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Origins of the Taiping Vision: Cross-Cultural Dimensions of a Chinese Rebellion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Philip A. Kuhn
Philip A. Kuhn
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

The transmission of systems of ideas across wide cultural gaps is hard enough to study on any scale of human organization. It is particularly hard when two large, complex cultures meet under traumatic circumstances, as did China and the West in the nineteenth century. The myriad variables in such a situation dictate special care in defining the specific terms and conditions under which ideas are transmitted. The present case suggests three points worth attention: first, the precise language of the textual material that impinges on the host culture; second, the underlying structure of the historical circumstances into which this material is introduced; third, the process whereby the foreign material becomes important to sectors of society outside the group that first appreciated and received it and thereby becomes a significant historical force.

Type
Religion and Revolutionary Minorities
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 350 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1977

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References

1 Though remnant bands fought on for a time in several provinces, the movement itself was effectively exterminated. The most valuable work on the Taipings in English is Michael's, FranzThe Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents (3 vols., Seattie, 1966 and 1971).Google Scholar The extensive translations (vols. Hand III) of Taiping sources will be cited in these notes as Documents.

2 The background of Liang and his tract are treated in Teng Ssu-yü's introductory essay to the 1965 Taiwan photolithographic reprint of Good Words. The analysis here is based upon this facsimile edition, cited as CSLY. It is an open question what Christian sources Liang had at his disposal besides the Morrison Bible. Although direct quotes from the Bible appear to follow Morrison's vocabulary exactly, Liang's own exigetical sermons obviously contain terminology from other sources. The term ‘shang-ti’ for God, and ‘yeh-huo-hua’ for Jehovah, are not used by Morrison. See CSLY 2:10, 8:1 ff. The Morrison Bible in the University of Chicago's Far Eastern Library is dated 1832 and was published at the Anglo-Chinese College, Malacca. A general study of texts available to the Taipings is Boardman, Eugene Powers, Christian Influence upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion, 1851–1864 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952).Google Scholar

3 CSLY 3: 1–3.

4 Hung's views on ancient China's worship of Shang-ti are found in the Taiping Imperial Declaration (T'ai-p 'ing chao-shu) in Documents, II,43–46;Google Scholar another statement to the same effect occurs in the Taipings’ Three Character Classic (San-tzu-ching) in Ta, Hsiang, ed., T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo (The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) (Peking, 1952), I: 226.Google Scholar

5 CSLY 5: 4ab.

6 CSLY 1: 16.

7 CSLY 5: 25–26b.

8 CSLY 4: 16.

9 CSLY 8: 28b-29.

10 Liang quotes the ominous passage in the second epistle of Peter (Peter 3.8) ‘… one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,’ and goes on to explain that St. Peter is referring to the end of the world, which will come suddenly and unpredictably, as a thief in the night. CSLY 5: 8ab, 8: 8.

11 CSLY 2: 10. See Teng Ssu-yü's comments on the liang-yen, Ch'üan-shih in his Historiography of the Taiping Rebellion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 1–5.Google Scholar

12 CSLY 5: 13.

13 I-shan, Hsiao, T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo ts'ung-shu (Taipei, 1956) I: 57.Google Scholar

14 CSLV 5: 24ab, 26.

15 Available accounts of Hung's visions occur in Hamberg, Theodore, The Visions of Hung-siu-Tshuen and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection (Hong Kong, 1854), pp. 6–13Google Scholar, reprinted by Yenching University Library, Peking, 1935; and another version, t'ai-p'ing t'ien-jih (Translated as The Taiping Heavenly Chronicle) in Documents, II, 51–76.Google Scholar

16 Documents, II, 63.Google Scholar

17 The poems referred to may be found in translation in Documents, II, 18–20.Google Scholar Chien Yu-wen's attribution of a particularly apocalyptic poem to 1843, to support his contention that Hung's final failure at the examination turned him into a ‘resolute’ revolutionary, relies on what seems to me unconvincing retrospective dating. See Chien, , T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuoch'iian-shih (Complete history of the Taiping Rebellion) (Hong Kong, 1962), I, 41.Google Scholar

18 The writings referred to here are those included in the Taiping Imperial Declaration, published in 1852 but actually thought to have been written in 1844–45. The text used here is the translation in Documents. II, 24–27.Google Scholar

19 Taiping Heavenly Chronicle, Documents, II, 57.Google Scholar

20 Taiping Imperial Declaration, Documents, II, 31.Google Scholar

21 Tai-p'ing chao-shu (Taiping imperial declaration) in Ta, Hsiang, ed., T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo, I: 89.Google Scholar The Michael and Chang translation is, I believe, mistaken in rendering t'ien-ming here as ‘Heavenly mandate.’ See Documents, II: 29.Google Scholar

22 Taiping Imperial Declaration, Documents, II: 36.Google Scholar

23 I am inclined to agree with Teng Ssu-yü on the apolitical character of Hung's early writings, as opposed to Chien Yu-wen and others who see rebellious intent. See the discussion in Teng Ssu-yü, Historiography, 9.

24 Ellsworth Huntington, The Character of Races; and George Campbell, ‘The Origin and Migration of Hakkas,’ both cited in A-mu, P'eng, ‘Kyakka ni tsuite no kenkyn’ (Study of the Hakkas)shina Kenkyū 21:77–183Google Scholar, 23:113–217(1930). Hsiang-lin, Lo, ‘K'o-chia yuan-liu k'ao’ (The origin of the Hakkas) in Ch'ung-cheng tsung-hui san-shih-chou nien chi-nien t'e-k'an (Hong Kong, 1950), pp. 1–106.Google Scholar

25 These coastal counties had been cleared of their entire populations by government edict in the 1660s as part of the campaign against the Koxinga regime on Taiwan. The settlement of these areas by Hakkas is traced in Lo, ‘k'ao, K'o-chia yuan-liu.’ Myron Cohen's important article ‘The Hakka or Guest People: Dialect as a Sociocultural Variable in Southeastern China,’ Ethnohistory 15.3 (1968), 237–292Google Scholar, analyses the social consequences of this migration. See also the valuable study by Wan, Lo, ‘Communal Strife in Mid-Nineteenth Century Kwangtung: the Establishment of Ch'ih-ch'i,’ Papers on China (East Asian Research Center, Harvard University) Vol. 19 (1965), 85–119.Google Scholar

26 Information on Hung's village comes from a number of sources. Chien Yu-wen's field data from the 1930s is summarized in ‘Yu Hung Hsiu-ch'üan ku-hsiang so te-tao ti T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo hsin shih-liao’ (New historical material on theTaipings acquired from a visit to Hung Hsiu-ch'iian's native village), I-ching (1939, no. 2) 67–74.Google Scholar The Hung lineage genealogy was acquired and copied by Hsiang-lin, Lo and is reproduced in his K'o-chia shih-liao hui-pien (Source materials on the Hakkas) (Hong Kong, 1965);Google Scholar see esp. pp. 344–45. See also Lo's, ‘T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo Hung T'ien-wang chia-shih k'ao’ (The lineage of Hung, the Heavenly King of the Taiping Kingdom) Kuang-chou hsueh-pao 1.2 (04, 1937) 1–19. Unfortunately we have no information on landowning patterns in Hung's village. It is quite possible that these Hakka villagers rented all or part of their land from Cantonese-speaking absentee landowners.Google Scholar

27 Hsun-chou fu-chih (Gazetteer of Hsun-chou prefecture) 1874 edition, 4:14a–b.Google Scholar

28 See, for example, the ‘local customs’ sections of the gazetteers for Hsun-chou prefecture (1874 ed., ch. 4) and Kuei-p'ing county (1920 ed., ch. 31.) The Kuei-p'ing gazetteer points out that the ‘indigenous’ (pen-ti or ‘punti’) people among whom the Hakkas settled were actually ‘assimilated’ (shu) Chuang. Both the Chuang and the linguistically similar Lang people are referred to elsewhere in this text as ‘indigenous’ (t'u), in distinction to the Hakkas (lai, or k'o). Kuei-p'ing hsien-chih (Gazetteer of Kuei-p'ing county) 1920 ed., 31: 47b–8, 33:12.Google Scholar

29 Myron Cohen has demonstrated the importance of dialect throughout south China as a cohesive factor that transcended kinship and territory, and thus contributed to wide spread civil war during the 1850s. Cohen, , ‘Hakkas,’ 273–287.Google Scholar

30 For examples of such opprobrious record-keeping in Kwangtung, see K'ai-p'ing hsien-chih (Gazetteer of K'ai-p'ingcounty), 1933ed., 21:5b;Google ScholarHsin-ning hsien-chih (Gazet teer of Hsin-ning county), 1893 ed., 14:22. The Hsun-chou gazetteer (1874 ed., 4:14a-b) lists Hakkas as ‘lai’ (the word ‘to come,’ i.e., immigrate, with the dog-radical added).Google Scholar