"The background of the Kong family of Lu and the origins of Ruism", by Robert Eno, in Early China, issue 28 (2003)
This is a summary of the above-mentioned text, and requires that you already know some basic elements about Ruism if you want to understand the importance of this argument. For a good introduction to Confucianism, and to the reasons why the term Ruism is of late prefered by many scholars to Confucianism, see Neo-Confucianism Philosophy@The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The author's theory is that everyone agrees today on the fact that cultural developments of China during the Zhou has elements of Confucianism (or Ruism ) in it, and that those developments find their origins in the Xia/Shang cultural heritage. Through his essay, Robert Eno wants to demonstrate that Confucius, refered to in this essay as Kong Qiu, his real name, wasn't a descendant of the Shang house, like the tradition had established, but instead was from a culturally mixed background, and that this fact had consequences on Ruism, implying that cultural development, at least during the Zhou period, was not a "purely chinese" one, but had foreign elements in it.
The first written trace of a genealogy for Kong Qiu is found in the Shi ji, written some centuries after Kong Qiu's lifetime. It refers to his father as being Shuliang He, but generally speaking, the connection between Kong Qiu and his ancestors listed is tenuous at best; moreover, in another text that focuses on Kong Qiu, the Zuo zhuan, there's no reference to Shuliang He as his father, even if he is mentioned in the text. While some scholars propose that the connection between the two was fabricated, the author thinks that the cnnection is stronger than it first appears. Indeed, in the Zuo zhuan, Shuliang He appears in connection with one of the most important clans of Lu, the Zang, and one of its members, Zang He, who is saved by a party where Shuliang He prominantly appears. Those names, Zang clan and Zang He, appears several times in connection with Kong Qiu, connections that seem more than sheer coincidence. On this point, the author concludes that Shuliang He should be considered the father of Kong Qiu, unless counter-evidence appears. Since there's no other formal proof than the quote from the Shi ji, it seems indeed better to leave the door open for the possibility that Shuliang He may not be his father; it however seems unlikely to be the case.
As for his mother, we know from the Shi ji that she was of the Yan clan, that she survived Kong Qiu's father who died when he was an infant, since Kong Qiu was old enough then to arrange her funerals. Since it also states that he didn't know the place of his father's grave to bury her nearby, it seems, from that and other hints in several texts that he had, as a boy and young man, solely the family support of his mother, and maybe her own family. This is reinforced by the fact that many disciples of Kong Qiu share the surname "Yan"; the logical explanation to this would be that there was a strong interest on his mother's side. Another point that's important is that her family must have originated from the state of Zou (a later name for the "barbarian" (Yi) state of Zhu, or Zhulou; as indicated in the 6th century AD writing Yan Zhitui). Since it seems his father too came from that state (he, like Kong Qiu, is sometimes refered to in texts as a "man of Zou", which could be either a city in Lu, or the state of Zhulou; the author thinks it is in fact the second possibility that's the right one), that would mean that Kong Qiu's origins are found in a Yi culture, and not in the "chinese" one.
The Kongzi jiayu traces Kong Qiu's ancestry all the way back to the Shang dynasty, in the brave and wise brother of the last ruler of that dynasty. His son became the duke of the new state Song and Kong Qiu's great grandfather was the first to arrive in Lu. But it seems that this lineage, which is the one usually given to Kong Qiu and which would mean that he is, in fact, the heir to the Shang throne had his forbearer not left it to his brother under circumstances that show him as a wise man displaying typical qualities praised by Ruism, has no historical basis and was made up.
The following point (and I won't go through the details here because it would become even longer than it already is), is that the different undercurrent of early Ruism notably manifest themselves through the difference in treatment of both the Yan and the Zang clans (remember, the Yan are the clan of Kong Qiu's mother, the Zhang are related to his father) in the texts they wrote: while in some, like the Zuo zhuan, they praise Zang Wenzhong and the cultural orientation is clearly that of Lu or Zhou, in others, like the Lun Yu, or the Mengzi, they side with the Yan clan, a Yi clan.
So what's this Zhulou state anyway? Well, it was just south of Lu, not far from its capital, and one of the many Yi states in the region, before being absorbed by Lu at the end of the 5th century BC, i.e. after Kong Qiu's death which was in 479 BC. Also, Kong Qiu's birthplace, Zou, must have been a former capital of that state. All in all, Kong Qiu was an outsider to the Zhou culture, a fact that is actually implied in the Lun Yu and other writings that describe him as practicing or teaching to others non-Zhou customs. Most of the time, there's an underlying tension between Zhou and non-Zhou in such descriptions, something that appears in the early texts of his school as well.
After having discussed the influence of a Yi state, the author spends some time on the Zhou influences and the role played by the Zang clan in early ruism. Zang Wenzhong is listed as one of Kong Qiu's early influences in the Shi Ji, so that must mean than origins of ruism are found also in Lu. He points out that the Zang clan may have been singular in Lu for their ritual traditions, notably the nurturing of a big turtle throughout several generations. The first apparitions of Zang members in texts are when they intervene in a discussion about the respect of ritual actions (or li, which is a central notion of Ruism).However, the author recognizes the fact that no other tradition specific to the Zang clan is known to us, which weakens his claim. Then he proceeds to the origins of the term "ruism". For him, it may come from the fact that Zou, or Zhulou, is a transcription of a name that's not a "Zhou" one, but comes from another language. Therefore, different possible transcriptions are possible for Zhulou, one of them may be in fact zhuru, ru being represented by the character meaning "dwarf". The author, in that regard, underlines more than once the fact that Zang He is, at one point, mocked as a "ru of zhulou", i.e. a "dwarf of Zhulou". He concludes by saying that probably, by the time Kong Qiu arrives on the scene, there was a ru tradition characteristic of the Zang clan that was somehow connected to the Zhulou state, and to which Kong Qiu's father, close to the Zang clan, was also related.
This analysis is one more argument for those who have, during the last decades, insisted on the fact that early, pre-Qin cultures were not "purely chinese", but were in fact hybrid ones, Ruism among them. For, no matter how much one agrees with the author's arguments (I'm personally not too sure about his explanation of the origins of the term "Ru" and its link to both the Zang clan and the Zhulou state), there are just too many evidence, some I wouldn't bring up here because it would have become a little complicated, pointing to a strong link between Kong Qiu and a non-Zhou, or Yi, state. Another evidence is also the care with which the disciples who wrote some of the most important texts in Ruism "bashed" Zang clan's members, sometimes through comments coming out of the blue, as if to make sure that a distance would be criven between that clan and Kong Qiu. Why would they do that if there wasn't a connection in the first place? However, as the author finally points out, there is no evidence of non-Zhou tradition in Ruism, and the origins of Kong Qiu certainly explain more in terms of internal politics between Ruist disciples than explanations of the Ruist tradition itslef. However, it is possible that theultra-orthodox Zhou aspect of Ruism is due to an attempt at erasing the foreign origins of the school of Kong Qiu and his first disciples
