Rìjiǎng Lǐjì jiěyì 日講禮記解義
Imperial Daily Lectures: Exposition of the Book of Rites
by 張廷玉 (奉敕編), 鄂爾泰 (奉敕編), 汪由敦 (奉敕編)
About the work
The Lǐjì member of the Rìjiǎng 日講 (“Imperial Daily Lecture”) classics-and-history series. Drafted by the Kāngxī-era imperial-lecture team at the Jīngyán tent during the late seventeenth century, the manuscript remained at the Fānshū fáng 翻書房 (Translation Office) for several decades without being completed. After Qiánlóng’s accession (1735), Qiánlóng ordered the original Kāngxī manuscripts edited and published, and the work was presented to him in Qiánlóng 12, second month, first day (= 12 March 1747) under the editorial direction of Zhāng Tíngyù 張廷玉 (1672–1755), È’ěrtài 鄂爾泰 (1677–1745, deceased before publication), and Wāng Yóudūn 汪由敦 (1692–1758). The work is in 64 juàn, prefaced by Qiánlóng’s own yùzhì essay (the Yùzhì Rìjiǎng Lǐjì jiěyì xù) and Kāngxī’s yùzhì preface (the Shèngzǔ Rénhuángdì yùzhì xù) — both included in the Sìkù.
Abstract
The Rìjiǎng Lǐjì jiěyì is the Lǐjì member of the Kāngxī-era Rìjiǎng series — imperial-lecture reading-and-exposition compendia drafted by the Jīngyán team for use in the daily classical-lecture sessions before the throne. The earlier Yìjīng / Shūjīng / Shījīng / Chūnqiū members of the Rìjiǎng series were completed and published under Kāngxī himself or in the early Yōngzhèng period; only the Lǐjì — owing to the great length of the canonical text — remained unfinished as a draft manuscript at the Fānshū fáng. Qiánlóng, in his preface, explains: “the Yì, Shū, Shī three classics had earlier been completed; the Chūnqiū’s several juan were carved during the Yōngzhèng period; only the Lǐjì’s juan-and-bundles being vast — the manuscript was preserved at the Translation Office, long not bringing its task to completion. At the beginning of my reign, agreeing to the proposal of the Confucian ministers to compile the Sānlǐ yìshū, I therefore took the original Rìjiǎng Lǐjì jiěyì manuscript, comparatively-collated the variants-and-similarities, returning [them] to a single right reading; together [I] commanded translation, gave [it] to be carved, to complete the Five Classics.”
The work serves a double role in the early-Qīng Lǐjì corpus: as the imperial-pedagogical text superseding Chén Hào’s KR1d0059 Lǐjì jíshuō (which the Kāngxī court had been forced to adopt as the examination text but did not value editorially), and as the conceptual precursor to the larger Qīndìng Lǐjì yìshū KR1d0068 commissioned by Qiánlóng in the same year (Qiánlóng 13 / 1748). The Rìjiǎng edition is editorially less ambitious than the Qīndìng yìshū: it preserves the canonical text in its 49-piān sequence, follows the standard HànTáng zhùshū in the main, and adds SòngMíng yìlǐ commentary in the secondary register.
The compositional history is the unusual feature: the work spans the period from the late Kāngxī Jīngyán sessions (the original drafts can be dated to the 1690s, when the Rìjiǎng programme was at its height) to the 1747 imperial publication. The dating bracket 1690–1747 captures this span; the work as published is fundamentally a Qiánlóng-period editorial product, but its base material is Kāngxī-era.
The named editorial team — Zhāng Tíngyù, È’ěrtài, Wāng Yóudūn — represents the senior generation of Qiánlóng-era court ministers; all three were Dàxuéshì (Grand Secretaries) and held parallel responsibilities for major court compilations including the Míng shǐ (under Zhāng Tíngyù’s general direction) and the parallel Qīndìng Sānlǐ yìshū set. È’ěrtài’s death in 1745, before the publication, is recorded in the imperial preface.
Translations and research
- Qīng shǐ gǎo 清史稿 jj. 282 (Zhāng Tíngyù), 288 (È’ěrtài), 302 (Wāng Yóudūn) — biographical sources for the editorial team.
- Pèng Lín 彭林, Sānlǐ yánjiū rùmén 三禮研究入門 (Fùdàn dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2012) — covers the early-Qīng imperial Lǐjì commentary tradition.
- Sūn Xīdàn 孫希旦, Lǐjì jíjiě 禮記集解 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1989) — the standard Qīng-evidential commentary that effectively supersedes the Rì-jiǎng for serious modern work.
Other points of interest
The Rìjiǎng Lǐjì jiěyì and the Qīndìng Lǐjì yìshū KR1d0068 together represent two distinct early-Qīng court approaches to the Lǐjì: the Rìjiǎng is a pedagogical-imperial-instruction text, more concerned with smooth exposition of the canonical text than with editorial precision; the Qīndìng yìshū is the more ambitious philological work, drawing on Wèi Shí KR1d0057 and the HànTángSòng commentary tradition. The two sit side-by-side in the Sìkù Lǐjì sub-class as the parallel official Qīng Lǐjì texts.
Links
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Tingyu
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/liji.html