The composition of examination standards: Daoxue and Southern Song dynasty examination culture (China)

After the eventful institutional reforms of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, early Southern Song politicians established an institutional framework for the examinations that remained firmly in place until the end of the dynasty. Examination standards, however, continued to be subject to intellectual and political debate. The Southern Song government's early commitment to non-partisan selection standards created space for teachers, editors and publishers to define curricular standards. Through an investigation of governmental regulations, examination encyclopedias and prose anthologies, and examination expositions and policy essays, this dissertation investigates how different types of agents and different sociopolitical and moral value systems shaped examination standards. It advances an interpretation of the civil service examinations as a cultural system whose conventions provided the context within which the intellectual and political agendas of the court, high officials, examiners, teachers and literati at large had to be negotiated.; In this context, this study adds a missing piece to the puzzle of the success of Daoxue/The Learning of the Way in the late Southern Song period. It discusses how the examinations functioned as a key location for the adaptation, extension and contestation of Daoxue ideology. The ascendancy of Daoxue ideology has previously been attributed to its imposition as state orthodoxy in 1241, or to the appeal of its rejection of an examination degree as the hallmark of the scholar-official. The analysis of its adaptation to the conventions of examination culture shows that its success was also due to the development of alternative kinds of examination preparation and examination writing by its proponents.