Shìwěi 士緯
The Woof-Threads of the Officer by 姚信 (Yáo Xìn, fl. mid 3rd century, 吳)
About the work
A lost SūnWú 孫吳 zǐbù treatise on personnel evaluation (rénwù 人物) by Yáo Xìn 姚信. Reconstructed from quotations in 《意林》, 《太平御覽》, 《藝文類聚》. Not in the Sìkù quánshū; sourced from CHANT (CH2a1473). The title-list (Kanripo and CHANT) gives Yáo Xìn as a ShǔHàn figure, but the Suí shū jīngjí zhì and standard biographical reference works place him under SūnWú; the dynasty here follows the Suí shū.
Abstract
The Shìwěi — the title combines shì 士 (officer / scholar-aspirant) with wěi 緯 (the woof-threads of a fabric, by extension the apocryphal weave underlying the jīng 經 warp) — is a rénwù treatise in the same broad genre as the more famous Rénwù zhì 人物志 of Liú Shào 劉劭. The surviving fragments engage with the standard topics of mid-3rd-century rénwù lùn: the discrimination of talent, the relation of inner character to outward expression, the management of recommendation systems, and the moral psychology of office-holding. Yáo Xìn was also the author of an important Zhōu Yì zhù 周易注 — Wú-period Yì commentary that is preserved in fragments in Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s 李鼎祚 Zhōu Yì jí jiě 周易集解 of the Táng — but the Shìwěi is his major zǐbù contribution. The Suí shū jīngjí zhì lists it in 10 juàn. The composition window follows the Wú period; the received recension is a 19th-century jíyì.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated secondary literature located in Western languages. For Yáo Xìn’s Yì commentary see Tze-ki Hon, The Yijing and Chinese Politics (SUNY, 2005), which references the Wú-shī yì school of which Yáo was a representative. Standard fragment-compilation: 嚴可均 Quán sān guó wén 全三國文 j. 73.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志.
- Zhōu Yì jí jiě 周易集解 (Lǐ Dǐngzuò, Táng) — preserves Yáo Xìn Yì fragments.