November 19, 2020); the stele is described and the miraculous tale summarized in “Dongnan weiguan—Jianning fu Wenmiao” 東南偉觀—建寧府文廟 (The Magnificent Sight in Southeast China—The Confucian Temple in Jianning), at https://web.archive.org/web/20201119212242/http://chinakongmiao.org/templates/T_CatalogList/index.aspx?nodeid=50&page=ContentPage&categoryid=0&contentid=8100. Although not explicitly identified as such, the rubbing reproduced in figure 11 matches the description of the Jianning stele, including all of the inscriptions.
In medieval Europe, thefts and seizures of saints’ relics were sometimes justified by claims that it was the will of the saints themselves to relocate elsewhere; see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978; rev. ed. 1991).
Xuanhe huapu 宣和畫譜 (Register of Paintings in the Xuanhe Palace), in Huashi congshu, vol. 1, juan 2, 13 (overall p. 387).
Despite superficial similarities, neither of these seated wooden figurines has a cavity in its back, and hence no inserted inscriptions, consecration documents, or other items naming or “animating” them, unlike the much-studied and very numerous statuettes of assorted gods and ancestors from central Hunan (which do not include Confucius); e.g., see Alain Arrault, “Analytic Essay on the Domestic Statuary of Central Hunan: The Cult to Divinities, Parents, and Masters,” Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008): 1–53; and Alain Arrault and Michela Bussotti, “Statuettes religieuses et certificats de consécration en Chine du Sud (XVIIe–XXe siècle),” Arts Asiatiques 63 (2008): 36–60.
Family lore is collected in Cui Mingxian 崔銘先, Kong shi nanzong zhi 孔氏南宗志 (Gazetteer of the Kong Southern Lineage) (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chuban she, 2018); and Quzhou Kongshi Nanzong jiamiao zhi bianweihui 衢州孔氏南宗家廟志編委會, comp., Quzhou Kongshi Nanzong jiamiao zhi 衢州孔氏南宗家廟志 (Gazetteer of the Kong Southern Lineage’s Family Temple in Quzhou) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin chubanshe, 2001). The lead compiler, Kong Xiangkai 孔祥楷, is the seventy-fifth-generation head of the Southern Lineage.
Cui Mingxian claims that in 1129 Song Gaozong ordered Quzhou’s prefect to install the figurines in the Quzhou prefectural school temple, which the Kongs initially used for family-ancestral sacrifices; see “Kong shi nanzong zhi zuowei ji qi yingxiang (shang)” 孔氏南宗之作為及其影響 (上) (The Kong Southern Lineage’s Actions and Their Impact, Part One), posted January 11, 2008, on Zhongguo Kongzi wang 中國孔子网, https://web.archive.org/web/20201120180710/http://www.chinakongzi.org/gxdt/200801/t20080111_3153121.htm. However, the earliest explicit references that I have found are in the 1699 county gazetteer, when the statues were in the Kong family temple’s Si Lu ge 思魯閣 (Pavilion for Thinking of Lu); see Xu Zhikai 徐之凱 and Chen Pengnian 陳鵬年, comps., Xi’an xian zhi 西安縣志 (repr., Quzhou wenxian jicheng 衢州文獻集成 [Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2015]), 35:264–65, 473.
The late Southern Song iteration of Quzhou’s Kong family temple included a single-story Si Lu tang, described in a 1254-dated temple stele by Zhao Ruteng 趙汝騰 (d. 1261) as a place to remind descendants of their Qufu homeland, but the figurines and stele portrait are not mentioned; see Shen Jie 沈杰, comp., San Qu Kongshi jiamiao zhi 三衢孔氏家廟志 (Gazetteer of the Kong Family Temple in Quzhou) (1505; repr., Quzhou Wenxian jicheng, 84:309; also see temple plans on 275–76). The building was a two-story pavilion from the mid-Ming onward. In the late Qing, the figurines were upstairs and the portrait stele downstairs; see Zheng Yongxi 鄭永禧, comp., (Minguo) Quxian zhi (民國) 衢縣志 (1926, 1937; repr., Zhongguo difangzhi jicheng: Zhejiang fuxian zhiji 中國地方志集成：浙江府縣志輯, vol. 55 [Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1993]), juan 3, 16b (692).
The entire saga is described in Quzhou Kongshi Nanzong jiamiao zhi, dashi ji 大事記 (Record of Major Events), 9–10; also in “Liangqian wubai nian de chuanqi: Kongzi fufu kaimu xiang beihou zhi mi” 兩千五百年的傳奇：孔子夫婦楷木像背後之秘 (A 2500-Year Legend: The Secret behind the Pistache-Wood Images of Confucius and His Wife), posted on KKNews at https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/culture/eorvpr4.html on June 30, 2017 (accessed November 20, 2020). For photographs and numerous primary documents, see “Fengsi guan, kaimu xiang, Shengxiang bei” 奉祀官 楷木像聖像碑 (Sacrificial Officials, Pistache-Wood Images, and Stele Portrait of the Sage), posted on the Southern Lineage website at https://web.archive.org/web/20191219165631/http://www.kongzi.gov.cn/news.aspx?newsID=10562.
The late Qianlong-period account is quoted in Wei Shuguang, “Yanshenggong Kong Duanyou nandu kao,” 30; Wei in turn quoted it from Liu Chengyu 劉成禺, “Zai ji Nanzong Kongshi houyi” 再紀南宗孔氏後裔 (Again Recording the Southern Lineage of Kong Descendants), Shizaitang zayi 世載堂雜憶 (Miscellaneous Recollections by Liu Chengyu) (Taiyuan: Shanxi guji chuban she, 1995), 226. I have not found the text in independent form.
Wei Shuguang, “Yanshenggong Kong Duanyou nandu kao,” 30. Kong Xiangkai has energetically supported efforts to use Southern Kong history to make Quzhou better known and to attract economic activity; see Xiao-bing Wang-Reise, “Globalization vs. Localization: Remaking the Cult of Confucius in Contemporary Quzhou,” in Globalization and the Making of Religious Modernity in China: Transnational Religions, Local Agents, and the Study of Religion, 1800–Present, ed. Thomas Jansen, Thoralf Klein, and Christian Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 182–207. Virtually the same version of the legend was collected as part of an official Intangible Cultural Heritage project on August 28, 2017, from Zhang Xiuying 張秀英, described as the daughter-in-law of a seventy-fourth-generation Kong descendant; see “Lu fu shan shen ci” 魯阜山神祠 (Shrine to the Mountain Gods of Lu), in “Minsu shihua” 民俗史話 (Folkloric History), at https://web.archive.org/web/20190126062649/http://kc.smart0570.com/m/view.php?aid=172.
The first part of the series is reproduced on Quzhou wenming zaixian 衢州文明在線 (Quzhou Culture Online) at https://web.archive.org/web/20191219183454/http://www.qzwmzx.com/news_info.aspx?NewsId=20034 , posted on July 14, 2015. In style, the pictures are vaguely reminiscent of anti-Confucius cartoons from the Cultural Revolution, e.g., Kong Lao’er zui e de yi sheng 孔老二罪惡的一生 (The Evil Life of Confucius) (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1974); or, see the poster on Kenneth Brashier’s website at https://web.archive.org/web/20191219175038/http://people.reed.edu/~brashiek/syllabi/Poster/index.html.
A knowledgeable viewer can discern that, from left to right, the billows are forming the characters “Lu fu shan shen” 魯阜山神.
Quzhou Kongshi Nanzong jiamiao zhi, dashi ji, 11. For further details and photographs, see “Fengsi guan, kaimu xiang, Shengxiang bei.”
Including Zhang Xiuying, the wife of a seventy-fifth-generation descendant (see note 53).
In 2009, I saw them in a storeroom in Qufu, where they are treated like any other museum object, and they were loaned abroad for an exhibition in 2010; see Wensheng Lu and Julia K. Murray, Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art (New York: China Institute, 2010), cat. 2. On the much-discussed revival of Confucianism, see particularly Jun Deng and Craig Smith, “The Rise of New Confucianism and the Return of Spirituality to Politics in Mainland China,” China Information 32, no. 2 (July 2018): 294–314 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X18764041); and Sébastien Billioud, ed., The Varieties of Confucian Experience: Documenting a Grassroots Revival of Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 28–29.
Early twentieth-century votive prints (nianhua 年畫) depicting Confucius and the Four Correlates suggest the beginnings of popular worship, as I discuss in “‘Idols’ in the Temple,” 394–97. Sébastian Billioud and Joël Thoraval describe the rise of contemporary forms of veneration in The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Some kinds of devotional activities have been deliberately introduced or encouraged by the management of the Confucian temples in order to bolster their finances; see Anna Sun, “Contemporary Confucian Temples Life in Mainland China: Report from the Field,” in Billioud, Varieties of Confucian Experience, 205–34. For other forms of popular veneration that have emerged in China, see Billioud and Thoraval, The Sage and the People.
Ars Orientalis Volume 50
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