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張子全書

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Text ID
KR3a0026
Date
1058–1077
Dynasty
宋

Zhāngzǐ quánshū 張子全書

The Master Zhāng — Complete Works by 張載 (Zhāng Zǎi, zì Zǐhòu 子厚, hào Héngqú xiānsheng 橫渠先生, 1020–1077, 宋)

(Note: the catalog meta gives the author’s name as 張戴, which is a typographical slip for 張載 — the cosmological qì-metaphysics figure of the Northern Sòng daoxué tradition. The character 戴 (dài, “to bear on the head”) and 載 (zǎi, “to bear, carry, year”) differ in radical and pronunciation; the slip is silent in the catalog and is corrected in the wikilink target. Both forms appear in the alternate-names list of the 張載 note for discoverability.)

About the work

A fourteen-juan integrated edition of Zhāng Zǎi’s surviving writings, structured (in the SKQS-base recension): Xī míng 西銘 (1 juan), Zhèng méng 正蒙 (2 juan), Jīngxué lǐkū 經學理窟 (5 juan), Yì shuō 易說 (3 juan), Yǔlù chāo 語錄抄 (1 juan), Wénjí chāo 文集抄 (1 juan), Shíyí 拾遺 (1 juan), and an appendix (1 juan) gathering SòngYuánMíng commentary on Zhāng Zǎi and his xíngzhuàng. The compiler is unnamed in the SKQS-base; the work as transmitted is unmistakably a post-Yuán selection rather than a recovery of the complete works (the yǔlù and wénjí are explicitly chāo “selections” rather than full versions). The Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì records Yì shuō in 3 juan, Zhèng méng in 10 juan, Jīngxué lǐkū in 10 juan, Wénjí in 10 juan; only the Yì shuō and Xī míng (originally a Zhèng méng 篇 separately transmitted) match the present text in juan-count. The Wú Chéng 吳澄 / Yú Jí 虞集 collation noted in the tíyào — opening with Dōng míng and Xī míng, with the Zhèng méng following — is no longer extant.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Zhāngzǐ quánshū in fourteen juan was composed by Zhāng Zǎi of the Sòng. Zǎi, zì Zǐhòu. Examining the works of Zǎi in the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì — Yì shuō in three juan, Zhèng méng in ten juan, Jīngxué lǐkū in ten juan, Wénjí in ten juan. Yú Jí’s Wú Chéng xíngzhuàng records that Wú Chéng once edited the writings of Zhāngzǐ, putting the Dōng and Xī inscriptions at the head and the Zhèng méng next; the present text has no such recension.

By whom this text was edited is unknown. Titled quánshū yet containing only Xī míng in one juan, Zhèng méng in two, Jīngxué lǐkū in five, Yì shuō in three, Yǔlù chāo in one, Wénjí chāo in one, plus Shíyí in one and an appendix gathering the SòngYuán Confucians’ discussions and xíngzhuàng in one — fifteen juan in all. Beyond the Yì shuō and Xī míng, the juan-counts do not match the Sòng zhì. The Yǔlù and Wénjí are both labelled chāo — clearly not the complete versions. So this is the later selection-recension named “complete works”, which is somewhat off the mark. But the Míng Xú Shídá 徐時逹’s printing was already this recension. Lǚ Nán 呂柟 in the Jiājìng era composed his Zhāngzǐ chāoshì 張子抄釋 (KR3a0090) and stated: “the Wénjí no longer has a complete copy; only two juan are extant.” In Kāngxī jǐhài (1719), Zhū Shì 朱軾, Director of Education in Shǎnxī, said he had obtained an old draft from the family of the descendant Wǔjīng bóshì Shéngwǔ 繩武 and reprinted it; checking its juan-sequence and chapter titles, it is exactly this text. So this recension’s transmission is now of long standing.

Zhāngzǐ’s learning made shēnsī zìdé 深思自得 (deep reflection and self-finding) its master, and was not in the first place to be measured by abundance of writing. What is recorded in this work, though not many juan, is taken and rejected with care, and the deep arguments and subtle words of Héngqú — their essence has been pretty well gathered.

Respectfully revised and submitted, eighth 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 Zhāngzǐ quánshū in its received SKQS-base form is a late-Míng / early-Qīng selective integration of Zhāng Zǎi’s surviving writings — not a true quánshū but a jīngxuǎn anthology that the Qīng-period editor (per Zhū Shì’s account) understood himself to be reconstructing, against an already substantial YuánMíng loss of the original wénjí and yǔlù. The Wú Chéng (1249–1333) collation noted in the tíyào, opening with Dōng míng / Xī míng and putting the Zhèng méng next, is the principal lost editorial layer; whether the SKQS-base text has any genealogical relation to it is unclear.

The composition window is the working life of Zhāng Zǎi himself. The Yì shuō is dated to early Jiāyòu (post-1057 jìnshì); the Zhèng méng is the master-work of his Héngqú years (1070s); the Jīngxué lǐkū lectures span much of his career; the Wénjí and Yǔlù are continuous over his working life. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1058–1077, the period of his post-jìnshì compositional activity through to his death.

The principal substantive components of the work, in order of intellectual weight: (i) the Zhèng méng 正蒙 — the master-work of Zhāng’s qì metaphysics, in seventeen 篇, of which the closing Qián chēng 篇 contains the Xī míng and Dōng míng; (ii) the Xī míng — the cosmological-ethical yī tǐ manifesto, separately transmitted from the Northern Sòng under Yáng Shí’s transmission and Zhū Xī’s gloss, here positioned as juan 1; (iii) the Jīngxué lǐkū — Zhāng’s lecture-notes on the Shī, Shū, Lǐ, Yì and the institutional system of the early sage-kings; (iv) the Yì shuō — Zhāng’s Yì commentary, partially recovered (parts also surviving as the separately catalogued Héngqú Yì shuō KR1a0014); (v) the Yǔlù chāo — selections from his recorded oral teaching, including the famous sì wèi (sìjù).

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì (separate components in differing juan-counts); Wényuāngé shūmù; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi. The companion Zhāngzǐ yǔlù (KR3a0027) is the SBCK-only separate transmission of the yǔlù materials.

Translations and research

  • Ira E. Kasoff, The Thought of Chang Tsai, Cambridge University Press, 1984. The standard English-language critical study; treats the Zhèng méng in detail.
  • Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 1963, 495–517 — translation of Xī míng, selections from Zhèng méng, and the sì-jù.
  • Tu Wei-ming, Centrality and Commonality (1989) — extended treatment of the Xī míng doctrine.
  • Brook Ziporyn, Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents, SUNY Press, 2013 — major use of Zhāng Zǎi’s qì metaphysics.
  • Hāng Sōng 韓鬆 (and others), Zhāng Zǎi jí 張載集, Běijīng: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1978; revised 2006. The standard modern Chinese critical edition, integrating SKQS-base, SBCK, and Yǒng-lè dàdiǎn fragments.
  • Zhāng Yǐng-jiě 張英傑, Zhāng Zǎi sī-xiǎng yánjiū 張載思想研究.
  • Robin Wang and Ding Weixiang, “Zhang Zai’s Theory of Vital Energy”, in J. Makeham (ed.), Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy, Springer, 2010.

Other points of interest

The Zhèng méng 正蒙 is the master-work and the principal source for Zhāng’s qì doctrine, with the famous opening “Tàihé 太和 — what is called the dào; the harmony in dispersed and integrating, the contractive and expansive, gives birth and sustains, and so the myriad things have their forms.” The Xī míng — formally a single short zhāng of Zhèng méng — became the most cited single passage of Northern Sòng daoxué and is canonical in Zhū Xī’s Jìnsī lù (KR3a0042).

The sìjù — wèi tiāndì lì xīn / wèi shēngmín lì mìng / wèi wǎngshèng jì juéxué / wèi wànshì kāi tàipíng — preserved in the Yǔlù chāo of this volume, is one of the most quoted Confucian programmatic statements in the millennium of SòngMíng tradition, frequently cited by Qīng Lǐxué and modern Chinese intellectual revivals.

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