What does Confucius look like?

[Heracles]

Recent years, there has been a debate about the standard appearance of Confucius(Chinese philosopher whose Analects contain a collection of his sayings and dialogues compiled by disciples after his death. ).

I want to take a free-talking online program(like a conference), with 5 to 10 people, and try to find out the truth about the looks of Confucius form some historical material.

Anyone interests?

[BrandeX]

Much like modern interpretations of Jesus are based upon popular artwork of ages past "made up" by the artists, is there truly any way to recreate the exact appearance of an individual who lived in times prior to photography, or accurate portrait painting?

[muyongshi]

Well you could dig up his bones and do facial reconstruction of the shape that way based on other common geographical facial features.

But another good question is do you want what he looked like when he was alive or now?:mrgreen:

Kind of decayed now I bet.

[Heracles]

I think we can at least get some clues about his appearance, and build his image in our way:mrgreen:

[fireball9261]

He was supposed to be pretty tall. He was probably pretty strong also because his father was a famous warrior with great strength. In addition, he was trained in sword play, archery, and chariot riding, so he was not a weakling.

There were some paintings of him, but I am not sure how real it was. Considering he has tractable descendents since ancient time, the painting of him might be close to his real appearance.

[Lu]

What was tall in ancient China?

The descendants might help, but over the past 2000-something years, they will have intermarried so much that it will be hard to see what their ancestor looked like.

[owshawng]

Oprah

[fireball9261]

Hi Lu,

Actually, I meant that Confucius' has 香火 since his son's time, and each generation's direct descendent were known and appointed by the emperors of each dynasty. I figure they might have paintings of his true look from that time. Although the original painting may be lost because of the length of time (2000 years and more -- I think 2500 years?), the later paintings might be copies of the original painting, which might show his appearence. It's just my guess.

However, I think the current generation of Confucius' direct descendent (there is only one person in every generation) would have more information about this. I also know there is supposed to be an association of Confucius associated to the family, and they might also have some information about it. I am not sure whether this generation of Confucius direct descendent and his association are still based in Taiwan or not. There was a standard Confucius painting in Taiwan's history books, but I am not sure that is supposed to be the real one.

[Lu]

I know the Kong family made a new inventarisation of all the descendents recently. (This time, they included the women, for the first time in history.) They would probably have information about him. But as to looks, well, photography is something rather recent, and it's hard to tell how accurate a 2500 year old painting is, no matter who has painted or kept it, let alone if it's a copy.

Confucius' direct descendent (there is only one person in every generation)

This doesn't make sense to me. If Conf had two sons, for example, there are two people in the second generation of direct descendents. If they both had three children, that makes six direct descendents in the third generation. Etcetera. There are thousands of direct descendants by now, I think.

Either way, I wish the OP good luck with this project.

[fireball9261]

What I meant is the officially appointed descendent. There is only one in each generation no matter how many sons in that generation. Only one of the sons of the official descendent would be the next official descendent of the next generation. Since you live in Taiwan, don't you know that?

Every year's teacher's day in Taiwan, only the official descendent of the Confucius of that generation could officiate the sacrifice to Confucius in the Confucius' temple. This custom has been continued since Han dynasty. The other descendents could sacrifice to Confucius as their ancestor in the New Year Eve or the Qing Ming feastival in private, but the public sacrifices to Confucius in Confucius temple was always done by the official Confucius descendent in every dynasty.

Several years ago, I heard the original Confucius temple in mainland China also started to perform the official sacrifice to Confucius in his birthday to promote tourism, but they used the actors to do it at the time. I am not sure whether they changed it or not now -- as in changed it to have the actual descendent of Confucius to officiate the sacrifice. And if so, does the official descendent of Confucius go there to do it, or the mainland government picked some other mainland Confucius descendent to do it?

[Lu]

Since you live in Taiwan, don't you know that?

Unfortunately, when I got off the plane at The Airport Formerly Know As CKS, I was not miraculously filled with all there is to know about Taiwan.

Seems you confused the official descendant and the direct descendant, and that's why it didn't make sense.

[fireball9261]

Ah! Sorry about it. I thought you were born and educated in Taiwan.

The current Confucius official descendent is NOT the direct descendent. The direct descendents were killed by Cao Cao of kingdom of Wei in 3 Kingdom's time because the direct and official descendent at the time was against Cao Cao's taking over the throne of Han dynasty. His two young sons refused to flee and said the famous words, "There will be no unbroken eggs under the fallen nest." They stayed and were killed also. After that, I think Cao Cao appointed another more agreeable side descendent of Confucius to take over the line of the descent. I don't remember whether today's official descendent of Confucius is from this appointed family, or that line also died out in the 2000+ years of history.

[LiYuanXi]

Well you could dig up his bones and do facial reconstruction of the shape that way based on other common geographical facial features.

LOL!

Just like what they did to King Tut's skull in NGC. They reconstructed his face using a CT scan of his skull. Maybe we can suggest to NGC to do one on Confucius!~

[fireball9261]

It would be interesting. However, the family of Confucius would probably go after anyone who try to do it. Believe me, after 2000+ years, he had a lot of family. And Chinese tradition disallow descendents to disturb the tomb of the ancestors.

I saw a family tree comparison of Confucius family tree compared to a family tree of some famous western family (I forgot which one. I think it may be the family tree of a western noble family.) Comparing to Confucius' family tree, the other family tree was just like a little branch to a huge big tree.

[LiYuanXi]

Comparing to Confucius' family tree, the other family tree was just like a little branch to a huge big tree.

Wow~ Seems like he has got a huge number of descendants out there! Maybe cuz the chinese prefer to have more children.

[Lu]

I suppose it also didn't hurt that Chinese could have more than one wife (not that European noblemen never cheated, but their kids didn't count in the family tree).

And nowaways children only count as noble if both parents are noble. As a result, European nobility is going extinct.

Also, I wonder if really all those Kongs that claim they are descendants of Conf really are. A family could happen to be surnamed Kong and one day thought it was a good idea to trace their ancestry back to Confuciun. In Europe, this wouldn't happen so easily, as noble families usually had long & complicated names, odds were that anyone with that name really was related.

[gougou]

OK, so what I am wondering the whole time: why would you want to know?

[fireball9261]

Regarding thos Kong family members: If they are truely Confucius' descendents, they would have a specific middle name for all the sons in the same generation. Therefore, any member of the family would know the exact generation of each other. That's say, a Kong family member from Canada met another member from Taiwan. Just knowing each other's names, one would know the other was his uncle or nephew or same-generation cousins. These words were pre-determined for many generations so all members would know even if they were isolated from the main branch for a long long time.

I would say that the Kong's family tree was preserved carefully by generations of Chinese emperors and rulers because he was consider the most influenced person in China.

Regarding how he looked like: I was just curious. I am familiar with his standard painting, but I think he would not really look like that because he was trained as a warrior and his father was a man of great strength. I would think he looked fairly strong and more like a warrior. It would be interesting to see how his real look broke everyone's expectation. I truely wish the Kong family would allow Scientists to do research on Confucius' body for Science sake.