Shìzhì 釋滯
Resolving Stuck-Points [in Mourning Ritual]
by 虞喜 (撰)
About the work
A single-juàn reconstruction of 虞喜 Yú Xǐ’s (281–356) lost Shìzhì 釋滯, the third of his three principal ritual treatises (alongside KR1d0094 Tōngyí and KR1d0095 Guǎnglín). The CHANT reconstruction (CH2c1355) is the shortest of the three, drawing only from Tōngdiǎn 通典 juàn 93 and 103. The text addresses the jiàng-shā 降殺 (graduated reduction of mourning for collateral relatives) protocols for officials of dàfū 大夫 rank — the central technical question being whether the canonical Sāngfú “qiánfēng zhī jūn bù chén zhū fù xiōngdì” (founding-prince does not subordinate his father’s brothers) rule should be analogously applied to the office of dàfū, and over how many generations the jiàng-shā reduction should accumulate.
Abstract
The Shìzhì takes its title from the genre-name shì-zhì 釋滯 (“resolving stuck-points”) — a recurring Six-Dynasties title-formula for ritual biàn-lùn (case-discussion) collections. The text addresses three principal biàn lǐ problems:
(i) The dàfū downgrading-of-collateral-mourning rule. Yú Xǐ argues that the conventional Hàn-Wèi reading — that any dàfū downgrades collateral mourning one degree from the standard — is incoherent against the canonical Sāngfú rule for founding-princes (who do not downgrade their fathers’ brothers). His solution is a three-generation rule: first-generation dàfū do not downgrade their fathers’ brothers; second-generation dàfū do not downgrade brothers; only third-generation dàfū downgrade all collaterals. The proof draws on the Lǔ-zhī-sānhuán 魯之三桓 and Zhèng-zhī-qīmù 鄭之七穆 hereditary-office lineages.
(ii) The Yīn / Zhōu jiàng-shā genealogy. Yú Xǐ frames the jiàng-shā (graduated-reduction) rule as a Zhōu innovation over a Yīn precedent where “shàng-xià gè yǐ qí qīn” (each-side mourned by its own kin-relation, without downgrading), citing the Téng Bó Wén 滕伯文 zī shuāi 齊衰 case in the Tánjiā as an yì-lǐ 逸禮 — a fragment of pre-Zhōu Yīn ritual preserved for yuán-zhuī yú Yīn, yǐn gǔ zhèng jīn 遠追於殷，引古證今.
(iii) The double-sacrifice rule for delayed burial. Against Zhèng Xuán’s canonical reading of Sāngfú xiǎojì “sān-nián ér hòu zàng zhě bì zài jì” as referring to liàn 練 (practice-sacrifice) and xiáng 祥 (felicitous-sacrifice), Yú Xǐ proposes that the zài jì should be performed separately from the mourning-removal — a subtle but consequential ritual-temporality question.
The reconstruction is exclusively from Tōngdiǎn citations; the work seems to have been already partially-lost by the Sòng. The dating bracket reflects Yú Xǐ’s documented lifespan; the Shìzhì is not separately dated by any internal evidence and is conventionally grouped with Tōngyí and Guǎnglín in his Yúyáo retirement-period scholarship.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located for this fragment specifically. Treated in survey-discussions of Eastern-Jìn biàn lǐ.
Other points of interest
The three Yú Xǐ ritual treatises (Tōngyí, Guǎnglín, Shìzhì) together preserve the most substantial Eastern-Jìn single-author Sāngfú / jīmiào judgement corpus to survive. Their pairing with the Liú Zhì Shìyí and the KR1d0097 Kǒng Yǎn Xiōnglǐ fragments documents the working ritual-scholarship of the early Eastern-Jìn court before its consolidation into the Liú-Sòng Lǐlùn (cf. KR1d0101) collection-tradition.
Links
- Chinese Text Project — Tōngdiǎn 93: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=549966