四如講稿

Sìrú jiǎng gǎo 四如講稿

Master Sìrú’s Lecture Drafts by 黃仲元 (撰)

About the work

A 6-juàn compilation of Huáng Zhòngyuán 黃仲元’s classical lectures, transmitted under the title Sìrú jiǎng gǎo but covering the Five Classics together with the Four Books (and not — as the parallel title Sì shū jiǎng gǎo in the local Fújiàn gazetteer would suggest — the Four Books alone). The lectures are notable for their general fidelity to Zhū Xī while diverging on particular questions of Lǐ yùn 禮運 / dynastic-calendar interpretation, the Zhōu lǐ jǐng tián 周禮井田 institution, and the identification of the Zhōu nán and Shào nán as ducal apanages. The work is ascribed to the dynastic transition: Huáng was a yí mín (Sòng-loyalist) refusing service under the Yuán, and the lectures represent his teaching at his Pútián home from 1276 onwards.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Sìrú jiǎng gǎo in 6 juàn was composed by Huáng Zhòngyuán of the Sòng. Zhòngyuán’s style name was Shànfǔ, his sobriquet Sìrú; he was a man of Pútián. He was jìnshì of the seventh year of Xiánchún and was appointed Guózǐ jiàn bù, but did not take up the post. After the fall of the Sòng he changed his name to Yuān, his style name to Tiānsǒu, his sobriquet to Yùnxiāng lǎorén, and taught in his native village to the end of his days.

The Fújiàn tōng zhì and the Pútián xiàn zhì both record that Zhòngyuán composed a Sì shū jiǎng gǎo 四書講稿. But examining this book, the lectures in it actually extend to the various Classics and not the Four Books alone. The exposition for the most part records the threads of Zhū Xī’s doctrine, but at intervals presents a new view, illuminating what the older Confucians had not. As, on the Zhōu lǐ “Conduct the seasons of the Xià” (xíng Xià zhī shí 行夏之時), he relies on the Lǐ yùn — “Confucius obtained the seasons of Xià at Qǐ” — to gloss “Xià shí” (the seasons of Xià) as the four-season calendar of the Xià, not as the sān zhèng 三正 (three royal calendars) doctrine of the Hàn. As, on Zhōu guān jǐng tián 周官井田, he holds that throughout the Zhōu the jǐng (well-field) system was used everywhere — and rejects Zhèng Xuán’s distinction between gòng tribute (in the metropolitan area) and zhù assistance (in dū and bǐ zones). As, on Bóyú’s “be the Zhōu nán and Shào nán”, he relies on the Shī Gǔ zhōng 詩鼓鐘 and on Jì Zhá’s guān yuè in the Zuǒ zhuàn — “the nán is the music” — and adds that Zhōu and Shào were the apanages of two ducal lords, not titles named after the two dukes. Although these readings need not all be coherent with the canonical sense, they are at any rate the products of fond study and deep thought, and able to formulate his own seeing.

This text was preserved in the household of his descendant Wénbǐng, and was already partially mutilated when, in bǐngwǔ of Jiājìng (1546), it was first cut to print. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo records only Huáng’s Jīng shǐ biàn yí and not this book — perhaps because the cut was in a private school in remote Fújiàn and a transmitted copy had not yet reached him? Respectfully collated and submitted in the third 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 Sìrú jiǎng gǎo belongs to the corpus of late Sòng yí mín (loyalist) scholarship — Confucian classicism produced from refused political service under the Yuán. Huáng Zhòngyuán’s specific intellectual position is best characterized as Zhū Xī orthodox in framework but quite willing to depart from the Master on individual readings supported by alternative classical evidence. The most-cited single reading — that the Zhōu nán / Shào nán are place-names of ducal apanages and that the term nán itself is a music designation, both inferred from independent witnesses (Shī, Zuǒ zhuàn) — was already current in pre-Zhū-Xī Sòng Shī exegesis but was definitively articulated by Huáng. The reading was later picked up in Qing evidential scholarship and remains a serious option in modern debates about the Shī’s editorial history.

The book was preserved in the family of Huáng Zhòngyuán’s descendant Wénbǐng 文炳 and printed only in 1546. The 1546 cut is the textual ancestor of the WYG edition, with no earlier printing attested. The dating bracket runs from Huáng’s jìnshì year (1271) through his teaching career to his death (1312); the bulk of the lectures derive from the post-1276 Pútián teaching period.

Translations and research

• Sòng-Yuán xué àn 宋元學案. Pútián group of late-Sòng yí mín scholars. Standard Qing biographical-doxographical entry.
• Pútián xiàn zhì 莆田縣志, rénwù (people) section, entry on Huáng Zhòngyuán.
• Bol, Peter K. Neo-Confucianism in History. HUP, 2008. Discusses the late-Sòng yí mín loyalist generation as a contributing stream to Yuán-period Confucian thought.
• Mote, F. W. Imperial China 900–1800. HUP, 1999. Pages on Sòng loyalism after 1276.

Other points of interest

The book is a useful witness to the formation of Sì shū / Wǔ jīng curriculum in the late thirteenth century: by the time Huáng was lecturing, the integration of the two sets had become natural enough that a single set of lectures could move freely between them, and the local gazetteer’s Sì shū jiǎng gǎo title and the present Sìrú jiǎng gǎo (covering both) reflect the same body of teaching simply re-titled.

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Zhongyuan
• (no separate Zinbun tíyào URL identified — searchable from the Zinbun search interface)