A Speechless Monarch: Early China's Battle for Intellectual Authority

Although the earliest political text from early China, namely the Canon of Documents, comprises speeches attributed to ancient kings, for most of the Eastern Zhou period (770-255 BCE) monarchs remained conspicuously silent. This article surveys the instances of the rulers' speeches in major historical collections and a sample of philosophical texts from the Warring States period. I demonstrate that the rulers' voice in these texts is overwhelmingly confined to short questions, approval of proposed policies, or other insignificant uttering. I argue that this silence was deliberately built into the texts by their composers, so as to preserve the intellectual authority in the hands of the educated elite. It was only with the imperial unification of 221 BCE and the dramatic change in the balance of power between the emperors and the intellectuals that the royal speech regained its prominence and political importance.