Introduction
The question of whether dizi 弟子 (lit. “younglings”) and menren 門人 (lit. “people at the gate”)Footnote 1 in the Lunyu 論語 and other early Chinese texts refer to the same or separate groups of disciples has been the subject of a centuries-long scholarly debate. Broadly speaking, the discussion centres around two main perspectives. On the one hand, some scholars have argued that dizi can denote a smaller, more select group of disciples, such as the 70 or soFootnote 2 alleged disciples of Confucius, named and listed in Han-era texts like the Shiji 史記, who acted as teachers to a larger group called menren. This interpretation extends back to Huang Kan’s 皇侃 (488–545) commentary on the Lunyu,Footnote 3 and was notably advanced by Zhu Yizun 朱彜尊 (1629–1709),Footnote 4 who went so far as to compile separate lists of Confucius’s dizi and menren.Footnote 5 Definitions derived from this interpretation have occasionally even found their way into modern dictionaries, such as the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten 大漢和辞典,Footnote 6 and led to translations of menren as “grandchild” or “second-generation disciples” (sunzi dizi 孫子弟子, zaichuan dizi 再傳弟子).Footnote 7
On the other hand, a similarly substantial group of critics has vehemently rejected such a distinction, relying primarily on two key counterarguments.Footnote 8 First, they cite passages and commentaries predating Huang Kan, which show that menren and dizi could be used interchangeably, thereby dismissing Huang’s interpretation as anachronistic.Footnote 9 Second, they contend that the menren could not have been “second-generation disciples” in the strict sense, as several passages in the Lunyu and other early Chinese texts clearly show that many menren were directly affiliated with Confucius and not with his dizi.Footnote 10
It is worth noting that Huang Kan and his successors never explicitly asserted that dizi and menren must always have distinct meanings. Nor did they strictly define menren as “grandchild disciples” affiliated solely with the dizi, who, in turn, acted as leaders of independent, separate schools.Footnote 11 Thus, many critics may have been attacking a straw man.
Rather than delving further into the specifics of this debate, I will instead shift focus to propose a third, thoroughly justifiable solution with which I aim to balance and reconcile the arguments on both sides. On the basis of the textual evidence discussed below, there is little reason to doubt that menren and dizi were used as “co-hyponyms” in early Chinese texts, representing conceptually distinct categories of disciples while occasionally being used as though the two categories were identical. The complexities of diachronic semantic change and linguistic pragmatism certainly allow for the coexistence of these varied uses.
At the same time, the evidence suggests that menren are best understood not as “second-generation” but as “second-rank” disciples, who still belonged to the same scholastic community as the dizi. The di 弟 (or di 第) in dizi, on the other hand, appears to indicate that these disciples had attained a recognized rank, effectively becoming “ranked men” who held formal superiority over the menren. In the context of the Shiji’s account of Confucius’s followers, the dizi are thus identified as the 77 disciples who had “mastered the six arts” (tong liu yi 通六藝), whereas the menren correspond to the remainder of Confucius’s purported 3,000 disciples, described as those who had “received only a few lessons” (po shou ye zhe 頗受業者).Footnote 12
While this interpretation is not new,Footnote 13 it has yet to be substantiated through a comprehensive analysis of the textual material involved – an endeavour I aim to undertake in this article. I will begin by offering general observations on the use of menren across various pre-Han 漢 and Han Dynasty (202 bce–220 ce) sources, examining their close relationship with the Ru 儒 (“Confucian” or “Classicist”) movement and exploring the potential origins of the concept. I will then conduct a case study focusing on the menren of Confucius, the best-documented group of menren in the early Chinese corpus. As I will demonstrate, not only is there significant evidence supporting a distinction between menren and dizi as “second-rank” and “first-rank” disciples, but focusing on these two forms of discipleship also offers us a compelling perspective on the Ru as transmitters of educational practices.
The menren and the Ru
Early Chinese texts certainly offer evidence that the terms menren and dizi were used in a general sense, denoting all the disciples of a master. As Yu Jiaxi 余嘉錫 (1884–1955) observed, the Eastern Han commentators Ma Rong 馬融 (79–166) and his student Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200) glossed and interpreted menren as dizi, indicating that the latter included the former.Footnote 14 Long before him, Zheng Zhen 鄭珍 (1806–1864) noted that menren in Eastern Han stele inscriptions likewise included different types of disciples regardless of their hierarchical distinctions.Footnote 15 To this, Chen Li 陳澧 (1810–1882) added further examples from the Han Shu 漢書 biographies of Ru masters, where the menren appear to have been among the most distinguished students of their teachers.Footnote 16 The earliest generic use of menren that I have encountered is in Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (c. 145–86) description of Zixia 子夏 as a “gaodi of the menren” (menren zhi gaodi 門人之高弟), suggesting that Sima Qian considered Zixia “among” (zhong 中) the menren.Footnote 17 For the term dizi, traces of its hypernymous use reach even further back, as not only Sima Qian but also the authors of the Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋 refer to the entirety of Confucius’s purported 3,000 disciples as dizi.Footnote 18
That said, it would be misleading to assume that the two terms were used exclusively in such ways.Footnote 19 In the case of dizi, just the title alone of Sima Qian’s “Ranked Biographies of Confucius’s dizi” (Zhongni dizi liezhuan 仲尼弟子列傳) provides compelling evidence that the term could also carry a narrow, hierarchical meaning, referring specifically to the 70 disciples whose lives and deeds are detailed in the chapter. Furthermore, at the very end of the chapter, when Sima Qian reports that he “took the dizi’s names, surnames, and style names” (yi dizi ming xing wenzi 以弟子名姓文字) from a dizi list (dizi ji 弟子籍) allegedly discovered at Confucius’s mansion and added “the Lunyu’s questions of the dizi” (Lunyu dizi wen 論語弟子問) to it, he is clearly referring to “the seventy disciples” (qi shi zi 七十子) rather than the full 3,000.Footnote 20
With regard to menren, several examples of a narrow use can be found in relation to Confucius’s following, discussed in the second section below. However, some preliminary evidence can be inferred from the fact that nearly allFootnote 21 of the approximately 150 individual uses of menren in received pre-Han and Han texts refer to students of Ru masters.Footnote 22 Since he figures prominently in early Chinese literature, it is not surprising that most references to menren occur in relation to Confucius. Yet the overwhelming majority of pre-Han and Han period figures who are also said to have had menren were either disciples of Confucius or later representatives of the Ru movement, being explicitly referred to as Ru or described as teachers and students of Ru classics:
Zixia 子夏 (b. 507 bce)Footnote 23
Ziyou 子游 (b. 506 bce)Footnote 24
Zengzi 曾子 (505–435 bce)Footnote 25
Zisi 子思 (492–431 bce)Footnote 26
Yuezheng Zichun 樂正子春 (fourth century bce)Footnote 27
Mencius 孟子 (fourth century bce)Footnote 28
Xunzi 荀子 (third century bce)Footnote 29
Jia Yi 賈誼 (d. 169 bce)Footnote 30
Tian He 田何 (c. 230–160)Footnote 31
Tian Wangsun 田王孫 (second century bce)Footnote 32
Ni Kuan 倪寬 (d. 103 bce)Footnote 33
Jing Fang 京房 (77–37)Footnote 34
Xu Shang 許商 (first century bce)Footnote 35
Wu Zhang 吳章 (d. 3 ce)Footnote 36
Gong Sheng龔勝 (68 bce –11 ce)Footnote 37
Huan Yu 桓郁 (d. 93 ce)Footnote 38
Gao Kang 高康 (d. first century ce)Footnote 39
Li Sheng 李生 (first century ce)Footnote 40
Kong Fen 孔奮 (d. first century ce)Footnote 41
Zheng Xing 鄭興 (d. first century ce)Footnote 42
Chen Chong 陳寵 (d. 107 ce)Footnote 43
Lu Pi 魯丕 (37–111)Footnote 44
Yang Zhen 楊震 (54–124)Footnote 45
Yang Hou 楊厚 (72–153)Footnote 46
Zhu Mu 朱穆 (100–163)Footnote 47
Kong Zhou 孔宙 (103–164)Footnote 48
Yang Bing 楊秉 (92–165)Footnote 49
Ma Rong 馬融 (79–166)Footnote 50
Yang Tong 楊統 (d. 168 ce)Footnote 51
Hu Shuo 胡碩 (128–168)Footnote 52
Guo Tai 郭泰 (128–169)Footnote 53
Qiao Xuan 橋玄 (110–184)Footnote 54
Yang Ci 楊賜 (d. 185 ce)Footnote 55
Ai Kui 袁隗 (d. 190 ce)Footnote 56
Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200)Footnote 57
Zhang Ba 张霸 (d. second century ce)Footnote 58
Li He 李郃 (d. second century ce)Footnote 59
Liao Fu 廖扶 (d. second century ce)Footnote 60
We must of course bear in mind that the Ru are overwhelmingly present in extant ancient Chinese literature. We should therefore expect that the menren are more often attributed to Ru masters than to other teachers, as these other teachers are mentioned much less frequently. That said, pre-Han and Han texts nevertheless contain hundreds of references to non-Ru disciples, who are named dizi, tu 徒, yi 役, tushu 徒屬, er san zi 二三子, zi 子, etc.Footnote 61 The general absence of menren among these disciples speaks volumes: pre-imperial and early imperial authors found it inappropriate to call non-Ru disciples menren. While this does not necessarily mean that each listed instance is to be understood in a narrow sense, as some may function as hypernyms for all disciples (albeit restricted to those of Ru masters), the general pattern nevertheless strongly suggests that writers associated menren with a more specific form of discipleship over several centuries. In other words, dizi and menren both appear to exhibit what modern linguists refer to as “vertical polysemy”, possessing a broad meaning that refers to (Ru) disciples in general alongside (at least) one narrower meaning associated with a distinct subgroup of the disciples.Footnote 62
Further support for this interpretation comes from the later term mensheng 門生 (lit. “students/scholars of the gate”) which first appears in texts of the Eastern Han period, suggesting that its origin was linked to the administrative changes that occurred between the Western and Eastern Han dynasties.Footnote 63 While extant texts provide limited information about the mensheng, they indicate that the mensheng initially constituted a clearly defined category of students who were required to register their affiliations,Footnote 64 and who represented a type of disciple separate from the dizi.Footnote 65 While the relationship between the two remains subject to debate, the well-known account of a distinction between mentu 門徒 (lit. “follower of the gate”) and dizi in Ma Rong’s school has been interpreted as evidence that the dizi taught the mensheng.Footnote 66 Additionally, the earliest surviving gloss of the term by Yang Shixun 楊士勛 (fl. sixth century ce) defines the mensheng as “junior disciples of the same gate” (tongmen housheng 同門後生), thereby assigning them an inferior status.Footnote 67
In light of the apparent parallels to the concept of the menren, as proposed in this article, it is conceivable that the Eastern Han court introduced the term mensheng to circumvent the ambiguity of menren, thereby attempting to assert control over this form of discipleship. This strategy, known as the “rectification of names” (zheng ming 正名), must have been employed by the Eastern Han administration on various occasions, as evidenced by its broader terminology for client-patron relationships.Footnote 68 That said, just as the imperial court ultimately failed to control the teaching and learning of the Confucian Classics more broadly,Footnote 69 it was equally unable to prevent the mensheng from adhering to their original purpose. In his Zhong lun 中論, written towards the end of the Eastern Han period, Xu Gan 徐幹 (171–218) famously laments that by his time, many wealthy patrons retained mensheng purely for prestige, even though they had nothing to teach them.Footnote 70 Consequently, the term mensheng acquired a second, broader meaning,Footnote 71 further complicating scholars’ efforts to interpret the role of mensheng in individual texts and historical contexts.
The semantic evolution of menren may have followed a similar trajectory, initially emerging as a narrowly defined term that later developed a more general meaning. However, some exceptions to this pattern, which refer neither to Ru disciples nor to “disciples” at all, suggest that the history of menren may have been more complex than a straightforward progression. Beyond its meaning of “gatekeeper” (men zhe 門者),Footnote 72 which seems unrelated to its association with discipleship, pre-imperial sources indicate that menren may have also originally been a name for retainers (shi ke 食客 or men ke 門客).Footnote 73 Notably, the roles of retainers and disciples are known to have overlapped considerably.Footnote 74
In the context of Confucius’s following, perhaps the most conspicuous parallel lies in the numbers. As has been noted, the purported total of 3,000 disciples (most of whom must be assumed to have been menren) agrees precisely with the standard number of retainers associated with contemporaneous regional rulers,Footnote 75 granting him the aura of an “uncrowned king” (su wang 素王).Footnote 76 Similarly, it has been argued that the number of 70 disciples was derived from the conventional size of personal military retinues maintained by lower Spring and Autumn aristocrats.Footnote 77
While the evidence is, admittedly, limited and inconclusive, it may be worth considering how much of a “disciple” truly resides within a menren. Unlike the mensheng, who initially represented a distinct, politically regulated type of disciple, the menren may originally have been connected to a form of clientship that occupied a space between later retainers and disciples. It was only through the influence of the Ru tradition that the term eventually acquired its narrower meaning.
Confucius’s menren
Let us begin with Huang Kan’s commentary – the root of all controversy – in which he, through two seemingly inconspicuous glosses, asserts that the menren mentioned in Lunyu 4/15 and 11/11 specifically refer to the disciples (dizi and mentu) of Yan Yuan 顏淵 and Zengzi 曾子:
子曰: “參乎! 吾道一以貫之。“曾子曰: “唯” 子出。門人問曰: “何謂也?” 曾子曰: “夫子之道, 忠恕而已矣。”
【疏】門人, 曾子弟子也。 不解孔子之言, 故問於曾子也。
Confucius said, “Zeng, my way is unified by being connected by a single thread.” Zengzi replied, “Indeed.” After Confucius left, the menren asked Zengzi, “What did he mean?” Zengzi said, “The way of the Master is nothing more than loyalty and forgiving tolerance.”
Comment: The menren are the disciples of Zengzi. Not understanding the words of Confucius, they therefore inquired of Zengzi.Footnote 78
顏淵死, 門人欲厚葬之, 子曰: “不可。” 門人厚葬之。子曰: “回也視予猶父也, 予不得視猶子也。非我也, 夫二三子也。”
【疏】顏淵之門徒。見師貧而己欲厚葬之也。一云是孔子門人欲厚葬朋友也。
When Yan Yuan passed away, the menren wished to give him a grand burial. Confucius said, “That is not appropriate.” The menren went ahead with the grand burial. Confucius said, “Hui regarded me as a father, yet it was not possible for me to treat him as a son. Not because of me, but because of you, my disciples.”
Comment: Yan Yuan’s disciples. Seeing their teacher impoverished, they wished to give him a grand funeral. Others say that Confucius’s menren wanted to give a grand funeral to their friend.Footnote 79
Since Huang Kan does not elaborate on the role of the menren beyond stating that they were disciples and the dizi, their teachers (shi 師), one can only speculate about what he believed their relationship to Confucius to have been. Huang Kan most certainly assumed that the menren had a fundamental interest in Confucius’s teachings. Contrary to what many of his critics have claimed, Huang Kan also does not appear to have been troubled by the notion that the menren were in personal contact with Confucius, as their presence during his instruction in 4/15 is implied. In fact, Huang Kan clearly noted that Confucius refers to the menren as “my disciples” (er san zi 二三子) in 11/11, addressing them as members of his own following.Footnote 80 Therefore, it appears that Huang Kan regarded dizi such as Zengzi and Yan Yuan as teaching assistants responsible for conveying and explaining Confucius’s teachings to different groups of his extended following.
Huang Kan reveals through his citation of an alternative interpretation (yi yun 一云) in the second comment that his understanding of the term menren was not unanimously shared during his time. While he proposes that their wish for a grand burial was rooted in the student-teacher relationship between the menren and Yan Yuan, other contemporaneous interpreters of Confucius apparently argued against such a relationship by maintaining that the burial was a gesture of friendship, which in the hierarchical world of ancient China meant that Yan Yuan and the menren interacted as equals.Footnote 81
Yu Jiaxi argued that Huang Kan’s reading was an anachronistic interpretation shaped by a meaning of menren that had only developed during the post-Han era.Footnote 82 Yu pointed to the stele of the Biyong 辟雍 Hall of the Western Jin 晉 (266–316) Imperial Academy (taixue 太學) erected in 278 ce, which has on its back a list of donors that makes a distinction between dizi and menren (as well as several other types of members of the Academy).Footnote 83 Yu related the fact that the list mentions only two menren but dozens of dizi to an account of the Tongdian 通典 which reported that Cao Pi 曹丕 (220–226) had introduced a ranking system at the Imperial Academy in 224 ce, in which novice students were called menren, while those who had studied for two years and had fully mastered a classic were appointed dizi. After several rounds of examinations, the best among them, referred to as the “highly ranked” (gaodi 高弟/第), were then chosen for prestigious offices such as tutor to the heir to the throne.Footnote 84
For Yu Jiaxi, Cao Pi’s reform marked the historical inception of the terminological distinction between menren and dizi. While Yu acknowledged that Cao Pi’s ranking system probably drew inspiration from similar hierarchies in private schools of the Eastern Han period (citing the aforementioned mensheng and the mentu of Ma Rong’s school),Footnote 85 he maintained that the separation of menren and dizi was inspired by these hierarchies, rather than vice versa. As further evidence, he added the following fragment of Wei Hong’s 衛宏 (fl. 25–57) Han guan jiu yi 漢官舊儀, reporting that the name menren had already become an official title at the Imperial Academy during the reign of Emperor Wu 武 (r. 141–87):
武帝初置博士, 取學通行脩, 博識多藝, 曉古文爾雅, 能屬文章, 為高第。朝賀位次中都官史。稱先生, 不得言君。其真弟子稱門人。
When Emperor Wu first appointed the Erudites, he selected those who had mastered their studies and cultivated their demeanour, had extensive knowledge and many skills, were proficient in ancient script and elegant pronunciations, and could compose beautiful literature, and he made them gaodi. When they conveyed their congratulations to him, their position was the same as that of capital officials. They had to be addressed as “my teacher” and not “my lord”. Their real disciples were called menren.Footnote 86
Quoting only the last two sentences, Yu claimed that the fact that Emperor Wu is reported to have established menren as a formal rank for the “real disciples” (zhen dizi 真弟子)Footnote 87 of high-ranking (gaodi) Erudites (boshi 博士) demonstrated that dizi and menren shared the same meaning.Footnote 88
Since the earliest textual witnesses to the account are the Beitang Shuchao 北堂書鈔 and the Yiwen Leiju 藝文類聚, two florilegia (lei shu 類書) from the seventh century ce, one can doubt the fragment’s authenticity and the broader historicity of Emperor Wu’s reform. However, an even greater challenge for Yu is that his evidence remains open to interpretation, as the fragment essentially relates that Emperor Wu, an allegedly devout patron of the Ru,Footnote 89 surrounded himself with a group of “high” (gao) dizi tasked with instructing another, less-accomplished group of disciples referred to as menren. If we assume that Emperor Wu’s reforms and the hierarchies among disciples in Eastern Han schools both reflect a collective aspiration to organize schools and disciples modelled on Confucius’s following, we can arrive at the opposite conclusion: Han interpreters of Confucius implicitly distinguished between menren and dizi.
Indeed, the concept of menren as a formally inferior class of disciples seems to have been embedded in texts that most likely were already circulating at the time of Cao Pi’s reform, a fact which casts doubt on Yu Jiaxi’s hypothesis. Consider, for instance, the biography of Zizhang 子張 in the Kongzi Jiayu 孔子家語, where the description of the relationship between Zizhang and Confucius’s menren suggests that they were expected to act as his subordinates:
顓孫師, 陳人, 字子張。少孔子四十八歲。為人有容貌資質, 寬沖博接, 從容自務。居不務立於仁義之行。孔子門人友之而弗敬。
Zhuansun Shi, a man of Chen, courtesy name Zizhang. He was 48 years younger than Confucius. As a person and in terms of appearance and natural endowments, he was tolerant and convivial, easy-going and worked on himself. He did not seek to stand out for his enactment of moral values. The menren of Confucius befriended him and thus did not revere him.Footnote 90
The contrast between “friendship” (you 友) and “reverence” (jing 敬) is readily explained by the fact that the former signified an interaction between equals, while the latter conveyed formal submission to individuals or entities such as parents, rulers or ancestral spirits.Footnote 91 In other words, this passage reports that the menren did not treat Zizhang as their superior but as one of their own. The fact that this is mentioned points to the unusual nature of the phenomenon. Menren would not typically become friends with someone like Zizhang. However, his case was different, thanks to his likable character and lack of ambition.
Even though the Kongzi jiayu was probably compiled during Wang Su’s 王肅 (195–256) lifetime,Footnote 92 it is not particularly convincing that this use of menren is directly linked to Cao Pi’s reform. The numerous parallels between the Kongzi jiayu and received literature and excavated manuscripts from the Western Han and even the pre-Han period,Footnote 93 particularly the overlaps between the Kongzi jiayu’s biographies of Confucius’s disciples and Sima Qian’s “Ranked Biographies”, Footnote 94 strongly suggest that Zizhang’s biography is of earlier provenance. In fact, the irreverence of the menren is already evident in Lunyu 11/15, a text known to have circulated as early as the Western Han period:Footnote 95
子曰: “由之瑟奚為於丘之門。” 門人不敬子路。子曰: “由也升堂矣! 未入於室也。”
The Master said: “What is You’s (Zilu) zither doing at my gate?” The menren ceased to revere Zilu. The Master said: “Although he has not yet entered the private chambers, Zilu has nevertheless ascended to the ceremonial hall!”Footnote 96
As a consequence of Confucius’s complaint about Zilu’s fondness for unorthodox music,Footnote 97 the menren stop revering (jing) him. Confucius’s response confirms that the menren were meant to treat Zilu as their superior. His references to his ceremonial hall and private chambers is connected to the meaning of men 門 (“gate”), the place at which the broader body of his disciples typically received instruction.Footnote 98 Addressing the menren, Confucius emphasizes that even though Zilu has his guilty pleasures, he still deserves the respect of those who have only been allowed to enter his “gate”.Footnote 99 He effectively hands us the underlying concept of the menren on a silver platter.Footnote 100
In Lunyu 9/12, which also definitely circulated during the Western Han,Footnote 101 the menren likewise appear to represent a formally subordinate group of students.Footnote 102 Zilu, anticipating that the Master is nearing death, instructs the menren to act as Confucius’s “servants” (chen 臣):
子疾, 病。子路使門人為臣。病閒, 曰: “久矣哉, 由之行詐也! 無臣而為有臣, 吾誰欺? 欺天乎? 且予與其死於臣之手也, 無寧死於二三子之手乎? 且予縱不得大葬, 予死於道路乎?”
The Master was sick and became seriously ill. Zilu ordered the menren to act as servants. The Master temporarily recovered from his illness and said: “For a long time, yes, You has acted deceitfully! Whom could I fool if I had no servants but acted as though I had? Could I fool Heaven? Moreover, would I not rather die in the hands of my disciples than in the hands of servants? And even if I do not receive a great burial, will I die on the streets?Footnote 103
According to Zheng Xuan, servants (chen) refers not to domestic menials or “slaves” but to administrative personnel of an aristocratic dafu 大夫 household (jia chen 家臣).Footnote 104 As Confucius belonged to a dafu lineage, Zilu tried to provide him with a prestigious funeral that honoured his ancestry. Assuming that Zheng Xuan’s reading is correct, the fact that Zilu had the capacity to give orders (shi 使) to the menren suggests that they were not his fellow students, which also fits well with the fact that Confucius reprimands Zilu only for being dishonest but not for overstepping his authority. This is all the truer if Zheng is wrong and the servants are of much lower status.
Zilu’s relationship to the menren is also discussed in Sima Qian’s Ranked Biographies, which is found on the recently excavated mirror of Liu He 劉賀 (r. 74 bce),Footnote 105 and offers evidence for a terminological contrast between menren and dizi:
路性鄙, 好勇力。志伉直; 冠雄雞, 佩豭豚, 陵暴孔子。孔子設禮稍誘子路。子路後儒服委質。因門人請為弟子。
Zilu was by nature rude and fond of [acts of] bravery and strength. His will was unyielding and forthright; his cap looked like a cockscomb, he decorated himself with pig teeth and insulted and attacked Confucius. Confucius established rites, which gradually attracted Zilu. After that, Zilu began to dress as a Ru and pledged allegiance. He asked to become a dizi by relying on the menren.Footnote 106
Zheng Zhen dismissed this passage by arguing that the change from menren to dizi is an elegant variation to avoid the awkward repetition of the same word.Footnote 107
The problem with Zheng’s interpretation is that it does not fit well with the general thematic focus of the chapter. Since the “Ranked Biographies” focus exclusively on the 77 distinguished disciples, this passage seems to explain how the uncouth “swashbuckler” Zilu eventually managed to join this illustrious circle. Thus, it appears likely that dizi is used here in a narrow sense, indicating that Zilu aspired to become more than just an ordinary member of Confucius’s following. In fact, as Zilu’s “pledge of allegiance” (wei zhi 委質) is explicitly associated elsewhere with admission to Confucius’s extended circle of disciples,Footnote 108 Zilu was apparently already a formal member of Confucius’s following when he asked to become a dizi. In other words, Zilu did not merely enter Confucius’s following but sought promotion to a higher rank with the support of his former peers.
While there is no definitive evidence for their circulation prior to the Eastern Han period, two pieces of Confucian lore quoted in the Mengzi (3A/4) also provide particularly compelling insights into the inferior status of the menren:
昔者孔子沒, 三年之外, 門人治任將歸。入揖於子貢, 相向而哭, 皆失聲, 然後歸。子貢反, 築室於場, 獨居三年, 然後歸。他日, 子夏、子張、子游以有若似聖人, 欲以所事孔子事之, 彊曾子。曾子曰: “不可。江漢以濯之, 秋陽以暴之, 皜皜乎不可尚已。”
In the past, when Confucius had died, and the three years [of mourning] had passed, the menren packed up and wanted to return home. They entered, bowed before Zigong, looked at each other, and wailed until everyone lost his voice. Then they went home. Zigong went back, built a hut next to Confucius’s altar, and lived there alone for three years before he returned home [as well]. On another day, Zixia, Zizhang, and Ziyou wanted to serve You Ruo as they had served Confucius because he resembled the sage, and they tried to compel Zengzi [to do the same]. Zengzi said: “This is not permissible. What has been washed by the Yangtze and the Han River, and what has dried in the autumn sun sparkles so brightly that nothing must be put on top of it.”Footnote 109
Preparing to leave Confucius’s school, the menren enter Zigong’s (or Confucius’s)Footnote 110 residence and bow to him, the conventional way for disciples greeted their masters.Footnote 111 But the fact that they leave because the mourning period for Confucius’s death has passed shows that the menren are followers of Confucius, not Zigong, a paradox that would be resolved if we assumed that Zigong had instructed the menren on behalf of Confucius, which would then also allow that only the menren and not the dizi returned home. This, in turn, would explain the meeting between Zixia, Zizhang and Ziyou, who sought to force Zengzi to recognize You Ruo as Confucius’s official successor. Zengzi firmly rejects this by arguing that someone of Confucius’s stature, who had emerged radiant from all the kinds of adversity he had encountered throughout his life, must not be overshadowed by a successor. Since “on another day” (ta ri 他日) can indicate a leap forward or backward in time, we could also speculate that Mencius implied that the four had met within the three-year period. However, it would certainly have been highly inappropriate for the disciples to appoint a successor to Confucius before they had properly finished mourning his death.
This goes to show that the menren were most probably already regarded as lower-ranking disciples centuries before Cao Pi’s reform, with the quoted Mengzi passages further suggesting that they viewed the dizi as quasi-teachers. But could the dizi also have been responsible for overseeing separate groups of menren, as Huang Kan apparently implied? This idea, which is certainly consistent with the passages discussed so far, appears to emerge in the “Zizhang” 子張 chapter of the Lunyu. Compare 19/3, which evidently also circulated during the Western Han period:Footnote 112
子夏之門人問交於子張。子張曰: “子夏云何?” 對曰: “子夏曰: ‘可者與之, 其不可者拒之。’” 子張曰: “異乎吾所聞: 君子尊賢而容眾, 嘉善而矜不能。我之大賢與, 於人何所不容? 我之不賢與, 人將拒我, 如之何其拒人也?”
The menren of Zixia asked Zizhang how to interact with others. Zizhang asked: “What did Zixia say?” [They] answered: “Zixia said: ‘Associate with those who are right and reject those who are not.’” Zizhang said: “This differs from what I have heard: a gentleman respects those who are worthy and has tolerance towards the masses; he praises goodness and has compassion for those who are inept. Suppose I associated with someone worthy: what could that person have that I would not tolerate? Suppose I associate with someone who is not worthy: why would I do the same even if that person rejected me?Footnote 113
What is peculiar about this passage is that even though the menren are explicitly attributed to Zixia, they approach Zizhang to find an answer to their question. They apparently doubt Zixia’s authority and also refer to him not as “master” (fuzi 夫子) but by his courtesy name. At the same time, Zizhang seems to be in close physical proximity. All this becomes easily understandable if we assume that Zixia and Zizhang are not masters of their own schools but are serving as teaching assistants responsible for different parts of their master’s following.
Zixia’s menren are also mentioned in Lunyu 19/12, where Ziyou 子游 mocks them as knowing little more than how to sweep and how to interact properly with others.Footnote 114 Ziyou’s criticism and Zixia’s response suggest two things. First, while menren were novice students and thus typically assigned more menial tasks, their ultimate goal was to grasp the deeper tenets of Confucius’s teachings. Second, there may have been competition among different dizi and their menren in Confucius’s following, as Ziyou himself is also documented to have had menren. Compare the Zi Dao E 子道餓 from the Shanghai Museum collection, which contains the only known instance of menren in a published pre-imperial manuscript. This unfortunately severely damaged and incomplete manuscript recounts that Ziyou, one of Confucius’s disciples, was sent on a mission to Chu 楚, during which he tragically lost a son:
魯司寇寄言遊於逡楚。曰: “除乎! 司寇【4】將見我。” 門人旣除, 而司寇不至。言遊去。司【5】[寇]……將焉往?” 言遊曰: “食而弗與爲禮, 是獸工畜【3】之也。偃也, 修其德行。以受獸工之食於子, 偃僞, 於子損。於是乎何待?” 遂行, 至宋衛之間, 其一【2】子道餓而死焉。門人諫曰: “吾子齒年長矣, 家生甚急, 生未有所定。願吾子之圖之也。” 言遊【1】
Lu’s Minister of Justice sent Ziyou to Qun of Chu.Footnote 115 Ziyou said: “Clean up! The Minister of Justice wants to see me.” The menren finished cleaning, but the Minister of Justice did not come. Ziyou left. “The Minister [of Justice] [lacunae] send off, why do you set out?” Ziyou said: “To feed someone without treating him according to ritual is like tossing food to him as a tanner [does to his animals.] I am cultivating my virtuous conduct. If I accepted the food of a tanner from you, I would be acting dishonestly and would cause you losses. Therefore, why should I wait?” He then departed. When he was on the way between Song and Wei, one of his sons died of hunger. The menren remonstrated and said: “Sir, you are of advanced age. The livelihood of your household is in great trouble and has yet to be secured. We hope that you, Sir, reconsider your plans.” Ziyou […].Footnote 116
The anecdote relates that Ziyou lost his son because he attempted to travel from Lu to Chu with insufficient provisions. The Minister of Justice was supposed to hand over these provisions at Ziyou’s farewell ceremony, but after the Minister failed to arrive on time, Ziyou set off unprepared. Chen Wei 陳偉 has argued that the unnamed Minister of Justice is Confucius himself,Footnote 117 as he is said to have served in such a position when he was in his fifties.Footnote 118 In this case, this anecdote would provide clear evidence that Confucius, Ziyou and the menren stood in a vertical hierarchy to each other. However, if we accept Han Dynasty reports claiming that Ziyou was 35 to 45 years younger than Confucius,Footnote 119 Confucius was probably assumed dead, as the *Zi dao e explicitly states that Ziyou was “of advanced age” (chinian zhang 齒年長).Footnote 120 While it remains possible that the menren were former second-rank disciples of Confucius who stayed on with Ziyou, or that they were second-rank disciples whom Ziyou had gathered independently, the anecdote offers no concrete evidence for either scenario.Footnote 121 One naturally wonders if the second half of the text answered these questions. However, since it has been irretrievably lost, the manuscript’s bearing on the menren remains unknown.
Conclusion
The ambiguity of the Zi Dao E is particularly tragic because the question of the pre-imperial origin of the distinction between dizi and menren thereby effectively depends on the dating of the Lunyu and Mengzi, whose origins and early transmission are poorly documented.Footnote 122 While their language and philosophical content support a pre-imperial provenance,Footnote 123 both works were evidently edited and redacted during the Han Dynasty, a process during which a few words or anecdotes might arguably have slipped in. That the allegedly large size of Confucius’s following may well reflect the wishful thinking of later hagiographers prompts caution when dating the belief that this group had reached such a scale that it required hierarchical distinctions and that disciples taught one another.Footnote 124 As a result, we cannot rule out that the hierarchy between dizi and menren constitutes a retrojection by Western Han writers, who lived in times when scholastic communities steadily increased in size, and where the practice of having some students instructing other students appears to have been rather common.Footnote 125
That said, at least for the Han Dynasty and the corpus of traditionally transmitted sources that emerged during this period, dizi and menren should be seen as potentially more than just general terms for disciples. While notable exceptions suggest that translating the two words must be done on a case-by-case basis, the post-Han distinction between menren and dizi was in all likelihood not an invention of Cao Pi, but reflected how Han interpreters of Confucius and other Ru masters came to understand these terms. The general usage pattern of the word menren strongly suggests that it already carried a more specific meaning in Han times. Furthermore, several passages predating the third century ce provide contextual support for a hierarchical difference – if not a teacher-student relationship – between dizi and menren. Distinctions between disciples, such as those documented by Ma Rong’s school, were probably not only pragmatic measures to manage an increasingly large number of students, but were also reflective of a desire to organize one’s following according to principles believed to have been established by Confucius himself.
Suffice it to say that this article will leave some questions unanswered. Were the menren assumed to live with Confucius and his dizi? Or were they among those students who, as Lü Simian 呂思勉 (1884–1957) suggested, only visited their teacher occasionally while spending most of their time “plowing the fields and raising livestock” (geng qie yang 耕且養)?Footnote 126 How did the menren contribute to their community? Were they merely a convenient source of income, or were they reimbursed for their service? What non-educational purposes might they have fulfilled, and could they have had paramilitary functions? The Shiji reports that Confucius’s dizi Gongliang Ru 公良孺 travelled with five chariots while accompanying Confucius,Footnote 127 and even Mencius’s following is still said to have consisted of “dozens of chariots and hundreds of men” (3B/4).Footnote 128 Could it have been the menren who provided military protection?
The growing number of manuscripts from the pre-imperial and early imperial periods gives us reason to hope that some of the questions raised here may eventually be resolved. However, achieving this first requires acknowledgment that the distinction between menren and dizi is not a mere philological invention of medieval or late imperial scholars – a point that I have sought to demonstrate above.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all anonymous referees of this journal for their insightful comments and suggestions, which have greatly improved this article. All remaining errors and shortcomings are my own.
Funding statement
Work on this article has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 3061 – 533680712 (“Cross-Cultural Philology. New Perspectives on Premodern Textualities”).
