Sìshū zhájì 四書劄記
Notebook on the Four Books
by 楊名時 (Yáng Míngshí, 1660–1736, zì Bīnshí, hào Níngzhāi, shì Wéndìng, 撰)
About the work
A 4-juàn Sìshū notebook by Yáng Míngshí — the principal early-Qiánlóng-period continuator of the Lǐ Guāngdì Lǐxué line, Mínzhèng (administrator) of Yúnnán under Yōngzhèng, and Lǐbù shàngshū under Qiánlóng. The work is a personal zhájì (notebook), not a systematic commentary; the four juàn cover the four books unevenly — the Mèngzǐ juàn is the briefest and the Sìkù editors suspect it incomplete. On the Dàxué Yáng silently follows Lǐ Guāngdì’s gǔběn shuō (cf. KR1h0059), citing his teacher by his posthumous title Wénzhēngōng 文貞公; he takes neither the gǔběn / gǎiběn dispute as needing fresh defence, nor Wáng Yángmíng’s mid-Míng géwù reading (the famous “investigating-the-bamboo” anecdote), nor Zhū Xī’s bǔzhuàn. The doctrinal centre of gravity is moderate Cheng-Zhu under the Lǐ Guāng-dì-school inflection.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Sìshū zhájì in four juàn — by Yáng Míngshí of the present dynasty. Míngshí has the Zhōuyì zhájì already separately catalogued. This compilation is what he recorded from his reading of the Sìshū. On the Dàxué he does not flag the title gǔběn, nor does he openly pronounce on the right-and-wrong of gǔběn and gǎiběn; but he uses Lǐ Guāngdì’s gǔběn doctrine throughout. Hence his opening section says: “Wénzhēngōng (Lǐ Guāngdì) attaches zhīzhǐ to zhìxué (setting the will on learning); attaches jìngān to zhǔjìng (taking up reverence); attaches nénglǜ néngdé to zhìzhī lìxíng (extending knowledge and putting it into practice); takes zhīsuǒxiānhòu (knowing what comes first and what comes after) as zhīběn zhīzhì. This explanation is firmly unalterable.” He takes géwù as míngshàn (clarifying the good); does not adopt Wáng Shǒurén’s [Yángmíng’s] doctrine of “investigating a bamboo in the courtyard”; nor does he stand on Zhūzǐ’s bǔzhuàn doctrine. On Lúnyǔ — e.g. the zhī zhī Wú Mèngzǐ line, and the four phrases fēi lǐ wù shì — though he uses shíwén mode in the explication, the major thrust is to clarify yìlǐ; many points are xīndé (attainment from his own heart). On Zhōngyōng his positions are also qièshí (solid). For example: “On guǐshén zhī wéidé and the preceding chapters’ zǐchéndìyǒu, qīzǐfùmǔ talk, suddenly turning to guǐshén seems to lapse into yǐnguài (the recondite-and-the-strange) — one does not know how to bridge them. The answer: zōngmiào shèjì are the supreme reach of rénlún (the human relations); without speaking of these, how could the full quantum of rénlún be made complete?” Again: “Wú shēngchòu taken in the sense of wújí is also flawless, but it falls into emptiness; better to express it as tiān wúxīn ér chéng huà (Heaven without intent yet completing the transformation).” Again: “Wú shēng wú chòu refers to tiānmìng běnrán (the fundamental nature of Heaven’s mandate); do not let it slip into the yuánmiào (mysterious-recondite).” His zōngzhǐ is plain. The Mèngzǐ one juàn is the most cursory; one suspects it to be an unfinished work. But all in all it is far from what the recent jiǎngzhāng writers offer. — Respectfully revised, ninth month of the 46th year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Sìshū zhájì is the principal Sìshū work of Yáng Míngshí — jìnshì of 1691 (with Lǐ Guāngdì as chief examiner), Yúnnán xúnfǔ under Yōngzhèng, and Lǐbù shàngshū under Qiánlóng. The work is a personal-notebook genre product, with no overall preface preserved in the WYG front matter. The dating bracket is bounded by Yáng’s mature life: post quem the Yùzuǎn Zhōuyì zhézhōng (1715) and the establishment of his teacher Lǐ Guāngdì’s Sìshū programme (Lǐ d. 1718); ante quem Yáng’s own death in 1736.
The work is fundamentally a Lǐ Guāng-dì-school document. The Sìkù tíyào opens by noting that on the contested Dàxué recension question — the same question Lǐ had treated in KR1h0059 — Yáng silently adopts the gǔběn of his teacher, citing him as Wénzhēngōng. He takes Lǐ’s specific reading of the Dàxué’s opening sequence (zhīzhǐ = zhìxué, jìngān = zhǔjìng, nénglǜ néngdé = zhìzhī lìxíng, zhīsuǒxiānhòu = zhīběn zhīzhì) as “firmly unalterable”. On géwù he aligns with Lǐ Guāngdì in reading the term as míngshàn, explicitly rejecting both the famous Wáng Yángmíng gézhú (investigate a bamboo) reading and Zhū Xī’s bǔzhuàn programme. The school-position is moderate Cheng-Zhu inflected through Lǐ Guāngdì’s classicism.
The Sìkù editors single out as evidence of Yáng’s substantive contribution his Zhōngyōng readings: notably his integration of the guǐshén zhī wéidé passage into the surrounding human-relations talk by way of zōngmiào shèjì as the supreme reach of rénlún — i.e. ancestor-and-state ritual is not a rupture into the recondite but the apex of human relationship. They also note his careful navigation of the wú shēng wú chòu problem — refusing both the empty wújí reading and the dangerously Daoist-tinged yuánmiào reading, settling instead on tiān wúxīn ér chéng huà as the safer Cheng-Zhu paraphrase. They note that on the Lúnyǔ sections Yáng uses shíwén (eight-legged-essay) idiom for the surface-form but anchors his major points in genuine yìlǐ.
The closing observation — that the Mèngzǐ juàn is the briefest and may be incomplete — is a frank Sìkù acknowledgement; the zhájì genre tolerates such asymmetry. The verdict: “all in all it is far from what the recent jiǎngzhāng writers offer”, i.e. far above the average post-Kāngxī examination-aid Sìshū jiǎngyì.
Translations and research
No English translation. Modern Chinese: 點校本 in Yáng Míng-shí jí 楊名時集 (Phoenix Publishing, 2014); the Wényuān-gé Sì-kù-quán-shū photo-reprint is the standard scholarly text. Studies: Hùng-lám Chu (Zhū Hóng-lín), Lǐ Guāng-dì hé Sòng-Míng Lǐ-xué (Bā-Shǔ-shū-shè, 2004), discusses Yáng as Lǐ Guāng-dì’s principal continuator; for the broader Yōng-zhèng-Qián-lóng-transition Lǐ Guāng-dì school see On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing (SUNY, 2001). Specialised: Cài Fāng-lù 蔡方鹿, Qīng-dài Sì-shū xué shǐ (Bā-Shǔ-shū-shè, 2014), ch. 6.
Other points of interest
The work is the principal pre-Qián-lóng-Sìkù Sìshū work in the Lǐ Guāngdì school’s continuity. Read together with KR1h0059 (Lǐ Guāngdì’s Róngcūn Sìshū shuō), it shows the late-Kāngxī-Yōng-zhèng court Lǐxué line settling into Lǐ Guāngdì’s Dàxué gǔběn + Cheng-Zhu yìlǐ synthesis as the moderate-orthodox compromise, distinct equally from Lù Lǒngqí’s Cheng-Zhu purism (KR1h0057, KR1h0058) and from Máo Qílíng’s fǎn-Cheng-Zhu polemic (KR1h0060–0062).
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4.
- Qīngshǐgǎo 290 (Yáng Míngshí biography).