Muhammad and His Dao 173
Most of the greetings to Ma Zhu’s Guide to Islam refer to Mu-
hammad as a sage. For example, Li Yanling, the Chinese Muslim
teacher from Jining, depicted Muhammad in a poem as “the sage
Muhammad, who was born in Mecca” 聖人出在天方, whose
teaching “flows toward [and fills] the four seas” 四海向中流.^16
Similar references appear repeatedly throughout the huge number
of poems composed by Chinese Muslim poets for the occasion of
the publication of Ma Zhu’s Guide.^17
Ding Peng丁澎 (fl. 1650 – 1695 ), a native of Hangzhou and a pro-
lific poet,^18 for example, claimed that Confucius spoke in his teach-
ings of “a sage who comes from the West.”^19 According to Ding,
“First there was Adam, who knew the word of God. But then his
[Adam’s] message was gradually distorted. Superior people could
not conduct themselves according to his Dao 上之人不能行其道,
and inferior people could not follow his teaching 下之人不能率其
教. Therefore, Muhammad the sage rose up in all lands of the west
in order to rectify and clarify, explain and spread, the Dao of the
sages” 於是聖人起而修明之群土西方闡揚聖道.^20
For those readers unable to see the implications of this narrative,
Ding concluded by saying that Confucius’ words referred directly
to Muhammad (西方有聖人焉孔子嘗言之).^21 The accuracy of
Ding’s claim about Confucius is not of immediate relevance. What
mattered to Ding was that Confucius—the ultimate sage, the sage
of all sages—spoke of Muhammad as a sage, thus giving him the ul-
timate stamp, as it were, of sagehood. Whereas Ma validated his
depiction of Muhammad as a sage by grounding it in the actions of
Chinese emperors, Ding found greater validation still in linking
—————
16. Li Yanling, “Zengyan,” in HRZ (Qingdai) p. 351 ; also in QZZN, p. 17.
17. These were Ma Yanrui, Ma Zhiqi, Huangfu Jing, and Cai Haoming. All
poems praised the “sage who comes from the west”; see HRZ (Qingdai) pp. 352 – 56 ;
also QZZN, pp. 16 – 19.
18. See Ding’s biography in HRZ (Qingdai), pp. 135 – 36.
19. Ding Peng, “Jiaokuan jielun xu” (Preface to the Jiaokuan jielun), dated 1691 ,
in HRZ (Qingdai), p. 235.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 234. The same claim is also made by an earlier writer, Liang Yijun
梁以浚 (fl. 1640 s- 60 s), in his preface to Wang Daiyu’s Qingzhen zhengquan; see
Liang Yijun, “Xu” (Preface), in ZQX, p. 2.