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1
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On the Word “Wu” and Some Related Questions
In oracle bone inscriptions, characters
“Meng” and “Wu” are connected to dreams and sleep. This
article points out that, according to Shuowen jiezi
(Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters), the
transitive verb “Meng” used by the awakened subject is
followed by an object in relation to the description of
dreams. “Wu,” instead, means the sound made by the
subject during slumber, namely somniloquy, which
requires no objects for further explanation of dreams.
With the evolution of semantics, “Wu” maintained its
meaning as “waking up after sleep,” but the other
implication for “Wu”, somniloquy, gradually vanished.
Because “Wu” had been transformed from the meaning of
“simniloquy” to “the utterances after waking up from the
dreams,” this character thus started to appear with
“Meng.” The meaning of “waking up” was soon replaced by
“Jue” ; at the same time, “Wu” had transformed once
again from “waking up” to “awakening something or
realizing something,” and became a transitive verb. This
article also points out that when “Jue” is used to
express the meaning of “Juewu,” its original writing
should be “Gao.” It can be proved by some variant forms
in literature that “Gao” includes the meaning of
perception.
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Chang, Yu-wei
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2
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Interpreting “The Black Robes”: Two Versions, Three
Differences
This study considers three different
passages from the early Chinese text “Ziyi” (Black Robes).
Through a careful comparison of the three extant versions
of “Ziyi”—two manuscript versions and a third received
version in the canonical Liji (Records of Rites)—the study
shows that the transmission of the “Ziyi” undergoes a
transformation from the Warring States to the Han. An
early version of the text presents a position where the
minister stands on an equal footing with the ruler and is
thus able to challenge his authority wherever necessary.
However, in the later version, this position is revised,
literally rewritten, to reflect a different position: the
ruler’s absolute power dominates the minister absolutely.
Such findings have significant implications for
understanding “Ziyi,” the Guodian manuscripts, and early
Confucian thought, and they illustrate an approach that
can be considered when reading other newly excavated
manuscripts with received counterparts.
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Pham, Lee-moi
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3
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The Construction of “Unity of Ritual, Rule and
Doctrine” Theory in Tokugawa Japan: Centered on Aizawa
Seshisai
Most previous studies claim that scholars
of later Mito School promoted the restoration of the
Tenn? in terms of granting him the power of “unity of
ritual and rule ”through Confucianism, and used it to
create ideological support for “kokutai.” Apart from the
fact that “unity of ritual and rule” proved the Tenn?
was born with the divine rights to religion and
governance, more importantly, concerning the virtues of
loyalty and filial piety, one can conclude that this
proved “ch?k?ippon” and further manifested
“h?honhanshi.” However, this study proposes, when facing
invasions from the “xijiao” toward the end of the Edo
period, “unity of ritual and rule” was claimed by the
later Mito Scholar, Aizawa Seshisai. He absorbed the
political thoughts of Kitabatake Chikafusa and Ogy?
Sorai, and wanted to promote the code of etiquette to
the entire Japan. Aizawa Seshisai made all subjects
accept the ancestral “Tenso” as the only origin for
religion and governance, realize “kunminittai” in this
sense, and thus eliminate the concern that religions
from the “xijiao” would manipulate the thoughts of the
subjects. Being aware of the risk of invasions from the
“xijiao,” Aizawa Seshisai realized that one had to
integrate folk customs through “enlightenment” and to
emphasize the importance of “unity of ritual, rule, and
doctrine ” once again, which was the completion of the
political thought of “unity of ritual, rule and
doctrine.
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Kuo, Yu-ying
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4
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The Correlation between Heaven and Man: On Huang
Zongxi's Interpretations of Tian, Shangdi, and Hunpo
This
article discusses Huang Zongxi's interpretations of tian,
shangdi, and hunpo based on the correlation between heaven
and man, aiming to respond to the disputes concerning the
relationship between Confucianism and Christianity. Tian
and shangdi are different terms for the same reality: tian
represents its natural aspect, while shangdi represents
its personal aspect. This article argues that both
pantheism and Christianity fail to account for the meaning
of tian. Moreover, shangdi is a term borrowed from the
Shijing that refers to the shangdi in the Shijing, and
hence the associated image of heaven also refers to the
image of heaven in the Shijing. Based on the division of
heaven and man, this article also argues that in a weak
sense there is still a division between the sages and the
normal people. The spirits of the sages can live on, while
the hunpo of the normal people are mortal. Thus, there is
an absolute difference between the mortality of hunpo in
Huang Zongxi’s works and the immortality of soul in
Christianity. However, corresponding to the concept of
soul in Christianity, Huang Zongxi has a similar view
about xing, which may be a platform for further dialogues
between Confucianism and Christianity.
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Kuo, Fang-ru
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5
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Listening to (Talks with) Ghosts: Haunting in
Margaret Sweatman’s When Alice Lay Down with Peter
Margaret Sweatman’s When Alice Lay Down with Peter (2001)
is a multigenerational saga that interweaves the stories
of two Scottish settlers and their descendants with
influential historical events in Canada between 1869 and
1979. Commonly classified as a magic realist text, the
novel also employs a few conventions of ghost stories to
multiply the layers of haunting in the Canadian context.
By manipulating these conventions of ghost stories,
Sweatman shifts attention to the figure of the ghost-seer,
foregrounds the spatial dimension and the economic basis
of haunting, and applies the dialectical relationship
between possession and dispossession to revisiting the
history of two Metis uprisings, the Red River Resistance
of 1869-1870 and the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Her
fictional account rejects the binary relationship between
the colonizer and the colonized, highlights the in-between
position of the Metis, and exposes the dispossession and
displacement inflicted on Indian populations by the
conflict between Metis nationalism and Canadian settler
nationalism. This article examines how the manipulation of
these conventions enables Sweatman’s novel to turn its
readers into ghost-seers listening both to ghosts speaking
and to talks with ghosts, to differentiate the multiple
layers of haunting involved in the tripartite struggle
over territory between white settlers, the Metis, and
Indian communities, and finally to shatter the dream of
indigenization in the settler-invader society of Canada,
where the very fact that the craving for indigenization
has been rekindled during the recent decades makes it more
compelling than ever to revisit When Alice Lay Down with
Peter.
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Wang, Mei-Chuen
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