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儒志編

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Text ID
KR3a0022
Date
1055–1068
Dynasty
宋

Rú zhì biān 儒志編

The Rú-Zhì Compilation by 王開祖 (Wáng Kāizǔ, zì Jǐngshān 景山, ca. 1035–1068, 宋)

About the work

A one-juan posthumous compilation of Wáng Kāizǔ’s lecture-discussions, gathered and printed by Wáng Xún 王循 (1466–1525, jìnshì of Hóngzhì bǐngchén 1496) during his term as Prefect of Yǒngjiā in the Míng Hóngzhì–Zhèngdé era. Wáng Kāizǔ taught at Dōngshān 東山 in Wēnzhōu after his Huángyòu 5 (1053) jìnshì until his early death; the lectures were dispersed and only partly preserved. The SKQS editors’ verdict: in the early Northern Sòng, before the rise of the LiánLuò tradition (Zhōu Dūnyí 周敦頤 and the Chéng brothers), each jiǎngxué lecturer worked from his own materials, and even a man as eminent as Sīmǎ Guāng could write the Yí Mèngzǐ against the Mencian tradition; Wáng Kāizǔ’s standing fast for the sage’s Way without yielding to the anti-Mencian current makes him “indeed a man of resolute spirit” — placed in the SKQS as the chronological head of the pre-Lǐxué Sòng Rújiā.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Rú zhì biān in one juan was composed by Wáng Kāizǔ of the Sòng. Kāizǔ, zì Jǐngshān, was a man of Yǒngjiā. Jìnshì of Huángyòu 5 (1053); appointed Mìshūshěng jiàoshūláng in trial (試), with assignment as Adjutant of Lìshuǐ in Chǔzhōu. He soon withdrew to settle at Dōngshān, set up a school, and gathered students; those who came regularly numbered in the hundreds. The students venerated him as Rúzhì xiānsheng 儒志先生. He died at thirty-two; the Sòng shǐ gives him no biography, and most of his writings have likewise been lost from the transmission. This compilation is the language of his career-long lecturing; in his term as Prefect of Yǒngjiā in the Míng, Wáng Xún sought out the bequeathed and lost pieces and edited them up for circulation.

Kāizǔ stood at a moment, in Sòng Rénzōng’s reign, before the rise of the LiánLuò discourse, when those who lectured each composed his own teaching at home. Even a worthy as eminent as Sīmǎ Guāng could compose a Yí Mèngzǐ (questioning the Mencian); and Kāizǔ alone stood up firmly to make the explication of the sage’s Way his life’s work. While his propositions are not always entirely apt, the explication of moral principle without confusion of by-paths gives him the title of a man of resolute spirit. Wáng Xún’s zì was Jìnzhī 進之, a man of Xiūníng 休寧, jìnshì of Hóngzhì bǐngchén (1496); his collection is the Rénfēng jí 仁峯集. His sober conduct and devotion to learning are also worthy of mention.

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 Rú zhì biān is a useful pre-Lǐxué Northern Sòng witness, both for its substantive position — a defence of the Mencian shèngdào tradition while a contemporary like Sīmǎ Guāng was writing the Yí Mèngzǐ against it — and as a forerunner of the Yǒngjiā xuépài 永嘉學派 that would emerge a century later under Xuē Jìxuān 薛季宣, Chén Fùliáng 陳傅良, and Yè Shì 葉適. The work’s preservation is essentially the achievement of the late-Míng prefect Wáng Xún (1466–1525), who in his Yǒngjiā term collected the surviving pieces of Wáng Kāizǔ’s lectures and printed them.

The composition window is the lecture-period of Wáng Kāizǔ at Dōngshān, after his jìnshì of 1053 and before his death at thirty-two — bracketed in the frontmatter to ca. 1055–1068. The Wáng Xún editorial labour of the late Míng (ca. 1496–1520) is the terminus ad quem for the surviving form.

The textual problems are accordingly significant: this is an early-Sòng work surviving only via a Míng compilation from scattered fragments, whose original chapter-divisions and full extent are no longer recoverable. The single juan as transmitted is the Wáng Xún editorial product, not the original lecture corpus.

The bibliographic record: not in Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo (no entry); Wényuāngé shūmù (in the SKQS); SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi. The work was effectively unknown between Wáng Kāizǔ’s death and Wáng Xún’s recovery.

Translations and research

  • No substantial secondary literature located in Western languages.
  • The Wāng Kāizǔ corpus is treated within Wēn-zhōu local-history scholarship and within histories of the Yǒng-jiā xué-pài; standard references include Yáng Xì 楊熙, Yǒng-jiā xué-pài kǎolùn 永嘉學派考論 (1990s).

Other points of interest

The work is an unusual case in pre-modern Chinese book-history: a piece of substantive Northern Sòng Rújiā discourse that survives only through Míng-period editorial recovery, with no direct Sòng or Yuán transmission. The Wáng Xún recovery process — early Míng prefects of Sòng-tradition centres recovering lost local-Confucian materials — is broadly analogous to the contemporaneous Míng recoveries of Lìxué materials at Yuèlù 嶽麓 and Báilù 白鹿 academies.

The Wáng Kāizǔ pre-Lǐxué defence of the Mencian against Sīmǎ Guāng’s Yí Mèngzǐ is one of the small number of pre-Zhū-Xī Northern-Sòng Mèngzǐ defenses on record, and is sometimes cited in studies of the canonisation of the Mèngzǐ into the Sìshū.

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