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傅子

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Text ID
KR3a0013
Date
250–278
Dynasty
晉

Fùzǐ 傅子

The Master Fù by 傅玄 (Fù Xuán, zì Xiūyì 休奕, 217–278, 晉)

About the work

A reconstruction in one juan of the originally massive Fùzǐ of Fù Xuán — a 140-chapter, several-hundred-thousand-character treatise organised in four sections and six registers (四部六錄) on imperial governance, the jiǔ liú 九流 of pre-Qín thought, and historical commentary, presented to Jìn Wǔdì in the late 260s or 270s. The Suí, Táng and Mǎ Zǒng’s Yìlín all attest the complete 140-juan work; the Sòng Chóngwén zǒngmù records only twenty-three 篇, the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì only five juan; by YuánMíng the work was effectively lost from the book trade. The SKQS editors, examining the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn (1408) corpus, recovered twelve 篇 with their text continuous and sense complete, and twelve further 篇 partially extant, plus over forty citations drawn from other works as appendix. The reconstruction is the standard SKQS-period reconstitution.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Fùzǐ in one juan was composed by Fù Xuán of the Jìn. Xuán, zì Xiūyì, was a man of Běidì. He rose in office to Inspector of Sīlì and was enfeoffed as Chúngūzǐ 鶉觚子. The Jìn shū biography says: Xuán wrote a treatise on imperial governance, on the Jiǔ liú, and on matter from the three histories, judging gain and loss, dividing the matter into separate sections — and named it Fùzǐ. It comprised inner篇, outer篇 and middle篇, in four sections and six registers, 140 shǒu (chapters) in all, several hundred thousand characters, and circulated in his time.

When he first completed the inner篇 he showed them to the Sīkōng Wáng Chén 王沈. Wáng Chén replied in writing: “I have looked over your composition. The wording is rich, the principle reaches its goal, the arranging-up of governance is in keeping, the holding-firm of Confucian instruction is sustained — sufficient to block the heterodoxies of Yáng [Zhū] and Mò [Dí], and to put Sūn [Sòng] and Mèng [Kē] of generations past on equal terms.” Such was its reception by his contemporaries.

The Suí jīngjí zhì and Táng yìwén zhì both record Fùzǐ in 140 juan. Mǎ Zǒng’s Yìlín matches. So in the Táng the work was still complete. The Sòng Chóngwén zǒngmù gives only twenty-three 篇 — already 117 篇 lost from the original count. Hence the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì records only five juan. Thereafter only Yóu Mào’s 尤袤 Suìchūtáng shūmù 遂初堂書目 still records the title; from the Yuán and Míng on, no library lists it. Long lost, in short.

We have now examined the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn: scattered passages are quite numerous, with their chapter-titles preserved. We have respectfully gathered and arranged them, recovering twelve 篇 of complete sense — Zhèng xīn 正心, Rén lùn 仁論, Yì xìn 義信, Tōng zhì 通志, Jǔ xián 舉賢, Zhòng juélù 重爵祿, Lǐyuè 禮樂, Guì jiào 貴教, Jiǎn shāngjiǎ 檢商賈, Xiào gōng 校工, Jiè yán 戒言, Jiǎ yán 假言. And further twelve 篇 of incomplete sense — Wèn zhèng 問政, Zhì tǐ 治體, Shòu zhí 授職, Guān rén 官人, Qū zhì 曲制, Xìn zhí 信直, Jiǎo wéi 矯違, Wèn xíng 問刑, Ān mín 安民, Fǎ xíng 法刑, Píng yìfù 平役賦, Jìng zǒngxù 鏡總敍. The chapter-list, compared to the Chóngwén zǒngmù, has one more — perhaps Wèn xíng and Fǎ xíng were originally one 篇 and the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn mistakenly split it. The Sòng zhì’s five juan: the original sequence is no longer recoverable. We have arranged it according to the wording, totalling one juan. From other works’ citations not in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn we have gathered over forty further passages, made an appendix, and attached them at the end.

Of Jìn-period zǐ-house works now circulating, only Zhāng Huá’s 張華 Bówù zhì, Gān Bǎo’s 干寶 Sōushén jì, Gě Hóng’s 葛洪 Bàopǔzǐ, Jì Hán’s 嵇含 Cǎomù zhuàng, and the Zhú pǔ attributed to Dài Kǎizhī 戴凱之 still survive. Of these the Bówù zhì and Sōushén jì have been altered by later hands and are no longer the original; the Cǎomù zhuàng and Zhú pǔ are records of trifles, of no bearing on principles; the Bàopǔzǐ is full of Daoist fantastic discourses and cannot all be brought to orthodoxy. Only Fù Xuán’s book — what it discusses bears closely on the way of governance, opening up Confucian wind, with refined intent and naming-words constantly in evidence. Compared to the Lùn héng and Chāng yán, both must yield to it. Even gathered up as a tattered fragment from the leavings of loss, what one can still recover is a tenth or so — and this too is precious.

Abstract

The Fùzǐ in its original form was the most ambitious zǐ-style imperial-treatise of the Wèi-Western-Jìn transition: a 140-chapter, several-hundred-thousand-character work organised across four sections and six registers (the precise meaning of which is no longer recoverable), submitted to Jìn Wǔdì by Fù Xuán. The presentation followed Wáng Chén’s letter of approval on the inner篇 — the only surviving contemporary reception evidence. The composition window can be bracketed broadly within Fù Xuán’s mature working life from the late 240s to his death in 278; the inner篇 are presumably earlier (presented to Wáng Chén, who died 266), the middle and outer 篇 later. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 250–278.

The textual transmission is the longest and clearest case of large-scale zǐ-text loss in early-medieval Chinese book history: 140 juan in the Sui-Táng catalogs, 23 篇 in the Northern Sòng, 5 juan in the Sòng zhì, effectively lost in the YuánMíng, and finally a one-juan SKQS reconstruction (24 篇 + 40-some external citations) from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The reconstruction is the standard text and is faithfully reproduced in the WYG KR3a0013_001.txt and following.

The chapters Zhèng xīn 正心, Rén lùn 仁論, Tōng zhì 通志 and Lǐyuè 禮樂 are the most fully recovered and the most studied. The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn-recovered passages constitute one of the principal sources for early-Western-Jìn classical-political reflection.

The bibliographic record: Suí shū jīngjí zhì (140 juan, Rújiā); Jiù Táng zhì, Xīn Táng zhì (likewise); Chóngwén zǒngmù (23 篇); Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì (5 juan); Suìchūtáng shūmù; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi (1 juan reconstruction).

Translations and research

  • Pierre-Étienne Will and Charles Le Blanc, “Fu Xuan and his Times: A Study of the Fu-zi”, various paper-length treatments — no comprehensive monograph or translation in a Western language.
  • Wèi Mínghuà 魏明華 et al., Fù-zǐ jí jiàozhù 傅子集校注, Hé-féi: Hwáng-shān Shūshè, 2003; Wèi Mínghuà and Yuán Hàn-yīng 袁漢英, Fù Xuán jí biān-nián jiāo zhù 傅玄集編年校注, 2017. Standard Chinese reconstructions integrating the SKQS reconstruction with all known fragmentary citations.
  • Wáng Yǐ-zhuàng 王毅莊, Fù-zǐ yán-jiū 傅子研究.
  • For Fù Xuán’s poetry, David R. Knechtges has translated several fù and yuèfǔ in his ongoing Wenxuan and related projects.

Other points of interest

The Fùzǐ reconstruction in the SKQS is one of the earliest and best-known cases of imperial-court jíyì 輯佚 (recovery of lost texts from compendia), undertaken by the SKQS editors under their access to the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The methodology — recovering 24 篇 of variable completeness plus 40-some external citations — became a template for subsequent jíyì work in the Qīng.

Fù Xuán’s polemic against YángMò and his vision of a Confucian-grounded post-Hàn classical-political order are the cleanest pieces of early-Western-Jìn Confucian reflection that survive in any quantity, and are routinely cited in modern reconstructions of WèiJìn intellectual history (e.g. Yú Yīngshí, Tāng Yòngtóng).

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