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童蒙訓

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Text ID
KR3a0037
Date
1110–1136
Dynasty
宋

Tóngméng xùn 童蒙訓

Instructions for the Young by 呂本中 (Lǚ Běnzhōng, zì Jūrén 居仁, 1084–1145, 宋)

About the work

A three-juan family-school instruction manual composed by Lǚ Běnzhōng for the use of his own household pupils, drawing on his lineage memory of Yuán-yòu-faction and pre-Xīnfǎ classical and political mores. The work is a yǔlù-style collection of zhèng lùn and gé yán (proper discourses and gnomic wisdom), grounded in classical training and applied to the practice of lìshēn (self-establishment) and cóngzhèng (officeholding). The SKQS tíyào notes that the work is also a unique source for the lives of several Yuányòu figures — Shēn Yán 申顏, Lǐ Qián 李潛, Tián Yú 田腴, Zhāng Qí 張琪, Hóu Wúkě 侯無可 — whose biographies have largely been lost from the standard histories. The work as transmitted in the Sòng existed in a longer form including poetic criticism (the SūHuáng poetic tradition) attested by the Zhūzǐ yǔlù but not preserved in the SKQS-base text; He Chuō 何焯’s later colophon argues the SKQS-base is an excerpt of the yǔlù-portion alone, with the shīhuà portion separately preserved (perhaps as the Zǐwēi shīhuà).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Tóngméng xùn in three juan was composed by Lǚ Běnzhōng of the Sòng. Běnzhōng’s Chūnqiū jíjiě has been catalogued elsewhere. This book is the family-school instruction manual. Běnzhōng was of an old Northern-Sòng house and personally encountered the elder figures of the Yuányòu generation; teachers and friends in transmission, the lineage is fully documented. So what he records is mostly zhènglùn and géyán, generally founded on classical instruction, focused on the practical use in lìshēn and cóngzhèng — deeply beneficial.

In the middle, figures such as Shēn Yán, Lǐ Qián, Tián Yú, Zhāng Qí, Hóu Wúkě and others — most of whom have lost their record in the histories — can still be glimpsed in outline through this work; not merely a manual for childhood instruction.

Examining Zhūzǐ’s letter to Lǚ Zǔqiān, a passage cites the shèrén wén [Lǚ Běnzhōng’s writings] Tóngméng xùn exhaustively arguing shīwén must take Sū and Huáng [Shì and Tíngjiān] as the model — but the present text contains nothing of the kind. Other works’ citations of poetic-criticism passages from this Tóngméng xùn likewise are not in the present book. Hé Chuō’s colophon suspected that the present text is only a selected-essentials excerpt and not the original. But editorial trimming should be the simplification of the essence and the cutting away of branches; one would not preserve everything in the yǔlù mode and discard everything in the shīhuà mode altogether. Pressing the matter further, presumably at the time it was issued in two volumes — yǔlù portion in one, poetic-criticism portion in another — perhaps an nèipiān / wàipiān division. Those who transmitted the book valued xíngyì over cíhuá and printed only the half — also possible.

The work was first printed at Chángshā by Lóngxī, with many errors. In Jiādìng yǐhài 乙亥 (1215), Wùzhōu Prefect Qiū Shòujùn 邱壽雋 collated and reprinted it, with a postface by Lóu Fǎng 樓昉. Later, in Sháodìng jǐchǒu 己丑 (1229), Méishān Lǐ — character missing — Prefect, obtained a copy from Tíxíng Lǚ Zǔliè and again printed it on Yùshāntáng wood. The transmitted text now is the Míng reprint following the Sòng qiàn, with the layout and characters all preserved as the original — the best edition. We follow it.

[Tíyào continues; abbreviated.]

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth 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.

Abstract

The Tóngméng xùn is the principal Northern–Southern Sòng transition family-school instructional work, composed by a major Yuán-yòu-faction-derived lineage classicist for his own household. The composition window is bracketed by Lǚ Běnzhōng’s working life — most likely his middle years (1110s–early 1140s); the latest internal date in transmitted material is around the 1130s–early 1140s. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1110–1136 (catalog meta gives “date: 1136” for a presentation date); the work’s preservation owes to Lǚ Zǔliè’s later editorial recovery and the Jiādìng / Sháodìng printings.

The work is in two distinct modes: (i) yǔlù-style ethical-political zhènglùn and géyán (the nèipiān — preserved in the SKQS-base); (ii) shīhuà-style poetic criticism on SūHuáng (the wàipiān — not preserved in the SKQS-base, attested only via Zhū Xī’s quotation). The lost wàipiān is one of the more substantial pre-Yán-Yǔ Northern-Sòng literary-critical pieces.

The unique substantive content — the prosopography of obscure Yuányòu Confucians (Shēn Yán, Lǐ Qián, Tián Yú, Zhāng Qí, Hóu Wúkě and others) — gives the work standing value beyond its instructional function.

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi. The Sòng printing-history (Chángshā Lóngxī first; Wùzhōu Qiū Shòujùn 1215; Méishān Lǐmǒu and Yùshāntáng 1229) is unusually well-documented through the SKQS tíyào’s account.

Translations and research

  • No substantial English-language secondary literature located specific to this Tóng-méng xùn (a different Tóng-méng xùn by Wáng Yìng-lín — also catalogued — is also studied in Western languages).
  • The work is treated within studies of the Lǚ family scholarship and within studies of Sòng family-school education.
  • Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters (1993), uses the work for Sòng family practice; Charles Hartman, The Making of a Confucian Saint — context.

Other points of interest

The Lǚ-family lineage from Lǚ Yīhào (962–1042) through Lǚ Gōngzhuó (1018–1089) to Lǚ Běnzhōng to Lǚ Zǔqiān is one of the most prominent Northern-Sòng shìdàfū lineages, paralleled in the related Sū family of Sū Shùnqīn / Sū Shì lineage. The Tóngméng xùn’s preservation of internal lineage memory makes it a unique source for that shìdàfū milieu.

The dual-mode (yǔlù + shīhuà) compositional design, with one mode preserved and the other lost, is methodologically interesting for the study of Sòng intellectual book-history: the Lǐxué-loyal Sòng readership preserved the yǔlù portion, while the shīhuà portion (more useful to literary readers) was lost.

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