Gěishì jí 給事集
The Director-of-Edicts Collection by 劉安上 (撰)
About the work
Gěishì jí 給事集 in 5 juǎn preserves the writings of Liú Ānshàng 劉安上 (1069–1128), one of the Sān xiānshēng 三先生 of Yǒngjiā — the foundational triad (with his near-relative Liú Ānjié 劉安節 劉安節 and their colleague Zhōu Xíngjǐ 周行己 周行己) of the Yǒngjiā xuépài. The title takes Liú’s Jǐshìzhōng office. The recension is significant for its preservation of Yǒng-jiā-school first-generation writings — ChéngYí discipleship transmitted into Wēnzhōu, where it would become the distinctive utilitarian-statecraft tradition of Chén Fùliáng 陳傅良 and Yè Shì 葉適.
Tiyao
Abstract
Gěishì jí is the third member of the foundational Yǒngjiā school’s Sān xiānshēng corpus, alongside Zhōu Xíngjǐ’s Fúzhǐ jí KR4d0125 and Liú Ānjié’s Liú zuǒshǐ jí KR4d0128. All three figures studied with Chéng Yí, transmitted Luòxué into Wēnzhōu, and provided the cohort that would over the following century mutate into the Yǒngjiā xuépài — the utilitarian-statecraft tradition.
The collection contains memorials, zòuyì (mostly from Liú’s Jǐshìzhōng tenure under Huīzōng), classical essays, jì, and a small body of poetry. Liú’s tenure as Jǐshìzhōng placed him among the near-court-attendants of the early-Huīzōng court before the Cài Jīng faction’s full ascendancy; his memorials are a source for Chóngníng / Dàguān court politics from a Confucian-disciple position.
The dating bracket runs from his jìnshì (1097 or 1100) through his death (1128). Lifedates 1069–1128 are confirmed.
Translations and research
- Sòng-shǐ j. 347 — biography (附 to Liú Ān-jié).
- Sòng yuán xué-àn 宋元學案 j. 32 (Zhōu, Xǔ zhū-rú xué-àn) — covers the Yǒng-jiā Sān xiān-shēng.
- Lo, Winston W. The Life and Thought of Yeh Shih (Hawaii 1974). Background on the late Yǒng-jiā school whose origins this bié-jí documents.
- Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Hawaii 1992). Background.
- No dedicated monographic study of Liú Ān-shàng located.
Other points of interest
- The Sān xiānshēng together represent one of the rare cases of a regional school’s foundation being represented by biéjí of all three founders, allowing direct comparison of Yǒngjiā first-generation literary culture.