御定淵鑑類函

Yù dìng Yuānjiàn lèihán 御定淵鑑類函

Imperially Established Categorized Anthology from the Yuanjian Studio

by 張英 (Zhāng Yīng, Qīng, 奉敕撰; zǒngcái), 王士禛 (Wáng Shìzhēn, Qīng, 奉敕撰; zǒngcái), Wáng Yǎn 王掞 (Qīng, 奉敕撰; zǒngcái), Zhāng Róngduān 張榕端 (Qīng, 奉敕撰; zǒngcái), and the 聖祖玄燁 (Kāngxī emperor, 定); compiled in the Hànlín bureaux with c. 80 fēnzuǎn, jiàokān, and xiàolù personnel.

About the work

A massive imperially-commissioned lèishū in 450 juǎn, finalized in Kāngxī 40 (1701) and printed Kāngxī 49 (1710). The work is named after the Yuānjiàn zhāi 淵鑑齋 — one of the Kāngxī emperor’s studios in the Chàngchūn yuán 暢春園 — and is the principal imperial-Qīng lèishū of the Kāngxī court. It takes Yú Ānqī’s 俞安期 late-Míng Táng lèihán 唐類函 as its base, retaining the latter’s adaptation of Ōuyáng Xún’s Yìwén lèijù, Yú Shìnán’s Běitáng shūchāo, Xú Jiān’s Chūxué jì and BáiKǒng’s Liù tiè — but the Kāngxī work extends coverage forward through the Sòng, Liáo, Jīn, Yuán and Míng, and back to fill Táng-period lacunae missed by Yú An-qī. Material in each bù is organized in five tiers: yīnyì (etymology and definition) at the head, diǎngù (allusions), shìduì (paired phrases), dāncí zhījù (isolated phrases), and finally shīfù záwén (poetry, fù, and miscellaneous prose). The work has 43 bù. Coverage includes a newly-segregated Huā bù 花部 (flower section), previously embedded in the medicine and plant sections.

Tiyao

(The Sìkù tíyào is not present at the head of the work; the front matter consists of the Kāngxī emperor’s preface, the jìn biǎo of the chief compilers, and the fánlì. The principal contemporary framing is therefore the yùzhì xù and the jìn biǎo, which are paraphrased here in lieu of a Sìkù tíyào.)

Imperial preface (Kāngxī 49, 1710): “In leisure from the myriad affairs of state I have read widely through the realm of letters, never letting a volume pass unfinished… Ancient government and writing, though distinct, are not separate: writing is the means by which government and reason are made known to the distant. Surely it cannot be argued that polished phrasing alone is the substance of learning. From the Six Dynasties onward there have been lèishū, especially abundant in the Táng — and these are works of the wénjù (phrase-and-passage) discipline. Yet the principles of order are present in them and they cannot be discarded. As Confucius said in his Yì commentary: ‘Categories are gathered according to kind; the Yì is the book in which the principles of all things under heaven are made manifest by lèi.’ So the lèishū form is not without its sanction in the Sage’s mode of utterance. The most celebrated specimens — the Yìwén lèijù, the Běitáng shūchāo, the Chūxué jì, the Bái tiè, Dù Yòu’s Tōngdiǎn — and the Sòng-and-Míng successors are many; but those that are broad without being verbose, brief without being skeletal, are few. Only Yú An-qī’s Táng lèihán may be called full and well-organized. It is fundamentally modelled on Ōuyáng Xún’s Lèijù, slightly trimming the Shūchāo, Chūxué jì, Bái tiè, and Tōngdiǎn, and adding accretions. Yú was a Míng man yet titled his work Táng lèihán because all the books it gathers are Táng compilations. Since he omits Sòng and later material — and even has Táng-period gaps — I commanded the rúchén (scholar-officials) to search broadly, trace back to the antecedent sources, and net the moderns: filling in what was absent, expanding what was abbreviated, fusing variants while extracting commonalities. They have not departed from the principle of lèi-grouping, and lèi-grouping is the form of the book… When the work was complete it ran to 450 juǎn. From the first appearance of lèishū to today is more than a thousand years; that it should be brought to a jí dà chéng (great consummation) — is this not a contribution to the cause of letters?” — Kāngxī 49, tenth month, twenty-fifth day.

Submission memorial (presented Kāngxī 40, 1701): Submitted by Zhāng Yīng (then Wénhuádiàn dàxuéshì, since retired), Wáng Shìzhēn (Xíngbù shàngshū), Wáng Yǎn (Lǐbù zuǒ shìláng), and Zhāng Róngduān (Nèigé xuéshì) as principal zǒngcái. The compilation took 41 fēnzuǎn including 陳元龍, plus校勘 and校錄 officials.

Abstract

The Yuānjiàn lèihán is the principal imperial-Qīng lèishū, and one of the two or three most-consulted lèishū of the entire late-imperial period (alongside the Yìwén lèijù, the Tàipíng yùlǎn, and the Yǒng-lè-period Gǔjīn túshū jíchéng). It was compiled at the Kāngxī court 1694–1701, finalized and printed 1710. The Kāngxī emperor’s preface explicitly frames it as a comprehensive consolidation of the entire pre-Qīng lèishū tradition, taking Yú Ānqī’s late-Míng Táng lèihán as its working base and extending coverage in both directions (forward through SòngLiáoJīnYuánMíng, and backward filling Táng lacunae). The work’s name encodes its court provenance: the Yuānjiàn zhāi 淵鑑齋 was the Kāngxī emperor’s working studio in the Chàngchūn yuán outside Beijing.

The principal zǒngcái (general directors) were Zhāng Yīng 張英 (1637–1708), the senior Tóngchéng dàxuéshì (whose son Zhāng Tíngyù 張廷玉 would direct the equivalent compilation programme under Yōngzhèng), and Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禛 (1634–1711), the leading poet-critic of early-Qīng. The fēnzuǎn roster reads as a who’s who of the Kāngxī Hànlín establishment: Xú Bǐngyì 徐秉義, Lǐ Lùyǔ 李録予, Sūn Yuèbǎn 孫岳頒, Chén Yuánlóng 陳元龍 (later compiler of the Gézhì jìngyuán KR3k0061), Cài Shēngyuán 蔡升元, Yáng Xuān 楊瑄, Zhāng Tíngzàn 張廷瓚, Chá Shènxíng 查慎行, Chén Bāngyàn 陳邦彥, Zhāng Tíngyù 張廷玉, and others.

The structural innovation of the Yuānjiàn lèihán, recorded in the fánlì, is the reordering of presentation within each topical entry into five tiers — yīnyì first (definition), then diǎngù (events), then shìduì (paired references), then dāncí zhījù (loose phrases), then shīfù (poetry and fù). Earlier lèishū including the Yìwén lèijù gave priority to text-by-text ordering of source; the Kāngxī work reorders by epistemic function. The 43 bù are themselves a refinement of the Táng lèihán’s structure, with the addition of a separated Huā bù 花部 (flowers — previously embedded in medicines and plant sections) and adjustments to the Jūnyì (military) and Jùnyì (prefectural) sections to reflect the jīnzhì (current institutional arrangement).

The Yuānjiàn lèihán is canonical in modern Chinese-studies reference practice as the standard lèishū of last resort for Six-Dynasties through Yuán materials: Wilkinson’s Manual (§72.1.2.4) treats it as one of the four principal lèishū a working researcher consults. The 1887 Tóngwén shūjú lithographic edition and the modern Shanghai Gǔjí re-typeset (1985) are the standard reference editions; the work is also fully searchable in the e-Sìkù and other commercial databases. Wilkinson’s Manual (§3.1.6.4) discusses the title in detail as a case of imperial study-naming convention (paralleling the Pèiwén yùnfǔ KR3k0059 from the Pèiwén zhāi).

Translations and research

• Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2018), §§3.1.6.4, 72.1.2.4 — the standard English-language treatment.
• Hú Dào-jìng 胡道靜, Zhōngguó gǔdài de lèishū (Zhōng-huá, 1982), §Qīng.
• Zhāng Dí-huá 張滌華, Lèishū liú-bié 類書流別 (Shāng-wù, rev. ed. 1985) — comprehensive monograph on the lèishū genre, with extensive treatment of the Yuān-jiàn lèi-hán.
• Liú Yè-qiū 劉葉秋, Lèi-shū jiǎn shuō 類書簡説 (Zhōng-huá, 1980).

No European-language complete translation. The work is too large for full translation; sections have been used by individual scholars as reference apparatus.

Other points of interest

The work’s connection to the Yuānjiàn zhāi — one of the Kāngxī emperor’s named studios in the Chàngchūn yuán outside the capital — and parallel naming convention with the Pèiwén yùnfǔ (from the Pèiwén zhāi) reflects the late-Kāngxī court practice of branding compendia with the emperor’s working-studio names. Wilkinson notes this as a distinguishing feature of Kāngxī-period imperial scholarship.

The yùzhì xù dated 1710 was written nine years after the editorial work was formally submitted (1701), reflecting the long lag between completion of the gǎo and the imperial printing. The printing-block edition is the so-called Wǔyīngdiàn jùzhēnbǎn 武英殿聚珍版.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Yù dìng Yuānjiàn lèihán entry.
• Wikidata: Q11079815.