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雜學辨

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Text ID
KR3a0045
Date
1166–1175
Dynasty
宋

Zá xué biàn 雜學辨

Disputations against Mixed Learning by 朱熹 (Zhū Xī, 1130–1200, 宋)

About the work

A one-juan polemical work by Zhū Xī, with an attached one-juan Jì yí 記疑, attacking what Zhū diagnosed as Buddhist and Daoist contamination in the writings of four major contemporaries: Sū Shì 蘇軾’s Yì zhuàn 易傳 (19 items), Sū Zhé 蘇轍’s Lǎozǐ jiě 老子解 (14 items), Zhāng Jiǔchéng 張九成’s Zhōng yōng jiě 中庸解 (52 items), and Lǚ Xīzhé 呂希哲’s Dà xué jiě 大學解 (4 items). The body of the work was completed in Qiándào bǐngxū (1166), when Zhū was thirty-seven and supervising the Yuèmiào shrine while resident at home; the colophon is by Hé Hào 何鎬 (Hé Duì 何兌’s son), zì Jīngshū 京叔. The attached Jì yí — composed in Chúnxī 2 bǐngshēn (1175), ten years later, while Zhū was at Wùyuán — comprises 20 items diagnosing Buddhist contamination in disciple-records of the Chéng brothers. Together the two pieces are Zhū Xī’s most sustained early polemic against the Buddhist-Daoist heterodoxy he saw threatening the Confucian classical tradition; they are foundational to his later anti-heterodox polemic in the Jìnsī lù (chapter 13, Biàn yì duān) and elsewhere.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Zá xué biàn in one juan with one juan of Jì yí attached was composed by Zhūzǐ of the Sòng. Composed to attack the contemporary Confucians’ mixing-in of Buddhism and Daoism. Comprising: nineteen items from Sū Shì’s Yì zhuàn; fourteen items from Sū Zhé’s Lǎozǐ jiě; fifty-two items from Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s Zhōng yōng jiě; four items from Lǚ Xīzhé’s Dà xué jiě — all extract the original passage and place his refutation beneath. At the close is Hé Hào’s colophon dated Qiándào bǐngxū (1166) — Hào, zì Jīngshū 京叔, was Hé Duì’s son. Bǐngxū is Qiándào 2; Zhūzǐ at thirty-seven was supervising the Yuèmiào and resident at home.

The Jì yí in one juan has Zhūzǐ’s preface saying: “I happened to obtain a miscellaneous-writings volume; do not know who recorded it; afraid that with long transmission it might bring discredit on the master’s school.” This is the disciples of the Chéngzǐ recording the master’s words and bringing in their own meaning, thereby flowing into the Two-Schools [Buddhism and Daoism]. He extracts and disputes them — twenty items in all. The book was composed in the third month of Chúnxī 2 bǐngshēn (1175), when Zhūzǐ was at Wùyuán — ten years after the original Zá xué biàn. Later hands appended it to the Zá xué biàn by category. We here follow the old recension in copying.

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. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Zá xué biàn is the major early polemical work of Zhū Xī, datable precisely to Qiándào 2 (1166) — Zhū at age 37, in the period of intellectual consolidation following his teacher Lǐ Tóng’s death (1163) and preceding the Wèifā / yǐfā turn of 1169. The four targets — Sū Shì, Sū Zhé, Zhāng Jiǔchéng, Lǚ Xīzhé — represent the four principal late-Northern-Sòng / early-Southern-Sòng jīngyán trends Zhū saw as Buddhist-Daoist-contaminated: the SūShǔ literary-classical tradition (the two Sū’s), the Zhōng yōng heterodox reading (Zhāng Jiǔchéng, often paired with Wáng Xiàng 王相), and the Dà xué Buddhist-tinged reading (Lǚ Xīzhé). The attached Jì yí of 1175 extends the diagnosis to the Chéng-school yǔlù-tradition itself.

The composition window for the work as a whole runs from 1166 (the body) to 1175 (the Jì yí). The frontmatter brackets the work to ca. 1166–1175.

The work’s significance for Zhū’s intellectual development is twofold: (i) it documents the Lǐxué defensive position that consolidates after Zhū’s Wèifā / yǐfā turn; (ii) it provides the Lǐxué mainstream’s systematic objections to four major rival classical-political traditions, with quotation-and-refutation specificity. The Zhāng Jiǔchéng Zhōng yōng jiě polemic — fifty-two items — is the longest and most substantial.

The bibliographic record: Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi. The work is preserved alongside Zhū Xī’s collected works (Huìān jí) and is closely related to the Jìnsī lù’s chapter 13.

Translations and research

  • Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (1992) — major treatment of Zhū’s anti-Sū-Shǔ polemic.
  • Conrad Schirokauer (and others) on Zhū Xī’s relations with the major Sòng classical-political schools.
  • Yú Yīngshí, Zhū Xī de lìshǐ shìjiè (2003) — full intellectual-biographical context.
  • Stephen Owen, The End of the Chinese ‘Middle Ages’: Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture, 1996 — Sū-Shǔ background.

Other points of interest

The Zhāng Jiǔchéng 張九成 Zhōng yōng jiě attack — fifty-two items, half the Zá xué biàn — became the foundational document for the SòngYuánMíng Lǐxué mainstream’s diagnostic against the xīnxué-tinged Zhōng yōng reading. Modern scholarship (e.g. Yú Yīngshí) has revisited some of Zhū’s specific charges; in many cases Zhū’s polemical reading of his targets is sharper than the targets’ own text strictly warrants.

The fact of preserving and printing the Jì yí — Zhū’s diagnosis of Buddhist contamination in the Chéng-school yǔlù itself — alongside the more conventional anti-rival-school Zá xué biàn shows the comprehensiveness of Zhū’s mid-career anti-heterodox polemical project: even the master-school’s own yǔlù tradition was not exempt from textual scrutiny.

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