This article examines the connection between writing on the past and the construction of collective memory and identity by the Kong family of Qufu, the recognized descendants of the Confucius. Kong family dukes raised an ancestor named Renyu to a position of importance in the Kong historical imaginary second only to Confucius himself, transforming a seemingly insignificant name from the family records into a powerful signifier of the centralized economic and political institution represented by the title of the “Duke for Fulfilling the Sage.” By tracing the development of the legend of Kong Renyu from the fourteenth century to the present, this article details the centrality of social and political power in the construction of the historical narratives that serve as the basis of collective memory and identity.
For several essays on the Kongs and Qufu, see Thomas A. Wilson, ed., On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002 ).
2.
Jun Jing, The Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese Village (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
3.
Pierre Nora , "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire ," Representations26 ( 1989): 8.
4.
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 58.
5.
Jan Assmann , "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity," New German Critique65 (1995): 129.
6.
Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 84-85.
7.
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 92-128.
8.
Modern scholars nevertheless have continued to use uncritically the sources produced in later centuries in the biographical reconstructions of his life. See, for example, Li Jingming , Jia shi benmo , in Kongzi jiazu quanshu , ed. Kong Demao , vol. 7 (Fanyang: Liaohai chubanshe, 1999), 65-66; Kong Juyou , Jiazu jingying , in Kongzi jiazu quanshu, ed. Kong Demao, vol. 4 (Fanyang: Liaohai chubanshe, 1999), 207-09; Kong Fanyin , Qufu de lishi mingren yu wenwu (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2002), 56-57.
9.
Dating the work precisely is complicated by the political events of the late 1120s and early 1130s when Kong Chuan and other powerful Kong officials followed the Song emperor to south China following the Jurchen invasion of north China. The preface of the extant version is dated 1134, but the preface to Chuan’s work reproduced in Kong Yuancuo’s thirteenth-century history is dated 1124, suggesting that an earlier version may have been published and available in the north.
10.
For a discussion of the contending forms of kinship organization during the Song and the proliferation of social and legal institutions of elite reproduction, see Patricia Ebrey, "Conceptions of the Family in the Sung Dynasty," Journal of Asian Studies 43, no. 2 (February 1984): 219-45 and "The Early Stages in the Development of Descent Group Organization," in Patricia Buckley Ebrey and James L. Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 16-61.
11.
Kong Chuan , "Preface," Dongjia zaji , in Congshu jicheng chubian (Shanghai: Shanghai yinshu, 1936), 3315.
12.
For more on the political conflicts in Qufu during Song, Jin, and Yuan conflict in north China, see Christopher Agnew, "Culture and Power in the Making of the Descendants of Confucius, 1300-1800" (PhD diss. University of Washington, 2006), 85-91.
13.
Kong Chuan, Dong jia zaji, 9-10.
14.
Kong Duanchao , "Preface," Kong Chuan, Dong jia zaji, 57.
15.
Yuancuo professes his comprehensive mastery of the source material by noting that his twelve-chapter (juan) work includes not only all historical materials available from dynastic histories and family genealogies, but that he has gone further to include the contents of all important stone inscriptions still legible in the temple and graveyard. See Kong Yuancuo , "Kong shi zuting guangji yin ,"in Kong shi zuting guangji , in Congshu jicheng chubian , 3316-17. (Shanghai: Shanghai yinshu, 1936), 1.
16.
Kong Chuan, Dong jia zaji, 50.
17.
Kong Yuancuo, Kong shi zuting guangji, 1.8.
18.
Ibid.
19.
See for example Chen Hao , Queli zhi , 1552 edition, Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan , vol. 23 (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1988), 2.46b-47a, 483-84; Cai Wenyuan’s epitaph for Kong Sicheng in Chen Hao, Queli zhi, 1552 edition, 13.13b-15a, 798-800.
20.
Song Lian , et al. eds., Yuan shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976), 180.4167-68; Kong Jifen , Queli wenxian kao (Jinan: Shandong youyi, 1989), 9.1a-b, 167-69; Chen Hao, Queli zhi, 1552 edition, 2.47a-48a, 484.
21.
Kong Sihui , "Queli zongzhi tuji ," in Qufu Kongfu dang’an shiliao xuanbian (Jinan: Qi Lu shushe, 1985), 3.1.349-350.
22.
Kong Sihui, "Queli zongzhi tuji," 3.1.349.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Kong Sihui, "Queli zongzhi tuji," 3.1.350.
26.
Ibid.
27.
For an analysis of mythical speech from the position of semiotics, see Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 109-59.
28.
"Xuande wunian Kong shi baoben chouen bei," in Luo Chenglie , ed., Shitou shang de rujia wenxian-Qufu beiwen lu - (Jinan: Qilu Press, 2001), 1.385-86.
29.
"Xuande wunian Kong shi baoben chouen bei," 1.386.
30.
Kong Hongxu, "Liushiyi dai yansheng gong ji zhongxing waizu mu wen," in Kong Jifen, Queli wenxian kao, 39.3ab-.
31.
Liu Jun , Kong Yan Meng sanshi zhi , in Beijing tushuguan guji zhenben congkan , vol. 14 (Beijing: Shumu wenxian, 1988), 1.33a-b, 27. Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals became a widely distributed and cited manual among elite families in this period. See Patricia Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
32.
Kong Hongxu, "Liushiyi dai yansheng gong ji zhongxing waizu mu wen," 39.3ab-.
33.
For more on the social context of Qufu in the sixteenth century, see Christopher Agnew, "Culture and Power in the Making of the Descendants of Confucius, 1300-1800 " (PhD diss. University of Washington, 2006), 106-12.
34.
Kong Yinzhi , "Old Preface," in Kong Shangren , Kongzi shi jiapu (Taibei: Guo li zhong yang tu shu guan, 1969), 36-37.
35.
Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1991) and Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley: University of California press, 1998).
36.
Kong Wenjian , " Old Preface," Kongzi shijia pu, 39.
37.
Ibid.
38.
Kong Hongyong , " Old Preface," Kongzi shijia pu, 35.
39.
Kong Wenjian , "Old Preface," Kongzi shijia pu, 39.
40.
Kong Hongyong , "Wei Kong bian," Kongzi shijia pu, 148.
41.
Ibid., 149.
42.
Kong Yinchun , " Jiu xu," Kongzi shijia pu, 47.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Kong Demao and Ke Lan, In the Mansion of Confucius Descendants, trans. Rosemary Roberts ( Beijing: New World Press, 1984), 283.
