Organizer: Susan Whitfield, The British Library
Chair: Peter K. Bol, Harvard University
Discussant: Denis Twitchett, Princeton University
Frontiers, both physical and mental, are used by historians and others to define a country. China is no exception: it is frequently and effectively presented as a clearly defined physical and cultural entity with a continuous existence. But this view is not consonant with the reality of Chinese history. The mismatch of image and events requires consideration of the manner in which China's frontiers have been constructed and reconstructed by Chinese historiography.
The papers in this panel consider this issue from several different angles. Jennifer Jay's paper examines the changes in frontier historiography visible in the works of Du You (735-816) and Ma Duanlin (1254-1325), despite the similarity of their general approaches to historical writing. Naomi Standen's paper uses a case study of a tenth-century governor to explore the relationship between the frontier around loyalty and its historiographical reconstruction, both in the tenth century and subsequently. Susan Whitfield's contribution similarly looks at the connection between the shifting physical boundaries of Tang-Song China and the changing mental boundaries around Buddhism. Finally, Jue Chen's paper offers a comparison of literary and historiographical perspectives on the Tang frontier.
Approaching China's history in terms of its struggle to define its own borders can be extremely fruitful, leading us to ask new questions about what we mean by 'China,' and to challenge established, but possibly misleading, verities.
The Historiography of Du You (735-816) and Ma Duanlin (1254-1325) on the Frontier
Jennifer W. Jay, University of Alberta
Du You (735-816) and Ma Duanlin (1254-1325) were notable institutional historians who sought to account for social, economic and political setbacks in the general history of China. They subscribed to mainstream Confucian concerns of didactic and moralistic history-writing, but both Du You's Tongdian and Ma Duanlin's Wenxian tongkao contain a neo-legalist argument that institutional changes are necessary to cope with new historical realities.
Du You and Ma Duanlin both deal with the frontier or the foreign peoples as the last entry in their institutional histories. Instead of visiting the frontier and collecting ethnographic data, Du You and Ma Duanlin wrote their accounts of the foreign peoples on the basis of historical and contemporary sources, some of which were mythological. Indeed Ma Duanlin quotes verbatim from Du You on events before 755.
The primary purpose of the paper is to compare and contrast the frontier writing of Du You and Ma Duanlin, and assess the extent to which their general historiographical principles are reflected. An examination of these two outstanding historians who lived five centuries apart will allow us to delineate the changes in frontier historiography that occurred between the Tang to Song periods.
Frontiers Without Maps: Loyalty and Historiography in the Life of a Chinese
Governor
Naomi Standen, Oxford University
Zhao Dejun (d. 837) is vilified as a traitor because he asked a neighboring emperor to place him on the Chinese throne. Re-examination of the sources shows that in fact the faithfulness of his service is striking. His life, its representation, his reputation, and his rehabilitation tell us much about the frontiers of the world in which he lived, when China and its northern border were being redefined.
Dejun has suffered from the historiographical reconstruction of the frontier and the concomitant distortion of the conception of loyalty in this period. Confusion arises from the attempt to apply a single definition of loyalty, and thus the frontier, to three different subjects: the events of Dejun's life and the early tenth century; the eleventh-century primary texts covering this period; and the secondary writings by present-day Chinese historians. These in fact use three quite separate understandings of loyalty, and this paper attempts to separate them, revealing a sequence of different definitions of various frontiers.
The "problem" of Dejun's behavior arises out of the confusion of the personal loyalties of the tenth century with dynastic, ethnic, "national" and other loyalties recognized in later times. The repeated construction and reconstruction of unmappable frontiers as clearly defined, and often linear, entities can be deeply confusing, but, once dismantled, they give us a view of the "historiographical frontier." This reveals more of the potential complexities of Chinese historical writing, and illustrates the urgent need for more studies of China in its period of fragmentation.
The Changing Frontiers of Buddhism in the Late Tang to Song
Susan Whitfield, The British Library
This paper explores the thesis that the changing physical boundaries from the Han to Song had a direct relationship with the changing mental boundaries of Buddhism in China over the same period. Crudely put, Buddhism's initial acceptance and later rejection as part of Chinese culture coincided with periods when the Chinese were forced out of their heartland of the Central Plain. The paper will concentrate on the gradual "rejection" of Buddhism by the elite from Tang to Song when Buddhism, once again, became "barbarian." Buddhism continued to flourish after the Song, but the literati's attitude toward it had changed. And this is one facet of a more general change of which Neo-Confucianism and the increasing political autocracy of the late imperial age are manifestations.
Although this paper concentrates on only one aspect of the Tang-Song transition, its thesis has important wider implications. The changing perceptions of both physical and mental boundaries over this period cannot be separated, and they inform studies in many areas, especially language, culture and politics.
It has only recently been acknowledged that Buddhism did not decline in China post-Tang, but the fact that its decline was accepted for so long is a reflection of the power of elite attitudes expressed in historical and literary texts. It is important that this influence is understood so that other aspects of Chinese culture may be re-examined.
Calculated Anachronism: Frontiers Between the Historical and the Fictional World
in Tang Chuanqi
Jue Chen, Princeton University
The mature of chuanqi during the mid-Tang marks an important stage in the entire development of traditional Chinese fiction. Through some techniques then newly developed, chuanqi distinguishes fiction from history and simultaneously incorporates history into fiction. The frontier between history and fiction is one of the most interesting areas in chuanqi studies.
Calculated anachronism, one of these techniques, plays a double role in this process of separating fiction from history and combining history with fiction. For instance, in Bu Jiang Zong baiyuan zhuan and Zhenzhong ji, the sense of historicity and the elements of fictionality are so intricately and skillfully interwoven that a poetics of calculated anachronism is thus created. This paper explores the patterns, functions, and major components of calculated anachronism in chuanqi to further explore these subtle frontiers.
The border between the historical and the fictional worlds here is closely related to the yingshe (insinuative) mode of representation in chuanqi composition. This paper will also explore how the yingshe mode established itself in the Tang Dynasty fiction writing and thus provided a watershed for fictional and historiographical perspectives in the Tang mind.