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8/19/2019 (Brill's Korean Studies Library) Young Kyun Oh-Engraving Virtue_ the Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral …

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Engraving Virtue:

The Printing History of a Premodern

Korean Moral Primer


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Brill’s Korean Studies Library

Edited by

Ross King (University of British Columbia)

In co-operation with

Boudewijn Walraven (Leiden University),Sun Joo Kim (Harvard University) andRüdiger Frank (University of Vienna)

VOLUME

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bksl

http://www.brill.com/bkslhttp://www.brill.com/bksl


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This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characterscovering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.

ISSN -ISBN ---- (hardback)ISBN ---- (e-book)

Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhof Publishers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Publication of this book was supported by the following grants from Arizona State University:Institute for Humanities Research Publication Subvention Grant, College of Liberal Arts andSciences East Asian Studies Research Fund, and School of International Letters and CulturesResearch Fund.

Cover Illustration: Folio image showing “Lady Yu is lial to her mother-in-law” (Yu ssi hyo ko劉氏孝姑), in the Samgang haengsil-to, 1726 reduced edition. Image from the Internet Archiveat http://archive.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oh, Young Kyun. Engraving virtue : the printing history of a premodern Korean moral primer / by Young Kyun Oh. pages cm. — (Brill’s Korean studies library series, ISSN 1876-7079 ; volume 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-24988-2 (hardback : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25196-0 (e-book)

1. Samgang haengsilto. 2. Samgang haengsilto—Inuence. 3. Wood-engraving—Printing—Korea—History. 4. Primers (Prayer books)—Korea—History. 5. Confucian ethics—Korea—History.6. Korea—History—Choson dynasty, 1392–1910. 7. Korea—Social conditions—1392–1910. I. Title.

BJ117.S25 2013170.9519—dc23

2013010579

http://www.brill.com/brill-typefacehttp://archive.org/http://archive.org/http://www.brill.com/brill-typeface


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CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables ............................................................................ viiPreface ................................................................................................................ ix

Introduction .....................................................................................................

Prelude to a Confucian State: Literati, Morality, and Books ......

The Conception of the Samgang haengsil-to ..................................

Vernacular Sounds and the Reduced Edition .................................

The Sequels: Here and Now in the Chosŏn ....................................

Conclusions .......................................................................................................

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... Index ...................................................................................................................


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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures

. The illustration of “Several Generals Suppress Rebels” (left )and the text of “Sŏng Ch’ung Dies in Prison” (right) ..................

. Ming Palace Treasury Edition of the Grand Pronouncementsby the Imperial Order .............................................................................

. “[Zhao] Yuanjiang Takes Of the Cangue” ...................................... . “The Earnest Behavior of Xu Ji” ......................................................... . “Puyan Fullls Loyalty” ......................................................................... A. “Ŭnbo Impresses the Crow” without vernacular text ................... B. “Ŭnbo Impresses the Crow” with vernacular text .......................... . The illustration of “[To] Mi’s Wife Chews Grass” (left )

and the text of “Chastity of a Ning-Family Daughter” (right ) .... A. The vernacular text of “[To] Mi’s Wife Chews Grass”

(1490 edition) .......................................................................................... B. The vernacular text of “[To] Mi’s Wife Chews Grass”(1570s edition) .........................................................................................

. “Sang Tŏk Slices Of His Thigh” .......................................................... . “Lady Kim Pounces on a Tiger” .......................................................... . Folio image showing “Wang Zhong Moves Heaven” ................... . List of contents, kwŏn , New Sequel to the Samgang

haengsil-to ................................................................................................. . “The Most Virtuous Actions of I-ch’ŏm” ..........................................

. “Yun-gŭn Cuts Of His Finger” ............................................................ . “Cho-i Has Her Head Cut Of ” ...........................................................

Tables

. Distribution of Chinese and Korean Stories in the InitialEdition of the Samgang haengsil-to (1434) .....................................

. Category : Vernacular Texts of the Samgang haengsil-to inChŏng’ŭm (Han’gŭl) with Chinese Characters Mixed In ............

. Category : Vernacular Texts of the Samgang haengsil-to in Chŏng’ŭm (Han’gŭl) without Interspersed ChineseCharacters .................................................................................................


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. Editions of the Sequel to the Samgang haengsil-to Outlinedby Song Il-gi and Yi T’ae-ho ................................................................

. Editions of the Sequel to the Samgang haengsil-to, RevisedSummary ...................................................................................................

. Distribution of Stories in the New Sequel to the Samganghaengsil-to (1617) .....................................................................................


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PREFACE

For a scholar this was almost a career change. After a degree in Chinesehistorical phonology, I spent the last four years learning and studyingabout the history of one book. I never realized that studying about onebook could be so absorbing as to consume four years. Begun initially as ashort lecture preparation, the project on this Chosŏn moral primer keptleading me on to larger and more captivating domains of research, until

nally resulting in the present monograph. All academic texts, I believe,are communal works. Even more help and support than usual went into writing this book. My discovery of the eld of book history was throughconversations with Jamie Newhard when we were both beginning juniorfaculty members at Arizona State University. My interest grew more seri-ous during my stay at the Academy of Korean Studies in 2007, where Ilearned about Korean books and print culture from Joo Young-ha [Chu Yŏng-ha], Ok Young-jung [Ok Yŏng-jŏng], and Choi Jin-duk, whose gener-

ous support and inspiration I deeply appreciate.I am also most grateful to those who gave me crucial help for this proj-ect to move forward. Stephen West has seen my progress from my earlycareer, has read primary texts with me, and helped form my rudimen-tary ideas into readable shapes. Without Ross King’s meticulous eyes andkindness in reading and rereading my drafts, not to mention his expertiseon Middle Korean and the Samgang haengsil-to, the manuscript wouldnot have seen the current state. Peter Kornicki encouraged me from thebeginning to embark on this new area of study and gave me opportunities

for this project to advance. Xiaoqiao Ling has been a loyal friend who readmy rst drafts every time I nished a section, thereby providing me withconsistent pressure to write on.

Arizona State University has been an ideal environment for a novice(in many senses) scholar like myself. Colleagues who participated in read-ing groups at the School of International Letters and Cultures, Stephen West, Daniel Gilllan, John (Yu) Zou, John Creamer, Yoon Sun Yang,Sookja Cho, and Xiaoqiao Ling, have all read parts of the manuscript at

various stages. Robert Joe Cutter, Stephen Bokenkamp, Madeline Spring,Hoyt Tillman, Marcus Cruse, and Juliann Vitulo have also read variousparts and excerpts of the manuscript, and provided generous criticismsand encouragements. My senior colleagues among the Asian Studies


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faculty were especially nurturing and supportive of me in pursuing thisproject without being distracted by administrative and teaching duties.

The inquisitiveness and intelligence of the students who took my “Booksand Print Culture of Premodern East Asia” kept me on task. This book would never have appeared in one piece, without these brilliant minds at Arizona State University.

I would be remiss if I failed to thank Ryan Robbins and Victoria Scottfor their editorial touches on the numerous linguistic errors and incon-sistencies; I also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightfuland invaluable comments. Unyielding friendship to comfort me through

some hectic times came from Joanne Tsao, Meow Hui Goh, and Newell Ann Van Aucken. I would also like to think that my fatherly teacher, Pro-fessor Tsai-fa Cheng—who taught the clueless student I once was every-thing about the historical linguistics of Chinese and showed me what itmeans to be a scholar—would approve of this book. Very special thanksare due to Stephen West for the innite wisdom and unceasing friendshiphe has granted me. It has been my fortune to have him as my mentor anda friend.

Someone once said that it is inappropriate to thank publicly one’s fam-

ily for their sacrices because a few words could never acknowledge allthe things that family members do for each other. But it has been par-ticularly dicult for my family with the dysfunctional son, husband andfather that I have been. My parents, who nurtured my often-quixotic curi-osity and wanderlust since childhood, have long waited for this book tocome out. For a husband who is always unavailable, Mia has had to be thestrong woman who makes things work. My sons had to get accustomedearly on to their father being away, growing up so fast and so wonderfully.

They are, needless to say, my superheroes.


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Relations), to provide an example through which we might begin to open

up the history of the book in Korea. This celebrated book had a long and

intriguing life in the Chosŏn (1392–1910), the last premodern dynasty. Firstprinted in 1434 by the court under King Sejong’s世宗 (r. 1418–50) man-date, the Samgang haengsil-to was a response to a patricidal incident that

inspired Sejong to issue the book as a morality primer and corrective that

would aid in the ethical transformation of his people. During the several

centuries that followed, the text was reedited and reprinted numerous

times, and even inspired several sequels. Editors altered it—sometimes

subtly, at other times signicantly. Whatever its form, the text reproduced

stories from Chinese and Korean histories that demonstrated the moralquality of lial sons (hyoja 孝子), loyal subjects (ch’ungsin 忠臣), anddevoted women ( yŏllyŏ 烈女) whose actions best represented the ethicalnature of the three fundamental human relations that sustained Confu-

cian society: father–son, ruler–subject, and husband–wife.

This book examines two facets of the Samgang haengsil-to printing his-

tory: (1) how a changing socio-political context motivated the publishing

projects; and (2) how that context afected the book both in terms of its

physicality (selection and arrangement of stories, layout and design) and

texts (written text and illustrations). Assuming that what happened to theSamgang haengsil-to reects not just any premodern book culture but one

specically inuenced by Confucian moralists’ attitudes toward books, this

study provides insight into how two groups of people occupying opposing

ends of the social hierarchy—namely, the literate and illiterate—came

together in this typically Confucian and yet unusual project of trans-

planting Chinese values into new cultural soil. The changes made to the

structure and content of the Samgang haengsil-to are indicative of the

ideological and political shifts that lay behind the serial publication andcirculation of the book.

What is unique about the Samgang haengsil-to is that it was a “granted”

or “bestowed” book, one whereby the author-editors (the literatus-ocials)

reigned over their target readers: the mostly illiterate and, by Confucian

ethical logic, morally decient common folk. These author-editors might

This is well illuminated by a quote from the Mencius: “Those who labor with theirminds govern others; those who labor with their strength are governed by others. Those who are governed by others support them; those who govern them are supported by them.

This is a universal principle.” 勞心者治人，勞力者治於人；治於人者食人，治人者食於人；天下之通義也。 Mencius 3A.3.6. Translation by James Legge,The Chinese Clas-sics, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 249–50.


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occupy the same physical world as their readers, but they certainly did

not inhabit the same mental universe. Hence the literatus-ocials who

conceived the work had to rely on their own limited knowledge of people whose lives they had very little real access to or prior interest in. Their

imaginative guesses about the lives of commoners were often based on

a moralistic and archaic romanticism as well as on a sense of Confucian

obligation to extend compassion to those lower on the scale of the ethical

meritocracy. Moreover, since they would receive no direct feedback about

the way the book was received when put to actual use out in the prov-

inces, they surely had a very dim idea of how the book could be employed

as a tool to teach the illiterate. We cannot rule out that they did receivesome input from reactions to its use, but this would have been hearsay

or ltered through the minds of intermediaries. As the documents related

to the text’s production over several hundred years show, this created an

epistemological quandary for the court and the author-editors of subse-

quent editions. In shaping subsequent editions based on a presumed use,

actual circulation and use could not but remain a secondary consider-

ation; instead, literatus-ocials considered it to be their own ethical, liter-

ary, and artistic taste that, in the main, granted the text its legitimacy. This

sense of taste was afected to a certain extent by having to leave spacefor the imagined reader—members of the lower class, commoners, the

illiterate, women, children, and so forth—but its major hue derived from

matching the text to the doctrinal principles to which the literati sub-

scribed and which were embodied in the canonical texts of the Confucian

classics. And there was consensus among the authors about the scholastic

and ethical authority of those texts.

This general sense of incommensurability between production and

reception was complicated by two other underlying processes that shapedthe history of editions of the Samgang haengsil-to: nativization and inter-

pretation. The desire to transform Chosŏn into a Confucian state was

undoubtedly the single most important motivation behind the initial pub-

lication of the Samgang haengsil-to. The early Chosŏn rulers strove to deal

with the foreignness of China—a mindset they inherited from previous

dynasties. This might seem strange, considering the long history of Korea’s

interaction with and assimilation of Chinese culture, but the Chosŏn

endeavor went far beyond haphazardly absorbing a foreign culture. It was

a total reconguration of state ideology and identity so that Chosŏn would

be in synchronicity with the neighboring Sinitic tradition. For it to have

a lasting inuence, this change had to be both organized and fundamen-

tal. Two factors greatly inuenced this programmatic agenda. First was


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a change in the mode of cultural association among the members of the

East Asian community after the Mongols created a pan-regional order. The

expansion of the Mongol empire and the relative freedom of movement(both physical and intellectual) that accompanied it broke the sinocentric

cultural exclusivism that had marked pre-Yuan China and helped spread

Chinese texts and ideology beyond the borders of China. When the suc-

ceeding Ming dynasty replaced the Mongols, they reestablished a dis-

tinctly Han-Chinese orthodoxy and conrmed China and “Chineseness”

as the center of the political and moral order. The Ming restoration in

China also reshaped the way Korea perceived itself in relation to Chinese

civilization. This difered from the previous modes of Sino-Korean culturalassociation, in which Korean polities learned aspects of Chinese culture

and the distance between the two cultures was understood. Chosŏn now

came to view itself as an active member of Sinitic civilization and tradi-

tion with its own cultural entelechy. Part of this sense of belonging to a

new East Asian order was the attempt the Chosŏn court made to adopt

a revitalized form of Confucianism, called “Learning of Principles” (lixue

理學) or “Learning of the Way” (daoxue 道學), that had gained orthodoxyin China during and after the Yuan. Lixue is a philosophy reinforced by a

moral metaphysics, developed during Song-dynasty China (960–1279) by agroup of scholars that included Zhu Xi朱熹 (1130–1200). Through master-ing and practicing Neo-Confucian doctrines, Chosŏn aspired to become as

bona de a Confucian state as China itself.

The second process shaping the evolution of the Samgang haengsil-to,

that of interpretation, was dictated by Neo-Confucianism itself, and

involved a process far more subtle than the simple linguistic translation

of Chinese into Korean. This interpretive work was in fact comparable to

Zhu Xi’s project. In China, Zhu Xi had created a philosophical primer withthe Four Books, which he thought captured the philosophical essence

of the Confucian classics. As part of the discipline of learning, Zhu Xi

emphasized that these words of the sages should be read aloud and mem-

orized by heart. In the same manner, to reach the untrained minds of

illiterate Koreans using the stories that epitomized Confucian ethics, the

The Four Books are the Great Learning ( Daxue 大學), the Analects ( Lunyu 論語), the

Mencius ( Mengzi 孟子), and the Doctrine of the Mean ( Zhongyong 中庸). Numerous studieshave examined the role that Zhu Xi and the Four Books played in the history of Confucianscholarship. See, for example, Daniel K. Gardner, “Principle and Pedagogy: Chu Hsi and theFour Books,” HJAS 44.1 (1984): 57–81; and “Transmitting the Way: Chu Hsi and His Programof Learning,” HJAS 49.1 (1989), 141–72. The inuence of Zhu Xi and the Four Books on theConfucian culture of books and reading is discussed in Chapter 1.


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Chosŏn literati needed to properly interpret and elucidate them in the

vernacular Korean language understandable to all Koreans. Not having

a writing system with which to transform the Chinese text into Korean,the initial edition was designed to be orally “interpreted”—not exactly

“read”—to an audience incapable of reading Chinese. Confucianism has

always stressed the master-disciple relationship, and the authoritative role

that Confucian masters played in the transmission of knowledge as oral

interpretation of written text became an integral factor in helping people

bridge the gap between moral knowledge ( zhi知) and practice ( xing 行).That is, the teacher had to elucidate the meaning behind the text and

ensure that the moral knowledge contained therein would be correctlyunderstood and practiced by his students. Teaching and learning, there-

fore, turned into an ontological activity, in which the literati completed,

and contributed to realizing, a world of moral goodness practiced through

action. The Samgang haengsil-to, which both the literati and the illiterate

participated in “reading,” was no exception in this respect. Indeed, we can

trace the historical and political shifts in hermeneutical strategies used in

dispensing and attaining knowledge by examining the changes in layout

and arrangement of the texts and illustrations that occur in diferent edi-

tions of the Samgang haengsil-to.The physicality—or the notion that may be termed “body,” inclusive

of both the physical and ethical self—through which nativization and

interpretation operated is omnipresent in the Samgang haengsil-to. First

of all, in their textual content, many of the stories describe mutilations of

the body (e.g., a son cutting of his nger to save his dying parent, a wife

getting her foot severed while resisting rape). Such ethically sanctioned

violence is a distinctive characteristic of this text. Physicality makes its

presence felt in the textual language as well. Vernacular Korean wasadded in later editions, after the invention of Han’gŭl, the Korean writing

system. The new writing system through which the vernacular language

was projected is an alphabetic system based on the sounds of the spoken

language, and thus a close physical representation of the oral language.

The evocation of orality left less room for ambiguity, which had always

been an important rhetorical feature of written classical Chinese, so that

the written text of the Samgang haengsil-to gradually gained its somatic

Dialectal divergence in modern Korean is not particularly severe. There are majorregional dialects, but they are mutually understandable with little or no diculty. The situ-ation may not have been very diferent during the Middle Korean stage in Chosŏn, for we donot nd any documented evidence to the contrary.


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voice, through which it spelled out the stories more plainly and vividly.

The bodily images of ethical conduct were also given visual shape through

the accompanying illustrations. Each illustration carefully selects a scenethat highlights commendable conduct and depicts it with graphic reality,

conjuring up the associated physical sensations for the viewers.

The notion of body is also anchored in the materiality of the book—not

necessarily the actual copies on paper but the woodblocks that bear the

text. By being engraved onto the blocks, the texts and pictures simultane-

ously acquired physical reality and immortality, as did the stories pub-

lished from their surfaces. This explains why there were so many disputes

surrounding the preparation of the texts of the Samgang haengsil-to, espe-cially over which stories were to be included and why so little efort, by

comparison, was made to produce and distribute actual copies of the text.

The primary concern with the book moved from its didactic function of

morally transforming people to its ritualistic function of registering the

people—or moral superheroes—who performed actions worthy of emu-

lation by engraving them on woodblocks and consequently validating

their historicity.

Chapter 1, “Prelude to a Confucian State: Literati, Morality, and Books,”

investigates in more detail the two factors described above. It calls spe-cial attention to Zhu Xi’s hierarchical restructuring of Confucian knowl-

edge and his emphasis on vocalized reading. This eventually popularized

Confucian learning by promoting oral, as well as textual, circulation of

the universal ethics and self-cultivation of lixue morality. I then discuss

the historical unfolding of late Koryŏ, its political interaction with the

Yuan imperial order, and the end of aristocracy under its rule. Under the

umbrella of the Mongol empire, which provided a hiatus in the traditional

cultural superiority ascribed to the Han-Chinese group, a window openedfor the Koryŏ literati—another non-Han-Chinese people—to claim rights

to the Confucian worldview.

Chapter 2, “The Conception of the Samgang haengsil-to,” discusses how

the original publishing project was conceived in the court of King Sejong.

As the initial political unrest of the new dynasty was gradually dampened,

Sejong and his scholar-ocials strove to instill in the society the founda-

tions of Confucian ethics: namely, lial piety, loyalty, and uxorial devo-

tion. A patricidal incident in Chinju provided an opportune reason for

this promotion to begin, and the result was a collection of 330 stories of

lial sons, loyal subjects, and devoted wives (110 per categorical relation)

chosen from Chinese and Korean histories. I trace the discourse behind

the compilation of the Samgang haengsil-to, and link it to the previous


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tradition of Chinese biographies of commendable gures, didactic story-

books, and early Ming court publications that set the precedents for its

publication. The second half of the chapter then examines how success-ful the rst edition of the Samgang haengsil-to was in representing the

editors’ plan for its readership, including the role of illustrations. Finally,

I discuss how the court and literatus-editors conceived of the ways in

which illiterate readers—oxymoronic though that term may be—would

consume the book and its ethical message. I draw special attention to

the role played by literate reader-interpreters and how this inuenced the

format of the book.

Chapter 3, “Vernacular Sounds and the Reduced Edition,” deals pri-marily with the problem of language. For the most part, premodern

Korea lived in a linguistic ecology in which classical Chinese had been

adopted as a written language that was poles apart from spoken Korean.

The invention of the native Han’gŭl script (called Chŏng’ŭm 正音 in thisbook, following its original name) shortly after the initial publication of

the Samgang haengsil-to meant that the vernacular language could stand

alongside classical Chinese as a written vernacular language, and it was

incorporated posthaste into the second edition. The changes in place-

ment of the vernacular text over time—its location, size, textual fullness,and so forth—bear witness to the shifting linguistic hierarchies of Chi-

nese and Korean vis-à-vis each other. A coincidental change alongside

this linguistic modication was the recension of the size of the Samgang

haengsil-to, reducing the original 330 stories to 105, an action that reveals

the inscription of the ethical and ideological orientation of the literatus-

editors. This revision excised stories that conveyed conicting moral mes-

sages and retained those that adhered to more canonical ethical maxims;

it also curtailed those that described radical actions and extraordinarycircumstances that might undercut the Chosŏn-Confucian fundamental-

ists’ (called sarim 士林) emphasis on the importance of common moralbehavior in daily life. At the same time, we can see a subtle change start-

ing in the section on loyalty that presaged an impending conict between

literatus-ocials and the kings.

Chapter 4, “The Sequels: Here and Now in Chosŏn,” examines the last

stage of the Samgang haengsil-to. The Sequel to the Samgang haengsil-to

(Sok Samgang haengsil-to 續三綱行實圖, or the Sequel , for short) wascompiled to collect stories of events that happened after the rst edition

was published. An important motivation behind it was the institutional

award, called chŏngnyŏ 旌閭 (and the attendant honorary and monetaryprivileges) that the court bestowed on families whose members’ stories


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were selected for inclusion in the Samgang haengsil-to. Two things become

apparent in the Sequel . One is the decrease in Chinese stories and increase

in Korean ones; the other is the downplaying of stories of loyalty—only veof sixty-seven stories were about loyalty. The winnowing of stories about

loyal generals, ocials, and servants paralleled the growth of a particu-

lar ideology among the sarim politicians, who endeavored to weaken the

monarchy and strengthen the rule of an ethical meritocracy composed of

literatus-ocials. These tendencies culminated in the last of the Samgang

haengsil-to, the New Sequel to the Samgang haengsil-to of the Eastern King-

dom (Tongguk sinsok Samgang haengsil-to 東國新續三綱行實圖, or the

New Sequel , for short). Here, only Korean stories were collected and textsin vernacular were situated not in the upper margin but on the main page,

where they enjoyed an equal status to that of classical Chinese. By the

time this edition appeared, only 6 percent of the 1,587 stories concerned

loyalty. Moreover, the printing process and format of the book demon-

strated that the publication of the Samgang haengsil-to had now become

ritualized as a kind of a commemorative registry of moral heroes. Only a

few copies were nally completed and circulated, despite the painstaking

preparation of the blocks and text. There were many debates as to whose

stories should be included; the language of the text became simplied andformulaic; stories came to be stereotypical according to several templates;

and the illustrations became both conventional and simplied.

There are four hypotheses in a more general context that I put forward

in this book. First, a dening characteristic of premodern Korean print

production is that, in addition to its function in reproducing and dissemi-

nating texts, texts were important as ritual symbols. While type printing

had long been available and continued to be improved, block printing had

secured its place in Chosŏn society and remained the preferred methodof making books for certain texts because it reied the metaphor of epig-

raphy, namely, that of literati “engraving in stone”; texts were considered

to become unchangeable and immortal by being carved into a sturdy

physical substance. Thus the primary signicance of printing lay not so

much in the imprints on paper as in the physical blocks themselves, for

imprints were mere copies of the original form, or the potentiality, of the

book. Blocks, consolidating the text and the design to frame the text, were

the true holders of text, an unchanging surface that could be reproduced

in ephemeral form over and over. Like shrines—where heroes are com-

memorated with records of their lives and their actions on tablets, and

with scenes of their heroic moments in photos and on murals—blocks

housed the text in conformation with ritualistic proprieties in layout and


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format, and recreated a traditional sense of immortality for the texts that

deserved to be preserved.

Second, with respect to the role of illustrations, I propose that the editorsof the Samgang haengsil-to, following the Neo-Confucian theory of moral

cognition, inserted visual illustrations to provoke in the text’s illiterate

audience memories of common moral actions and the innate goodness

of human nature. Thus the pictures become aides-memoires and evoca-

tive objects at the same time, rather than simple devices to help them

follow or understand the stories as told. Since classical Chinese texts pre-

sented a dual impediment to the illiterate public of the Chosŏn—by being

both written and foreign—the visual texts (illustrations) could not workdirectly with the written text in the beginning, but could indirectly inspire

memories of past actions and comparisons with present behavior.

Third, as a book meant to be orally interpreted, the Samgang haengsil-

to was intended to encompass two distinct “reader” groups: the direct

audience consisted of the illiterate general masses, but the indirect audi-

ence was made up of the literati whom the recensions of the Samgang

haengsil-to implicitly addressed. Yet the literati were not reading the text

of the book; rather, they were reading the subtext, which was the political

ideology that lay behind the selection of and presentation of stories foreach subsequent edition. As the sarim rose to political power, the editorial

choice of stories gradually changed to reect their ethical doctrines rather

than those of the court. The Samgang haengsil-to was not only an efort

to produce didactic texts to be disseminated among the general masses,

but also an endeavor on the part of the core group of Confucian editor-

compilers to establish their ideological dominance and increase their

moral capital among the literati community. Thus there was a group of

implied readers who were also reading the Samgang haengsil-to, partici-pating in negotiations of political power based on moral ideals.

Lastly, classical Chinese, a textual language that had conveyed sacred

messages in East Asia for a long time, maintained its cultural author-

ity by being detached from any form of actual spoken language and its

sounds. Relating the nature of written languages and the connection

The term “classical Chinese” here is used in rather a loosely dened sense, and refers

to the written Chinese language that was emulated by the Chosŏn (Confucian) literati. The“Confucian” in parentheses indicates that it was vested more in the world of Confucian liter-ature than in the texts used by clerks for administrative purposes or by Buddhist monks forreligious scriptures. Some insist on the strictest sense, whereby classical Chinese refers onlyto the language of the well-dened set of Confucian classics; others are partial to the loosestuse, of denoting as “classical Chinese” any written Chinese that existed in the premodern


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between literacy and orality, this hypothesis suggests that the absence of

the sounds that ground a script in a living—and hence secular—language

allowed the written text to acquire a universality and timelessness. Simi-lar hypotheses about sacred or liturgical languages, as well as scriptural

languages, have been made in the context of religious studies, but I focus

on the case of classical Chinese and its cultural signicance as a written

language. Accompanied only by imagined “ideal” sounds and not paired

with any substrate of natural language, the visuality of Chinese characters

had mystied classical Chinese and enveloped it with an esoteric semiotic

authority. This is exemplied in the print history of the Samgang haengsil-

to, where the classical Chinese texts faced and negotiated with the needto interpret them into plain spoken language for the illiterate; it was the

invention of Han’gŭl , a phonetic writing system, that would disambigu-

ate the message by giving somatic voices to the messages embodied by

the Chinese text. Since the stories of the Samgang haengsil-to eventually

became a direct and physical manual for the illiterate in times of ethical

East Asian textual sphere. Or we may consider using “Literary Sinitic” instead of “classicalChinese” to refer to the written Chinese texts created by the Chosŏn literati (such as thosein the Samgang haengsil-to), as coined by Victor Mair to include a variety of Chinese textsthat formed a continuum of literary language across temporal and spatial boundaries, sepa-rable from any spoken layer; Mair, “Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East

Asia: The Making of National Languages,” JAS 53.3 (1994): 707–51. The idea of liberating the written languages of the periphery from the narrow denition that only relates to the (imag-

ined) cultural center and treats the rest as its derivatives is indeed useful when it comes todiscussing such texts that are otherwise called Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean. As PeterKornicki has noted, however, terms like “Sino-Japanese” do present a few dilemmas and arestill distant from being appropriate taxonomic units; Kornicki, “A Note on Sino-Japanese:

A Question of Terminology,” Sino-Japanese Studies 17 (2010): 28–44. The prime diculty in

using a term in the form of “Sino-X” lies in the complexity and variety of styles that wouldhave to be covered by it. To put it in Kornicki’s words: “We need something like sinologicallitmus paper to measure where any given text falls on the gamut between natural Sinitic atone extreme and at the other extreme written texts that are incomprehensible as Sinitic”(ibid., 43). For this reason, Scott Wells’s recent M.A. thesis in fact applies “Literary Sinitic” tohis discussion of Sino-Korean as a literary language; Wells, “From Center to Periphery: TheDemotion of the Literary Sinitic and the Beginnings of Hanmunkwa—Korea, 1876–1910,”M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 2011. My own reluctance in adopting “LiterarySinitic” here comes from taking into consideration the perceptions of Chosŏn (and Koryŏ,for that matter) literati of the written Chinese text as a medium of intellectual and liter-ary discourse. As is well known, there were times, especially in the later Chosŏn era, when

literati and the court consciously and deliberately follow the style of the written text of theConfucian classics, as exemplied by King Chŏngjo’s 正祖 (r. 1776–1800) “rectication ofliterary styles” ( Munch’e panjŏng 文體反正). That is, in the case of Sino-Korean, particularlyfor Confucian texts like the Samgang haengsil-to, the psychological inclination to directlyconnect the message of the texts to the moral authority of the sages by simulating the lan-guage of the classics is more than salient.


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challenges, the sarim Confucians allowed written-vernacular interpre-

tation in the book, breaking the esoteric boundary of the Chinese text.

These stories were plain enough not to need complicated interpretations, while representing canonical conduct of Confucian virtue that was suf-

ciently dicult to carry out. Yet the vernacular text was not meant to

be an integral part of the main text, on an equal level with the classical

Chinese, but an aid to reader-interpreters in their oral interpretation.

As simple and plain as its text might seem, the Samgang haengsil-to was

at the core of transcultural integration between the Sinitic and the Korean

cultural worlds, transferring ideology and moral knowledge from one cul-

ture to the other, where it was reshaped to t a native agenda. The printhistory of the Samgang haengsil-to shows how printing was instrumental

in restructuring socio-political parameters and was precisely the nexus at

which diverse societal groups negotiated for power—the court and the

Confucian literati, literati and the illiterate, elites and commoners, and

so forth. As the Chosŏn nativized Confucian philosophy and ideology, the

Samgang haengsil-to served as a form of propaganda—a didactic guide to

fundamental changes in the ethical system that lay at the base of Korean

society. The purported target readers, too, participated in the print his-

tory by competing to have stories from their own families included or toproduce similar kinds of texts, thus giving rise to a new “illustrated con-

duct” (haengsil-to 行實圖) genre. In this respect, the “value” of such booksbegan to reside more in the realm of production, in their being brought

into concrete being, than in their dissemination.


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CHAPTER ONE

PRELUDE TO A CONFUCIAN STATE:LITERATI, MORALITY, AND BOOKS

An examination of the place of the Samgang haengsil-to in Chosŏn bookculture requires some context. First, insofar as the Chosŏn court initiatedthe printing of the Samgang haengsil-to to install the cardinal Confucian

values in society, we must understand the Neo-Confucian culture of booksand reading exemplied by the so-called Cheng-Zhu school (Cheng-Zhu

xue 程朱學) of Neo-Confucianism that reached its apex in the Song.Departing from the accepted tradition of Confucian scholarship, thisschool made extensive changes to notions of epistemology and the asso-ciated practices of reading. A second point to consider is how this form ofConfucianism was introduced to Korea. Although the school reached theculmination of its doctrinal development under Zhu Xi朱熹 (1130–1200),it did not make inroads into Koryŏ 高麗 (935–1392) until the fourteenthcentury, when it supplanted earlier, less metaphysical forms of Confucianlearning. It thus passed not directly through Zhu Xi, but via later forms oflearning developed under the Mongol-Yuan Empire (1279–1368). There-fore, the learning that nally arrived in Koryŏ was already twice removedfrom Zhu Xi, the school’s major thinker and its single most inuentialformative inuence.

In his satirical work of ction Yangban chŏn 兩班傳 (Biography of a yangban), the adroit late Chosŏn writer Pak Chi-wŏn朴趾源 (1731–1805)

remarked: “Those yangban [members of the two orders of ocialdom]are named in several ways. If he reads books, then he is a sŏnbi 선비 [literatus]; if he works in the administration, then he is a taebu [ocial];if he is virtuous, then he is a kunja [gentleman]. The military order linesup by ranks on the west; the civil order is arranged on the east; this is

what is called ‘ yangban’ [the two orders].” This is a succinct summary of what was involved in the life of a Chosŏn literatus: he was a book reader,

維厥兩班，名謂多端。讀書曰士，從政爲大夫，有德謂君子。武階列西，文秩敍東，是謂兩班。Pak Chi-wŏn, Yŏnam chip 燕巖集 (reprint in lead type, n.p., 1932;photographic reproduction in Han’guk munjip ch’onggan, Vol. 252, Seoul: Han’guk kojŏnpŏnyŏgwŏn, 2000) 8:10b–11a. All translations are mine unless noted otherwise.


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a government ocial, and a man of virtue. The collective name sadaebu (literatus-ocial or scholar-ocial) was given to the class whose mem-

bers either served in the government or aspired to do so. Whether we callthem yangban orsadaebu士大夫, the literatus-ocials in Chosŏn society

were certainly more than just a socioeconomic class. They were the lead-ing elites in every sense. They set the trends and paradigms of the highculture; owned land and wealth and consequently were important con-sumers; set ritual standards; and guided—ideally, embodied—the ethicalprinciples of the society. It is this last aspect of their lives—exemplarymoral behavior—that was the major focus of their learning. Whereas by

modern standards there is no necessary link between the bureaucraticskills needed to serve in ocialdom and moral virtue, to Confucian lite-rati moral virtue was the most crucial qualication of all and the basisof the right to rule others. It was in the Analects that the four categoriesin which Confucians should excel—virtuous behavior (dexing 德行), lan-guage ( yanyu 言語), governance ( zhengshi 政事), and learning of literarytradition ( wenxue 文學)—were described as merits of the disciples ofConfucius, and virtuous behavior came rst. However, a literatus alwaysfound himself pursuing two goals: to become an ocial and to become a

person embodying moral virtues. The two goals were not incompatible inprinciple, but they could be so in reality.

A New Phase of Reading: Zhu Xi and the Virtue of Reading Less

Confucianism is an ideology that is deeply rooted in literacy and books.The construction of authority through writing and literacy in the early

years of Confucian history has been relatively well explored, but thenew wave of intellectual enterprise that began in the Song dynasty,often referred to as Neo-Confucianism, steered the meaning and

value of literacy and of books in a new direction. Taking Peter Bol’s

Analects 11.3. See, for example, Mark Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: SUNY

Press, 1999). Not all specialists would agree with using the term “Neo-Confucianism” to designate

the intellectual ideas that arose in the post-Tang Chinese Confucian tradition. It wascoined as a part of modern terminology that often fails to convey much about the centralideas or core concerns shared by the thinkers to whom the name refers, not to mentionthat it indiscriminately lumps together those whose ideals difered vastly. This issue hasalready been debated at some length by scholars in the West as well, as exemplied byHoyt Tillman’s criticisms of the term in his “A New Direction in Confucian Scholarship:


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summarization, the changes that shaped the Neo-Confucianism of theeleventh century were: politicizing learning, undermining the ideological

foundation of the empire, and imposing an ideological program on thegovernment. Behind these changes were two formal factors: the reformsmade to the civil service examinations in the eleventh century, and theprint technology that became widely available starting around the tenthcentury in China.

Civil service examinations in Song times entered into a new phase formany reasons, one of which was that the exams came to be the singlemost important mechanism for managing social mobility. This was dif-

ferent from Tang times, when civil service examinations had functionedmore to give literati candidates a qualication to serve in the governmentand aristocratic background had still played a critical role in their actualcareers. The examinations were carefully systematized in principle, cov-ering all areas of the empire’s territory, so that candidates were made toascend from prefectural levels to the capital city and then to the palace,passing competitive selections. Apparently, the government made greateforts to maintain fairness through this institution, from covering up thecandidates’ names on their answers to assigning quotas to prefectures.

The efort to establish fairness typies the ideology of statecraft of theSong dynasty, or at least the rst half of it, in that anyone, regardless of hisstatus, could serve in the government as long as he had the required talent

Approaches to Examining the Diferences between Neo-Confucianism and Tao-Hsüeh,” Philosophy East and West 42.3 (1992): 455–74), and Wm. Theodore de Bary’s response inhis own “The Uses of Neo-Confucianism: A Response to Professor Tillman,” Philosophy Eastand West 43.3 (1993): 541–55. But my discussion here is centered not on Song-Ming Chinese

intellectual history, but to a certain degree on the shifts and efects of Confucian ideologyon Chosŏn society, which comprised varied and yet clustered groups of intellectuals. ThusI use the terms “Neo-Confucian” and “Neo-Confucianism” to refer mainly to the Confuciantradition that developed a noticeably disparate discourse after Tang, and was apparentlyinstrumental to Chosŏn society. Specically, it refers to: the philosophies of Yuan intel-lectual trends with which late Koryŏ scholars were in contact; the views of the foundingliterati of Chosŏn and their approaches to statecraft; and the more rigid form of ideologyemployed by the sarim 士林 faction in mid-Chosŏn. Oftentimes, the term delineates theideas that were eventually attributed to Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi (paired as the “Cheng-Zhuschool” of thought), but this should not deter us from distinguishing the context of itssocial import in Chosŏn or from appreciating its fundamental theoretical assumptions.

Further specications, such as the “New Literati of Koryŏ” or “sarim of Chosŏn,” will bemaintained as needed. Peter K. Bol, Neo-Confucianism in History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia

Center, 2008), 43–44. Thomas H. C. Lee, Education in Traditional China: A History (Leiden; Boston: Brill,

2000), 138.


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and knowledge, and that there was the idea that these ocials shouldcome from all areas of the empire.

The fact that the emperor not only presided over but personally exam-ined the candidates at the highest level (i.e., the palace examination, ordianshi 殿試) is an important symbolism. This examination situated thenal selection in such a way that, by ranking the nalists, the emperorhimself found the most qualied talents among all the people from every-

where in his empire. An ocial’s qualication was certied not by hispedigree but by the emperor himself, while the emperor and the exampasser formed a new symbolic relationship of master and disciple. The

anonymity and fairness signied and carried out by the civil service exam-inations signaled the waning of the old-style aristocracy and the beginningof a new, more objective meritocracy. As a result, the role of books andeducation in binding and sustaining subsequent generations with politicaland economic power undeniably began to grow.

It is not that books and education had played an insignicant rolebefore Song times. In order to have the opportunity to participate inthe political coterie, one typically had to pass the civil service exami-nation. One of the most efective ways for aristocratic literati to secure

their members’ path to ocialdom was through control of the accessto books and teachers. Toward the later years of Tang, the situationchanged through the spread of block-print technology. Compared to thetimes when a only small number of manuscripts and a select few whohad both the social background and the knowledge to teach were avail-able, the opportunities that print technology unfolded were tremendous.Moreover, the Northern Song policy did not make formal schooling acondition for taking the examinations (although some privileges were

given back to government-school attendees later), which meant that any-one who could master the required knowledge had to be allowed to jointhe life of literatus-ocials.

The divorce of texts from teachers was something to happen down theroad. True, the life of books—and of the knowledge contained within—asnot completely auxiliary to teachers did not start right away, but a sig-nicant change would denitely take place. For one thing, the birth ofcirculating printed classics created an anonymity for such texts, which

were now devoid of the personal voice of a teacher. For another, printaltered not just the physical individuality of the texts but the nature ofthe ties between the texts and the historical memory attached to them.These ties included (1) the calligraphic details through which the readerhad established a personal connection with the person who had copied


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the texts, and (2) the traditions and privileges that had descended fromthe past that the manuscripts indexed and embodied. The knowledge and

messages contained in the text would also eventually become objectied,stripped from the context of orality. Readers would be exposed to textsdirectly; and the texts would be analyzed and interpreted by the readersthemselves. By the eleventh century, printed books were available for pur-chase at commercial bookstores in China.

These two factors—the changes in civil service examinations and therise of print technology—contributed to shaping Zhu Xi’s (and hencethe Neo-Confucian) attitude toward books and reading. After all, it was

Zhu Xi’s ideals that left the most profound inuence on Chosŏn society.By Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) time, the works in the curriculum for literati hadall become re-textualized into printed books. These works had alreadybeen made into books, either on wooden strips or silk patches, much ear-lier, perhaps in pre-Qin (before 221 ) times. But the importance herelies in print. The literati education prior to the Song (960–1279) was car-ried out either by public schools or private tutoring. In the Han dynasty(202 –220 ), the education of the empire relied on public schools. Thecurriculum might difer; selected students studied at the Grand Academy

(Taixue太学) with eminent scholar-teachers, known as “erudites” (boshi 博士), or at local schools ( xiang 庠, xiao 校, etc.) with ocially appointedinstructors. Public schools were also where students could access scrollsof books collected in the imperial library or supplied by the central gov-ernment. Private academies had too existed since Han times, as had pri-

vate tutoring, as we can see in the examples of Ma Rong馬融 (79–166)and Zheng Xuan鄭玄 (127–200). This overall structure of the educationalsystem continued to the Qing dynasty, although the weight given to the

educational roles and details of the units changed drastically at times. Upuntil the Tang era, the education system was more in the oral tradition, in which the role of teachers was central to a student’s learning.

To many literati before the Song, literacy was a way to become a mem-ber of the select community that carried on the cultural legacy of antiq-uity and led the civilization. The literati’s activities of composing poemsand prose works, and complying with complicated rhyming, metrics, andprosodic norms, were ways of showing their qualications to participatein the culture—and they were in fact obligated to create literary worksas proof of their qualication. The ourishing of Tang belles lettres wasperhaps in part a result of this coterie literature, and literary performances

were emblematic of status. By their nature, belles-lettres were a form ofcommunity literature in which one’s ability to create literature and one’s


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intellectual pedigree were equally important. Thus Tang scholarship andintellectual activities were fundamentally aristocratic. This trend had

started in the Han dynasty, when the tradition of jiafa 家法 (lineagemethod), whereby teachings were transmitted by individual teachers,became active and gradually predominant after the proclamation ofshifa 師法 ([state-sanctioned] teacher’s methods) by the court. Since forthe most part Confucian education was carried out more in the lineagemethod than in the formal-ocial domain, the bond between teachersand their disciples was direct and strong, a situation that continued forseveral hundred years until the Tang era. Such bonds entailed immediate

and persuasive transmission of experiences through personal and simul-taneous formats. Although the reality of the teacher-disciple relationshipafter the Han may have been diferent—in the sense that the texts with

which teachers were associated were more stable and irrefutable than theyhad been earlier, and thus became the crucial condition of teaching—it isnot dicult to surmise that in the jiafa tradition the teachings still reliedprimarily on individual and personal instruction, and that the authorityof the texts complemented that of the teacher.

Neo-Confucians had to deal with a diferent kind of reality: the emer-

gence of “standardized texts.” Standardizing the texts of the classics was along-lasting project throughout the Tang. Though the notion of Confucianclassics ( jing 經) began to form during the Han, the actual list and textual

varieties selected changed vastly over time until they were nalized in theSong. The list of classics was standardized as the “Five Classics” (Wujing 五經) for the rst time in 136 , when Emperor Wu established eru-dites for them: namely, The Songs (Shi 詩), The Documents (Shu 書), The

Rites ( Li 禮), The Changes (Yi 易), and The Spring and Autumn Annals

Thomas H. C. Lee, Education in Traditional China: A History, 200. Used as pairing con-trastive terms, though it may not be immediately clear from the original idioms and theirtranslations adopted here, shifa refers to (constructed and sanctioned) ocial standardsof interpreting texts and jiafa to sectarian orientations of private (or less ocial) lineages.

As Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Michael Nylan have argued, the jia categories under which various thinkers were grouped, in the way these categories were adopted in early Han

times, were not necessarily centered on a specic text or textual corpus to begin with butmay have been in a shifting paradigm, changing from “individual experts [using a set of

methods]” to “authorized transmitters of particular writings”; Csikszentmihalyi and Nylan,“Constructing Lineages and Inventing Traditions through Exemplary Figures,” T’oung Pao 89.1 (2003): 99. In the earlier paradigm, discipleship may not have equated with the notionof “multi-generational textual lineages that arose later in China,” and the same texts, suchas the Five Classics, could have been used by multiple jias in promoting their respectiveagendas (ibid., 65.)


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(Chunqiu 春秋). To these were added The Classic of Filial Piety ( Xiaojing 孝經) and the Analects ( Lunyu 論語) during the Eastern Han, to make

“Seven Classics” (Qijng 七經). In the Tang, the Five Classics came to com-prise nine works ( Jiujing 九經), The Rites being replaced by three separatetexts (the Rites of Zhou [ Zhouli 周禮], the Ceremonies and Rituals [Yili 儀禮] and the Records of Rites [ Liji 禮記]), and The Spring and Autumn

Annals by three commentarial texts (Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳, Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳, and Zuo zhuan 左傳), all of which had to be masteredfor the civil service examination. The Nine Classics increased to “TwelveClassics” (Shi’erjing 十二經) in the later Tang, the nine being augmented

by the Analects, The Classic of Filial Piety, and The Ready Rectier ( Erya 爾雅), as is still found inscribed on a stele at the Imperial Academy(Guozijian 國子監) site in Chang’an. The well-known reference to “Thir-teen Classics” (Shisanjing 十三經)—namely, the Twelve Classics plus the

Mencius ( Mengzi 孟子)—was made in the Song, incorporating all themajor Confucian canonical texts known thus far.

The standardization of classics in connection with government exami-nations, especially in Tang institutions, foretold a new phase of classicallearning: the texts would become the de facto source of teachings—not

only their language but also the intertextual system of interpretation, which would take on primary importance. In other words, the network

of messages, rather than those contained in each text, would emerge as asystem. This was not exactly the case in the Han and Wei-Jin (220–439)periods, in which government schools existed normally for education andselecting ocials, and relied mostly on recommendation and aristocraticarrangement. Standardizing the classics had a meaningful efect on thestandardization of knowledge when the classics became the basis for the

education of those seeking to become government ocials. To an aspiring youth, the mastery of the classics as specied by imperial authority wasnow the most authentic and noble way to achieve honor for himself andhis family.

The Southern Song standardization of classics launched by Zhu Xi, which took efect after his death and ourished in ensuing dynasties, not

only introduced a new phase of Confucian learning but marked a majorshift in the reading practice applied to the Confucian classics. Comple-mented by the development of printing, texts or the textual community

Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 2000), 475.


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of Confucian classics reached a wider mass of readers. In this respect,the Song-Ming standardization of Confucian texts embodied in the “Four

Books and Five Classics” (Sishu wujing 四書五經) solidied the groundsfor the socialization and communalization of Neo-Confucian doctrine.Following Zhu Xi’s reedition of the Great Learning ( Daxue 大學) and Doc-trine of the Mean ( Zhongyong 中庸) in 1190, two works which had beentransmitted since their initial inclusion in the Records of Rites, the contentof the classics was reduced to the original Five Classics, while the funda-ments of knowledge were excerpted in those two short texts, along withthe Analects and the Mencius that personalized the sages’ voices. The Four

Books had become the most essential texts for an examination candidate,not to mention any aspiring novice literatus, to memorize by heart. Theburden of imbibing the entire culture codied in the classics, for whichthe sons of privileged families had been better prepared in previous eras,

was now signicantly alleviated; but, more importantly, the diculty ofaccess to texts and knowledge was reduced thanks to print technology.

There was also tension over print technology within Confucianism. Zhu Xi’s unease surrounding printed books was apparent:

The reason that the reading of people today has become overly rudimentaryis that too many prints are made of books. As it was, people in the old daysall used bamboo slips [for books], and only those with resources could havethem made. When it came to a mere literatus, how would he have afordedit? . . . The ancients did not have books, and had to memorize them com-pletely from beginning to end. As for discussing and reciting them, one alsohad to memorize them all and then wait to receive teachings from one’smaster. As [Su] Dongpo蘇東坡 [1037–1101] wrote in his Records of the Col-lections in Mr. Li’s Mountain Studio, books were still hard to nd in thosedays. Chao [Yidao] 晁以道 [1054–1129] wished to get the Gong[yang] and

Gu[liang] commentaries [of the Spring and Autumn Annals], sought every- where for them, but did not nd them. Later, when he managed to nd acopy [of them], he could nally hand-copy them to transmit them. Peoplethese days even hate hand-copying, thinking that it is a nuisance, and thustheir reading is unduly callow.

Zhu Xi’s lament was not just about the abundance of books that madepeople lazy in their reading. It was more about the profusion of texts,

今人所以讀書苟簡者，緣書皆有印本多了。如古人皆用竹簡，除非大段有力人方做得。若一介之士，如何置。. . .蓋古人無本，除非首尾熟背得方得。至於講誦者，也是都背得，然後從師受學。如東坡作李氏山房藏書記，那時書猶自難得。晁以道嘗欲得公、穀傅，遍求無之，後得一本，方傳寫得。今人連寫也自厭煩了，所以讀書茍簡。 Zhuzi yulei 10:67.


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and about the kinds of texts that began to afect the reading practice ofpeople. Print technology made it considerably easier for ordinary read-

ers to take possession of texts of the classics, but it also made availableother kinds of writings, including exegetical commentaries on the classics.Readers were now given choices for their reading, which could invite mul-tiple, though not necessarily consistent or orthodox, ways of construingthe sages’ words, yet without the proper guidance of teachers.

Printing the classics on woodblocks had two efects: one was to petrify,and eventually standardize, the texts; the other was massive dissemi-nation. Zhu Xi felt threatened by the latter, in particular by the epiphe-

nomena of Song print culture—namely, extensive reading, speed reading,haphazard reading, and reading just for reading’s sake. It may thus be alogical result that his “Rules of Reading” ( Dushu fa 讀書法) contains whatI would call a “minimalist perspective” that tried to counterbalance theoverow of texts and the absence of teachers’ contextualization. In theClassied Sayings of Master Zhu ( Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類), Zhu Xi is foundto issue frequent cautionary remarks about “the reading of these days,”in which he specically warns against contemporary readers’ greed forquantity. “One should not covet quantity in reading,” he reminds, “but

be meticulous and thorough.” People in his time developed the habitof reading books in a hurry, moving from one book to another, withouteven trying to nish one book at a time. This shows that the numberand range of books available had begun to overwhelm people. Zhu Xi thusemphasized reducing the amount of reading:

Reading books, one must read little and become extremely familiar [with what one reads]. The reason that children remember what they read but

Susan Cherniack, “Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China,” HJAS 54.1(1994): 19.

讀書不可貪多，且要精熟。 Zhuzi yulei 10:40. “When people read books these days, even though they have not read up to here

[i.e., a certain point], their minds are already at a later page of the book; when they haveread up to here, they wish to leave the book. Doing like this is not seeking to understandby themselves. One must roam around it, looking back fondly, as if one wishes not toleave; only then can one attain an understanding.”今人讀書，看未到這裏，心已在後面；纔看到這裏，便欲舍去了。如此，只是不求自家曉解。須是徘徊顧戀，如

不欲去，方會認得。 Zhuzi yulei 10:46. He also describes, “For learners of these days, what they have read is as if they haven’t; what they have not yet read is as if they have”(今之學者，看了也似不曾看，不曾看也似看了。 Zhuzi yulei 10:72), meaning that,because of their careless reading habits, people retain nothing from what they read, asif they had not read the books at all, but also pretend to know what is in books withoutactually reading them.


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grownups don’t remember is that children are single-minded. If we teachthem one hundred characters a day, then they only [know] one hundred;

two hundred, then two hundred. Grownups may look at one hundred blocks[folios], but they do not rely on punctiliousness and concentration. Peo-ple often read ten times [what they should], but now it is suitable to readone tenth [of what they do]. Relax the time limit [i.e., do not set a limiton the time spent on reading], and be more stringent about the stages ofprogress.

To survive the overwhelming quantity of prints, one must not only main-tain a slow and steady reading pace but also try to minimize one’s reading.Reading a smaller amount enables a reader to concentrate more and start

building up his knowledge more eciently. An important strategy that Zhu Xi introduced repeatedly was reading

out loud (dusong 讀誦):

When reading books, make the progress of study small but apply great efort.If you can read two hundred characters, read only one hundred characters.But, within those one hundred characters, make great eforts to understandthem thoroughly, and read them out loud to make the teachings familiar . Likethis, even those with poor memory and people with no knowledge can com-prehend. Reading a lot as if oating on shallow water will only prove useless.

When reading a [new] book, one should not read it alongside what one hasnot read yet, but [alongside] what one has already read. (italics added)

Reading out loud was, of course, not a new method. Most premodernreading practices relied on reciting, and human memory was one of themain media for transmitting texts besides manuscripts before printing.Thus Zhu Xi’s sudden emphasis on reading aloud is rather puzzling, sug-gesting, perhaps, that the increase in printed books may have inducedsilent reading. That is, his stress on vocalizing the text may have been

another nostalgic attempt to convert the print-oriented students of hisday to the tradition of pre-print book culture. In any case, oral reading

was associated with a specic meaning in Zhu Xi’s paradigm of learning.

書宜少看，要極熟。小兒讀書記得，大人多記不得者，只為小兒心專。一日授一百字，則只是一百字；二百字，則只是二百字。大人一日或看百板，不恁精專。人多看一分之十，今宜看十分之一。寬著期限，緊著課程。 Zhuzi yulei 10:37.

讀書，小作課程，大施功力。如會讀得二百字，只讀得一百字，卻於百字中猛施工夫，理會子細，讀誦教熟。如此，不會記性人自記得，無識性人亦理會得。若泛泛然念多，只是皆無益耳。讀書，不可以兼看未讀者。卻當兼看已讀者。 Zhuzi yulei 10:39.

Cherniack, “Book Culture and Textual Transmission,” 50.


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The following passage is rather long but underscores his ideas about vocalizing texts:

For books, reading them out loud is crucial, and reading them out loud manytimes, one will understand them naturally. Now, even if I write down whatI thought of [from reading], it still doesn’t help, and [what is on the paper]ultimately is not what I own: [the book] only becomes valuable by readingit out loud. We may not know how this is so, but [if one reads out loud,] themind naturally merges with the qi氣, uplifted and transcended, and comesto remember securely [what one has read]. Even if one has viewed [the text]thoroughly and ruminated [upon it] in one’s mind, it is not as good as read-ing out loud. By reading out loud continuously, even those things that one

could not understand at times will become clear by themselves, and thosethings that one already understood will have even more taste. If one werenot familiar with reading out loud, one would never be able to have suchtastes. Also, I am not saying to read commentaries out loud, but just to readout loud the regular text of the classics, [so that] when you are walking, sit-ting, or lying down, your mind is always with it; then you will understandit naturally. I have thought about it before, and reading out loud is learn-ing. The master once said, “Learning without reecting is hollow; reecting

without learning is perilous.” Learning is reading out loud. Read, then reectagain; reect, then read again, and the meaning will come alive naturally.

If one reads aloud but does not reect, one will also not know the mean-ing; if one reects but does not read aloud, then even if one understands,one will be worried and unsettled in the end. It is like asking someone tocome over to take care of the house; not being one of your own, he wouldnever be a servant who belongs to the house. If you read out loud until

you become familiar with [the text], and reect [on it] until you acquirea precise understanding, your mind naturally becomes one with the li 理 [principle] and will never forget it. I used to have diculty in remember-ing texts, so then I read out loud. What I remember now is all the result ofreading out loud. Old Su [Su Xun 蘇洵, 1009–1061] chose the Mencius, the

Analects, Master Han [Han Yu韓愈, 768–824], and books of various sages,and just read them out loud while sitting peacefully, for seven or eight years.He then wrote out countless texts so ably. His talent may have been some-thing one cannot attain, but he must have read as such [i.e., out loud]. It isonly that, when he read [a book] out loud, he wanted to imitate its languageto write his literary works. If he had transferred this mind and such talentto investigating moral principles, he could have acquired [principles] there!

With this we know that for books, reading out loud is most crucial and thereis no other way.

書只貴讀，讀多自然曉。今即思量得，寫在紙上底，也不濟事，終非我有，只貴乎讀。這個不知如何，自然心與氣合，舒暢發越，自是記得牢。縱饒熟看過，心裏思量過，也不如讀。讀來讀去，少間曉不得底，自然曉得；已曉得者，越有滋味。若是讀不熟，都沒這般滋味。而今未說讀得註，且只熟讀正


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For Zhu Xi, oral reading was a way for readers to internalize the text, whichin turn contained the words of the sages. In describing this, he often uses

the word “naturally” ( ziran 自然). By reading out loud repeatedly, themind naturally merges with qi , naturally becomes one with li , and natu-rally understands the text. Reading turns into a physical practice and ametaphysical activity at the same time, whereby the meaning of the textenters the reader’s mind and body and nally comes alive. By vocalizingthe text, the reader’s mind tears down the connement of individuality,

joining the metaphysical universe that is a moral substance in itself. Thisis achieved by integrating the text into the body; without being corporeal-

ized in the form of sound, the text does not become knowledge.Zhu Xi even quotes a well-known line from the Analects, “Learning without reecting is hollow; reecting without learning is perilous,” and

reinterprets “learning” as vocal reading. Learning is more than collectingand accumulating information in the intellect. It is a physically engag-ing activity that implicates both mind and body in the teachings. In thisrespect, it is a process of recreating orality out of literacy, transforming

what was written into sounds, and hence recorporealizing the text. Allthis is redolent of the role of teachers in the pre-print tradition of reading:

even though the teachings were in written form, they had to be transmittedto the students through the teacher’s vocalization. The text itself containedthe words of sages, but had to be situated and interpreted for the tempo-ral and spatial circumstances of learning, and pedagogically programmedaccording to the student’s ability and proclivities. But in Zhu Xi’s time,printed books were replacing the reliance on teachers and their personal

經，行住坐臥，心常在此，自然曉得。嘗思之，讀便是學。夫子說“學而不思

則罔，思而不學則殆”，學便是讀。讀了又思，思了又讀，自然有意。若讀而不思，又不知其意味；思而不讀，縱使曉得，終是卼臲不安。一似倩得人來守屋相似，不是自家人，終不屬自家使喚。若讀得熟，而又思得精，自然心與理一，永遠不忘。某舊苦記文字不得，後來只是讀。今之記得者，皆讀之功也。老蘇只取孟子論語韓子與諸聖人之書，安坐而讀之者七八年，後來做出許多文字如此好。他資質固不可及，然亦須著如此讀。只是他讀時，便只要模寫他言語，做文章。若移此心與這樣資質去講究義理，那裏得來！是知書只貴熟讀，別無方法。 Zhuzi yulei 10:65.

Ziran 自然 appears early on in Chinese philosophy, especially in Daoist contexts,designating naturalness, spontaneity, and efortlessness, and literally meaning “being so

of itself.” Anne McLaren also notices the frequent metaphor Zhu Xi adopted repeatedly tostress the “sheer physical efort required to master the canon,” which would eventuallylead to “possession” of the text. McLaren, “Constructing New Reading Publics in Late MingChina,” in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by Cynthia Brokaw andKai-wing Chow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 155–56.


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integrity, as well as the accumulation of antiquity and tradition. The com-munity context of learning, where learning took place between a teacher

and a student or a group of students, was becoming diluted, and study-ing was becoming a lonely activity undertaken by solitary book readers.That books were replacing the role of teacher coheres with the fact thatnowhere in the “Rules of Reading” chapter do we nd Zhu Xi comment-ing on teachers’ roles in reading. Although this chapter is a collection ofanecdotal quotes of his words, as heard by his disciples who were pastthe stage of novices, it is almost as if teachers were already assumed to beabsent in the reading and learning environment of Zhu Xi’s time.

Zhu Xi does not forget to caution that there is a textual hierarchybetween original texts of the classics ( zhengjing 正經) and commentaries( zhu 註). By denition, commentaries exist to explain the regular textsof the classics, as in this comparison: “The text of a sacred classic is likea master; its explanation is like his servant.” “Explaining” the classicsmeant literally to “untie” ( jieshi 解釋) them so that they could be read

with ease, but writing commentaries had become somewhat diferentin Zhu Xi’s time:

As for commentarial transmission, only the ancient commentaries did notcreate discourses [of their own] and are good to read. They just divide andexpound [the text] following the phrases of the classics, not departing fromtheir meaning; hence, they are the best. So it is with subcommentaries.

When people of today explicate books, they also try to create discourses andto add [their own] argumentation, which brings about questions in a hun-dred ways. Therefore, their texts can be read, but the meaning of the classicsbecomes far diferent. The Commentary on “The Changes” (Yi zhuan 易傳)by Master Cheng [Yi]程[頤] also created its own discourses, and explainedagain what was explained. So the readers of today who read books don’t

look at the original classics any more and just read [Cheng’s] Commentary.This, too, is not a way to make people think.

Zhu Xi went on to say, “The texts of the sages’ classics are like masters; their interpre-tations, slaves. People these days don’t recognize the master, but exchange names throughthe servant and then recognize the master. They are never the same as the text of theclassics” (聖經字若個主人，解者猶若奴仆。今人不識主人，且因奴仆通名，方識得主人，畢竟不如經字也。 Zhuzi yulei 11:118).

解經謂之解者，只要解釋出來。將聖賢之語解開了，庶易讀。 Zhuzi yulei 11:117. 傳註，惟古註不作文，卻好看。只隨經句分說，不離經意，最好。疏亦然。今人解書，且圖要作文，又加辯說，百般生疑。故其文雖可讀，而經意殊遠。程子易傳亦成作文，說了又說。故今人觀者更不看本經，只讀傳，亦非所以使人思也。 Zhuzi yulei 11:116.


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Already in the earliest years in the history of Chinese classics, writingcommentaries had turned into a way for scholars to expand intellectual

discourse and interject their own thoughts. The problem was that thesecommentaries began to be printed and circulated along with regular textsof the classics, gaining at times even more popularity than the originalclassics. The order of teaching was being disrupted. Even the Commentaryon “The Changes” written by one of Zhu Xi’s own masters, Cheng Yi (1033–1107), drew readers’ attention away from the original text. Perhaps Zhu Ximeant that writing commentaries was not to be blamed for distractinglearners as much as was their availability in print. At any rate, since the

six Confucian classics were the superior products of the Three AncientDynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou) and had passed through the hands ofthe sages, they should all be understood to convey Heavenly Principles(tianli 天理), whereas commentaries and exegeses should not. It wasthus the original texts that should be vocalized, not the commentaries.

Amid the ood of printed books, it would have been impossible forlearners to practice, with every book they encountered, the strategy ofrepeatedly reading the text out loud and reecting on it. Zhu Xi thereforehad to make the world of texts more consumable and accommodating

to this reading strategy. He had to provide an arrangement of texts in which they were hierarchically organized according to their importance

to knowledge. To him, reading was teleological and strictly served the pur-pose of helping the reader acquire knowledge. Acquiring knowledge wasteleological as well, for knowledge was not an end in itself but a meansby which eventually to reach the state of moral being. For Zhu Xi, reading

was a process of “investigating things” ( gewu 格物), the initial step in aperson’s moral perfection as specied in the Great Learning, and in and of

itself an ethical activity. He declares: “A learner’s study only seeks what isright. The principle of all-under-heaven does not exceed the two extremi-ties of right and wrong. Following what is right is good; submitting to

what is wrong is evi