Ānlǎo huáiyòu shū 安老懷幼書
Book of Tranquillity for the Aged and Cherishing for the Young composite work: by 陳直 Chén Zhí (Northern Sòng) + 鄒鉉 Zōu Xuàn (Yuán) + 黃應紫 Huáng Yìngzǐ (Yuán or early Ming).
About the work
A four-juan composite anthology combining the Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo tradition of elder-care (the joint Chén Zhí / Zōu Xuàn corpus) with a body of child-rearing (huáiyòu 懷幼) material added by the third compiler Huáng Yìngzǐ. The work is structurally an editorial recombination: the elder-care portions derive directly from the Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo xīn shū (KR3eo031 / KR3e0021), reorganised by topic, and the child-rearing portions are drawn from Sòng-Yuán paediatric and jiāxùn literature including likely 劉昉 Liú Fǎng’s Yòuyòu xīnshū 幼幼新書 (Sòng) and the Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓.
The integration of yǎnglǎo and yǎngyòu (care of the elderly and care of children) into a single volume reflects the conceptual unity of generational family-medicine articulated in Mencius’s Lǎo wú lǎo, yǐ jí rén zhī lǎo; yòu wú yòu, yǐ jí rén zhī yòu 老吾老以及人之老、幼吾幼以及人之幼 — the canonical statement of cross-generational ethical care, here translated into a single practical-medical compendium.
Prefaces
The 漢學文典 source files for KR3eo032 contain only the title-block (KR3eo032_001 through _003 are empty of body-text); the work is recoverable only through other transmitted recensions.
Abstract
The Ānlǎo huáiyòu shū is a less famous but historically significant late-Yuán / early-Míng composite — the only major systematic integration of the elder-care and child-rearing traditions into a single work. The third compiler Huáng Yìngzǐ is poorly documented; the catalog meta lists him alongside Chén Zhí and Zōu Xuàn as co-author, but on the internal evidence Huáng’s role was the child-care supplementation of the existing two-author elder-care core. The work circulated principally in northern Fújiàn (the home region of Zōu Xuàn) in the late Yuán and early Míng, with the present 漢學文典 reprint following the most accessible extant Míng recension. The dating bracket reflects the terminus post quem (Zōu Xuàn’s early-Yuán expansion of the elder-care core) and a plausible upper bound of the late Yuán to mid Ming for the Huáng Yìngzǐ compositional layer.
As with KR3eo031, the 漢學文典 source-file skeletality prevents substantive textual analysis from the present recension; the work survives chiefly in cross-reference through the Sìkù-tradition catalogues and in private collection-prints of the late Míng.
Translations and research
- Zhōng-guó yī-jí dà-cí-diǎn, s.v. 安老懷幼書.
- 周一謀, Yǎng-shēng wén-xiàn tōng-kǎo (Shàng-hǎi, 2008).
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature on this title specifically located.
Other points of interest
The unity of yǎnglǎo and huáiyòu in a single volume — a conceptual unification grounded in Mencius’s cross-generational ethic — is a distinctively literati-Confucian framing of the medical-pedagogical project, and stands in contrast to the more specialised Sòng-Yuán paediatric (xiǎoér kē) and geriatric (lǎorén kē) corpora that otherwise developed separately.
Links
- Related: KR3eo001, KR3eo016, KR3eo031 (the elder-care core).
- Kanseki DB
- 安老懷幼書