ism, but its continuous hegemony should not be taken for granted. In the late
Warring States, Confucianism was one faction among many, and not the
dominant one; nor was its position especially high through the first two
generations of the Han. The Confucian ju maneuvered their way into power
through a series of moves on both intellectual and organizational terrain.
The first move was to establish a tie to the divination practices which
appealed so strongly to lay politicians. At the time of transition between the
Ch’in and Han dynasties, when books of the philosophical schools were
banned, divination texts were exempted. They became the turf on which
intellectual schools scrambled for survival. One faction of Confucians adopted
a relatively recent compilation of old divination records, and added commen-
taries, ascribed to Confucius himself, interpreting the hexagrams of broken or
unbroken lines in terms of advice for the Confucian “superior man” (Graham,
1989: 358–359). Within a generation or two the book was regarded as one of
the canonical ancient texts, now called the Yi Ching—“Classic of Changes.”
From this base in the divination camp, the Confucians next were able to absorb
the Yin-Yang school into a dominant synthesis. All others of the old Warring
States intellectual schools disappeared, leaving Confucian occultism in the
center of the attention space.
The material base was built up, first by restoring the cult of Heaven in the
sacrificial ritual of the court. Later Confucius himself was deified. A periodic
ritual was established, offering homage to the emblem of their group identity,
in effect putting Confucians in the position of ritual precedence. The doctrine
was developed that Confucius himself had held the Mandate of Heaven as de
facto earthly ruler, and furthermore that there was a series of such sages,
periodically reappearing, leading one to expect further such Confucian rulers.
On the mundane plane, this ideology corresponded to the change by which the
Confucians were turning from ju, custodians of ancient texts, into bureaucratic
officials claiming a monopoly on official positions in government. A state
university was founded in 124 b.c.e. to train officials; by 5 c.e. it had grown
to 3,000 students (CHC, 1986: 756).
Confucian claims for ideological and administrative monopoly were ideal-
ized; reality fell considerably short. Only a start was made at an administrative
bureaucracy recruited as a meritocracy of educated officials. Clans and noble
families still held sway in the provinces, and patrimonial politics remained
influential at court. Admission to the state university was not by competitive
examination but by patronage of notables. The effects on intellectual creativity
occurred principally at the moment when the structure was first established.
In the early Han, the court patronized official teaching by 70 Erudites, covering
the range of texts and specialties which had come down from the Warring
States. Under the new emperor Wu Ti (r. 141–86 b.c.e.), the Confucians struck:154 •^ Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths