Shìzōng Xiànhuángdì shèngxùn 世宗憲皇帝聖訓
Imperial Instructions of Shìzōng, the Constitutional Emperor by 高宗 (敕編)
About the work
A 36-juàn compilation of pronouncements by the Yōngzhèng 雍正 emperor (Shìzōng 世宗, Yìnzhēn 胤禛, 1678–1735, r. 1722–1735), edited by his son and successor the Qiánlóng 乾隆 emperor (Gāozōng 高宗) with a preface dated Qiánlóng 5 / 12 / 7 (1741). The work is the categorical companion to the 159-juàn Shìzōng Xiànhuángdì shílù compiled in the same period.
Tiyao
The 36 juàn of the Sage Instructions of Shìzōng Xiànhuángdì — Yōngzhèng strove with full vigour at governance, his hours unceasing from dawn to dusk; though seated in nine-fold seclusion he kept thought ranged over the four seas, planning for the lasting reliance of ten-thousand ages. Hence in the management of complexity and the discipline of tumult he did not avoid trouble; in the matter of one man unprovided-for he was anxious; he projected far and guarded the small, never neglecting the minute. Therefore his admonishments and instructions were unusually detailed. Before his accession in Guǐmǎo (= his enthronement year 1722), serving by the Shèngzǔ Rénhuángdì (Kāngxī) emperor for a long while, he had above heard fully the regulations of policy and instruction and the balances of punishment and reward; below he knew most deeply the benefits and ills of the hundred administrations and the truth-and-falsehood of the ten-thousand things. Therefore his sage gaze missed nothing, like a golden mirror clear and bright; whatever came before it took its image faithfully. His admonishments and teachings, ever responding to the inexhaustible — our present emperor (the Qiánlóng emperor) inquired and looked up at the Lónglóu 龍樓 [imperial chamber], personally attending the imperial lúnfú 綸綍 [silken thread, fig. royal pronouncement] for more than twenty years; after his enthronement his sage longing grew the deeper. Tracing back the yùyīn (jade-tones, imperial speech) from beginning to end, he was uniquely qualified to set down the record in detail. Within the thirteen years of Yōngzhèng the records accumulated to overflowing more than thirty juàn — original, full, and fully traceable. The Yáo diǎn and Yǔ mó are transmitted on the slips of bamboo; the dàshèngrén 大聖人’s heart of unceasing self-strengthening, his policy of bright doing — all are made manifest, gleaming as the sun and moon. Reverently presented in the eighth month of Qiánlóng 48 (1783). Chief Editors: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The thirteen years of Yōngzhèng’s reign produced a notably dense documentary record — on a per-year basis the densest of any Qīng reign — owing to the emperor’s hands-on style of governance, his preference for written zhūpī 硃批 (“vermilion-rescript”) commentary on individual memorials, and the early establishment of the Jūnjī chù 軍機處 (Council of State, 1730). The 36 juàn of the shèngxùn are organized into the standard shèngdé, lùn zhìdào, xùn xíngrénzhūwáng, jiào jiè … sequence; particularly substantial are the headings on fiscal management (the huǒhào guīgōng 火耗歸公 and tāndīng rùmǔ 攤丁入畝 reforms) and on Buddhist-Daoist policy. The Qiánlóng preface insists on his personal continuity with his father’s administrative line — the project being thus simultaneously a filial duty (jìshù 繼述) and a charter for his own policy.
Translations and research
- Pierre-Henri Durand, Lettrés et pouvoirs: Un procès littéraire dans la Chine impériale (EHESS, 1992) — the political-cultural setting.
- Mark Elliott (ed.), Yongzheng in Cambridge History of China vol. 9 (forthcoming).
- Madeleine Zelin, The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Ch’ing China (UCalP, 1984) — uses the shèng-xùn extensively for fiscal-reform reconstruction.
Links
- Wikidata: Yongzheng Emperor
- Wilkinson 2018 §65.3.7.