ABSTRACT

The Confucian classics were transmitted orally for centuries before they were committed to writing—and long after the invention of writing. The confusion of writing with divinatory trigrams is itself interesting, since the earliest deciphered written characters served the divination rituals. It highlights the magico-religious character of the writing system, reflected even today in the practice of divination by word-analysis or glyphomancy. Writing was invented in China less for the purpose of communication between human beings and more for communication between humans and the gods and ancestral spirits. Exegetes and interpreters sought to partake of textual authority by bending the words and sentences, just as do our contemporary experts in the constitutions of states and, in the case of China, often with the intention of limiting the exercise of despotic power. The Confucian canon had normative authority, having allegedly come from the sages. The classics are the custodians of the authority coming from the ancient sages.