In this innovative study, Erica Brindley examines how, during the period 400 BCE–50 CE, Chinese states and an embryonic Chinese empire interacted with peoples referred to as the Yue/Viet along its southern frontier. Brindley provides an overview of current theories in archaeology and linguistics concerning the peoples of the ancient southern frontier of China, the closest relations on the mainland to certain later Southeast Asian and Polynesian peoples. Through analysis of warring states and early Han textual sources, she shows how representations of Chinese and Yue identity invariably fed upon, and often grew out of, a two-way process of centering the self while de-centering the other. Examining rebellions, pivotal ruling figures from various Yue states, and key moments of Yue agency, Brindley demonstrates the complexities involved in identity formation and cultural hybridization in the ancient world and highlights the ancestry of cultures now associated with southern China and Vietnam.
Central to Confucian teachings in the Analects is the ideal of self-cultivation—in particular that of the junzi 君子 (“gentleman” “nobleman”) ideal. At the same time that Confucius recommends that individuals follow such an ideal, he also places limits on who actually might attain it. By examining statements involving such terms as the junzi, the “petty man” ( xiao ren 小人), and the “masses” ( min 民, or zhong 眾), or common people, this essay highlights the sociopolitical and gender restrictions informing one of the most basic, yet lofty, ethical goals of the text. A new means is also offered of discussing these socially delimited discrepancies in moral cultivation by referring to leading, or self-determining agency in association with junzi on the one hand, and to conformist agency for women and common people on the other.
Music plays an important role in the development of discourses on the body, and, in particular, on psychology. From the received and excavated textual record dating to the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. we gain insights into the emergence of an elaborate logos of the psyche, or "psychology," as such a psychology relates to the cosmos. The article explores two orientations on the role of music in psychology. The first and earlier orientation outlines what the author terms a "psychology of influence," which provides a rationale for the beneficial effects of good music in self-cultivation and social order. The second and later orientation outlines what the author calls a "psychology of cosmic attunement," which identifies music with the harmony of the cosmos and speaks of sages who attune themselves to it. Through a close examination of these two perspectives on music, the article delineates how a triangular relationship among music, cosmos, and psyche develops in early China, essentially forming a new paradigm within which human relationship to music and cosmic order is understood. La musique joue un rôle important dans le développement des discours sur le corps, en particulier sur la psychologie. Grâce aux textes reçus ou exhumés datant des 3e et 4e siècles avant notre ère, il est possible d'obtenir des aperçus sur l'émergence d'un logos élaboré sur la psyché, soit une "psychologie", dans la mesure où cette psychologie est en relation avec le cosmos. L'article explore deux orientations dans le rôle de la musique en psychologie. La première, plus ancienne, décrit ce que l'auteur appelle une "psychologie de l'influence", qui fournit une explication aux effets bénéfiques de la "bonne" musique sur la culture de soi et sur l'ordre social. La seconde orientation, plus récente, décrit ce que l'auteur appelle une "psychologie de l'harmonisation cosmique", qui identifie la musique avec l'harmonie du cosmos et évoque les sages qui s'accordent sur elle. En examinant de près ces deux perspectives sur la musique, l'article suggère la façon dont une relation triangulaire entre la musique, le cosmos et la psyché s'est développée dans la Chine ancienne, formant essentiellement un nouveau paradigme à l'intérieur duquel comprendre la relation de l'homme à la musique et à l'ordre cosmique.
This article examines the early history and evolution of the concept of jiaohua (教化 “educational transformation”) as a reference to civilizing missions in China. It explores Ru (Confucian) concepts advocating the widespread education of the masses, showing how such concepts were linked to notions of ethnicity and moral attainment. Then it contextualizes the first uses of educational transformation in writings concerning statecraft. Xunzi emerges as a pivotal figure who helped adapt the statecraft rhetoric on educational transformation to the largely Ru goal of spreading a morally superior Huaxia culture among the masses and to peoples of other cultures. I then move beyond this conceptual history to examine a few civilizing missions in the Han era. My purpose is to link large-scale, civilizing missions in Chinese history with the early philosophical rhetoric and show how history was shaped by these underlying conceptual orientations.
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