INTRODUCTION

In this essay I will be introducing the "Three Doctrines Discussions" of
medieval China. These were imperially-sponsored debates between
representatives of China's three major religious systems, these being
Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. These debates had a long history. They
began during the Period of Disunion (221-580 C.E.), when China had
splintered into a number of separately-ruled, contending states, and they
continued during the reunification of the empire under the short-lived Sui
dynasty (581617). After reaching their apogee in the early half of the Tang
dynasty (618-960) they then underwent a decline in the mid-Tang and were
abandoned after 870.

This study of the "Three Doctrines Discussions" may be of interest to
students of argumentation and debate in several ways.[1] The "Discussions"
are one of the few instances in which the Chinese state sponsored
semi-public, adversarial debates, Fortunately there is a wealth of
historical materials and primary sources, including many verbatim accounts,
which allows us to paint a fairly comprehensive picture of these debates
and their development.[2] Despite the significant differences of language,
philosophical heritage, and cultural context between medieval China and the
contemporary West, I expect that the procedures, standards of judgment, and
underlying rationale of these debates will be surprisingly familiar to
Western-trained students of debate, Finally, the abundant records of these
debates allow us to trace out a suggestive parallel between the emergence,
evolution, and disappearance of the "Three Doctrines Discussions" and major
shifts in their political context.

In what follows I first briefly describe the precursors to the "Three
Doctrines Discussions"--that is, the varieties of debate whose forms,
topics, standards, and functions were the likely models for the "Three
Doctrines Discussions." After describing the emergence, growth, and decline
of the "Three Doctrines Discussions," I place their history within the
larger story of Chinese dynastic politics. Based on this correlation, I
propose that the evolution of these debates is best explained as an
instance in which the legitimizing functions of the impartial judgment of
reasoned debate were rhetorically exploited to political ends.
Specifically, by appearing to engage in dispassionate, reasoned judgment of
these debates, rulers sought to reinforce their ethos, and that of the
dynasty; and thus to contribute to its legitimation. Conversely, the less
need they had of such enhancement of their ethos, the greater the tendency
to reduce the "Three Doctrines Discussions" to a ritual enactment of a
debate, and finally to drop them entirely.

Sources of the "Three Doctrines Discussions"

First, let me briefly review the argumentative activities from which the
"Three Doctrines Discussions" developed, an especially needful task given
the common belief that China did not have a tradition of argumentation and
debate (Becker 1956). During the Period of Disunion (220-581 C.E.) there
developed two distinct practices of philosophical disputation. First, the
Buddhists sponsored frequent debates on points of Buddhist metaphysics.
These debates took place at the lecture halls associated with Buddhist
temples, and they were open to all to attend and even to participate in.
There was also a secular, private type of philosophical debate associated
with "Pure Talk" (qingtan) activities. These sessions of disputation and
explication, limited to invited guests, were drawn from the literati, and
the topics ranged over the doctrines of many philosophical schools (Garrett
1993).

In both these kinds of philosophical disputation the discussions concerned
abstract metaphysical and ethical themes. There were widely-accepted rules
of procedure that were quite similar for both. Seating was based on
reputation as a debater; the more well-known the individual, the closer to
the host's seat he was placed. Usually the host initiated the debate, but
sometimes he took challenges from other contenders. These debates were
generally constructive: a proponent proposed an argument for a thesis or
interpretation and defended his position; should he lose that round, his
opponent then advanced and defended his own position. The participants
themselves, as well as the audience members, reached a consensus on who
won. Audience members could become participants if they could hold their
own in the debate, thus providing a further check on the quality of the
argumentation.

The descriptions of these Buddhist and Pure Talk disputations show that
both the disputants and the audience were expected to find the better
argument, the one more in conformity with "reason," more convincing. What
"reason" (li) means in this context can be determined from two different
kinds of sources. First, there is a small body of literature which reflects
on and prescribes appropriate criteria for judging competing arguments,
especially those on abstract, dialectical topics.[3]

Whether they knew these works or not, in practice most participants in
these disputations assumed the standards articulated in these works, as can
be seen when they objected to points in others' arguments or when they
admitted defeat. Such instances reveal the normative standards for
conforming to "reason." They include such criteria as: internal coherence
and non-contradiction; consistency with canonical texts; sufficient
evidence; adequate response to objections; conformity to established
principles; justification for overriding precedents and principles; and,
less often, relevance, consequences, and predictability.

These criteria are no doubt familiar to readers of this journal, and their
application in these debates would be equally so, once the Western reader
became comfortable with the differing philosophical context. The goal of
these disputations--to discover the more defensible and thus, presumably,
the more likely or the true conclusion--also echoes traditional Western
justifications for debate as a means of testing ideas. This rationale for
debate was taken quite seriously; there are many recorded instances in
which the loser of a Pure Talk or a Buddhist disputation not only ceded to
the winner, as the spirit of the enterprise demanded, but praised the
winner's reasoning and publicly switched to that position.

There was an even longer tradition of debate on policy issues at the
ruler's court, debates which encompassed such issues as equitable taxation,
management of government monopolies, foreign relations, points of ritual,
and appointments to official positions. Such proposals were subjected to
much deliberation amongst officials and other members of the elite. These
debates were less formally structured than the philosophical disputations
but were equally competitive and serious. Generally such debates over
policy would be carried out orally at the court, or through a lengthy
process of written proposals, rebuttals, and counter-attacks which were
submitted to the throne and circulated among the officials. Indeed, astute
rulers solicited as broad a range of opinion as possible, so as to
illuminate all sides of the issue and test the support for various
positions. However, the ruler did not usually declare a winner. Instead,
after weighing the arguments, the ruler announced his decision and its
policy implications, sometimes explaining the reasons for both.[4]

In the case of these court debates as well, prolonged pro/con debate was
assumed to be an effective way to inform and improve decision-making. In
fact, rulers frequently called for submission of written opinions or
convened a court conference (tingyi) of high-ranking officials when they
were unsure of how best to proceed.[5] What's more, there are many cases in
the dynastic histories in which a ruler abandoned a proposal after good
reasons were advanced against it.

During the Period of Disunion the debates over policy at the courts of the
various rulers expanded to include issues raised by the infiltration of
Buddhism from China. Buddhism, with its renunciation of family ties and of
social and political obligations and its substituting of an alternative
source of moral authority and hierarchy, called into question the
underpinnings of the traditional Chinese social and political order. Unlike
the indigenous Chinese religions, Confucianism and Daoism, which recognized
or at least did not overtly challenge the supremacy of secular political
authority, Buddhism brought with it radical notions of the religious as an
autonomous, even superior sphere. This clash was neatly encapsulated in the
question of bowing. In India emperors bowed to monks. Must Chinese Buddhist
monks and nuns still bow to their parents and to the ruler, as Confucianism
and custom prescribed? There was also an economic aspect to the conflict.
Not only were monks and monasteries exempt from taxes, Buddhist
establishments accumulated huge fortunes from donors and became
money-lenders themselves. With money came power and corruption. In
response; from the fifth through the tenth centuries there were periodic
attempts at state-mandated reforms or purges of the Buddhist religious
establishment.

The "Three Doctrines" Discussions

To explore and resolve the social and political issues raised by this
foreign religion, the leading lights of Buddhism, Daoism, and, less often,
Confucianism, were invited to court to explain and to defend their
doctrines. At issue were considerations not only of truth, but of the
purported consequences of their doctrines for society. The ruler often
proposed a specific thesis, attended and judged the argumentation, and
issued policy directives afterwards. Sometime during the Northern Wei
(386-584) the imperial house instituted the practice of "birthday debates"
(danchen tanlun; Zan, 999/1924, p. 248a-b), holding such discussions as
part of the celebration of the emperor's birthday. These occasional debates
continued through the Tang dynasty, when they were referred to as
"explications and discussions of the Three Doctrines" (san-jiao jiangtan or
jianglun or jiangshuo). The first two Tang emperors refused to hold such
debates on their birthdays, perhaps not wishing to grant Buddhism this mark
of imperial favor. However, they did hold them on other occasions, most
notably at the imperial Academy (guozi xue) after the emperor performed the
sacrificial ritual (shidian) there. The first of these debates took place
in 624, six years after the establishment of the dynasty, when the founding
emperor Gao Zu visited the imperial Academy. Emperor Gao Zong (reigned
650-683) returned to the custom of also holding these debates on the
emperor's birthday. The practice of holding religious debates, especially
on these symbolically portentous days, continued through much of the Tang
dynasty. Though interrupted by the An Lushan revolt of 755-763, they were
resumed in 796. They were also discontinued during the Huichang persecution
of Buddhism (842-845) but were revived in 849. The last such debate of the
Tang dynasty was held in 870.

In many ways these competitive, adversarial debates reflect a confluence of
the court debates over policy issues and the philosophical disputations of
Pure Talk and Buddhism. Like the debates at court, the "Three Doctrines
Discussions" were an affair of the imperial court, not open to the public;
only well-placed officials and selected members of the religious and
secular elite were invited to watch the matches, and the populace learned
of the results by official imperial proclamation.

More significantly, like the debates over policy issues, these "Three
Doctrines Discussions" could eventuate in governmental action. For
instance, after the debate of 705 on the authenticity of the text Laozi
Converted the Barbarians [Laozi huahu jing]; a work which described the
Daoist sage Laozi as the source of Buddhist teachings, emperor Gao Zong
ordered that all copies of this text be burned.[6] Even more substantive
real-world gains were possible; after the Buddhist Zhi Xuan triumphed in
the debate of 849, the emperor Xuan Zong commanded that all the monastic
establishments which had been demolished by the previous emperor be rebuilt
(Zan, 988/1924, p. 744a).

As often as not, though, the debates revolved around doctrinal claims. For
instance, the emperor Tang Wu Zong (reigned 841-846) proposed the question
of whether one could learn to become an immortal, as well as the
proposition that "a large country should be governed as though frying a
small fish," that is, with minimal interference (Zan, 988/1924, p. 743c).
Both these notions were associated with Daoism, an amalgamation which
espoused linguistic scepticism, non-action, detachment, and, somewhat
inconsistently, the search for immortality. Given such abstract topics, the
debate was very similar to the more philosophical disputation of Pure Talk
and the Buddhist monasteries; the reasoning generally proceeded at a very
abstract level, the argumentation was heavily text-based, and such
standards as consistency with canonical texts and non-contradiction were
more central.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this similarity to the philosophical
disputations is to look at a representative excerpt from a "Three Doctrines
Discussion." In a debate held in 625 at the Imperial Academy, the Buddhist
Hui Cheng was the opening speaker. After an effusion of praise for the
Emperor and a synopsis of Buddhism, Hui Cheng turned to his first target,
the Daoist Li Chungqing. Hui Cheng pointed out that the first half of the
Daoist text The Classic of The Way and the Power [Daode jing] illuminated
the Way (Dao) and he asked whether there was anything greater than the Way.
Li answered negatively. Hui Cheng then attempted to trap Li into a
contradiction.

     Objection: "If the Way is the most extensive and greatest of all, and
     there is nothing greater than the Way, then is it also admissible that
     the Way is the most extensive normative pattern, and that there is no
     normative pattern beyond the Way?"

     Answer: "The Way is the most extensive normative pattern, and there is
     no normative pattern beyond the Way."

     Objection: "The Daode jing itself says that people pattern themselves
     after the earth, the earth patterns itself after Heaven, Heaven
     patterns itself after the Way, and the Way patterns itself after
     nature (ziran). What is your intent in deviating from your original
     doctrine? If you say that there is no normative pattern beyond the
     Way, and the Way is the most extensive normative pattern, but there
     exists a normative pattern beyond the Way, what is the meaning of
     saying that the Way is the greatest and there can't be anything
     greater than the Way?"

     Answer: "The Way is merely nature; nature is the Way. This is the
     reason there is no other normative pattern which can function as a
     normative pattern beyond the Way."

     Objection: "If the Way patterns itself on nature, and nature is
     precisely the Way, then is it also the case that nature in turn
     patterns itself on the Way or not?"

     Answer: "The Way patterns itself on nature; nature does not pattern
     itself on the Way."

     Objection: "If the Way patterns itself on nature and nature does not
     pattern itself on the Way, then is it also admissible that if the Way
     patterns itself on nature then nature is not the Way?"

     Answer: "The Way patterns itself on nature; nature is the Way. This is
     the reason they do not pattern themselves on each other."

     Objection: "If the Way patterns itself on nature, and nature is the
     Way, then is it also admissible that the earth patterns itself on
     Heaven, and Heaven is earth? But in fact earth patterns itself on
     Heaven, and Heaven is not earth; thus we know that the Way patterns
     itself on nature and nature is not the Way. If nature truly were the
     Way, then Heaven ought to be earth." (Dao 664/1924, p. 381a-b; my
     trans.)[7]

The text notes that Li fell silent, and Hui triumphantly sang out, "The
Daoist has run into problems and can't get out!" He then capped his triumph
with a witty couplet which left the Emperor beaming with approval.

As well as illustrating the affinity to the Buddhist and Pure Talk
disputations, this example also hints at some of the significant
differences between them. First, as in this example, these debates tended
to be destructive rather than constructive. Although the opening speaker
often sketched out the general principles of his doctrines, he did not then
defend them against challengers, as in Pure Talk and Buddhist disputation.
Rather, he demanded that his opponent resolve some apparent contradiction
in his (the opponent's) belief system or explicate a complex concept or
puzzling passage in his canonical texts. The exchange ended when the
challenger exhausted his questions or the challenged was reduced to
self-contradiction or silence.[8]

The parallel between these imperially-sponsored debates and the Pure Talk
and Buddhist disputation breaks down in some other ways as well. For these
debates the Emperor decided points of precedence such as who walked in
ahead of whom, who sat in the most honored seat, who spoke first, and when
the debate had ended. For instance, in the debate above Emperor Gao Zu
opened by proclaiming that the Daoists and the Confucians would be seated
ahead of the Buddhists, since their doctrines were indigenous to China.
Observing that the Buddhist monk Hui Cheng was unhappy about this turn of
events, he then announced that the Buddhist side would speak first. More
importantly, the Emperor was the sole judge of the match, rewarding the
victor with gifts and honorific titles, and there was no appeal of his
decision.

Historical Development during the Tang

Ostensibly the function of the "Three Doctrines Discussions" was to
illuminate all sides of the issue and to inform decision-making. During the
Period of Disunion through the earlier part of the Tang dynasty rulers and
emperors often behaved as if they took this notion very seriously, granting
victory to the better-argued case regardless of their personal beliefs or
the consequences. Thus, for instance, in 574 Emperor Wu Di of the Northern
Zhou dynasty (557-581) took negative measures against the Daoists as well
as against the Buddhists. As Ch'en notes, "[t]his might sound surprising,
considering the favorable attitude which he [the Emperor] held toward the
Taoists [Daoists], but in the series of debates between the Buddhists and
Taoists held before him beginning in 568, the Buddhists had so thoroughly
exposed the forged compositions in the Taoist canon, that the emperor was
obliged to take some action against the Taoists also" (Dao, 660/1924, pp.
631c-632a; Ch'en 1952, p. 272). The rhetorical nature of this decision is
underlined by the emperor's later softening of these restrictions in the
case of the Daoists.

Generally speaking, such impartial judgments became less and less the case
during the middle and the later Tang. During the ninth century the outcome
of these religious debates could be predicted on the basis of the emperor's
ideological preference; the winner, if there were one, was almost always
the Daoist. The apparent exception, the reign of Empress Wu, bears out the
general rule: Empress Wu based her usurpation on a Buddhist text, and under
her reign the Buddhists consistently won. n these debates. Early on there
appeared a tendency to a compromise solution; in 713 Emperor Xuan Zong
proclaimed that the debate had demonstrated the underlying unity, and thus
the truth, of all three doctrines! In 735 he went further, convening a
debate for the very purpose of demonstrating this conclusion. This
syncretic solution was commonly summed up in the phrases huisan guiyi, "to
bring together the three [doctrines] to return to the one [truth]" or
sanjiao tiaohe, "the three doctrines harmonized." This, despite the fact
that the debates were still competitive and adversarial, that none of the
debaters themselves had advanced such a thesis, and that this resolution of
the debate was usually incompatible with the arguments just presented.

During the middle and late Tang dynasty emperors also diverged from the
customary procedures more often and more egregiously. Sometimes the
Confucians were not represented, and the Buddhists began to be dropped from
the invitation list in 844. Even when a doctrine was represented, the
emperor rather than the clergy now selected its spokesman, and the imperial
choices could be quite capricious. For example, in 827 the renowned
literatus and poet Bo Juyi, who was sympathetic to Buddhism, was commanded
to defend Confucianism, and he was paired up against a Buddhist monk who
could not respond to the simplest queries (Dong, 1814/1961, pp. 87768779;
Waley, 1949, pp. 169-171). Not surprisingly, the quality of the
argumentation deteriorated markedly. This devolution reached a logical
conclusion in 870, when the "court jester" Li Keji wittily argued that the
central sages of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism were all women (cited
in Luo, 1968, pp. 172-3). After this there are no more records of such
debates during the Tang.

After the Tang dynasty fell in 918 China lapsed back into contending
fiefdoms, giving this period its name of "The Five Dynasties." The "Three
Doctrines Discussions" lingered on in a desultory and truncated fashion
during the early part of this period. There are occasional references to
imperially-sponsored debates between representatives of Buddhism and
Daoism, most notably those held by the first and the second emperors of the
Posterior Tang dynasty; each scheduled them for their first birthday on the
throne (in 923 and 926, respectively).

By the mid-Tang, then, the "Three Doctrines" debates had become a
ritualized performance, a theatrical representation of debate. Why this
transformation, and why did these staged debates continue? I propose that
the explanation can be found by looking at the large-scale shifts in
political power of the times, and specifically at the need and the
resources for dynastic legitimation.

The Medieval Political Context

Vigorous efforts at legitimation might hardly seem necessary in the Chinese
system of imperial rule. Not only were there no institutionalized checks
and balances, there was no notion of inalienable human rights. On the
contrary, in theory the Chinese emperor possessed the entire kingdom and he
had absolute power over every one of his subjects: There were no legal or
institutionalized restraints on his actions. What's more, as the "Son of
Heaven" only he could perform the sacrifices upon which the welfare of the
entire nation hinged. Because of the emperor's unique religious status he
was set apart by various privileges and taboos; for instance, speaking or
writing the emperor's personal name, even inadvertently, was punishable by
death.

However, the emperor's legitimacy was not just religiously-based; it also
rested on a pragmatic, procedural notion of legitimacy (Friedrich 1963, p.
236). This performance-based legitimacy was explicitly codified in the
notion of the "Mandate of Heaven" (tianming), according to which Heaven
itself sanctified the Emperor's rule. The "Mandate" was always
provisional-should the Emperor's moral character, and thus his government,
degenerate, the populace would become disaffected and Heaven would signal
its displeasure through portents. Should these warnings not be heeded,
Heaven would "withdraw the Mandate" and bestow it on the most worthy
candidate, who then founded a new dynasty. The "Mandate of Heaven" was a
crucial element in every Chinese dynasty's legitimizing rhetoric from the
inception of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1120 B.C.E.) down to this century.

Such a concept naturally invited palace coups and popular revolts against
weak rulers, and the "Mandate of Heaven" became a rhetorical tool in
political power struggles at all levels. A dynasty's legitimacy was always
conditional and required constant reinforcement at every turn, by drawing
on every resource of the ritual and the symbolic realms. In traditional
China brute force was never a sufficient long-term strategy for maintaining
political power. Indeed, "[i]n imperial China, several regimes and
dynasties . . . lost their claim to the mandate under widespread rebellions
because of the extreme use of force. Therefore, most of the imperial
Chinese emperors, who were constrained by the Confucian ideology of
benevolent government and the complex procedures of a bureaucratic empire,
preferred to employ legal and administrative means and, in particular,
indoctrination and persuasion" (Cham, 1984, p. 45).

A continuing goal of this "indoctrination and persuasion" was to manifest
the dynasty's legitimacy (zhengtong), to show that it still held the
"Mandate of Heaven." At the beginning of a dynasty this was achieved
through such actions as establishing a new calendar, with a new dynasty
name and a new reign period title, selecting the capitol, revising law
codes and bureaucratic procedures, manufacturing a suitably impressive
family tree for the emperor, promoting canonical literature, and adapting
rituals. All these functioned as implicit evidence of the ruling house's
authority.

The emperor, as a synecdoche for the dynasty, was a key figure in this
legitimation project. Bloodline alone was not enough: the emperor's
legitimacy was in large part a matter of ethos. This ethos was manifested
by the Emperor conforming to his role expectations; being devoted to the
well-being of the state and the people, filial, frugal, and so on.
Outrageous behavior or egregious faults could be used as a reason, or, at
least, a pretext, for demoting an heir-apparent or even deposing and
killing an enthroned emperor.

One of the major ways in which an emperor established his ethos was through
the manner in which he judged the court debates over policy issues.
Emperors were warned against the most serious failings. They were not to be
"partial towards" or "prejudiced against" (hi) people or ideas. Similarly,
they were not to be swayed by personal desire or interests, they were not
to be "inclined towards" (ce) or "leaning to" (qing). Additionally, they
were to avoid any reluctance to let irk unwelcome information; that is,
they were not to be "blocked" (si) or "obstructed" (yong). Indeed, emperors
had a special obligation to listen carefully to unwelcome advice, even to
solicit it, and individuals and groups frequently sent the emperor their
unsolicited opinions on an issue. And above all, emperors were urged to be
gong, that is, "impartial, fair, public-spirited, disinterested." While in
this state they were to evaluate proposals and discussions on the basis of
"reason" (li). In short, the emperor was held to high standards of
impartiality and assumed to allow the greater reasonableness of the better
argument to outweigh his personal prejudices and preferences.

In actuality rulers and emperors were often very interested or even
conflicted parties. This was true not only for political issues narrowly
construed but also when it came to religious matters. The rulers of the
Period of Disunion and the Sui tended to favor Confucianism or Buddhism.
However, the Tang emperors usually leaned toward Daoism. Indeed, as part of
its legitimation effort the Tang ruling house, whose surname was Li, in 637
C.E. created a genealogy for itself that traced its origin back to the most
illustrious bearer of that surname--the founder of Daoism! Reinforcing this
ideological predilection was the Tang imperial concern about institutional
Buddhism as a threat to state authority. Nevertheless, emperors and members
of the Tang imperial family sometimes were sympathetic to Buddhism, at
least to the extent of donating to the church and participating in some of
its rituals. However, even in these cases political considerations
influenced which particular sect of Buddhism they espoused (Weinstein,
1973).

This political hyperconsciousness was fostered by the especially acute,
ongoing "legitimation crisis" that lasted from the fall of the Han (220
C.E.) until well into the Tang. The Period of Disunion was comprised of
four centuries of seemingly interminable warfare, social and political
upheaval, mass migrations, brutal power politics, and innumerable failed
attempts to unite the country under one ruling house (Wright, 1957, pp.
74-79). The Sui lasted only two generations, and although the Tang
eventually became an epochal dynasty, its founders, looking back over the
past four centuries, had every reason to be gloomy about their prospects.
Added to these anxieties was the unusually powerful ideological challenge
of Buddhism, which by the seventh century was the dominant belief system of
China. Because of these historical contingencies the rulers of this period
were especially reliant on their ethos to establish their legitimacy and
that of their ruling house.

Given this precarious situation, instituting the "Three Doctrines
Discussions" was a rhetorically brilliant move for the ruler. Regardless of
who won, the very structure of the debates legitimized the state. At the
deepest level the issue raised by Buddhism was whether there could be an
autonomous sphere of belief and action in China, one which operated
independently of the state. By acting as the judge of these debates the
emperor asserted his primacy, and thus the primacy of the state, over all
three doctrines. Indeed, the debaters, in implicit recognition of this
supremacy, often opened with an encomium for the emperor. (In India, by
contrast, rulers observed such religious debates and rewarded the winners,
but never were the judges.) What's more, merely positioning the emperor as
the judge of these abstruse disputations reinforced his ethos, by
attributing to him the intelligence to evaluate the argumentation and the
ability to be impartial when doing so.

The setting of the debates reinforced this skewed framing of the situation.
The emperor donned ceremonial robes, sat on a dais raised above the
contending parties, and was addressed with appropriately deferential
language. During the Tang the emperor's preeminence was further reinforced
by scheduling some of these debates on his birthday. Added to this was the
ruler's power to determine certain procedural aspects of the debates: he
decided who walked in ahead of whom, who sat in the most honored seat, and
who spoke first.

In other ways as well these debates worked to the advantage of the Emperor.
Restaging the debates several times each year ensured that victory was
fleeting for any one group. Encouraging debators to refute their
adversaries' doctrines rather than to establish their own diminished the
significance of a victory, so that the Emperor could declare a winner for a
particular debate without any political consequences necessarily following
from that judgment, and also without inconsistency in judgments from year
to year becoming an embarrassing issue.

Given these obvious manipulations of the situation, it seems reasonable to
see the "Three Doctrines Discussions" as a rhetorical strategy exploited by
rulers anxious to bolster their ethos. When the balance of power was
especially delicate, creating the appropriate ethos by demonstrating
thoughtful, impartial judgment of the arguments was crucial.

However, the more secure the imperial House felt, especially in its
relation to Buddhism, the less need to appear to be judging impartially and
according to the standards of "reason." In short, I would hypothesize that
as the need for legitimation through imperial ethos became somewhat less
pressing and emperors could deal with their adversaries in more direct
ways, so too the "Three Doctrines Discussions" became a shadow play and
then eventually disappeared. This crucial shift in the balance of power
came in 845, with Emperor Wu Zong's devastating proscription of Buddhism, a
proscription which broke the power of the institutional forms of Buddhism
and set the Church back several centuries (Dalby, pp. 666669).

Before leaving these debates, we might ask why the representatives of the
three doctrines cooperated in what became, during the Tang, a patently
rigged contest, and one that apparently worked above all to the emperor's
advantage? It is striking that there are not any cases recorded of a
refusal to participate because of anticipated unfairness or of dropping out
because of procedural irregularities. One reason was surely that
individuals did not have an entirely free choice; by balking one risked
calling down imperial displeasure on oneself or one's group.

Furthermore, there were advantages to playing the game. Not only was there
the lure of victory; lacking that, one still had an imperial forum, and the
chance to cultivate the favor of the ruling house. Although, technically,
one side might win by arguing its opposition into repeated embarrassed
silences or damning contradictions, the ruler might still be secretly
swayed by the losing arguments, and nothing restrained him (that is, there
was no check on his power to prevent him) from favoring the losers in other
ways afterwards. In addition, at a deeper level each of the three doctrines
was legitimized by the very process of participating, even when they
lost--they were recognized as "players." Far worse not to be invited at
all! This validating effect of mere inclusion was especially important for
the Buddhists because of the foreign origin of their religion.

Finally, we might speculate that the Buddhists in particular may have had a
false sense of optimism about their chances in these debates. Buddhism is a
rationalistic religion, and never more so than in those strains of Indian
Buddhist philosophy which were absorbed during the early Tang. In addition,
some Chinese Buddhists monks of the Tang studied argumentation; there are
contemporary references to Tang monks translating and lecturing on Indian
works on philosophical disputation (yinming; Garrett, 1992). These
interests and biases might well have encouraged an unwarranted faith in the
power of reasoned argument, especially when reinforced by their victories.
Or perhaps their religious convictions impelled them to seize any
opportunity to proselytize, and they measured success by a different
standard than that of victory in debate.

                                CONCLUSIONS

The ostensible function of the "Three Doctrines Discussions" mirrors
certain Western notions about the function of debate in testing and
weighing propositions. One widely accepted and well-developed notion of a
"reasonable" or "rational" belief is that such a belief obtains its
guarantee of reasonableness from the procedures by which it is tested. On
this view a claim must be submitted to open, critical debate, a debate
judged solely on the basis of the merits of the arguments. The presumption
is that competitive debate will reveal the weaknesses and strengths of all
arguments, and thereby lead to better decision-making. The "Three Doctrines
Discussion" are a cross-cultural testimonial to the appeal of this notion
of competitive debate as an aid to exploring issues and evaluating
propositions.

But what, then, of the refashioning of such debate into a ritual
performance staged for political purposes? I have argued here that this
seeming devolution was a deliberate rhetorical strategy, one by which the
appearance of reasoned debate and impartial evaluation of such
argumentation were turned toward other ends than the discovery of the
better position. Ironically, this shift in function is, in its own way, a
further tribute to the force of this notion of impartial judgment of
reasoned debate. The impression that such debate is occurring can be a
powerful rhetorical strategy, but the Chinese experience shows that this
strategy cannot work for long if the debate is a debate in name only. Just
as lies are parasitic on truth, so too the exploitation of the appearance
of reasoned debate can only function so long as there are still some
instances in which it is more than just an appearance. It was when this was
no longer true that these debates degenerated into a farce, and then
disappeared.

I do not mean to suggest that this is a process unique to medieval China.
Arguably, a similar dynamic may be at work in many contemporary situations.
Faculty meetings, task forces, the United States Supreme Court,--there is
an ample field for research here, and the Chinese case study suggests a
chain of hypotheses that, may be explored in such cases: that under certain
circumstances or in certain instances the institutionalization of reasoned
debate and judgment of it may function largely as a rhetorical strategy;
that this rhetorical strategy is intended to validate the participants and
to establish a particular ethos for the judges; that this particular ethos
functions to legitimize these judges; and that this legitimization of
particular individuals or institutions then legitimizes the larger
political system in a diffuse way.

We might extrapolate two further hypotheses from this Chinese case study,
hypotheses about the relative gains for participants in such debates.
First, the fiction of impartial, reasoned judgment of debate can work to a
participant's advantage so long as the judge is heavily invested in
maintaining his or her ethos to strengthen legitimacy. The Chinese
materials contain a number of instances in which a ruler was forced to
acknowledge the better-argued position, despite his personal opposition to
it, and to act accordingly, at least for the time being. However, when
power was held more securely and this fiction became less important, the
emperor's decisions were less closely tied to the actual argumentation and
participants could not exploit the fiction to their advantage. However,
even in these cases participants could subvert such debates to other ends,
such as personal glory or, perhaps, proselytizing another audience other
than the emperor. Such lines of explanation may explain other cases in
which debaters opt to subscribe to a sustained pretext that all are engaged
in a reasoned debate to determine the stronger arguments despite the
likelihood that, in reality, they are party to more or less arbitrary
exercises in power.

In closing, I would like to return for a moment to the syncretic resolution
of these debates mentioned above. Within a competitive debate framework,
the conclusion that the clash of arguments has demonstrated the truth of
both or all doctrines seems odd, if not outright illogical. From a
philosophical standpoint, the notion that each religion expresses the same
truth in its own way is a respectable intellectual tenet in China as in the
West. However, it is not one that the structure of the competitive debate
format of the "Three Doctrines Discussions" would seem to encourage, or
even be consistent with. One final thought we might take from this case
study, then, is that particular procedures of debate may presuppose
particular assumptions about truth, assumptions which in turn forestall
certain conclusions about the thesis and thus restrict our perspective on
it.

1 So far as I am aware there is no English-language study of these debates.
There are two articles in Chinese by Luo Xianglin on the subject; the first
(1954) covers only the Tang dynasty, the second (1964) is more
comprehensive.

2 The accounts of these debates are found in a variety of medieval Chinese
sources, each with its biases. One major resource is the several Buddhist
compilations of materials related to the controversies they engendered.
These include letters, petitions to the throne, and responses to opponents'
petitions and proposals, as well as purportedly firsthand records of the
various debates. In chronological order, these are Seng You's Hongming ji
(c. 515/1924) Dao Xuan's Guang hongming ji (c. 664/1924), and his Ji gujin
fodao lunheng (664/1924). Other accounts of the debates are scattered
throughout the collections of monks' biographies for this period; these are
Duo Xuan's Xu gaoseng zhuan (c. 660/1924) and Zan Ning's Songgaoseng zhuan
(988/1924), The dynastic histories for this period incorporated many kinds
of primary records, including (presumably) verbatim renderings of
argumentative essays and petitions relating to religious matters which,
however, were edited from and commented on within a Confucian perspective.
Finally there are encyclopedia of various doctrinal stripes and other
miscellaneous historical records. (Unfortunately for those interested in
pursuing this topic, only bits and pieces of these primary sources have
been translated into English.)

Although--or perhaps because--they were written by those close to the
events, these materials are not unproblematic as historical records. The
natural tendency to give an ideological slant (one's own) to description
and evaluation of the debates was reinforced by the culturally-sanctioned
belief that historical writing should be didactic. Once this source of bias
is accounted for, though, there is a remarkable congruence in most of the
records of these debates, especially concerning such historical data as
dates and frequency of occurrence, participants, and political
consequences.

3 The most comprehensive early works treating standards of judgment are
those of the Later Mohists, which survived in highly corrupted form in
chapters forty through forty-five of the book Mozi. According to Angus C.
Graham's (1978) reconstruction of the text these five chapters contain
several related texts dating to the third century B.C.E. During the early
Tang a small number of Indian Buddhist tracts on philosophical
argumentation (yinming) were translated into Chinese. However, they only
achieved a limited circulation. The Song gaoseng zhuan (Zan, 988/1924)
records that certain Tang monks taught such works on argumentation, but
they were a tiny minority (Garrett, 1992).

4 In actuality dowager empresses, acting either as regent or as de facto
emperors, were often the real power behind the throne, to the point of
attending court, formally receiving proposals, and issuing edicts. However,
only Empress Wu (reigned 684-704) dared to establish herself as the ruler,
proclaiming her own dynastic title, calendar, and other apparatus of
legitimation. Since the political system was overwhelmingly male-dominated,
I will use the male pronorm throughout.

5 For the historical roots of the court conference in the Han dynasty see
Wang 1949, pp. 173-178.

6 For citations as well as a discussion of whether a similar debate took
place in 688, see Forte, 1976, pp. 88-91.

7 The rest of the debate appears in another text; see Dao 660/1924, p.
634a-b.

8 This format was not always followed strictly. For instance, the Emperor
Gao Zu allowed Lu Deming to question representatives of the three religions
at will (Ouyang 1040/1971, p. 5640). For the differing sources for the
dating of this debate, which put it at either 624 or 625, see Ran 1966, p.
21, n. 55.

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