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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
In February 1999 I published a review article in the Bulletin (62/1) pointing to the difficulties encountered in trying to confirm the derivation of the Latin term ‘ Confucius’ from its supposed Chinese original, ‘ Kong Fuzi’. Briefly, the only general lexicographer to cite the Chinese term from premodern materials, Morohashi Tetsuji, does no more than quote a memorial inscription from the early nineteenth century, long after the Jesuit coinage of the Latin term, for a Mongol period figure from amongst the descendants of Confucius. Other earlier sources on this figure do not confirm the usage ‘ Kong Fuzi’ in his memorial materials, but only the more usual‘ Kong Zi’. Consequently, my own speculation was that ‘ Kong Fuzi’ could have represented a deliberate barbarism on the part of the nineteenth-century author, Cai Jinquan. The expression ‘Kong Fuzi’, therefore, remained unattested before the Jesuits, raising the suspicion that it might even be a back-formation from Latin rather than genuinely Chinese.
1 Barrett, T. H., ‘Is there a Chinese word for “Confucius”? A review article’, BSOAS 62/1 1999, 105–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Jensen, Lionel M., Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese traditions and universal civilization (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1997 [1998]), 7.Google Scholar
3 Thus the dictionary Zhongguo suyu dacidian (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 1989), 459, cites two modern authors and also Wang Yuguang, Wuxia yanlian, the first publication of which I take to be that listed in Sun Dianqi, ed., Fanshu ouji xubian 11 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji chubanshe, 1980), 178. I should point out that since I have not verified this reference, I am not certain whether Wang's original text in fact uses ‘ Kong Fuzi’ rather than ‘ Kongzi’.
4 Meibiao, Cai, Yuandai baihua bei jilu (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1955), 29, 54, 104.Google Scholar
5 Xiangmai, ed., Bianwei lit, 2, 765a21 in the edition of Taisho Canon, ui. Date from Cai, Yuandai baihua, 104, n2, and also Chavannes (next note).
6 Chavannes, E., ‘Inscriptions ct pièces de chancellerie Chinoiscs de l'epoque mongole’, T'oung pao 5 (1904), 366–404Google Scholar; see 392 in particular. More recently, for the overall context see also 47–8 in Thiel, Joseph, ‘Der Streit der Buddhisten und Taoisten zur Mongolzeit’, Monumenta Serica 20 (1961), 1–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Langlois, John D., ‘Chinese culturalism and the Yüan analogy: seventeenth century perspectives’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40 (1980), 355–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Ricci, Matthieu and Trigault, Nicolas, Histoire de l'expedition Chrelienne au royaume de la Chine (Paris: Descleé de Brouwer, 1978), 106, 394Google Scholar. Cited for convenience: the concordance on 695–7 gives easy access to better sources.
9 Wilkinson, Endymion, Chinese history: a manual (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 41, n25, and cf. 40 at n24Google Scholar: Wilkinson is concerned with specifically Buddhist terms, newly coined or introduced from what he wrongly suggests (for the early stage he mentions) was Sanskrit. Karashima, Seishi, A glossary of Dharmaraksa's translation of the Lotus Sutra (Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 1998)Google Scholar, vii, notes that, Buddhist technical terms aside, ordinary vernacular expressions also turn up for the first time in these materials, often long before the sources used by experts in the development of colloquial Chinese.