Gu Yanwu
Gu Yanwu was a Chinese historian, philologist, and poet active during the Ming to Qing|Ming–Qing transition]. Born to a family of scholar-officials in the village of Qiandun in modern Kunshan, Jiangsu, he was adopted as the grandchild of his paternal uncle as an infant. He was tutored in the Chinese classics by his adoptive mother and grandfather, and began to pursue advancement in the imperial examination system.
After the death of his adoptive grandfather, he passed preliminary examinations in 1626, but repeatedly failed to advance beyond the triennial examinations to achieve the scholarly rank of. He abandoned the exams in 1641. Several of his family members, including his adoptive mother, died in 1644–1645 during the Qing dynasty's conquest of China. He became a Ming loyalist, changing his name to Yanwu, but declined any political position in the Ming rump state and refused to collaborate with the Qing administration. He took to a life of itinerant scholarship, wandering across much of China while collecting notes for his scholarly works.
The most notable of his works was the, an edited collection of his notes on various topics, mainly related to statecraft and historiography. Only two of his works – the first edition of the and his phonology treatise – were published during his lifetime; the rest, including a variety of poetry, geographical texts, and notes, were published by his lone disciple Pan Lei after his death. Although Gu's work was relevant throughout the Qing period, 19th century scholars such as venerated him at a Beijing temple constructed in his honor. Later, revolutionaries such as Liang Qichao emphasized his work, stressing his empiricism and resistance to Qing rule.
Early life and education
In 1613, Gu Yanwu was born under the name Gu Jishen in the Chinese village of Qiandun. This was about 24 south of the city of Kunshan, in what was then the province of Jiangnan. Gu's ancestors had lived in the area for several centuries; he traced his roots to a man named Gu Qing who settled in the Yangtze Delta during the fall of the Northern Song around 1127. Gu's family had been scholar-officials since around 1524, when his family first settled in Qiandun.Gu's father Gu Tongying was born in 1585. Orphaned at a young age, he became a minor scholar-official, but failed the provincial examinations seven times. However, he gained some local renown as a poet, like his father Gu Shaofu and eldest son Gu Xiang. He married a woman named He, and had five sons with her and at least five daughters. Gu Jishen was the second of their sons.
While he was an infant, Gu was adopted as the grandchild of his father's paternal uncle, Gu Shaofei. He also became the heir of Shaofei's deceased son, Gu Tongji. Tongji had died in 1601 at the age of eighteen while betrothed to a woman named Wang. Wang remained unmarried due to traditional customs and continued living in relative seclusion with her would-be husband's family. As such, she became Gu Jishen's adoptive mother. Gu had little contact with his birth parents, and made no mention of them in his works.
Gu was often sick as a child. At the age of three, he contracted smallpox, permanently disfiguring one of his eyes. Wang tutored him during his early childhood, using the works of the Song philosopher Zhu Xi. He then began attending a local school when he was seven. As part of his education, he read the Confucian Four Books and the philosophical treatise, His adoptive grandfather Gu Shaofei had him read various historical texts, such as the, the, and the. When Gu was eleven, his grandfather had him read the Song chronicle, telling him that understanding "one hundred by Ming authors is not as good as understanding one from Song times".
Imperial examinations
Resenting both modern scholarship and the imperial examination system Gu Shaofei did not initially focus Gu's studies around preparation for the examinations. However, on the advice of a family friend, he began training him for this. In 1626, Gu passed an examination at Suzhou and became a . Around this time, he allegedly joined the, a literary and political revival movement.Gu's biological father, Gu Tongying died that year. He went into a period of mourning and did not take the 1627 examinations. However, his position as a required him to attend later annual examinations to reconfirm his status. The following year, the Commissioner of Education took sick leave and left during the grading process, and his results were not released. In 1630, he passed the preliminary examinations, but later in the year failed the triennial examinations in Nanjing to become a . The following year, he married a woman named Wang from Taicang and changed his name to Gu Jiang.
Gu repeatedly took examinations throughout the 1630s. He often achieved the first rank in the annual examinations, but achieved only the third rank in the higher-level preliminary examinations. He failed the triennial examinations for a second time in 1639. Taking Gu Shaofei's advice, he began to focus less on the examinations, and began focus on private studies. He later wrote: "Realizing the many grievous problems with which the state was faced, I was ashamed of the meager resources which students of the Classics possessed to deal with these problems." He took notes as he read through the Twenty-One Histories and various local gazetteers. He later noted 1639 as the year he began collecting notes for his geography works.
Career
In 1641, Gu Shaofei died, and Gu returned home to mourn. After this, he no longer took part in the examinations. The next year, his older brother Gu Xiang died, and Gu became the head of the household. Financially burdened by the funerals of both his brother and Gu Shaofei, he was forced to mortgage part of his family estate to a prominent local scholar-official, Ye Fangheng. Shaofei's death sparked an inheritance dispute within his family, as Shaofei's nephews disputed the legitimacy adoption of Gu. They attempted to force Gu and Wang to leave the family estate.The invading Manchu Qing dynasty captured the Ming capital of Beijing in 1644 and continued south, threatening the rest of China. Gu and his family moved several times over the following months, as local government began to break down across China. They briefly returned to their family residence at Qiandun, where they were robbed. After this, near the end of the year, they settled at a village named Yulianjing between Kunshan and Changshu.
A Ming rump state, the Southern Ming, was established in Nanjing under the rule of the Hongguang Emperor. Gu was recommended as an official by the magistrate of Kunshan, Yang Yongyan, and in early 1645 was called to Nanjing to serve in the office of the Ministry of War. After he left, the Manchu captured Kunshan, killing two of Gu's younger brothers and injuring his biological mother. In the sixth month of the year, the Qing forces captured Nanjing, forcing Gu to return home to Yulianjing before he had taken up office.
Gu's adoptive mother, Wang, allegedly killed herself through starvation in response to the Manchu conquest. In late 1645, Gu temporarily buried his mother at the family's burial ground in Kunshan, waiting for a potential Ming restoration to give her a proper funeral. Following the conquest, he changed his name to Gu Yanwu and destroyed all his prior poetry. His new name likely represented his devotion to protect China against the Manchu. The death of his mother greatly affected his emotional state. Gu's contemporary Wang Gen later wrote that he had "survived profound suffering, and was committed to glorifying the memories of his mother", but that his "sentiments concealed during those decades hardly ever found a chance to be expressed in full".
Wandering
In 1646, Gu sent a servant to the court of the Prince of Tang, a Southern Ming imperial claimant in Fujian. The servant returned with a summons to the prince's court. Gu did not go, partially because he had not yet officially buried his mother, and partially because the servant described the prince as having difficulties establishing a firm control over the region. However, he wrote a poem entitled "A Messenger from Yanping Has Arrived" in honor of the occasion. As the Southern Ming's resistance against the Qing conquest continued, many of Gu's friends and relatives were killed due to their Ming loyalist activities. He wrote a series of poems to honor them, although no evidence directly links him to participating in resistance activities.For unclear reasons, Gu traveled along the coast of northern Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the autumn of 1647, visiting the city of Wuxing that winter alongside his friend. In late 1647, seeing little hope for a Ming restoration, Gu held a formal funeral for his mother in Kunshan. He returned to Yulianjiang near the end of the year.
After spending much of 1648 in mourning for his mother, Gu began to travel again that autumn. He first went to Suzhou, and then traveled south. In 1651, he returned to Nanjing to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Ming founding emperor Hongwu. He lived in Nanjing from 1652 to 1654 while his wife stayed in Kunshan. To help facilitate his frequent pilgrimages to Hongwu's tomb, he purchased a secondary residence on Shenlie Mountain.
Dispute with Ye Fangheng
In 1655, one of Gu's former servants, Lu En, had begun working for Ye Fangheng, the landowner with whom Gu had a property dispute. Liu sought to discredit Gu, and told local officials that he had connections to Ming loyalists in Fuzhou. Because of this, Gu returned to Kunshan and led a group of his friends and relative who captured Liu and either beat him to death or drowned him. Gu was arrested afterwards and held in confinement under the watch of men associated with Ye. Gu was sentenced to forced labor, but was able to secure a second trial due to the support of two of his friends. After this, he had his sentence reduced to a beating. He was released in early 1656 and returned to Kunshan.Shortly after Gu returned to Kunshan, his biological mother died. While traveling to Nanjing, he was attacked by an assassin sent by Ye. Gu fell from a mule he was riding and suffered a head injury, but was able to run away and escape further injury with help from a bystander. Later in 1656, his house was robbed by men under Ye's employ. Feeling that he would be unlikely to secure a legal victory over Ye, Gu began to travel further outside of his home region.
Further travels
Gu spent much of his time traveling, although his reasons for doing so and his methods for financing his increasingly lengthy journeys are unclear. The American historian Willard J. Peterson describes him as having a "predilection for being on the move", and noted that other potential reasons for his travel – such as political activities, visiting friends, and research for his historical scholarship – would only partially explain his itinerancy. Gu described himself as spending half his year staying at inns, and rarely staying in a single location for more than a couple months.His family landholdings in Kunshan likely was the source of most of his income. However, he also gained some income through purchasing and renting out farmland, his scholarly work, and gifts from friends and Qing officials. In 1658, he traveled to Tai'an and climbed Mount Tai before traveling across Shandong to visit the Temple of Confucius and at Qufu and the at Zouxian. He lived intermittently around Jinan from 1657 to 1659. During this time, Gu may have purchased a mortgage on a farm owned by his friend, who had been indebted to him. Over the following decade, Gu intermittently used this farm, located east of Jinan in Zhangqiu, as a staging ground for his travels in northern China. He left the farm to be managed by others, only staying on it for a few months at a time.
In 1659, Gu continued north, visiting Shanhai Pass and the Ming tombs of Shisanling. In autumn, he traveled south to visit Yangzhou before returning north to Tianjin. Around this time, he visited the ruined Lingyan Temple near Jinan and obtained a number of Tang-era inscriptions. For unknown reasons, he traveled south the following year; he went to Nanjing and Jiangnan in 1660, before visiting Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shaoxing in 1661. Peterson theorizes that he may have intended to evaluate the Qing government's control over the region.
During the early 1660s, the Zhuang Tinglong case resulted in the execution of many historians who were associated with an unauthorized history of the Ming dynasty, greatly upsetting Gu and forcing him to abstain from writing about Ming history. He returned north in 1662, visiting various locations in Shanxi and Shaanxi over the next two years. After visiting Henan and parts of Shandong, he returned to Jinan in 1665 and fully took control of the farm in Zhangqiu. In 1667, he made his final trip south to Jiangnan.
The following year, while staying at a monastery in Beijing, Gu was told that he was implicated in a trial in Shandong. Upon his arrival in Jinan, he learned that he was one of a group of scholars accused of creating texts which slandered the Qing dynasty in favor of the Ming. He was arrested for sedition and imprisoned for about six months before he was exonerated and released later in 1668. He resumed travel the following year, making trips between Shandong and Beijing. That year, he also acquired his only student: a young scholar named Pan Lei, who traveled from Shanyang to join Gu at Jinan.
In 1670, he published the eight- first edition of his collected essays,. The Qing official Xiong Cili summoned him to Beijing in 1671 and asked him to work on the compilation of the History of Ming, the Qing government's official history of the Ming. Gu refused to help, wishing to maintain his lifestyle and honor his adoptive mother's wishes that he never serve the Qing. He never served the Qing government in any capacity, although he maintained good relationships with many Qing officials, as well as his nephews Xu Yuanwen and Xu Qianxie, who served as advisors at the court of the Kangxi Emperor. He traveled to Taiyuan, Shanxi, where he helped edit a commentary on the Book of Han. The following year, he twice traveled between Shanxi and Beijing, staying at the capital with Xu Yuanwen. He continued frequent travels through the northern provinces in the following years.
Later life and death
In 1675, Gu began studying in a house built for him in Qi County, Shanxi, living there alongside a concubine. The house was built by his friend Dai Tingshi, who collected art and sponsored Ming loyalists from his residence in Shanxi. Some 19th-century sources in Shanxi describe him and his friend as founding figures of the province's banking industry.Gu Yanwu had one biological son, Yigu, who died at the age of four. As such, he had no heir for much of his life. In 1676, he summoned Gu Yansheng, the son of one of his distant cousins, from Wujiang. The two met at Dezhou, and Gu performed a ritual to recognize Yansheng as his son. Later, he adopted Gu Shishu – the grandson of his biological younger brother Gu Shu – as the heir to his deceased son Yigu and thus his own grandson. This was a controversial and unusual adoption at the time, as the adoption of heirs to sons who died before adulthood was proscribed against in prior Confucian doctrine. The adoption was later used as an example in Qing legal discourse of adoption.
Gu refused to accept any position within the Qing government. In 1678, he refused to participate in a, an offer to work with a magistrate in Fuping County, Shaanxi, and an invitation to work with the son of a prominent military commander in Gansu. He learned of the death of his wife in 1680, who had stayed in Kunshan during his period of travel. He worked with the scholar Wang Hongzhuang Gu did not return south, but carried out his period of mourning at the residence of a friend in Fenzhou, Shanxi.
After a journey to Quwo in 1681, Gu fell ill and began having difficulties walking. He completed the adoption rites of Gu Yansheng while staying with a friend in Quwo, and arranged his marriage to the daughter of an influential local family. Gu's health began to improve by the start of the following year. However, after he slipped and fell off his horse while attempting to mount it, his health again began to decline. He died the following day at the age of seventy. Two months later, Gu Yansheng arrived to obtain his coffin, which he took home to Kunshan for burial.
Works
Gu read and wrote frequently throughout his life, purportedly bringing an additional horse with him while traveling to carry his books and study materials. He frequently sought out inscriptions when traveling near historical and religious sites. He published only two works during his lifetime: the phonology text and the first edition of his collected notes, . Many of his works were lost after his death, while others survived only as manuscripts and never saw proper publication. Pan Lei collected some of his poems and letters and published them for the first time in the collect .Gu's longest work was, a collection of historical and local documents totaling 120. The book outlines the social, political, and economic history of the Ming dynasty, noting their increased corruption during the empire's decline. Taxes, corvée, national defense,, land rights, and water conservation are common focuses. Gu described the text as a way to both record the knowledge he gained during his travels and advise on the use of natural resources.
The similar 100- text, a compendium of notes on historical geography, was compiled during work on. Another geography text, details the foundation of cities, temples, and palaces across various dynasties.
''Rizhilu''
Gu published an eight- edition of the in 1670. After his death, Pan Lei edited a full 32- version of the anthology and published it in Fujian in 1695. The expanded edition included many edits, some improvements suggested by scholars such as Yan Ruoqu, while others were made to avoid Qing literary censorship.Described by scholar Jao Tsung-I as Gu's magnum opus, the is an edited anthology of Gu's notes compiled over a period of thirty years. The expanded edition is divided into sections about the classics, government, social customs, the examination system, historiography, and geography in addition to smaller sections on various other topics. It critiques mistakes in ancient works and expresses many of Gu's historiographical ideas. Although anti-Manchu elements of the work were downplayed in order to evade censorship, Gu intended the work to advise on the resumption of Chinese statecraft after the end of Qing rule.
''Yinxue wushu''
Gu's Yinxue wushu analyzes the phonology of Old Chinese as it was spoken at the time of the compilation of the Chinese classics. He adapts the phonological method of the Ming dynasty writer Chen Di to dispute modern readings of classical poetry.The five books total 38 in length. The first, . studies the phonetics of the, while analyzes the phonetics of the. compares the phonology recorded in Tang dynasty–era Middle Chinese to Old Chinese. The last book,, presents a general overview of Chinese historical phonology.Gu's heterodox views on phonology were upsetting to some of his contemporaries; his friend wrote to him in 1668 that "I suspect that as your learning widens, it will grow stranger, which may not be limited to the field of phonology. If your other opinions are similar to these, would it be too abstruse and eccentric." Gu responded with a series of six poems entitled "Coming to the East", declaring that "My heart's principle will endure with constancy, / And like mountains and rivers does not ever change".
Poetry
Many Ming loyalists and former Ming officials wrote highly emotional poetry during the early Qing period, often recalling Tang-era poets such as Bai Juyi and Du Fu. Gu greatly admired Bai Juyi's allegorical poetry, believing that it captured poetry's fundamental purpose of expressing melancholy and criticizing elements of society.Much of Gu's poetry focuses on contemporary events, such as his 1644 poem, made in mourning for the Chongzhen Emperor. The first collection of his poetry was published by Pan Lei later in the Kangxi era. Following editions were subject to censorship due to Qing literary inquisitions, often resulting in the removal or alteration of taboo characters. The six- collection of poetry was reduced to five or four in later editions due to state censorship.
Philosophy
Gu was generally critical of Neo-Confucianism, dismissing the thought of the 11th-century Cheng brothers as a derivative of Chan Buddhism. He critiqued Zhu Xi's concept of a "philosophy of rational principle", but he did not closely follow the utilitarian approach of Zhu's contemporary opponents, such as Ye Shi. The historian Ian Johnston described Gu as a "fundamentalist Confucian" due to his emphasis on classical philosophy and his rejection of Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism.Governance
Gu argued that rulers should not try to change the moral and political values of a country, but that they should seek to constantly adjust the functions of state in order to adapt to new circumstances. He noted that the Qin dynasty's abolition of the system of governance in favor of was a wise decision. However, wrote that it was only from the prior decay of the old system that a new system was able to be implemented.Conceptualizing as both the moral foundations of Chinese civilization and Chinese civilization itself, Gu argued that it endured despite the rise and fall of successive dynasties. He warned of the potential for the "collapse of civilization" as distinct from the fall of a dynasty, arguing that such a state would reduce humans to an animalistic existence.
Writing that the system itself had grown obsolete, Gu argued that a new system which combined elements of both systems, featuring both a strong central authority and local devolution of power. He wrote that political centralization impaired the ability for local government to effectively govern, and that magistrates should be allowed to hold hereditary control over their home territory. According to him, this would incentivize them to aid the stability and security of the region out of their own rational self-interest. He argued that a true autocracy was futile to impose, and that a wise ruler should instead seek to rule through the "rule of many", emphasizing the status of local clans and familial lineages across the empire.
In one section of his, Gu disputes the idea that the emperor's sovereignty emerges from the Mandate of Heaven. He argues that the emperor's position is ultimately in service of the populace, and that there is no fundamental difference between the emperorship and any other political position besides rank. He praised the Ming dynasty's founding Hongwu Emperor, writing that he attempted to devolve power to local government. This was in contrast to many other scholars, who saw the Hongwu Emperor's rule as despotic.
Gu wrote that the growing power of eunuchs and administrative clerks were symptoms of an over-reliance on regulation. He contrasts regulation with law, arguing that laws and legal systems which emphasize the public good were essential for the survival of a dynasty. In contrast to Western conceptions of the "rule of law", Gu saw law as a mechanism by which the ruler attempted to curtail his own officials. He wrote that this could be beneficial, but that over-reliance on legal and administrative codes unintentionally delegates decision-making power to corrupt officials, eunuchs, and clerks.
Although he criticized Qin Shi Huang for his autocratic rule, he praised the Qin dynasty for establishing an administrative and legal system which continued to the present day. Gu's defense of the Qin and of law more generally ran strongly against conventional Confucian doctrine, leading to some later scholars denouncing him as a Legalist. His approach was inspired by the 12th-century scholar, who implemented some elements of Legalist doctrine and opposed Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism.
Historiography
Gu outlined a method of historical writing centered on the collection of many distinct primary sources. He criticized his contemporaries for relying too heavily on secondary sources, comparing this to minting new coins by melting down old ones. Gu described his experience of finding previously unknown primary sources as leaving him "so overjoyed that he could not sleep". He emphasized the importance of corroborating sources with external evidence and viewing no one source as infallible. He also proscribed the use of citations for all quotations, including the mention of both authors when a quotation comes from a secondary source, describing it as a matter of respect for past generations.Gu opposed the pursuit of knowledge purely for its own sake, writing that "historical books are composed to mirror what happened in the past so as to provide lessons for the present", illuminating the Tao through descriptions of state affairs and the livelihoods of the people. He believed that poems such as those collected in the could provide useful insight into the past; criticizing scholars who objected to the inclusion of love poems alongside moral and philosophical poetry in the, Gu wrote that "people's customs are shown through verses and one may learn from them the growth and decay of a certain country".
Sima Qian, the Han dynasty author of the, was Gu's model for proper historical research. He took additional inspiration from the medieval scholars Sima Guang and Ma Duanlin due to their lifelong dedication to historical research. He viewed history as a cyclical process, although viewed some aspects of society, such as morality, as fundamental and unchanging.
Legacy
Gu's family remained prominent scholar-officials around Suzhou throughout the Qing period. One of his indirect descendants, born near the end of the Qing dynasty, was the heterodox historian Gu Jiegang. The first for Gu Yanwu was compiled by Gu Yansheng after his death, while another was compiled by the early Qing official Li Guangdi. In the early 19th century, additional were compiled by the historian Wu Yingkui. After a revival of interest in Gu's political philosophy during the middle of the 19th century, new were compiled by the scholars and Zhang Mu. Li Guangdi described Gu as being seen to "unsociable and eccentric, and mock both the ancient and the contemporary", resulting in him being "despised by all the people" in Jiangnan.Influence and evaluation
Gu's works were read by many early Qing scholars, including both Ming loyalists and Qing officials. Zhang Xuecheng, writing in the late-18th century, considered Gu the founder of the "western" school of studies. He described Gu and his intellectual followers as more inspired by classical studies and Zhu Xi's works than the "eastern" school in the tradition of Huang Zongxi, which he described as emphasizing historical studies and the work of Ming philosopher Wang Yangming. Modern scholars have credited Gu with founding the philological field of .The discussion of Gu Yanwu's political philosophy was largely dismissed until the waves of crises faced by the dynasty during the mid-19th century. In 1843, He Shaoji led a group of scholars to construct. This became a community of scholars who met annually at the temple to honor Gu from 1843. One of these scholars, Zeng Guofan, declared Gu one of the "two sages" of the Qing dynasty alongside the 18th-century thinker. Alongside his contemporary Ming loyalists Wang Fuzhi and Huang Zongxi, Gu had his name added to the Beijing Temple of Confucius in 1909.
The writer and activist Liang Qichao, one of the founding thinkers of the New Culture Movement of the early 20th century, sought to elevate the importance of Gu's work. Liang argued that Gu incorporated the scientific method in his work, describing him as among the primary founders of the, an empiricist school of thought on textual criticism. One of Liang's contemporaries, the philologist Zhang Binglin, praised Gu for his resistance to the Qing dynasty and his denial of the dynasty's legitimacy, seeing his thought as applicable to the resistance to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s.
Up to the late 20th century, little in-depth scholarly attention was given to Gu's historiography. The Japanese sinologist Naitō Konan briefly summarized Gu's thought in his studies on Chinese historiography. During the mid-20th century, Chinese historians Ch'ien Mu and evaluated Gu's philosophy, but only gave cursory attention to his historical work. The American historian Willard J. Peterson wrote a biography of Gu in the 1960s, emphasizing his historiographical thought.