With the arrival of the twenty-first century, Michael Loewe, already long retired from his distinguished teaching career, has added to our knowledge of the Han period in a number of ways, and paradoxically not least in calling attention to aspects of the dynasty where our sources are much more reticent than we have tended to assume. Thus in discussing the men who governed China under the Western Han, he scrupulously devoted but a handful of pages to records of the signs of respect shown then to Confucius and his kin, suggesting thereby that our conventional picture of the supposed significance of the sage during this epoch might need further evaluation.Footnote ¹ Most recently, early in 2021, Loewe has closely scrutinized similar material in a substantial article leading to the same conclusion: Confucius was not lightly regarded, but he was equally not normally treated as the fountainhead or even supreme figurehead of a tradition which endowed him with a widely recognized authority.Footnote ² For that, even during the Eastern Han, we must look elsewhere.

During the early decades of the Eastern Han followers of the South Asian figure we know as the Buddha began to arrive in East Asia, and in less than half a millennium they transformed ways of thinking and acting in the entire region to such an extent that forgetting their influence has become one of the prime tasks of any historian who would wish to see the Han independently from the regrets and reconsiderations of later ages. At first glance, establishing what non-Buddhist China was seems an easy enough task, for the Buddhists arrived from a South Asia already rife with rivalries in matters religious, and so wasted no time in articulating, at least among their leadership, a collective view of their own tradition explicitly quite distinct from those of named opponents; eventually, too, they were quite equal to the task of collecting and analyzing the writings of their critics. So non-Buddhist or at least anti-Buddhist thought in China has, in a preliminary way, been conveniently assembled for our research.

The willingness of Buddhists, on the basis of past experience outside East Asia, to engage in polemics may indeed have formed part of the basis for their eventual success in establishing their presence throughout the region, though probably only a small part. The greater proportion of the propagation of their view of the human condition to the broader population of the Chinese speaking world is perhaps not reflected at all in our sources, which tend to concentrate largely on preserving what the monastic leadership found interesting and important. Indeed, it is not at all easy to discern what information was available about Buddhism to the wider population beyond those who engaged in debate with the clergy or how they construed and formulated it.Footnote ³ This impasse has affected many researchers, myself included: at one point it seemed that the evidence of material culture pointed to an understanding of the Buddha as a Lord of the Dead, but archaeologists and art historians told me that my view relied on shaky analogies best abandoned. Perhaps their future research will bring more clarity to the matter.

The upshot of the polemical debates between learned monks and their erudite opponents is, in any case, not in any doubt. Though the fragmentation of empire entailed by the waning of Han power made the establishment of any kind of unifying or consolidating ideology difficult for three centuries, one may detect during the reign of Emperor Wudi of the Liang (r. 502–549)Footnote ⁴ that a certain level of stability was achieved, at least in the southern kingdom wherein debate flourished. Compendia of various sorts were put together, reflecting the heritage, both Buddhist and indigenous, that had accumulated over the past half millennium. And given all this reshaping of tradition in the early sixth century, what are we to make of a poem by the emperor on the “Three Teachings,” apparently the very first reference as a group to what we call Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism? The title may have been added later, but the contents are clear enough.Footnote ⁵ In his youth, says the monarch, he studied the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, while in his middle age he read the writings of the Dao, including those of the realm of Supreme Purity, Shangqing 上清; only in his later years did he unroll the scrolls of the Buddha, which were like the moon outshining all the stars.Footnote ⁶ Though the narrative—like the narrative in the second book of the Analects (2.4) giving the thoughts of Confucius on his progress through life—does imply gradations in knowledge, the poem does not imply a rejection of Daoism justifying its suppression, which would seem to be in line with current views of the emperor's position.Footnote ⁷ Even so, the emperor seems to have thought, for the most part, in binary terms somewhat analogous to our dichotomy between spiritual and temporal or sacred and secular, with the proviso that the Buddhist spiritual or sacred, by talking of a transcendent plane beyond even the world unseen, allowed the inherited spirit world of China to find an accepted place at what he considered to be a lower level. But the Buddhist clergy and their supporters under Emperor Wudi pursued a much less politic and conciliatory line than their ruler, conceding a role to Laozi only as an ancient philosopher and some acceptance of macrobiotic practices associated with that legendary figure, while denying any legitimate standing at all to their priestly Daoist rivals.

The lengthy process whereby Buddhist apologists brought their competitors to this point has been subjected to a certain provisional degree of analysis, though of course much more remains to be said.Footnote ⁸ Until the fifth century, the dichotomies that already existed in Chinese rhetoric were predominantly used to assert the distinctiveness of the Buddha's message, but with no specific opponents targeted: Buddhism is an “inner” teaching, for example, that is distinct from mere “outer” concerns.Footnote ⁹ To affirm the distinctiveness of Buddhism in an environment where worship of the Buddha could quite easily be accommodated within existing Chinese modes of dealing with the supernatural was plainly an urgent priority: as a one-time prince, he was much less uncouth than many more disturbing deities whose cults might grip the populace, and as such he formed a beguiling focus for worship of the normal Chinese sort. So it took some effort to point out that he was more than a god. This apologetic tactic was not due, in retrospect, to any inherent reluctance to attack specific targets: it turns out that South Asian Buddhist sources quite explicitly attacking their Jain rivals were soon translated, and remained in circulation throughout imperial times.Footnote ¹⁰ Rather, the polemics in China seem initially to have revolved around contesting specific issues of Buddhist conduct much more than criticizing any named group.Footnote ¹¹ It looks as if there were no Chinese equivalents to the Jains. But with the consolidation in the fifth century of a Daoist organization equipped with its own distinct canon and monastic strongholds, its consequent competition with the Buddhist clergy for imperial and aristocratic patronage stimulated explicit criticism of the Daoist leadership. They were now denounced as pretenders to the same status as Buddhism, despite the fact that, as Buddhists saw it, only their teachings offered a path beyond the forces of karma that controlled all worlds seen and unseen onwards to the highest goal of complete liberation, nirvana. It seems that what had happened was that the existence of the model of Buddhism as a religious tradition, which encompassed a range of religious texts and practices within one broader conceptual and organizational framework, had enabled various groups and individuals sharing a particular and not uncommon Chinese religious outlook to emulate the new foreign import and achieve a unity of a type that had not existed before.Footnote ¹² For there was already another unifying model within many non-Buddhist groups, but it was based on the idea of imperial hierarchy in the unseen world, a notion that tended to embroil believers in a somewhat tense relationship with this-worldly authorities.Footnote ¹³ Assurances that the emperor and the Daoist priesthood were both on the same side under the oversight of unseen powers were in some ways just as problematic as the Buddhist argument that monks and nuns lived a life beyond the political realm; and so a partial move towards a Buddhist model of a celibate clergy living a separate existence in monastic communities made some sense for ambitious sixth-century Daoists.

But in denouncing the newly coherent force of Daoism for its creation of an unprecedented but spurious path of salvation, the apologists for the Buddha in a way created a new category of “acceptable East Asian cultural traditions inherited from the remote past,” and included in this category was the learning of the scholars of the classical texts, the ru 儒. Their learning stretched back in origin to the time of the sages of antiquity, and Confucius was of that number. In this way, Buddhism was moving towards the creation of something that might be called Confucianism, for there was pressure over time to select a single figure to represent this heritage in the same way that the Buddha stood as the sole fountainhead in the history of our epoch of the universally and perpetually valid teachings leading to liberation. Before this process started to get under way in the sixth century, however, what was the picture of the Chinese non-Buddhist landscape beyond the gathering forces of Daoism? As we have stated, the whole debate clustered around issues rather than identifiable groups with a common purpose. But is it possible to identify a few organizing themes, as well as focal figures like Confucius who might embody an image of the sage to contrast with that of the Buddha? Here, a brief review at least serves to point up those elements in the Han legacy around which opposition to Buddhism tended to crystallize.

To do justice to our sources by explicating each one within the historical context within which it was written would inevitably overburden a collection of studies devoted to the Han with a plethora of much later material; to trace back each element in opposition to Buddhism to earlier Han antecedents would again entail a considerable research effort. Here, all that is attempted is an initial survey in the hope that the thorough study of this topic may commend itself to others. The survey concentrates on the main collection of polemical materials formed by a learned Buddhist monk of the early sixth century, and reference is made not to the text as such (though this has been digitized, and can be readily consulted online) but to a published index that allows the occurrence of repeated terms to be taken in at a glance. Reference to other sources is also limited; those with a better grasp of the literature of the Eastern Han in particular will be well placed to take matters further, and to read those sources too within their proper historical context. Locating materials is, of course, but the first stage towards their interpretation; all that is suggested here is that the possibility of interpretation exists.

Something of the strengths and weaknesses of such an initial account may be illustrated by looking at the figure of Confucius himself as he appears within these polemical materials, the Hongming ji 弘明集 or Collection for Propagation and Clarification by Sengyou 僧祐 (445–518).Footnote ¹⁴ After his elevation to “Uncrowned King” suwang 素王 during the Han, he looms fairly large in the collected debates, though no one actually uses that particular phrase.Footnote ¹⁵ Of course, there are plenty of quotations from the Analects; it is a very quotable source. But Confucius is mentioned not alone but in tandem together with the Duke of Zhou over fifty times, and half a dozen times with the ancient sage king Yao, though more often Yao and fellow sage king Shun are brought together as a double pairing with the Duke of Zhou and Confucius.Footnote ¹⁶ Laozi is most often mentioned with Zhuangzi, but less than ten times; four times, his name is linked with that of the Yellow Emperor, if that is what Huang-Lao means.Footnote ¹⁷ Mencius, incidentally, is quoted four times and mentioned a dozen more, but is never paired with Confucius or anyone else, except once with two other followers of Confucius.Footnote ¹⁸ The Buddha is never, ever linked with any other figure in this way, whether by a Buddhist or even by an opponent. This goes right against the general stylistic usage of inserting cultural heroes into a piece of prose like animals going into the ark, two by two. There are certainly stylistic forces at play here: under his personal name Zhongni 仲尼, rather than Kongzi 孔子, Confucius is, in fact, not coupled in our polemical sources with the Duke of Zhou, though in one case Zhongni and Laozi together are contrasted with the Buddha.Footnote ¹⁹ There is some sense here that the names are being used metonymically: Confucius and Laozi mean “Chinese thought,” and “the Duke of Zhou and Confucius” with or without Yao and Shun mean “the cultural package purveyed by the ru.” But the Buddha is not just “foreign culture”; he comes complete with a dharma and a sangha, and the latter (understood as the clergy, but also the devout laity) are responsible for propagating the former, the teachings of the Buddha or fojiao 佛教. We do find just once in Sengyou's materials the “teaching of Laozi” (老教), meaning the Daode jing, and four or five times the “teaching of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius,” but these pale in insignificance compared to the dozens of references to the teachings of the Buddha, to say nothing of the Buddha dharma (佛法).Footnote ²⁰

Of course, there is plentiful talk of other “teachings” and also “ways” (dao 道) native to China, some of which may be regarded as roughly synonymous with others, but ultimately it seems to me that these may not readily be reduced to but three strands of belief, two native and one foreign. There are indeed several mentions of the “teachings of the Way” (daojiao 道教), though the first of these is quite far from what this term would refer to these days, since it states that “Confucius took the Five Classics as the Teaching of the Way” (孔子以五經為道教).Footnote ²¹ The “teachings of the Classicists” (rujiao), the notion taken up by Emperor Wu of the Liang, is mentioned just once in Sengyou's compilation, in recounting the actions of Emperor Wu of the Han in support of classical studies. This was not the first occurrence of the expression in Chinese literature, since it is used already by Cai Yong 蔡邕 (132–192).Footnote ²² But it seems only right to conclude that supposing something we would have called Confucianism existed after the Han and before the Liang, it must have generally had another label.

There is, as it happens, one consistently identified teaching that had its roots in Han times, if not earlier, that persisted at least into the Tang, and that is often mentioned in contrast with Buddhism. By the second century, the mingjiao 名教, the “Teaching of a Good Name,” had come to a degree of prominence, and researchers on the period have therefore devoted some attention to it.Footnote ²³ Translators have not found it an easy term to render into English in the contexts in which it was deployed during the time that Buddhism started to make its presence felt, and have tended to render it simply as “moral teachings.”Footnote ²⁴ In Sengyou's materials, it shows up no fewer than twenty times, explicitly or implicitly in contrast with Buddhism.Footnote ²⁵ Can we say that this was the equivalent during the third to sixth centuries of what came to be called the “teachings of the Classicists”? I think not, even if at times it seems to indicate the broader moral heritage of cultural norms, for the term was not supplanted by or subsumed into rujiao during the Tang, when that label had become the regular one for the teaching that was neither Buddhism nor Daoism. Rather, mingjiao continued to be used, but only in certain contexts to do with moral reputation. Arthur Waley adduces a case from the early ninth century in which it refers to the infringement of naming taboos, and comments informatively, “Ming-chiao (literally, name-teaching) is here used in its narrower sense, i.e., the ritually correct use of words. It sometimes means Confucian ordinances and injunctions in general.”Footnote ²⁶ Ordinances and injunctions were certainly not all that the classicists had to teach, any more than the prescriptions of the vinaya covered the totality of Buddhism. Assuredly, there were points at issue between Buddhist ethics and the customary codes of Chinese elite conduct, and they were duly subject to controversy. But we see no “mingjiaoists” standing shoulder to shoulder (or in a triple standoff) with the Daoists against the Buddhists. Only in the comments of Zhang Zhan 張湛 on the Daoist Liezi 列子(c. 370) does the non-discriminating sage, through his refusal to make choices, support mingjiao as an element in his larger vision. But there is no sign here of a strategy of syncretism in the face of Buddhism, simply of flexible rhetorical strategies within the Chinese tradition.Footnote ²⁷

The situation is not quite the same with another teaching that turns up in the corpus of early polemics as being in some sense opposed to the teachings of the Buddha. The “teaching on ritual” (lijiao 禮教) would seem to be mentioned in the Zhuangzi, though in a part of the corpus, the twenty-fourth, “Xu Wugui” 徐無鬼, chapter, whose origins and date are unclear. Burton Watson, moreover, in his translation, takes the phrase there, lijiao zhi shi 禮教之士, to signify separately “men of ritual and instruction.”Footnote ²⁸ But again the term is fully established as a compound by the second century, in a context that makes clearer the scope of its meaning. Xun Yue 荀悦 (148–209), discussing the different measures required to discipline the better sort of person, states that the “teaching of rites and glory or humiliation are applied to the superior man” (禮教榮辱以加君子), that is, in preference to mere violence.Footnote ²⁹ Nine times in the polemical literature collected by Sengyou, it is the “teaching on ritual” that, in contradistinction to Buddhism, embodies the social code bequeathed by the sage rulers of old.Footnote ³⁰ The three additional examples afforded by the Wenxuan further suggest that this social code was seen as a heritage that could be corrupted or preserved.Footnote ³¹ Even so, this term, too, does not seem to be treated as an exact synonym for the teachings of the Classicists. Ge Hong 葛洪 (283–343), in response to the accusation that unlike the ru, adherents of the Dao did not support the “teaching on ritual” (不营禮教), retorts that Laozi did indeed incorporate it into his outlook, together with his “long vision” (老子既兼綜禮教，而又久視), thereby anticipating the inclusionary approach of Zhang Zhan to mingjiao; elsewhere, however, he makes it clear that he does associate the ru and lijiao, even if they are not treated as identical.Footnote ³²

There was, moreover, another way in which the teachings of the ru and of ritual could be seen as related. Both attracted students, thus producing socially identifiable adherents, a sort of sangha, if you will, though minus the women and celibates. Along with the term of Han vintage rusheng 儒生 for a student of the classical corpus of writings, it is also possible to find the parallel term lisheng 禮生, “student of ritual,” and though it appears primarily in the main Tang compendium of rites, at least one earlier example may be found, presumably not anachronistically, in the Liang shu 梁書.Footnote ³³ But the fact that the term is so rare does rather underline the institutional weakness of ritual studies during the Period of Disunion (220–589). The ethnically non-Chinese Northern Wei rulers, for example, held separate Chinese and non-Chinese rituals to worship Heaven, participating with markedly greater enthusiasm in the latter.Footnote ³⁴ Even the rituals commemorating Confucius were only held very sporadically before Tang times, even in the more Sinophone core of South China.Footnote ³⁵ Meanwhile, day after day, over hundreds of years, within the Chinese world and far beyond, incense rose before thousands upon thousands of images of the Buddha.

But against this picture we must set the very real passion with which arguments over filial piety and the like are pursued in the Hongming ji; they can be quite accurately characterized as exhibiting morality tinged with emotion, however one wishes to name that syndrome.Footnote ³⁶ One can therefore certainly sympathize with those who take the view that for the general ethos displayed by those opposed to Buddhism on the grounds of cultural loyalty, the term “Confucianism” is not inappropriate: they may not have had the name, it might be said, but they had the deed. There are to be sure contemporary scholars who appear to write on the basis of such an assumption.Footnote ³⁷ But surely, too, it is worth noting that while opposition to Buddhism may cluster around terms such as mingjiao and lijiao, it does so without achieving any unified focus. The value of the Han cultural heritage, moreover, may have been felt, but it was not examined. By contrast, the buddhadharma was subject to extensive analysis; in time, even its ontological status became an issue in Chinese scholastic Buddhism.Footnote ³⁸ Such concerns may betoken a somewhat later intellectual environment: that particular discussion refers to the “tangible words” of the Buddha, suggesting a broader movement that was, in the seventh century, bringing mass printing into being.Footnote ³⁹ But the Buddhist urge to analyse was much older, and this surely is a difference that cannot be ignored.

The scope of the foregoing remarks has been limited. To understand fully how the educated people of the period after Eastern Han understood their cultural situation and the traditions with which they chose to identify themselves, it would be necessary to survey a much wider range of terminology, expressions such as Kongmen 孔門 (“adherents of Confucius”) or lidao 禮道 (the “Way of ritual”), plus several others, and to pursue the terminology through a wider range of sources.Footnote ⁴⁰ Provisionally, however, it is probably fair to say that loyalty to the cultural legacy of the Han was a relatively diffuse phenomenon, very different from the self-aware identity of an educated Buddhist who had taken refuge in the Three Jewels of Buddha, dharma, and sangha. So should one choose to speak of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism before the Tang, then it may be best to bear in mind that these labels do not exactly refer to commensurable groupings. The Buddhist leadership had a clear view of their identity and their purpose. Those who looked instead to the power of the Dao inherited some elements of institutional organization, but in integrating different groups into a larger scheme of practice and belief, they only gradually learned from the Buddhists. When Buddhists discovered that their example had prompted the integration of another rival force, and denounced these Daoists for their pretensions, they tacitly favored those who were content to sustain an inherited culture without challenging the dominance of Buddhist conceptions of the world unseen.

But how some in that third category took up that favored role and shaped it into a self-conscious movement is in my provisional estimation a story that belongs to another period of history, following the reappearance of a larger empire on Sinophone territory, a period of history that did not live (or at least did not live solely) in the shadow of the Han. Briefly, Friederike Assandri notes that in the government-sponsored polemical debates between Buddhists and Daoists from the late sixth century into the early Tang, representatives of the Ru tradition were occasionally enlisted to expand the discussion.Footnote ⁴¹ During the eighth century, several works on evaluating the “Three Teachings” were compiled, though from what we know of them, the Ru were not assigned a dominant role by anyone.Footnote ⁴² Only with the end of the century do we see Li Ao (c. 772–836) putting forward a sagely tradition explicitly superior to that of both the Buddhists and the Daoists.Footnote ⁴³ To my eye, there is nothing similar to this in the writings composed between the Han and the Tang. But what is there surely bears further exploration.