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Text ID
KR1g0009
Date
1229–1238
Dynasty
宋

Róngtáng Sì shū guǎn jiàn 融堂四書管見

Master Róngtáng’s Restricted Views on the Four Books by 錢時 (撰)

About the work

A 13-juàn commentary by Qián Shí 錢時 (Róngtáng 融堂) on a heterodox set of “Four Books” — Lúnyǔ (10 juàn), Xiàojīng (1 juàn), Dàxué (1 juàn), and Zhōngyōng (1 juàn). Note that the set deliberately omits Mèngzǐ and adds the Xiàojīng — diverging programmatically from the canonical Sìshū of Zhū Xī. The work is the principal monument of CíhúLù 慈湖陸 xīn xué 心學 Sì shū exegesis: Qián Shí’s teacher was Yáng Jiǎn 楊簡 (Cíhú 慈湖), Yáng’s teacher was Lù Jiǔyuān 陸九淵 (陸九淵), and the lineage gave the work an explicit doctrinal alternative to Zhū Xī’s Sì shū zhāngjù.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Róngtáng Sì shū guǎn jiàn in 12 [sic, 13 in the WYG] juàn was composed by Qián Shí of the Sòng. Shí has the Róngtáng shū jiě 融堂書解, already catalogued. This compilation comprises Lúnyǔ in 10 juàn, Xiàojīng in 1, Dàxué in 1, Zhōngyōng in 1 — i.e. the works submitted to court when Qiáo Xíngjiǎn 喬行簡 in the second year of Jiāxī (1238) recommended that the Yánzhōu prefecture obtain Shí’s writings. In each case the canonical text is given first, with brief sound-glosses, then his exposition of the principal sense follows. The Xiàojīng uses the gǔwén 古文 recension; the Dàxué is divided merely into six chapters without separating jīng from zhuàn. Shí’s learning derived from Yáng Jiǎn, whose learning came from Lù Jiǔyuān — a quite different gate from the ChéngZhū lineage — and so he does not use the ChéngZhū Dàxué edition.

His treatment of the Lúnyǔ “exalt virtue and dissolve confusion” chapter (chóng dé biàn huò 崇德辨惑) takes the two sentences “chéng bù yǐ fù, yì zhǐ yǐ yì 誠不以富,亦祗以異” as evidence supplementing “loving him you would have him live, hating him you would have him die” — the very meaning of “yì” (peculiar). The chapter “Qí Jǐnggōng has a thousand teams of horses” he splits at jié 節, joining it with the preceding chapter, and reads “qí sī zhī wèi yǔ” 其斯之謂與 as referring not to that line but to the YíQí brothers’ “seeking what they sought, attaining the dào they walked.” Likewise the Dàxué’s “cǐ wèi zhī běn, cǐ wèi zhī zhī zhì yě” 此謂知本,此謂知之至也 he attaches at the end of the first chapter, holding that the Sage repeats the message “the root is thick, the branches are thin” — and so refuses the cuò jiǎn (mistaken-bamboo-strip) hypothesis. He follows the old text and does not credit the conjecture of dislocated bamboo. As Zhū Xī’s letter to Lù Jiǔyuān put it, “each honours what he has heard, each enacts what he has known.”

Yet whereas the Jīnxī (= Lù Jiǔyuān, of Jīnxī county) school relies merely on direct mind-realization, sometimes drifting into nebulosity, Shí takes solidity and earnestness as the keynote — and so his elucidation of the doctrines is for the most part level, plain, and unornamented, without divisive or extravagant talk. As Áo Jìgōng’s 敖繼公 Yílǐ jí shuō postscript puts it: “the man of Lǔ who could not be learnt from Liǔxià Huì yet could be learnt from” (alluding to the Lúnyǔ’s ambivalent praise). The volume opens with a preface by Shí himself dated jǐchǒu of the Shàoxīng [sic, Shàodìng 紹定 jǐchǒu = 1229] era, and ends with a colophon by Qián Kězé 錢可則 of Tiāntái dated xīnyǒu of the Jǐngdìng era (1261). The Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì and Mǎ Duānlín’s Jīngjí kǎo both omit it; only Zhāng Xuān’s 張萱 Nèigé shū mù records it. Although it is named “Sì shū”, its commentary does not extend to the Mèngzǐ and is therefore at variance with what Zhū Xī meant by “Sì shū” — and accordingly we have appended it to the Wǔ jīng zǒng yì category. Respectfully collated and submitted in the sixth month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng (1778). — Editors-in-chief: your servants Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. — Chief proof-reader: your servant Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Róngtáng Sì shū guǎn jiàn is the principal monument of LùWáng xīn xué exegesis in the Sì shū register prior to Wáng Yángmíng 王陽明 (whose own Dàxué wèn 大學問 directly engages the same textual programme). Three points of distinction stand out:

(1) The deliberately heterodox Sìshū selection (Lúnyǔ, Xiàojīng, Dàxué, Zhōngyōng — not Lúnyǔ, Mèngzǐ, Dàxué, Zhōngyōng) signals a LùCíhú lineage objection to the privilege Zhū Xī had given the Mèngzǐ in his canonical synthesis. Including the Xiàojīng in the gǔwén recension is a separate doctrinal gesture: it elevates the Xiàojīng-as-xīnxué — affective, immediate, and not subject to gé wù analysis — over the ChéngZhū Mèngzǐ-as-xìnglǐ.

(2) The retention of the original Dàxué arrangement (six chapters, no jīng / zhuàn separation, no cuò jiǎn conjecture) is the deliberate textual counterposition to Zhū Xī’s Dàxué zhāngjù. Qián Shí refuses the gé wù bǔ chuán 格物補傳 (the famous interpolation that Zhū Xī wrote to fill a perceived lacuna). The doctrinal ground is xīn xué: there is no lǐ outside the mind that needs to be added.

(3) The interpretive method exhibits the CíhúLù school’s preference for plain reading over conjectural emendation — even where (as the Sìkù compilers note) the alternative readings he offers are themselves bold (e.g. resplitting the Lúnyǔ’s “Qí Jǐnggōng yǒu mǎ qiān sì” chapter).

The dating bracket is given by the self-preface (Shàodìng jǐchǒu = 1229, with later additions through the Jiāxī recommendation of 1238). The text was not formally printed until 1261 (Qián Kězé’s Jǐngdìng-era cut). The work is bibliographically scarce in the SòngYuán catalogues — absent from the Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì and Mǎ Duānlín’s Jīngjí kǎo; the only YuánMíng catalogue carrying it is Zhāng Xuān’s Nèigé shū mù — which suggests circulation primarily within the Cíhú school’s private channels.

Translations and research

  • Sòng-Yuán xué àn 宋元學案 (Huáng Zōng-xī, comp.; completed by Quán Zǔwàng), j. 74, Cíhú jiā xué 慈湖家學. Standard Qing biographical-doxographical entry on Qián Shí.
  • Foulk, T. Griffith. “The ‘Ch’an School’ and Its Place in the Buddhist Monastic Tradition.” PhD diss., U Michigan, 1987. Includes treatment of late Sòng xīn xué.
  • Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. UHP, 1992. Discusses the Cíhú-Lù school’s Sì shū alternative.
  • Bol, Peter K. Neo-Confucianism in History. HUP, 2008. Pages on the Lù-Cíhú lineage as a southern alternative to Cheng-Zhu canonical orthodoxy.
  • Cíhú yí shū 慈湖遺書 (collected works of Yáng Jiǎn) — necessary background.

Other points of interest

The work’s exclusion of the Mèngzǐ from the “Sì shū” is the primum mobile of the Sìkù compilers’ decision to reclassify the work under Wǔ jīng zǒng yì rather than Sì shū lèi. The decision reflects the canonical post-Yuán understanding that “Sì shū” without Mèngzǐ is not a Sì shū at all — a useful index of how stabilized the ZhūXī canon had become by the Qiánlóng era.

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