月令解

Yuèlìng jiě 月令解

An Exposition of the Monthly Ordinances

by 張虙 (撰)

About the work

A Southern Sòng monograph commentary on the Yuèlìng 月令 (“Monthly Ordinances”) chapter of the Lǐjì KR1d0052 in twelve juàn — one juan per month — by Zhāng Fú 張虙, jìnshì of Qìngyuán bǐngchén 慶元丙辰 (1196), who reached Guózǐ jìjiǔ (Director of the Imperial Academy). Zhāng Fú composed the work during his service as imperial Shìdú (lecturer to the throne) in the early Duānpíng period of Lǐzōng (1234–1236), with the express intention that the relevant juan should be presented to the emperor each month “as the calendar turned” — a use of the Yuèlìng as a real-time political-ritual aid for the imperial monthly cycle. He fell ill before completing the project, returned home, and finished it in retirement before submitting the completed twelve-juan work to court.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Yuèlìng jiě in twelve juan was composed by Zhāng Fú of the Sòng. Fú was a man of Cíqī, jìnshì of Qìngyuán bǐngchén [1196], whose office reached Guózǐ jìjiǔ. This compilation was [composed when] Fú entered the Shìdú tent in the early Duānpíng period; because of the compilation [being] not yet complete, [he] departed because of illness and dwelt at home, then continued and completed it, presenting the table to the court. The twelve months are each made into separate juan; the memorial states: “as each month changes, the yuèlìng of this month should be presented before the imperial seat” — that one may “complete the way of Heaven and Earth, and assist Heaven and Earth’s appropriateness.”

Although [the work cannot avoid] over-adhering to ancient meanings — and [so] not entirely realisable in implementation — the diction-and-meaning are clear-and-fluent. In the matters of timely-following and issuing-government — [Zhāng Fú] in every case devotes thrice-fold attention. There is much in his use-of-mind worth taking.

The Yuèlìng in Liú Xiàng’s Biélù belongs to Míngtáng yīnyáng jì — that is, the Hàn shū yìwén zhì’s “ancient Míngtáng-residual matters in the Míngtáng yīnyáng thirty piān”. The Lǚshì chūnqiū records [it] dividing it among the heads of the twelve jì (annals). Mǎ Róng, Jiǎ Kuí, Cài Yōng, Wáng Sù, Kǒng Cháo, Zhāng Huá all take it as composed by the Duke of Zhōu; Zhèng [Xuán] Kāngchéng and Gāo Yòu take it as composed precisely by [Lǚ] Bùwéi.

Disputants, on the basis of the Hàn bǎiguān biǎo — speaking that the Tàiwèi was a Qín office — and further on the Guóyǔ “Jìn had Yuánwèi and Yúwèi” passage — say that the name wèi need not have begun with Qín. Yet ultimately one cannot, on the basis of Yuánwèi and Yúwèi, decide that the Three Dynasties must have had a Tàiwèi. Probably [Lǚ] Bùwéi gathered ancient records and either transmitted-and-supplemented with Qín institutions?

Now examining the book — the major points of the ancient kings’ lawful-government and instruction-issuing are all clearly preserved. Obtaining their meaning and adapting them — never has it not been a help to general-classical practical-application. As to its sayings of “if such-and-such ordinance is mistaken, then such-and-such disaster results” — perhaps from the Hóngfàn “manifold-omens” passage and so extending it — and so [it] became the source of the Hàn-Confucian yīnyáng wǔxíng (yin-yang and five-phases) [doctrine]. [Zhāng] Fú’s exposition is in every case unable to refute-and-correct it. Yet [the Yuèlìng] has long stood in the ritual canon, and one cannot fault [Zhāng] Fú alone.

The original book — because it was presented to the throne by the month — every exposition seen at the first month of a season is repeated at the second and third months. The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn combined them into one volume, mostly deleting the duplications, in keeping with editorial practice. There are still places where the deletion is incomplete; we have here further struck them out for a single uniform reading.

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth 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

The Yuèlìng jiě is the principal Sòng-period monograph commentary on the Lǐjì’s Yuèlìng chapter — the canonical text on the imperial monthly ritual cycle, which structures the calendrical-ritual dimension of state government. Zhāng Fú composed the work as a working tool for actual court practice during his term as imperial Shìdú in the early Duānpíng period (1234–1236), illness forced him into retirement, and he completed the manuscript at home before submitting the finished twelve-juan version to the throne. The dating bracket 1234–1240 reflects this composition history; precise completion-and-submission dates are undocumented.

The Sìkù tíyào takes a generally favourable view but criticises Zhāng Fú on two counts: (i) over-fidelity to yīnyáng wǔxíng correlative cosmology, particularly on the principle that ritual mistakes in any given month cause specific disasters in that month — a doctrine the tíyào traces to the Shàngshū Hóngfàn “manifold-omens” passage and which it sees Hàn-Confucian yīnyáng scholarship as having developed pathologically; and (ii) over-adherence to ancient detail in ways the editors regard as not practically applicable. Both criticisms are tempered: the cosmological excess is the fault of the Yuèlìng tradition itself, not Zhāng Fú alone, and the over-detailed antiquarianism is set against the work’s genuine value as a thoughtful application-oriented exposition.

The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserved the work and the Sìkù editors used the dàdiǎn text to reconstruct the twelve-juan recension, deleting the substantial cross-month repetitions that resulted from Zhāng Fú’s original month-by-month presentation format.

The tíyào’s extensive opening discussion of the Yuèlìng’s authorship — a balanced presentation of the early imperial-Hàn–WèiJìn schools attributing it variously to Zhōu Gōng (Mǎ Róng, Jiǎ Kuí, Cài Yōng, Wáng Sù, Kǒng Cháo, Zhāng Huá) and to Lǚ Bùwéi (Zhèng Xuán, Gāo Yòu) — is itself a useful condensation of the early authorship debate, and reflects the modern consensus (the Yuèlìng is a Lǚ Bù-wéi-circle Qín-period redaction of older calendrical-ritual material).

Translations and research

• Charles Le Blanc, “From Cosmology to Ontology through Resonance: A Chinese Interpretation of Reality”, in Beyond Textuality: Asceticism and Violence in Anthropological Interpretation (Mouton de Gruyter, 1991), 67–78 — discusses the Yuèlìng tradition.
• Wáng Pèihuán 王沛桓, “Yuèlìng yǔ Hàn dài yuè-lìng wén-shū yánjiū” 月令與漢代月令文書研究 (Wǔhàn dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2014) — the principal modern monograph on the Yuèlìng tradition.
• Pèng Lín 彭林, Sānlǐ yánjiū rùmén 三禮研究入門 (Fùdàn dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2012) — situates the Sòng Yuèlìng commentary tradition.

Other points of interest

The work’s compositional format — twelve juan, one per month, with the express intention of presenting the relevant juan to the throne at the start of each month — is an unusual late-Southern-Sòng instance of court-ritual scholarship designed for direct imperial pedagogical use. It exemplifies the late-Lǐzōng court’s revival of jīngyán 經筵 (canonical-lecture) culture as a counterweight to the political instability of the Mongol-pressed late Southern Sòng.

Links

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