Mèngzǐ shīshuō 孟子師說
The Master’s Sayings on Mencius
by 黃宗羲 (Huáng Zōngxī, 1610–1695, zì Tàichōng, hào Lízhōu, 撰)
(The catalog meta misspells the author’s given name as 黃宗義 for 黃宗羲 — a recurrent slip; preserved here in the source field but corrected to 羲 in the prose and frontmatter, following both the WYG tíyào and Huáng’s own preface signature 劉門弟子姚江黃宗羲識.)
About the work
A 2-juàn Mèngzǐ commentary by Huáng Zōngxī, framed as the recovery of his teacher Liú Zōngzhōu’s 劉宗周 Mèngzǐ readings — Liú had left a Lúnyǔ xuéàn (KR1h0051), a Dàxué tǒngyì, and a Zhōngyōng shèndú yì, but had no completed Mèngzǐ commentary. Huáng, “submerging the heart for years” in Liú’s Yíshū 遺書, “stole the master’s intent” (his own phrase) and reconstructed the Mèngzǐ lectures into the present two juàn. The genre-form (shīshuō — “the master’s sayings”) is borrowed explicitly from Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 Chūnqiū shīshuō 春秋師說, which had stood in the same relation to Huáng Zé 黃澤. Doctrinally this is a Mèngzǐ read through Liú Zōngzhōu’s shèndú and through residues of Yáojiāng / WángYángmíng mind-learning, but Huáng repeatedly disowns the late-Wáng liángzhī extreme — most pointedly in his rejections of the Wú shàn wú è 無善無惡 and the Xìng yì kōngjì 性亦空寂 propositions of Shěn Zuòzhé 沈作喆 and Wáng Tángnán 王塘南.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Mèngzǐ shīshuō in two juàn — by Huáng Zōngxī of the present dynasty. Zōngxī received instruction under Liú Zōngzhōu. Because Zōngzhōu had a xuéàn on the Lúnyǔ, a tǒngyì on the Dàxué, and a shèndú yì on the Zhōngyōng, but no completed work on the Mèngzǐ, [Huáng] therefore put down what he had heard from his everyday lectures and made the present book to supplement what was unprovided. The reason for the title shīshuō is on the model of Zhào Fǎng’s writing-up of Huáng Zé’s Chūnqiū learning under the title Chūnqiū shīshuō. Although Zōngzhōu’s learning takes shèndú as its zōng (governing point), the great purport’s deep source is in fact rooted in the Yáojiāng (Wáng Yángmíng) school. Hence what Zōngxī sets down still mostly unfolds and clarifies the liángzhī purport. However, in the chapter “Téng Wéngōng as crown prince” he forcefully refutes Shěn Zuòzhé’s saying, arguing the wrongness of wú shàn wú è (no-good-no-evil); and in the chapter “jū xiàwèi” he forcefully refutes Wáng Tángnán’s saying, arguing the doctrine that “xìng (nature) is also empty-and-still, varying-with-objects in good or evil” — and so the work is not entirely held to the Yáojiāng line. The remainder of the discussion mostly comes back to actual circumstance and pursues shìlǐ (the principle of practical affairs); it is not empty, useless talk. Setting aside its admixture, taking what is míngqiè (clear-and-pointed), is not without benefit to the learner. There is no need to hold by one rigid rubric and discard the multitude of arguments, or, on account of one cataract, discard the whole book. — 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 Mèngzǐ shīshuō is the principal Mèngzǐ commentary in the late-Liú-Zōng-zhōu / early-Huáng-Zōng-xī line. Huáng’s own preface — signed Liúmén dìzǐ Yáojiāng Huáng Zōngxī (Disciple-of-Liú of Yáojiāng, Huáng Zōngxī) — frames the project as a posthumous filling-in: Liú Zōngzhōu died in self-starvation in 1645 protesting the Manchu conquest; he had left Sìshū commentaries on three of the four books but no completed Mèngzǐ. Huáng, during his decades of forced retreat after the Míng collapse, drew on his own notes from Liú’s lectures and on Liú’s Yíshū to reconstruct the missing Mèngzǐ portion. The dating bracket is therefore: post quem the death of Liú Zōngzhōu in 1645, ante quem Huáng’s own death in 1695; the work was written during his long retreat at Shàoxīng / Yúyáo. No specific composition-year is given in the WYG preface.
The shīshuō genre-form, lifted from Zhào Fǎng’s recovery of Huáng Zé’s Chūnqiū lectures, is doctrinally consequential. Huáng explicitly disclaims invention: “the master had no completed book; I have stolen his intent” — i.e. the Mèngzǐ readings here represent Liú Zōngzhōu’s positions as far as Huáng could reconstruct them, not Huáng’s own free Mèngzǐ exegesis. The Sìkù editors take this seriously: they read the work as a Liú Zōngzhōu commentary at one remove, locate it in the genealogical line Yáojiāng / Wáng Yángmíng → Liú Zōngzhōu → Huáng Zōngxī, and note that Liú’s shèndú doctrine functions as a corrective overlay on the underlying WángYángmíng liángzhī substrate.
The Sìkù verdict picks out two specific doctrinal interventions as evidence that Huáng (and through him Liú) had genuinely broken with the late-Wáng radical wing: (1) the rejection of Shěn Zuòzhé’s wú shàn wú è in the Téng Wéngōng chapter, and (2) the rejection of Wáng Tángnán’s xìng yì kōngjì in the jū xiàwèi chapter. In both, Huáng argues that the late-Wáng tendency to dissolve xìng into a quietist void misses the Mèngzǐ’s positive shànxìng commitment. The Qiánlóng editors note further that the rest of the work is ànzhū shíjì, tuījiū shìlǐ — “anchored in actuality, working out the principle of affairs” — i.e. that Huáng’s general mode is doctrinally engaged but anti-quietist. They conclude with the unusual be-not-quick-to-condemn clause: “no need to hold one rigid rubric and discard the multitude of arguments, or, on account of one cataract, discard the whole book” — a defence Huáng’s reputation, as a Míng-loyalist Lǐxué heterodox, would have made unusual under the late Qiánlóng Sìkù programme.
This is the only one of Huáng Zōngxī’s many works on classical learning that survives as an explicit transmission of Liú Zōngzhōu’s positions; it should be read in tandem with KR1h0051 (Liú Zōngzhōu, Lúnyǔ xuéàn) for the full LiúZōngzhōu Sìshū programme.
Translations and research
No complete English translation. Modern Chinese: 點校本 in Huáng Zōng-xī quán-jí 黃宗羲全集 (Zhè-jiāng-gǔ-jí, ed. Shěn Shàn-hóng 沈善洪 / Wú Guāng 吳光, 12 vols, 1985–1994 / 2005 reprint), volume 1; also in Liú Zōng-zhōu quán-jí 劉宗周全集 (same press, 2007) as an appendix. Studies: Lynn Struve, The Southern Ming, 1644–1662 (Yale, 1984), for the political context of Huáng’s retreat; Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (Columbia, 1981); On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001), on the Sì-shū lineage. Specialised: Wú Guāng 吳光, Huáng Zōng-xī yǔ Liú Zōng-zhōu 黃宗羲與劉宗周 (Zhè-jiāng-gǔ-jí, 2008), ch. 5.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal posthumous bridge text between Liú Zōngzhōu and Huáng Zōngxī as Sìshū exegetes: the Lúnyǔ xuéàn and the Mèngzǐ shīshuō together constitute an effective pair, the first by the master, the second by his disciple recovering what the master had not lived to complete. Read together with the Míngrú xuéàn (in which Huáng laid out the whole Míng Lǐxué tradition through his teacher’s lens), the Mèngzǐ shīshuō provides the jīngbù analogue to the xuéàn genre Huáng made famous on the zǐbù / shǐbù side.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.7.3 on Sìshū commentary; §49 on Huáng Zōngxī’s historiographical works.
- Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (Columbia, 1981).
- Qīngshǐgǎo 480 (Huáng Zōngxī biography).