| Abstract |
During the early Edo period, the work Heresies Refuted （Heikii，《闢異》）published by Yamazaki Ansai（山崎闇齋）, a Zhu, Xi scholar, collected all Zhu, Xi’s anti-Buddhist theories. Against this, one of Ansai’s contemporaries, a monk named Inkei Chidatsu（隱溪智脫）, began an thorough defense with his A Synthesis of Confucianism and Buddhism（《儒佛合論》）. This paper is meant to analyze and compare the controversy surrounding Confucianism and Buddhism as expressed in the two scholars’ works and the ensuing controversies it provoked, hence, an insight into the significance of the controversy in the history of thought. The second section of this paper analyzes the content of Heresies Refuted . And then the third section treats the defense of A Synthesis of Confucianism and Buddhism against Heresies Refuted, one by one. After the controversy between the two works, various controversies still remained to be seen. Through the chapters on the relationship between Confucianism and Buddhism in Aid for Defending Buddhism （《護法資治論》）by Mori Shoken（森尚謙） in 1707, the fourth section expounds the Shoken’s comprehensive method, that is, “to prove Buddhism with Confucianism, to illustrate Confucianism with Buddhism”. Thanks to the afore-mentioned Confucian-Buddhist controversy, we are able to see the very fact that the time had come for Confucianism to stand on an equal footing with Buddhism even though it had previously been appending to Zen monks or Buddhist temples as a learning. Consequently, the Confucian-Buddhist controversy between the Ansai School and the Buddhist monk-scholars not only means something influential in the history of Edo thought, but should occupy a significant place in the history of East Asian Confucian-Buddhist controversy.
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