| Author | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Classical Chinese | ||||||||
| Subject | Political philosophy | ||||||||
Publication date | c. 26 CE | ||||||||
| Publication place | China | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 新論 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 新论 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Xinlun (Chinese:新論;pinyin:Xīnlùn) is a partially-survivingHan dynasty text written by the scholar-officialHuan Tan. Intended as a manual for rulers, it emphasizes political matters, but also featured discussions of philosophy, everyday life, occultism, culture, music, and the economy. It was presented toEmperor Guangwu of Han around 26 CE with its final chapter (onzither music) still unfinished. Sixty years later,Emperor Zhang of Han commissioned the scholarBan Gu to complete the work.
The text was no longer in the Chinese imperial libraries by the 10th century, leading to an attempt to retrieve a copy from Korea in the late 11th century. It is unknown when the book fully disappeared. The text now survives in the form of collected fragments which were included in other works. New quotations continued to circulate in scholarly works for centuries after the work was lost, possibly sourced fromLeishu reference books or simply fabricated. Several attempts to reconstruct theXinlun were made in the 19th century byQing dynasty scholars.
TheXinlun is a partially surviving text from the early Eastern Han Dynasty, written in the early 1st century CE. In its full form, it described a wide variety of subjects, including philosophy, everyday life, occultism, culture, and the economy.[1]Political philosophy is a prevalent focus of the work, but unlike its contemporary treatises, it draws more from contemporary social and political topics than from history. Huan and theXinlun broadly aligned with theOld Text school of scholarly thought, although Huan's emphasis on direct knowledge was highly unusual among the school.[1][2]
Huan intended the work as a manual for a ruler. Unlike many other Confucian scholars, he described legitimate and illegitimate rulers as equally able to misuse their power, writing that "the Way of the King is pure; his virtue is like that. The Way of the Hegemon is dappled and mixed; his achievement is like this. They both possess the Empire and rule over myriads of people. Their rule passes down to their sons and grandsons. They are the same in substance."[3]
Although he did not explicitly mentionLegalism, Huan incorporated some of its concepts, emphasizing the importance of impartial officials in legal cases. However, he warned against unjustly severe punishment for crime and noted that good laws and prohibitions "meet the wishes of the multitude".[4] He took rational approaches to some supernatural phenomena in the work,[5] although relayed other supernatural events uncritically; he described enjoying "wonderful treatises and unusual texts".[6] He describes death as inevitable and denied the existence ofimmortals, writing that there is "no such thing as the Way of the Immortals but that it had been invented by those who like strange things".[7][5] In a segment of disputed authenticity, Huan wrote that the "spirit lives in the body like the flame blazing in the candle".[7]
According to the 7th-century scholar and princeLi Xian, the book was originally divided into 16 sections, thirteen of which were divided into two chapters, for a total of 29 chapters.[8]
Huan Tan was a Chinesescholar-official who served under the Western Han,Xin, and Eastern Han dynasties,[9] serving in positions such as the Prefect of theMusic Bureau.[10] In 26 CE, he was recommended as an official toEmperor Guangwu of Han, who had recently reestablished the Han dynasty. He received two minor political appointments and reportedly impressed the emperor by performing music during banquets. Around this time, he presented the partially-finishedXinlun to Emperor Guangwu.[11] Huan may have intended it as an advisory text for the Emperor himself.[1]
Huan died in 28, with the final chapter on zither music still unfinished. Around 85,Emperor Zhang of Han commissioned the scholarBan Gu to complete the work. Zhang was in the process of reorganizing the state's rituals and music, and likely sought to popularize Huan's conceptions of music.[10] The chapter existed in a partially-finished form before theXinlun's presentation around 26 CE, possibly as a separate book.[12] After the completion of the work, Huan was honored with sacrifices at his tomb.[10] Ban later used some of Huan's work as his basis for a chapter on drains and ditches in hisBook of Han.[12]
A copy of the work made it to Japan by the 9th century, as it is mentioned in the catalogue of scholarFujiwara no Sukeyo. However, as the book does not reappear in later collections of lost Chinese works which were published around 1800, it likely became lost in Japan over the following centuries and was never printed.[13] By the end of the Tang dynasty in the early 10th century, theXinlun had become lost to the imperial libraries. In 1091, theSong dynasty rulerZhezong attempted to obtain a copy of the work from Korea.[8] Some 18th century scholars date the loss of the work alternatively to the 10th century or the Southern Song (12th–13th centuries),[14] while others believed it persisted as long as the 17th century due to the emergence of new quotations inMing dynasty texts.[15]
The book now exists only in various fragments found across other surviving works. Fragments continued circulating long after the book had been lost, likely taken fromLeishu (reference books) or simply fabricated. While fragments predating the Song are likely authentic and taken from the actual work, some later fragments are dubious. One fragment reproduced by the 17th-century scholarDong Yue [zh] refers to a likely non-existent work by the 5th-century BCE scholarLi Kui.[8]
The first attempt to compile all the fragments of the work was made by the scholarSun Fengyi [zh] around 1800. Over the following decades, historianYan Kejun [zh] made an attempt to reconstruct the work according to Li Xian's description, often combining multiple attested versions of the same passages together into one. Similar attempts were made by other Qing scholars later in the 19th century.[16][17] An English translation of the collected fragments was produced by the Czech scholarTimoteus Pokora in 1975,[18] including three previously unattested quotations included in an 18th–century work attributed to the scholarHui Dong [zh].[19]