In this presentation, I explore how the "Yiwen zhi" of the Hanshu, the earliest library catalog in China, defended Confucian authority over the Classics by proposing a theory that all masters (zhuzi) were descendants of ancient royal officials. While previous scholarship has argued that it was not until the late Western Han that Rujia, as a school of thought, became the state ideology, insufficient attention has been given to why the Classics, once shared cultural heritages in the preHan period, became exclusively Confucian propriety in the imperial history of China. My paper aims to address this gap.
Location and Address
1219 Cathedral of Learning