Zhōuguān zǒngyì 周官總義
The General Meaning of the Officials of Zhōu
by 易祓 (撰)
About the work
Yì Fú’s 易祓 thirty-juan Southern-Sòng commentary on the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001), composed during his Níngzōng-era career. Originally printed in Héngyáng 衡陽 with a preface by Xǔ Yí 許儀; the Sòng block-prints were lost by the Míng. The Sìkù editors recovered the Tiānguān, Chūnguān, Qiūguān, and Kǎogōngjì sections from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and supplemented the missing Dìguān and Xiàguān by extracting Wáng Yǔzhī’s KR1d0010 Zhōulǐ dìngyì citations of Yì Fú; the reconstruction follows the thirty-juan division reported in Zhào Xībiàn’s 趙希弁 Dúshū fùzhì 讀書附志. The work is one of the principal Yǒngjiā xuépài 永嘉學派 and Húnán-school Zhōulǐ studies of the late Southern Sòng. It is particularly noted for its detailed geographical-administrative analysis of the Zhífāngshì 職方氏 chapter.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuguān zǒngyì in thirty juan was composed by Yì Fú of the Sòng. Fú has a Yì zǒngyì already catalogued KR1a0048. This book is not entered in Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí; only Zhào Xībiàn’s Dúshū fùzhì registers it, with the note that Xǔ Yí had written a preface and that the work was printed in Héngyáng. Today the Héngyáng print is no longer extant; only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn still preserves the Tiānguān, Chūnguān, Qiūguān, and Kǎogōngjì. The Dìguān and Xiàguān are also lost. We have respectfully gathered the four-ministry text and arranged it; for the Dìguān and Xiàguān we have drawn on Wáng Yǔzhī’s Zhōulǐ dìngyì extractions of Yì Fú to fill in the gap. Following the listing in Dúshū fùzhì we have organised the whole into thirty juan. Although not the complete text, eight or nine parts in ten are recovered.
The work researches the classical text and judges by its own intent, with frequent disagreements with earlier Confucians. For instance, on the Tàizǎi’s jiǔ fù 九賦 (Nine Levies), he draws on the Zàishī on land-allotment, and on Sīshì, Sīguān, Kuàngrén, Jiǎorén, and Zhíbì, to refute the “head-rate of cash” reading. On the ancestral-temple jiǔ xiàn 九獻 (Nine Libations) he combines the Biānrén, Hǎirén, Nèizǎi, Sīzūnyí, and the Xíngrén Wánglǐ zàiguàn texts to refute the placement of guàn events within the jiǔ xiàn. On the Sìshī’s qí ěr 祈珥 he cites Yángrén, Xiǎozǐ, and Shānyú passages to correct the [Zhèng] reading of qí as guī and ěr as xù. On the Zhōurén’s four banners, he traces the discrepancies between Jīnchē, Sīcháng, Dàsīmǎ, Dàxíngrén, and the Kǎogōngjì, demonstrating that the Qūlǐ’s chariots-and-cavalry are a Warring-States institution. Such positions, even where his arguments have varying force, all interpret the classic by the classic and do not engage in empty fabrication.
When he changes “two affairs” of the Nèizǎi to “deputy-second” (fùèr 副貳), interprets the Jiǔshì zhī fǎ 九式之灋 of the Jiǔ zhèng office as the law of the Nine Expenditures, holds that the levies on garden-fields, chán-house land, and varnish forests are taken at one-in-ten plus a further three of one-in-ten / one-in-twelve / one-in-twenty divisions to be sent up to the king, holds that the Língrén who quarry ice in the twelfth month [建亥之月] are first ordered in the hài month and then take three months xūshì to receive the three months’ storage of hài, zǐ, chǒu — all these too are his original interpretations.
His treatment of the Zhífāngshì geography is especially detailed. Where he interprets the Sānjiāng he confounds it with the Sūshì (Sū Shì) reading; where he interprets Bō and Zhā he sticks too closely to the Táng zhì on Suíxiàn; where he interprets Jǐshuǐ and Jìshuǐ he relies on the Hàn zhì and forces them into two — these are all not entirely settled. But the citations and clarifications cannot be dismissed.
Although Yì Fú’s character was contemptible, in classical exegesis he is rich in textual evidence; one should not let the affair with Hán Tuōzhòu and Sū Shīdàn cover over the merit of his books.
Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh 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 Zhōuguān zǒngyì is one of the principal late-Southern-Sòng Zhōulǐ commentaries to combine Yǒngjiā xuépài statecraft preoccupation with a strict line-by-line evidential method. Yì Fú’s distinctive contribution is the use of cross-reference between offices within the Zhōulǐ itself to resolve interpretive disputes — what the Sìkù editors approvingly call “interpreting the classic by the classic” (yǐ jīng shì jīng 以經釋經). The most striking single block of original analysis is the geographical material in the Zhífāngshì commentary, which inaugurates the Sòng tradition of treating the Zhōulǐ’s administrative geography as recoverable through systematic comparison with later geographical sources.
The Sìkù editors acknowledge Yì Fú’s compromised political record (close association with Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄 and Sū Shīdàn 蘇師旦, demoted and exiled after their fall in 1207) but explicitly separate it from the scholarly value of his commentary. The composition is most plausibly dated across his Níngzōng-era career, in the bracket 1190–1230 (he was jìnshì in 1184 and was still receiving visiting-poems in the Jiāxī era 1237–1240).
The reconstruction in the Wényuāngé Sìkù is approximately 80–90% of the original — Tiānguān, Chūnguān, Qiūguān, and Kǎogōngjì substantially complete from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; Dìguān and Xiàguān in patchwork form from Wáng Yǔzhī’s Zhōulǐ dìngyì extracts.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Discussed in surveys of Yǒngjiā-school Zhōulǐ scholarship and Hú-nán Sòng-period classical learning.
Other points of interest
The reconstruction history of this text — Sòng print lost; substantially recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn with gaps filled from a contemporaneous citing-source — is one of the cleaner examples of Sìkù-editorial method, and is explicitly described in the tíyào with the editors’ arithmetic (“eight or nine parts in ten recovered”). The procedure became the template for the Sìkù recovery of dozens of Sòng commentaries that survived only in Dàdiǎn fragments.
Links
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html