Zhōulǐ xiángjiě 周禮詳解
Detailed Explication of the Rites of Zhōu
by 王昭禹 (撰)
About the work
Wáng Zhāoyǔ’s 王昭禹 (fl. ca. 1100–1126) forty-juan sub-commentary on the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001), composed in the late Northern Sòng during the period when Wáng Ānshí’s KR1d0004 Zhōuguān xīnyì 周官新義 was the official examination-syllabus text. Wáng Zhāoyǔ follows the New School (xīnxué 新學) graphological method derived from Wáng Ānshí’s Zì shuō 字說 throughout, and the work was widely used by Sòng examination candidates as an authorised gloss on the Zhōulǐ. But on key fiscal-policy passages — most strikingly the Quán fǔ 泉府 office of the Dìguān — Wáng Zhāoyǔ silently undermines the Reform-policy reading. The Sìkù tíyào highlights this as evidence that the author had personally witnessed the failures of the qīngmiáo 青苗 (Green Sprouts) loan programme. The five ministries are presented without their introductory xùguān 敘官 sections — a defect that the late-Yuán Zhōulǐ jùjiě 周禮句解 of Zhū Shēn 朱申 (KR1d0012) inherited and which the Sìkù editors flag as a genuine flaw.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōulǐ xiángjiě in forty juan was composed by Wáng Zhāoyǔ of the Sòng. Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 says: “Of Zhāoyǔ I do not know what kind of man he was; recently he has been much used by candidates for the jǔrén examinations, and his learning everywhere takes refuge in the New Master [Wáng Ānshí]‘s explanations.” Wáng Yǔzhī’s 王與之 Zhōulǐ dìngyì KR1d0010 lèibiān xìngshì shìcì lists him after the Guīshān Yángshì [Yáng Shí], giving his zì as Guāngyuǎn 光遠 but again giving no rank or place — so we may take him to have been a man of the Huīzōng–Qīnzōng era.
Looking at his book, his gloss on “the king establishes the state” (wáng jiàn guó 王建國) takes “the enterprise reaching to upper and lower” as the meaning of wáng; and the act of enclosing it as guó. His gloss on “the fěibān expenditure” (fěi bān zhī shì 匪頒之式) takes the dispersing of stored goods as fěi and the graded distribution as bān; fěi is composed of 匚 (basket) and 非 (not) — meaning what is dispersed and is not stored; bān is composed of 分 (divide) and 頁 (head) — meaning that which is distributed downward from above. His gloss on pǔ (vegetable garden, 圃) reads: “the place that contains many fǔ (small officers)” — hence pǔ is for the orchards. His gloss on dried fish (bào yú 鮑魚) reads: “fresh fish wrapped (bāo 包) and presented.” His gloss on sù (dried-strip fish, 鱐) reads: “dried fish presented with reverence (sù 肅).” His gloss on the Sītú office reads: “hòu 后 (sovereign) is composed of 一, 口, 𠂉, and 口 — that which issues commands; reverse it [as 司] and it becomes the office that holds the commands. The 一 represents the unifying of the multitude; reverse [it as 司] and it represents dividing the multitude to govern them. The 𠂉 represents the receiving of the protective covering of the previous generation by which one rules the world; reverse [it as 司] and it represents taking the sovereign’s rank as the rule for executing offices.”
These tortured graphological constructions all follow the Zì shuō of the Reform school. At that time the Sānjīng xīnyì was officially established as examination doctrine, and Zhāoyǔ followed it without alteration. Yet his exposition of classical meaning is not entirely identical to Wáng Ānshí’s positions. For instance, on Quán fǔ taking the “produce of the home state” as interest, he says: “Each pays interest in the goods of the state-services he provides and the products in which he deals — farmers in grain, artisans in implements, all in what they have. When the Zhōu declined and could not regulate the field-system or stabilise land taxes for the people, taxes were levied without limit, and on top of that loans were extended; in famine years there was nothing with which to repay. When those below could not repay, the men above demanded payment, and the system of loans-and-interest became no help to the people at all. To require the produce of the home state as interest was effectively to abandon recovery of the principal.” Here he had with his own eyes seen the abuses of the qīngmiáo 青苗 programme and was quietly attacking its rationale.
Where his exposition of the classic genuinely emends earlier zhùshū errors, take his gloss on Zàishī 載師 lǐbù and wūsù 屋粟 (cloth-tax of the village and grain-tax of the dwelling): “State residences are not taxed; civilian residences are taxed; for those that grow nothing we exact the lǐbù; the people work the fields and reside in the village quarters, and their dwelling is provided with fields from which to issue grain — when they fail to till the fields we calculate their dwellings and tax them, hence wūsù.” He does not follow the earlier scholars who read lǐbù as “money for twenty-five households” and wūsù as “grain for three fū-units.” His gloss on the gradation of land-taxes — one in ten in the inner suburb, two in three in the outer suburb, but in the diàn, shāo, xiàn, and dū zones nowhere over one in ten — reads: “this is fixed by the demands of corvée labour, modified by remoteness or proximity, by ease or difficulty.” All these are points the earlier scholars never opened up. So when Sòng commentators on the Zhōulǐ — Wáng Yǔzhī’s Dìngyì, Lín Zhīqí’s Jiǎngyì — frequently cite him, they were right not to dismiss him simply because he followed the New School.
The five ministries [Tiānguān to Qiūguān] all omit their introductory xùguān 敘官 sections; the late-Yuán Zhū Shēn 朱申 in his Jùjiě 句解 KR1d0012 follows the same arrangement — ultimately a single defect. We retain the old text. Inside the work the Shìwén 釋文 of Lù Démíng 陸德明 is appended interlinearly, and at the head of each juan Démíng’s name is placed before Zhāoyǔ’s. We now find that Zhāoyǔ’s own preface ends “I have written this following the Shìwén” — so the Shìwén may have been added by a later hand. Because Démíng belongs to an earlier era, the title-page entered him above Zhāoyǔ. We retain his phonetic glosses but place his name only here, no longer side-by-side at the head of the juan.
Respectfully revised and submitted, sixth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Zhōulǐ xiángjiě is the principal surviving Northern Sòng exam-textbook commentary on the Zhōulǐ in the Wáng Ānshí lineage. Its widespread use under the Reform programme is amply attested by Chén Zhènsūn (writing in the early Southern Sòng) and the citation patterns in Wáng Yǔzhī’s Dìngyì (KR1d0010) and Lín Zhīqí’s 林之奇 Jiǎngyì — both of which draw extensively on Wáng Zhāoyǔ. The Sìkù editors single out two notable features: the embedded critique of the qīngmiáo loan policy (read off Wáng Zhāoyǔ’s gloss on the Quán fǔ office), and the genuinely original readings of lǐbù and wūsù in the Zàishī office, which depart from both the Zhèng Xuán and Jiǎ Gōngyàn glosses of KR1d0003.
Wáng Zhāoyǔ’s biography is irrecoverable. The most reliable inference (followed by both the Sìkù tíyào and modern scholarship) places him in the late Northern Sòng on the basis of the Zì shuō-orientation of his glosses, the unfavourable reference to qīngmiáo (necessarily post-Xīníng), and the position assigned him in Wáng Yǔzhī’s catalogue.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is occasionally cited in modern surveys of Sòng Zhōulǐ scholarship (e.g., Yè Chúnfāng 葉純芳, Sòngdài Zhōulǐ xué shǐ 宋代周禮學史 [Líng-bō chūbǎn 2010]) but has not been the subject of a dedicated monograph or article.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ note that Lù Démíng’s Shìwén glosses had been folded into the body text by some later editor — and consequently were entered above Wáng Zhāoyǔ’s name at the head of each juan — is a useful warning about the textual layering of recovered Sòng commentaries: an editorial insertion of yīnyì glosses can become so naturalised that a later transmission treats the gloss-author as a co-author of the host text.
Links
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html