Liùjīng tiānwén biān 六經天文編
Compilation of Astronomical Lore from the Six Classics by 王應麟 (Wáng Yīnglín, 1223–1296, 宋, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A topical compendium in 2 juàn gathering every passage in the Six Classics that bears on Heaven — the asterisms, the seasons, the sun and moon, the wind and rain, yīnyáng and the Five Phases, even the cosmological resonances of the trigrams. The upper juàn draws from the Yì, Shū, and Shī; the lower from the Zhōulǐ, Lǐjì, and Chūnqiū. Wáng’s purpose is kǎozhèng: to recover from the canonical record the technical-astronomical substratum (tuībù 推步, calendrical computation) that later writers had assumed lay outside the classical inheritance, and to show — by collating earlier rúshēng commentaries and supplementing from the dynastic-history monographs — that the sources of post-classical astronomy were already latent in the Six Classics. Note: the catalog meta reads Liùjīng tiānfǎ biān 六經天法編, but both the WYG title-page and the 提要 give 六經天文編 (the correct title is followed here).
Tiyao
[Sub-classification: 子部, Tiānwén suànfǎ class 1, tuībù sub-category. Edition: WYG.]
Respectfully examined: Liùjīng tiānwén biān, 2 juàn, by Wáng Yīnglín of the Sòng. Yīnglín’s Zhèngshì Zhōuyì zhù (KR1a0003) is already catalogued. This compilation gathers the words of the Six Classics on astronomy, taking the matter contained in the Yì, Shū, and Shī as the upper juàn, and that in the Zhōulǐ, Lǐjì, and Chūnqiū as the lower. The works on astronomical computation prior to the Three Dynasties have not been transmitted, and discussants hold that ancient methods were rough whereas modern methods are precise — distinctions such as the suìchā 嵗差 (precession) and the lǐchā 里差 (mileage-difference, i.e. parallax of latitude/longitude) are all things the Sages did not pronounce upon. Yú Xǐ 虞喜 of the Jìn first recognized precession, and Táng-period scholars compiling the fùjǔ tú 覆矩圖 first recognized that the Earth has east-west and north-south lǐchā. Yet the Yáodiǎn, the Bīnfēng, the Yuèlìng, and what the Zuǒzhuàn and Guóyǔ record of stars and asterisms — already the precedence-and-following has shifted by one cì (lunar mansion-station). This means the principle of precession can be inferred directly from these instances. The Zhōulǐ method of the tǔguī 土圭 (earth-gnomon) — “to the south of the Sun the shadow is short, to the north the shadow is long; to the east the shadow falls in the evening, to the west the shadow falls in the morning” — is the principle of lǐchā, and it too can be derived directly. Therefore the source of later tuībù (astronomical computation) was not absent from the Six Classics; only that the ancient texts are succinct and concise, not comparable to the elaboration and detailed examination of later eras. This compilation, though “astronomy” stands in its title, does not confine itself to stellar imagery. Whatever pertains to yīnyáng and the Five Phases, wind and rain, even the meanings of the hexagrams, is collected here. The bulk is drawn from earlier Confucian classical exegesis, and where the meaning is incomplete it ranges into the dynastic-history treatises by way of clarification — also a matter that the tuībù practitioner must investigate. The Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records it in 6 juàn; the Zhìzhèng Sìmíng xùzhì records it in 2 juàn. The present text divides into upper and lower halves, so 2 juàn is correct.
The Compatriot Lǐ Zhènyù 李振裕 of Jíshuǐ, in his preface supplementing the printing of the Yùhǎi, states that Yīnglín’s writings exceeded thirty kinds: those already engraved are the Yùhǎi with the Cíxué zhǐnán appended; in addition there are 13 yíshū (posthumous works) from the Shī kǎo down to the Tōngjiàn dáwèn, in over fifty juàn, the printing-blocks all decayed and worm-eaten, all of which were now supplemented and reprinted — and this present compilation is one of them. This copy has neither preface nor colophon, the paper-and-ink very old: probably still the recension printed by Wáng Hòusūn 王厚孫 (the author’s grandson) at the Zhìyuán 6 (1340 CE) edition.
Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46, sixth month [July 1781].
Chief Compilers: (subject) Jì Yún 紀昀, (subject) Lù Xíxióng 陸錫熊, (subject) Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief Collator: (subject) Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Composition window: 1241 (Wáng’s jìnshì year, after which he began producing original scholarship) – 1296 (his death). The work belongs to the latter, post-1276 phase of his career, when — having refused all office under the Yuán — he devoted himself entirely to kǎozhèng compilation in his Yín-county retirement at Qìngyuán; but a tighter bracket cannot be defended without preface or dated colophon. The Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records the work in 6 juàn and the Zhìzhèng Sìmíng xùzhì in 2 juàn; the discrepancy probably reflects an early circulating-recension difference rather than two distinct works. The 2-juàn form survived. The earliest surviving printing is the Zhìyuán 6 (1340) edition prepared by the author’s grandson Wáng Hòusūn 王厚孫; the SKQS editors took this as their base.
The work is one of the clearest demonstrations of Wáng Yīnglín’s signature method — gathering scattered citations and reorganizing them into a coherent topical body — applied not to a lost text but to a lost category of knowledge: the technical-astronomical substratum of the canonical inheritance. Its placement in the SKQS Tiānwén suànfǎ class (rather than the Jīng division where Wáng’s other classical compilations sit) reflects the editors’ judgement that the work’s value lies in its astronomical-historical contribution rather than its classical-exegetical one. The 提要’s editorial comments on precession (suìchā) and parallax (lǐchā) — that these phenomena are latent in the Yáodiǎn, Bīnfēng yuèlìng, Zuǒzhuàn, Guóyǔ, and Zhōulǐ — show the late-Qián-lóng editorial line on the relationship between classical antiquity and post-Jesuit “Western” astronomical science (the same line developed at greater length in the KR3f0001 Zhōubì suànjīng 提要).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Wáng Yīnglín’s classical-exegetical compilations have received considerable Sinological attention (especially the Sānjiā Shī kǎo, Hànshū yìwén zhì kǎozhèng, and the Yùhǎi), but the Liù-jīng tiānwén biān has been treated chiefly within the broader literature on his bibliographic-and-philological method.