Wéndìng jí 文定集
The Wén-dìng Collection by 汪應辰 (撰)
About the work
Wéndìng jí 文定集 in 24 juǎn (also called Yùshān jí 玉山集) is the literary collection of Wāng Yīngchén 汪應辰 (1118–1176, zì Shèngxī 聖錫, of Xìnzhōu Yùshān 信州玉山, Jiāngxī; original name Wāng Yáng 汪洋, changed by imperial decree on his being placed first in the jìnshì of 1135 — at age 17, the youngest zhuàngyuán of the Sòng). Posthumous shì Wéndìng 文定. The collection is heavy on memorials and zhì (制 — drafted commands), reflecting Wāng’s career trajectory: Mìshūshěng zhèngzì in the late Shàoxīng decade, expelled by Qín Huì 秦檜 to a Jiànzhōu tōngpàn post (where he sat for 17 years), then recalled after Qín’s death in 1155 to Lǐbù shìláng, Hànlínyuàn, and finally Fūwéngé xuéshì concurrently Sìchuān zhìzhìshǐ / Zhī Chéngdūfǔ in the late 1160s.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào: the Wéndìng jí, also titled Yùshān jí, was composed by Wāng Yīngchén of the Sòng. Yīngchén’s zì was Shèngxī, of Xìnzhōu Yùshān; original name Yáng. Jìnshì placed first in Shàoxīng 5 (1135); Gāozōng specially renamed him. Initially appointed Zhèndōngjūn qiānpàn; later rose to Fūwéngé xuéshì, Sìchuān zhìzhìshǐ, Zhī Chéngdūfǔ. His record is in the Sòngshǐ biography. In his youth Yīngchén studied with Yú Chū 喻樗, Zhāng Jiǔchéng 張九成, Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中, Hú Ānguó 胡安國, and others; later he was on close terms with Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 and Zhāng Shì 張栻, and to Master Zhū 朱熹 he stood as cousin-by-marriage’s elder. The two often consulted by exchange of letters; when Yīngchén was appointed Fūwéngé dàizhì, he submitted Zhū Xī to take his own place — their bond was particularly deep — so his learning has its sources in good order.
When serving as Mìshūshěng zhèngzì, he submitted a memorial that crossed Qín Huì; he was demoted abroad to Jiànzhōu tōngpàn and stagnated in zhōu-and-jùn for seventeen years in all. The Sòngshǐ says of his straight-forward speech without concealment, that among Wú Fú 吳芾, Wáng Shípéng 王十朋, Chén Liánghàn 陳良翰, and others, he was the most upright and bone-honest, and his standing-firm too had its sources and ends.
The Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì records his collection in 50 juǎn. By the early Míng it was already rare. In Hóngzhì (the 1490s), Chéng Mǐnzhèng 程敏政 obtained the volume in the Nèigé (Inner Cabinet); finding the juǎnzhì too bulky to copy in full, he excerpted the essentials, editing into 10 juǎn of tíngshì cè (court-examination essays) + 2 juǎn of memorials + 1 juǎn of inner zhì (drafted commands) + 8 juǎn of miscellaneous prose. In the Jiājìng era (1522–1566) his fellow-villager Xià Jùn 夏浚 had it carved, with 2 juǎn of yíshì (anecdotes) and zhìzhuàn (epitaphs and biographies) appended. What circulates today is all from Chéng’s recension; for two or three hundred years no complete copy has been seen. We have now examined the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, where some 4 to 5 tenths of what Chéng’s recension lacks is preserved — for Yáo Guǎngxiào and his colleagues’ source-text was the same Inner-Cabinet copy that Chéng saw; but Chéng selected too narrowly and let many long memorial pieces drop out. We respectfully use the Zhèjiāng acquired text together with the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recoveries to constitute this present 24-juǎn recension.
Abstract
Wāng Yīngchén stands at the precise generational and intellectual hinge between the late-Northern-Sòng Dàoxué establishment of Hú Ānguó / Yáng Shí / Yú Chū / Lǚ Běnzhōng and the Southern-Sòng Dàoxué synthesis of Lǚ Zǔqiān, Zhāng Shì, and Zhū Xī. The principal biographical anchors of the collection are: (a) the spectacular zhuàngyuán placement of 1135 at age 17, after which Gāozōng personally renamed him from Yáng to Yīngchén; (b) the impeachment by Qín Huì for his memorial against the appeasement program, leading to a 17-year exile in regional posts; (c) the late-life return to power and his role as Sìchuān provincial governor in the late 1160s; (d) his cousin-uncle relationship to Zhū Xī (Wāng was a 從表叔 of Zhū) and the documented close correspondence between them — Wāng formally proposed Zhū Xī as his replacement at the Fūwéngé. The Sòngshǐ obituary places Wāng among the gǔgěng (bone-honest) figures of the Shàoxīng era alongside Wú Fú 吳芾 and Wáng Shípéng 王十朋.
The transmission of the collection itself is one of the most heavily reconstructed in the Sìkù: the original 50-juǎn Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì version was lost between Sòng and Míng; Chéng Mǐnzhèng made a partial 21-juǎn recension from the late-Míng Nèigé copy; the present 24-juǎn WYG recension is a Sìkù compound of Chéng’s transmitted recension augmented by 4–5 tenths of recovered material from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The dating bracket here uses Wāng’s jìnshì year (1135) as notBefore and his death (1176) as notAfter for the underlying composition.
Translations and research
- Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. 1992. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. Hawai’i. Treats Wāng Yīng-chén in the Dào-xué network around Zhū Xī.
- Schirokauer, Conrad. 1986. “Chu Hsi’s sense of history.” In Ordering the World. Discusses Wāng among Zhū Xī’s senior correspondents.
Other points of interest
The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn augmentation is unusually large here — the Sìkù editors single out Wāng’s long memorial pieces (奏議長篇) as the principal recovered material. The collection is particularly important for Sòng Lǐxué prosopography because Wāng’s letters to Zhū Xī, Lǚ Zǔqiān, and Zhāng Shì document the senior generation’s view of the rising Dàoxué movement.
Links
- Wang Yingchen (Wikipedia, zh)
- Wikidata Q15911605
- Sòngshǐ j. 387 (biography of Wāng Yīngchén).