Guānzhēn 官箴
Admonitions to Officials by 呂本中 (Lǚ Běnzhōng, 撰)
About the work
The Guānzhēn in 1 juǎn is a short Northern–Southern Sòng manual of magistracy by Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中 (1084–1145; zì Jūrén 居仁, hào Dōnglái xiānsheng 東萊先生), comprising thirty-three short admonitions on the conduct of office. The work’s most influential contribution is the formula qīngshènqín 清慎勤 — “pure, prudent, diligent” — set out at the head as the magistrate’s three cardinal virtues. The Sìkù editors note that the Kāngxī emperor (誤標”上” — actually the Sìkù editors are referring to the early Qīng emperors, here probably the Kāngxī emperor or his successors) had imperially calligraphed these three characters and had stelae inscribed and bestowed on inner and outer ministers; the citation in Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎’s Gǔ fú yútíng zálù 古夫于亭雜錄 attributes the formula directly to Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Guānzhēn. The transmitted recension has thirty-three entries; it is preserved in the Bǎichuān xuéhǎi 百川學海 of Zuǒ Guī 左圭, with a colophon dated Bǎoqìng 寶慶 dīnghài (1227) by Chén Fǎng 陳昉 of Yǒngjiā 永嘉. The work is not separately recorded in the Sòngshǐ “Lǚ Běnzhōng” biography but does appear in the Yìwén zhì under “miscellany” (雜家類).
Tiyao
The editors respectfully submit that the Guānzhēn in 1 juǎn was composed by Lǚ Běnzhōng of the Sòng. Běnzhōng’s Chūnqiū jí jiě 春秋集解 has already been catalogued. The present work is his own jūguān géyán 居官格言 — “maxims for those in office” — in 33 entries. The Sòngshǐ Běnzhōng biography lists his works in detail but does not record this; yet the Yìwén zhì “miscellany” (雜家) section records 1 juǎn. This recension is preserved in Zuǒ Guī’s Bǎichuān xuéhǎi; after it stands a Bǎoqìng dīnghài (1227) colophon by Chén Fǎng 陳昉 of Yǒngjiā — perhaps it is Fǎng’s reprint, or only a casual notation as in Ōuyáng Xiū’s “Shì bǐ” 試筆 — not originally intended as a book; the manuscript was acquired and copied and engraved by later hands, and thereupon labelled — hence its absence from the biography.
Běnzhōng was renowned as a poet, but his Tóngméng xùn 童蒙訓 on cultivating self and ruling people has full conceptual order; he was indeed a man of practical ordering of the world, and this book is therefore replete with maxims gleaned from experience, applicable to actual practice. At the very head of the book are the three characters qīngshènqín — “pure, prudent, diligent” — set forth as the law of office. These words are unalterable by a thousand ages. Wáng Shìzhēn’s Gǔ fú yútíng zálù 古夫于亭雜錄 says: “The Sage Sovereign once with his own brush wrote the three large characters qīngshènqín on stone, and bestowed copies on internal and external officials. These three characters are the words of Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Guānzhēn. After several hundred years they still received the imperial sage’s selection and were used to admonish the hundred officials — that the words are reasonable can therefore be known.” As to its discussion of the way of “no deception” (不欺), it is plain and deeply earnest, sufficient to serve as a warning. Although the work is small in size, its words are pithy and its sense pure: it is the very mirror for those who hold office. Respectfully collated, ninth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780).
Abstract
Lǚ Běnzhōng was a major Northern–Southern Sòng poet, classicist, and Confucian moralist — best known for his Tóngméng xùn 童蒙訓 (Instruction for Children, a foundational text of Sòng moral pedagogy) and as a leading early figure of the Jiāngxī school of poetry. The Guānzhēn is a more practical sibling-text: a short collection of maxims on personal conduct in office, with the three-character formula qīngshènqín as its core principle. The formula’s later imperial canonization in the Kāngxī era (Wáng Shìzhēn, fl. early Qīng, attributes Kāngxī’s calligraphic stelae directly to Lǚ Běnzhōng) made it the most influential single saying in the entire guānzhēn corpus. The Guānzhēn is a prose miscellany rather than a systematic treatise; the thirty-three entries are short and pithy, in the manner of Sòng yǔlù 語錄 (recorded sayings). The work survives via the Bǎichuān xuéhǎi and its successor anthologies; the WYG recension preserves the standard text with Chén Fǎng’s 1227 colophon.
Translations and research
- Guānzhēnshū jíchéng 官箴書集成. Vol. 1. Huángshān, 1997. Includes the standard reprint of the Guānzhēn.
- Sō-Gen kanshin sōgō sakuin 宋元官箴綜合索引. 1987. Indexes the Guānzhēn among other Sòng-Yuán handbooks.
- Will, Pierre-Étienne. 2020. Handbooks and anthologies for officials in imperial China. Brill. (Principal Western-language survey.)
- Many discussions of Lǚ Běnzhōng’s literary thought also touch on the Guānzhēn; e.g., Egan, Ronald. 2006. The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China. Harvard.
Other points of interest
The phrase 清慎勤 — “pure, prudent, diligent” — became one of the most widely circulating formulas in late imperial bureaucratic culture. Its endorsement by Kāngxī (or his successors), as documented by Wáng Shìzhēn, ensured its inscription on examination halls, yámen gates, and magistrate residences across the Qīng. The Sìkù editors’ inclusion of this point in the Tíyào underlines the Qīng court’s awareness of and pride in this SòngQīng line of transmission.