The Practice of Textual Criticism in Traditional China as Illustrated by Lu Wenchao’s (1717–1796) Work

Abstract

Abstract Eighteenth-century Chinese evidential (kaozheng or kaoju) scholarship has been viewed as an intellectual apostasy from the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy of Neo-Confucianism. In terms of textual criticism, however, leading evidential critics inherited the norm and assumptions from the Song dynasty Neo-Confucian master Zhu Xi (1130–1200), even though some of them questioned his moral-political system. This article examines representative evidential textual critic Lu Wenchao’s (1717–1796) editing of the first-century Confucian text Baihu tong and traces his practical and conceptual origin back to Zhu Xi. It argues that Chinese evidential textual criticism is a mixture of methodological eclecticism, editorial conservatism, and hermeneutic activism.