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中論

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Text ID
KR3a0012
Date
200–217
Dynasty
漢

Zhōng lùn 中論

Discourses of the Mean by 徐幹 (Xú Gàn, zì Wěicháng 偉長, 170–217, 漢)

About the work

A two-juan / twenty-篇 zǐ-style treatise of late-Eastern-Hàn / proto-Wèi Confucian reflection by Xú Gàn 徐幹 of Běihǎi, one of the Jiàn’ān qīzǐ. The work expounds yìlǐ 義理 grounded in the classical Confucian tradition and is, with Wáng Fú’s Qiánfū lùn (KR3a0010) and Xún Yuè’s Shēn jiàn (KR3a0011), one of the three principal late-Hàn / proto-Wèi zǐ works in the Rújiā class. The Suí, Táng and Chóngwén bibliographies all give six juan; the received form was reduced to two juan by Sòng-period editors. The original work also had a Fù sānnián sàng 復三年喪 篇 (on restoring the three-year mourning) and a Zhì yì 制役 篇, attested by Táng Tàizōng in Zhēnguān zhèngyào 貞觀政要 and by Lǐ Shū’s 李淑 Hándān shūmù 邯鄲書目 respectively but lost from the present recension. Each of the surviving twenty 篇 — Zhì xué 治學, Fǎ xiàng 法象, Xiū běn 修本, Xū dào 虛道, Guì yán 貴言, etc. — is a free-standing essay on a moral-political theme.

Tiyao

The Zhōng lùn in two juan — current circulating recension (通行本).

Composed by Xú Gàn of the Hàn. Gàn, zì Wěicháng, was a man of Jùxiàn in Běihǎi. In the Jiàn’ān era he served as Jìjiǔyuàn of the Sīkōng Bureau and Wénxué of the Wǔguān General. His career is appended to the Wèi zhì biography of Wáng Càn, and so he has come to be conventionally treated as a Wèi figure. But Gàn died three or four years before the Wèi accession; the imperial succession cannot be made to begin so early. Chén Shòu 陳壽 wrote his history starting from Cáo Cāo, calling him Tàizǔ, and so put all his subordinates into the Wèi zhì — but it does not match reality.

The book is recorded in the Suí and Táng bibliographies as six juan; the Suí zhì notes that the Liáng catalog gave one juan; the Chóngwén zǒngmù also gives six juan. But Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì and Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí both give two juan, matching the present text — the conflation is by Sòng hands. The book is twenty 篇 in all, expounding yìlǐ in the manner of the classical canon and returning to the way of the sages and worthies; the earlier histories accordingly placed it in the Rújiā. Zēng Gǒng’s collation preface 校書序 says: “I first saw the Zhōng lùn in twenty 篇 in the academy archives. Looking at the Zhēnguān zhèng yào, [I find] Tàizōng saying he had once seen Gàn’s Zhōng lùn Fù sānnián sàng 篇, but the present book lacks it. Examining the Wèi zhì, Wéndì [Cáo Pī] says Gàn wrote the Zhōng lùn in over twenty 篇. So the academy text is not the complete book.” Cháo Gōngwǔ further says Lǐ Xiànmín 李獻民 had seen another recension that contained both Fù sānnián and Zhì yì 制役 篇 — Lǐ Xiànmín being Lǐ Shū’s 李淑 zì, the compiler of the Hándān shūmù. So in Sòng Rénzōng’s time the work had not yet entirely fallen into the present incomplete form. Zēng Gǒng catalogued from a defective academy text, the so-called “alternate recension” was no longer to be found, and the two 篇 fell out of transmission.

There is also a preface at the head of the book without name; Chén Zhènsūn took it to be by a contemporary of Gàn’s, and on inspection the prose is in Hàn-period style — Zhènsūn’s judgment is correct. But the Wèi zhì gives Gàn’s death as Jiàn’ān 22 (217), while the preface dates to Jiàn’ān 23, second month — slightly out. There is surely a copyist’s error somewhere; which side cannot now be determined.

Abstract

The Zhōng lùn is the most fully-preserved Confucian zǐ work of the Jiàn’ān period and is among the cleanest pieces of late-Hàn / proto-Wèi philosophical prose. Composition can be bracketed within Xú Gàn’s mature working life — his entry into Cáo Cāo’s headquarters being in the late 190s and his death in 217 — with a conventional working window of roughly 200–217. The frontmatter brackets the work to that range.

The textual transmission falls clearly into two stages: (i) the original twenty-plus-篇 work, attested by Cáo Pī in the Wèi zhì and by the surviving anonymous Hàn-period preface; (ii) the partial Sòng recension in twenty 篇, missing Fù sānnián sàng (attested by Tàizōng in Zhēnguān zhèngyào before its loss) and Zhì yì (attested by Lǐ Shū). The two-juan format is a Sòng compression of the original six-juan text. The textual divergences between the present text and the corresponding Hòu Hàn shū / Wèi zhì citations — flagged by both Cháo Gōngwǔ and the SKQS tíyào — are minor and reflect editorial revision rather than substantial recomposition.

The chapters Zhì xué 治學, Fǎ xiàng 法象 and Xiū běn 修本 are the most studied; the Wén jiào 問交 chapter (on choosing friends) is one of the major early statements of friendship-ethics in classical Chinese; Wáng yán 妄言 (on speech) is the cleanest pre-Wèi Confucian engagement with the xíngmíng 形名 / linguistic-political problem.

The bibliographic record: Suí shū jīngjí zhì (中論 6 卷, Rújiā); Jiù Táng zhì, Xīn Táng zhì; Chóngwén zǒngmù (6 juan); Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí, Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì (both 2 juan); SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi.

Translations and research

  • John Makeham, Balanced Discourses: A Bilingual Edition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. The standard complete English translation, with extensive critical apparatus and an authoritative introduction.
  • John Makeham, “The Earliest Extant Commentary on Lunyu: Lunyu Zheng Shi Zhu”, T’oung Pao 83 (1997) — context.
  • Sūn Qǐzhì 孫啟治, Zhōng lùn jiě gǔ 中論解詁, Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 2014. Modern Chinese collation and commentary.
  • Yú Shīhán 喻世瀚 (and others), Zhōng lùn jiào zhèng 中論校證, Tabei: Tánshí, 2010s.
  • Michael Loewe (ed.), Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, 1993, s.v. “Chung lun”, 76–78 (entry by John Makeham).

Other points of interest

The lost Fù sānnián sàng 篇 is mentioned by Táng Tàizōng in Zhēnguān zhèngyào 貞觀政要 j. 7 — one of a small number of cases where a high-medieval imperial conversation testifies to the presence of a Hàn-period text not subsequently transmitted, and the loss of the chapter between Tàizōng and Zēng Gǒng is one of the cleaner instances of pre-Sòng zǐ-text dispersal.

Xú Gàn’s place among the Jiàn’ān qīzǐ makes the Zhōng lùn uniquely useful as a control on early-medieval Chinese poetic-political milieu: Cáo Pī’s Diǎn lùn — Lùnwén 典論論文 names him as the master of fù, but the Zhōng lùn is a remarkably sober piece of Confucian zǐ-style discourse, suggesting the qīzǐ identity was more stylistically heterogeneous than the fù-centred Cáo Pī tradition implies.

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