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帝學

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Text ID
KR3a0021
Date
1086–1093
Dynasty
宋

Dì xué 帝學

Imperial Studies by 范祖禹 (Fàn Zǔyǔ, 1041–1098, 宋)

About the work

An eight-juan compendium of imperial study-models — anecdotes of how xián jūn 賢君 from Fúxī 伏羲 down to the Northern Sòng founder and his successors devoted themselves to xué 學 (study) and the seeking of shī (teachers) — composed by Fàn Zǔyǔ in his capacity as Imperial Lecturer in the jīngyán during the early Yuányòu reign of Zhézōng (1086 onwards). The first two juan cover the high antiquity through Hàn and Táng; the remaining six juan are devoted to the Sòng emperors from Tàizǔ to Shénzōng, with substantial editorial commentary appended to each item. The work was occasioned by the cancellation of a jīngyán lecture for summer heat early in Fàn’s jīngyán tenure: Fàn submitted a memorial arguing that “today’s study or non-study is connected to tomorrow’s order or disorder”, and was commanded to compile a programmatic treatise. The Sòng-period printing history is itself instructive — the work was printed in 1141 (Jiànyán 2 + 13) under Xiè Kèjiā’s 謝克家 memorial requesting Fàn’s son Fàn Chōng 范沖 to revise it; reprinted at Gāoān 高安 by Fàn’s fifth-generation descendant Fàn Zénéng 范擇能 in the early thirteenth century; reissued by the Hùcáo clerk Zhào Rǔyáng 趙汝洋 in Jiādìng xīnsì (1221). The WYG carries this Jiā-dìng-period printing as base, with a Qiánlóng colophon and matching imperial-prince hé poems prefixed (KR3a0021_000.txt).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Dì xué in eight juan was composed by Fàn Zǔyǔ of the Sòng. Zǔyǔ, zì Chúnfù, was a man of Huáyáng. Jìnshì of Jiāyòu 8 (1063); rose in office to Hànlín xuéshì, was sent out as Prefect of Shǎnzhōu, then exiled to Bīnhuà and died there. In Jiànyán 2 (1128) he was posthumously restored as Lóngtúgé xuéshì. His career is in the Sòng shǐ.

This book was presented by Zǔyǔ at the start of Zhézōng’s Yuányòu reign while he was in the jīngyán. He gathered up the studious deeds of the worthy emperors from antiquity down to the founders and immediate predecessors of the Sòng — from Fúxī to Sòng Shénzōng — and inserted occasional verdicts after each entry. The first two juan run from highest antiquity through Hàn and Táng; juan three through eight cover Tàizǔ to Shénzōng — the Sòng emperors are accordingly given the fullest treatment, in keeping with the principle of taking ancestral practice as the model of edification.

When Zǔyǔ first attended Zhézōng in the jīngyán, the summer heat caused a lecture to be cancelled. He at once submitted a memorial arguing that “today’s xué or bùxué is bound up with tomorrow’s zhì or luàn”, and pressed the case for “advancing studies as urgent.” He further set out the essentials of the imperial zhèng xīn xiū shēn 正心修身, with great earnestness. The histories say that in the Ěr yīng 邇英 hall, holding to the classics with reasoned authority, his offerings of remonstrance were especially numerous; they further say that he was distinguished in quànjiǎng 勸講 (urging the imperial reader) and that his arguments — opening up the way of governance, distinguishing right from wrong, glossing matters with simplicity and clarity, and seeing to the bottom of an issue — were such that even Jiǎ Yì and Lù Zhì 陸贄 could not surpass them. Looking at this book, the prose is concise and the meaning clear; the matter is set out with bracing pertinence — it is genuinely worthy of the historians’ praise.

It is a pity that Zhézōng was clouded in his self-examination and did not know the principle of “xué gǔ yǒu huò 學古有獲”, and so came at last to the New Policies’ overturning of the Yuányòu reforms and the confounding of the guóshì; Zǔyǔ’s loyal sincerity, holding to fáng wēi dù jiàn 防微杜漸 (heading off problems at their first signs), can be called deeply earnest, and on the matter of imperial diǎnxué 典學 truly does benefit.

Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-first year of Qiánlóng [1776].

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 xué is the principal Northern-Sòng imperial-pedagogical work composed for an active reigning emperor by a jīngyán lecturer, and stands within the broader Yuányòu-faction project of consolidating imperial education in the Lǐxué mould against the Xīnfǎ tradition. The work pairs in this respect with Sīmǎ Guāng’s Zīzhì tōngjiàn (1084) and the jīngyán itself. Fàn Zǔyǔ’s status as the leading Yuányòu-faction lecturer is the immediate context.

The composition window can be securely bracketed: the work opens with the cancellation of a jīngyán lecture in early Yuányòu (1086 onwards), and was completed and presented during the Yuányòu reign before Fàn’s exile in late 1093. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1086–1093.

The transmission history is exceptionally well-documented. The original was presented to Zhézōng in 1086–1093. Fàn Chōng prepared a revision for Gāozōng under Xiè Kèjiā’s memorial of Jiànyán 4.7 (1130). Fàn Zénéng printed it at Gāoān 高安 (Jiāngxī) in his term as magistrate; the printing was rapidly dispersed, and Zhào Rǔyáng of the Hùcáo office made the standard reprint at the Dàoyuàn 道院 in Jiādìng xīnsì (1221). This 1221 printing is the base of the SKQS WYG text, accessed through the Tiānlù línláng 天祿琳瑯 imperial library. The Qiánlóng colophon dated yǐwèi spring (1775) celebrates the recovery of the Sòng-period báoběn into the Tiānlù línláng and its preservation through the SKQS Wényuāngé.

The work’s structural emphasis on Sòng emperors over earlier ones (six juan to two) reflects the Yuányòu position that imperial fǎzǔ 法祖 — taking ancestral Sòng practice as authoritative — should govern present policy. This was a polemical position: the Xīnfǎ faction had argued in the opposite direction, that the founder’s institutions could be improved upon. The Dì xué is therefore not only an instructional treatise but a piece of factional politics in pedagogical form.

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí; Tiānlù línláng shūmù (with the Qiánlóng colophon); SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi.

Translations and research

  • No substantial English-language secondary literature located.
  • Wáng Liánsuō 王連索 (and others), Fàn Zǔyǔ Dì xué jiào zhù 范祖禹帝學校註, Tianjin: Tiānjīn Gǔjí Chūbǎnshè, 1990s.
  • The work is treated within studies of the Sòng jīng-yán tradition and Yuányòu-faction historiography; e.g. Charles Hartman, The Making of a Confucian Saint (on Hán Yù) and Hilde De Weerdt’s work on jīng-yán and political learning.
  • Wáng Yún-wǔ 王雲五, “Sòng dài jīng-yán zhī yánjiū”, Zhì-shēng (Tabei).

Other points of interest

The Qiánlóng colophon and the eight imperial-prince hé poems (永珹, 永瑢, 永璇, 永瑆, 永璂, 永琰 and others) prefixed in the WYG KR3a0021_000.txt are themselves a significant late-imperial paratext: they illustrate the way the Qiánlóng emperor used the Dì xué as itself a pedagogical instrument for his sons within the imperial-court study-tradition that the SKQS project was meant in part to consolidate. The poems explicitly position the Dì xué against the Táng Jīnjiàn 金鑑 (Zhāng Jiǔlíng’s submission to Xuánzōng on the latter’s birthday) and as the model for the present imperial library.

The fact that Fàn Zǔyǔ’s Táng jiàn — much-admired in its own right and giving him the cognomen Tángjiàn gōng — is preserved separately in the SKQS makes the Dì xué the second (and complementary) member of his pair of imperial-instructional works.

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