Sāngfú biànchú tú 喪服變除圖
Chart of Mourning-Dress Reduction-and-Removal
by 射慈 (撰)
About the work
A single-juàn reconstruction of 射慈 Shè Cí’s (third century, Wú dynasty) lost Sāngfú biànchú tú 喪服變除圖 — a Wú-court Sāngfú (mourning-dress) practical-handbook in chart-and-explanation form. Shè Cí, zì Wén-tī 文體, was a leading Wú 吳 court ritualist under Sūn Quán and Sūn Liàng, Tài-zǐ shǎo-fù 太子少傅 and Sǎn-qí cháng-shì 散騎常侍. His ritual works include the present Sāngfú biànchú tú and the parallel KR1d0126 Lǐjì yīnyì yǐn (which CHANT however attributes to him as 射慈, alongside the same-title work by 謝徽 Xiè Huī). The CHANT reconstruction (CH2e1081) draws all surviving citations from Dù Yòu 杜佑’s Tōngdiǎn 通典.
Abstract
The Sāngfú biànchú tú is one of the principal Wú-court ritual handbooks and the genre-defining text for the biànchú-tú form: a chart-organized handbook displaying the canonical Sāngfú mourning-dress assemblage and the prescribed sequence of biàn (reduction-changes) and chú (removal-stages) over the canonical mourning period. The surviving fragments cover:
(i) The Son-of-Heaven’s mourning for descendants. A canonical rule that the Son of Heaven does not mourn his sons who have been enfeoffed as zhū-hóu (separate-princes) — preserving the zūn / bēi asymmetry in imperial mourning.
(ii) The biàn-dié xī-cuī (small-cap-and-cord with white-mourning-dress) protocol. The Son-of-Heaven’s mourning protocol for the Sān-gōng (three excellencies) and Sān-gū (three solitaries) using this special light-mourning attire — a key technical distinction in early-medieval court mourning.
(iii) The graded reduction protocols. Step-by-step charts showing the canonical biàn (changes) at the conventional mourning-stage transitions: from full zhǎn-cuī to the post-funeral qiān-fú, through the liàn-fú and xiáng-fú sacrifices to the final tán-fú (removal-sacrifice).
The work is conventionally placed as the principal pre-Jìn Sāngfú biànchú-tú — a tradition continued and elaborated in KR1d0119 Gě-shì sāngfú biànchú and other later treatises.
The dating bracket (220–280) reflects Shè Cí’s documented Wú-court career.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. Treated in studies of Wú-court ritual scholarship.
Other points of interest
The Sāngfú biànchú tú is a generic prototype for the chart-and-commentary form of Sāngfú handbook that became the dominant Six-Dynasties teaching format, with 葛洪 Gě Hóng’s KR1d0119 Gě-shì sāngfú biànchú representing the Eastern-Jìn elaboration of the same form.
Links
- Chinese Text Project — Tōngdiǎn: https://ctext.org/tongdian