Lì xué 厲學
On Diligent Study by 庾闡 (Yǔ Chǎn, c. 286–339, 晉)
About the work
A short Eastern Jìn 東晉 essay on the discipline of scholarship by Yǔ Chǎn 庾闡. Preserved chiefly in the context of Yú Pǔ’s 虞溥 biography in Jìn shū 晉書 j. 82, where Yǔ Chǎn’s brief piece is embedded; the jíyì compilation here adds short ancillary citations. Not in the Sìkù quánshū; sourced from CHANT (CH2a1395).
Abstract
The Lì xué is a brief admonitory essay urging persistent application in classical study — a topos as old as the Xúnzǐ 《勸學》 chapter, but recast in the rhythmical parallel-prose 駢文 idiom that was crystallising in the early Eastern Jìn. The piece is preserved primarily as a quotation in the Jìn shū biography of Yú Pǔ 虞溥 (the noted Eastern Jìn classicist and prefect of Póyáng 鄱陽), where it is cited as the rhetorical model that Yú Pǔ adopted in instructing his prefectural school. Yǔ Chǎn’s longer zǐ-house treatise Wén shì 文釋 is separately preserved (cf. KR3a0156). The composition window is bracketed by his Eastern Jìn floruit; he was active from the Tàixìng 太興 reign onward. The received recension is a 19th-century jíyì.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated secondary literature located. Standard fragment-compilation: 嚴可均 Quán Jìn wén 全晉文 j. 38. For Yǔ Chǎn’s poetics see David R. Knechtges’ entries in Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide (Brill).
Links
- Jìn shū 晉書 j. 82 (虞溥傳, with Yǔ Chǎn’s text embedded).