兩同書

Liǎngtóng shū 兩同書

Book of the Twofold Sameness (Daoist self-cultivation and Confucian governance “made one”)

by 羅隱 (Luó Yǐn, zì Zhāojiàn 昭諫, 833–909/910; late-Táng / early-Wú-Yuè poet and political essayist, of Xīnchéng 新城)

About the work

A short late-Táng zájiā treatise in two juan (ten piān total: five upper, five lower), arguing that the Daoist programme of self-cultivation (xiūshēn 修身) and the Confucian programme of governance (zhìshì 治世) converge on a single ultimate principle. Each piān in the upper juan closes with a citation from Lǎozǐ; each piān in the lower juan closes with a citation from Confucius — making the book’s “two-faced” liǎngtóng structure explicit on every page. Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division. The work survives only in this short transmission; Luó Yǐn’s better-known Chán shū 讒書 and Huáihǎi yùyán 淮海寓言 were already lost by Chén Zhènsūn’s time.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Liǎngtóng shū in two juan, composed by Luó Yǐn of the Táng. Yǐn’s zì was Zhāojiàn 昭諫, a man of Xīnchéng 新城; originally named Hèng 橫, he changed his name after failing the jìnshì examination ten times. When Zhū Wēn 朱溫 (Zhū Quánzhōng) usurped the Táng, Yǐn was summoned with the rank of Jiànyì dàfū 諫議大夫 but refused. Serving Qián Liú 錢鏐 he was made magistrate of Qiántáng 錢塘 county, then Zhènhǎijūn zhǎngshūjì 鎮海軍掌書記 (Cabinet-Recorder of the Zhènhǎi Command), Adjudicating Adjutant 節度判官, Yántiě fāyùn fùshǐ 鹽鐵發運副使 (Vice-Commissioner for the Salt-and-Iron Transport Office), then assigned the title Zhùzuò zuǒláng 著作佐郎 and Sīxūn lángzhōng 司勳郎中, eventually advancing to Jiànyì dàfū gěishìzhōng 諫議大夫給事中 (Remonstrating Grandee, Drafter of the Court).

The WúYuè bèishǐ 吳越備史 records that Yǐn’s surviving compositions include a Huáihǎi yùyán 淮海寓言 and a Chán shū 讒書 but does not mention this book. Yet both Huáihǎi yùyán and Chán shū had already been searched for unsuccessfully by Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫, and only the Liǎngtóng shū survives in transmission to today. It contains ten piān: the five piān of the upper juan all close with Lǎozǐ; the five piān of the lower juan all close with Confucius. The Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 says: “He takes Lǎozǐ’s doctrine of self-cultivation as the inner [register] and Confucius’ Way of governing the world as the outer [register], so as to make their import meet and converge in the One Origin (tóng yuán 同元).” This being so, the name Liǎngtóng is taken from the Jìn-period dictum jiāng wú tóng 將無同 (“Are they not perhaps the same?”). Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 view that the title is taken from Lǎozǐ’s “the two emerge from the same source but differ in name” misses the import.

The Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 cites the Zhōngxīng shūmù 中興書目 attribution to Wú Yún 吳筠 of the Táng. Examining the Sòng shǐ · Yìwén zhì, there is a separate Liǎngtóng shū in two juan by Wú Yún also catalogued under the Zájiā — a different book.

Abstract

Luó Yǐn 羅隱 (833–909/910), zì Zhāojiàn 昭諫, originally named Hèng 橫, was a major late-Táng poet and political essayist of Xīnchéng 新城 (modern Fùyáng 富陽 in Zhèjiāng) who, after failing the jìnshì examinations ten times, took refuge under the WúYuè regime of Qián Liú 錢鏐, where he held a series of senior administrative posts. He is famous as the most caustic political satirist of the dying Táng, his prose collection Chán shū 讒書 (now mostly lost — a partial recension survives) being the most pointed late-Táng anatomy of imperial decline.

The Liǎngtóng shū is his only philosophical (záxué) treatise to survive entire. Its programmatic structure is unusually transparent: ten short piān, five paired with Lǎozǐ and five with Confucius, making the book a literal performance of liǎngtóng — the “twofold sameness” of inner Daoist self-cultivation and outer Confucian governance. The Sìkù editors and the Chóngwén zǒngmù read this both-sides programme as Luó Yǐn’s contribution to the late-Táng / early-Sòng project of sān jiào hé yī 三教合一 (the unity of the three teachings) — though without the Buddhist register that came to dominate later iterations. The phrase liǎngtóng is itself drawn from the famous WèiJìn locution jiāng wú tóng 將無同, attributed to Ruǎn Zhān 阮瞻 (or in some sources Wáng Yǎn 王衍): when asked whether the teachings of LǎoZhuāng and Confucius were ultimately the same, the reply was jiāng wú tóng — “Are they not perhaps the same?” The Chóngwén zǒngmù glosses the title as yǐ Lǎozǐ xiūshēn zhī shuō wéi nèi, Kǒngzǐ zhìshì zhī dào wéi wài, huì qí zhǐ ér tóng yuán 以老子修身之說為內、孔子治世之道為外、會其旨而同元.

The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 880, notAfter 909) reflects the work’s most plausible composition window in the last three decades of Luó Yǐn’s life, after his return south to serve Qián Liú: the catalog entry, like the Chóngwén zǒngmù and the Sìkù, gives no precise date, and there is no internal preface. The terminus ante quem is Luó Yǐn’s death in 909.

There is a longstanding alternative attribution to the Táng Daoist Wú Yún 吳筠 (d. 778), preserved in the Zhōngxīng shūmù 中興書目 and via Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí. The Sìkù editors, on the basis of the Sòng shǐ · Yìwén zhì’s separate listing of Wú Yún’s Liǎngtóng shū in 2 juan as a distinct work, dismiss the conflation; modern scholarship (see Hartman) has generally followed them, while noting that the question is not entirely closed. The Daoist tradition preserves Luó Yǐn’s text under the title Tàipíng liǎngtóng shū 太平兩同書 (KR5e0037 = DZ 1135).

The work is recorded in 《崇文總目》, 《郡齋讀書志》, 《直齋書錄解題》, 《宋史·藝文志》, and 《文獻通考》; it survives both in the SKQS and in the Dàozàng recension.

Translations and research

No complete European-language translation exists. Substantive scholarship on Luó Yǐn concentrates on his poetry and his Chán shū; the Liǎngtóng shū is treated more sparingly:

• Wáng Yún-xī 王雲熙, Luó Yǐn jí jiào jiān 羅隱集校箋 (Zhōnghuá Shū-jú, 1983; new edition 2013) — the standard collected works, including the Liǎngtóng shū.
• Lǐ Dìng-guǎng 李定廣, Luó Yǐn nián-pǔ 羅隱年譜 (Shàng-hǎi Gǔjí, 2013) — the most comprehensive recent biographical study.
• Charles Hartman, “Luo Yin,” in Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. William H. Nienhauser (Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 605–607.
• Stephen Owen, The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), passim on Luó Yǐn’s poetic milieu.
• Luó Liánjiān 羅聯添 et al., studies on late-Táng jìnshì failures and recluse-officials, including chapters on Luó Yǐn.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the small set of surviving late-Táng / Five-Dynasties philosophical treatises that explicitly programmatize a Daoist-Confucian convergence on the level of textual structure rather than merely doctrinal pronouncement — each piān’s closing citation is the rhetorical proof of the syncretic claim. The text was sufficiently respected within the Daoist tradition to be incorporated into the Dàozàng under the title Tàipíng liǎngtóng shū 太平兩同書 (KR5e0037 = DZ 1135), the Tàipíng prefix identifying it as a contribution to the Tàipíng (Great Peace) tradition of statecraft Daoism.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Liǎngtóng shū entry.
• 《崇文總目》, 《郡齋讀書志》, 《直齋書錄解題》, 《宋史·藝文志》, 《文獻通考》.
• Wikidata: Q10921116 (Luo Yin).
• Parallel recension: KR5e0037 (Dàozàng DZ 1135 Tàipíng liǎngtóng shū).