172 Muhammad and His Dao
was here making use of Lu Jiuyuan, although he did not mention
him by name. He then presented Islam: “Our teaching is transmit-
ted from the west, and its whole mind is transmitted [by] several
[written] words [i.e., books] like this one classic, Explication of
Kalām” 吾教傳自西方亦具心傳數字如克里默解一經是矣.^12
Zhang Junshi presented Muhammad as the “sage” (shengren)
whose “conduct” (xing 行) must be followed by the Muslims (須循
聖行). “What the sage did, we do; what the sage forbade, we for-
bid” 聖人之所為吾為之聖人之所禁吾禁之.^13 Lest the parallel be
lost on his reader, Zhang explained explicitly that this is exactly
akin to following the conduct of Yao and Shun, the great legen-
dary Chinese sage-kings whose behavior and conduct became a
model for subsequent generations.^14
Interestingly, in the Muslim world the tradition of hadith and
hadith interpretation provides, in theory at least, the basis for all
aspects of Muslim conduct, but Chinese Muslim scholars did not
invoke these hadith traditions of the Prophet as the basis for behav-
ior and conduct. Instead, they more readily used the notion that
Muhammad was a sage as the reason for emulating his conduct. In
both approaches Muhammad is to be emulated. But whereas the
ideology behind hadith (which is termed, significantly, shengyu
聖諭)^15 is that Muhammad is to be imitated because he is the
Prophet, the reasoning behind Chinese Muslim interpretations is
that Muhammad is to be imitated because he is a sage, and sages, in
Chinese tradition, are figures worthy of emulation. Muhammad is
not “like” a sage, or “equal to” the sages; he is a sage, counted
among the others.
In later texts, particularly, this theme of Muhammad as a sage is
common and is developed in a more explicit and elaborate way.
—————
12. Zhang Zhong, “Kelimo jie xu” (Preface to the Kelimo), in HRZ (Qingdai),
p. 213.
13. Ibid.
14. In the second volume of Kelimo, Zhang put it simply and explicitly: “Mu-
hammad [should be] translated ‘Most Sagely’ ” 穆罕默德譯曰至聖 (Zhang Zhong
[Zhang Junshi], Kelimo jie, in HRZ [(Qingdai], p. 221 ).
15. The term, which in a non-Muslim Chinese context means “imperial edict,”
was used in the Chinese educational system at least as early as the mid-sixteenth
century.