禮記大全

Lǐjì dàquán 禮記大全

The Great Completeness of the Book of Rites

by 胡廣 (奉敕撰)

About the work

The Yǒng-lè-period imperial Lǐjì of the Wǔ jīng dàquán 五經大全 (Five Classics Great Completeness) compendium, in 30 juàn, presented to the throne in Yǒnglè 13 (1415) under the editorial direction of Hú Guǎng 胡廣 (1370–1418), the head of the Yǒnglè Hànlín drafting commission. It is the Lǐjì member of the larger official imperial imperially-commissioned set that fixed the Míng examination canon: Yìjīng dàquán / Shūjīng dàquán / Shījīng dàquán / Chūnqiū dàquán / Lǐjì dàquán, plus the corresponding Sìshū dàquán and Xìnglǐ dàquán. The Lǐjì dàquán takes Chén Hào’s KR1d0059 Lǐjì jíshuō (1322) as its base text and effectively wraps that work in additional schools — its content is largely an extension of Chén Hào — drawing in 42 schools of post-Sòng commentary and consolidating Chén Hào’s already-influential digest as the imperial standard. With its issuance, the Hàn–Táng Lǐjì zhùshū KR1d0053 line was definitively replaced as the examination text by the SòngYuánMíng line of Chén Hào → Hú Guǎng.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Lǐjì dàquán in thirty juan was composed by Hú Guǎng et al. of the Míng under imperial commission. The Yuán Yányòu examination law: for the Yì used Chéngzǐ and Zhūzǐ; for the Shū used Càishì; for the Shī used Zhūzǐ; for the Chūnqiū used Húshì; while still permitting the parallel use of the ancient zhùshū. Yet the Zhèng annotation is archaic-and-difficult; the Kǒng shū vast-and-broad — equally [students] cannot in haste obtain their essentials. Therefore [Hú] Guǎng et al. composed this book, taking only the shallow-near and easy-clear, taking Chén Hào’s Jíshuō as foundation. [Chén] Hào’s book’s standing as the imperial-academy text in fact began from this. Its selection of various Confucian sayings: in total forty-two schools.

Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo quotes Lù Yuánfǔ’s saying: “in those days, the various-classics’ Dàquán were all stolen-and-appropriated finished books to deceive their superiors. This too must have been a finished book of Yuán [scholars], not what the various ministers compiled” etc. Although [this charge] tends towards the suspicion of “the neighbour stealing the axe” (i.e., a strong but unprovable suspicion), yet “the empty cave brings the wind, the tóngrǔ attracts nesting” — by analogy with the appropriations in the other classics, perhaps not without basis?

The various classics’ compositions all aim at clarifying lǐ (principle); yet lǐ is not empty-suspended, with no anchor. Therefore the Yì’s lǐ attaches to xiàngshù (image-and-number); the Shū’s lǐ attaches to zhèngshì (governmental affairs); the Shī’s lǐ attaches to měicì (praise-and-criticism); the Chūnqiū’s lǐ attaches to bāobiǎn (commendation-and-condemnation); the Lǐ’s lǐ attaches to jiéwén (ritual gradations and outward forms). All cannot be expounded in empty words — and the Lǐ especially so. Chén Hào’s Jíshuō slights dùshǔ (numerical-measurement) and pushes towards yìlǐ (philosophical principles); thin on kǎozhèng (evidential-research) and the errors compound. Nàlàn Xìngdé even composed a separate book to investigate it KR1d0070; in everything that he refutes, [he] mostly hits its faults. [Hú] Guǎng et al. then took [Chén Hào] as the chief [authority], so the root-and-base first failed; what they cite is also no more than glosses-and-explanations of text-and-phrasing — mutually expounding-and-clarifying with Chén Hào’s sayings.

Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù says: “from the popularity of the eight-leg [examination essay] ancient learning has been abandoned; with the issuance of the Dàquán, jīngshuō (canonical exposition) has perished. The HóngwǔYǒnglè period was also one juncture in the rise-and-fall of the Way.” [Gù Yánwǔ] truly saw deeply its meanness. But because we wish to fully record the Five Classics of the Míng dynasty so as to display the institutions of one dynasty, we provisionally preserve them all together.

Respectfully revised and submitted, fourth 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 Lǐjì dàquán is the Lǐjì member of the Yǒnglè Wǔ jīng dàquán (1415) — the imperial Míng official examination canon. With its issuance, the Hàn–Táng zhùshū line ceased to be the active examination text; the late-imperial Lǐjì curriculum was henceforth Chén Hào KR1d0059 augmented by Hú Guǎng’s compilation. The Sìkù tíyào’s judgement is severe: editorially, the work is essentially Chén Hào with minor additions; its 42-school citations consist mostly of glosses-and-paraphrases that “mutually clarify” Chén Hào rather than offer independent textual research. The Sìkù editors specifically endorse the suspicion (recorded by Zhū Yízūn from Lù Yuánfǔ 陸元輔) that the various Dàquán are essentially “stolen Yuán-period books” rather than genuine Hú Guǎng compilations — a charge confirmed at least in part by modern scholarship (Yú Yīngshí 余英時 has shown that the Sìshū dàquán and Wǔ jīng dàquán drew very heavily on a Yuán-period anthology, Sìshū jíyì by Liú Yīn 劉因 and others, with minimal editorial transformation).

The tíyào invokes Gù Yánwǔ’s 顧炎武 famous condemnation in the Rì zhī lù 日知錄: “with the popularity of the eight-leg, ancient learning was abandoned; with the issuance of the Dàquán, jīngshuō perished.” The Sìkù editors include the Dàquán “to display the institutions of the Míng dynasty” rather than for any positive scholarly value. The dating is precise: the Wǔ jīng dàquán including the Lǐjì dàquán was officially presented and promulgated in the ninth month of Yǒnglè 13 (October 1415); the editorial work was begun the previous year in Yǒnglè 12 (1414).

The work draws particularly on the same scholarly base as Nàlàn Xìngdé’s late-Qīng Chénshì Lǐjì jíshuō bǔzhèng KR1d0070 — a refutation of Chén Hào — but in the Dàquán’s case the goal is to support and supplement Chén Hào, not to refute him. The Sìkù tíyào’s remarkable preference of Nàlàn Xìngdé over Hú Guǎng is one of the sharpest editorial verdicts in the Sìkù on a court-issued imperial work.

Translations and research

• Hok-lam Chan, “The Compilation and Sources of the Various Classics in the Yongle Wujing daquan”, Asia Major 14:2 (1968), 51–71 — major English-language source-critical study of the Wǔ jīng dàquán.
• Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (UC Press, 2000) — situates the Dàquán in the Míng-Qīng examination institutional history.
• Yú Yīngshí 余英時, Zhū Xī de lìshǐ shìjiè 朱熹的歷史世界 (Yúnchén wénhuà, 2003) — discusses the Yuán-Míng appropriation of Sòng commentary tradition.
• Míng shǐ 明史 j. 147 (biography of Hú Guǎng) — primary biographical source.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s sharp condemnation of the Dàquán — including the explicit endorsement of Gù Yánwǔ’s “with the issuance of the Dàquán, jīngshuō perished” — is part of the systematic Qīng evidential-school recovery of the older zhùshū line that the Dàquán had displaced. The eighteenth-century imperial Qīndìng Lǐjì yìshū KR1d0068 is the Sìkù-tradition’s deliberate replacement-by-improvement of the Dàquán as the imperial Lǐjì canon: it draws principally on Wèi Shí KR1d0057 and the HànTáng zhùshū line, restoring the older commentary tradition that the Dàquán had set aside.

Links

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