Qīndìng Dà Qīng Tōnglǐ 欽定大清通禮
Imperially Authorized Complete Ritual Code of the Great Qīng by 來保 (奉敕撰), 李玉鳴 (奉敕撰)
About the work
The Qīng dynasty’s principal complete ritual code, in 50 juǎn. Commissioned at the very start of the Qiánlóng reign (Qiánlóng 1, 1736) and presented to the throne 21 years later (1756). Editorial direction by Láibǎo 來保 (a Manchu Mongol bordered-yellow-banner qīnwáng) and Lǐ Yùmíng 李玉鳴, with full Cabinet support. The code presents the wǔlǐ in the order of the Zhōu guān, but adopts the chapter-by-chapter format of the Yílǐ: it lists rank-distinctions and protocol sequences but explicitly excludes historical-evolution data (those go in KR2m0012 Dà Qīng Huìdiǎn) and material-form data (those go in KR2m0036 Huángcháo lǐqì túshì). Designed for daily use rather than for antiquarian reference. The code applies to all ranks, from the imperial court down to commoners.
Tiyao
By imperial command of Qiánlóng 1 (1736); completed 21 years later (1756). At the head: court-and-temple grand rites and the imperial-promulgated regulations. The wǔlǐ sequence follows the Zhōu guān; the framework follows the Yílǐ. The work records only rank-distinctions and protocol-order, not historical changes (these are in the Huìdiǎn); records only object-names-and-counts and arrangement-positions, not material forms (these are in the Huángcháo lǐqì túshì). Each treatise has its assigned domain; cross-citation is unnecessary.
The Yílǐ old text has lacunae; commentators reconstructed practice by extrapolating from shìlǐ up to imperial; ancient and present systems differ, and later ages can never restore them in full. Of one-dynasty ritual codes that survive: Kāiyuán lǐ, Zhènghé wǔlǐ xīnyí, Dà Jīn jí lǐ, Míng jí lǐ. All seek detail and grow tangled. They preserve administrative history adequately but cannot all be put into practice. Our August Emperor, in voice-and-presence harmonized with rule, has specially commanded this volume to be drawn up and made standard. From court to commoner, the great framework and the small detail are all regulated. Each matter is suited; nothing is mechanical. Each rule is observable; no flowery additions. Unlike past ritual books that lay out administrative-history without practical use, this is different. The Lǐjì says: “Ritual follows the suitable.” It also says: “The great ritual must be simple.” The Three Dynasties’ sage-kings, in regulating the people’s way, took only this as the foundational meaning. Calling the work Tōnglǐ (Comprehensive Ritual) is fitting—it draws from past and present and reaches from high to low, a model for a hundred-million-year governed age.
Abstract
The Dà Qīng Tōnglǐ is the Qīng equivalent of the Táng Kāiyuán Lǐ and the Míng Jí Lǐ: the empire’s principal ritual code, designed for actual practice. Its 21-year compilation history (1736–1756) reflects the project’s scale. The Qiánlóng-era programmatic distinction between huìdiǎn (statutes), zélì (case precedents), tōnglǐ (ritual), and lǐqì túshì (vessel diagrams) is a deliberate division of labor: each volume specializes, with cross-reference to the others. This is the structural principle Wilkinson identifies (Chinese History: A New Manual, §66.4.6.1) as defining the Qīng administrative-reference tradition.
The work was reprinted twice during the Qīng (Jiāqìng and Guāngxù updates), reflecting its status as living code rather than archival monument. Láibǎo’s life-dates are not in CBDB; he is recorded as died Qiánlóng 29 (1764). Lǐ Yùmíng’s life-dates are not transmitted (CBDB record 357504, no dates).
Translations and research
Standard editions: Wényuāngé Sìkù. The Guāngxù-period reprint (the late-Qīng standard reference) is the most-used in modern scholarship. Western literature: Angela Zito, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China (Univ. of Chicago, 1997), is the principal Western study; Tā Tā 沓拓, Qīng-dài lǐ-yí zhì-dù yán-jiū 清代禮儀制度研究 (Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué, 2010). For comparative ritual-code analysis, Patricia Ebrey and Maggie Bickford, eds., Ritual and the Body in Imperial China (Brill, 2006).
Other points of interest
The Qiánlóng-era allocation of ritual matter into four parallel reference works—Tōnglǐ for protocol, Lǐqì túshì for material form, Huìdiǎn for historical statute, and Zélì for case precedent—is a remarkable bureaucratic-encyclopedic innovation, dividing what earlier dynasties had treated as a single corpus into a suite of specialized handbooks. The principle is articulated explicitly in the Sìkù tíyào of the Tōnglǐ.