Writing for the empire : a study of Ban Gu's (32-92 CE) "Dian yin" (Elicitation of the canon)

Abstract

The present study focuses on the “Dian yin” (Elicitation of the canon) by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), a piece of Han panegyrical prose that was traditionally accorded much prestige but marginalized by later literary historiography chiefly because of its panegyrical nature. The thesis argues that underneath the surface of effusive praise and epideictic rhetoric lies a defense of the legitimacy of the Later Han dynasty and an advocation for the long-anticipated reform of state rituals. Due to its being understudied in previous scholarship, some basic issues regarding the “Dian yin” – for example, when it was written, who was the target readership, what purposes did it serve – had remained unclear. Failure to contextualize the text in the correct historical background led past scholars to misinterpret its purport as urging the practice of the feng and shan sacrifices at Mount Tai. With the help of recent scholarship, this study finds that Ban Gu probably composed this piece late in the reign of Emperor Zhang, between early 87 to early 88 CE, to lend his support to the sovereign in his ritual reform, already set in motion partially due to the author’s previous effort. This hypothesis also sheds new light on the long-forgotten, aborted reform effort. The thesis first addresses the overlooked issue of the target readership of “Dian yin” and similar writings in the “Portents” genre. It then places the text firmly in the context of the author’s life and against the political and intellectual background in which it was created. The last part of the discussion focuses on the key legitimate issues faced by the re-established polity of the Later Han, with an emphasis of the legitimating devices Ban Gu utilized in defending the dynastic legitimacy. One contribution of the study is to translate the “Dian yin,” together with the paratextual “Presentation” and the Cai Yong commentary, for the first time into English. The comprehensively annotated translation forms the basis for this historically informed and textually grounded study. The study aims to shed light on the well-studied writer Ban Gu from one of his least-studied works, drawing attention to his stances on a number of key issues of the time and his transformation of the political discourse on legitimacy into a masterpiece of court literature. The results have interdisciplinary significance for the fields of genre theory, the Han politics, early Chinese intellectual history, and even cosmology.