Zhongyong

The Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) has traditionally been ascribed to Zisi, the grandson of Confucius and the indirect teacher of Mencius. Although this ascription has been challenged by modern critical scholarship since the turn of the twentieth century, recent archaeological finds indicate that the traditional view is not without textual base. If the Zhongyong actually predated the Mengzi, it seems that a significant portion of the Liji (Book of Rites), of which the Daxue (Great Learning) and Zhongyong are chapters, contains documents of the fifth century bc. This fact alone merits a fundamental restructuring of classical Confucian chronology and reinterpretation of the Mencian line of the Confucian tradition.