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伸蒙子

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Text ID
KR3a0018
Date
870–880
Dynasty
唐

Shēnméngzǐ 伸蒙子

Master Shēn-méng by 林愼思 (Lín Shènsī, zì Qiánzhōng 虔中, 844–880, 唐)

About the work

A three-juan work in three structural divisions — Huáilǐ biàn 槐里辨 (3 篇, mirroring the three powers, 三才, narrating tiāndìrén 天地人 affairs), Zéguó jì 澤國紀 (3 篇, mirroring the three powers in the variant order jūnchénmín 君臣民, written as jūnchénrén 君臣人 by Táng bìhuì avoidance of Tàizōng’s name 民), and Shí yù 時喻 (2 篇, mirroring the èr jiào 二教 of wén and wǔ). Composed by Lín Shènsī after his own earlier seven-篇 Rúfàn 儒範 had failed to circulate; the title comes from a hexagram-pair divination Lín reports in his preface — the Yìjīng’s Méng 蒙 (☶☵) followed by Guān 觀 (☴☷), giving “ShēnMéng entering Guān, the image of penetrating clarity” (Shēn Méng rù gòu, tōngmíng zhī xiàng 伸蒙入覯通明之象). The work uses fictive interlocutors throughout: the upper juan stages dialogues among “Master Gānlù” 干禄先生, “Master Zhīdào” 知道先生 and “Master Qiújǐ” 求己先生; the middle juan among “Master Hóngwén” 弘文先生, the Rúyúzǐ 如愚子 and the Lúrǔzǐ 盧乳子; the lower juan is Lín’s own discourse. The author further wrote variant forms of the speakers’ names with deliberately altered radicals — an eccentricity the SKQS tíyào scolds as a “fondness for novelty taken too far.”

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Shēnméngzǐ in three juan was composed by Lín Shènsī of the Táng. The work has Shènsī’s own preface: “I had earlier composed seven 篇 of Rúfàn, but the wording was hard, the principle obscure, and it was not recognised by my contemporaries. So I again refined and exhausted my thought; one day I bathed and made my heart-mind pray for inspiration. That night I had a strange dream. The next morning I called for milfoil and divined: I obtained Méng 蒙 leading into Guān 觀. The reading: ‘ShēnMéng entering Guān — the image of penetrating clarity.’ I therefore took Shēnméngzǐ as my style.” He continues: “I had once with two or three students debated the rise and fall of states, set out the ancient and modern, and edited it into upper, middle, and lower juan. Huáilǐ biàn in three 篇 mirrors the three powers, narrating affairs of tiāndìrén. Zéguó jì in three 篇 mirrors the three powers, narrating affairs of jūnchénrén” — note: Táng men avoiding Tàizōng’s tabooed name 民 wrote jūnchénmín as jūnchénrén — “and Shí yù in two 篇 mirrors the two teachings, narrating affairs of wén and wǔ.”

Examining the present text, the upper juan is set out as the question-and-answer of Master Gānlù 干禄先生, Master Zhīdào 知道先生, and Master Qiújǐ 求己先生; the middle juan as the question-and-answer of Master Hóngwén 弘文先生, the Rúyúzǐ 如愚子, and the Lúrǔzǐ 盧乳子; the lower juan is Lín’s own discourse. Only the Shí yù opening 篇 of the upper juan, on Confucius “making the world small” — its wording is not close to principle. The rest hold to discourse that is sober and orthodox; not the kind of pretentious empty rhetoric of the Tiānyǐn 天隱 zhūzǐ of the Táng. The Chóngwén zǒngmù placed it in Rújiā; not unjustly. Only the six speakers’ names listed — Gānlù written as 𤇆𥎶 [a fictive variant], Zhīdào as 智衜, Qiújǐ as 求𢈻, Hóngwén as 𢎢𢎤, Rúyú as 𢒮𢒬, Lúrǔ as 𤇆𢎥, with Lín supplying notes on each “added or altered radical” — these are all peculiar and verging on the absurd. This is the over-reach of his fondness for novelty.

Respectfully revised and submitted, fourth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].

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 Shēnméngzǐ is Lín Shènsī’s principal personal-philosophical work, complementing the more Mèngzǐ-derivative Xù Mèngzǐ (KR3a0017). Composition is bracketed by Lín’s career — after the failed Rúfàn of his early career and before his execution by Huáng Cháo’s forces in 880; the preface places the divination episode in conventional autobiographical mid-career context, suggesting roughly the 870s. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 870–880.

The structural ambition — three juan in three sections of 3, 3, and 2 篇, organised by the sāncái 三才 and èrjiào 二教 schemata — places the work within the Yìjīng-cosmological zǐ-text tradition that runs from Yáng Xióng’s Tài xuán through Wáng Tōng’s Zhōng shuō and into the Northern Sòng Tàijí / Tōngshū tradition of Zhōu Dūnyí. The fictive-speaker technique is closest to Lièzǐ / Zhuāngzǐ in form, but the substance is sober Confucian yìlǐ. The eccentric variant orthography of the speakers’ names — Lín’s invented characters — is the work’s most-noted unusual feature.

The transmitted text matches the Chóngwén zǒngmù and the Tōngzhì yìwén lüè in three juan; transmission appears stable since the early Northern Sòng.

The bibliographic record: Chóngwén zǒngmù (3 juan, Rújiā); Tōngzhì yìwén lüè (likewise); Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi.

Translations and research

  • No substantial secondary literature located in Western languages.
  • Yáng Bóxiàng 楊伯翔’s Lín Shènsī yánjiū (cited above) is the principal modern Chinese treatment.
  • The work is occasionally cited in studies of late-Táng zǐ-text revival in connection with xuán-xué themes, but is not the subject of a stand-alone monograph.

Other points of interest

The Táng bìhuì substitution flagged by the tíyào — jūnchénrén 君臣人 for jūnchénmín 君臣民 — is itself an interesting witness to the persistence of Táng-period name-avoidance into the SKQS WYG transmission: had a Sòng or later editor felt free to restore 民, they would have done so, but the SKQS preserves the Táng-period taboo form. The text’s deliberately invented characters for speakers’ names are likewise preserved in the WYG, providing a small case study of textual fidelity to authorial eccentricity.

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