Hóng fàn tǒng yī 洪範統一
The Unity of the “Great Plan” by 趙善湘 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A short single-juǎn monographic treatise on the “Hóng fàn” 洪範 chapter of the Shàngshū 尚書 (KR1b0001), arguing that the Nine Chóu 九疇 (“Nine Categories”) of the chapter form a single integrated structure governed by a unifying principle within each category. The work was completed and prefaced in Kāixī 3 / 1207 (mid-autumn, fifth day before Zhōngqiū 中秋) by Zhào Shànxiāng 趙善湘 (Qīngchén 清臣), a fifth-generation imperial-clan descendant of Púānyìwáng 濮安懿王 (the biological father of Yīngzōng 英宗) who in his own right was a serious Yìjīng commentator. The text was extremely rare even in the Sòng — recorded as Hóng fàn tǒng lùn 洪範統論 in the Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì and as Hóng fàn tǒng jì 洪範統紀 in the Wényuángé shūmù — and was already marked “not seen” by Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo 經義考; the surviving 1-juǎn recension is recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiàn, where it carries the present title. The substantive importance of the work lies in its position within the famous Zhū Xī / Lù Jiǔyuān debate over the meaning of huáng jí 皇極 (“the Imperial Ultimate”): Zhào Shànxiāng arbitrates between the two positions, taking Lù Jiǔyuān’s reading of huáng jí = dà zhōng 大中 (“the Great Mean”) in agreement with the zhùshū tradition, while combining it with Zhū Xī’s “establish the ultimate” (jiàn jí 建極) practical-administrative application.
Tiyao
Imperially Authorized Sìkù Quánshū. Classics, division 2. Hóng fàn tǒng yī. Books-class.
Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Hóng fàn tǒng yī in one juǎn is by Zhào Shànxiāng of the Sòng. Shànxiāng, zì Qīngchén, was a fifth-generation descendant of the Púānyìwáng. His career reached Zīzhèngdiàn dàxuéshì; he was enfeoffed Wénshuǐjùngōng and posthumously canonized Shǎoshī. His record is fully given in his Sòngshǐ biography. Per the preface of his son [Zhào] Rǔméi to the Zhōuyì jí wén, Shànxiāng exerted himself deeply in Yì studies and composed five Yì shuō, all now lost. The present book is also rarely entered in collectors’ catalogs, hence Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo notes it “not seen.” We have now transcribed [the surviving copy] from the Yǒnglè dàdiàn and made it once more a complete chapter. The book was completed in the Kāixī era. The Sòngshǐ gives it the title Hóng fàn tǒng lùn; the Wényuángé shūmù further records it as Tǒng jì. We adopt here the title used by the Yǒnglè dàdiàn.
According to Shànxiāng’s own statement: “Hàn-dynasty exegetes glossed and explained, but only used [the categories of] Wǔ shì (the Five Conducts) and Shù zhèng (the Various Verifications) as proofs of [the doctrine of] Wǔ xíng (the Five Phases), so that the [categories of] Wǔ jì (the Five Calendrical Numbers), Bā zhèng (the Eight Administrations), and so on were dispersed and one could not see what they were ordered under. The disasters they cited and the events they invoked were largely forced.” So he draws on Ōuyáng Xiū’s Tángshū yìwén zhì [Tang lì zhì 唐曆志], on Sū Xún’s Hóng fàn tú lùn, and on the residual intent of these earlier writers, and fixes upon huáng jí as the unifying principle for the Nine Chóu. Within each chóu, similarly: as for Wǔ xíng, water-fire-wood-metal are all unified under earth (tǔ 土); as for Wǔ shì, demeanor-speech-sight-hearing are all unified under thought (sī 思); when one has the unifying principle, the Nine Chóu can be threaded through with one [thread]” etc. — so the Yǒnglè dàdiàn title, Hóng fàn tǒng yī, is name and substance in correspondence.
On investigation: when Master Zhū and Lù Jiǔyuān debated over the meaning of huáng jí, going back and forth in argument, each held to a single position. This book glosses huáng jí as dà zhōng (the great mean), grounding itself in the [old] zhùshū — that agrees with Lù; and it again says that the Nine Chóu all turn upon the ruler’s heart-mind, made manifest as zhì zhì 至治 (perfect ordering) — that agrees with Master Zhū’s intent of jiàn jí. So [Shànxiāng] is one able to reconcile both [self and other] and to take from both schools. Living at the time of factional partisanship and competitive lecture-disputation, yet steadfastly not a participant in the rivalry-of-gates, this is no small accomplishment. Respectfully submitted, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, ninth month.
— Director-General, Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. — Director of Final Collation, Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Hóng fàn tǒng yī is a small but historically significant document: a 1207-dated single-juǎn essay by an imperial-clan member that — within the lifetime of both Zhū Xī (d. 1200) and the still-living xīnxué 心學 lineage — proposed an irenic reading of the huáng jí 皇極 phrase that took half from each contending side of the Zhū / Lù dispute. The author Zhào Shànxiāng 趙善湘 (Qīngchén 清臣), elsewhere known principally as a Yì-commentator (his five Yì-treatises are now lost; their methodology is preserved through his son 趙汝楳’s Zhōuyì jí wén (KR1a0058)), wrote this Shàngshū essay as a deliberate intervention into a debate that had defined the doctrinal field of the Sòng Hóng fàn tradition.
His thesis is precise and limited. Hàn-dynasty exegesis on the “Hóng fàn” — exemplified by the Hóng fàn wǔ xíng zhuàn tradition surviving through Liú Xiàng 劉向 and Liú Xīn 劉歆 in the Hànshū — had treated the chapter as a code for zāi yì 災異 (“disasters and anomalies”), pulling together Wǔ xíng 五行, Wǔ shì 五事, Huáng jí 皇極, Shù zhèng 庶徵, and Fú jí 福極 into a single causal apparatus while leaving the remaining four categories (Bā zhèng 八政, Wǔ jì 五紀, Sān dé 三德, Jī yí 稽疑) “dispersed and ungoverned.” Zhào Shànxiāng accepts the partial truth of this Hàn reading — that there is a unifier for the Nine Chóu — but rejects its identity (the Hàn pattern of forced zāiyì correspondences). Drawing on the irenic precedents of Ōuyáng Xiū’s 歐陽修 Xīn Tángshū yìwén zhì (which records disasters without forcing event-correspondences) and Sū Xún’s 蘇洵 Hóng fàn tú lùn 洪範圖論 (which had already pushed Fú jí 福極 toward Huáng jí as unifier), he posits that Huáng jí — placed structurally at the fifth and central position of the Nine — is the unifying principle of the entire chapter, and that each of the Nine Chóu contains its own internal unifier (e.g. earth among the Five Phases, thought among the Five Conducts).
The doctrinal balancing-act is the work’s most cited feature. The Sìkù compilers note that Zhào’s gloss of Huáng jí as Dà zhōng 大中 (the Great Mean) follows the old zhùshū and agrees with Lù Jiǔyuān’s position — Lù had argued precisely this against Zhū Xī, who insisted on jiàn jí 建極 (“establishing the ultimate”) with strongly normative-political content. But Zhào also holds that the Nine Chóu “all turn upon the ruler’s heart-mind and are made manifest as perfect ordering” — which is the practical-administrative application that Zhū Xī’s jiàn jí required. The Sìkù compilers’ verdict is striking: in an era of fēn péng jiǎng shèng 分朋講勝 (“factional partisanship and competitive lecture-disputation”), Zhào held aloof from the ménhù 門戶 (“school-gates”), and this is “no small accomplishment.”
The transmission history is straightforward: composed and prefaced 1207, lost during the YuánMíng transition, recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiàn by the Sìkù in 1781. Title variants — Tǒng lùn 統論 (Sòngshǐ), Tǒng jì 統紀 (Wényuángé shūmù), Tǒng yī 統一 (Yǒnglè dàdiàn / Sìkù) — all preserve the same substantive thesis.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation of the Hóng fàn tǒng yī is known. The work is treated within the broader Hóng fàn secondary literature: see Michael Nylan, The Shifting Center: The Original “Great Plan” and Later Readings (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1992) — the standard Western reference on the Hóng fàn tradition, treating Zhū Xī, Lù Jiǔyuān, and the Sòng huáng jí debate at length. Zhào Shàn-xiāng’s specific contribution is treated in Jīn Yǔnxǐ 金允錫, Sòngdài Hóng fàn xué yánjiū 宋代洪範學研究 (Beijing: Beijing University Ph.D. dissertation, 2008), which surveys the entire arc of Sòng Hóng fàn monographic literature.
Other points of interest
The work is methodologically significant as one of the earliest sustained Sòng arguments for internal hierarchy within each of the Nine Chóu — Zhào’s key example, that tǔ 土 (earth) is the unifier of the Five Phases (rather than the conventional centric balance of all five), and sī 思 (thought) the unifier of the Five Conducts, anticipates the late-Yuán and Míng tendency to treat the “Hóng fàn” as a graduated system rather than a flat catalog. The latter reading is foundational to Cài Shěn’s much more famous Hóng fàn huáng jí nèi piān 洪範皇極內篇 — written a few years after the present work — but where Cài Shěn’s project leans into number-cosmology, Zhào’s stays squarely with classical exegesis and political philosophy.
The 1207 dating places the work very close in time to Cài Shěn’s own Shū jízhuàn preface (1209, KR1b0017) and Shí Lán’s Zēngxiū Dōnglái shū shuō preface (1207, KR1b0013): the year of the huáng jí arbitration is also the year the major surviving Southern-Sòng Shàngshū commentaries achieved their canonical form.
Links
- CBDB id 19405
- Wikidata: no entity for this 趙善湘
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Shū lèi, Hóng fàn tǒng yī entry (Kyoto Zinbun digital edition)