Yang Xiong

Yang Xiong a Han dynasty philosopher, poet and philologist (53 BC-18 AD) whose work spans rhapsody, ethics, cosmology and the study of language. A courtier under the emperors Cheng and Ai and later a minister under the usurper Wang Mang, he is remembered as a profound thinker who sought to systematise Confucian doctrine and to record the speech of the empire.

Life and Career

Yang Xiong was born in 53 BC in the region of Shu, in the west of the Han empire, the same area that had produced Sima Xiangru a century and a half earlier. He was a quiet and studious youth, afflicted with a stutter that made him reluctant to speak in public, and he devoted himself to reading and to the composition of literature. He admired Sima Xiangru and modelled his early rhapsodies on that master.

He travelled to the capital as a young man and presented his work at court, where his fu on the imperial hunts and parks won him a position and the favour of the emperor Cheng. For some years he served as a palace attendant and official, composing on commission and taking part in the ceremonial and literary life of the court, but he gradually came to feel that the ornamental rhapsody was a trivial form and that his true vocation lay in philosophy.

After the death of emperor Cheng he withdrew from the composition of fu and turned to scholarship and moral reflection. He held office under the emperor Ai and, after the accession of Wang Mang to the throne, accepted a position in the new administration, a decision that later critics regarded as a blemish on his reputation. He died in 18 AD, having spent his last years in study and teaching.

Philosophical Works

Yang Xiong's most important philosophical work is the Model Sayings, a book written in imitation of the Analects of Confucius, in which his own teachings are set out in the form of brief dialogues and aphorisms. In it he defends the Confucian doctrine against the challenges of other schools and elaborates his understanding of human nature, learning and the moral life.

A central theme of his thought is the importance of self-cultivation through learning. He argued that human nature is neither wholly good nor wholly bad but is shaped by effort and practice, and that the study of the classics and the imitation of the sages are the means by which a person becomes virtuous. This emphasis on cultivation placed him in the mainstream of Confucian ethics while allowing him to give it a distinctive formulation.

He also wrote the Supreme Mystery, a work modelled on the classic of changes, in which he developed a cosmology based on a system of triads rather than the yin-yang pairs of the older text. The Supreme Mystery sets out a view of the cosmos in which heaven, earth and humanity form a triad, and it uses a system of symbolic figures to describe the phases of change. Though less influential than the classic it imitated, it is a serious and original work of Han cosmology.

The Study of Language

Yang Xiong is also celebrated as a pioneer of Chinese linguistics. His most remarkable work in this field is the Regional Words, a dictionary of dialect vocabulary in which he recorded the different words used for the same thing in different parts of the empire. To compile it he gathered information from officials, soldiers, merchants and travellers who passed through the capital, placing them under a kind of informal and friendly interrogation.

The Regional Words is the earliest surviving systematic record of Chinese dialect variation, and it remains a source of great value for the historical study of the language. It reveals a rich diversity of speech behind the written standard, and it shows an acute awareness that language varies with place and social circumstance. The method by which it was compiled, relying on the systematic collection of spoken usage, was strikingly empirical for its time.

He also wrote a glossary of difficult words in the ancient classics, the Co-ordination of Dialects, which sought to explain obsolete expressions found in the literature of earlier centuries. Together these philological works established him as a founder of the scholarly study of the Chinese language and of the exegetical tradition that sought to make the classics intelligible to later readers.

Poetry and Prose

In his earlier years Yang Xiong was a celebrated writer of fu, and several of his rhapsodies survive, including works on the great imperial sacrifices and on the capital cities. These compositions display the abundance and verbal ingenuity of the genre, and they show the influence of Sima Xiangru in their vast scope and elaborate constructions.

In later life, however, he spoke with some disparagement of the fu, likening it to a decorative art that pleased the eye but failed to instruct, and he turned his energy to philosophy and scholarship. This change of heart, recorded in his own reflections, became an important episode in the history of Chinese literary criticism, illustrating the tension between ornament and moral purpose that runs through the tradition.

His prose, including his memorials and letters, is marked by clarity and a sober, argumentative style. He preferred plain statement to rhetorical display, and his mature writing embodies the seriousness that he came to value above the brilliance of his youth.

Reputation and Legacy

Yang Xiong's reputation in later ages was complex. He was admired as a moralist and a scholar, and his philosophical and philological works were studied by generations of Confucian thinkers, but his service to Wang Mang, the usurper whose brief dynasty interrupted the Han, was held against him by some critics who felt that a true scholar should have withdrawn from the corrupt court.

The philosopher and commentator who wrote under the name of Master Yang was among the most frequently quoted of the Han thinkers, and his defence of Confucian learning influenced later scholars and officials. His account of the value of learning and self-cultivation became part of the common inheritance of Chinese ethical thought.

His Regional Words remains his most distinctive monument, a work that preserves a lost world of speech and reveals the breadth of his curiosity. He is remembered as a man who combined the brilliance of the poet with the patience of the philologist and the gravity of the philosopher, and who stands among the most versatile minds of the Han era.

See also

• Han dynasty philosophy
• Confucianism
• Chinese rhapsody
• Chinese dialectology