The Han Sources on Early Classicism

Michael Nylan
Bryn Mawr College

Although the Mencius names Confucius as author of the Chunqiu, it is the Han sources (for example, the “Rulin” chapters of the Shiji, Hanshu, and Hou Hanshu) to which most scholars have looked for information about early classicism, its characteristic institutions, and its particular form of production of knowledge. As the Han sources have generally been regarded as reliable, despite their many internal contradictions and curious lacunae, their genealogizing construction of the past has been adopted in standard accounts. This paper raises questions about the reliability of the Han sources as accurate accounts of the pre-unification past, while arguing that the Han sources (including parts of the Hou Hanshu that clearly reflect Han narratives, rather than the work of the later compiler) reveal - sometimes inadvertently - a great deal about changes in the self conception and position of the Han Ru, changes bound to affect their preferred styles of exegesis.