Qúnshū huìyuán jiéjiāng wǎng 群書會元截江網
Compiled Net Across the River: Gathered Origins of the Many Books
anonymous Southern-Sòng Tàixué zēngxiū 太學增修.
About the work
A late-Southern-Sòng anonymous cèyì / cèlùn crammer (35 juan, 65 mén), produced by the Tàixué 太學 (Imperial University) editorial team — the head-title reads “Tàixué zēngxiū” — as a comprehensive examination handbook for the jìnshì policy-essay. Internal evidence includes the reign-titles Chúnyòu 淳祐 (1241–1252) and Duānpíng 端平 (1234–1236), placing the compilation in Lǐzōng’s reign. The Yuán-period Máshā 麻沙 (Fújiàn) reprint preface by Hú Zhù 胡助 of Dōngyáng 東陽 is dated Zhìzhèng 7 = 1347; Hú Zhù’s preface omits the original compiler’s name as “chéng shìshū jūnzǐ bù zhù qí míng” (the gentleman who completed this work did not record his name), which Huáng Yújì then mistakenly took as a self-effacement by Hú himself, attributing the work to Hú — an error noted in the Sìkù tíyào.
The work is the most fully-articulated extant example of a Southern-Sòng cèlùn crammer. Each mén opens with: Lìdài shìshí (historical facts of past dynasties); Sòngcháo shìshí (Sòng-dynasty facts); Jīngzhuàn géyán (canonical maxims); Míngchén zòuyì (memorials by famous ministers); Zhūrú zhìlùn (statements by Confucian scholars). Further sub-categories are zhǔyì (chief points), shìzhèng (factual evidence), shízhèng jǐngduàn (contemporary policy alerts), jiéwěi (conclusion). Even páiǒu chéngjù (ready-made parallel-prose couplets) are included. The work’s title — jiéjiāng wǎng “net across the river” — is the metaphor of completeness.
Tiyao (abridged)
We respectfully submit that the Qúnshū huìyuán jiéjiāng wǎng in 35 juan; the compiler is not given. The head-title reads “Tàixué zēngxiū”; the contents include the reign-titles Chúnyòu and Duānpíng — so it is a Lǐzōng-period chéngshì cèlùn (programmatic-examination policy-essay) source-book. The Yuán-period Máshā-cut book has a preface by Hú Zhù 胡助 of Dōngyáng dated Zhìzhèng 7 [1347]. Huáng Yújì’s Qiānqǐng táng shūmù then takes Hú as compiler — that is wrong.
The work has 65 mén; each occasionally has sub-topics. Within each category: historical facts of past dynasties; Sòng facts; canonical maxims; míngchén zòuyì; zhūrú zhìlùn — divided into segments and tagged. There are also so-called zhǔyì, shìzhèng, shízhèng jǐngduàn, jiéwěi — even the ready-made parallel-couplets are recorded.
Examining the Sòng Lǐbù tiáoshì: in the old Yuányòu system, the first session tested jīngyì and shīfù in two divisions; the second tested lùn (one piece, 500+ characters); the third tested cè (three pieces); imperial session also used three cè of 1,000+ characters. From Shàoxīng 6 (1136) the system was changed to four sessions; the third was lùn (one piece), the fourth reduced to two cè; imperial session still used one cè. So those who taught kējǔ learning all assembled old prose for use.
What came from shìdàfū hands: the Yǒngjiā Bāmiàn fēng (KR3k0022) and the Dōnglái zhìdù xiángshuō (KR3k0021). What came from fāngběn (commercial/non-elite editions): works like this one. Generally the intention is comprehensive coverage, so the accumulation is increasingly inflated. But each entry gives full head and tail, conveniently available for inspection; for Sòng-dynasty diǎngù the citations are particularly detailed, sometimes useful for supplementing historical gaps. So what was in its day súshū (popular book), in later ages becomes gǔjí (ancient text) — another case of “discussion is not single-tracked; each has its own appropriateness”.
Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng [1779].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Qúnshū huìyuán jiéjiāng wǎng is the principal extant fāngběn (commercially-produced popular-edition) Southern-Sòng cèlùn crammer. It complements two senior-scholar handbooks of the same genre — Chén Fùliáng’s Bāmiàn fēng (KR3k0022) and Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Lìdài zhìdù xiángshuō (KR3k0021) — by providing a thoroughly commercial pedagogical alternative produced collectively at the Tàixué (Imperial University), with no individual author-attribution. Composition is bracketed here to the Lǐzōng reign (1225–1264), with most internal dates falling between 1234 and 1252; the Yuán Máshā reprint of 1347 (with Hú Zhù preface) is the principal Yuán-period transmission. Hú Zhù was wrongly taken as compiler by Huáng Yújì.
The work’s value to modern scholarship is twofold. First, it is a primary source for the cèlùn examination culture of the late Southern Sòng — the topical syllabus, the rhetorical conventions, and the ready-made textual building-blocks that examination candidates were expected to internalize. Second, as the Sìkù editors observe, the work preserves detailed citations of Sòng diǎngù — court precedents and case-history — that sometimes plug gaps in the standard histories. For social-history scholarship on Southern-Sòng education and the operation of fāngběn commercial publishing in Fújiàn (the Máshā center), the work is a key document.
Translations and research
- Étienne Balazs and Yves Hervouet, A Sung Bibliography (HKCUP, 1978), entry on the Qún-shū huì-yuán jié-jiāng wǎng.
- Hú Dào-jìng 胡道靜, Zhōngguó gǔdài de lèishū (Zhōng-huá, 1982), §Sòng.
- Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries) (Harvard, 2002), §III on the Má-shā commercial publishers and the fāng-běn tradition that produced works like this.
No European-language translation.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s contrast of two strands of late-Southern-Sòng kējǔ literature — the shìdàfū tradition (Chén Fùliáng, Lǚ Zǔqiān) and the fāngběn tradition (this work) — is a methodologically useful distinction for modern scholarship on Sòng book culture and the social stratification of cèlùn preparation.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Qúnshū huìyuán jiéjiāng wǎng entry.
- Wikidata: Q11074336.