Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (78 page)

The Confucian literature on mourning gives fullest detail on the behavior expected of those in mourning for their parents. They were to abstain from comforts, including tasty food and soft beds, and withdraw from many activities, including political office and making offerings at the ancestral altar. They could not marry or officiate at a marriage and were expected to abstain from sexual relations and from drinking wine.

Over time, as funerary practices not documented in the Classics gained hold, Confucian scholars debated at length which ones could be considered minor variations of canonical practices, which were harmless elaborations, and which were pernicious violations of the spirit of the Classics that had to be opposed.

In Song times (960–1276) Zhu Xi and other leading Confucian scholars wrote against such practices as cremation instead of burial, playing music at funerals, calling in monks to perform Buddhist services, and leaving bodies unburied for long periods of time, often because the descendants were not yet able to secure a grave that would be favorable according to geomancy.

Although many Confucian scholars became specialists in ritual, an equally important strand of Confucianism stressed the moral dimensions of family life.

Particularly important here was the concept of filial piety, understood as the feelings of love and obligation a child should have toward his parents and the ways he should act on them. Even though filial piety was strongly associated with the followers of Confucius, other religions and schools of thought did not attack it. Buddhists, in adapting to China, did not challenge the weight placed on filial piety; rather they argued that their teachings allowed a child to fulfill his filial duties to the utmost, for instance by aiding the salvation of deceased 370

ancestors. Daoists of the Song and later regularly promoted filial piety in their moral tracts.

The exaltation of filial piety was carried to extreme heights in the Han period. In the
Record of Ritual
Zengzi asserts that true goodness, propriety, righteousness, and sincerity all lay in reverent, persistent service to parents and cautious behavior that avoids bringing shame on them. The
Classic of Filial
Piety
attributed to Confucius the statement that “filial piety is the root of all virtue and the source of all teachings.” The Han government made filial piety a criterion for selecting men to office and rewarded extreme acts of filial piety.

Depictions of paragons of filial piety were a common theme in Han art. Religious passion often seems to have underlay the more extreme forms of filial piety. Truly devoted children, for instance, would cut off a piece of their flesh to feed an ill parent, confident that it would cure them. Stories of such self-sacrificing filial exemplars were eventually collected into the widely circulated
Twenty-Four Filial Sons.

The moral weight assigned to filial piety had pervasive effects on Chinese culture and social organization. Proverbs and popular literature show the contempt people had for those who flouted or ignored the demands of filial piety.

Law codes treated violations of filial piety, such as cursing parents or acciden-tally causing them bodily harm, as major crimes. The opinion of Mencius that the worst of unfilial acts was to fail to have descendents, often quoted in later ages, not only shaped Chinese family dynamics but also Chinese population growth.

Much more space is given in the core Confucian texts to filial piety, ancestral rites, and the proper way to bury and mourn parents than to sex and husband-wife relations. The
Record of Ritual
includes instructions on wedding rituals and the proper behavior of daughters-in-law, but says much more about how a married woman should treat her parents-in-law than how she should treat her husband (and even less on how a man should treat his wife). Within the tradition of Confucian scholarship every effort was made to avoid direct discussion of sexual acts. Thus, to refer to the need to abstain from sexual intercourse as part of the purification necessary before making offerings to ancestors, the phrase “does not enter the inner quarters” was used. Girls not yet married are referred to as “girls living at home,” which implied that they had not yet had sexual relations but not nearly as explicitly as the term
virgin
does in English.

SELECTION OF TEXTS

For this sourcebook texts were selected to illustrate the several ways Confucianism has been associated with sex, marriage, and the family in China. The texts are arranged chronologically, with the first six illustrating what is found in the Classics. Even fragmentary statements in the Classics on subjects such as marriage were frequently quoted by later authors as authoritative. Besides passages
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that assert the desirability of certain behaviors, I have also included passages that describe but do not comment on sexual matters. Songs in the
Book of
Poetry
touch on issues of sexual attraction and courtship. The
Zuo zhuan
includes matter-of-fact references to nonstandard sexual behavior—from incest and rape to rulers who took over the wives of their subordinates and women who schemed to supplant rivals or advance their children over the children of other wives.

The Classics may have been the authoritative source for correct family behavior, but they were not easy to read. To reach children and those with less education, Confucian teachers over the centuries wrote didactic works of all kinds. Here we have selections from seven, ranging from the Han (202 bce– 220 ce) through the Song periods (960–1276). The first one included here, the
Classic of Filial Piety,
was eventually classed as a Confucian Classic, but it was probably originally written as a primer aimed at young people. Some didactic literature was aimed specifically at women and girls, three examples of which are given here. Although some didactic works extol extreme cases of self-sacrifice, there was also a tradition of offering more practical advice. Selections from two such works are included here, one by Yan Zhitui of the sixth century, the other by Yuan Cai of the twelfth.

Confucianism underwent a major transformation during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a movement variously called Neo-Confucianism or the Learning of the Way. Neo-Confucianism reiterated basic Confucian teachings on the family and marriage, tried to purify them of contamination by Buddhism (and to a lesser extent Daoism), and made new efforts to bring the Confucian mes-sage to ordinary people. In terms of teachings about sex, marriage, and the family, the Neo-Confucian tradition, especially as it was elaborated in later centuries, tended to be more conservative than earlier teachings. It put more emphasis on the purity of women and the chastity of widows. Here I have included several selections from the writings of the major master Zhu Xi (1130– 1200).

Confucian teachings on sex, marriage, and the family had never been conveyed solely in texts written by Confucian scholars. Once Confucianism became the ideology of the state, the state played a role in defining and elaborating these principles, especially in its law codes. Unlike societies in which religious professionals preside at weddings and decide what is or is not a legal marriage, in China weddings were largely a matter that families arranged on their own.

The legality of a union was, however, a matter of concern to the state as it has implications with regard to property rights. The law codes of the successive dynasties reinforced Confucian teachings in many of their provisions. For instance, Confucian family ethics also entered into the gradation of crimes. Injuring one’s father or uncle was more serious crime than injuring one’s son or nephew, for instance. Chinese law codes also set limits on acceptable sexual activity, defining the equivalent of adultery, incest, and rape and distinguishing 372

degrees of seriousness. For this sourcebook the laws on illicit sexual activity of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) code are coupled with actual rulings and advice from an experienced official on how to apply the law.

This chapter on Confucianism ends with two twentieth-century pieces that give some sense of the questioning of Confucian teachings on marriage and the family that occurred in the twentieth century, one by Chen Duxiu, a representative of the New Culture movement, ready to throw out most Confucian strictures, the other by Feng Youlan, a philosopher who saw much worth retaining.

Confucianism is still a vital force today, but its association with teachings about family behavior is now rather attenuated. None of those who identify themselves as Confucians today argue that the separation of the sexes should be reinstated, that parents should have control over their children’s marriages, that wives or children should endure mistreatment out of devotion to fidelity or filiality, or that widows should renounce remarriage. Confucians today want Confucianism to evolve in a way that accommodates all the changes that have occurred in the family system as well as ideas about the equality of males and females introduced by feminism. The one traditional virtue that does still get praised is filial piety, reinterpreted as respect for elders and support for elderly parents. Some contemporary Confucians hold up the persistence of filial piety in East Asia as evidence of the superiority of Confucianism over modern Western ways of thinking. Others lament its decline among the young.

Although all of the texts selected here originated in China, Confucian teachings on the family had influence throughout East Asia, especially in Korea and to a lesser degree in Japan. Confucian scholars in Korea and Japan recognized the same texts as Confucian Classics and also read the works of great Confucian teachers such as Zhu Xi. Some of the Chinese didactic works also circulated outside China, but Korean and Japanese Confucian teachers also wrote their own, drawing examples from their own societies. The selections here from the legal tradition are more particular to China, though parallels could be found in the other East Asian countries. Similarly, although Chen Duxiu and Feng Youlan would not be household names in Korea or Japan, the issues they strug-gled with were common ones in the early twentieth century.

THE
BOOK OF POETRY (SHI JING)
The 305 poems preserved in the
Book of Poetry (Shi jing)
mostly date to the Western Zhou period (1045–771 bce). Over half of the poems are thought to have originated in folk songs. The remainder are songs or hymns sung at court, some for use in sacrificial ceremonies, others in praise of the founders of the dynasty. Confucius referred to the
Book of Poetry
respectfully, and other early sources, such as the Zuo zhuan, show that those who spoke at court frequently quoted from it. Because it came to be recognized as one of the Five Classics revered by Confucians, for centuries students studied these poems closely.

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Tradition allowed for the allegorical reading of these poems, so that poems that seem on the surface to be complaints of neglected lovers could be read as the complaints of officials not properly appreciated by their lords. Nevertheless, many readers over the centuries recognized that some poems in this collection describe sexual attraction, love, and pleasure. Of the four poems given below, the first three concern love between young men and women; the last is included for its depiction of differences in the way boys and girls should be treated. In the original the poems do not have titles; here they are referred to by the traditional numbers assigned to them (the Mao numbers).

Document 6–1

“
Guan, guan”
[cry] the ospreys on the isle in the river.

The reclusive, modest girl

is a good mate for the noble man.

Long and short is the duckweed

To the left and to the right we look for it.

The reclusive, modest girl—

waking and sleeping he seeks her.

He seeks her and does not obtain her.

Waking and sleeping he pines and yearns for her.

Oh, anxious! Oh, anxious!

He tosses and twists and turns onto his side.

Long and short is the duckweed.

To the left and to the right we gather it.

The reclusive, modest girl—

among lutes and citherns, he shows her his friendship.

Long and short is the duckweed.

To the left and to the right we pick it.

The reclusive, modest girl—

as a bell to a drum, he delights in her.

Document 6–2

In the field there is a dead roe.

With white grass we wrap it.

There is a girl who longs for spring.

A fine fellow seduces her.

374

In the forest there is the
pusu
tree.

In the field there is a dead deer.

With white grass we bind it.

There is a girl like jade.

Oh, undress me slowly.

Oh, do not upset my kerchief.

Do not make the shaggy dog bark.

Document 6–3

The fish in the nine-meshed net

are rudd and bream.

I see this young man

in regal robes and embroidered skirt.

The wild geese fly along the sandbar.

When the Duke goes back, there will be no place [for us].

I will stay with you one more time.

The wild geese fly along the hill.

The Duke is going back and will not return.

I will lodge with you one more time.

Oh, here we had the regal robes.

Oh, do not go back with our Duke.

Oh, do not make my heart grieve.

Document 6–4

A male child is born.

He is made to sleep on a bed.

He is made to wear a skirt.

He is made to play with a scepter.

His crying is loud.

His red knee-covers are august.

He is the hall and household’s lord and king.

A female child is born.

She is made to sleep on the floor.