The Models of Transmission: Early Transmission Narratives of the Taiji tu and the Late Northern Song Intellectual Context

Abstract

The claim that Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 created the Taiji tu 太極圖 has been disputed ever since Zhu Xi proposed so in the twelfth century. Critics who denied Zhou’s authorship have often ascribed the Taiji tu to the recluse Chen Tuan 陳摶, with the ultimate source of this attribution being Zhu Zhen 朱震. All transmission claims are, essentially, myth, and a myth is an answer to the problems of the mythmaker. This article explores such problems that would possibly have troubled Zhu Zhen in the historical context of the late Northern Song intellectual world. An investigation of individuals and works that constituted the world of Book of Changes specialists reveals two dominant models of transmission (chuan 傳) of the Way. Those who preferred an image/number approach to the Book of Changes passed their scholarship down to a highly limited number of pupils; those who cherished a moralist understanding tended to disseminate their knowledge broadly. Zhu Zhen and other Book of Changes masters of the late North-ern Song sought to reconcile the two models and one result of their efforts was the unification of the academic genealogies of the two traditions