Imperial and Ancestral Sage

This paper examines cult rites devoted to Confucius as Supreme Sage performed in the capital by imperial authorities and in Qufu and by Confucius’s descendants in imperial and ancestral halls of his birthplace. I discuss court debates on the multivalent conception of Heaven-God (haotian shangdi), which received offerings from the emperor at the Altar of Heaven, to show that Confucian officials conceived of the highest deity of the imperial pantheon in terms of filial devotion. I argue that in spite of official pronouncements on the unity of Heaven-God, imperial officials performed a complex liturgy that treated it as possessing cosmological astrological propensities and anthropomorphic qualities. I then consider the ritual disposition of the principal consecrator–both imperial officer and lineage descendant–at the imperial Confucius Temple and consider the role of ancestor veneration in the consecrator’s purification rites in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I pose two questions: To what extent did the ancestor-descendant relationship bear upon imperial sacrifices, even when the object of cult veneration was not ancestral? Given the central role of imperial cults in governing empire, what insights into the nature of governance in late imperial times can be gained by considering the presence of ancestors at imperial sacrifices?