Míngrú yánxíng lù 明儒言行錄
Words and Deeds of Míng-Period Confucian Scholars by 沈佳 (撰)
About the work
A 10-juàn main compilation plus 2-juàn Xùlù (continuation), modelled on Zhū Xī’s Sòng míngchén yánxíng lù (KR2g0024), gathering the words and deeds of Míng-period Confucian scholars. By Shěn Jiā 沈佳 (zì Zhāosì 昭嗣, hào Fùzhāi 復齋), of Rénhé 仁和 (Hángzhōu), jìnshì of Kāngxī wùchén (= 1688), who served as Magistrate of Ānhuàxiàn 安化縣. The main compilation includes 75 men with full biographies plus 74 attached; the Xùlù includes 59 men plus 9 attached — running from Yè Yí 葉儀 (early Míng) to Jīn Xuàn 金鉉 (late Míng) in the main, and from Sòng Lián 宋濂 (early Míng) to Huáng Chúnyào 黃淳耀 (late Míng) in the continuation. Shěn’s learning derived from Tāng Bīn 湯斌 (one of the great early-Qīng Lǐxué synthesizers, who himself had absorbed both Cheng-Zhū and Yáojiāng strands), but Shěn himself was strictly Cheng-Zhū. Hence the work’s principal zōng is Xuē Xuān 薛瑄 (the Hé-dōng-school Cheng-Zhū synthesizer); it is rather negative on Chén Xiànzhāng 陳獻章 (the Bái-shā-school proto-xīnxué exemplar); it includes Wáng Shǒurén 王守仁 in the main collection but excludes most of his disciples (Wáng Jī 王畿 and Wáng Gěn 王艮 are notably both absent). The Sìkù editors propose that the work was deliberately compiled as a Cheng-Zhū corrective to Huáng Zōngxī’s Yáojiāng-tilted Míngrú xuéàn (KR2g0046) — a striking reading endorsed by the fact that Wàn Sīdà 萬斯大 (a pupil of Huáng’s) wrote a preface to Shěn’s work that gently faults its over-strictness without attempting to attack it on the merits, “evidently in tacit assent.”
Tiyao
Míngrú yánxíng lù in 10 juàn and Xùlù in 2 juàn. By Shěn Jiā of our dynasty. Jiā, courtesy name Zhāosì, sobriquet Fùzhāi, was a man of Rénhé. He took the jìnshì in Kāngxī wùchén (1688) and served as Magistrate of Ānhuàxiàn. The compilation imitates Zhūzǐ’s Wǔcháo míngchén yánxíng lù and gathers the various Míng rú, citing books for their conduct and inserting yǔlù extracts where appropriate. The men listed run from Yè Yí to Jīn Xuàn — 75 men with attached 74 — in the main; the Xùlù runs from Sòng Lián to Huáng Chúnyào — 59 men with attached 9. Jiā’s learning was from Tāng Bīn, but Bīn was a synthesizer of ZhūLù; Jiā is wholly Zhūzǐ. Hence the work’s main thrust takes Xuē as the lineage of Míng rú; for Chén Xiànzhāng he shows no enthusiasm; he includes Wáng Shǒurén in the main collection but excludes most of his disciples — Wáng Jī and Wáng Gěn are both not included. His judgments are quite strict. Earlier, Huáng Zōngxī wrote Míngrú xuéàn and his selection was the most thorough; but his learning derives from the Yáojiāng, and although he does not openly attack the Héjīn (Xuē Xuān’s school), toward the Wángmén late-stream men who fell into wild abandonment he is rather protective: the gate-and-house bias is not entirely absent. Jiā wrote this lù, apparently in tacit corrective. Wàn Sīdà of Yínxiàn was Zōngxī’s pupil; he had always been a sincere follower of his master’s doctrine, and yet in writing the preface for Jiā’s lù he only gently chides it for excess strictness — without attempting to attack it on substance. Apparently he too tacitly assented. The reader who studies the two books together — using one to verify the other — should be able to attain a balanced view of the Míng xuépài. There is no need to prefer the sweet and abjure the spicy, take the cinnabar and repudiate the white. Reverently presented in the fifth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). 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 Míngrú yánxíng lù is a major early-Qīng Cheng-Zhū-leaning corrective to Huáng Zōngxī’s Yáojiāng-tilted Míngrú xuéàn. Shěn Jiā (CBDB id 356253; lifedates uncertain — flourished c. 1688–1710) was a leading Hángzhōu Cheng-Zhū scholar of the early Qīng. The work is best dated c. 1690–1710 on the basis of his jìnshì (1688) and active scholarly career through the early Kāngxī. The conscious institutional pairing with Huáng’s Xuéàn — the Sìkù editors recommend reading the two together as cross-correctives — makes this work an essential second-perspective document on Míng Lǐxué historiography. The Sìkù editors’ praise of Wàn Sīdà’s preface (which gently faults Shěn for over-strictness without attacking the substantive position) for its “tacit assent” is one of the more interesting Qing historiographical-pedagogical observations.
Translations and research
- Wing-tsit Chan, “The Hsing-li ching-i and the Ch’eng-Chu School of the Seventeenth Century,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism (Columbia UP, 1975).
- Jonathan D. Spence, Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi (Knopf, 1974), provides background on the Kāng-xī court’s Cheng-Zhū revival.
- The Sì-kù tíyào notice is in 史部·傳記類三·總錄之屬.
Other points of interest
The work’s strict Cheng-Zhū stance — including the deliberate exclusion of the radical Tàizhōu school’s Wáng Jī and Wáng Gěn — represents the early-Qīng court’s official preference for Zhū Xī over Wáng Yángmíng, a preference reinforced by Tāng Bīn’s official patronage and by the Kāngxī emperor’s later canonization of Zhū Xī (1714).
Links
- Wilkinson 2018, Chinese History: A New Manual §49.
- CBDB person id 356253 (Shěn Jiā 沈佳).