Sìshū jiǎngyì kùnmiǎn lù 四書講義困勉錄
Records of Toilsome-and-Diligent Lectures on the Four Books
by 陸隴其 (Lù Lǒngqí, 1630–1692, zì Jiàshū, hào Sānyú, shì Qīngxiàn, 撰)
About the work
A 37-juàn Sìshū commentary by Lù Lǒngqí, the foundational early-Qīng Zhūzǐ-purist Lǐxué official. The work was begun in Shùnzhì wùxū 順治戊戌 (1658), continued through Lù’s life-long Sìshū labour, and was incomplete at his death in 1692; it was edited and printed posthumously by Lù’s clansman Lù Gōngmù 陸公穋 and his disciple Xí Yǒngxún 席永恂 (with the xù by Péng Dìngqiú 彭定求, dated Kāngxī jǐmǎo 1699). The structural design — Dàxué 1 juàn, Zhōngyōng 2, Lúnyǔ 20, Mèngzǐ 14 — exactly mirrors the Sìshū dàquán 四書大全 of the Yǒnglè era, which Lù had separately diǎndìng 點定. The “kùnmiǎn” 困勉 of the title — kùn ér xué zhī, miǎn ér xíng zhī (learning-by-toil, doing-by-effort) — is taken from Zhōngyōng §20 and is Lù’s self-description: he sets himself, deliberately, in the second-tier (kùnmiǎn) Confucian register rather than the first-tier shēngān / xuélì one, against late-Míng dùnwù (sudden-enlightenment) and xiànchéng (already-formed) talk.
Tiyao
(tíyào not present in the WYG front matter; supplied here from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào, Jīngbù 36, Sìshū lèi èr, no. 0074802 — Zhèjiāngxúnfǔ submission copy):
We respectfully submit: Sìshū jiǎngyì kùnmiǎn lù in thirty-seven juàn — by Lù Lǒngqí of the present dynasty. Lǒngqí has the Gǔwén Shàngshū already separately catalogued. This compilation works on the basis of Yànlíng Zhāngshì’s 彥陖張氏 jiǎngyì original, paring it down to its jīngyào (kernel essentials), augmenting with the views of the various Míng-end masters, and integrating his own opinion. There is one juàn on the Dàxué, two on the Zhōngyōng, twenty on the Lúnyǔ, fourteen on the Mèngzǐ. It was begun in Shùnzhì wùxū (1658). The draft was not yet wholly settled when Lǒngqí died. Afterwards his clansman Gōngmù first arranged the manuscript and the disciple Xí Yǒngxún and others printed it. The title “kùnmiǎn lù” is Lǒngqí’s own self-styling. After the Wànlì era of the Míng, the heterodox studies competed-in-claim. Those attacking the Jízhù used to lay out [false] propositions for argument; even those who claimed to expound the Jízhù were mostly yáng Rú yīn Shì (overtly Confucian, covertly Buddhist) — superficially-correct yet fundamentally-mistaken. Lǒngqí trusted Zhūzǐ deeply; his attainment in the Sìshū was particularly profound. The compilation gathers and refines the multitude of views, sifting them one by one. All scattered, indirect, and hearsay talk is pared away. His meritorious yǔyì (winging-and-aiding) of Zhūzǐ — set against Hú Bǐngwén 胡炳文 [Sìshū tōng 四書通] and the others — equals or exceeds them. (Sìkù tíyào, Zinbun ID 0074802.)
Abstract
The Sìshū jiǎngyì kùnmiǎn lù is the principal Sìshū commentary of the early-Qīng Zhūzǐxué purist line. Lù Lǒngqí is the most prominent of the post-Sòng Cheng-Zhu loyalists who, in the Kāngxī era, set out to clear away the late-Míng Yáng-míng-school readings and re-anchor the Sìshū exegetical tradition in Zhū Xī’s Sìshū jízhù. The Kùnmiǎn lù is his sustained jiǎngyì-genre commentary; the companion piece is the Sōngyáng jiǎngyì (KR1h0058), a shorter selected jiǎngyì. He organised it by way of paring down a base text — Yànlíng Zhāngshì’s jiǎngyì — keeping its essentials, augmenting from Wàn-lì-and-after Míng Sìshū literature, and inserting his own assessments at every contested point.
The Sìkù editors place him in a Cheng-Zhu exegete genealogy that runs Hú Bǐngwén (Yuán Sìshū tōng), the Sìshū dàquán compilers (early-Míng), and Lù — and rank Lù as the equal-or-superior of his predecessors as a yǔyì Zhūzǐ exegete. Their critical-historical frame is sharp: from the Wànlì onwards, yìxué (Yángmíng-line heterodoxies) had stratified into open fǎnJízhù attack and a covert yáng Rú yīn Shì mode that claimed to expound the Jízhù but actually delivered Buddhist quietism in Rú dress. The Kùnmiǎn lù is positioned as the corrective: orthodox Cheng-Zhu, philologically tightened, with all zhīlí yǐngxiǎng zhī tán (scattered hearsay-talk) cut away.
The dating bracket is fixed by Péng Dìngqiú’s preface: composition began in Shùnzhì wùxū 順治戊戌 (1658), continued through Lù’s Kāngxī jiǔ (1670) jìnshì and subsequent magistracies, and remained unfinished at his death in 1692. The 1699 first printing (Péng’s preface) is the terminus ante quem for the received recension; the WYG copy descends from this Xí Yǒngxún edition. The title is Lù’s own self-styling and constitutes a doctrinal statement: against the liángzhī / xiànchéng / dùnwù end of the late-Míng Wángxué, Lù aligns himself with kùn ér xué zhī, miǎn ér xíng zhī (Zhōngyōng §20) — the second-tier register of toilsome-and-diligent Confucian self-cultivation — citing Chéng Yí’s biānpì jìnlǐ zhuójǐ and Zhū Xī’s kāijuàn biàn yǒu yǔ shèngxián bù xiāngsì chù as his explicit warrants.
The work is the longest single Sìshū commentary in the WYG and represents a generation’s worth of Lù’s jiǎngyì labour. Read together with the Sōngyáng jiǎngyì (KR1h0058), it constitutes the principal monument of the early-Qīng Zhūzǐxué loyalist Sìshū programme. Péng Dìngqiú’s 1699 preface frames the publication as the public release of the Sìshū working-papers of “Jiàshū xiānshēng” (Lù’s zì) on the model of an yíshū of a deceased master.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: 點校本 in Lù Lǒng-qí quán-jí 陸隴其全集 (Zhōng-zhōu-gǔ-jí, ed. 2014); the Wényuān-gé Sì-kù-quán-shū photo-reprint is the standard scholarly text. Studies: On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001), provides the principal English-language treatment of Lù Lǒng-qí’s Cheng-Zhu loyalism; Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Míng-dài Sì-shū xué shǐ (final chapter on the early-Qīng); Yú Yīng-shí 余英時, Lùn Dài Zhèn yǔ Zhāng Xué-chéng (Sān-lián, 1976) — peripheral but important for Lù’s place in the Cheng-Zhu-vs-Hàn-xué split. Specialised: Wú Guāng 吳光 et al., Lù Lǒng-qí xué-shù sī-xiǎng yánjiū (Zhè-jiāng-gǔ-jí, 2010).
Other points of interest
The work is the longest Sìshū commentary in the Wényuāngé Sìkùquánshū (37 juàn) and is the canonical early-Qīng Cheng-Zhu-purist counterweight to the Yángmíng-leaning early-Qīng Sìshū literature represented by Sūn Qíféng’s Sìshū jìnzhǐ (KR1h0054) and Huáng Zōngxī’s Mèngzǐ shīshuō (KR1h0055). The Sìkù editors’ explicit ranking of Lù above Hú Bǐngwén — the standard Yuán-period Cheng-Zhu exegete of the Sìshū tōng — is a striking late-Qián-lóng endorsement.
Links
- Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4.
- Qīngshǐgǎo 480 (Lù Lǒngqí biography).