Ritual Knowledge and Confucian Gods

Abstract This chapter describes the book’s analytical framework. It first describes the intersection of distinct factors that converged at the imperial court as it built a system of Ritual Governance based on what court officers understood to be the truth as articulated in the Confucian canon. Ritual Governance was based the assumption that the ancient sage-kings correctly apprehended that true governance required harnessing the power of the gods through proper ritual interactions with them as recorded in the Classics. Beginning in the seventh century, court debates revolved around identifying the correct precedent for the cults of the imperial pantheon based on study of the Confucian canon and commentaries approved by the court. These debates privileged the voice of the figure I call the “canonical Confucius” on all matters of the gods and proper rites devoted to them. Second, this chapter reviews recent scholarship on the role played by the Three Teachings in the imperial court’s ongoing efforts to bring peace and order to the realm by deploying a range of liturgical measures. I focus mainly on Daoist rites patronized by several emperors in the Tang, Song, and Ming because, Daoist ritualists often drew from the same classical sources as Confucian officers, although they did so from very different exegetical approaches. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the question of Confucianism as a religion. My primary concern here is focused on explicating the Confucian discourse on gods prior to the emergence of modernism in China in the twentieth century.