The school text of the Mencian movement. Its core consists of transcripts of interviews of Mencius with various rulers in the years 0320-c0305 (now making up about half of MC 1; the rest of that chapter is later inventions) and a record of private discussions between Mencius and his followers (most of MC 2A2). All other material was added by two Mencian successor schools, between c0303 and c0250. The more orthodox of these successor schools, which continued Mencius's own governmental focus, wrote the rest of MC 1-2 and all of MC 3. The other school, whose interests were chiefly philosophical, wrote MC 4-7. See now our Singapore article, and the included Mencius Worksheet.
The Mencius later became central to Neo-Confucianism. Together with the perhaps related Jung Yung, it bulks large in the Confucianism of our own time. It is the classical text most esteemed by modern philosophers.
DESCRIPTION DETAILS OTHER OPINIONS IMPLICATIONS SUGGESTIONS The Present Text
Title. Mvngdz "Master Mvng," referring to the school founder Mvng Kv. This is the commonest type of title for a Warring States school text, and it was probably assigned in Han times, when the school text came to be possessed by others. There is no reason for the text, or for either of the two portions of it identified below, to have had a formal name when they functioned as the house texts of the still active schools. The insider way of referring to such house traditions seems to have been jwan, "tradition."
Text. MC was not included in the Han canon, and thus does not appear in the Latter Han, Ngwei, or Tang stone classics (the MC text which is now part of the Tang stone classics was added in 1668 to complete that set retrospectively). Rwan Ywaen's standard 1816 edition, based in part on a stone text of Sung Gau-dzung's time which was partly still extant in Legge's time, is the basis for the HY (1942) and the HK (1995) concordance texts. For the chapters excised from the Han text by Jau Chi and later recovered from quotations, see the Mvngdz Waishu page.
Size. The HK concordance reports a text of 35,417 characters (our count of the text alone, not including titles, is 35,390), and a vocabulary of 1,913 different characters (ratio, 18.5 to 1).
Form. Divided into chapters. There were originally 11 of these (see the HS 30 listing), but Jau Chi (died 201) excised 4 of them as inferior, leaving our present 7 (for statistics, see the separate Inventory). Each of the extant chapters is named by its incipit, and is divided into shang (A) and sya (B) sections. (The shang/sya division was probably made to avoid having a physically unstable roll of bamboo strips, and has nothing to do with content; see Bamboo Strips and further examples cited there). The MC 1 interviews were organized by chronology, and arranged in modules of 3 + 1 interviews (with a noninterview, MC 1B16, which is chronologically out of place, bringing up the end and filling out the pattern). The later chapters show a tendency toward organization by pairing of sayings (possibly an inherited Analects device), and the portions so organized may be the cores of those chapters. This possibility has not been thoroughly investigated as of this writing.
Interpolations. The final paragraphs in the core interviews 1A3 and 1A5 conflict in tone and doctrine with what precedes, and are probably later additions, as are the wholly fictitious interviews composed later in the history of the school, and inserted at appropriate places in MC 1. Kennedy, in a review of Creel's Mencius textbook (Works 493), has spotted a later incorporated marginal gloss in MC 1B4. This is the only obvious interpolation from a time later than the formation of the text itself; it suggests the existence of a marginally annotated version of the text earlier than Jau Chi's commentary.
Content. There are two types: Purported interviews or near-interviews between Mencius and various rulers of his time (which have been collected in MC 1), and conversations with disciples (most of the rest of the material). The content of MC 2-3 focuses on the statecraft issues of Mencius's formal career, while that of MC 4-7 takes up the more philosophical aspects of statecraft and (toward the end of that series) explores techniques of self-cultivation and withdrawal. A sense of progressive demoralization is evident toward the ends of both these sequences, leading to frustration (MC 3) or inner withdrawal (MC 7).
Language. Karlgren grouped Mencius and the Analects as "Lu" texts. The two do have points in common, but they are distinct even in terms of Karlgren's test words. Kennedy has analyzed the grammar of the Mencius (an experiment which he himself calls abortive; see Works 323f) on the usual assumption of homogeneity of language. Our own analysis shows subtle grammatical differences (adverb position) between the two posthumous school texts (MC 1-3 and MC 4-7). Like the Mwodz, and for that matter the Analects, the Mencius has a zone, which can be interpreted as a chronological stratum, in which coverb yw is replaced by hu (see the Hu page).
The Original Text
Type. Doubly accretional, with a core and subsequent elaborations by not one but two parallel successor groups. See the Worksheet for an overview. The core consists of twelve interview transcripts. In chronological order, these are MC 1A1, 1A3:1-3, 1A5:1-3, 1A6; 1B1, 1B9, 1B16, 1B10, and 1B12-15. MC 2A2:1-23 is a conflation of several conversations from late in Mencius's lifetime, and we consider it to have been added to the core interviews shortly after Mencius's death in c0303, as a personal reminiscence. The rest of the extant Mencius consists of two separate sequences of chapters, added over time but in parallel with each other: (a) interpolations in MC 1, other material added to MC 2A2 to make up MC 2, and all of MC 3, by a southern successor school probably located in Tvng (the place where Mencius was last employed by a ruler), and (b) MC 4-7, by a more philosophically oriented successor school probably located in Dzou (Mencius's birthplace). MC 3 and 7 are essentially contemporaneous, and show closer interschool contact than the earlier material, they probably postdate the arrival and dominance of Sywndz in that area in 0254, and predate the final destruction of Lu and environs and its incorporation into Chu, in 0249.
Author. The genuine MC 1 interviews reflect Mvng Kv (c0385-c0303), in most cases as recorded by an amanuensis at the time. There are no passages which speak as though in the voice of Mencius; instead, he is always cited in the third person, and as "Master Mvng," a respectful designation which implies a disciple author. The chief figures in the two posthumous schools were probably Gungsun Chou (MC 1-3) and Wan Jang (MC 4-7), and they are the likeliest authors of the earliest material in the respective school texts. They are themselves mentioned or cited in the third person, evidently by some different school head after their deaths. Subsequent leaders of the two successor schools cannot presently be identified.
Date. The core interviews contain material from between 0320, when Mvng Kv was first interviewed in Ngwei (see MC 1A1, 1A3, and 1A5), to shortly before his death in Tvng, c0303 (see MC 2A2). The two successor texts run in parallel from the time of the split (c0300?) down to the closing of the text, presumably under the influence of Sywndz, who after the final Chu conquest of Lu in 0249 was in effect the dictator of that portion of the Chu empire.
Location. The core interviews reflect Mencius's career: first leaving Lu for Ngwei, moving then to a high post in Chi, and (after a visit to his birthplace Dzou) finding a final low-profile position in Tvng. Mencius's retinue must have been equally peripatetic in this period. Of the two successor schools, the governmental one (MC 1-3) probably continued in Tvng; the philosophical one (MC 4-7) may have relocated back to the north, most plausibly in Mencius's birthplace Dzou. Both Tvng and Dzou were on the border of Lu, and were affected by the Chi conquest of Sung in 0286. Both schools were apparently silenced by the final Chu conquest of the Lu area in 0249, which imposed the philosophical dictatorship of the school's arch-enemy Sywndz. (Sywndz had been the Chu governor at Lan-ling, in Sywjou, since the preliminary conquest of the Lu area in 0255/54).
Audience. The original MC 1 core was an identity document for Mencius's followers and for the later Mencian school. The positions taken in the subsequent material were at least in part known to the philosophical opponents of the Mencian school, which for MC 4-7 was chiefly the Sywndz group. Apart from its function as the institutional memory of the school itself, the MC also served as an elite controversial text.
Proprietor. The circle around Mencius originally kept its own primary records (at first, these may have consisted of only the the interview transcripts). The southern or statecraft school seems to have retained that original record at the time of the split; it is in that school text that issues of Mencius's career continue to be addressed. After the split, the two posthumous schools were undoubtedly in charge of their respective texts. It is possible that the two schools were forced together after 0249, and that the chapters Jau Chi excised were a joint production, of the merged survivor group, which like the Analects survivor group relocated in Chi, but there is really no basis at present for a firm conclusion.
Other Output. Some of the following may represent other textual activities of the Mencian school, or of groups on its fringes and sharing some of its outlook:
- (1) The Jung Yung, quoted in MC 4A12, and both quoted and named in the perhaps somewhat later LY *6:29 (dated tentatively to c0262 in Brooks Original 176), is compatible with many Mencian tenets, as the honored place of both these texts in later Confucian thought attests.
- (2) The Lu Mu-gung text (found at Gwodyen 1, and thus with a terminus ante quem of c0288), defending the right of remonstrance, belongs to the genre of Dz-sz anecdotes of which the Mencius contains the only other examples: the southern MC 2B11 on loyalty, and the northern 4B31, 5B7, and 6B6 on propriety. Of the two possibilities, LMG is closer to the interests of the southern Mencians; note that the southern passage MC 2B5 defends Mencius against the charge of earlier advising Chr Wa to remonstrate, resulting in Chr Wa's resignation. LMG, as a defense of remonstrance by Dz-sz, is compatible with the position which Mencius is faulted for taking in MC 2B5. The southern Mencians later retreat from their early strong position on remonstrance.
- (3) The Wu-sying documents (Gwodyen, Mawangdwei), especially the latter, are thought to reflect Mencian ethical principles which are not always fully articulated in our Mencius text, but which were known to be associated with the school, and were criticized in the early 03c by Sywndz. The cosmological version of "wu-sying" theory, which is probably its original form, is often associated with Chi, and may represent a Chi influence on Mencius and his successors, some of whom were themselves Chi natives. (One Mencius associate was surnamed Ywejvng, and a school of that name, presumably active in Han, is mentioned in the middle Han document HFZ 50 as one of eight current divisions of Confucianism).
Text History
Contacts. Mencius himself seems to have been in touch with all the major trends of late 04c thought. The following are relevant to those contacts: (1) The Analects chapters (LY 12-13) produced during Mencius's last years in the Lu school are very close to the statecraft of the core MC interviews (Brooks Original 97). They probably reflect Lu theories at a time when Mencius was still associated with the Lu Confucian school, and may have contributed his own ideas to that public position. (2) LY 12-13 are also in dialogue with the early Gwandz, and thus suggest that Mencius knew of (and differed with) those Chi theories. (3) Mencius's meditation techniques (MC 2A2) may derive from a source contemporary with the early and middle layers of the DDJ, which is to say, also with the earliest of the Gwandz meditation texts, GZ 49. (4) The populist social ideology of the Dzwo Jwan (completed in Chi in c0312, the year after Mencius's departure from Chi) is at many points similar to that of the historical Mencius. It is possible that Mencius or his retinue, returning from Lu to Chi in 0317, may have had a role in the transference of an early state of the DJ (which up to that point had been a Lu effort) to Chi, or in the final shaping of the text in Chi. (5) Mician influence on Mencius is important, and usually underrated. The Mician concept of li "benefit," though it triggers an adverse reaction in MC 1A1 as a general principle, actually pervades the thought and the political stance of Mencius, which fully acknowledges the importance of social utility, though still within a moral framework. Mencius offers his system not as a philosophical ideal, but as something that can be applied, and will give good results if applied. Coming to the Mencian position, after Mencius, we have (6) Sywndz school opposition, most famously the human nature dispute (MC 6, SZ 23). Dan Robins has shown that both these texts are accretional: each contains several stages of its side of the joint argument. (7) That human nature argument is noted, and a decision in favor of the environmentalist Mencian position seems to be given, in LY 17:1 (c0270). (8) A general Mencian presence can be argued in the Lw-shr Chun/Chyou (more precisely, in its first layer, datable to c0240).
Transmission. The first transmitters were the first compilers, the second and third generation disciples who led the two successor Mencian schools. We know nothing about disciple sequences within those schools, or when they ended. Lyou Dv, King of Hvjyen in 0155-c0130, is said to have obtained and preserved the Mencius text along with other Confucian writings and the Dau/Dv Jing. His copy is presumably the one that found its way into the Han Palace Library. The Mencius was known to the SJ authors at the end of the 02nd century, and the HS 30 Palace Library catalogue mentions what is probably that same copy, which was in 11 chapters). This 11-chapter Han text was edited into its present form at the end of Latter Han by Jau Chi, who excised 4 chapters as inferior. In Jau Chi's abridgement, the Mencius has been continually available to scholarship until it was canonized in Sung. Attempts have been made to regather from quotations the four chapters that Jau Chi excised. The chief ones are by Li Tyau-ywaen (1734-1803) and by Ma Gwo-han (1794-1857). The results are conventionally called the Mvngdz Wai-shu. They are, as Jau Chi apparently had judged, of almost superhumanly slight literary or philosophical interest.
Importance. Mencius was a major political and intellectual figure in his own time, and remained consequential afterward. His northern or philosophical successor school, with its new ideas, was regarded as a serious rival by the contemporary Sywndz movement, and its MC 6 was the target of the human nature tract in SZ 23. The Mencius functioned as a mixed philosophical and political work through the Tang dynasty. Since its incorporation into the canon in Sung, under Neo-Confucian auspices, its philosophical side (in particular, its politically harmless mental self-cultivation side, MC 6-7) have come increasingly to the fore, and it is these aspects that occupy most modern readers. The inspirational Mencian view of human and political possibilities has always attracted readers, but those same qualities also aroused opposition in Ming China and its contemporaries, the Oriental despotisms of Korea, and Japan, which not unreasonably felt threatened by such doctrines as the Mencian "right of revolution."The political side of Mencius remains vital, but only potentially so. Life under those regimes is simpler if one drops the public political program, and concentrates instead on inner concentration. This is approximately what has happened to the Mencius.
Commentaries. The earliest extant commentary is by Jau Chi; its language has been studied in Dobson Late. The orthodox interpretation is that of Ju Syi's Mvngdz Ji-ju (1177). The modern standard commentary is by Jyau Sywn (1763-1820), a relative of Rwan Ywaen and an admirer of Dai Jvn; it was written at the end of his life, in 1818-1820. Dai Jvn's own treatise on the meaning of terms in Mencius (Mvngdz Dz-yi, 1888) has been philosophically influential. The notes in Legge's 1861 translation are a useful commentary. Waley's Notes (1936) supplement Jyau Sywn and Legge.
Translations. Legge (1861, 1895) is still standard; Lau (1970, 1984) is at once more modern and more orthodox. Wilhelm (1916) has points of independent interest. A translation and commentary by the present authors is in preparation.
Studies. Brooks Nature (2002) outlines our conclusions about the growth of the text and some of their implications. See also Brooks Social Engagement (2001). Schumacher Begriff (1993) explores the tension between li "advantage" and yi "right" in Mencius and other texts, and the important but neglected relation between Mencian and Mician doctrines.
Citation Convention. By chapter number, with A/B representing the shang/sya division, and the passage number following. It is helpful to add Legge's subdivisions, thus 1A7:12. Do not follow the chapter numbering, from 1 (1A) to 14 (7B), used in the HK concordance.
There is a passage numbering crux at 4A7. The HY concordance divides this into two, leading to a numbering difference of 1 until the editors combine the standard text's 4A22 and 4A23 as 4A23; HY and the standard text agree again from 4A24 onward. The 4A7 division separates a paragraph by "Mencius" from a longer segment beginning with a quotation from Chi Jing-gung. But the latter is readily interpreted as quoted by the "Mencius" of the previous paragraph in illustration of his point about the weak serving the strong, just as the citation of a child's song about the Tsanglang River illustrates the point of 4A8, following, and does not begin a new section. At the other end, the HY text of 4A23 features a "Mvngdz ywe" incipit in the middle, which should indeed normally signal a passage division. Both HY departures are thus dubious, and the HK (and standard) text's treatment is thus preferable in both instances. As in the Analects, many of these editorial clumping or splitting decisions ultimately depend on judgements about whether a related pair of passages should be counted as one or two. A reconstruction of the first form of MC 4 will need to consider these subtleties, but for citation purposes, follow the standard numbering of passages (seen in Legge and the passage numbering, not the chapter numbering, of the HK concordance).
Details A detailed argument for the structure and date of the Mencius is available in our paper in the Singapore conference volume; for an outline of our argument see the Summary, and for an updated graphic overview of our conclusions, see the revised Worksheet. The paragraphs below explore additional points.
Mencius's Career. See the separate page.
Mencius's Enemies. Outside the Confucian family, the MC term "Yang/Mwo" for its chief philosophical rivals probably has in view the Jwangdz movement (which was separately attacked by LY 18:5-7 for its selfishness) and the Mician movement. The Jwangdz's counterpart term is "Ru/Mwo" (JZ 2, 11, 14, 22, 24, 25; some of these are late and we assume the term had by then become conventional, though it would have been still apposite). The earlier of these Jwangdz phrases might be thought to refer to "Sywndz and the Micians," since Sywndz greatly developed the term Ru, while that term hardly appears in the Mencius. But the chapters in Mencius where Ru does appear (3A, 7B) are the same ones in which the term "Yang/Mwo" appears, namely MC 3B and 7B. The Sywndzian term Ru, uncharacteristic for the Mencians, may have been adopted by them at this time as part of a defensive adaptation in or after 0254, the date when Sywndz was established at Lan-ling as governor of the territory, including the Sywjou area just south of Lu proper, in which the Mencian schools were located, following its conquest by Chu in 0255/0254. See the Analects page, or Brooks Original ad loc, for analogous Analects gestures of accommodation to Sywndzian orthodoxy, such as LY *13:3 and the covert satire LY 19. Then MC 3 and 7, along with the Jwangdz chapters in which the counterpart Yang/Mwo usage first became established (see the Jwangdz entry) both date to the years just prior to 0250.
The links, some of them reciprocal, with what appear to be early and middle writings of Sywndz, date the corresponding portions of the Mencius to the first half of the 03c. The probability that both the Analects and the Mencius were subjected to Sywndzian influence after the initial Chu conquests of 0255/54, and effectively brought to an end by the Chu final conquest of Lu in 0249, fixes specific portions of both texts at mid-century. This locates much of the Mencius later than does the traditional theory, which credits all of it to Mvng Kv and thus to the late 04c.
Our Theory. Here are the major steps followed in reaching the present theory:
- (1) Establishing the dates of the historical Mencius as boundaries for the writings attributed to him, by reconstructing the obviously corrupt traditional date.
- (2) Distinguishing two groups of MC 1 interviews by content (one group is respectful and the other, less plausible, group is not; the two groups also imply different degrees of Confucianization in the society of the time).
- (3) Linguistic analysis of these two groups shows that only one of them contains certain linguistic peculiarities that seem to characterize the speech of Mencius.
- (4) Detecting development and other signs of the passage of time, both in the MC 1-3 or governmental strand and in the MC 4-7 or philosophical strand.
- (5) These differences correspond with systematic if subtle linguistic differences between the two strands.
- (6) Demonstrating the closeness of the respective final chapters, MC 3 and MC 7 in date, as seen in usage, thought, their apparently hostile mutual interactions, and their implied external world, in which both strands have the same enemies (to which the same names are given) and many of the same preoccupations.
Other Opinions Jau Chi's claim (latter Han) that Mencius was the author of the text, a claim later echoed by Ju Syi, can be dismissed at the outset: the text always refers to Mencius in the third person, and thus was written by someone else. The milder claim that the text was put together by Mencius in collaboration with his disciples can be said to be implied by the statement in SJ 63. The compilation role of the disciples was openly advanced by Yau Syin (Three Kingdoms period), and later articulated by Han Yw, Jang Ji, and Lin Shvn-sz (Tang); and by still others in later periods. It was left for Lin Jr-chi (Sung) to notice that since the chief disciples are also mentioned in the third person, sometimes by terms of respect (Wandz = "Master Wan," which would be an appropriate form of address only for Wan Jang's disciples or their successors), at least some second-generation disciples were probably also involved as compilers. This conclusion is logically impregnable, but it has not dislodged the traditional view that all of the Mencius text reflects only the thought of the historical Mencius.
Early Criticisms. The text was criticized both before and after its entry into the state-approved canon. Wang Chung (Latter Han) devoted an essay (LH 30) to its flaws of logic and candor, anticipating the spirit of Waley's famous "nugatory" judgement. Szma Gwang had a notable aversion to the Mencius, and on one occasion called it a forgery of Eastern Han date. Fvng Syou (Sung) produced an Abridged Mencius (Shan Mvng) which omitted parts he considered contrary to the spirit of classical culture. The first Emperor of the Ming loathed the Mencian "right of revolution" doctrine, as did Confucianists in Korea (where another abridged version of Mencius was published) and in Japan. Kang You-wei (1858-1927) considered that the arrangement of the text was defective, and produced his own improved version (Henderson Scripture 154; Henderson Kang). The Chywn-shu Jr-yau (early Tang) treated the Mencius largely as a statecraft text, but Han Yw and following him Ju Syi have repositioned it as a philosophical text, concentrating especially on the material in MC 4-7 (representing the northern or philosophical school, though not necessarily highlighting the extreme populist statements of that school) and largely ignoring MC 1-3 (representing the southern or statecraft school). The Index Locorum of any modern work on the Mencius will tend to show the same tilt toward MC 4-7. It is generally true that over the last thousand years, the standing of the Mencius text within Chinese culture has increased in proportion as its statecraft elements, which are radical in implication, have been ignored.
Orthodox Views stress the purity of the text above all else. Han Yw's phrase "the purest of the pure" had in view its doctrinal purity, but modern linguists have also been persuaded to regard the Mencius as an exceptionally safe and uniform linguistic sample of Warring States Chinese. The subtle grammatical and lexical differences noted above between the northern and southern school portions of the text suggest that the "linguistic purity" view cannot itself be maintained in its full purity. More precise linguistic statements should be possible if the Mencius text sample is appropriately limited.
Modern Intrigues. A reader for the University of Hawaii Press in 2000 argued that the existence of significant time depth in the Mencius (claimed as a discovery by our Nature paper, which was then under consideration by that Press as part of the Singapore Mencius Conference volume) was universally accepted by scholars, and cited Jeffrey Riegel and David Nivison in particular as holding that view. The implication was that our paper could without loss be abridged in, or removed from, the Conference volume.
Anything goes in Sinology, no doubt, but not all of it goes undetected; it is risky to misrepresent living persons. Riegel and Nivison were promptly queried, as to where they had published their views on significant time depth in the Mencius. Here are their responses, which were made for attribution:
- "I have never held the views attributed to me" (Jeffrey Riegel)
- "I don't know what this guy is talking about" (David S Nivison)
In the end, the paper survived the misrepresentation, and was included in the Conference volume as finally published. The above incident is summarized in its note 3.
Implications Specific. The ability of the present Mencius theory to clarify patterns or anomalies noted by others in the text was first tested at the Singapore Mencius Conference of 1999, when it was argued that the data cited in some of the other conference papers was distributed along the lines set out in the Mencius Worksheet. The Mencius theory was not in the first place constructed by considering these data (a brief account of the theory was included in our Prospects essay of 1994, long before the Conference), and they thus provide an independent check of the adequacy and fruitfulness of the theory. Some samples, from the Conference and later, are:
- The long Ames/Bloom dispute over human nature (two Singapore papers)
- Robert Eno on certain abnormal passages in MC (Singapore paper)
- David Nivison on conceptions of history in MC (Singapore paper)
- Yi Yin in Mencius (from our Singapore paper)
- Remonstrance in Mencius (from our Singapore paper)
- The Term Gwojya (from WSW discussion, 2004)
These examples collectively render it likely that the proposed dating, and the proposed division into two parallel posthumous schools, are along the right lines.
General. The larger implication of the present theory is that the dynamics of the early Mencian movement may be more complex than originally suspected, and may be relevant in large part to a different half-century than has usually been assumed. This gives a different tendency to the history of early Chinese thought. In principle, Mencius is the central and most closely datable of the late 04c philosophical figures, and the pattern of his contacts and affinities (as distinct from those of his subsequent school) ought to be a major nexus within that history.
Suggestions Research. Attractive topics abound. Some are currently being pursued, but there is plenty of room for more. Among them are: Mencius and meditation. Mencius and Micianism. Mencius as the great ideological eclectic of the world of c0325, a role which Sywndz assumed in the following generation. The possibility that original Mencianism was suited only to the smaller states (such as Tvng, rather than great Chi), and that those states were themselves unsuited to the age (the hopelessness of Tvng's position is made clear in the text), Sywndz being more successful in adapting Confucianism to large-state needs. Relation between Mencius or his colleagues and the final composition of the Dzwo Jwan in Chi (see now our Dzwo Jwan article). Relation between the Mencian northern school (MC 4-7) and the early layers of the Jung Yung. Possible overlap in date between successive chapters in each strand of MC. Significance of the definite but incomplete pattern of paired passages in most Mencian chapters. Tensions between northern (theoretical) and southern (practical) development of the same concepts. The famous problem of the nature and tone of MC 5 (which at least in part constitutes a running dispute with the forgers of supposedly ancient traditions). Lexical and grammatical differences between the northern and southern school texts, and their meaning for dialect geography. Investigation of the speeches attributed in this text to Chi persons, as samples of Warring States Chi language. Authenticity and (Chi?) locale of the Mvngdz Wai-shu. The post-Sywndzian accommodation with Mencian motifs, such as the tale of Mencius's Wife. Mencianism in Han, which is little documented, but was evidently more pervasive (as against the better-known influence of Sywndz) than one might at first have supposed.
See Also: Dzwo Jwan, Jung Yung, Lu Mu-gung, Wu-sying
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