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先進遺風

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Text ID
KR3l0087
Date
1560–1596
Dynasty
明

Xiānjìn yífēng 先進遺風

Lingering Style of the Elder Worthies by 耿定向 (撰) and 毛在 (增補)

About the work

A two-juàn Míng bǐjì of exemplary-conduct anecdotes from Míng officials of the early- and mid-dynasty, compiled by 耿定向 Gěng Dìngxiàng 耿定向 (1524–1596; zì Zàilún 在倫 / Zǐchéng 子承, hào Chǔtóng 楚侗 / Tiāntái 天臺, posthumously Gōngjiǎn 恭簡), a major Tàizhōu xuépài 泰州學派 thinker and senior Wànlì official, and supplemented by 毛在 Máo Zài 毛在 (b. 1544; zì Jūnmíng 君明) of Tàicāng 太倉. The work loosely follows the form of the Sòng Diǎnxíng lù 典刑錄 — short biographic anecdotes — recording the yíwén suǒshì (lost reports and small matters) of famous Míng ministers, with the moral emphasis on strict self-discipline, refined personal conduct, and zhōnghòu (loyal-and-generous) character. The Sìkù notice locates it in the Zǐbù xiǎoshuōjiā lèi 子部小說家類 (záshì zhī shǔ 雜事之屬), and stresses that the work was designed by Gěng as a corrective intervention against the corrupt and sycophantic political climate of the Yán Sōng 嚴嵩 (粉宜 Fēnyí) ascendancy in the Jiājìng — early Lóngqìng years. The transmitted text comes through Chén Jìrú 陳繼儒’s Mìjí 秘笈 imprint, in which Gěng’s original entries and Máo Zài’s continuations are no longer clearly separable (the Sìkù compilers’ working hypothesis: entries whose first line is indented mark Gěng’s text, those flush left Máo’s).

Tiyao

Your servants report: Xiānjìn yífēng in 2 juàn, by the Míng Gěng Dìngxiàng (撰); with supplements added by Máo Zài (增補). Dìngxiàng’s other works Shuòfǔ bǎojiàn yàolǎn 碩輔寶鑑要覽 KR2m0072 is already on record. As for Máo Zài, he himself signs as a native of Tàicāng; further details of his life are not recoverable. The book loosely imitates the form of the Sòng Diǎnxíng lù, recording the yíwén (anecdotes) and small matters of famous Míng ministers — the majority being cases of strict self-discipline, refined personal conduct, and the preservation of zhōnghòu (loyal-generous) character. For after Jiājìng the kāiguó dūnpáng zhī qì (the founding generation’s plain solid spirit) grew daily more distant and was diluted; the shìdàfū (officials) were trading on power and trafficking in bribes; the customary style was daily more debased. Dìngxiàng set out the fine deeds of the elder worthies to redress the failings of the age; hence what he records is mostly fine domestic and personal matters, and the affairs of court government are scarcely touched. Considering that the time of the book’s composition was precisely the day of Fēnyí’s [Yán Sōng’s] arrogance and abuse, did not Dìngxiàng have a covert intent therein? In passages such as the lavish praise of Lǐ Dōngyáng 李東陽 he cannot avoid the partiality of a fellow-xiānglǐ (regional clan); his promotion of the Yáojiāng [Wáng Yángmíng] school similarly cannot avoid the prejudice of a school-faction. Yet the main aim of the book lies not there, and these minor defects may be passed over. The present text is what was printed in Chén Jìrú’s Mìjí; its formatting is muddled — Dìngxiàng’s original book and Máo Zài’s continued compilation cannot be readily distinguished. There are occasional editorial lùnduàn (verdicts) of unknown attribution. Inferring from the printing layout, perhaps entries whose first character is on a new indented line are Dìngxiàng’s, and those whose first character is set flush are Máo Zài’s. Since we have not seen Dìngxiàng’s original edition, this is no longer ascertainable. Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 4th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Sìkù tíyào fixes the composition context decisively: the work was written during the Yán Sōng ascendancy (Yán Sōng dominant in court 1542–1562, with the high point in the 1550s–1562; Yán was finally dismissed in 1562). Gěng Dìngxiàng (1524–1596; CBDB id 124891), a 1556 jìnshì from Huángān 黃安 / Máchéng 麻城 in Húguǎng, served through this entire crisis and rose to Hùbù shàngshū 戶部尚書 (Minister of Revenue) under Wànlì. The composition window for Gěng’s original layer therefore lies in roughly the Jiājìng late period through Gěng’s lifetime to 1596; Máo Zài’s zēngbǔ supplements are still later, presumably late Wànlì, but before the Mìjí imprint. The conservative bracket adopted here is 1560–1596 for Gěng’s layer, with the proviso that Máo Zài’s interpolations extend the period of compilation into the early seventeenth century.

The work belongs to the Míng bǐjì tradition of moral-exemplum biography in the lineage of the Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語, Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓, and SòngYuán Diǎnxíng lù-type anthologies. Its specific intervention — recording the jūjiā xíngjǐ (private domestic conduct) of the early-Míng senior officials (Sòng Lián 宋濂, Yáng Shìqí 楊士奇, Wú Lín 吳琳, Wáng Áo 王翺, etc.) and consciously omitting their political dealings — is itself an indictment of the contemporary court. The Sìkù compilers, sensitive to this, identify a “wēizhǐ” (subtle intent) in the composition: the book is a Tàizhōu xuépài moral protest disguised as antiquarian bǐjì.

Two partisan tendencies are also flagged by the Sìkù. First, the eulogy of Lǐ Dōngyáng 李東陽 (the early-Míng grand secretary from Húguǎng) is read as Gěng’s xiānglǐ (regional-clan) bias, since Gěng too was from Húguǎng. Second, the work’s promotion of the Yáojiāng (Wáng Yángmíng 王陽明) school — Gěng Dìngxiàng was a leading second-generation Tàizhōu xuépài figure who studied under Wáng Gěn 王艮’s disciple Xú Yuè 徐樾 — is judged a ménhù zhī jiàn (school-faction prejudice).

Gěng Dìngxiàng is best known to intellectual historians as the principal lifelong adversary of Lǐ Zhì 李贄 (Lǐ Zhuówú, 1527–1602). Lǐ Zhì had been a friend of Gěng’s brother Gěng Dìnglǐ 耿定理 (the genuine xīnxué enthusiast in the family); after Dìnglǐ’s death (1584), Lǐ Zhì and Gěng Dìngxiàng broke fiercely over questions of moral universalism versus rule-bound Confucian conduct, the famous GěngLǐ lùnbiàn 耿李論辯. Gěng came to represent for Lǐ Zhì everything wrong with orthodox-leaning Tàizhōu moralism; Lǐ Zhì’s Fénshū 焚書 contains many of the Yǔ Gěng Sīkòu 與耿司寇 letters that are now the principal documents of the controversy. Xiānjìn yífēng — with its hagiographic emphasis on rule-keeping moral exemplars — is precisely the kind of project Lǐ Zhì satirised as the jiǎdàoxué (false-moralist) tendency he was determined to expose.

The two-juàn Chén Jìrú Mìjí recension transmitted in the Sìkù is the one consulted; no earlier Gěng-only version is known to survive.

Translations and research

  • Huáng Zōng-xī 黃宗羲, Míng-rú xué-àn 明儒學案, juàn 35 (Tài-zhōu xué-àn 4): the standard early-Qīng intellectual-historical placement of Gěng Dìngxiàng.
  • Hé Yán-jūn 何炎舉 / Cài Hè-rán 蔡和燃, Gěng Dìngxiàng yánjiū 耿定向研究 (various Chinese-academic monographs and dissertations from the early 21st century deal extensively with the Gěng-Lǐ controversy).
  • Pauline C. Lee, Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire (SUNY 2012): treats Gěng Dìngxiàng as Lǐ Zhì’s principal foil and analyses the Gěng-Lǐ letters.
  • Rivi Handler-Spitz, Symptoms of an Unruly Age: Li Zhi and Cultures of Early Modernity (Washington 2017): repeated discussion of Gěng Dìngxiàng’s position vis-à-vis Lǐ Zhì.
  • Jiang Yonglin and others on Tài-zhōu xué-pài historiography: Gěng’s middle-orthodox position is now standard subject matter.
  • No European-language translation of Xiānjìn yífēng itself has been located. The work has been used primarily as a Míng-political bǐ-jì source rather than as an intellectual-historical document.

Other points of interest

The work’s editorial layering — Gěng Dìngxiàng’s original moral-exemplum compilation, with Máo Zài’s later supplements grafted in and the resulting hybrid printed by Chén Jìrú 陳繼儒 in his Mìjí cóngshū 秘笈叢書 — is itself diagnostic of late-Míng publishing practice: a senior official’s manuscript circulated, was expanded by a younger compiler, and reached print through a late-Míng commercial cóngshū curator with no consistent typographic differentiation of the two layers. The Sìkù compilers’ frank acknowledgement that the layers cannot be cleanly separated — “not seen the original edition, no longer ascertainable” — is a model of conservative editorial reporting.

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