Zhōulǐ quánjīng shìyuán 周禮全經釋原
The Complete Classic of the Rites of Zhōu, Explicating the Source
by 柯尚遷 (撰)
About the work
Kē Shàngqiān’s 柯尚遷 (fl. mid Jiājìng era) fourteen-juan Zhōulǐ commentary, signed yǐsì of Jiājìng (1545). The work spans twelve juan covering the six ministries (with Suìrén and following offices reassigned from the Dìguān to a reconstructed Sīkōng), plus Zhōulǐ tōnglùn 周禮通論 and Zhōulǐ tōngjīn xùlùn 周禮通今續論 as supplementary chapters. Kē’s distinctive position is a comparatively conservative variant of the “Dōngguān not lost” thesis: rather than redistributing offices across all five ministries (as Yú Tíngchūn KR1d0006 does), Kē holds that the Dōngguān survives intact within the Dìguān, and detaches only the offices from Suìrén onwards. The work is highly regarded by mid-Míng Dàoxué-statecraft thinkers — Táng Shùnzhī 唐順之 (1507–1560) and Jiāng Bǎo 姜寶 are recorded as approving of Kē’s argument.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōulǐ quánjīng shìyuán in fourteen juan was composed by Kē Shàngqiān of the Míng. Shàngqiān (zì Qiáokě, native of Chánglè) self-styled “Yángshí shānrén.” The book runs from Tiānguān through Dōngguān in twelve juan, with Zhōulǐ tōnglùn and Zhōulǐ tōngjīn xùlùn added as one juan each. Two prefaces, a yuánliú xùlùn (genealogical preface), four liùguān mùwèn (six-ministry catalogue questions), twelve quánjīng gānglǐng (entire-classic principles), and seven shìyuán fánlì (explanation editorial conventions) head the work. The interpretations explicitly designated as “shuō 說” all rely on the old commentaries collected; those designated “yuán 原” are tracing back the original intent of the classic.
That the Dōngguān is not lost has been disputed among the Confucians; Yú Tíngchūn and others wished to slice the five ministries to fill the gap, drawing the rebuke of “garbling the ancient classic.” Shàngqiān holds that one should use the classic to verify the classic: take the offices from Suìrén onwards in the Dìguān as the Dōngguān; from Suìrén through Lǚxiàshì totalling exactly sixty offices serves to verify the xùguān claim of “the same as sixty,” without the need to detach offices from elsewhere and corrupt the holy classic. His position is fairly well-grounded compared with the others; therefore Táng Shùnzhī and Jiāng Bǎo both deeply approved of him.
His detaching the Dà Sītú’s “responsible for setting up the state’s land-and-territory diagram” passage onwards as the text of the Dà Sīkōng, his direct emendation of the original “stabilising-and-pacifying the state” to “enriching the state” by appeal to the Liùdiǎn, his appropriation of Wú Chéng’s supplied forty characters from “the king establishes the state” to head the Dōngguān while still expelling the Kǎogōngjì — these still cannot escape the charge of self-willed alteration. Yet his line of argument is plain and reasonable, and not unsuitable as supplementary interpretation.
Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo lists this book by juan-number consistent with our text, but notes that it includes a yuánliú xùlùn in one juan and a tōnglùn in one juan. The present text has, in addition to the tōnglùn, also an xùlùn; the yuánliú xùlùn is in the prefatory matter rather than counted among the fourteen juan. Yízūn’s report is mistaken, lapsing in editorial verification.
Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].
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 quánjīng shìyuán is the most methodologically careful Míng Zhōulǐ commentary in the Sìkù. Kē Shàngqiān’s variant of the “Dōngguān not lost” thesis — holding that the missing ministry survives intact as a coherent block within the Dìguān (the offices from Suìrén onward), rather than being scattered across multiple ministries — represents a substantial methodological improvement over the SòngYuán versions associated with Yú Tíngchūn and Wú Chéng. The argument hinges on counting the offices from Suìrén through Lǚxiàshì and obtaining exactly sixty, matching the canonical sixty-office count for each ministry asserted in the xùguān. Táng Shùnzhī (the major late-Míng statecraft thinker) and Jiāng Bǎo were both convinced by the argument.
The Sìkù editors register two specific objections — Kē’s editorial detachment of part of the Dà Sītú as the Dà Sīkōng, and his replacement of “stabilising-and-pacifying the state” with “enriching the state” by appeal to the early-Táng Liùdiǎn 六典 — but acknowledge that the methodology, on its own terms, is more disciplined than its predecessors.
The work is structured to be didactic: the prefatory quánjīng gānglǐng (twelve principles for reading the entire classic), the shìyuán fánlì (seven editorial conventions), the liùguān mùwèn (catechetical question-and-answer on each ministry), and the yuánliú xùlùn (transmission history) constitute one of the more comprehensive Míng-period pedagogical apparatuses for the Zhōulǐ. The composition was completed by 1545 (autograph preface).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Discussed in surveys of mid-Míng classical scholarship and in literature on Táng Shùnzhī’s intellectual circle.
Other points of interest
Kē’s autograph preface contains a striking statement of the yuán (root-tracing) method: “Once one understands that the Zhōulǐ is not the work of any one person, but the codified record of what was actually practised in the Western Zhōu, then one ceases to be misled by literary disputes and can attend to its substantive institutional content.” This anticipates by two centuries the methodological position of the Hàn xué movement on the Zhōulǐ’s composition and use.
Links
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html