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家範

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Text ID
KR3a0020
Date
1071–1086
Dynasty
宋

Jiā fàn 家範

Family Model by 司馬光 (Sīmǎ Guāng, 1019–1086, 宋)

About the work

A ten-juan, twenty-篇 Confucian family-pedagogical treatise composed by Sīmǎ Guāng, taking its title from a one-juan Jiā fàn by Dí Rénjié 狄仁傑 (WǔZhōu period, lost by the Sòng) but in substance a fresh composition. The opening juan is a programmatic preface drawing on the Yìjīng’s Jiārén hexagram judgment, the Dà xué, Xiào jīng, Yáo diǎn of the Shàng shū, and the Sī qí 思齊 of the Shī. The remaining nineteen 篇 — Zhì jiā 治家, Zǔ 祖, Fùmǔ 父母, Zǐ shàng 子上, Zǐ xià 子下, Nǚ 女, Sūn 孫, Bóshūfù 伯叔父, Zhí 姪, Xiōng 兄, Dì 弟, Gūzǐ 姑姊妹, Fū 夫, Qī shàng 妻上, Qī xià 妻下, Sǎoshū 嫂叔, Jiùgū 舅姑, Fù 婦, Qiè 妾, Rǔmǔ 乳母 — collect classical and historical anecdotes that can serve as exemplary practice for each kinship role within the household. Substantively the work shares much purpose with Zhū Xī’s later Xiǎo xué 小學 (KR3a0046, included as Yù dìng Xiǎoxué jízhù) but with somewhat different chapter structure and exemplar selection. Within the Sīmǎ Guāng oeuvre the Jiā fàn belongs to the Luòyáng retirement period (1071–1085) when the Zīzhì tōngjiàn was being completed.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Jiā fàn in ten juan was composed by Sīmǎ Guāng of the Sòng. Guāng’s other writings, the Wēngōng Yìshuō (KR1a0013) and the rest, have been catalogued separately. This book appears in the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì and the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo with juan-titles all matching the present text — the original recension survives.

From Yán Zhītuī 顏之推’s Jiā xùn 家訓 [a Northern-Qí work, KR3 in some catalogs], teaching descendants, the discussion was upright but wording diffuse, not throughout grounded in classical instruction. Dí Rénjié had a Jiā fàn in one juan, recorded in the histories’ bibliographies but no longer transmitted; Guāng took up Rénjié’s old title, supplied fresh editorial material, and gave it to later students as a measuring-line. He puts at the head the Jiārén hexagram words of the Yìjīng, [passages from] the Dà xué, the Xiào jīng, the Yáo diǎn, and the Sī qí 篇 of the Shī — these together serve as the preface to the whole. Thereafter from Zhì jiā through to Rǔmǔ in nineteen 篇, all gather from histories and traditions matters that may serve as model. Occasionally Guāng’s own discussion is added; with Zhū Xī’s Xiǎo xué the editorial conventions are slightly different but the intent is essentially the same. The chapter-divisions are full, the bearing close to daily use, concise without redundancy — sufficient as the essential of Confucian conduct.

Zhū Xī once said of the Zhōulǐ Master (Shīshì) that “the perfect virtue is the foundation of the Way, and Master Míngdào 明道先生 [Chéng Hào] practised it; the constant virtue is the foundation of conduct, and Sīmǎ Wēngōng practised it.” Looking at this compilation, his rules for shaping behaviour and instructing common practice can be glimpsed in outline.

Respectfully revised and submitted, fifth month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].

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 Jiā fàn is the principal Northern Sòng family-pedagogical compendium and the closest Sòng analogue, in scope and ambition, to Yán Zhītuī’s Yánshì jiā xùn (the Northern Qí classic of the genre) and Zhū Xī’s later Xiǎo xué. Composition can be bracketed within Sīmǎ Guāng’s Luòyáng retirement period: he withdrew from court in 1071 and remained at Luò until his recall as Chancellor in 1085; the bulk of his independent compositional activity (the Zīzhì tōngjiàn primarily, but also the Jī gǔ lù, the Yì shuō and Tài xuán zhù, and the Jiā fàn) cluster in this period. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1071–1086.

The structural innovation — preface drawn from the canonical Yìjīng / Dà xué / Xiào jīng / Shū / Shī matrix, body organised around twenty kinship roles — became the standard template for the late-Imperial jiā xùn tradition. The chapters on women (the Nǚ, two Qī, Fù, Qiè, Rǔmǔ chapters) carry approximately a third of the work’s bulk and are the source from which much of late-Imperial Chinese discourse on female ritual conduct directly draws.

The transmitted text is stable from the Sòng to the SKQS; the SKQS tíyào’s remark that “the original recension survives” is taken as accurate by modern scholarship. The principal modern critical edition is Wáng Zōngzhì 王宗志’s Jiā fàn jiào zhù 家範校注 (Tabei: Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn, 1990s).

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì (10 juan, Rújiā); Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi.

Translations and research

  • Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “Family Rituals in Imperial China: Three Case Studies”, in her Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China, Princeton University Press, 1991. Treats the Jiā fàn alongside Zhū Xī’s Jiā lǐ 家禮 as foundational works of Sòng family-ritual codification.
  • Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period, University of California Press, 1993 — major use of the Jiā fàn.
  • Pearl S. Buck, Family Instructions for the Yan Clan: Translation (with introduction by Teng Ssu-yu), Brill, 1968 — context for the jiā xùn genre.
  • Yú Yúndì 余允堤, Sīmǎ Guāng Jiā fàn jí jiào yì 司馬光家範譯註, Tabei, 1990s.
  • Hú Wěn-fǔ 胡文輔, Sīmǎ Guāng Jiā fàn yánjiū 司馬光家範研究, 2010s mainland Chinese monograph.

Other points of interest

The Jiā fàn is one of the few major Sòng Rújiā works whose textual transmission is essentially clean — there is no “original lost / restored” history of the kind that complicates the Fǎ yán, Xīnshū, Shuōyuàn and others. This stability is typical of Sòng-period works of court-officer Confucians whose copies were widely circulated within the guānxué networks before any disruption.

The Rǔmǔ 乳母 chapter — on wet-nurses — is unusual among classical Chinese family-pedagogical literature for its specificity, and is the principal Sòng source for the social position of wet-nurses in elite households, much used in modern social-historical work.

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