有關孔子一生的故事甚多，漢人獨喜以孔子見老子一事畫或刻在祠堂和墓室中，可 能是因為這個故事在漢代人的認識中具有多面性。它可以隨墓主或家人的理解，作 不同或多重的解釋。它可以象徵學聖與尊師，也可以因漢人視老子如神仙，象徵由 學聖而成仙的追求。墓主追求的道，可以是儒家理解的道，也可以是道家或神仙家 的道。所謂「朝聞道，夕死可矣」，他們如同孔子之聞道於老子，不論其道為何，可 依個人心之所安去解釋，然後安心地走向人生的終點。 本文考證孔、老二人中間的小童應是項橐，他象徵著生而知之。孔子以他和老 子這一少一老為師，象徵聖人無常師。在漢人的傳說中，孔子雖為大聖，卻也有不 如這一老一少之處。對一生嚮往成聖的士子儒生而言，這幅畫像中的大聖有不如人 處，項橐乃生而知之者，如此學聖不成，非己之過，也就不那麼感到遺憾了。可是 另一方面，漢代士人又堅信聖人與常人無異，有為者亦若是。因此圖緯內學所強調 的聖人具天生異能異相之說，似乎不那麼受歡迎；圖緯書中描繪的異相聖人也就不 曾出現在漢代的畫像中。 以目前可考的有孔子見老子畫像的墓葬或祠堂而言，墓主身份皆屬儒生或儒生 兼官僚。漢代儒學大興，流播各處，不過齊魯畢竟是儒學的發源地。在地域觀念深 重的東漢，孔子見老子畫像獨多於今山東地區，應與孔子乃魯人、弟子多齊魯所 產、儒學與齊魯之地淵源較深這三點有關。

There are many stories about the life of Confucius. People of the Han particularly enjoyed painting or sculpting the story of how Confucius met Laozi on their ancestral halls or tomb walls. Perhaps this was due to the fact that this story, as the people of the Han knew it, was multi-faceted. It was capable of presenting different, complex interpretations depending on the understanding of the tomb owners or family members. It could represent the great sage of learning, or a revered teacher; and also, since people of the Han viewed Laozi as a sublime immortal, it could represent the pursuit of the sublime world facilitated by the great sage of learning. The dao pursued by the tomb occupant might be the dao as understood by the Ru [Confucian] scholars; or it might be the dao of the Daoists or of the specialists and devotees of the sublime immortals. As [Confucius] had said, “If I heard about the dao in the morning, I could die peacefully in the evening,” and so they compared this to the event of Confucius hearing about the dao from Laozi. It didn’t matter which dao it was: that could depend on the explanation that best satisfied each individual’s heart and mind, after which they could peacefully move on towards the ultimate events of a human life. According to the research done in the present paper, the youth between Confucius and Laozi ought to be Xiang Tuo, who symbolizes those prodigies born full of knowledge. Confucius took these two—one old, one young—to be his teachers to show that a sage is flexible in his choice of teacher. In the legends of the Han, although Confucius was a great sage, in some respects he was not as good as this pair of figures, one old and one young. As far as it concerned a follower of the Ru [Confucian] programme, who worked all his life to become sagely, this image of the great sage who yet had aspects that were not as good as other people’s—whereas in contrast Xiang Tuo was a prodigy born full of knowledge—implied that if one did not become a great sage of learning, it was not entirely one’s own fault, and did not need to occasion so much regret. However, from another viewpoint, the scholarofficials of the Han dynasty firmly believed that there was no essential difference between a sage and ordinary humans. With just the proper devotion to work, anyone could be like that. For this reason the sage with extraordinary circumstances of birth or extraordinary physical features, often appearing in apocryphal texts, seems not to have found so much favor here: the sage with extraordinary physical features was never depicted in Han painting. Based on the presently available tomb paintings or ancestral hall paintings of the theme of Confucius meeting Laozi, we can say that the tomb owners were all devotees of Ru [Confucianism] or Ru devotees who served as officials. In the Han dynasty, Confucianism enjoyed a great rise in popularity and spread everywhere. Nevertheless, the areas formerly occupied by the states of Qi and Lu were after all its original domains. In the Eastern Han, a time that was deeply conscious of regional viewpoints, depictions of Confucius meeting Laozi were particularly common in the Shandong area. This should have something to do with the fact that Confucius was from the state of Lu [in Shandong] and that his disciples were mostly from the areas of Qi and Lu: so that the relations between Confucianism and these areas were particularly deep.