Zhōulǐ zhuàn 周禮傳
A Transmission of the Rites of Zhōu
by 王應電 (撰)
About the work
Wáng Yīngdiàn’s 王應電 (fl. Jiājìng mid-era) ten-juan commentary on the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001), composed during his refuge at Tàihé 泰和 (Jiāngxī) after the Wokou raids drove him from Kūnshān. The Sìkù presents the work in three coordinated parts: Zhōulǐ zhuàn in 10 juan (line-by-line transmission), Túshuō 圖說 in 2 juan (illustrations and explanations), and Yìzhuàn 翼傳 in 2 juan (supplementary essays in seven chapters, including a Dōngguān bǔyì 冬官補義 reconstructing 18 offices for the missing ministry, Tiānwáng huìtōng 天王會通 correlating the offices with the Heavenly-Officers astronomy, Xué Zhōulǐ fǎ 學周禮法 on how to read the work, and Jīngzhuàn zhèngwěi 經傳正譌 on textual emendations). Wáng was a pupil of Wèi Xiào 魏校 (1483–1543); the work cites him as “the Master.” The autograph preface is dated Jiājìng wùwǔ (1558).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōulǐ zhuàn in ten juan, Túshuō in two juan, and Yìzhuàn in two juan was composed by Wáng Yīngdiàn of the Míng. Yīngdiàn (zì Zhāomíng, native of Kūnshān) in the Jiājìng era encountered the Wokou disturbances and took refuge in Jiāngxī, ending at Tàihé. He received instruction from Wèi Xiào — when the book says “the Master said” it transmits Wèi Xiào’s words; the Míngshǐ Rúlín zhuàn therefore attaches his biography to Wèi Xiào’s. The history records that Yīngdiàn was deeply enamoured of the Zhōulǐ; he holds that since the Sòng, Hú Hóng 胡宏 and Jì Běn 季本 each wrote books picking out its flaws to the tune of several hundred thousand characters; Yú Shòuwēng [Tíngchūn] and Wú Chéng held that the Dōngguān was not lost but interspersed in the five remaining ministries, and rearranged accordingly; recently Hé Qiáoxīn 何喬新, Chén Fèngwú 陳鳳梧, and Shū Fēn 舒芬 each rearranged on personal judgement. But these are all the various Confucians’ Zhōulǐ — not the classic itself.
So Wáng spent more than a decade in deep study, first seeking the sage’s mind, tracing the source of the ritual; next consulting the documents of celestial phenomena, recovering the original intent of office-establishment; tracing the cohesions and divisions of the five ministries; seeing the structural extreme of mainframe and details; from the manifest probing the subtle, from the small unfolding the great — and from this fashioned his Zhōulǐ zhuàn in several juan.
Yīngdiàn’s exertions on Zhōulǐ learning are deep. The three books are bound separately but in fact mutually-supportive in operation. Examining the broad outline, merit and demerit are visible side by side. The ten-juan Zhuàn expels the Kǎogōngjì and does not record it — even granting that this is a project devoted to the ancient classic alone, his cutting-up of the xùguān text (gathering offices subordinate to the same function and arranging them by category) cannot escape the charge of garbling. Yet his interpretive reasoning is fairly sound and proper — though sparse on textual evidence — and brings out a great deal of philosophical meaning. The two-juan Túshuō serves as a check on the Zhuàn meanings; some passages have illustrations without text (e.g., Zhífāngshì nine-province diagrams) or text without illustrations (e.g., distinctions of nǚgōng, nǚxī, nǚnú). The upper-juan Míngtáng biǎo one chapter has the entry but not the text, indicating defect in the source; the lower-juan lacks jǐngyìqiūdiàn diagrams which appear separately in the Yìzhuàn.
There are some misstatements: e.g., his identification of shè (altar) as the earth-spirit and his assertion that the summer solstice rite at the fāngzé (square pond) was the great-altar offering — but examining the Chūnguān Sīfú, the xuánmiǎn is offered to shèjì and the five sacrifices, ordered below the cuìmiǎn used for the four-watch mountain-and-river offerings; Zhèng Kāngchéng’s Jiǔzhèng note accordingly lists shèjì among the lesser sacrifices — fundamentally clear. Yīngdiàn’s making the shè into the great earth-spirit-offering departs from classical meaning. As to his identification of the Míngtáng with the king’s six rest-chambers, with the ritual ancestor-offering to King Wén accompanied with the High God being not in the king’s chamber but in the southern suburb co-located with the Heavenly Suburb — and the spirit-receiver going only to the Míngtáng — the Tōngdiǎn records the southern suburb as 50 lǐ from the capital, the Míngtáng as between 3 and 7 lǐ outside the capital — making them more than 40 lǐ apart; how could the spirit-receiver during the offering be welcomed forty lǐ away? The Zhōulǐ Zhǎngcì (掌次) “for all sacrifices set up the spirit-receiver tent” — the spirit tent is right next to the altar-precinct and the spirit-receiver came there. Yīngdiàn has not consulted the zhùshū and so falls into this error. Other instances: he diagrams the Southern Suburb before the cháorì (audience-of-the-sun) — accurate to the order; but diagrams the Qígǔ (prayer-for-grain) after yíngshǔ (welcoming-summer) — quite confused.
His own preface says the older Zhōulǐ tú depicted ceremonial robes by category as male/female forms but did not clarify the zhāngfú insignia; and depicted jǐngyì by category as great-square enclosures but did not differentiate the gōuxù channels — points he has corrected. We retain the present text alongside his Zhuàn to preserve a single-school account.
The two-juan Yìzhuàn is in seven chapters. Upper juan: Dōngguān bǔyì, Tiānwáng huìtōng (correlating offices with Heavenly Officers), Xué Zhōulǐ fǎ (how to read the work), Zhìdì shìyí (matters of administering land); lower juan: Wòqí jīngzhuàn (esoteric military canon), Fēi Zhōulǐ biàn (refutation of Zhōulǐ objectors), Jīngzhuàn zhèngé (correction of textual errors). The Dōngguān bǔyì posits eighteen offices (Tǔsīkōng, Gōngshī, Zǐrén, Qìfǔ, Sìdú, Jiàngrén, Lěibìshì, Xúnfāng, Kǎogōng, Zhǔnrén, Sèfū, Zhùxiàshǐ, Zuǒshǐ, Yòushǐ, Shuǐquán, Yúzhèng, Yánfǎ, Shǐrén) — unable to escape speculation. Tiānwáng huìtōng uses Tiānguān shū star-listings to assign stars to offices, a king’s ruling-by-Heaven framework — much of it forced association. Xué Zhōulǐ fǎ discusses the Zhōulǐ’s irrecoverable elements, the absurdity of impostors copying it, the wrong-headedness of old commentaries’ alterations of sound and character, and the merit of fine-grained passages preserving ancient practice — all with insight; the rest mostly repeats older texts. Zhìdì shìyí genuinely seeks to restore the jǐngtián system — too anachronistic. Wòqí jīngzhuàn mixes in later-age methods — too miscellaneous. Fēi Zhōulǐ biàn refutes the various commentators and is largely clear. Jīngzhuàn zhèngé extends from the Zhōulǐ to all the other classics — not only changing seal-script for clerical, but also changing seal-script back to zhòu — picks up Wèi Xiào’s Liù shū jīngyùn doctrine and falls into oddity.
Broadly speaking, the three books are full of conjectural opinions and not all to be followed. The Zhōulǐ and Yílǐ by the Míng had nearly become extinct disciplines, so we take what is good and discard the bad, sampling several houses to provisionally complete the dynasty’s classical learning — what is meant by “doing what is unavoidable and choosing the next best.” The three books total fourteen juan; the Míngshǐ gives “several tens of juan,” a loose summation. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo records only the ten-juan Zhuàn, two-juan Túshuō, one-juan Xué Zhōulǐ fǎ, and one-juan Fēi Zhōulǐ biàn without the Yìzhuàn name — quite a lapse. He cites Huáng Yúqí’s words from the Yìzhuàn jiětí but attaches them to Zhōulǐ zhuàn — also an error. Was this a passing oversight without checking the full work?
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
Wáng Yīngdiàn’s three-part Zhōulǐ project (Zhuàn + Túshuō + Yìzhuàn) is the principal mid-Míng Zhōulǐ commentary in the Sìkù. The work belongs to the Yú Tíngchūn–Wú Chéng “Dōngguān not lost” tradition, with Wáng’s distinctive contribution being the explicit reconstruction of 18 Dōngguān offices in the Yìzhuàn. The Zhuàn itself omits the Kǎogōngjì on principle and rearranges the xùguān by functional category — both judged by the Sìkù editors as illegitimate textual surgery, though the substantive interpretive content is judged philosophically sound.
The dating window 1540–1558 covers Wáng’s mid-life Tàihé refuge period through his autograph preface (Jiājìng wùwǔ = 1558).
The work’s importance is partly negative — the Sìkù editors judge it as an example of how late-Míng Zhōulǐ studies had fallen into amateurism — and partly positive, in that it is one of the few sustained mid-Míng engagements with the Sānlǐ and the only Míng commentary entered in the Sìkù with such a comprehensive three-part structure.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Treated in surveys of Míng-period classical scholarship.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s comment that “the Zhōulǐ and Yílǐ by the Míng had nearly become extinct disciplines” (Zhōulǐ Yílǐ zhì Míng jǐ wéi juéxué 周禮儀禮至明幾為絕學) is one of the editors’ more significant historical judgements about the trajectory of post-Sòng classical learning, and explains why the Sìkù admits Míng commentary works that the editors would otherwise have judged below standard.
Links
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html