Bǔ xiǎnglǐ 補饗禮
by 諸錦 (Zhū Jǐn, zì Xiāngqī 襄七, hào Cǎolú 草廬, 1686–1769, 秀水)
About the work
A one-juan reconstruction supplementing the chapter on xiǎng 饗 (royal banquet) ritual that is missing from the received seventeen-chapter Yílǐ 儀禮 (KR1d0025). Zhū Jǐn drew on Zhōuguān 周官 (the Zhōulǐ), the Zuǒzhuàn 左傳, and the Lǐjì 禮記 to assemble what could be known of the missing ritual, organising the material with Zhōuguān as the structural backbone and adding interlinear notes from the Zuǒzhuàn and the Dài jì. The original title was Xiǎnglǐ bǔwáng 饗禮補亡.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Bǔ xiǎnglǐ in one juan was compiled by Zhū Jǐn of the present dynasty. Zhū (zì Xiāngqī, hào Cǎolú, native of Xiùshuǐ 秀水) was a jìnshì of the Jiǎchén year of Yōngzhèng [雍正甲辰, 1724], reassigned as a shùjíshì 庶吉士; on dismissal from the Hanlin Academy he was given a magistracy. In the Bǐngchén year of Qiánlóng [乾隆丙辰, 1736] he was summoned and tested in the bóxué hóngcí 博學鴻詞 examination, made a biānxiū of the Hanlin Academy, and rose to zuǒ zànshàn of the Left Spring Office.
Zhū observed that the seventeen chapters of the Yílǐ contain Yànlǐ 燕禮 and Gōng shí dàfū lǐ 公食大夫禮 but not a Xiǎnglǐ, although the ritual is mentioned in the Zhōuguān, Chūnqiū zhuàn, and the Dài records. The Yuán scholar Wú Chéng 吳澄 in his Zuǎnyán and Kǎozhù had supplied eight chapters of “supplementary classic” and fifteen chapters of “supplementary commentary,” but did not separately treat the Xiǎnglǐ, on the grounds that the eighth and tenth chapters (Pìnlǐ 聘禮 and Jìnlǐ 覲禮) deal with xiǎng and shí ritual together, so that the matter could be subsumed under the pìn ritual and abridged. He failed to recognise that the xiǎng is not a single uniform ritual that can be reduced to the pìn alone: there is the great xiǎng of the jì dì 祭帝 and the xiá jì 祫祭 sacrifices; there is also the Son of Heaven’s xiǎng of senior princes (元侯), the mutual xiǎng of two rulers in audience, and the various xiǎng of guests — these are all different. If they are not given a chapter to themselves, then although the various sources can be consulted, there is no organised vantage from which to view the whole.
Accordingly, Zhū took the Zhōuguān sequence on guest ritual and ranked the materials in order, drawing notes from the Zuǒzhuàn and the Dài records to elucidate the points beneath each line. His basic principle is that the Zhōulǐ is the framework of the Yílǐ: classic supplementing classic incurs no charge of dissimilarity. As for the cross-attestations and corroborations from the zhuàn and jì he distributes as notes, they have a natural orderliness and are far from forced harmonisations. On variant readings such as whether or not 籩 baskets are presented, or whether the courtyard torches and gate torches are tended by the hūn rén 閽人 or the diàn rén 甸人, he preserves both readings without forcing a synthesis. The book is barely twenty leaves long, but the ancient ritual it preserves furnishes evidence enough; one ought not to set it aside for its slimness.
Respectfully revised and submitted, eighth month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng [1779].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Zhū Jǐn (1686–1769) was a Xiùshuǐ (Jiāxīng prefecture, Zhèjiāng) native of substantial achievement: jìnshì of Yōngzhèng 2 (1724), bóxué hóngcí of Qiánlóng 1 (1736), Hanlin compiler, and a zuǎnxiū on the Sānlǐguǎn 三禮館 (Three Ritual Classics Bureau) — directly relevant to this book. He served as chief examiner in Fújiàn (1741), deputy in Shānxī (1747), and chief in Guìzhōu (1750), retiring as zuǒ zànshàn. His other surviving works include the Máoshī shuō 毛詩說, the Xià xiǎo zhèng gǔ 夏小正詁, and the poetry collection Jiàngfū gé shīgǎo 絳跗閣詩稿. He was enrolled in the Xiùshuǐ shrine for local worthies in Jiāqìng 23 (1818).
The treatise itself fits a recognisable Qīng evidential genre — the reconstruction of lost Yílǐ chapters — earlier represented above all by Wú Chéng’s Yuán-dynasty work. Zhū’s distinctive contribution is the insistence that xiǎng 饗 ritual is generically diverse (sacrificial, diplomatic, and hospitality varieties) and demands its own chapter rather than being absorbed into pìn and jìn. The Sìkù editors approved both the principle and the execution, particularly the restraint Zhū showed in preserving variant attestations rather than forcing them into a single account.
Translations and research
No English translation exists. No standalone modern punctuated edition has been located; the text circulates in the Wényuāngé Sìkù photo-reprint and on digital scholarly resources (Shídiǎn gǔjí SK0327; ctext.org). No dedicated journal article or monograph on the Bǔ xiǎnglǐ or on Zhū Jǐn’s lǐ scholarship has been confirmed; he appears only as a passing figure in surveys of Qīng Sānlǐ-guǎn scholarship.
Other points of interest
The work is short — the tiyao notes “barely twenty leaves” — but it is one of the cleaner examples of the Qīng project of reconstructing missing Yílǐ chapters from cross-references in other ritual texts, and it inherits its method from Wú Chéng while explicitly correcting Wú’s most consequential omission.