Juéyí yàozhù 決疑要注
Essential Annotations for Resolving Doubts
by 摯虞 (撰)
About the work
A single-juàn reconstruction of 摯虞 Zhì Yú’s (c. 250–311) lost Juéyí yàozhù 決疑要注 — a miscellaneous compendium on court-ritual cases, regalia, palace-protocol, and historical anecdotes drawn from his broader scholarly oeuvre. Zhì Yú, zì Zhòngqià 仲洽, was the leading Western-Jìn court literary-scholar and ritualist under Sīmǎ Yán and Sīmǎ Zhōng, Tài-zǐ shě-rén 太子舍人 and later Mì-shū jiān 秘書監 with the formal commission to organise the imperial library; his major work the Wénzhāng liúbié zhì 文章流別志 is the foundational Six-Dynasties literary-genre classification work (lost, fragmentary).
Abstract
The surviving Juéyí yàozhù fragments cover diverse topics:
(i) The five-phoenix typology and the bird-of-Xīn Shàn case. A historical anecdote of the Hàn-period Hóngnóng tài-shǒu memorial concerning a great bird (5 chǐ tall, mostly-green plumage) that perched on the locust-tree of the hermit Xīn Shàn 辛繕; the Tài-shǐ-lìng Cài Héng 蔡衡 distinguishing the five phoenix-like birds by colour (red-majority = phoenix; green-majority = luán 鸞; yellow = chú; purple = yuān; white = hú).
(ii) The history of the gǔnmiǎn regalia. A chronological note from the Qín abolition (only retaining xuán yī jiàng cháng 玄衣絳裳) through the Hàn restoration under Míngdì Yǒngpíng (58–75) reign, where the imperial court ordered the Confucian scholars to research ancient illustrations and restore the gǔn-miǎn full ceremonial dress.
(iii) Palace-architectural protocol. The use of jǐ-yán 几筵 (low-table-and-mat) on the diàn-táng upper platform; the imperial zhào-chuáng (summoning-couch) reserved only for the Son of Heaven; the Lǐjì canonical measurement rule “dù-táng yǐ yán” (measure the hall by mat-lengths) — with the imperial hall measured at 9 mats east-west, 7 mats north-south.
(iv) The Hàn-Wǔdì Kūnmíng-chí anecdote. Hàn Wǔdì’s excavation of the Kūnmíng Pool revealing only ash-and-soot without earth; Dōngfāng Shuò unable to answer; a later Eastern-Hàn Buddhist visitor explaining as residue of a previous kalpa-conflagration — an early piece of Buddhist-court anecdote-literature.
(v) Court-summons calligraphy protocols. Use of the hǔ-zhǎo shū 虎爪書 for Shàngshū-tái summons and the po-shū 波書 (?) for downward edicts — both deliberately difficult-to-learn scripts to prevent forgery.
(vi) Court-banquet vs. court-assembly protocols. The distinction between yàn 讌 (banquet, dressed in everyday clothes with silk-and-bamboo music) and huì 會 (assembly, dressed in five-seasonal court attire with court-music and full ceremonial guard).
The dating bracket (281–311) reflects Zhì Yú’s documented Western-Jìn career under Wǔdì and Huìdì, ending with his death in the Yǒngjiā disaster.
Translations and research
- David R. Knechtges, “Zhi Yu”, in Knechtges and Chang (eds.), Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide (Brill, 2010–2014). The standard English-language reference.
Other points of interest
The Juéyí yàozhù’s preservation of the Kūnmíng-chí “previous kalpa-conflagration” anecdote is one of the earliest documented contact-points between Chinese court anecdote-tradition and Buddhist kalpa-cosmology, predating Liú Yìqìng 劉義慶’s Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 organising of similar material.
Links
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhi_Yu
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Diverse/zhiyu.html