Rìjiǎng Sìshū jiěyì 日講四書解義
Imperial Daily-Lectures: Explication of the Four Books
by 喇沙里 (Lǎshālǐ / Lasari, fl. early Kāngxī, 奉敕編), 陳廷敬 (Chén Tíngjìng, 1639–1712, 奉敕編), with the Hànlín lecturer-academician group of 庫勒納 (Kùlènà), 葉方藹 (Yè Fāngǎi), 張英 (Zhāng Yīng) and others.
About the work
The Rìjiǎng Sìshū jiěyì in 26 juàn is the official Qīng imperial-court Sìshū exposition: it preserves the daily lectures (rìjiǎng) delivered before the young Kāngxī emperor by his Hànlín lecturer-academicians at the Hóngdédiàn 弘德殿. Compilation was completed in 1677 (Kāngxī 16) and the work was published with the emperor’s yùzhì preface dated the twelfth month of that year. It is not a fresh exegesis but an authorised Cheng-Zhu-orthodox reading channelled into a court-lecture form, with Zhū Xī’s Sìshū jízhù 四書集注 supplying the controlling framework throughout. The work covers all four books — Dàxué, Lúnyǔ, Mèngzǐ, Zhōngyōng — under one continuous numbering. As an imperial imprimatur on Cheng-Zhu Sìshū learning at the start of the long Kāngxī reign, it became the de facto official-orthodox commentary set against which later Qīng Sìshū scholarship had to position itself.
Tiyao
(tíyào not present in the WYG front matter; supplied here from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào, Jīngbù 36, Sìshū lèi èr, no. 0074602):
We respectfully submit: Rìjiǎng Sìshū jiěyì in twenty-six juàn — imperially fixed by the Sage-zǔ Rénhuángdì in the sixteenth year of Kāngxī. From the time Zhūzǐ established the Sìshū, through the Yuán and Míng down to the present dynasty, it has been hung up as the standard for the examinations: every household chants it, every door recites it — almost to the point that it is taken as familiar and unremarkable. In reality, the way of the nèishèng wàiwáng 內聖外王 (sage-within-and-king-without) is fully present in Confucius; the heart-method (xīnfǎ) of Confucius is lodged in the Six Classics; the kernel of the Six Classics is gathered in the Lúnyǔ; while Zēngzǐ, Zǐsī, and Mèngzǐ pass on its thread in succession. Hence the Lúnyǔ begins with the discourse on learning and ends with the governance of Yáo, Shùn, Tāng, and Wǔ — instruction in honouring goodness and rejecting evil; the Dàxué begins with géwù zhìzhī (investigation of things and extension of knowing) and ends with ordering the state and pacifying-the-realm; the Zhōngyōng begins with zhōnghé wèiyù and ends with reverent humility producing the peace of the realm; the Mèngzǐ begins with the yìlì distinction and ends with the dàotǒng descended from Yáo and Shùn. The dàzhǐ of the sage-and-worthies’ establishing words is plainly discernible — it is the pivot of the imperial way through the ages, not merely the sectional-and-phrasal business of jīngshēng. Our Sage-zǔ Rénhuángdì, in his early-reign fǎngluò (court-consultation period), in person fixed this compilation by way of jīngyán lecture-articles. What is unfolded therein is the basis of becoming-a-sage and the root of governance: the diction is near, but the meaning is distant; the language is concise, but the way is vast. The sagely virtue and divine merit by which the transmission of ZhūSì 洙泗 is touched and the track of TángYú resumed — all begin from this. (Sìkù tíyào, abbreviated, Zinbun ID 0074602.)
Abstract
The Rìjiǎng Sìshū jiěyì is the principal product of the early-Kāngxī jīngyán rìjiǎng (classics-mat daily-lectures) institution, by which the young emperor — having taken the throne in 1661 at age seven and shaken off the regent Áobài 鰲拜 in 1669 — was tutored daily on the Sìshū and Wǔjīng by a rotating group of Hànlín academicians at the Hóngdédiàn. The completed Sìshū lectures were submitted to the emperor in the twelfth month of Kāngxī 16 (1677), with a 進呈疏 (memorial of submission) signed jointly by Lǎshālǐ, Chén Tíngjìng, Sèlěng, Yè Fāngǎi, Jiǎng Hóngdào, Kùlènà, and Zhāng Yīng; Kùlènà and Yè Fāngǎi are named as 總裁官 (chief editors), with a long list of fēnzhuànguān (apportioning compilers) led by Géěrgǔdé 格爾古德 attached at the back. The emperor’s own yùzhì xù dated 1677/12/8 frames the work as a public huàmín chéngsú 化民成俗 instrument, using the lecture series as the means of “rectifying the heart and clarifying learning” for the realm.
The compilation method is direct exposition of the Sìshū jízhù of Zhū Xī, paragraph by paragraph, with each lecture-day covering a section. The orthodoxy is openly Cheng-Zhu; there is no trace of Yángmíng Xīnxué, no admixture of Hànxué philological glossing, and no engagement with the late-Míng liángzhī tradition. As the first major Sìshū publication of the new dynasty’s mature classical-learning programme — and the one bearing the emperor’s personal yùzhì preface — it set the template for the Rìjiǎng series, parallels of which were produced for the Yì, Shū, Shī, Chūnqiū, and Lǐjì over the following two decades.
The dating is fixed exactly: the work is post quem the start of the Kāngxī rìjiǎng programme (1670, Kāngxī 9, when daily lectures were instituted) and ad quem the 1677 submission. The Sìkù catalogues it under the Sìshū lèi èr of jīngbù, and the tíyào (preserved in the Zinbun digital edition rather than the WYG front matter, which carries only the imperial preface and the submission-memorial) frames it as the public re-establishment of the ZhūSì dàotǒng by the new Manchu emperor.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: 識典古籍 hosts a punctuated digital edition; the Wényuān-gé Sì-kù-quán-shū photo-reprint is the standard scholarly text. Studies: On the jīng-yán rì-jiǎng institution and the textual production around the young Kāngxī, see Jonathan Spence, Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi (Knopf, 1974) and the relevant chapters of R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries (Harvard, 1987); on Kāngxī’s classical-learning programme more broadly, On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001), and Pei-yi Wu’s discussion in The Confucian’s Progress (Princeton, 1990). For the place of Cheng-Zhu Sì-shū learning in early-Qīng court ideology, Daniel Gardner, Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects (Columbia, 2003), is the principal English study of the controlling commentary.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal example of the yùzhuàn / yùdìng genre of Sìshū exegesis — Sìshū learning produced under direct imperial sponsorship, taking shape inside the jīngyán rìjiǎng institution rather than in private scholarly circles. It is in this respect the Qīng counterpart of the Yǒng-lè-era Sìshū dàquán 四書大全 (Míng), but with one major difference: the Dàquán is a synthetic bian-zuǎn of prior commentary, whereas the Rìjiǎng is a freshly-written court lecture series, oral in origin and only secondarily printed. The 進呈疏 explicitly invokes the precedent of Zhào Pǔ’s “half a Lúnyǔ governs the empire” and Zhū Xī’s “four characters” chéngyì zhèngxīn — situating the imperial Sìshū lecture within a continuous Cheng-Zhu jīngyán tradition.
Links
- Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4 (the Sìshū) and §27 (Qing imperial publishing).
- Internet Archive scan: https://archive.org/details/06055104.cn (《日講四書解義·卷一》).