Rites "research

Confucius, as the originator of the Confucianism and the representative of the Chinese traditional culture, the study of his thought is valuable. But, the reliable material for the study is so rare because of the influence of the historical skepticism. The dialogue of Confucius and his student Ziyou in the "Liyunpian" from "The book of Rites" has been paid close attention to in all ages for the reason that it involved the famous "Great harmony". Though a lot of scholars have studied this issue, the connections between "Liyunpian", "Great harmony" and Confucius are still complicated and confusing.With the help of the last unearned literature, "The School Sayings of Confucius", once affirmed as forged book, play a great part in solving several problems of "Liyunpian" because it also has this passage and its reliability is affirmed now. This essay tries to make clear of the written of this passage and which school it belonged to. Based on that, we further focus on the compare of the different edition of the same passage in two books, and discuss the reason of the differences. With this good foundation, we will try to study the profound thought of it.There were immense number of books in the history discussing the written time of "Liyunpian", so this is also our core issue. However, because of the complexity of "The book of Rites", opinions about the written time issue were widely divided. With the study of the ancestors'research, we find there are a lot of problems we need to resolve. Besides the written time and the school of the "Liyunpian" are need to make clear, we should pay more attention to the thoughts of Rites.The date birth date of Ziyou is very important for resolving problems of written time. According to the "Shih Chi", Ziyou was 45 years younger than Confucius, so it was impossible that Confucius talked to a boy so profound truth who was even younger than 10. With this reason, there were a lot of negative judgments of Confucius and the "Liyunpian". In order to solve the problem, we need new material. Thanks to the new unearthed material, we find "The School Sayings of Confucius" is reliable to make use of. On the other hand, there were several edition of this book, among them the "Siku" and "Tongwen" ones were more comprehensive and both of them said "Ziyou was 35 years younger than Confucius", which was different from what was written in "Shih Chi". With the compare of the other disciples of the Confucianism, we find Ziyou was not only an individual case. According to the rule of "self restrain cultivation& above", all of the disciples should be more than 15 years old, so the record in "The School Sayings of Confucius" was right. The words of Confucius as recorded by his disciples in general, the "Liyunpian" was also recorded by Ziyou.The "Liyunpian" recorded what Confucius said, which does not mean that all of it.Because the old books in the transmission endured many additions and deletions. Compare "The School Sayings of Confucius" with the "Liyunpian" from "The book of Rites", we find that "The School Sayings of Confucius" not mention "Xiaokang". After our research, we guess that "Xiaokang" may be added by the people of Han dynasty because they did not understand what "Xiaokang" mean. The study circle thought there were wrong sequence of the bamboo in the "Liyunpian" from "The book of Rites". Compared with "The School Sayings of Confucius", we find some of them were really in a wrong order, but the other of them just because of misunderstanding. Besides, there are some other differences between these two books, with some study, we ascribe the reason to the political influences in Han dynasty. This also proves the material in "The School Sayings of Confucius" are relible and unsophisticated.The "Liyunpian" in "The School Sayings of Confucius" is more primitive than that of "The Book of Rites", however, it is with less logicality. We use their excellences and try our best to restore to the original state. On that basis, we will make known the useful thought of it. The "Great harmony" is Confucius'political ideal, and Rites is the necessary approach, so it is clear that the point which said "Great harmony does not need Rites" was wrong. Confucius' thought did not limited to this, he also recognized that the reason why there is such a big function of the Rites is that is the result of the saints thinking of Heaven and human.