Sāngfú shìxíng yàojì 喪服世行要記
Essential Notes on Mourning Dress in Contemporary Practice
by 王逡之 (撰)
About the work
A single-juàn reconstruction of 王逡之 Wáng Qūnzhī’s (late-fifth-century, Southern Qí) lost Sāngfú shìxíng yàojì 喪服世行要記 — a Southern-Qí court compendium of practical (shì-xíng, “in-world-practice”) Sāngfú rulings. Wáng Qūnzhī was a Qí Shàngshū zuǒ-chéng 尚書左丞 and Zhuó-zuò láng 著作郎; the surviving text records his court-correspondence with 王儉 Wáng Jiǎn on specific imperial mourning cases. The CHANT reconstruction (CH2e1097) is drawn from Dù Yòu 杜佑’s Tōngdiǎn 通典 citations.
Abstract
The opening preserved fragment records a court-question-and-response: Wáng Qūnzhī questions Wáng Jiǎn (then Zuǒ Púyè) on the mourning protocol for the Huáng tài-zǐ (heir-apparent) Mù-fēi 穆妃 — specifically: should the Zhōng-jūn Nán-jùn Wáng 中軍南郡王’s xiǎo-xiáng (lesser felicitous-sacrifice) wait for Wén-xī (the Wén-xī gōng)? Mù-fēi died on the seventh-month twenty-fourth day; Wén-xī gōng opened the formal mourning-wailing on the eighth-month [date].
This documents the standard Southern-Qí court-mourning ruling-process: the Shàngshū zuǒ-chéng (Wáng Qūnzhī’s office) issues the technical question; Zuǒ Púyè 王儉 returns the court’s ruling. The substantive content of the Sāngfú shìxíng yàojì compiles these Wáng-Qūnzhī-to-Wáng-Jiǎn case-correspondences as a working reference for the Southern-Qí court.
The dating bracket (472–502) reflects the documented Southern-Qí dynasty span; Wáng Qūnzhī’s specific biographical details are sparse, but his collaboration with Wáng Jiǎn places him squarely in the Jiànyuán / Yǒngmíng / Yǒng-yuán court-ritual circle.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work survives only as Tōngdiǎn citations.
Other points of interest
The Sāngfú shìxíng yàojì is a key procedural-documentation source for the Southern-Qí court’s ritual decision-making process: the technical question-from-bureau / authoritative-ruling-from-prime-minister chain is recorded in unusual detail, making this work the principal extant source for the working culture of Qí-court ritualism alongside 王儉’s KR1d0104 Lǐlùn chāolüè and KR1d0124 Sāngfú gǔjīn jíjì.
Links
- Chinese Text Project — Tōngdiǎn: https://ctext.org/tongdian