The Crisis of Han Classical Scholarship and Exegetical Trends in the Kingdom of Wei

Abstract

The paper focuses on Confucian exegetical thought during the transition from the late Han to Three Kingdoms period (late 2nd and 3rd Cent. AD). The political crisis, which resulted in collapse of the Eastern Han dynasty and led to the decentralization of power, accelerated some processes that had already begun in the field of Confucian exegetics during the Eastern Han period. As the first consequence, the school traditions of the Han Classical scholarship lost both unity and authority. The debates that broke out in the 3rd Cent. AD on the topic of correct or incorrect interpretation of the texts of Confucian Classics, together with the emergence of new versions of interpretations and criticism of previous commentators, are associated with bringing exegetics to the level of a fairly open discussion. All this contributed to the shift of exegetical research to the polemic stage, starting from the late Han and Three Kingdoms period, when Confucian scholars openly refuted each other, introduced new commentary types, compiled their commentaries in the form of a dialogue. The paper traces main trends of Confucian Classical scholarship in the Cao-Wei kingdom and examines main commentary works of this period.