reorganizing the population, resettling devastated areas, and colonizing the
frontiers. Buddhist monasteries soon became the leading edge of economic
growth; their wealth and privileges became objects of contention between
landed magnates and court factions.
Religious factions converged on the center when government reunified.
Military struggle eventually resulted in reunification under the Sui (581–618)
and, after further civil war, the T’ang (618–900). There was a successful effort
to rebuild the central administration and to regain civilian control over a
conscript army. Revenue collection, public works, and state rituals were ex-
panded in the Han tradition; professionalized Confucian administrators re-
cruited by a formal examination system once again began to expand their
influence. Their usual struggles with the palace servants and the court aristoc-
racy were now complicated by patronage for Buddhists and Taoists. Battles
over the imperial succession often took on overtones of religious factionalism.
Taoism and Buddhism had brief episodes as state-imposed religions. More
usually, the panoply of state rituals took precedence, administered by Con-
fucians who were much more bureaucrats than priests. The structure had
become one of religious pluralism under the umbrella of a state administra-
tion that typically sought ritual legitimation simultaneously from all religions
and cults.When Does Rivalry Produce Creativity and When Stagnation?
A conflict theory of intellectual life emphasizes opposition as the generator of
creativity. But Chinese philosophy points up the pattern in which opposing
factions exist, sometimes for dozens of generations, without much intellectual
change. We see one such instance in the later Han, in the stagnant rivalry
between the religious and scholarly wings of the Confucian school. After the
disintegration of the Han dynasty, the prevailing pattern becomes a broad
three-way competition among Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist camps. But for
long periods Confucianism shows almost no creativity; except for one genera-
tion around 800 c.e. (see Chapter 6, Figures 6.1 through 6.4), we find no
notable Confucian philosophers until 1050, when the Neo-Confucian move-
ment comes alive for half a dozen generations. Buddhist philosophers monop-
olize creativity for much of this period, especially from 400 to 900, then
gradually tail off to around 1200, and produce nothing significant thereafter.
Taoism shows intermittent religious changes during this time but with long
phases of stagnation, especially on the level of abstract philosophy.
Yet there were plenty of confrontations among these major positions. There
was a lively struggle for patronage; Taoists and Buddhists especially instigated
intermittent purges, confiscations, and suppressions of each other. Intellectual162 •^ Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths