| Hunan Scholars in Modern Time adhered to Neo-Confucianism, and wereespecially famous with abide by Cheng-zhu Neo-Confucianism. From Tao Guang-XianFeng Time, Qing Empire faced and suffered serious situation from both outside anddomestic. So they especially dedicated themselves to practical theories and tried hardto help Qing Dynasty out from hard situation. Therefore many famous Hunanintellectuals stood out at that time and Xiang Military group came into being soon afterTaiping army turned up and most of the Key leaders of Xiang Military were HunanScholars. They directed their thoughts according to Confucius Theory, aimed to defendit devotedly, and achieved greatly in political, military, economy and culture, thesepeople were so called who ‘manage the country with Neo-Confucianism’.As a leader of Xiang Military really famous together with guo-fang tseng and HuLinyi, Tso Tsungt’ang is the out-standing representative of such Hunan Scholars. Thesescholars studied and understood Confucius classic very well, followed Confucianismrules, compared the reality with history, tried hard to find methods for bettermanagement of their country, and thus to devote themselves to the society. This is theircommon routine what we called ‘manage the world with Neo-Confucianism’. Besidesthis, Tso Tsungt’ang had a special understanding and practiced it in his life, that is, theway ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’.Tso Tsung T’ang ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’, is not only anideology, also a kind of practice. It resulted from Chinese tradition culture and greatConfucius theory, and resulted from his life experiences and accumulations. In his life,all his obtaining and giving were based on the principle Yi (a belief that do things forthe good of others and the society) and he judged himself with if what he did benefitthe country or not. Based on this, Tso Tsung’Tang used most of his salary for hiscommunity and country, and to help others who he thought need help. This is thespecial point that he was different from others keeping the principle ‘manage the worldwith Neo-Confucianism’.We can tell Tso Tsung T’ang’s practice of ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefitothers’ from following points. Firstly, he kept to the principle for a long time, hebegan to help others before he went into government. From his mid-age, he holdposts in the army and province government for many years and devoted his salary to others, this behavior lasted about several decades. Secondly, what his help anddevotion involved a large scale of people and events. Not only helped others withtheir life, but also devoted to events that were crucial his army and country. Althoughthere was no detailed record for his devotion, with so many scattered materials indocument literature, we can tell that involve so many people and events. And this isreally benefited for us to learn and understand the reality, society and history of histime.When Tso Tsung T’ang used his salary, he always kept the principle and order,firstly used it to help others and the public issues and then to himself and his family,even sometimes only used his salary for the public issues and others. At the same healso emphasized Confucius doctrine that favored relatives then others ethically.Therefore, his behavior of ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ followed aorder, that is, firstly self-spent, then for his family, then relatives, then his big family,then his friends and subordinates for their royalty to the army and country. Secondly,launching and encouraging education, helping poor students and intellectuals, buildingfacilities that benefit the people, then military service and diplomacy affairs. This Kindof order coincided with the ideal method of Confucius scholars, namely self-culturing,family supporting and culturing, and devotion to management of their country. At thesame time, this also illustrated Tso Tsung T’ang’s pursuing for the dream of rebuildingand strengthening China.Zhuge Liang’s words ‘be quiet and still for self-education and culturing, and befrugal for personal moral character culturing’ was viewed as a theory of self-culturingand family supporting and culturing as well, which affected Confucius intellects a lot.Compared with Zhuge Liang’s theory, Tso Tsung T’ang’s ‘keep a frugal life to relieveand benefit others’ proposed ‘prefer help others more and a less frugal life for oneself’.Besides containing the meaning of self-culturing and family supporting and culturing,these words meant more and provided a practice for country management. Furthermore, Tso Tsung T’ang’s proposal enlarged ‘personal moral character’ to ‘benefit andfavor to others’, and thus enriched traditional ideas to a higher level, and provided anew ideology and method for managing the country for his followers.The idea ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ played a virtual role inTso Tsung T’ang’s life, and this was his principle moral standard in getting along withothers, disposing different problems and issues. From his devotion we can find howmuch the Confucius ideology placed on intellects of China in the past in self-educationand culturing, and personal moral character culturing Tso Tsung T’ang’‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ involved manypeople and issues at that time. From the point of relationship, his devotion covered hisrelatives, friends, subordinate, poor students and people suffering trouble and/ordisasters as well. From the points of devotion use, it covered not only money providedto his relatives and friends, but more used for the benefit of society, philanthropy, andfor political, military, economic and cultural aspects, and many of these devotion had aclose relationship with important people and history events. From this, we can studyand understand Tso Tsung T’ang more about his mentality, thought, character, and thuslearn more about the human relationships and society character of his time.Many intellects like to say ‘most of the so called famous ministers arising fromHu Nan province of Qing Dynasty who lead Xiang army were scholars and managedthe country with Neo-Confucianism’. But there is nearly no clear studying on howthey managed their country with Neo-Confucianism, what the relationship wasbetween Neo-Confucianism and achievements they made. From the point of TsoTsung T’ang’s ideal ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ we can study hisall of aspects of economic measures, education and military achievements, andpersonal moral culturing as well. By this way we can learn and understand more ofgeneral reality how these famous ministers managed the country withNeo-Confucianism as Tso Tsung T’ang is a outstanding representative of them. As TsoTsung T’ang was an intellect grown up from natural economic society and Confuciusculture, we can clearly find Confucius intellectual character of inheritance andinnovation from Tso Tsung T’ang. He is a representative of his time, a time oftransferring from ancient to modern time, from tradition to innovation. By study wecan see his mentality of anguish, confusion, thinking, and his strive of adopting,change and exploring, and these were common for other intellects of his time. All ofthese were a kind of awakening and enlightenment.Tso Tsung T’ang is a great man of his time but not alone. His idea and belief, hispolitical proposal and execution, and even his moral character is marked with historyfeature and affected a lot of during and after his time. On the one hand, Tso TsungT’ang leaded his people with character of honesty and frugality, relieve and helppeople with benevolence. His idea ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ gota historical intellectual leadership influence. He leaded army and on the post of localgovernment for a long time in northwest China, and affected and trained many honestsubordinates. These people managed northwest China after Tso Tsung T’ang, andthey inherited many from Tso Tsung T’ang on political, economic and even mental character, and thus kept northwest of China. Tso Tsung T’ang’s subordinate placed avirtual role in keeping Xin Jiang province territorial integrity during the torrent ofQing being invaded and cut by west countries. On the other hand, Tso Tsung T’ang’sidea ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ still means lot for our society, andalso is a good example for moral building today.This article chooses Tso Tsung T’ang’s use of his salary as studying point becausethis is a topic being focused a little, and tries to fill in gaps and enrich the aspect of TsoTsung T’ang study. Methodology is the soul of history study, and my article triedsome new studying methods. In this article I tried to explore inner inevitability andlogic of Tso Tsung T’ang’s idea ‘keep a frugal life to relieve and benefit others’ fromthe aspects of economy, culture, and others as a whole. And at the same time study TsoTsung T’ang from the points of idea history, political history, society history, economichistory and mentality history together, aiming to further learn Tso Tsung T’angacademic achievement, personal character, behaviors and society situation of his timeas well. I think this way is helpful for further study of Xiang military group andmodern Hunan culture, and even for good of modern history study. Meanwhile, useof new materials and clearing up of relevant documents in this article also value a lotfor academic study. |
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