regards the nature of truth as uncertain and conceived knowledge and truth as products more of perception. Confucianism values clarity in speaking and was against sophistries and vagueness; in contrast Taoism sees perceived vagueness as a virtue and considers argumentation to be futile.
In brief, while Confucianism represents the orthodox of the Chinese culture with its traditions and the master narratives, Taoism seems to reflect the more unorthodox traditions in the Chinese culture and to account in a better way for the unaccountable. What Taoism tries to do is to reconcile the orthodox with the unorthodox, the unaccountable, the marginal, and bring them to unity. The way of doing this is through the unity of our way of life with the laws of nature. What is significant about Taoism is its emphasis on the equal importance of both the orthodox and the unorthodox, thus granting space to the marginalized. This is what attracts people who subscribe to Taoism, and many people find Taoist principles especially applicable today when chaos and the unaccountable seem more than rare occurrences.
Rhetorically speaking, the Taoist view of language is characterized by a more radical “historicism or situatedness” ( H. Wang, 1993, p. 54). Taoist use of language, argues H. Wang, “relies on human spontaneity, which is guided by human reasoning” (p. 54). This spontaneous nature of language use results from the fact that, while things in nature are constantly changing, man’s limited perception of them reflects only the present:
Since the linguistic systems are actually conceptual frameworks that organize and articulate our experiences with the world, to the extent that these frameworks spontaneously sort out only fluid boundaries and relations among momentary differences according to the circumstances, it is helpful; the effort to fix these boundaries as people often do in argumentation, however, is not helpful. (H. Wang, p. 57)
Understood this way, Taoism situates discourse in concrete social and historical contexts, and Taoist rhetoric is essentially “dynamic, creative, and individualistic” in nature (H. Wang, p. 58).
Buddhism
The main reason that Buddhism, one of the most dominant religions in the history of China, finds its way into my discussion of ideologies involved in technology development and transfer is that, although a religion, it is no doubt one of the most influential ideologies that has impacted the Chinese of all kinds, from the intellectual elite to the uneducated, from high government officials to laymen, from the wealthy to the poor. As Robert Somers (1990) has claimed, “few aspects of Chinese life, from high politics to popular culture, were untouched by the increased influence and mass appeal of this sophisticated religious system and the church that articulated and disseminated its teachings” (p. x). Buddhism “worked its way into all the domains of Chinese life—fundamental social doctrine, systems of belief, political institutions, and every sphere of culture, including architecture, sculpture, and painting” (Somers, p. x).
Buddhism first originated in India and later spread to China. Its exact date of introduction into China is an issue of dispute. It has been variously identified as around the first half of the first century CE (Fung, 1948), or the second half of the first century CE (Wright, 1990), or the second century CE (Xia et al., 1979), with some claims as specific as 67 CE (Pachow, 1980) and others as vague as the period from the first to the third centuries CE (Ebrey, 1993). Buddhism was commonly believed to have been founded by Shakyamuni Buddha (ca. 563–483 BCE). “As a set of ideas, it built on the Indian conviction that sentient beings transmigrate through endless series of lives as people, animals, gods, hungry ghosts, hell dwellers, or titans, moving up or down according to the karma, or good and bad deeds, that they accumulated,” Ebrey (1993) explains. “The major insight of the Buddha was that life is inevitably unsatisfactory because beings become enmeshed in the web of their attachments. Yet he offered hope, teaching that it was possible to escape the cycle of rebirth by moral conduct, meditative discipline, and the development of wisdom” (p. 97).
After its introduction into China, Buddhism branched off into many different schools. In spite of their differences, they generally agree on the theory of Karma, translated as Ye in Chinese and deed and action in English. Such a translation, however, does it much injustice, as its actual meaning extends far beyond simple deed or action to cover one’s speech and thoughts as well. Whatever one does, says, or thinks causes some effect, whether in the present or in the future, and “the being of an individual is made up of a chain of causes and effects” (Fung, 1948, p. 243). This chain of causes and effects spans a long cycle. “The present life of a sentient being is only one aspect in this whole process. Death is not the end of his being, but is only another aspect of the process. What an individual is in this life comes as a result of what he did in the past, and what he does in the present will determine what he will be in the future. Hence, what he does now will bear its fruits in a future life, and what he will do then will again bear its fruits in yet another future life, and so on ad infinitum. This chain of causation is what is called Samsara, the Wheel of Birth and Death. It is the main source from which come the sufferings of individual sentient beings” (Fung, 1948, p. 243–44). Only in the course of many rebirths can man accumulate Karma and attain an emancipation of the self, the Nirvana.
According to Buddhism, the transcendence of the cycle of life and death ( i.e., becoming a Buddha) is considered one’s highest, ultimate attainment. The path to this apex is one’s cultivation of the mind, which depends on endless good deeds and five prohibitions: no killing, no robbery, no adultery, no lie, and no alcohol, the meanings of which are compared by Wei Shou, a Chinese historian of the sixth century, to the five Confucian virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness (Ebrey, 1993). Such a comparison, which seems to put Buddhism and Confucianism on the same philosophical plane, is certainly open to debate as many scholars in Chinese philosophy will attest to the obvious differences and contentions between Buddhism and Confucianism (see, for example, Ch’en, 1973; Chan, 1985). Nevertheless, it points to the fact that Buddhism, one of the most dominant religions and prevailing philosophies in the history of China, has had its fair share of ideological influences in various spheres of Chinese life.
While the real meanings of Buddhist principles, in spite of my obviously simplistic attempt to summarize them, are far from being transparent, its impact on China is undeniably huge. Its impact is such that, as Arthur Wright (1990) has claimed, “an understanding of Buddhism in Chinese history helps to explain and clarify the whole of China’s development, that without such an understanding much remains inexplicable, [ . . . ] that the observation of Buddhism in interaction with Chinese cultural elements serves to bring into bold relief those institutions, points of view, and habits of mind which are most intractably and intransigently Chinese” (p. 32–33). Of course, as Wright has also asserted, a thorough understanding of the impact of Buddhist principles on various facets of the Chinese life requires the study of the following aspects:
the history of the relationship between Buddhism and Chinese law
the history of the state policies and institutions for the control of Buddhism
the history of the relation between Buddhism and religious Taoism
the history of Buddhism in relation to Chinese philosophy
all aspects of Buddhism in relation to the total culture of a specific period. (p. 33)
Lack of study in these areas, however, should not deter our effort directed at understanding Buddhism. As my brief summary of Buddhist principles has demonstrated, it is not impossible to catch at least some occasional glimpses, if not anything else, of some of the essences of Buddhism, which should shed much light on our discussion of the development of some of the writing technologies in China.
A discussion, however brief, of these three most dominant ideologies in the history of China begs the natural question: how do Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism coexist, and how do they fare with one another? While the coexistence of these three ideologies is a known fact, their coexistence has not
