谶纬里的孔子 = THE IMAGE OF CONFUCIUS IN THE CHENWEI(HAN APOCRYPHAL TEXTS)

Abstract

The corpus of literature called chenwei (Apocryphal Texts谶纬), was compiled during the Eastern Han dynasty. The image of Confucius in the chenwei is different from the historical Confucius. This thesis studies the image of Confucius as portrayed in the chenwei with the objective of understanding the political and ideological context of the Han dynasty. There is the belief that chenwei originated from chen(谶), a kind of mythological prophecy with strong political overtone. This thesis argues that there are indeed differences between the two. The various chenwei texts as transmitted to this day were in fact only being compiled as a body of literature during the time of Emperor Guang Wu, the first emperor of the Eastern Han dynasty. The sources therefore could be seen as a coalescence and transformation of the tu chen(图谶) and fu ming（符命） which appeared in the Western Han and the Xin dynasties. The coming into being of this corpus of literature was aimed at proving that the Liu family’s re-establishing their status as the ruling house of China was a choice of the god. The Confucius as seen in the chenwei is a super-human being. The person who has been regarded as the founder of Confucianism in history was deified as a god of heaven who could foretell the future. Such a construction was mainly motivated by the objective of legitimizing the Eastern Han regime and reinforcing the authority of the state.