聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

帝範

6 min read

Text ID
KR3a0016
Date
648–648
Dynasty
唐

Dì fàn 帝範

Model for an Emperor by 太宗 (Táng Tàizōng — Lǐ Shìmín 李世民, 597–649, 唐)

About the work

A four-juan, twelve-篇 imperial pedagogical treatise composed by Táng Tàizōng in Zhēnguān 22 (648) and presented to the Crown Prince Lǐ Zhì 李治 (Gāozōng) as a guide to emperorship. The twelve 篇 are: Jūn tǐ 君體, Jiàn qīn 建親, Qiú xián 求賢, Shěn guān 審官, Nà jiàn 納諫, Qù chán 去讒, Jiè yíng 戒盈, Chóng jiǎn 崇儉, Shǎng fá 賞罰, Wù nóng 務農, Yuè wǔ 閱武, Chóng wén 崇文. The work is the principal first-person imperial-political treatise to survive from the Táng, written by an emperor at the close of his reign for his successor. The transmitted text was reduced to half its content by the late Northern Sòng (Cháo Gōngwǔ records only six 篇; Chén Zhènsūn one juan), and was recovered to completeness by Wú Lái 吳萊 in Yuán Tàidìng 2 (1325) — see the SKQS tíyào discussion below. The commentary in the received text is anonymous; the SKQS editors infer that it is a Yuán-period reworking of an earlier Táng commentary (by Jiǎ Xíng 賈行 or Wéi Gōngsù 韋公肅), with citations of Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 and Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 supplied by the Yuán reviser.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Dì fàn in twelve 篇 was composed by Táng Tàizōng in Zhēnguān 22 (648) and presented to the Crown Prince. Both the Jiù Táng shū and Xīn Táng shū give it as four juan. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì records only six 篇; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí gives it as one juan. Yuán-period Wú Lái 吳萊 says he obtained the complete book at the time of the Yúnnán Bóyí 僰夷 expedition; that event is in Tàidìng 2 (1325). So the work had lost half its content in the Sòng and was recovered to completeness in the Yuán.

The Táng yìwén zhì records a commentary by Jiǎ Xíng; the Jiù Táng shū — Jìngzōng běnjì says that in Bǎolì 2 (826) the Imperial Library Compiler Wéi Gōngsù 韋公肅 presented a commentary on this work — so already in the Táng there were two commentaries. The present text’s commentary is unsigned, and from its layout resembles the Táng commentarial style on the classics. But it cites Yáng Wànlǐ and Lǚ Zǔqiān; presumably Yuán hands extended the old commentary. The citations are quite full and the wording occasionally redundant. We have respectfully cross-checked errors and listed corrections beneath the commentary lines, while restoring the four-juan division per the old histories.

Respectfully revised and submitted, fourth month of the thirty-eighth year of Qiánlóng [1773].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Dì fàn is the principal first-person imperial pedagogical treatise of pre-Sòng Chinese political literature. The twelve-篇 structure addresses the principal domains of imperial concern: imperial conduct (jūn tǐ), the imperial clan (jiàn qīn), recruitment and evaluation of officials (qiú xián, shěn guān), the institution of remonstrance (nà jiàn) and avoidance of slander (qù chán), restraint in conduct (jiè yíng, chóng jiǎn), reward and punishment (shǎng fá), agriculture (wù nóng), military review (yuè wǔ), and patronage of letters (chóng wén). The work draws extensively on classical citation throughout, and is distinctive among imperial-authored works for its sustained quotation of the Shī, Shū, Lǐjì, Yìjīng and Lúnyǔ.

The composition window is precisely datable to Zhēnguān 22 (648), one year before Tàizōng’s death; the work was completed and presented as a single act to Lǐ Zhì in advance of the succession. The frontmatter brackets it to 648–648.

The textual transmission falls into two phases: (i) the original Táng work, transmitted through the early Sòng with at least one commentary (Jiǎ Xíng / Wéi Gōngsù) and at four juan as the Liǎng Táng zhì attests; (ii) the late-Sòng partial loss to six 篇 / one juan, followed by Wú Lái’s Yuán-period (1325) recovery. The Yuán recension is the basis of the SKQS-base text; the SKQS editors restored four-juan layout to match the Táng catalogues. The anonymous commentary now in the work is Yuán-period in its current form, building on a Táng-era commentarial layer.

The work’s pairing with the female-pedagogical Nèi xùn 內訓 (KR3a0076) of Empress Xú of Míng — also a twelve-篇 imperial-style pedagogical treatise — and with the imperial Tíngxùn tradition that runs from this work through the Qīng Shèngzǔ Rénhuángdì tíngxùn géyán 聖祖仁皇帝庭訓格言 (KR3a0103) makes it the founder of the Chinese imperial pedagogical genre. Its citation in Zhēnguān zhèngyào 貞觀政要 j. 9 places it within the corpus of late-Tàizōng’s didactic prose.

The bibliographic record: Jiù Táng shū jīngjí zhì (4 juan, Rújiā); Xīn Táng shū yìwén zhì (4 juan, with Jiǎ Xíng commentary); Chóngwén zǒngmù; Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì (6 篇 only); Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí (1 juan); Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi (4 juan, restored).

Translations and research

  • Denis Twitchett, “How to Be an Emperor: T’ang T’ai-tsung’s Vision of His Role”, Asia Major (3rd ser.) 9.1–2 (1996): 1–102. The standard English-language critical study; includes substantial translated extracts.
  • Sūn Wàng-fēng 孫望峰, Dì fàn jiào shì 帝範校釋, Tabei: Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn, 1990s. Modern collation.
  • Zhēn-guān zhèngyào 貞觀政要 of Wú Jǐng 吳兢 — the principal contemporary witness for the Tàizōng didactic project.
  • Howard J. Wechsler, Mirror to the Son of Heaven: Wei Cheng at the Court of T’ang T’ai-tsung, Yale University Press, 1974 — the major Western treatment of Tàizōng’s didactic milieu.

Other points of interest

The Táng-period commentaries by Jiǎ Xíng (Táng yìwén zhì-attested) and Wéi Gōngsù (presented in Bǎolì 2, 826 — a generation after Han Yü) are the only two pre-Sòng emperor’s-text commentaries known in Chinese literary history; the genre never recurs at this density.

The Dì fàn circulates as a paired work with the prose section of the Jīnjìng 金鏡 (a short prose piece of Tàizōng’s also addressed to the heir, on the metaphor of imperial governance as a mirror); the Dì fàn is the longer and more developed of the two, and is the work transmitted in the SKQS.

Graph View

Backlinks