Kong Yingda, Cheng Xuanying, and Their “Others”: A Synchronic Contextualization of Visions of the Sage

Abstract

The early medieval period saw the spread of Buddhism from India into China and the development of Daoism as a religious institution. By the early Tang dynasty, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism were referred to as the three teachings, and had developed separate institutions; representatives of the three teachings were competing at court for patronage and influence. This paper probes the extent to which the institutionalization of these three teachings as separate, often competing, entities is mirrored at the philosophical level and attempts to delineate the fault lines of philosophical contention among them. Scholarship on Daoist chongxuan philosophy, as it developed in early Tang Changan, documents Daoists’ utilization of Buddhist concepts and terminologies, implying shared discourses. This paper extends this investigation to include Confucianism, focusing on excerpts from two texts written in early seventh-century Changan: the Confucian Zhouyi zhengyi and the Daoist Daode jing yishu, as a case study for a synchronic contextualization across the boundaries of the teachings. Analyzing explicit demarcation discourses and intertextual occurrences of specific terminologies, the paper juxtaposes the Daoist and Confucian conceptualizations of the “sage who embodies Dao”. Through this analysis, the paper explores shared discourses and demarcations in philosophical thought among the three teachings, emphasizing the complexity of fault lines in philosophical arguments, which resist simplistic alignment with sectarian affiliations.