Zuòyì zìzhēn 作邑自箴
Self-Admonitions for Holding a County by 李元弼 (Lǐ Yuánbì, 撰)
About the work
The Zuòyì zìzhēn in 10 juǎn is one of the most important Northern Sòng guānzhēn — a manual of magistracy authored by Lǐ Yuánbì 李元弼 (zì Chíguó 持國 / Chízhì 持之), a county magistrate active in the Zhènghé 政和 era. The author’s preface, dated the seventh month of Zhènghé dīngyǒu 丁酉 (1117) at Guǎnglíng 廣陵 (Yángzhōu), explains that the magistracy of a county (zǐnán zhī rèn 子男之任) is in fact “harder than its rank suggests”; he gathered some 130 oral instructions on government from “village elders and senior teachers” (鄉老先生), some hundred-odd written rules of his own, and arranged them in 10 juǎn under the title Zuòyì zìzhēn — “self-admonitions for holding a county” — for use as a desk reference. The work treats personal cultivation (正己, 治家), administration (聽訟, 御吏, 催科), the management of clerks and scribes, financial probity, and the conduct of relations with superiors and colleagues. As one of the few extant Northern Sòng guānzhēn and as a practitioner’s compendium based on “what was said by senior teachers and what one has seen with one’s own eyes,” it is a foundational document for the social history of Sòng local government.
Tiyao
The body of juǎn 1, “zhèngjǐ” (rectifying oneself), opens with: “The master says: in all desire to govern others, one must first rectify oneself. As Confucius said, ‘when the body is rectified, the orders carry without being given; when the body is unrectified, even though commands are given they will not be followed.‘” Maxims follow on equanimity in office, distance from doubt, broad observation, the suspicion of slander, careful examination of true and false, public guarantees, the reduction of summonses, the disciplining of clerks, and the protection of the lonely and orphaned. The Tíyào in the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù (the work was preserved as part of the SBCK transmission line) gives a brief description of the work’s content as essentially identical to the present preface.
Abstract
The Zuòyì zìzhēn is one of the principal extant Northern Sòng guānzhēn and is the earliest dated treatise of its kind: where Lǚ Běnzhōng’s Guānzhēn (KR2l0017) was composed in the next generation, and where the Southern Sòng Zhōuxiàn tígāng (KR2l0016), Hú Tàichū’s Zhòulián xùlùn (KR2l0020), and the Yuán Sānshì zhōnggào (KR2l0021) extend the genre into later centuries, Lǐ Yuánbì’s manual gives the founding statement. The work was kept current and printed throughout the late imperial period; the SBCK base edition (used in the present recension) reproduces the late Sòng or Yuán imprint. Lǐ Yuánbì’s prose is dense with practical observations: he advises on writing implements (“ink and brush, paper, hall-lamps and candles all to be self-supplied; banquet utensils, charcoal and fire to be supplied generously”), on gift policy (“seasonal presents, even if politely returned, are not to be received”), on banquets (“when entertaining at evening banquets, even if late, send a constable to escort dancers home and watch the gates against incidents”), and on a host of similar matters. The work is therefore not only a moral manual but a piece of practical professional advice, and a major source for Northern Sòng social-administrative history.
Translations and research
- Guānzhēnshū jíchéng 官箴書集成. Vol. 1. Huángshān, 1997. Includes the standard reprint based on the SBCK edition.
- Sō-Gen kanshin sōgō sakuin 宋元官箴綜合索引. 1987.
- Will, Pierre-Étienne. 2020. Handbooks and anthologies for officials in imperial China. Brill. (Substantial entry on the Zuòyì zìzhēn.)
- Iain McMullen, Brian E. McKnight, and other Sòng-Yuán institutional historians cite the work for the practical mechanics of Northern Sòng county administration.
Other points of interest
The work’s title — zì zhēn 自箴, “self-admonition” — reflects the guānzhēn genre’s tendency to frame practical advice as inner discipline. The fact that Lǐ Yuánbì attributed half of his maxims to “village elders and senior teachers” (鄉老先生) makes the book the principal Northern Sòng evidence for an oral tradition of magistrate-craft passed between practitioners. It is one of the earliest texts to use the formula qīngshènqín 清慎勤 (later canonized in KR2l0017 Guānzhēn).