Hè-shì sāngfú yàojì 賀氏喪服要記
Master Hè’s Essential Notes on Mourning Dress
by 賀循 (撰)
About the work
A single-juàn reconstruction of 賀循 Hè Xún’s (260–319) lost Sāngfú yàojì 喪服要記 — the question-and-answer ruling-compendium that pairs with his KR1d0117 Sāngfú pǔ (genealogical-chart commentary) to form the two-part Eastern-Jìn court-authoritative Sāngfú reference. The CHANT reconstruction (CH2e1086) is drawn from Dù Yòu 杜佑’s Tōngdiǎn 通典 citations.
Abstract
The opening preserved fragment addresses the canonical zhàng-zhāng (mourning-staff section) rule: “chū jū lú, lùn chēng zhàng zhě bì lú, lú zhě bì tán” 出居廬，論稱杖者必廬，廬者必禫 — i.e. those bearing the mourning-staff must reside in the lú (mourning-hut), and lú-residents must perform the tán (removal-sacrifice). Hè Xún’s gloss: “this clarifies that within the zhàng-zhāng, lú-residence must culminate in tán — lú and tán are inseparable as the zhàng-zhāng internal sequence.”
The substantive content addresses the practical-ritual implementation of the canonical Sāngfú schedule:
(i) The zhàng / lú / tán sequence. Detailed protocols for the three principal external markers of the deepest mourning-grade (staff, hut, removal-sacrifice), with their canonical inter-relations.
(ii) The liàn (practice-sacrifice) and xiáng (felicitous-sacrifice) transitions. Specific rulings on which ritual events trigger which mourning-dress changes.
(iii) Citation-of-and-response-to 杜預’s Sāngfú yàojí. Throughout the surviving text, Hè Xún cites Dù Yù’s earlier KR1d0115 Sāngfú yàojí as an authoritative reference, then either follows or modifies. The interlocutor Chuán Chún 傳純 questions Hè Xún on these citations (cf. Tōngdiǎn 73 citation in KR1d0115) — a documented Eastern-Jìn-to-Western-Jìn citation chain.
(iv) Court-specific biàn-lǐ cases. Particular rulings for the Sīmǎ imperial-clan mourning protocols established under Jìn Yuándì.
The dating bracket (280–319) reflects Hè Xún’s documented life-span; the work is conventionally placed in his Eastern-Jìn Tài-cháng period.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. Treated in studies of Eastern-Jìn court ritualism.
Other points of interest
The Sāngfú yàojì and Sāngfú pǔ together formed the principal Eastern-Jìn court-authoritative Sāngfú reference and were the most-cited single-author Sāngfú compilation in the Tōngdiǎn. Their preservation of the 杜預 → 賀循 → Chuán Chún citation chain is the key documentation for the Western-to-Eastern-Jìn ritual-scholarship transmission line.
Links
- Chinese Text Project — Tōngdiǎn: https://ctext.org/tongdian