忍經

Rěn jīng 忍經

Classic of Forbearance

by 吳亮 (Wú Liàng), Yuán literatus, fl. early 14th c.

About the work

A 1-juàn Yuán-era moral compendium gathering classical and historical sayings, anecdotes, and example-narratives all illustrating the virtue of rěn 忍 (forbearance, patience, self-restraint). Compiled by 吳亮 (Wú Liàng) during the Dàdé / Zhìdà reigns. The work opens with classical loci of rěn: the Yìjīng Sǔn hexagram’s “the gentleman uses [it] to restrain anger and stop desire”; the Shūjīng speeches of Zhōugōng admonishing King Chéng with “little people grumble and curse you — then august [self-]respect virtue” and “not only not daring to harbor anger”; the Zuǒzhuàn sayings on gāoxià zài xīn (“high-or-low is in the heart”); Lǔ yǐ xiāng rěn wéi guó (“Lǔ takes mutual forbearance as governance”); the famous Confucian admonitions from Lùn yǔ (“the little man cannot bear small things, then he confounds great plans”); Lǎozǐ’s “great rectitude as if bent, great wisdom as if clumsy, great eloquence as if slow”; Xúnzǐ’s “hurtful words are deeper than spear-and-halberd”; Lìn Xiàngrú’s “if two tigers fight, in the situation neither will live”; and many more. After the classical-loci opening, the work proceeds through a long sequence of exemplary anecdotes — each headed by a short topic-phrase (the zhī sūn manuscript opens with a △ mark — perhaps a Yuán editorial convention). The anecdotes include: Cáo Cān 曹參 as Guóxiàng tolerating his neighbours’ drunken commotion; Bǐng Jí 丙吉 as Chancellor declining to dismiss his frequently-drunk driver; Zhāng Liáng 張良 at Yí shàng taking the old man’s slipper; Hán Xìn 韓信 passing through the legs of his market tormentor — the famous kuà xià episode; and many subsequent classical-to-Sòng historical examples of rěn. The book is one of the principal Yuán-era jiāxùn moral compendiums and was widely circulated in late-imperial East Asia.

Abstract

The Rěn jīng is a Yuán-era moral compendium devoted entirely to the virtue of forbearance (rěn). 吳亮 (Wú Liàng) compiled it from classical, historical, and biographical sources, arranging classical maxims first and then long historical example-narratives. The work is one of the principal Yuán-era jiāxùn works and was reprinted, copied, and circulated extensively in late-imperial and early-modern East Asia. The text was particularly influential in Korea and Japan, where it remained a standard moral-instructional text into the 19th century.

The book’s principal contributions:

1. Classical anthology of rěn. The opening sequence gathers the principal classical-Confucian and Daoist loci on rěn — Yìjīng, Shūjīng, Lùn yǔ, Lǎozǐ, Xúnzǐ, Zuǒzhuàn — providing a compact reference for the classical tradition.
2. Historical example-narratives. The long sequence of exemplary anecdotes — Cáo Cān’s tolerance of drunken neighbours, Bǐng Jí’s restraint with his driver, Zhāng Liáng’s deference to the Yíshàng old man, Hán Xìn’s kuà xià humiliation — gives the work a strong narrative quality and made it accessible to a broad readership.
3. East Asian circulation. The book was a standard jiāxùn text in Korean and Japanese Confucian education from the late medieval period.

Dating. Wú Liàng was active in the early 14th century. NotBefore 1300, notAfter 1310 (conservative bracket; no firm composition date is recorded in the sources, but the work is conventionally dated to the early Yuán Dàdé / Zhìdà period).

Translations and research

• The text is widely studied in modern Chinese moral-cultural-history scholarship.
• Critical editions: Several modern Chinese editions are available; the text is often paired with Xǔ Míng-kuí’s 許名奎 Sòng-Yuán work Quàn rěn bǎi zhēn 勸忍百箴 (Hundred Admonitions on Promoting Forbearance) in popular collections.
• For the broader Yuán jiā-xùn tradition see Hilde de Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks, Harvard, 2015.

Other points of interest

The Rěn jīng is sometimes paired and confused with the slightly later Quàn rěn bǎi zhēn by Xǔ Míngkuí. The two works often circulated together in late-imperial editions but are distinct compositions.

Links

• The work is recorded in the KRP catalog under krp-titles (no WYG attestation; transmitted via Yuán and later editions).