Sìshū liúshū 四書留書
Bequeathed Notes on the Four Books
by 章世純 (Zhāng Shìchún, zì Dàlì 大力, 1575–1644)
About the work
A late-Míng Sìshū commentary in six juàn by Zhāng Shìchún, the Línchuān bāgǔ-essayist. Originally one part of a three-part personal collection titled Liúshū 留書 — six juàn on the Four Books, plus one juàn of philosophical nèijí and one juàn of miscellaneous sànjí — which the Míngshǐ yìwénzhì listed as a single Rújiā title. The Sìkù editors split off the Sìshū portion into the jīngbù and re-classified the rest under zǐbù, judging that a chapter-by-chapter exegesis “is properly a jīngjiě genre, not zǐshū.” The work proceeds by selecting individual chapters or sections of the Sìshū and offering an essayistic comment that aims for jīngyì (kernel meaning) rather than philological gloss; in the Sìkù judgement it is shaped by the zhìyì essayist’s habit of mind without falling into late-Yáng-míng liángzhī self-indulgence.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Sìshū liúshū in six juàn — by Zhāng Shìchún of the Míng. Shìchún, zì Dàlì, a man of Línchuān, was a jǔrén of the xīnyǒu year of Tiānqǐ (1621); he held office up to zhīfǔ of Liǔzhōu prefecture. This compilation contains, besides the six juàn on the Sìshū, one juàn of nèijí — being a zǐshū he composed — and one juàn of sànjí, being his miscellaneous notes (bǐjì). The Míngshǐ yìwénzhì lumps everything under the title Liúshū and places it among the Rújiā. However, the six juàn on the Sìshū are preceded by Shìchún’s own preface dated dīngmǎo of Tiānqǐ (1627), and followed by a self-postface, both of which speak only of the intent of explicating the Sìshū and touch on nothing else. The book is laid out by chapters, with discursive comment, on the model of Liú Chǎng’s 劉敞 Chūnqiū yìlín 春秋意林 — except that Liú Chǎng does not quote the jīng text, while Shìchún heads each section with the relevant chapter or paragraph. This is a regular jiějīng form; classifying it under zǐshū is positively wrong-in-kind. We therefore detach the nèijí and sànjí and catalogue them separately, while the Sìshū portion is entered into the jīngbù — recovering the actual genre. Shìchún, with Ài Nányīng, Luó Wànzǎo, and Chén Jìtài, made up what was called the Línchuān sìjiā 臨川四家; all four were celebrated in their own day for zhìyì (eight-legged-essay composition). Shìchún’s working-out of thought was particularly sharp, and his glosses on the Sìshū often pick out a fine kernel-meaning beyond the surface of the phrasing, opening points his predecessors had not opened — without confining himself to xùngǔ drudgery, yet also without ever, as the liángzhī school does, drifting unmoored in self-indulgence. As Yáng Xióng put it, those who “delight in profound and submerged thought” — Shìchún was one. — Respectfully revised, sixth month of the 43rd year of Qiánlóng [1778].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Sìshū liúshū is the principal late-Míng Sìshū commentary by an exam-essay master rather than by a doctrinal Lǐxué figure. Zhāng Shìchún’s preface, dated 1627, frames the Sìshū as the supreme essence of Confucian learning — Dàxué providing the zhìshēnxīn (governing-the-self) framework, Zhōngyōng the chéng doctrine, Lúnyǔ the manifold zhīyán jiécí of Confucius gathered by his foremost disciples, and Mèngzǐ the elaboration of rényì anchored in xìng (the original endowment). His exegetical method, descended from the Línchuān eight-legged-essay tradition, is to lift a single chapter or section and unfold its jīngyì in essayistic form — close in genre to Liú Chǎng’s Chūnqiū yìlín 春秋意林 (cited explicitly by the Sìkù editors as the model), but unlike Liú Chǎng he prints the relevant jīng text at each section’s head.
The Sìkù verdict is unusually generous: Zhāng’s reading “often picks out the kernel meaning beyond the words and opens up what the predecessors had not opened” while remaining philologically restrained, and — crucially for a Línchuān-school late-Míng figure — staying clear of the liángzhī extreme. The editors’ specific positive comparison is to Yáng Xióng’s hào shēnzhàn zhī sī 好深湛之思 (delighting in profound submerged thought). The work was evidently completed by 1627 (preface) and the date of his self-postface follows shortly thereafter; the terminus ante quem for the received recension is 1644, the year of Zhāng’s death and the fall of the Míng.
The cataloguing history is itself worth flagging. The Míngshǐ yìwénzhì had filed the whole Liúshū as a single Rújiā title under the zǐbù — an artefact of treating Zhāng as a thinker rather than a classicist. The Sìkù editors disassemble the bundle on strictly genre-categorical grounds: Sìshū exegesis is jīngjiě, not zǐshū. The nèijí (a piece of zǐshū proper) and sànjí (miscellaneous notes) were re-catalogued elsewhere, and only the six juàn on the Sìshū enter the jīngbù under this id.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: a punctuated edition of the Liú-shū circulates within the Línchuān-sì-jiā文集叢刊 series. Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Míng-dài Sì-shū xué shǐ (Bā-Shǔ-shū-shè), discusses the work in its chapter on zhì-yì-trained Sì-shū exegesis; on the Línchuān four more broadly see Andrew H. Plaks’s discussion of late-Míng bāgǔ-wén in his various essays on Ming examination prose.
Other points of interest
The work is a principal example of the Sìkù editors’ active genre re-cataloguing: a Míng-history-listed zǐshū split apart and partially re-canonised into the jīngbù purely on the editorial argument that the form of the writing is jiějīng. It is also the rare Sìkù entry whose tíyào explicitly cites Yáng Xióng as the praise-comparand — unusual for a Qián-lóng-era judgement on a late-Míng work.
Links
- Míngshǐ 288 (Wenyuan zhuan) for the Línchuān sìjiā.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4 on the Sìshū and §28.7 on its commentary tradition.