Lǐlùn dáwèn 禮論答問
Question-and-Answer on Discussions of Ritual
by 范宣 (撰)
About the work
A single-juàn reconstruction of 范宣 Fàn Xuān’s lost Lǐlùn dáwèn 禮論答問. Fàn Xuān, zì Xuānzǐ 宣子, native of Chénliú 陳留, was an Eastern-Jìn classicist who refused all court appointments and taught privately in Yùzhāng 豫章; his biography is in Jìn shū 91 (Rúlín). The CHANT reconstruction (CH2c1361) draws all surviving citations from Dù Yòu 杜佑’s Tōngdiǎn juàn 49, 60, 81, 83, 97, 101, 102. The text is a question-and-answer compilation of ritual rulings — Fàn Xuān answers questions posed by Liú Sì 劉嗣, Liú Sǔn 劉損, and other identified interlocutors on cases of biàn lǐ.
Abstract
Fàn Xuān’s Lǐlùn dáwèn is the principal extant remnant of his Eastern-Jìn private-school ritual teaching. The surviving fragments cover:
(i) The 30-month yīn jì (seasonal-comprehensive sacrifice) cycle. A Yuán-xīng 元興 (402–405)-era court memorial on whether the canonical 30-month yīn jì should be reckoned from the Tài-yuán 太元 1 (376) tenth-month yīn jì, with implications for the next-cycle observance date.
(ii) Marriage protocol during family mourning (Liú Sì, Liú Sǔn questions). The principle that mourning falling on younger family members does not invalidate a grandfather’s authority as hūn-zhǔ (marriage-host) to give a grandson in marriage, since guī-zhòng yú wáng-fù, lǐ wú qǔ yú chí-sù (returning the weight to the grandfather, ritual takes no concern of speed-or-slowness in such cases).
(iii) Three-day no-lamp rule for sending-off / receiving brides. A discussion of the canonical Lǐ “jià-nǚ zhī jiā sān-yè bù xī zhú; qǔ-fù zhī jiā […]” rule on whether continuous candle-vigil is required at both bride-sending and bride-receiving households.
(iv) Other biàn lǐ cases on collateral mourning and sacrificial-protocol details.
The dating bracket (339–376) is approximate, anchored by Fàn Xuān’s documented period of major teaching activity and by the Tài-yuán 1 (376) reference in the surviving text. He died sometime after 402 (the Yuán-xīng reign-period reference), though no exact death-year is in the Jìn shū.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Fàn Xuān is treated briefly in surveys of Eastern-Jìn private-school Confucianism.
Other points of interest
The Lǐlùn dáwèn is a key source for the working culture of Eastern-Jìn private-school ritual teaching — the named interlocutors are mostly Fàn Xuān’s students or correspondents, and the rulings show the southern-Jìn Confucian tradition working out the practical implications of canonical Sānlǐ doctrine in family-ritual contexts.
Links
- Chinese Text Project — Tōngdiǎn: https://ctext.org/tongdian