Tàipíng jīngguó shū 太平經國書
The Book of Bringing Great Peace to the State
by 鄭伯謙 (撰)
About the work
Zhèng Bóqiān’s 鄭伯謙 (fl. ca. 1200–1240) eleven-juan treatise on the institutional framework of the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001), composed in the Yǒngjiā xuépài 永嘉學派 statecraft tradition. The title alludes to Liú Xīn’s 劉歆 characterisation of the Zhōulǐ as preserving “the traces by which the Duke of Zhōu achieved the Great Peace.” Organised under thirty topical headings (jiāohuà 教化, fèngtiān 奉天, xǐngguān 省官, nèizhì 內治, etc.) covering thirty-two essays in total (with two of the topics — nèiwài 內外 and huìjì 會計 — split into upper and lower parts), preceded by four organisational diagrams (Zhōu offices, QínHàn offices, Hàn offices, Hàn northern-and-southern guard armies). The mode of argument throughout is comparative: Zhōu institutions are set against later imperial institutions (especially Hàn-period equivalents), with the Zhōu form generally vindicated.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Tàipíng jīngguó shū in eleven juan was composed by Zhèng Bóqiān of the Sòng. Bóqiān (zì Jiéqīng, native of Yǒngjiā) held the offices of Xiūzhí láng and Qúzhōu Prefectural School Education Officer. Wáng Yǔzhī’s Zhōulǐ dìngyì lists at the head 45 Sòng Zhōulǐ commentators, with Bóqiān as the 31st, placed between Huáng Dù and Xiàng Ānshì — so he was a man of the Níngzōng–Lǐzōng generation. The book unfolds the meanings of the Zhōulǐ. Its title “Book of Bringing Great Peace to the State” takes its name from Liú Xīn’s phrase about “the traces by which the Duke of Zhōu achieved the Great Peace.”
The book opens with four diagrams: one of ChéngZhōu officialdom; one of QínHàn officialdom; one of Hàn officialdom; and one of the Hàn northern-and-southern guard armies — though the latter only depicts the duty-rosters of three reigns, the broader intent being to subordinate civil and military affairs alike to the Tàizǎi 太宰 (Grand Steward), so that only these four diagrams are placed at the head, to make ancient practice clear. The book’s thirty topics are: Jiāohuà (Education), Fèngtiān (Honouring Heaven), Xǐngguān (Reducing Offices), Nèizhì (Inner Government), Guānlì (Officials and Clerks), Zǎixiàng (Counsellors), Guānmín (Civil Officials), Guānxíng (Penal Officials), Lǎnquán (Centralizing Power), Yǎngmín (Nourishing the People), Shuìfù (Taxes), Jiécái (Saving Resources), Bǎozhì (Maintaining Order), Kǎokè (Performance Evaluation), Bīnjì (Guests and Sacrifices), Xiāngtǐ (Mutual Bodies), Nèiwàiguānzhì (Inner-Outer Office Systems), Chénzhí (Ministerial Duties), Guānmínguānwèi (Civil and Guard Officials), Fèngyǎng (Imperial Provisioning), Jìxiǎng (Sacrificial Banquets), Àiwù (Cherishing Things), Yīguān (Medical Offices), Yánjiǔ (Salt and Wine), Lǐcái (Fiscal Administration), Nèitǎng (Inner Treasury), Huìjì (Accounting), Nèizhì (Inner Government). The Nèiwài topic and the Huìjì topic are each split into upper and lower, making thirty-two essays in all. All are organised by gathering the Zhōuguān institutions into thematic clusters and presenting them as question-and-answer dialogues, using cross-references to later historical events to illuminate ancient practice. The argument on the offices of Tiānguān Yùfǔ etc. is praised by Chē Ruòshuǐ in his Jiǎoqì jí 腳氣集.
But there are passages in the book whose intent is not easy to make out. As recorded in Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語, after Hán Tuōzhòu’s 韓侂胄 fall the Palace Guard Commander Xià Zhèn 夏震 was still bowing to him by the roadside; Méijiàn shīhuà 梅磵詩話 records that in the Shàodìng xīnmǎo year [1231] the great fire at Lín’ān destroyed all nine ancestral temples, but only Counsellor Shǐ Mǐyuǎn’s 史彌遠 imperially-bestowed mansion was saved by the Palace Guards — hence Hóng Zīkuí 洪咨夔’s poem with its lines “the Palace Guard general fierce as a tiger / saved the residence of Lord Fényáng / while the spirits of the ancestors flew up to Heaven / how grievous, the nine temples burned to ash.” At that time, military authority was subordinated to civil authority, and counsellors’ power was at its zenith. Yet the Zǎixiàng chapter of this book still seeks to deepen counsellors’ power further. Furthermore, the Sòng since the southward removal had given itself over to Húshān song-and-dance and ceased to attend to the Central Plain; the proper response would have been to inculcate the lesson of “lying on firewood and tasting gall” (acceptance of present hardship to recover what had been lost). Yet the Fèngyǎng chapter of this book deeply censures Emperor Wén of Hàn’s frugality as misguided. Such positions cannot be taken as model.
In the other chapters, the linkage of classical meaning still has a fair amount of original insight; the old text has long circulated in the world. We may simply take what is salvageable and let the rest go.
Respectfully revised and submitted, eleventh 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 Tàipíng jīngguó shū is one of the principal monuments of the Yǒngjiā 永嘉 statecraft school of Zhōulǐ exegesis. Where the ChéngZhū Dàoxué tradition (e.g., KR1d0007 Yè Shí) treats the Zhōulǐ as a moral-cultivation framework, Zhèng Bóqiān treats it as the explicit blueprint for institutional design — the complete administrative manual for bringing about the Great Peace. The Sòng-period statecraft tradition runs from Chén Fùliáng 陳傅良 through Yè Shì 葉適 and Wáng Yǔzhī to Zhèng Bóqiān; its characteristic move is the comparison of Zhōulǐ offices with later (especially Hàn) institutions, on the working assumption that the Zhōulǐ describes practical state-craft, not merely ritual abstraction.
The Sìkù tíyào registers two specific reservations — Zhèng’s defence of expanding counsellor power (judged inappropriate to a Southern Sòng already suffering from over-mighty civil counsellors) and his critique of Hàn Wéndì’s frugality (judged inappropriate to a regime that needed less luxury, not more) — but the editors recognise the work’s sustained institutional analysis. The Yuán xù 原序 by Zhèng Bóqiān himself, transmitted at the head of the book, frames the work as a corrective to the failure of post-Qín emperors to grasp that “all-under-Heaven cannot be ruled by self-private intent” and traces the diminishing fidelity to Zhōulǐ institutions through Hàn, Tang, and Sòng. A 1536 (Jiājìng bǐngshēn) preface by Gāo Shūsì 高叔嗣 of Xiángfú records the work’s printing in Shānxī.
The catalog dating is “13th century”; this is the most defensible bracket given Wáng Yǔzhī’s positioning of Zhèng among the 1200–1240 generation.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is treated in surveys of the Yǒngjiā xuépài (e.g., Zhōu Mèngjiāng 周夢江, Yè Shì yǔ Yǒngjiā xuépài 葉適與永嘉學派 [Zhèjiāng gǔjí 1992]) but has not received a dedicated monograph or critical edition.
Other points of interest
The four organizational diagrams at the head — comparing Zhōu, QínHàn, Hàn, and Hàn-guard military structures — are an early instance of the genre of comparative-administrative diagrams that becomes standard in later YuánMíng zhōngzhèng 中政 statecraft compendia. The work’s question-and-answer format is also a deliberate echo of pre-Qín dialogical philosophical writing, situating the institutional analysis within a moral-rhetorical framing.
Links
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html