Sìshū jíyì jīngyào 四書集義精要
Essential Selections from the Collected Meanings of the Four Books
劉因 (Liú Yīn, zì Mèngjí, hào Jìngxiū, 1249–1293)
About the work
Liú Yīn’s careful pruning of the post-Zhū-Xī Sìshū jíyì 四書集義 corpus — the Yǔlèi and Wénjí gleanings that, after Zhū Xī’s death, his followers had compiled into a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-character anthology of his miscellaneous Sìshū discussions. Liú Yīn selected the substantive readings and dropped the redundant, producing a tightly-edited summary of Zhū Xī’s not-yet-settled Sìshū arguments, organised by passage. The original was in 30 or 35 juàn (Yīzhāi shūmù gives 30; Nèigé shūmù gives 35); the WYG copy contains only 28 juàn, breaking off at Mèngzǐ Téng Wéngōng shàng.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Sìshū jíyì jīngyào in 28 juàn — by Liú Yīn 劉因 of the Yuán. Yīn, zì Mèngjí, native of Róngchéng; the Confucians called him Jìngxiū xiānshēng. In Zhìyuán 19 (1282), the Shìzǔ summoned him and made him Chéngdé láng 兼 Yòu zànshàn dàifū; not long after, he resigned and went home; called again as Jíxián xuéshì, he did not respond. Biography in the Yuánshǐ Rúlín zhuàn.
After Zhūzǐ composed the Sìshū jízhù, all the question-and-answer interactions with the various men, that diverged from the Jízhù — these had not been gathered into one before he died. Later students therefore took what was scattered through the Yǔlèi and Wénjí, and assembled it into the Sìshū jíyì; it ran to many tens of thousands of characters, and readers found it overgrown. Yīn accordingly chose the points-of-import, deleted the redundant entries, and arranged this book.
Zhāng Xuān’s 張萱 Nèigé shūmù lists Jíyì jīngyào in 35 juàn; the Yīzhāi shūmù gives 30 juàn; the juàn-counts diverge. The present text preserves only 28 juàn, ending at Mèngzǐ Téng Wéngōng shàngpiān; there is also some loss within the body — it is not a complete edition. Yet Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo has noted under this work “wèi jiàn” (unseen) — the work has long been rare. We do not let its incompleteness count against the venerable yíjí (left-behind manuscript) that has been preserved.
The book sweeps off floating words and standards-up the essentials, so that Zhūzǐ’s argument is not confused on the many divergent paths. Sū Tiānjué 蘇天爵 calls it “jiǎnyán jīngdāng” 簡嚴精當 — concise-strict, precise-and-apposite — and that is no idle praise. Yīn had immersed himself in yìlǐ and gained much; hence his selection-and-rejection is plain, like sorting black from white. Quite different from those who, vainly nurturing the name of Zhū-following, reverently treat every fragment of word-or-character — without enquiring whether the master’s argument is settled or not — as if it were a sacred globe-or-chart. — Respectfully revised, tenth month of the 46th year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Liú Yīn’s Jīngyào is a critical editorial intervention in the late-13th-century Sìshū commentarial industry. After Zhū Xī’s death, his followers had compiled a vast — and inevitably miscellaneous — anthology of his Yǔlèi and Wénjí discussions; the resulting Sìshū jíyì tended toward over-bulk and was full of one-time, undecided remarks. Liú Yīn’s contribution is the principled pruning: he selected the substantively-settled readings and dropped the redundant entries, producing a working reference that remained loyal to Zhū Xī’s mature thought.
The Sìkù editors’ praise is calibrated and substantive: they distinguish Liú Yīn from those who venerate Zhū Xī’s every fragment, and align his method with their own (Qiánlóng kǎozhèng) preference for serious editorial discipline. The Sū Tiānjué endorsement (“concise-strict, precise-and-apposite”) gives the verdict from within the early-Yuán Lǐxué community itself.
The 28-juàn extant text, broken off at Mèngzǐ Téng Wéngōng shàng, lacks roughly the latter half of the Mèngzǐ portion. The original was 30 or 35 juàn; the discrepancy between the Nèigé shūmù and Yīzhāi shūmù counts is itself an interesting transmission-historical problem — perhaps the 35-juàn count includes appended reading-notes that the 30-juàn count does not. The Sìkù WYG transmits the partial text on the principle of “jǐn cún (only-preserved)” — even an incomplete witness of a rare work is worth keeping.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: 點校本 in Yuán-rén Sì-shū wén-xiàn jí-chéng (Hé-nán-rén-mín 2005). Studies: Jen-Han Yu 余崑山 [Yu Kun-shan], Liú Jìng-xiū yǔ Yuán-dài Lǐ-xué (Tái-běi 1992); Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Sòng-Yuán Sì-shū xué shǐ (Bā-Shǔ-shū-shè 2008). Western: Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (Columbia, 1981), brief.
Other points of interest
Liú Yīn’s editorial example — selective, principled, willing to remove apparently-canonical material if it was not settled — was an unusual stance in the Yuán Lǐxué community, where (as the Sìkù editors note) the standard tendency was to “venerate every fragment”. The work is therefore a methodological touchstone for Cheng-Zhu commentary that is internally critical rather than reverentially comprehensive.
Links
- Yuánshǐ 171 (Liú Yīn biography in Rúlín zhuàn).
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.7.3.
- 全國漢籍データベース 四庫提要