Shānjū sìyào 山居四要
Four Essentials of Mountain Living by 汪汝懋 Wāng Rǔmào (zì Yǐjìng 以敬, 1308–1369, of Tóngjiāng 桐江 in Zhèjiāng); expanded from an earlier work by 楊元誠 Yáng Yuánchéng (former 太史令 Director of the Astronomical Service).
About the work
A four-juan compendium organising the practical knowledge of literati rural retreat under four canonical yào 要 (“essentials”):
- Shèshēng 攝生 (“regulating life”) — rénshì yízé 人事儀則 (proper rules of human conduct), xīngjū fángfàn 興居防範 (rising-and-resting precautions), and láoyì jiéxuān 勞佚節宣 (regulating labour and ease).
- Yǎngshēng 養生 (“nourishing life”) — yǐnshí yízhì 飲食宜制 (dietary regulation) and jīngshèn qùqǔ 精慎去取 (careful selection and avoidance) for the management of desire.
- Wèishēng 衛生 (“protecting life”) — pharmaceutical, restorative, and unguent (gāoyè 膏液) methods for treating the various illnesses.
- Zhìshēng 治生 (“ordering life” / household economy) — the practical-agricultural calendar of seasonal planting, harvesting, storage, and reserve-laying, drawing from the lǎonóng lǎopǔ (experienced farmer and gardener) tradition.
A closing fifth section nominally appended to the work transmits selected géyán 格言 (maxims) on five themes: shěngxīn 省心, zàodào 造道, lǜshì 慮事, yìngwù 應物, shènxiū 慎修.
Prefaces
The transmitted xù is by 劉仁本 Liú Rénběn of Tiāntái 天台, fèngxùn dàfū 奉訓大夫 and pànguān of the Jiāng-Zhè 行樞密院 (Branch Bureau of Military Affairs), dated Zhìzhèng gēngzǐ twelfth lunar month = 1360/61. Liú records that Wāng Rǔmào of Tóngjiāng has compiled the present four-juan work expanding (zēngguǎng 增廣) the earlier text by Yáng Yuánchéng (formerly 太史令 of the Astronomical Service, who had previously served as Prefect (jùnmù) of Wāng’s home county and there established his civil reputation); Wāng himself, then serving as district magistrate, “in his administration set kindness as the policy; the means of the people’s daily living, the doctrines of supporting elders and rearing children, were items he and his colleagues discussed morning and evening, exhaustively.” Liú frames the work theoretically: Heaven and Earth’s great virtue is to give life; but the sage’s calling is to supplement, to assist, to direct — making the people fit themselves to it. Then the proper way of standing in virtue and benefiting use thereby reaching the enrichment of life is attained. The xù concludes by citing the Shī “the people’s substance is in their daily living”: “is this not its meaning? Then is Wāng’s work serving only mountain residence? Indeed it is also of help to government and instruction.”
Abstract
Wāng Rǔmào (1308–1369), Yuán-Míng-transition civil official from Tónglú 桐廬 prefecture (Tóngjiāng), expanded the earlier work of Yáng Yuánchéng — an Astronomical-Service official whose earlier Shānjū compendium had been compiled while Yáng was prefect of Wāng’s home district. The expansion was completed in Zhìzhèng 20 = 1360, on the eve of the Yuán-Míng dynastic transition; the xù-writer Liú Rénběn is one of the principal Tāi-zhōu-prefecture civil officials of the Yuán terminal regime who would not survive the Míng conquest. The work consequently has an unusual dating precision and a strong location in the late-Yuán Zhèjiāng literati civil-service culture.
The work’s principal historical importance lies in its four-category framework — shè / yǎng / wèi / zhì — which made explicit the analytical articulation of practical yǎngshēng into separate domains of (i) bodily regimen, (ii) dietary cultivation, (iii) clinical-therapeutic care, and (iv) household-agricultural management. This fourfold scheme was widely adopted in subsequent Míng compilations and is the indirect ancestor of the 居家必用 jūjiā bìyòng → 便民圖纂 biànmín túzuǎn → zūnshēng bājiān 遵生八牋 (KR3j0172) lineage of Ming-Qing household encyclopaedias.
The work is also one of the rare Yuán-Míng-transition texts to explicitly cite an earlier compendium by name (Yáng Yuánchéng’s lost work) as its base, and so provides valuable evidence for the now-lost Yáng work. The Yáng original is not separately preserved.
Translations and research
- Zhōng-guó yī-jí dà-cí-diǎn, s.v. 山居四要.
- 周一謀, Yǎng-shēng wén-xiàn tōng-kǎo (Shàng-hǎi, 2008).
- Daoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, ed. Schipper and Verellen, on the Yuán yǎng-shēng compilations.
- 馬烈光, Zhōng-yī yǎng-shēng kāng-fù xué cí-diǎn (Běijīng, 2007).
Other points of interest
Liú Rénběn’s xù, with its careful invocation of the Shī and its philosophical framing of the relation between Heaven’s giving of life and the sage’s supplementation, is among the more theoretically articulate Yuán yǎngshēng prefaces and is widely cited in modern scholarship on late-Yuán yǎngshēng discourse.