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邇言

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Text ID
KR3a0055
Date
1200–1204
Dynasty
宋

Ěr yán 邇言

Words at Hand by 劉炎 (Liú Yán, zì Zǐxuān 子宣, 宋)

About the work

A twelve-juan / twelve-zhāng Southern Sòng yǔlù-style work by Liú Yán, divided thematically: Chéng xìng 成性, Cún xīn 存心, Lì zhì 立志, Jiàn xíng 踐行, Tiān dào 天道, Rén dào 人道, Jūn chén 君臣, Jīn xī 今昔, Jīng jí 經籍, Xí sú 習俗, Zhì jiàn 志見. Composition window: Liú’s self-preface is dated Jiātài 4 (1204); the work was likely under composition for some years preceding. The frontmatter brackets to ca. 1200–1204. The work is methodologically distinguished, in the SKQS tíyào’s judgment, by Liú’s willingness to make balanced judgments avoiding ménhù (factional) extremes — particularly his observation that the jǐngtián / fēngjiàn systems’ decline was a long process not reducible to single causes, that dǎnggù victims sometimes brought their fate on themselves, and that Chéng-school students themselves are not exempt from inheriting their masters’ partial views. The SKQS-base text is the Jiājìng jǐchǒu (1529) printing by the Guāngzé Wáng (the Míng prince of Guāngzé), based on a manuscript Wáng obtained from Fāng Sīdào 方思道.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Ěr yán in twelve juan was composed by Liú Yán of the Sòng. Yán, zì Zǐxuān, was a man of Sōngyáng. The book is divided into twelve zhāng: Chéng xìng, Cún xīn, Lì zhì, Jiàn xíng, Tiān dào, Rén dào, Jūn chén, Jīn xī, Jīng jí, Xí sú, Zhì jiàn. His positions are pure and grounded, close to human feeling and pertinent to the principles of affairs, with no impractical or pedantic propositions, no straining-after-height excesses.

For example: “The jǐngtián and fēngjiàn did not arrive in a single day; their decay also did not happen in a single morning. One ought not to be obstinate about their forms; if one preserves their intent, one can still govern.”

Or: “Asked about the upright men of jiéyì, why suffered the dǎnggù? — Reply: They brought it upon themselves. The gentleman, with a hundred rights, will yet have one wrong; the small man, with a hundred wrongs, will yet have one right. The shì of the realm at the time were not few; how must all who climbed the dragon-boat be worthy and all not chosen be unworthy? They published one another’s reputations and so set up the targets that brought them down — what one does to oneself, who can do further?”

Or: “Asked: those who learn the way of the sages and worthies — does their stream also have biases? — I have heard from Master Zhēn [Déxiù]: those who learn and arrive — how can they be biased? Those who learn and do not arrive — even Confucius and Mencius’s disciples cannot be without bias. If one can trace back to the source, the stream returns to the upright; if not, a hairsbreadth’s deviation drifts ever further. This serves as a warning to those students of the Two Chéngzǐ who do not arrive.”

Such positions — what other Confucians know in their hearts but do not put on their tongues, Yán uniquely puts to writing — call him bright and frank, without a hair of factional bias. The present text is the Jiājìng jǐchǒu (1529) printing by the Guāngzé Wáng — checking the Míng shǐ Zhūwáng biǎo, the Guāngzé Róngduānwáng Chǒngrǎng 寵瀼 succeeded in late Chénghuà; the prefacing Méinán shēng preface says he obtained the manuscript from Tánglíng Fāng Sīdào — Méinán shēng being Chǒngrǎng’s bié hào. There is also Yán’s self-preface dated Jiātài jiǎzǐ (1204).

[Tíyào continues; abbreviated.]

Respectfully revised and submitted, [date].

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

Abstract

The Ěr yán is a comparatively obscure but methodologically distinguished Southern Sòng Lǐxué-aligned yǔlù-style work. The composition window is precisely datable to Jiātài 4 (1204) by the self-preface, with composition presumably running from the late Qìngyuán era after 1196. The frontmatter brackets to ca. 1200–1204.

The substantive position — independent and balanced, willing to make polemically uncomfortable judgments (the dǎnggù victims’ partial responsibility, the Chéng-school disciples’ inherited biases) — places Liú Yán among the most notable independent voices of the late-twelfth- / early-thirteenth-century Lǐxué generation. The endorsement of Zhēn Déxiù 真德秀’s position on liú (lineage of error) — preserved in this work — gives a useful chronological marker (Zhēn Déxiù 1178–1235).

The textual transmission has a lacuna: the work was little known after the Sòng, recovered in the early Míng by Fāng Sīdào, printed in 1529 by the Guāngzé Wáng, then preserved in the SKQS WYG.

The bibliographic record: not in Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì; Wényuāngé shūmù; SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi.

Translations and research

  • No substantial English-language secondary literature located.
  • The work is briefly noted in studies of late-Sòng Lǐxué outside the Mǐn / Wù mainstream.

Other points of interest

The Liú Yán dǎnggù analysis — that the Yuányòu dǎngjìn and the Qìngyuán dǎngjìn victims sometimes contributed to their own proscription by their own factional self-publicising — is one of the more analytically sharp Sòng-period reflections on the political dynamics of Lǐxué persecution.

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