Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s7.t6.2

v1.c7.s7.t6.2

**Originating Evolution** - Confucianism and Daoism began to integrate in Han Dynasty. Kong Rong while replying to Li Ying said: “Previously respectable Confucius and Daoist saint Lao Zi maintain the relations between the teacher and student. So I also maintain friendly relations with you”. This became a story passed on at that time with admiration. Obviously, in the late Han Dynasty, the scholars admitted that Confucianism and Daoism got blended. In the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Confucius and Lao Zi were deemed homologous. During Zhengshi Period (about 240-249 CE), Wang Bi, He Yan and other scholars studied Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi's sayings, but they preferred to debate over the Confucian classics. For example, He Yan annotated “*The Analects of Confucius*”(*lun-yu*) and Wang Bi authored one book “*Answers to Questions on Analects of Confucius*” and annotated the “*Book of Change*”. Wang Bi and He Yan were born in famous big families, followed the traditions of “idle talk” since the late Han Dynasty; they had discussion between them with many questions raised for each other and analysed any issues with serious arguments over and over again; they raised the status and quality of the “idle talk” to the extent that people desired to imitate their contents and style. They further discussed about the relations between the fundamental and the incidental between “moralisation” (Confucian ethical code) and the “nature” and between sages' emotionless feature and emotional feature. Liu Shao, Fu Gu and other contemporaries played the leading role in the discussion on the “theory of character and talent”. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, evaluation for human personalities and investigation of nature was an important issue which was closely related to talent selection and recruitment system of that time. During the period of “Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest” (zhu-lin qi-xian 255-262 CE), Ji Kang and Ruan Ji adored the nature to put forward a viewpoint of “going beyond moralisation and stressed on following the nature with no constraint”, and believed that “people should be in pursuit of the nature and break away from the limits of moralisation”. The root cause of this viewpoint was that the rulers surnamed Sima of that time concealed all the lawlessness and unfairness of regime under disguise of moralisation. Ji Kang and Ruan Ji felt shameful to wallow in the mire with such rulers as Sima. “*Theory of Four Fundamentals*” authored by Zhong Hui, was based on the theory of Character and Talent with nothing new ideas. In contrast, theorists of moralisation sprang up like