禮說

Lǐ shuō 禮說

Discussions of the Rites

by 惠士奇 (撰)

About the work

Huì Shìqí’s 惠士奇 (1670–1741) fourteen-juan early-Qīng evidential study of the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001), composed during his Kāngxī–Yōngzhèng-era career as Hànlín reader-in-waiting and beyond. Despite the title Lǐ shuō, the work covers only the Zhōulǐ, not the Yílǐ or Lǐjì. The work does not transcribe the classical text but selects passages requiring evidential investigation or controversy-resolution, organising them in the order of the classic. The breakdown is: Tiānguān 2 juan / 61 entries; Dìguān 3 juan / 63 entries; Chūnguān 4 juan / 95 entries; Xiàguān 2 juan / 61 entries; Qiūguān 2 juan / 61 entries; Kǎogōngjì 1 juan / 40 entries.

Huì’s distinctive contribution is the systematic recovery of ancient pronunciations and graphic forms (gǔyīn 古音 and gǔzì 古字) lost to the late-imperial reader, supplementing Zhèng Xuán’s analogies-to-Hàn-institutions with comparable analogies drawn from a wider range of post-Hàn historical sources. Huì Shìqí is the second-generation patriarch of the Sūzhōu Huì-family Wúpài Hàn-school tradition; his work on the Zhōulǐ and his parallel work on the Yìjīng (Huìshì Yì shuō KR1a0144) are the founding documents of the eighteenth-century evidential return to Hàn-period commentary.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Lǐ shuō in fourteen juan was composed by Huì Shìqí of the present dynasty. Shìqí (hào Bànnóng, native of Chángzhōu) was a jìnshì of jǐchǒu of Kāngxī [1709], holding office as Hànlín reader-in-waiting. The book does not record the Zhōulǐ classical text — it only selects passages that require kǎozhèng (evidential investigation) or refutation, and supplies an account of each, arranged in the order of the classic. Total: Tiānguān 2 juan, 61 entries; Dìguān 3 juan, 63 entries; Chūnguān 4 juan, 95 entries; Xiàguān 2 juan, 61 entries; Qiūguān 2 juan, 61 entries; Kǎogōngjì 1 juan, 40 entries.

Of the ancient sage-kings’ way of ruling-the-world, none is more pertinent than ritual. But it is necessary first to know the names-and-things, then one can investigate the institutions; one must obtain the institutions, then one can speak of the precision-and-subtlety. As with studying the Chūnqiū, without verifying the day’s actual events one cannot grasp the sage’s praise-and-blame. So expounding ritual one must take the Zhèngshì as the lineage — just as expounding the Chūnqiū must take the Zuǒshì as the foundation. Zhèngshì’s time was already remote from the Zhōu, and his annotation of the Zhōulǐ often analogises Hàn-period institutions to make matters clear. Now another sixteen-hundred years remote from the late Hàn, what Zhèngshì called “like today’s such-and-such, such-and-such, such-and-such” has often itself become incomprehensible. The transmission of the period’s jīngshī glosses, as it has rolled forward, has often become divergent in shape-and-sound — irrecoverable by today’s pronunciation and characters.

Shìqí’s book divides and clarifies all these ancient pronunciations and graphic forms; he further cites the various histories and the hundred-schools texts, either to verify the Zhōu institutions or to consult the Hàn institutions Zhèngshì cited, working back through them to the Zhōu institutions, with each setting out the deep meaning of the original design. Among recent ritual-scholars, his arguments have the deepest grounding.

Some of his arguments — the wū jiàng (witch’s descent) ritual leading to the verdict that the Hàn Master Dān’s “letting witches descend the spirits” was wrong because it was the heterodox-way; the líshǒu (badger-head) archery ritual leading to the verdict that the Zhōu Cháng Hóng’s “shooting at the lords” was wrong because it was not according to the appropriate creature-symbol; the Shùshì attack-and-explication and the Jiǎnshì attack-and-praying-rituals leading to the verdict that the Yìshì shamanic Western-Region “tree-altar method” recorded by Duàn Chéngshì was a Zhōu remnant — all unfortunately sticking to ancient meaning and forcing the wording. Some, like citing the holding-of-jade cāntián method (a way of regaining vital essence) when discussing hányù (jade in the mouth at burial), become ramble; some, like reading the Zuǒzhuàn’s “Réng Shū’s son” passage to mean “weak” and accordingly ruling that “the brindled-cow’s calf is the dú” — also become forced association. As to citing Mòzǐ to verify the Sīméng ritual oath, and using it to verify the Chūnqiū mention of guānshè — he goes no further than taking the Mòzǐ’s not being remote from antiquity as supporting evidence; yet his statement “those who do not read the non-sage texts are not good readers” — by trying to correct empty-talk’s vice, he goes too far in the other direction.

But comprehensively examining the entire book — its citations are broad and all rooted; its arguments are abundant and all orderly — a hundred jewels with a single flaw, and one cannot deny its substantial merits.

Respectfully revised and submitted, sixth month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].

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 Lǐ shuō is one of the founding documents of the eighteenth-century Wúpài 吳派 Hàn-school evidential method applied to the Sānlǐ, by the patriarch of the Sūzhōu Huì family. Huì Shìqí’s son Huì Dòng 惠棟 (1697–1758) extended the method into a full Hàn-school methodology in his Jīnghuá lù xùnzuǎn and other works; the grandfather Huì Zhōutī 惠周惕 had begun the family tradition. The Lǐ shuō’s ancient-pronunciation-and-character recovery, comparative historical-institutional analysis, and citation of the zhūzǐ (the Hundred Schools) for cross-evidence are all hallmarks of the mature Hàn-school method as it would be practised through the QiánlóngJiāqìng era.

The dating “1709–1741” brackets Huì Shìqí’s jìnshì year and his death. The Sìkù tíyào registers two specific objections: (1) Huì’s defence of the philological-evidential reading of certain ritual passages leads him to defend ritual practices the editors regard as heterodox (witch-descent, líshǒu archery, the Western-Region tree-altar method); (2) Huì’s principled willingness to cite Mòzǐ and other “non-sage” texts as evidence is judged to be reactive overcorrection of Sòng-Daoxue empty-talk. But the editors recognise the substantial methodological achievement and judge the work “with the deepest grounding” of recent ritual-scholars.

Translations and research

• Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Council on East Asian Studies / Harvard University Asia Center, 1984; 2nd ed. UCLA, 2001) — places Huì Shìqí and the Sūzhōu Huì family at the centre of the Wú-pài Hàn-school formation.
• Yáng Xiàngkuí 楊向奎, Qīngrú xué’àn xīnbiān 清儒學案新編, vols. on the Wú-pài.
• Wú Tōng 吳通, “Huì Shìqí Lǐ shuō jí qí xuéshù sīxiǎng” 惠士奇《禮說》及其學術思想, Sūzhōu shèhuì kēxué (2008) — modern critical assessment.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ explicit identification of Huì Shìqí’s “non-sage texts” reading-policy — and their disagreement with it on principled grounds — is a revealing instance of the boundary between the late-Qiánlóng court-classicist position (which retained a normative-traditional commitment) and the emerging Hàn-school private-scholar position (which treated all early texts as in principle equally evidential). The boundary would dissolve over the following half-century in favour of the Hàn-school position.

Links

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_Shiqi
• Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html