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延平答問

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Text ID
KR3a0041
Date
1153–1163
Dynasty
宋

Yánpíng dá wèn 延平答問

Master Yán-píng’s Replies to Questions edited by 朱熹 (Zhū Xī, 1130–1200, 宋)

About the work

A one-juan compilation by Zhū Xī of his correspondence and recorded conversations with his teacher Lǐ Tóng 李侗 (zì Yuánzhōng 愿中, hào Yánpíng xiānsheng 延平先生, 1093–1163), with an appended one-juan supplement gathered by Zhū Xī’s disciples after Zhū’s death (containing Zhū’s later remarks on Lǐ Tóng plus jìwén 祭文 and xíngzhuàng 行狀). Lǐ Tóng’s intellectual lineage runs back through Luó Cóngyàn 羅從彥 to Yáng Shí 楊時 to the Chéng brothers — making him the proximate ancestor in the Mǐnxué line of the Chéng-school transmission, and Zhū Xī’s link to the Northern-Sòng daoxué tradition. Zhū Xī first met Lǐ Tóng in Shàoxīng 23 (1153, age 24) when departing for his Tóngān 同安 magistracy; met him again at the end of the Tóngān post in 1160; and Lǐ Tóng died in 1163, having had the rare distinction of being one of the few teachers Zhū Xī acknowledged. The actual face-to-face contact was therefore brief — at most several months total — and most of the correspondence was conducted by letter. Within the SKQS Rújiā this work is the principal documentation of Zhū Xī’s Mǐnxué genealogy.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Yánpíng dá wèn in one juan with one juan of appendix was composed by Zhūzǐ of the Sòng. The Chéngzǐ’s learning was transmitted once to Yáng Shí, again to Luó Cóngyàn, and yet again to Lǐ Tóng. Tóng, zì Yuánzhōng, Yánpíng his place of residence. Tóng was Zhūzǐ’s father’s friend; in Shàoxīng 23 (1153), when Zhūzǐ was 24 years old, on departing to take up the Tóngān Subprefect post, he went to see Tóng at Yánpíng and only then began to study with him.

In Shàoxīng 30 (1160), as the Tóngān office concluded, he again saw Tóng — staying only a little over a month. After another four years passed, Tóng died. Counting front and back together, the meetings were no more than a few months; so the letters going back and forth — questions and answers — make up the larger share. Later Zhūzǐ collected and recorded them, and added two items of correspondence with Liú Píngfǔ 劉平甫 to compose this book.

Zhūzǐ’s disciples then took Zhūzǐ’s previous discussions of Yánpíng, along with the jì wén and xíngzhuàng, and made them a separate appendix juan, titled Fùlù, evidently noting that they were not in Zhūzǐ’s original. Later still Tóng’s descendant Bǎochū 葆初 separately collected Tóng’s poetry and prose and added them in another juan, retitling the whole Yánpíng wénjí and labelling it as edited throughout by Zhūzǐ — quite missing the original form. We now retain the original recension; Bǎochū’s interpolated copy we have catalogued separately under Jíbù.

Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth 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 Yánpíng dá wèn is the principal documentation of the immediate teacher–student relationship that links Zhū Xī to the Chéng-school tradition through the southern Mǐnxué line (Yáng Shí → Luó Cóngyàn → Lǐ Tóng → Zhū Xī). The composition window is the period of correspondence between Zhū Xī and Lǐ Tóng, ca. 1153 (their first meeting) to 1163 (Lǐ Tóng’s death). The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1153–1163.

The substantive content includes the discussions of jìng zhōng tǐ rèn 靜中體認 (introspective examination in stillness) — Lǐ Tóng’s distinctive methodological emphasis — that Zhū Xī later modified into his own integrated jū jìng 居敬 / qióng lǐ 窮理 framework. The work is the closest available record of the teaching that shaped the early Zhū Xī’s intellectual formation, before his decisive turn in the Wēifā / yǐfā 未發已發 debate of the late 1160s.

The textual situation is straightforward: the original Zhū Xī compilation in 1 juan + later one-juan disciple-appendix is preserved cleanly; the Bǎo-chū-period (Yuán?) expanded recension as Yánpíng wénjí is recorded separately in the SKQS Jíbù, distinguishing it from the original Rújiā placement. The work is shorter than other major yǔlù preservations within the Northern–Southern Sòng daoxué tradition because of the limited face-to-face contact between teacher and student.

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi (and Jíbù for the Bǎochū Yánpíng wénjí).

Translations and research

  • Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy, University of Hawai’i Press, 1992 — uses the Yán-píng dá wèn extensively for the early Zhū Xī.
  • Tian Hao [Hoyt Cleveland Tillman], Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch’en Liang’s Challenge to Chu Hsi, Harvard University Press, 1982 — context.
  • Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: New Studies, University of Hawai’i Press, 1989 — major treatment of Lǐ Tóng’s role in shaping the early Zhū.
  • Yú Yīngshí, Zhū Xī de lìshǐ shìjiè (2003) — context.
  • Kenji Shimada, Shu Shi to Wō Yōmei 朱熹と王陽明 — Lǐ Tóng background.

Other points of interest

Lǐ Tóng’s role as Zhū Xī’s teacher is the principal point of Lǐxué-genealogical entry from the Chéng-school transmission down into the Mǐnxué mainstream of the Southern Sòng — a position that the SòngYuán xué àn and the SKQS tíyào both treat as canonically established. The brevity of the actual contact (several months total) makes the Yánpíng dá wèn a particularly important documentary record relative to the volume of the contact.

The Lǐ Tóng jìng zhōng tǐ rèn method — sustained introspective examination in stillness — was decisively rejected by the mature Zhū Xī (in his Wēifā / yǐfā turn of 1169) but is preserved here as a documentary record of his earlier formation.

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