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袁氏世範

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Text ID
KR3a0040
Date
1163–1180
Dynasty
宋

Yuánshì shì fàn 袁氏世範

The Yuán-Family Code of Conduct by 袁采 (Yuán Cǎi, zì Jūnzài 君載, 宋)

About the work

A three-juan family-school manual composed by Yuán Cǎi while serving as Magistrate of Lèqīng 樂清 — originally titled Xùn sú 訓俗 (“Instructions for the Vulgar Customs”) and renamed Shì fàn 世範 (“Family Standard”) by Yuán’s colleague Liú Zhèn 劉鎮, who composed the preface. Three sections: Mù qīn 睦親 (“Harmonious kinship”), Chǔ jǐ 處己 (“Conduct of self”), Zhì jiā 治家 (“Governance of the household”). The work is in deliberately accessible Chinese — the SKQS tíyào notes that the wording is sometimes “vulgar and shallow” — to function as instructional material for ordinary households. Within the SKQS Rújiā it is the principal Sòng counterpart to Yán Zhītuī’s Yánshì jiā xùn and Sīmǎ Guāng’s Jiā fàn (KR3a0020) — but with a wider intended readership beyond the shìdàfū class. The work has had remarkable subsequent influence in modern East-Asian family-conduct literature: it remains in print and in active use in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese editions.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Yuánshì shì fàn in three juan was composed by Yuán Cǎi of the Sòng. Examining the Qúzhōu fǔzhì: Cǎi, zì Jūnzài, was a man of Xìnān. He passed the jìnshì; thrice held magistracy of large counties, with reputation for purity, clarity, and uprightness; he served to Jiān Dēngwén jiǎnyuàn. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí says Cǎi once held magistracy of Lèqīng and edited a county gazetteer in ten juan. Wáng Qǐ’s Xù wén xiàn tōng kǎo further says he wrote, in the Zhènghé period, a Zhènghé zá zhì and a Xiànlìng xiǎolù — both no longer extant.

This compilation was made during his Lèqīng tenure. It is divided into Mù qīn, Chǔ jǐ, and Zhì jiā in three sections, originally titled Xùn sú. Fǔ pàn Liú Zhèn made the preface, and only then was it renamed Shì fàn. The book on the way of lìshēn and chǔshì is repeatedly thorough; on grinding away vulgar custom it is exceptionally serious. Although a family-school xùnméng book, with the intent to communicate broadly and the wording sometimes vulgar and shallow, the main bearing is clear and pertinent, easy for the reader to know and follow — not unworthy as a successor to Yánshì Jiā xùn.

In the Míng, Chén Jìrú 陳繼儒 once printed it in his Mìjí 秘笈; the wording was very corrupt. We have collated against the Sòng-recension preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, supplied missing matter and corrected errors, and following the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo fix the work in three juan.

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅.

Abstract

The Yuánshì shì fàn is a uniquely accessible Sòng family-conduct manual, composed for popular reach beyond the shìdàfū class. The composition window is bracketed by Yuán Cǎi’s Lèqīng magistracy. The catalog meta dates the work to 1163; the more conventional dating in Chinese scholarship is Chúnxī 5 (1178), based on Liú Zhèn’s preface. The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1163–1180.

The substantive position is moderately Lǐxué-aligned but practically oriented — the work emphasises specific jiāshì situations (kinship disputes, household economy, hiring and firing of servants, education of sons, treatment of daughters and concubines, financial planning) more than abstract ethical principle. It is consequently the major late-Sòng source for the daily practice of household management at the magistrate-class level.

The textual transmission is well-documented: a Sòng zhuó preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, against which the SKQS editors collated the corrupt Chén Jìrú Míng printing. The Wénxiàn tōngkǎo records the work in three juan; this matches the SKQS-base.

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi. Modern critical edition: Hè Cìjūn 賀次君, Yuánshì shì fàn jiào zhù 袁氏世範校註.

Translations and research

  • Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Family and Property in Sung China: Yüan Ts’ai’s “Precepts for Social Life”, Princeton University Press, 1984. The standard complete English translation, with extensive critical apparatus.
  • Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period, University of California Press, 1993 — major use of Yuán Cǎi.
  • Hè Cì-jūn 賀次君, Yuán-shì shì fàn jiào zhù 袁氏世範校註, Tianjin: Tiānjīn Gǔjí Chūbǎnshè, 1990s.
  • Bettine Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960–1368), Cambridge University Press, 2002 — uses Yuán-shì shì fàn extensively.
  • Dieter Kuhn, The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China, Belknap, 2009 — uses the work as primary source.

Other points of interest

The Yuánshì shì fàn is one of the few Sòng Rújiā texts to find substantive modern East-Asian use — current editions in mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam circulate as practical-ethical reading rather than as historical artefact. Its accessibility — the SKQS tíyào’s “vulgar and shallow” wording — is precisely the feature that has secured its modern preservation.

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