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齊永明諸王孝經講義

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Text ID
KR1f0015
Date
485–537
Dynasty
南齊

Qí Yǒngmíng Zhūwáng Xiàojīng Jiǎngyì 齊永明諸王孝經講義

Lectures on the Classic of Filial Piety by the Various Princes of the Qí Yǒngmíng Era

with contributions from 蕭長懋 (講, Crown Prince Wénhuì), 王儉 (對, Lesser Tutor), 周顒 (義疏, exegete), 蕭子良 (對, Prince of Jìnglíng), 蕭映 (對, Prince of Línchuān), and 張緒 (對, Grand Master of Splendid Happiness)

About the work

The Qí Yǒngmíng Zhūwáng Xiàojīng Jiǎngyì 齊永明諸王孝經講義 is a short single-juàn compilation of the dialogues held at Crown Prince Wénhuì’s 文惠太子 (Xiāo Chángmào 蕭長懋, 458–493) lectures on the Xiàojīng 孝經 at the Chóngzhèng Hall 崇正殿 in 永明三年 (485) and at the Imperial Academy 國學 in 永明五年 (487). It is preserved not as an independently transmitted work but as a cluster of extracts from the Nán Qí shū 南齊書 — principally the Wénhuì tàizǐ zhuàn 文惠太子傳 (juàn 21), the Wáng Jiǎn zhuàn 王儉傳 (juàn 23), and related biographical chapters — and is reassembled as a discrete jiǎngyì (lecture-text) by the editors of the CHANT 漢達古籍資料庫 corpus from which Kanripo took it. The text is therefore an editorial reconstruction of a Xiàojīng exegetical event rather than a separately authored treatise: its scholarly value lies in preserving a rare extended record of an aristocratic court Xiàojīng seminar from the Southern Dynasties, conducted between a princely lecturer, a senior bibliographer-tutor, and a Buddhist-affiliated literary master.

Abstract

The work opens with the procedural framing recorded in the Nán Qí shū: “In the third year of Yǒngmíng [485], at the Chóngzhèng Hall there was lecturing on the Xiàojīng; the Lesser Tutor Wáng Jiǎn was to extract the lemmata (tī jù 擿句), and [Zhōu] Yóng was commissioned to compose the formal exegesis (yìshū 義疏). In the fifth year [487], in winter, the Crown Prince visited the Imperial Academy and personally examined the students seated in audience” (《南齊書‧文惠太子傳》). The body of the text is a sequence of dialogues, in three main strata: (1) the Crown Prince questions 王儉 Wáng Jiǎn (452–489), Lesser Tutor and the most distinguished bibliographer of his generation, on points of Xiàojīng and adjacent classical doctrine (the meaning of jìng 敬 in the Qǔlǐ 曲禮, the relation between Zhōng 忠 and Huì 惠, the reason Confucius transmitted the Xiàojīng to Zēngzǐ rather than to Yán Huí, the relation between the Xiàojīng’s opening Zhòngní jū, Zēngzǐ shì 仲尼居曾子侍 and the Yìjīng’s zhèn 震 trigram); (2) the same Crown Prince poses parallel questions to the senior officers 蕭子良 Xiāo Zǐliáng (Prince of Jìnglíng 竟陵王, 460–494) and 蕭映 Xiāo Yìng (Prince of Línchuān 臨川王, 458–489); (3) 張緒 Zhāng Xù (422–489), Grand Master of Splendid Happiness (jīn-zǐ guānglù dàifū 金紫光祿大夫), is brought in to adjudicate on specific points (notably whether the Xiàojīng’s use of jìng covers both “honoring superiors” and “kindness to inferiors”). A separate notice records that “the Crown Prince further put this yì to the various students; Xiè Jīqīng 謝幾卿 and ten others responded in writing.”

The lectures are bibliographically significant on three counts. First, the institutional setting at the Chóngzhèng Hall and the formal division of labor — Crown Prince as jiǎng (lecturer), Wáng Jiǎn as tī jù (lemma-extractor and Lesser Tutor), and 周顒 Zhōu Yóng (d. 485) as composer of the yìshū (formal exegesis) — exemplify the Southern Dynasties aristocratic court-seminar style that produced much of the lost Liù-cháo Xiàojīng commentarial literature (eight separate Liù-cháo Xiàojīng commentaries are listed in the Suíshū jīngjí zhì and the Tángshū yìwén zhì, none of which has survived intact). Second, the participation of Zhōu Yóng, who would die later in the same year (485) and whose own Sānzōng èr dì lùn 三宗二諦論 is foundational for Chinese Mādhyamika Buddhism, documents the cross-traditional involvement of lay Buddhist exegetes in the Confucian classical curriculum at the Qí court. Third, the substantive content of the dialogues — Crown Prince Wénhuì’s persistent attention to the semantic asymmetry of jìng (honoring vs. condescension), to the chain jìng → xiào → zhōng, and to the Zēngzǐ-question — anticipates several of the principal cruxes of later Xiàojīng commentary, notably the SòngYuán treatment of the Kāi zōng míng yì 開宗明義 chapter and the Yuán-Míng dispute over whether the Xiàojīng is properly read as a jīng (in Zhū Xī’s narrow sense) or as a jīng + zhuàn (in Wáng Yīngzhī’s and Wú Chéng’s sense; see KR1f0006, KR1f0008).

The work is not transmitted as an independent text. The dialogues survive because Xiāo Zǐxiǎn 蕭子顯 (489–537), grandson of Qí Gāodì and compiler of the Nán Qí shū under the Liáng (compiled c. 514–537), preserved them at length within the Wénhuì tàizǐ zhuàn. The Kanripo recension is the CHANT editorial extraction (custom_id @CH2e1184), which gathers all and only the Qí Yǒngmíng Xiàojīng-seminar passages from the Nán Qí shū into a single jiǎngyì. The Sìkù quánshū does not include the work; it appears in no premodern catalog and in no premodern recension. The composition window is set by the events recorded: not before 485 (the first Chóngzhèng-Hall lecture) and not after 537 (the latest date by which the Nán Qí shū was complete); the terminus ante quem of 537 is the operative bracket for the “received recension.” The work is included at the end of the Kanripo Xiàojīng sub-corpus as a documentary witness to the lost Liù-cháo Xiàojīng commentarial tradition.

Translations and research

  • 林秀一 (Hayashi Hideichi). 1976. Kōkyō jutsugi fukugen ni kan suru kenkyū 孝經述議復原に関する研究 (Research on the reconstruction of the Xiàojīng shùyì). Tōkyō: Bunkyū-dō. The standard modern reconstruction of the lost Liù-cháo Xiàojīng commentarial tradition; treats the Yǒngmíng-era seminar as an important documentary witness alongside Liú Xuàn’s 劉炫 lost Xiàojīng shùyì 孝經述議.
  • Chen Yinque (陳寅恪). 1944. “Tiān shī dào yǔ bīn hǎi dìyù zhī guānxì” 天師道與濱海地域之關係, in Lǐshǐ yǔyán yánjiū suǒ jíkān 歷史語言研究所集刊 3. Brief but important comment on Zhāng Xù as a Tiānshī Dào affiliate at the Yǒngmíng court, with discussion of the Yǒngmíng Xiàojīng seminar as a cross-traditional event.
  • 王重民 (Wáng Chóngmín). 1983. Zhōngguó shànběn shū tíyào 中國善本書提要. Shanghai: Shànghǎi gǔjí. Brief bibliographic notice on the Nán Qí shū extract tradition.

No major Western-language translation of the lecture-dialogues located. The Nán Qí shū passages have not been translated into a European language as a unit, though Wáng Jiǎn’s biography is partially summarized in Crowell (1984) and Rogers (1959).

Other points of interest

The seminar’s institutional shape — zhū wáng (princes) as lecturers and disputants, with senior officers and a designated yìshū author — is a peculiarity of the high Yǒngmíng court. It produced a parallel record in the Nán Qí shū Wú jūn jiā zhuàn and was emulated at the Liáng Wǔdì court (502–549), where Liáng Wǔdì himself produced an Xiàojīng yìshū 孝經義疏 (now lost) along the same lines. The Liáng cycle is much more frequently cited (e.g. in the Suíshū jīngjí zhì), but the Yǒngmíng record preserved in the Nán Qí shū is the more textually substantive: the actual quaestiones and responses survive verbatim, where for the Liáng seminars only the titles of the resulting exegeses do.

The Yǒngmíng Xiàojīng seminar is also a small but well-documented site of intellectual coexistence between the imperial Confucian curriculum and the rapidly-developing southern Buddhist exegetical milieu: Zhōu Yóng is one of the principal early Chinese Mādhyamika thinkers, and his commissioning by the Crown Prince to compose the formal yìshū on the Xiàojīng is a noteworthy case of cross-traditional appointment.

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