潛邱劄記

Qián qiū zhá jì 潛邱劄記

Notes from Qián-qiū

by 閻若璩 (Yán Ruòqú, zì Bǎishī 百詩, hào Qiánqiū 潛邱, 1636–1704; founder of high-Qīng kǎozhèng movement); compiled and edited by 吳玉搢 (Wú Yùjìn, fl. early eighteenth century)

About the work

A 6-juan miscellaneous-notes collection of Yán Ruòqú, the founder of high-Qīng evidential learning, gathered from his scattered manuscript notes after his death and edited by Wú Yùjìn 吳玉搢 of Shānyáng 山陽 (Yán’s place of residence). The title takes from the Ěr yǎ statement that “Jìn has a Qiánqiū” and from the Yuánhé jùnxiàn zhì 元和郡縣志 location of Qiánqiū “three lǐ south of Tàiyuán county” — Yán’s ancestral home. Two competing recensions of the manuscript material existed: one by Yán’s grandson Yán Xuélín 閻學林, one by Wú Yùjìn (re-edited and re-organized). The SKQS adopts the Wú recension as having greater editorial structure. The book is one of three Yán Ruòqú works in the Sìkù (the others are Shàng shū gǔ wén shū zhèng [KR1b0048] and Sì shū shì dì 四書釋地); the Sìkù editors call him “without rival among early-Qīng evidential scholars” — they explicitly observe that even Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù was subject to Yán Ruòqú’s corrections.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Qiánqiū zhá jì in six juan was compiled by Yán Ruòqú of our dynasty. Ruòqú was originally from Tàiyuán; he settled at Shānyáng [as a lodger]. The Ěr yǎ says “Jìn has a Qián qiū”; the Yuánhé jùnxiàn zhì says “Qián qiū is three lǐ south of Tàiyuán county”; Ruòqú used the name for this book in token of his ancestral root.

His Shàng shū gǔ wén shū zhèng, Sì shū shì dì, and his annotated Kùnxué jìwén are separately catalogued. This book has two transmitted recensions: one printed by his grandson Xuélín, one re-edited by Wú Yùjìn of Shānyáng.

Examining Yán Ruòqú’s Shàng shū gǔ wén shū zhèng j. 6 under entry 81 there is a note saying “Qiánqiū zhá jì, I fear, will not be transmitted to the world; I therefore quote its argument here.” Yet the two passages there [recorded] — one inferring the Chūnqiū Zhuānggōng 18 (676 BCE) solar eclipse, one inferring the Jìn Guāngxī 1 (306 CE) frequent eclipses of the first, seventh, and twelfth lunar months — are absent from both recensions. So this is Yán’s early-life random-jotting notebook material; never completed as a book; gathered after his death from scattered manuscripts; assembled into volumes; not the complete corpus.

This recension is the Wú Yùjìn re-edited version. [The Sìkù editors describe Wú’s editorial decisions in detail: the first two juan of the original Yán Xuélín edition were “miscellaneous reading-notes, mostly evidential argument without decision, mostly notes under consideration”; Wú consolidated these into one juan. The original juan 3 was Dì lǐ yú lùn 地理餘論 — supplementary geographical notes — which Wú placed as new juan 2. He gathered geographical-related material from the original juan 1–2 to form new juan 3. The original juan 4a was miscellaneous prose, prefaces and colophons; juan 4b was Sāng fú yì zhù 喪服翼注 and Bǔ zhèng Rì zhī lù 補正日知錄 (Corrections to Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù). Wú gathered the mourning-rite items from the original juan 1 with the Sāng fú yì zhù to form new juan 4; he placed the miscellaneous prose after the Bǔ zhèng Rì zhī lù as new juan 5. The original juan 5 was correspondence on the classics and histories; Wú moved it to new juan 6 and removed Yán’s Bóxué hóng cí examination fù and miscellaneous poems (calling these “not Yán’s strengths, and not appropriate to a zhá jì”).]

The Yán Xuélín edition aimed at preserving every scrap of the grandfather’s drafts and is consequently disorganized. The Wú edition has at least some structure. We follow the Wú edition here. Four entries are duplicated and one is triplicated in the original; we have systematically deleted the redundant copies.

Yán Ruòqú’s learning was broad and well-anchored, but he was given to fierceness in argument; in dispute with others he often mixed in venomous and ugly mockery, and his rupture with Wāng Wǎn 汪琬 ended in lasting enmity — somewhat at odds with the proper authorial conduct. Yet his recall-citation was so abundant and his investigative precision so refined that in our dynasty’s beginning he had no rival. Even Gù Yánwǔ — whose learning has foundation — had his Rì zhī lù substantially corrected by Yán Ruòqú; the others may be passed over. This collection, though gathered rather than complete, is throughout founded on evidence and is sufficient as material for textual investigation. Its incompleteness does not warrant rejection.

Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-fifth year of Qiánlóng [1780].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

Yán Ruòqú 閻若璩 (1636–1704), zì Bǎishī 百詩, hào Qiánqiū 潛邱, is the founder — together with Gù Yánwǔ — of high-Qīng kǎozhèng learning. Originally of Tàiyuán 太原 (Shānxī); the family migrated to Shānyáng 山陽 in Huáiān 淮安 (northern Jiāngsū) when he was young. Never passed the jìnshì examinations; nominated for the Bóxué hóngcí of 1679 but did not pass. Spent his career as a private scholar and consultant to high officials including Xú Qiánxué 徐乾學 and Zhāng Pǔ 張溥. The biographical record is Qīng shǐ gǎo j. 481.

His magnum opus is the Shàng shū gǔ wén shū zhèng 尚書古文疏證 (KR1b0048) in 8 juan, whose 128-argument demonstrative case against the 25 “Old Text” Shàng shū chapters as Eastern-Jìn forgery established the methodological template for the entire eighteenth-century evidential movement. The Qiánqiū zhá jì is best understood as the byproduct of his evidential life — the working-notes that never coalesced into a finished book. Wú Yùjìn’s careful editorial reorganization of these notes after Yán’s death is itself a model of Qīng evidential textual practice.

The book’s contents — broadly speaking — are: classical exegesis (juan 1, miscellaneous kǎo lùn), historical geography (juan 2, dì lǐ yú lùn; juan 3, more geography), mourning ritual (juan 4, including the Sāng fú yì zhù essay on the Yílǐ Sāng fú chapter), miscellaneous prose with the famous Bǔ zhèng Rì zhī lù essays correcting Gù Yánwǔ (juan 5), and correspondence on classical and historical matter (juan 6). The Bǔ zhèng Rì zhī lù essays are particularly important: they are the most substantial early-Qīng critical engagement with Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù, and the basis of the Sìkù editors’ famous remark that “even Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù was subject to Yán Ruòqú’s corrections.”

Yán Ruòqú’s polemical temperament — flagged with mild disapproval by the Sìkù editors and amply documented in his rupture with Wāng Wǎn 汪琬 — is one of the more colourful elements of early-Qīng intellectual sociology. The Sìkù editors’ overall judgment (“without rival among early-Qīng evidential scholars”) is, however, decisive.

Dating. The work covers Yán Ruòqú’s entire adult life. The notBefore of 1660 is conservatively his early-career start; notAfter 1704 his death-year.

The transmitted text is from the Wú Yùjìn re-edited recension as preserved in the SKQS. The earlier Yán Xuélín recension survives in scattered library collections.

Translations and research

The Qián-qiū zhá jì has received less direct attention in Western scholarship than the Shàng shū gǔ wén shū zhèng but features in:

• Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Harvard, 1984; rev. 2001), substantial on Yán Ruòqú’s evidential method.
• R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era (Harvard, 1987), on the SKQS reception of Yán Ruòqú.
• Hú Chū-shēng 胡楚生, Qīng dài kǎo-jù xué yán-jiū 清代考據學研究, multiple chapters on Yán Ruòqú.

Standard Chinese-language scholarship: Liú Móu-jí 劉牟基, Yán Ruòqú jí qí kǎo-jù xué 閻若璩及其考據學; Lǐ Xué-qín 李學勤’s introductions in recent reprints.

Other points of interest

The Bǔ zhèng Rì zhī lù essays — twelve corrections of Gù Yánwǔ’s masterwork — are a model of evidential dialogue between the two founding figures of Qīng learning. They are also remarkable for the fact that Yán Ruòqú was 23 years Gù Yánwǔ’s junior and his junior in established status, yet felt empowered to systematically correct him — testimony to the egalitarian-evidential ethos of the early-Qīng Hàn xué movement.

The Sāng fú yì zhù essay in juan 4 is one of the more substantial early-Qīng Yílǐ commentaries on the Sāng fú chapter (mourning grades), foreshadowing the systematic eighteenth-century Yílǐ revival.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Qián qiū zhá jì entry.
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11067183 (Yán Ruòqú).