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通鑑答問

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Text ID
KR2o0014
Date
1270–1296
Dynasty
宋

Tōngjiàn dáwèn 通鑑答問

Questions and Answers on the Tongjian

by 王應麟 (Wáng Yīnglín, 1223–1296), traditional attribution

About the work

The Tōngjiàn dáwèn is an unfinished, 5-juan question-and-answer commentary running from King Wēilíè of Zhōu (the Tōngjiàn’s opening) down to Hàn Yuándì — i.e. covering only the early portion of the Zīzhì tōngjiàn, with the work breaking off mid-stream. It was traditionally transmitted as the work of Wáng Yīnglín, the foremost late-Southern-Sòng bibliographer-philologist (compiler of KR3a0027 Yùhǎi 玉海, the Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞, and a long series of pioneering recompilations of lost Hàn commentaries). The Sìkù tiyao, however, registers significant doubt about the attribution: although the work was printed as one of the thirteen titles appended to the Yùhǎi in the late-Sòng / Yuán transition, its textual character — the harshness of the criticisms, the closeness to the late-Sòng Tōngjiàn gāngmù-school manner of Yǐn Qǐxǐn 尹起莘 and the Dúshǐ guǎnjiàn manner of Hú Yín 胡寅 — does not fit Wáng Yīnglín’s other, much more philologically careful and critically restrained writing. The Sìkù editors hold open the possibility that the work was compiled by Wáng’s grandson at the time of the Yùhǎi printing and falsely attributed to the grandfather to lend it dàoxué legitimacy.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Tōngjiàn dáwèn in five juàn was composed by Wáng Yīnglín of the Sòng. Wáng has the Zhōuyì Zhèng Kāngchéng zhù, already separately catalogued. This book is one of thirteen titles printed at the end of the Yùhǎi. It begins with King Wēilíè of Zhōu and ends with Hàn Yuándì — clearly an unfinished work. It is titled Tōngjiàn dáwèn but mostly engages with Zhū Zǐ’s Gāngmù. The Gāngmù was originally written following the Tōngjiàn, so Wáng’s discussion moves between the two.

Of the verdicts: only on the matter of Hàn Gāozǔ being a son of the White Emperor (Báidì 白帝) does he say the two works’ editors merely happened to overlook the deletion; on Kǒng Zāng 孔臧’s removal from the post of Tàicháng in Yuánshuò 3, he suspects that the misattributed source is Kǒng Cóngzǐ. The rest of the work venerates Zhū Xī’s new precedents in the Gāngmù manner — somewhat in the style of Yǐn Qǐxǐn’s Fāmíng 發明 — and excoriates the men of antiquity in the manner of Hú Yín’s Guǎnjiàn. For instance: when Hàn Gāozǔ passed by Lǔ and offered sacrifice to Confucius, there was nothing to censure; yet here he is censured for “not having a true Confucian.” When Wéndì lifted the prohibition on private coinage, this is plainly not exemplary; yet here he is praised for benevolence reaching across the empire. These are utterly unlike Wáng’s other writings. Whether genuine or spurious cannot be ascertained — perhaps it was Wáng’s grandson, when printing the Yùhǎi, who fabricated this compilation to attach his ancestor to the dàoxué school. There is no clear evidence, so we cannot definitively prove its inauthenticity. Provisionally we take its broad bearing not to be at variance with the right; that is enough.

Abstract

The traditional attribution to Wáng Yīnglín is preserved here, since it is the form in which the work circulates and the Sìkù compilers themselves preserved the attribution while flagging the doubt. If Wáng Yīnglín (1223–1296; CBDB id 19880) is the author, the work belongs to his late period — the WYG edition’s appearance in the Yùhǎi appendix block, which was printed by Wáng’s grandson in the early Yuán, dates it after the Yùhǎi itself (which Wáng presented to court in Bǎoyòu 4 / 1256 and continued to revise until his death). A composition window of c. 1270–1296 is plausible.

The doubt the Sìkù tiyao raises is substantive and worth taking seriously. Wáng Yīnglín is famous as the most exacting late-Southern-Sòng evidential-bibliographic scholar; the Kùnxué jìwén is a model of careful, self-restrained, source-cited critical method. The Tōngjiàn dáwèn, by contrast, is full of moralising verdicts in the Gāngmù-school style. It is hard to reconcile these two intellectual profiles in the same author, and the suggestion that the work was assembled by a follower or descendant in Wáng’s name during the early-Yuán Gāngmù boom is plausible.

The work is in any case substantively a Gāngmù commentary rather than a Tōngjiàn commentary, despite its title. By the late thirteenth century the Gāngmù (Zhū Xī’s KR2o0020 Tōngjiàn gāngmù) was the operative reading-text in elite-school curricula, and Tōngjiàn commentaries had largely realigned to Gāngmù concerns; the Dáwèn fits that pattern.

The work breaking off at Yuándì of the Western Hàn — only c. 5 juàn of intended coverage — is itself striking. If by Wáng, the work was abandoned (perhaps after the 1276 fall of the Sòng, after which Wáng retired into permanent reclusion). If by Wáng’s grandson or a school follower, the unfinished state is consistent with a posthumous compilation that ran out of source materials.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge UP, 2021), §6.6 on Wáng Yīnglín; the Tōngjiàn dáwèn discussed under the rubric of late-Southern-Sòng Gāngmù commentary.
  • Hans van Ess, “The Compilation of the Yùhǎi and the Late-Sòng Encyclopedic Tradition”, in Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print, ed. Lucille Chia and Hilde De Weerdt (Brill, 2011).
  • Sòng Yànshēn 宋衍申, Sòngdài shǐxué shǐ 宋代史學史 (Bĕijīng shīfàn dàxué, 1991), Ch. 8.
  • Yú Yīngshí 余英時, Zhū Xī de lìshǐ shìjiè 朱熹的歷史世界 (Sānlián, 2003), Ch. 12.
  • Lǚ Sīmiǎn 呂思勉, Sòngdài wénhuà shǐ 宋代文化史 (Shanghai, 1933).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tiyao’s express doubt about the attribution is among the more candid attribution-discussions in the entire Sìkù. The editors were aware that they could not adjudicate the question — they preserve the attribution because the work circulates under it, while signalling that the body-of-evidence does not match Wáng Yīnglín’s other writings. The Qing evidential scholar Wáng Mòhóng 王懋竑 in the Báitián zázhù expressed a similar reservation. Modern scholarship has not produced a settled answer, although Hans van Ess (2011) leans toward acceptance of the traditional attribution on the basis of internal Yùhǎi cross-references that match Wáng Yīnglín’s autograph practice elsewhere.

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