Kinship ethics in the Ming
I’ve been working on modeling the ways that Song-era ideas about kinship organizations were reinterpreted in the Ming. Because there is such a large number of surviving materials from the Ming, relative to the Song and Yuan, which have been more closely studied, I’m doing this largely with a topic model, as well as selective reading of key essays.
I’m still being a bit cautious about how to interpret the corpus-level summary statistics, given the apparent bias in my sample. At this point, my understanding of known and unknown bias means that I’ve going to be very careful about drawing conclusions from lack of evidence. But I’ve read enough of these essays to be quite confident about the ways in which they are linked to one another. Anyway, I’ve been working on this for long enough that it’s certainly time to share some results.
In my 12-topic topic model of 645 genealogy essays, I’ve found four topics that largely account for changes in kinship ethics. First, I’ll look at topics that largely correspond to the ways that Ouyang Xiu and Su Xun — the progenitors of late imperial genealogy — thought about kin-group ethics. I’m going to use these to look at how later thinkers inherited and interpreted their ideas. Second, I have found two topics that show fundamentally new understandings of the role of kin groups vis-a-vis their members, and vis-a-vis society. These appear de novo in the late Yuan and early Ming, and have not really been addressed in much existing scholarship (as far as I’m aware).
I plan to do a brief discussion of the other eight topics at some point. But for now, the four most closely related to kin-group ethics:
Ouyang Xiu’s Service Ethic
In Ouyang’s understanding, the principle role of genealogy was to transmit records of the good works of his ancestors to serve as models for future generations. This concept is largely captured in my model by a topic I call “Service,” and described by high frequencies of words related to success, prominence and government service: sheng 盛 — flourish; yi 益 -increase; wang 望 — prestige; xing 顯 — prominent ; ji 積 — accumulate; de 徳 — virtue; zhong 忠 — faithful; shi 仕 — service, and Song 宋 — the dynasty. Yet this topic is so closely associated with the Ji’an gentry community that it also features high frequencies of words used in Ji’an-region place names: ling 陵 — used in Luling 盧陵 and Chaling Counties 茶陵, ji 吉 used in-Ji’an Prefecture, Jishui County and Jizhou (the pre-Ming name for Ji’an); and yi 宜, used in Yichun County. Indeed, Ji’an-affiliated literati made up seventy-six of the one-hundred essays with highest “Service” proportions, including late Song figures like Ouyang Shoudao and Wen Tianxiang; as well as early and mid-Ming leaders like Xie Jin, Li Shimian, Luo Qinshun Yang Rong, Yang Shiqi and Wang Zhi.
The topic “Service,” accounts for essays promoting ideas about the accumulation of virtue through scholarship and government service; virtue that manifest in Ji’an’s many flourishing lineages, and in the ascendance of the region itself. In later understandings, this distinctly local service ethic was both developed and exemplified by Ouyang Xiu, the philosopher-statesman given pride of place among the patron saints of Ji’an.
Yet Ouyang himself understood his service as continuing a pre-existing tradition that he called bequeathed or accumulated virtues (yide 遺德, jide 積德). In Ouyang’s famous genealogy (20% “Service” according to the topic model), he writes：
As an unfortunate youth, I was unprepared to hear my grandfather’s bequeathed virtues (yide), yet the tradition in our family is this: to be faithful to one’s lord, filial to one’s kin, incorrupt as an official, and to use learning to establish oneself.
Later he continues
the descendants of my family have all received [our ancestors’] protection and virtues (yin de 蔭德); how can we accept these except by following their examples? Tradition holds that families of long-standing virtue must have an excess of celebration (jide zhi jia bi you yi qing 積德之家必有遺慶, note this is a paraphrase of the “Discussion of patterns” (wenyan 文言) for the trigram kun 坤 in the Book of Changes. The original reads “ji shan zhi jia bi you yu qing”.).
In Ouyang’s understanding, the role of kinship organizations is to continue the good works of one’s ancestors; the role of genealogy is to record their deeds as models for future generations to follow. According to Ouyang, this was already a tradition in his family, and it certainly continued as a tradition among his descendants.
As with many of Ouyang Xiu’s ideas, these concepts of bequeathed or accumulated virtues became core to the conception of lineage in his home region of Ji’an.
Notions of accumulated virtue (ji and de, two of the highest-proportion words associated with “Serivce”) are so common in the writings of Ji’an literati that they are inseparable from the place itself. To quote one essay that typifies the early-Ming formulation of these ideas, Li Shimian’s preface to the Guping Li genealogy (44% “Service” according to the model) writes of how s
[Their founding ancestor’s] abundant achievements (feng gong) and bountiful virtues (hou de) have protected (piyin) his descendants…
[Other ancestors’] accumulated virtue (jide), acted with righteousness (xing yi), and cultivated benevolence (xiu ren); they strove to extend the blessings left by their predecessors (qianren zhi yu qing); and to bestow good fortune on their descendants.”
Like Ouyang, Li felt that a major role of genealogy was to record these virtues as example to later descendants.
Yet if Ouyang’s ideas about accumulated virtue were highly influential in Ji’an, they did not circulate widely outside of the region, and their importance declined over time. Looking at the graph of topic proportions of “Service,” there is a clear secular decline.
Some of the declining interest in a service-based lineage ethic is clearly related to the rise in new lineage ideologies. As we will see below, there were several important schools of lineage ethics that emerged in the Ming, and these displaced “Service” and other early conceptualizations of the role of lineage in the social and moral order. But it is clear that ideas of accumulated virtue fared particularly poorly in competition with other lineage ideals. In areas without established lineages, or for families without records of deep ancestry, there were simply no accumulated virtues to form the basis of kin group ethics. As we will see, other notions of kinship were better adapted to proselytize lineage formation in circumstances without pre-existing lineage traditions.
(Topic proportions here and to follow are graphed by essay. Because the overwhelming majority of essays are undated, they are assigned dates based on the index years of their authors. Note the logarithmic scale. I take proportions above 0.1 as good rule-of-thumb indications of active interest in a given topic.)
Su Xun’s Ritual Ethics
Su Xun, the second of the two fathers of late imperial genealogy, had a very different form of influence was very different than his friend Ouyang Xiu. While Ouyang’s ideas were intensely influential in his home region and barely represented elsewhere, Su hit upon concepts that shaped most of the high-level discourse on lineage ethics. Yet despite his wider influence, Su’s specific interpretations were rarely followed. My topic model accounts for Su Xun’s seminal genealogy largely with a single topic, which I call “Ritual Ethics.” This single topic is attributed 68% of Su’s essay — such a high proportion in this early essay that it is not far-fetched to claim that Su Xun essentially originated (or revived) this set of ideas. The most significant words in this topic include: zong 宗 — descent-line; qin 親 — kin; zu 祖 — ancestor; ben 本 and yuan 源 — root or origin; fa 法 — rules or methods; zun 尊 and jing 敬 — respect; xin 心 — heart/mind; tong 同 — same; ming 明 — clear; xiao 孝 — filial and di 弟 — fraternal; li 禮 — ritual, the Rites; zhao 昭 and mu 穆 — ordering of tombs, ritual order among the dead. Unlike some other topics, there is no particular clustering of “Ritual” at any particular time, place or group of writers. Su Xun’s thought, and the older ideas underlying his essays, were of exceptionally broad-reaching influence across the world of kinship thought.
A selective reading of later essays with high proportions of “Ritual” reveals that many quoted directly from Su, while others developed original understandings of the same ideas that interested Su. To better understand this distinction, let us parse Su’s essay into three parts: his thought experiment on brothers descending into strangers; his treatment of the descent-line system; and the specific history of his lineage itself (this largely captured by topics other than “Ritual”).
In the first part of Su’s essay, he claims that by looking at his genealogy, one can naturally bring forth a filial and fraternal state of mind. He argues that feelings, especially feelings of empathy, emerge from a sense of kinship (qing jian yu qin 情見與親). When people lose a sense of kinship, they also lose a sense of empathy and become little more than “strangers on the road” (turen 途人) But by recording descent-lines in his genealogy, Su ensures that his kin know that they are related, and feelings of empathy — and properly filial and fraternal thinking — will emerge naturally (youran er sheng 油然而生). This “strangers on the road” thought experiment is probably the single-most influential discourse on kinship written in late imperial China. Phrases related to the idea of filial emotions “emerging naturally” from records of kinship appear in forty-two essays; thirty-three of these also use the term “strangers on the road” (turen); in total, about five percent of later genealogical essays quote or paraphrase Su Xun directly.
The second part of Su’s essay is his consideration of what implications the descent-line system (zongfa 宗法) of antiquity should have for his contemporary world. Su concludes that most people should use the lesser descent-line sysetm (xiao zongfa 小宗法), and therefore restrict their ancestor worship to five generations. The precise meaning of the descent-line system was hotly debated by Su’s near-contemporaries Zhang Zai and Cheng Yi, by Zhu Xi, and by many scholars in the Ming and Qing.
But unlike the “strangers on the road” though experiment, where Su was often quoted nearly-verbatim, there were at least two substantial differences in the way that later figures wrote about the descent-line system.
First, there was a line of ritual ethics built around the descent-line system, but strongly influenced by Neo-Confucian metaphysics. This is often the form in which we see these ideas in the Ming. For example, in the preface Yin Changlong (d. 1417) composed for the Liang genealogy (49% accounted for by “Ritual” according to the model), he writes:
In antiquity, the sage kings granted surnames and land according to people’s birth, they also set up the greater and lesser descent-line systems to preserve these [distinctions].”
He clarifies that with the descent-line systems, “the sages specifically followed on heavenly nature (tianxing 天性) and institutionalized it (jigang zhi 紀綱之).” Nowhere does Su Xun use the concepts of heavenly nature in his discourse on the descent-line system; this understanding was built principally on the Neo-Confucian commentaries on the Four Books and Five Classics due to Zhu Xi and his disciples. It is in the writing of Yuan and early Ming Neo-Confucians that we first see the application of Neo-Confucian readings of nature (xing 性) to lineage ethics in particular.
Second, there was a more pragmatic school of genealogists, including many associated with Ji’an. They were clearly influenced by Su’s ideas about the descent-line system, but they also built on a distinct, local tradition that emphasized the importance of deep ancestry (see below). In an attempt to fit the transmission of essentially unlimited genealogical traditions to the limited-depth ancestor-worship Su derived from the classics, they reinterpreted Su’s guidelines to limit genealogical depth to five generations as a rule of thumb for lineages without good records. For example, in a preface to the Zhen genealogy (39% “Ritual”), Yang Shiqi opens with the argument
In antiquity, the descent-line system was used; and everyone venerated their ancestors and respected their lineages…in later eras the descent-line system disappeared, but people did not lose the hearts (xin) to venerate ancestors and respect the lineage (zunzu jingzong).
Yang then notes that Ouyang Xiu and Su Xun each kept different styles of genealogies; the only unifying element is that they “recorded what they knew, and left out what they did not. They each fixed their hearts on ensuring that the affairs of a family emphasized venerating ancestors and respecting the lineage.” For the Zhen lineage in particular, their lack of records meant that they should restrict themselves to five generations — a rule that Ji’an literati applied to many lineages without strong documentation.
But in general, lineages should respect the intent of the descent-line system to “venerate ancestors and respect the lineage (zun zu jing zong 尊祖敬宗).” In Yang’s mind, this was accomplished not by strict reconstruction of the ritual order of antiquity, but by any genealogical method that achieved similar ends.
Su’s interest in the classics as the basis for understanding contemporary forms of kinship was highly influential; his thought experiment on “strangers on the road” became the most widely referenced line on kinship since the classics themselves. Yet Su’s specific interpretation of classical ritual ethics for contemporary lineages was not closely followed. I have identified two divergent readings of the descent-line system, both of which are lumped together with Su’s reading under the topic “Ritual.” One group of scholars was interested in the metaphysics behind the nature of heaven and of human emotions; another was more focused on the pragmatics of forming effective kinship organizations; both groups looked to the descent-line system as a basis of general principles, rather than specific precepts.
Unlike Ouyang’s “Service” ethic, Su’s “Ritual” ethic shows strong persistence over time, without evidence of decline.
A Metaphysical Turn
Discourse on the descent-line system, revived by Su Xun and other Northern Song philosophers, was one of the major ways in thinkers tried to reason through the new forms of kinship appearing among their contemporaries. Yet this discourse did not stay within the bounds set by these early essayists. By the Ming, one group of thinkers turned to Neo-Confucian metaphysics to understand the underlying mechanisms by which kinship functioned. These philosophers placed less emphasis than their predecessors on the precise forms of ancient ritual, and were more concerned with the metaphysical reasons that kinship works. They came to understand the descent-line system as the purest institutional realization of the fundamental unity of all things, and looked to understand that unity first-hand.
In my model, this line of thought is captured by a topic I call “Metaphysics.” This topic includes high rates of words common to Neo-Confucian cosmology: tian 天 — heaven;
dao 道 — the Way, Dao; wan 萬 — ten-thousand, myriad; wu 物 — thing. It also features many words related to ethics and self-cultivation: shen 身 — body, self; xin 心 — heart/mind; jia 家 — family; yu 欲 — desire; yi 義 — righteousness; ren 仁 — benevolence; de 徳 — virtue; shan 善 — good; xiu 修 — cultivate; si 思 — consider; xue 學 — learning. But it also features words related to governance and statecraft: min 民 — the people; fa 法 — law, method; wang 王 — king, sovereign; jun 君 — lord, gentleman; zhi 治 — govern; hua 化 — transform. This specific juxtaposition of words related to cultivating the self with terms related to governing society is specifically associated with the metaphysics in the Four Books of the Neo-Confucian canon — particularly the Great Learning (daxue).
While some elements of this line of thought can be seen earlier, the first clear formulation of a metaphysics of lineage is apparent in the writings of Song Lian and especially his disciple Fang Xiaoru. Indeed, the cross-over between a more conservative interpretation of the descent-line system and the more radical form is best seen in Fang’s preface to Song’s genealogy (which the model assesses as 26% “Ritual” and 37% “Metaphysics), which opens with this expansive claim:
There is a way for gentlemen without [official] position to transform the world (hua tianxia 化天下). It is by harmonizing their kin (mu zu).
Fang then comments：
The world is enormous (zhi da 至大), how can I transform it by harmonizing my kin?
[he answers]
If kin groups are all at harmony, then who in the world will do ill [to others]?”
Yet if Fang Xiaoru was among the first writers to elaborate this philosophy of world-transforming kinship, his death did nothing to slow the spread of these ideas. Later writers, especially those associated with the world of Jiangxi academies, were among their greatest proponents. Like Fang, Luo Lun (1431–1478) was interested in how the transformation of the world could be effected by promotion of goodness in the family — largely through the use of the descent-line system. In a preface for the Lingnan Wang lineage (36% “Ritual Ethics,” 29% “Metaphysics”), he writes
When the system of the former kings (xianwang 先王i.e. the descent-line system) is practiced in the family, the family will be compassionate (ren 仁); when it is practiced in the lineage, the whole lineage will be compassionate; when it is practiced in the world, there will be no heartless (buren 不仁) people in the world, since the world the combination (ji 積) of its lineages (jiazu 家族).
In the sixteenth century, this line of thought took an further turn towards emphasis on the universality of the human heart, clearly showing the influence of Wang Yangming and his disciples. The clearest example of this is in the writings of Yin Tai (fl. 1565), a disciple of Ouyang De, and thus two steps removed from Wang himeself. For example, in an essay for the Wan’an Cangqian Zhou lineage (61% “Metaphysics”), Yin writes:
Search for the origins of people in nature (tian 天) — it cannot violate the fundamentals of life; search for the basis of nature in unity (yi 一) — it cannot violate the compassionate heart. The descent-line system is entirely present [in these principles].
“Metaphysics” is more generally correlated with times and places where Neo-Confucianism was significant as a social movement, as opposed to a government-sponsored orthodoxy. Writers from southern Zhejiang — including the groups around Song Liang and Fang Xiaoru — developed many of the concepts in the late 1300s, when we can see an early peaking of interest in this topic, with most essays above a 0.1 topic proprotion. During the Ji’an dominance at court (and in genealogical writing) in the early-to-mid 1400s, interest in “Metaphysics” falls off except in the writings of a few northern Jiangxi scholars like Luo Lun. Topic proportions rise again during the late 1400s and reaches their greatest peak during the mid-1500s, a period associated with Neo-Confucian movement surrounding Wang Yangming’s disciples, including (indirectly) Yin Tai. Interest falls off again in the late 1500s and early 1600s — exactly what we would expect, given the crackdowns on private academies and the Wang school of Neo-Confucian philosophy.
Nonetheless, it is clear that this particular understanding of kinship ethics had a huge impact on lineage formation — one that spread outward from Zhejiang and Jiangxi with the formation of Neo-Confucian academies.
A Ji’an Synthesis
There is second topic that captures a different set of early Ming developments of kinship ethics, which I call “Virtue.” The essays associated with this topic have much in common with those described by “Service” — an emphasis on the continuation of lineage traditions — but they are also influenced by the emphasis on living kinship and ritual captured by “Ritual Ethics.” This can be seen as body of ideas described by high-frequencies of words related to study, virtue and success: ren 仁 — benevolence; yi 義 — righteousness; xiang 賢 — worthy; dao 道 — the Way; de 德 — virtue; xing 行 — comportment; hou 厚 — plentiful; jiao 教 — teach; xue 學 — learn; yi 益 -increase; sheng 盛 — flourish. That is, essays with high proportions of the topic “Virtue” are interested in lineage as both a locus of traditions of service, and as a site of moral transformation.
Like “Service,” and unlike “Ritual Ethics,” the topic “Virtue” is closely associated with thinkers from Ji’an. Forty-eight of the the fifty essays with highest proportions of this topic (and eighty-six of the top one-hundred), were written by Ji’an-affiliated literati; forty-four of the top fifty were written by just three men: Chen Xun, Wang Zhi and Yang Shiqi.
In other words “Virute” accounts for a reconceptualization of Ji’an’s strong tradition of service, under the influence of Neo-Confucian ideology. In his preface to the Taihe Ningxi Xiao genealogy (65% “Virtue”), Chen Xun writes:
The way that gentlemen bring favor (hou) to their kin group (zu) is by leading them to be fundamentally filial, fraternal, loyal, and trustworthy; instructing them to employ ritual, justice, honesty, and shame; giving each person an avocation (xiao), and each generation an undertaking (cheng), to practice without cease, and transmit without end. Is this not enough to become greatly renowned in the river-lands (jiang xiang)?
Departing somewhat from the older Ji’an tradition that emphasized scholarship and government service, Chen argues that moral self-cultivation and kinship ritual are also measures of a lineage’s greatness, and the means for a lineage to perpetuate itself. Wang Zhi exemplifies this position even more succinctly in a preface for the Qingxi Chen genealogy (53% “Virtue”), in which he specifically cites Su Xun, but espouses an interpretation that clearly draws on Ouyang Xiu’s conceptions of genealogy as a record of good works. Wang writes “genealogies are a means to record one’s origin, to lead people to goodness that continues without end.”
In other words “Virtue” captures the early Ming Ji’an school’s synthesis of the Ouyang and Su positions; it emphasizes lineage as both a continuation of traditions, and a locus of moral transformation.
This cross-over between two major schools of kinship ethics was exemplified by a small group of early-Ming writers from Ji’an. It is clear that Yang Shiqi, Wang Zhi, Chen Xun and a handful of other Ji’an locals were especially driven to promote both the continuation of old lineages and the formation of new ones. These literati came from a place with deeper lineage traditions than anywhere else in the empire; they rose to power at a time when there was massive interest in lineage formation due to the ascendant school of Neo-Confucian philosophy, as well as the need to reconstruct records lost in the Red Turban wars. As they rose through the ranks of state service, they were also in positions of great influence and were able to promulgate their visions of lineage formation widely. Yet it is also clear that this vision of lineage was not particularly influential outside of this particular time and place. Yang, Wang, Liu and their cohort played a very large role in lineage formation in their home region, but their ideas and practices persisted only through the specific institutions they helped form, and had little lasting influence on the broader discourse on lineage ethics.
Conclusions
Ouyang and Su had real and lasting impact on the discourse on kin-group ethics. Of the two Su’s understanding of lineage as a locus of emotional kinship was far more important. His thought experiment on “strangers on the road” was hugely influential, and his revival of the descent-line sysetms of antiquity as the basis of ritual ethics had an even broader impact. Ouyang’s ideas about accumulated virtue derived from long, preexisting lineage traditions were very important in his home region of Ji’an, but were not widely used elsewhere. Ouyang’s thought grew even less important by the late Ming, when they were displaced by systems of though owing more to Su and the Neo-Confucians. Yet, as I’ll explore in a later post, Ouyang almost certainly had a greater impact on genealogical practice than his friend Su did.
I have identified two major off-shoots of the Ouyang and Su lines of thought. First, Neo-Confucians developed a novel understanding of descent-line ethics interpreted through the metaphysics of the Great Learning. They saw the lineage as a manifestation the fundamental unity of the world, and used the descent-line systems as a model for how the sages had built institutions to realize this unity. This school of thought grew first under the influence of movement Neo-Confucians from Jinhua and Taizhou. When they were purged from government by Yongle, their ideas resurfaced in the private academies of Jiangxi, and spread from there, especially after Wang Yangming revitalized Neo-Confucianism as a social movement.
Second, Ji’an scholars of the mid-1400s created a synthesis of Ouyang’s emphasis on ancestry and inheritance, and the Su and Neo-Confucian emphasis on living kinship and ritual ethics. They essentially argued that the old lineage of Ji’an were, themselves, realizations of ethical kinship in the contemporary world; but that these lineages depended on inherited traditions. This school of ethics was part of the major surge in lineage formation in central Jiangxi in the early Ming, and persisted through the lineages that took form at that time, but it did not have broad popularity outside of Ji’an, or after about 14
