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緇衣

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Text ID
KR2p0033
Date
-350–-250
Dynasty
戰國

Zī Yī 緇衣

The Black Robe (the title refers to the court robe of the ministers — modern editorial title taken from the opening analogy about the ruler and his robe)

(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)

About the work

Zī Yī 緇衣 is the second text in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 1, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2001, comprising approximately 25 bamboo strips bearing some 1,400 graphs organised across 27 sections. It is a Confucian ethical and political treatise on the ruler’s exemplary virtue, structured around the principle that the ruler’s personal dispositions — his genuine likes and dislikes, his conduct, his speech — are transparently mirrored in the people; the ruler therefore bears full responsibility for the moral condition of the state. Each section typically cites one or two passages from the Shī 詩 (Odes) or the Shū 書 (Documents) to illustrate and authorise its proposition. A closely parallel text was excavated at Guōdiàn 郭店 in 1993 and is one of the eighteen Guōdiàn text-units published in the 1998 Jīngmén Museum editio princeps. The transmitted version of Zī Yī appears as one of the 49 chapters of the received Lǐjì 禮記.

Abstract

The three-version tradition. The existence of Zī Yī in three textual states — Guōdiàn bamboo slips (pre-300 BCE), Shanghai Museum bamboo slips (4th–3rd c. BCE), and received Lǐjì (transmitted in the Hàn) — makes it one of the most important test cases for understanding how early Chinese philosophical texts were transmitted, revised, and eventually canonised. The three versions are close but not identical: they share the same governing propositions and most of the canonical citations, but differ in the number and order of sections (the Guōdiàn version has fewer sections), in the reading of individual graphs (the two bamboo-slip versions agree against the Lǐjì in several places), and in the selection of cited poems and documents (the Lǐjì adds additional citations). Scholars have used the three-version comparison to argue: (a) that the Lǐjì Zī Yī chapter is a later, expanded recension of the shorter Guōdiàn original (Shaughnessy 2006); (b) that all three versions represent independent transmissions of a common source-text that circulated in short bundles (Meyer 2011); (c) that the variations track school-specific editorial choices rather than chronological development (Li Tianhong 2003).

Content. The text’s governing analogy — embedded in its title — is that just as a minister dons a black robe over his court dress as a sign of appropriate office, the ruler must “cover” his personal desires with appropriately public virtue. Section by section, the text argues: that the ruler who properly displays his likes and dislikes will find the people truthful (mín qíng bù tè 民情不忒); that the ruler and people stand in the relation of heart-and-body (mín yǐ jūn wéi xīn, jūn yǐ mín wéi tǐ 民以君為心，君以民為體); that the people follow not the ruler’s commands but the ruler’s conduct (xià zhī shì shàng yě, bù cóng qí suǒ yǐ mìng, ér cóng qí suǒ xíng 下之事上也，不從其所以命，而從其所行 — a proposition also in Zūn Déyì KR2p0025 and Chéng zhī wén zhī KR2p0024); and that rulers must not be casual about punishments or careless with official ranks (shàng bùkěyǐ xiè xíng ér qīng jué 上不可以褻刑而輕爵). The text draws on a wide range of canonical sources: the received Mǎoshī 毛詩 poems Zhào mín 召旻, Jiézié sì mù 節彼南山, and Jǐn bǎo (among others); and documents including Kānggào 康誥, Jūnyá 君牙, and Jūnchén 君陳 (some of which are otherwise not attested in received versions of the Shūjīng 書經, indicating early circulation of distinct document collections).

The inner/outer mirror. The most systematically developed theme is that the ruler’s inner state (zhì 志, his genuine intention) is inevitably externalised: royal speech is like silk thread — when first issued it is fine, but when it comes out it is like a rope (wángyán rú sī, qí chū rú lún 王言如絲，其出如(綸) — “the king’s word, once issued, cannot be retracted”). This inner/outer transparency is the complement of Xìng Zì Mìng Chū’s KR2p0026 claim that nature is activated by external things (wù 物): in Zī Yī, the ruler’s inner dispositions are the “things” that activate the people’s nature.

Translations and research

  • 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 1, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2001 — editio princeps with transcription, photographs, and notes.
  • 荊門市博物館 ed., 《郭店楚墓竹簡》, Wénwù chūbǎnshè, 1998 — Guōdiàn version, text no. 5.
  • Ames, Roger T., and Henry Rosemont Jr. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation and Commentary. U of Hawai’i P, 2009 — translation and study of the Xiàojīng 孝經 with comparative material from excavated texts including Zī Yī.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006, ch. 1 — analysis of the three-version tradition as a model for studying manuscript revision.
  • Meyer, Dirk. Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China. Brill, 2011/2012 — compositional analysis of the Guōdiàn Confucian texts including Zī Yī.
  • Li Tianhong 李天虹, 《郭店竹簡〈性自命出〉研究》, Húběi jiàoyù chūbǎnshè, 2003 — contextual study useful for the Zī Yī comparison.
  • Lǐ Líng 李零, 《郭店楚簡校讀記》 (zēngdìng běn), Zhōngguó rénmín dàxué chūbǎnshè, 2007 — standard Chinese critical apparatus for the Guōdiàn version.

Other points of interest

The cited documents Jūnyá 君牙 and Jūnchén 君陳 appear in the Zī Yī text (Shànghǎi version) in a form that differs in significant ways from the transmitted Shūjīng. This makes Zī Yī an important witness to the pre-Hàn transmission of the Shū and raises questions about whether the Lǐjì Zī Yī’s citations were harmonised with the subsequently canonical Shū text.

Graph View