22. This is a term used by Yang Xianshi, Zuo zhuan fushi yinshi kao, p. 11.
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32
Performing the Tradition
meetings between rulers, either the host himself or the court musi-
cians at his behest would perform certain selections from the Poems
to convey the joy of the host in receiving his guest. 23 The guest would then request the musicians to perform (or would himself
perform) a selection to convey his gratitude to the host. Clues as to
the origin of this practice may be found in traditional texts on ritual, particularly the Ceremonies and Rituals 儀禮, which discusses the
role of music as an integral part of the formal (and less formal) rituals conducted between host and guest at court. 24 In numerous early texts, there is a recurring theme of music evoking and demonstrating
harmony of thought and feeling between various participants who
may feel separated from one another by the strictures of ritual. 25
Certainly, the Poems were treated as a musical repertoire in the Eastern Zhou, 26 but the narratives of the Zuo Tradition indicate that more often than not a selection from the Poems is not offered solely for its music, but just as much for the import of its words. Some of the protocol offerings do “double duty” as banquet songs and as
subtle indicators of the state of mind of participants at the banquet.
Members of court routinely offer poems and respond in kind to one
another outside the context of welcoming guests at banquets. 27 The narrative will specify by title which poem is being offered, sometimes indicating which particular stanza is being performed, or
even quoting the exact words. There is a wide range of modes of
performance (singing, chanting, and intoning among them) included
under the rubric “offering.” All of these things argue against
identifying the practice of offering a poem exclusively with
—————
23. The most common selection for welcoming a guest to a banquet was “The Deer Cry” 鹿鳴 (Mao #161), which includes the following apposite lines: “I have a fine guest, we play the lute and blow the reed-organ” (Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 104).
24. For an extended discussion, see Tam, “Use of Poetry in Tso Chuan,” p. 40.
25. The “Record of Music” 樂記 of the Classic of Rites 禮記 states this baldly as
“Music unifies; rites set things apart” (Owen, Anthology, p. 69); Xunzi 荀子 says
“Ritual is in respect of culture, while music sets its sights on harmony” 禮之敬文
也。樂之中和也 (chap. 1).
26. The most salient example of this is the grand concert for Jizha (Xiang 29).
27. Tam calculates that 55 percent of the poem offerings in the Zuo Tradition are conducted between officials (“Use of Poetry in Tso Chuan,” p. 154).
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Performing the Tradition
33
music. It is important to keep in mind, however, that even as the
practice slips away from its musical context, it still carries with it the connotation of being a vehicle for expressing harmony of thought
and feeling. With the passing of a Golden Age, however, such
harmony must be won through poetic competence (in performer
and audience) and can no longer be assumed. This becomes ex-
ceedingly clear in those narratives of the Zuo Tradition concerned with a lack of poetic competence in offering.
In
the
Analects, Confucius is quoted as spelling out the results of
poetic incompetence:
If one can chant the three hundred Poems yet does not succeed when entrusted with governmental duties and is unable to respond independently
when sent on missions abroad, then what use are the Poems even though one knows so many?
誦詩三百。授之以政。不達。使於四方。不能專對。雖多亦奚以為。(13.5)
Note that the failure does not lie in a lack of knowledge of the
Poems, but in a lack of competence in deploying them. The phrase
“unable to respond independently when sent on missions abroad” is
likely a direct reference to the practice of offering poems in the
context of a diplomatic banquet, a practice well established before
the time of Confucius. The term zhuandui 專對 is glossed by tradi-
tional commentators as “to respond by oneself,” the implication
being that a diplomat sent to a foreign state must have the judgment
and wherewithal to deal with situations on his own as they arise. In
this case, the diplomat must have the necessary poetic competence
to respond appropriately when he is called upon to offer a poem or
respond to a poem offered to him. 28 Poems are routinely offered and responded to in the narratives of the Zuo Tradition with little or no comment. It is only when poetic competence is called into question,
as it is in the following account, that it is addressed explicitly.
—————
28. One minister of Jin, Zhao Meng 趙孟, is depicted in the Zuo Tradition as being highly competent in poetic offering. At a banquet given in his honor by the Earl of Zheng, Zhao asks for all seven of the officials in attendance on the earl to offer poems to him so that he may “thereby observe the intent of the seven gentlemen” 以觀七子之志 (Xiang 27.5). He then engages in a tour de force critique of the (im)propriety of each of their performances.
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34
Performing the Tradition
The following passage is an episode from one of the most en-
gaging stories narrated in the Zuo Tradition, which relates the travels of Prince Chong’er 重耳, who must flee his own state of Jin
when he falls under suspicion of rebellion due to the slander of his
father’s new wife (Xi 4). The prince spends twelve years among the
Di “barbarians,” a non-Chinese people in the north, where he takes
a wife and fathers children. He then departs and spends the re-
mainder of his twenty years in exile wandering from state to state,
encountering varying levels of hospitality from their respective
rulers before returning to take, by military force, his rightful place
as the Duke of Jin. In his travels, he is accompanied by a retinue of
advisors, two of whom stand out as being particularly adept: Hu
Yan 狐偃 and Zhao Cui 趙衰. Members of the various courts
they visit repeatedly describe them as worthy gentlemen. 29 Hu Yan emerges as a gifted military strategist dedicated to seeing his master
return to strengthen the state of Jin. 30 Zhao Cui is portrayed as a
—————
29. The wife of a minister in the state of Cao tells her husband, “I have observed the Prince of Jin’s followers, and they are all capable of administering an entire state.
If he makes use of their aid, that man will certainly regain his state” (Xi 23). When the Duke of Zheng treats Chong’er impolitely, his own minister points out that this is a dangerous course of action because the prince is destined to become a ruler.
One of the proofs is that “he has three gentlemen ( shi 士) that are worthy of being ranked superior men and yet they follow him” (Xi 23). Hu Yan and Zhao Cui are traditionally counted among these three.
30. When the prince is given a clump of dirt to eat by a peas
ant of Wei, Hu Yan explains to the indignant prince that it is a favorable omen sent by Heaven; when the prince meets with great hospitality in Qi and decides to stay, it is Hu Yan who devises a plan to get him drunk and whisk him away (Xi 23). When the prince returns to Jin, Hu Yan considers his goal accomplished and tenders his resignation, which Chong’er refuses. This turns out to be a wise decision as it is Hu Yan who negotiates an agreement between Qin and Jin that allows the prince to take his place as undisputed ruler of Jin even though it was Qin’s military might that placed him there (Xi 24). Once the prince assumes his position as the new Duke of Jin, Hu Yan helps him to build up his army and to devise military strategies that eventually see Jin establish hegemony over the other states (Xi 27). Hu Yan then advises his lord in a conflict with the state of Chu, correctly interpreting his master’s disturbing dream—of the Chu ruler bending over him and sucking out his brains—as a good omen, since the Duke of Jin was facing up to Heaven (Xi 28). After the death of the Duke of Jin in 628 b.c.e., Hu Yan is not mentioned again until 597 b.c.e.
when a military advisor at the Jin court argues against doing battle with Chu by quoting the advice that Hu Yan once gave his own lord in a similar situation. The This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:33:49 UTC
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Performing the Tradition
35
man with impeccable cultural competence, able to deploy Tradi-
tional knowledge on behalf of the prince and to select worthy men
by judging their mastery of such knowledge. There is a division of
labor between Hu Yan, who is the epitome of the pragmatic advisor
on military ( wu 武) matters, and Zhao Cui, who is the epitome of
the Traditionalist, an advisor that aids his lord with his cultural ( wen 文) competence. The division is clearly shown in the following excerpt from Duke Xi 23rd Year (637 b.c.e.), the year before Chong’er
returns to Jin. Prince Chong’er has just been escorted from the state
of Chu to the state of Qin:31
The Duke of Qin provided him with five of his daughters, including Huai
Ying. 32 She held up a basin for him as he washed up, but when he was through he just shook the water off his hands [onto her rather than waiting for a towel]. She became angry and said, “The states of Qin and Jin are
equals; how could you treat me so poorly?” This alarmed the prince so he immediately bared his upper body and assumed the repentant posture of a
prisoner.
On a day thereafter, the duke invited the prince to a banquet. Hu Yan
said to the prince, “I do not measure up to Zhao Cui’s skill in cultural matters; I would ask that you have him go with you instead.” [At the
banquet] the prince offered the poem “River Waters.” The duke offered
“Sixth Month” in response. Zhao Cui said, “Chong’er bows in acceptance
of this!” The prince stepped down [from the platform], bowed, and then
touched his head to the ground. The duke then descended one step to de-
cline this gesture. Zhao Cui said, “Your lordship referred to Chong’er as a means ‘to help the Son of Heaven’ in giving him your command. How
could he dare not to bow down?” (Xi 23.6)
秦伯納女五人。懷嬴與焉。奉匜沃盥。既而揮之。怒曰。秦晉匹也。何
以卑我。公子懼。降服而囚。他日。公享之。子犯曰。吾不如衰之文也。
請使衰從。公子賦河水。公賦六月。趙衰曰。重耳拜賜。公子降拜稽首。
公降一級。而辭焉。衰曰。君稱所以佐天子者命重耳。重耳敢不拜。
—————
words of Hu Yan are thus converted into a kind of local traditional knowledge, to be cited as a rhetorical resource by later generations of Jin advisors.
31. The original text uses a variety of different names to refer to a single person.
To avoid confusion, I consistently use one name in my translations.
32. Huai Ying was the wife of Chong’er’s own nephew, who was being held as a Jin hostage in Qin.
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36
Performing the Tradition
The prince is a guest at the Qin court and is Duke Mu’s social infe-
rior, but because of his noble lineage, and because Duke Mu believes
that Chong’er is destined to be a duke himself one day, he is ac-
corded the special honor of being served by the duke’s own
daughters. Through the water-spattering incident, the narrative
implies that the prince’s courtly manners are rough around the
edges, perhaps because of his years among the barbarians. The seem-
ingly minor offense demonstrates the significance of even the most
trivial matters of etiquette at court, for Huai Ying construes the
prince’s carelessness as a slight against her entire state. The prince
atones for his inadvertent rudeness by baring his upper body and
crouching down, a ritual act of self-deprecation mimicking the
posture of a prisoner, which seems excessive and somewhat vulgar
in this context. The narratives of the Zuo Tradition are exceedingly terse and no detail is superfluous. This vignette establishes the
prince as a man of physical action: both his offense and his apology
are wordless and both are carried out in a somewhat clumsy fashion.
It also charges his impending audience before Duke Mu with a
heightened degree of anxiety: his political future is at stake and he is already off on the wrong foot. He will need a man with verbal facility to salvage the situation.
The narrative skips directly to the day of the meeting, with the
phrase “On a day thereafter” 他日. The Zuo Tradition is careful to note exact dates when they matter. In this case, however, the narrative is less concerned with an incremental chronology of events as
it is with a juxtaposition of two incidents: the first, an example of
cultural incompetence, and the second, an example of consummate
competence. Any extraneous events that took place between these
incidents are elided from the account.
Duke Mu invites Chong’er to be the guest of honor at a banquet.
Hu Yan, being a strategic thinker, realizes that the prince will need
someone with a high degree of cultural competence to successfully
negotiate a diplomatic banquet with the duke. And, being a wise
advisor, Hu Yan also realizes that Zhao Cui is better suited for the
job than he is. This is an astonishing admission. First, it implies that the prince, a man born and raised as a member of the Jin nobility,
lacks the cultural competence needed to attend a banquet at a royal
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Performing the Tradition
37
court. Second, it acknowledges that only a certain type of man
possesses the necessary competence. Hu Yan’s exact words are: “I do
not measure up to Zhao Cui’s culture” 吾不如衰之文也. Cultural
competence is now something that can be measured by degrees;
indeed, it can only be measured against incompetence. The Eastern
Zhou—as it is conveyed in the narratives of the Zuo Tradition—is a dangerous world that only makes sense to those people whose cultural competence makes it sensible. That ability increasingly de-
volves upon a certain class of “professionals”: the Traditionalists.
The rise in power of the advisor with competence in
Traditional
knowledge necessarily entails an evacuation of power from its usual
seat: the ruler. The ruler becomes a sort of passive “placeholder” in
the political hierarchy. He is theoretically the source of power in
the state, but that power is heavily mediated by the Traditionalist
advisor, who seeks to delimit the ruler’s actions and words using
parameters derived from received wisdom. The Zuo Tradition
“wins” its argument by repeatedly showing that part of being a
successful ruler is to heed the advice of a competent advisor.
The passing of agency from the hands of the ruler into those of
the advisors is clearly shown in the cycle of narratives regarding
Prince Chong’er. The passivity of the prince is most apparent when
he decides to stay and enjoy the hospitality of Qi (Xi 23). Hu Yan,
realizing that the prince is squandering his opportunity to become
Duke of Jin, hatches a plot with Chong’er’s wife to get him drunk
and smuggle him out of the state. Upon sobering up, the prince
repays Hu Yan for his trouble by chasing him with a spear! The
entire cycle of narratives suggests that the prince’s ascent to the
throne of Duke of Jin and his subsequent success there are not
achieved because of his personal motivation, but because he had the
good fortune of being surrounded with competent advisors.
Zhao Cui’s competence comes to the fore in the banquet with
Duke Mu. After Hu Yan asks the prince to bring Zhao Cui along,
the narrative jumps immediately to a poetic offering conducted by
the prince. No account of the formal welcoming and response
protocol that opens most diplomatic banquets is given, which sug-
gests that its routine nature renders it irrelevant here. Chong’er’s
choice of poem, “River Water” 河水, is likely made on the advice of
Words Well Put Page 6
