Sūn Yìān zòuyì 孫毅菴奏議
Memorials of Sūn Yì-ān by 孫懋 (撰)
About the work
A 2-juàn compilation of the memorials of Sūn Mào 孫懋 (d. 1551; zì Défū, hào Yìān), the Míng remonstrance official from Cíxī. The collection covers Sūn’s tenure as gěishìzhōng under late Wǔzōng and early Jiājìng, including his accompaniment of Wǔzōng on the imperial progress (xíngzài).
Tiyao
Sūn Yìān zòuyì, 2 juàn, by Sūn Mào of the Míng. Mào, zì Défū, hào Yìān, from Cíxī, Zhèngdé xīnwèi (1511) jìnshì, served to Yìngtiānfǔ yǐn; his career in his Míng shǐ biography. — As gěishìzhōng in Wǔzōng’s reign, when the emperor was intimate with petty men and his entertainment-favourites held power, the remonstrance officials were repeatedly demoted; Sūn alone stood firm and unbending, as in his memorials against the eunuchs Yú Xǐ, Shǐ Xuān, Zhāng Zé — all directly outspoken without concealment, with notable bearing. — His memorial on the Húguǎng matter of guǎnjiě miǎnhuā róng (cotton-thread administration) and on tightening kǎochá (official evaluation) — both supplement what the Míng shǐ Shíhuò and Xuǎnjǔ monographs do not cover. — Sūn at this time was in attendance during the imperial progress (xíngzài); his memorial requesting urgent fixing of the rewards for putting down the Chénhào rebellion, his memorial requesting the emperor’s return to the capital, his repeated submissions on frontier alarms, his qiānyú yán (more-than-a-thousand-words) memorial pointing directly at heavenly anomalies — all attest his loyal uprightness. — His impeachment of Jiāng Bīn: the Shǐ says that contemporaries thought him in mortal danger, but Jiāng Bīn was just then daily in attendance on the emperor in pleasure and did not see him, so Sūn was fortunate to escape. He may indeed be called one who impeached the powerful and the favoured fènbùgùshēn (without regard for his own safety). — The various memorials in this collection are mentioned only in summary in the Shǐ, not in full text; we have copied them in their entirety, that, set against his biography, the upright spirit may still be glimpsed. Only the persons impeached in these memorials are mostly with their names erased in the printed copies — apparently a precaution by the descendants to avoid retaliation; we are now unable to recover them one by one and have left them as they are. — Reverently presented in the twelfth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief Editors: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Sūn Yìān zòuyì is a 2-juàn documentary monument of late-Zhèngdé / early-Jiājìng remonstrance practice. The collection’s distinctive feature — repeatedly noted by the Sìkù editors — is that the impeached officials’ names have been blanked out in the printed editions, evidently by the family compilers to avoid descendant-retaliation. This makes the memorials substantively functional as policy-arguments but blunts their cross-checkability against the Míng shǐ biographical record. The collection’s value for Húguǎng economic history (the miǎnhuā róng memorial) and Míng kǎochá policy (the official-evaluation memorial) is recognized as supplementing the Shǐ monographs.
Translations and research
- L. Carrington Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang (eds.), Dictionary of Ming Biography (1976) — entry on Sun Mao.
- Wilkinson 2018 §65.3.7.
Other points of interest
The blank-name editorial practice — cìchú qí xìngmíng 劖除其姓名 — is one of the more interesting documentary phenomena of late-Míng / early-Qīng family-published memorial collections: a specific descendants’ strategy for preserving the moral-political value of the ancestor’s memorials while neutralizing their genealogical-retaliation risk. The Sìkù editors note other examples of this phenomenon in the same Division.
Links
- Wikidata: Sun Mao — (no entry located).
- Wilkinson 2018 §65.3.7.