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禮記(正文)

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Text ID
KR1d0052
Date
-200–-50
Dynasty
漢

Lǐjì 禮記

The Book of Rites

(canonical text — compiled corpus, no single author)

About the work

The Lǐjì 禮記 (“Records of Ritual”), one of the canonical Sānlǐ 三禮 (together with the Zhōulǐ KR1d0001 and the Yílǐ KR1d0025) and one of the Wǔ jīng 五經 (Five Classics) since the Hàn. The Kanripo recension is the bare canonical text in 49 chapters (piān 篇), divided into the conventional twenty juàn: from Qǔlǐ 曲禮 (“Detailed Ritual”), Tángōng 檀弓, Wángzhì 王制, Yuèlìng 月令 (“Monthly Ordinances”) through Lǐyùn 禮運 (“Conveyance of Rites”), Xuéjì 學記, Yuèjì 樂記 (“Records of Music”), Jìfǎ 祭法, Jìyì 祭義, Sāngfú sìzhì 喪服四制, and the deeply influential Dà xué 大學 and Zhōng yōng 中庸 chapters subsequently extracted by Zhū Xī into the Sì shū 四書. The Kanripo base text is derived from the Qīng Jiāqìng 20 (1816) Jiāngxī Nánchāng prefectural-school re-cut of the Sòng Lǐjì zhùshū.

Abstract

The Lǐjì in its received forty-nine-chapter form is the XiǎoDài 小戴 recension associated with Dài Shèng 戴聖 (fl. 1st c. BCE), nephew of Dài Dé 戴德 (the compiler of the parallel DàDài Lǐjì KR1d0076 in eighty-five chapters, of which only thirty-nine survive). Both recensions are Western Hàn redactions of an earlier corpus of ritual essays and miscellaneous records traditionally said to have circulated in 131 piān under the title Jì 記. The Hàn-period Liùyì lùn 六藝論 of Zhèng Xuán records a list of these ritual records as accompaniments to the Yílǐ; the Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書·藝文志 lists them under Lǐ jiā 禮家.

The chapters are heterogeneous in genre and date: some are early ritual fragments closely related to the Yílǐ; some (e.g. Yuèjì) preserve essay-treatises probably composed in the Warring States; some (e.g. Wángzhì) reflect Hàn-imperial ritual programmes; some (e.g. Tángōng, Lǐyùn) preserve early Confucian dialogues; and the Yuèlìng is a calendrical-ritual code with close parallels in the Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋 Shí’èr jì 十二紀. The work as a whole is conventionally dated as a late Western Hàn editorial product (ca. 1st c. BCE), but contains substantial pre-Qín material. Modern scholarship (William Boltz in Early Chinese Texts; Jeffrey Riegel in the Cambridge History of Ancient China) treats it as a heterogeneous compilation rather than a single composition.

The Lǐjì’s elevation to jīng 經 status — equal to the older Yílǐ — was completed by the canonisation of the Sānlǐ under Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄 (127–200) in the late Hàn. Among Sòng Neo-Confucians, two chapters of the Lǐjì — Dà xué 大學 and Zhōng yōng 中庸 — were extracted by Zhū Xī 朱熹 and combined with the Lúnyǔ and the Mèngzǐ to form the Sì shū 四書 (Four Books), thus giving the Lǐjì an unparalleled second canonical career as the parent text of two of the four major Neo-Confucian classics. The principal traditional commentary is Zhèng Xuán’s, on which Kǒng Yǐngdá’s KR1d0053 Lǐjì zhèngyì is built.

Translations and research

  • James Legge, The Lî Kî, Sacred Books of the East vols. 27–28 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1885) — the only complete English translation; still consulted, with the well-known caveats about late-Victorian classicism.
  • Séraphin Couvreur, Li Ki, ou Mémoires sur les bienséances et les cérémonies, 2 vols. (Hsien Hsien: Mission Press, 1899; rev. ed. 1913) — French translation with parallel Chinese text; remains the most reliable European-language translation.
  • Jeffrey Riegel, “Li chi 禮記”, in Michael Loewe (ed.), Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: SSEC / IEAS, 1993), 293–297 — standard English critical introduction.
  • Sūn Xīdàn 孫希旦, Lǐjì jíjiě 禮記集解 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1989) — the indispensable Qīng-evidential commentary; the standard reference for serious Lǐjì work.
  • Wáng Mèngōu 王夢鷗, Lǐjì jīnzhù jīnyì 禮記今註今譯, 2 vols. (Tāiběi: Shāngwù, 1969 and reprints) — standard modern Chinese translation.
  • Yáng Tiānyǔ 楊天宇, Lǐjì yìzhù 禮記譯注 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1997) — standard modern critical translation.

Other points of interest

The Lǐjì’s Yuèjì 樂記 chapter is the most important pre-imperial text on the philosophy of music; the Dà xué and Zhōng yōng chapters became, after Zhū Xī, the foundational texts of Neo-Confucian self-cultivation; the Yuèlìng 月令 chapter is the principal canonical source for the calendrical-ritual cycle that structured the imperial liturgical year; the Tángōng 檀弓 chapters are an early storehouse of Confucian disciple anecdotes parallel to the Lúnyǔ; and the Sāngfú / Jìfǎ / Jìyì chapters are the foundational doctrinal texts on Chinese mourning and ancestral sacrifice. Few classical works have had so many chapters live independent canonical lives.

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