Persuasion or Admonition Following Wen Yan:Rites and Music Adhered in Social Change of the Spring and Autumn Period
In the Spring and Autumn period,when offering their persuasion or admonition to monarchs,wise officials usually began with"Wen yan...."(闻言,meaning"People say...;It is heard...or I hear...."Most of the hearsay was commonsense in nature,presented in the form of third-party authoritative discourses.With strong practical implications,they were actu-ally political expressions cited to give authority,rationality,and legitimacy to what the speakers were offering,by reminding the aristocratic consensus in the society of rites and music,so as to defend the system of rites and music.Being a derivative of the tradition of advising,this fash-ion was rooted in the early Chinese way of state formation,which was characterized by helping so as to gather people and replacing the country with family.The use of wen yan format did have some effects,and yet showed a gradual withdrawing tendency.Its value,however,was not just limited to the time.Through a particular situation in which wise ministers gave advice or admonition to monarchs,wen yan format was borrowed to iterate and elaborate on what were actually long-standing public discourses,and with the assistance of historians'on-site records and subsequent organization,preservation,and dissemination of words,the importance of those aphorisms or maxims as public discourses has been since then emphasized and accepted,and then they are canonized in traditional Chinese culture with eternal vitality.
万方数据
维普
