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後養議

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Text ID
KR1d0093
Date
317–336
Dynasty
晉

Hòuyǎng yì 後養議

Discussion of the After-Care [of Two Mothers]

by 干寶 (撰)

About the work

A single-juàn fragmentary ritual essay by 干寶 Gān Bǎo (fl. 317–336), Eastern-Jìn court historian and zhùzuò láng 著作郎, preserved within the long debate-record at Jìn shū 19 Lǐ zhì zhōng 禮志中 on the hòuyǎng 後養 (later-mothering, i.e. service owed by a son to a stepmother / second wife of a father whose first wife and son were lost behind enemy lines). The fragment as transmitted in the CHANT collection (CH2c1352) reproduces the entire Jìn-court memorial cycle: the Tàikāng 太康 1 (280) petition of Wáng Mào 王楙 prince of Dōngpíng concerning the case of his retainer Wáng Bǐ 王毖, whose original Wú-side wife and son had been separated by the Three-Kingdoms partition; the dissenting opinions of shǒu bóshì 守博士 Xiè Héng 謝衡 and Xǔ Měng 許猛, of Duàn Chàng 段暢, Qín Xiù 秦秀, and Zōu Chōng 騶沖, and of sǎnqí chángshì Liú Zhì 劉智; and the closing settled opinion of Dū lìngshǐ 都令史 Yú Pǔ 虞溥, which was finally adopted by the Eastern-Jìn court. Gān Bǎo’s own lùn 論 appended at the Tàixīng 太興 1 (318) end of the debate-cycle gives the hòuyǎng of the title: his position that the two mothers’ shrine-tablets should be co-sacrificed (jiàjì 祫祭) under a left-right seniority order, with mutual mourning observed by their children, on the analogy of Zhào Jī 趙姬 / Shū Wěi 叔隗 in the Chūnqiū.

Abstract

The transmitted “Hòuyǎng yì” is the locus classicus for Eastern-Jìn discussion of the liǎngdí 兩嫡 (“two principal wives”) problem created by the Wèi-Wú partition: a serving Wèi-side official whose original wife and son were trapped in Wú territory, presumed dead, remarrying within Wèi, and then — after the Western-Jìn unification of 280 — confronted with the news that his Wú-side wife or son survived. The case, focused on Wáng Bǐ 王毖 and his sons Wáng Chāng 王昌 et al., generated the most substantial single Jìn-court debate on biàn lǐ 變禮 (variant / contingent ritual) recorded in the standard histories.

Gān Bǎo’s settled position, transmitted under the title Hòuyǎng yì, is a Confucian biàn lǐ (contingent-ritual) judgement: there is jīng 經, biàn 變, and quán 權 (canonical, variant, and weighted-judgement modes of ritual); the Wáng Bǐ case is biàn-quán, and the appropriate ritual response is to treat the two mothers’ shrine-tablets in a left-right seniority arrangement under a single jiàjì with mutual mourning between the half-sibling sons. The judgement draws explicitly on the Chūnqiū’s precedent of Zhào Jī 趙姬 receiving Shū Wěi 叔隗 as the first wife of Zhào Shuāi 趙衰, with deferral in domestic rank.

The text survives entire only through its preservation in the Jìn shū 禮志 (compiled in the Táng under Fáng Xuánlíng), where it is embedded in the wider debate record; the CHANT reconstruction of “Hòuyǎng yì” extracts Gān Bǎo’s contribution as a single-juàn freestanding piece. As an extant Eastern-Jìn ritual essay by a major court historian, it is one of the small set of biàn lǐ sources that can be read in continuous Jìn-period prose rather than scattered citation fragments.

The composition date of Gān Bǎo’s contribution is fixed at Tàixīng 太興 1 (318), the first reign-year of Jìn Yuándì after the southern relocation. The dating bracket above (317–336) reflects Gān Bǎo’s documented Eastern-Jìn zhùzuò láng tenure.

Translations and research

  • No substantial secondary literature located for the Hòuyǎng yì as such; treated as a paragraph-level entry in studies of Jìn biàn lǐ and in Jìn shū lǐ zhì exegesis.
  • Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China (Princeton, 1991), discusses the Jìn liǎngdí / hòuyǎng problem in its medieval context.

Other points of interest

The Hòuyǎng yì is the philological key to dating Gān Bǎo’s zhùzuò láng commission to Tàixīng 1 (318) rather than the more general Yuándì-era window (317–322): the colophon to the embedded debate explicitly dates Gān Bǎo’s lùn to that year, and is the firmest single-year fix in his official biography. The title 後養 (hòuyǎng) is itself a Jìn-period technical coinage for the variant-ritual service owed to a stepmother who has come into the family after the father’s second marriage.

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