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龍川集

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Text ID
KR4d0303
Date
1163–1194
Dynasty
宋

Lóngchuān jí 龍川集

Collection of Lóngchuān by 陳亮 (撰)

About the work

A thirty-juàn collected works of the Southern Sòng utilitarian thinker, cí-poet and political polemicist Chén Liàng 陳亮 (1143–1194, zì Tóngfǔ 同甫, of Yǒngkāng 永康, Wùzhōu). Chén is the best-known representative of the Yǒngkāng xuépài 永康學派, the activist statecraft school whose famous “kingly Way / hegemonic Way” (wángbà 王霸) debate with Zhū Xī 朱熹 is one of the defining events of late twelfth-century thought. The collection consists overwhelmingly of memorials, treatises, occasional essays and prefaces, with a smaller poetic and cí component, and includes the celebrated Shū Sìshū hòu 上孝宗皇帝書 series and the Zhōngxīng lùn 中興論.

Tiyao

Your servants and others respectfully submit: the Lóngchuān jí in thirty juàn was composed by Chén Liàng 陳亮 of the Sòng. Liàng is also the author of the Sānguó jìnián 三國紀年, already on record [in the Imperial collection]. Liàng was on close terms with Master Zhū [Xī]; thus when [Chén] framed Táng Zhòngyǒu 唐仲友, Master Zhū did not doubt him. Yet his bold spirit and ambition for actual deeds put his arguments at variance with Master Zhū. Luó Dàjīng’s 羅大經 Hèlín yùlù 鶴林玉露 records that Master Zhū admonished him saying, “Every true great hero must walk fearfully on thin ice as he goes” — meant to curb his fierce edge. Yuè Kē’s 岳珂 Tíngshǐ 桯史 further records that when Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 died and Liàng wrote a sacrificial text for him, it contained the line, “Filial piety, brotherliness, loyalty, and good faith are commonly insufficient to keep up with the world’s changes; while talent, technique, dialectic, and intellect are commonly insufficient to settle the world’s enduring norms.” When Master Zhū saw it he was greatly displeased, sent letters to the Wùzhōu men decrying it as preposterous; on hearing of it Liàng too was displeased. Later in a memorial to Xiàozōng he wrote: “The Confucians of the present age, who proclaim themselves possessors of the learning of rectifying the heart and making the intent sincere, are all wind-paralysed men who do not know pain or itch.” This was a veiled rebuke to Huìwēng [Zhū Xī], to which Huìwēng took no offence. Such passages amply show his unconstrained vigor: even with Zhū Xī’s renown then unrivalled, Liàng never bent to flatter. Looking at the present collection, most of its pieces are argumentative essays; his oratorical force is unbridled, as if no man under heaven could fill his measure — had he gained position, he might well have proved a Zhào Kuò 趙括 or a Mǎ Sù 馬謖, hot-headed and chariot-wrecking. But judged purely as writing, the praise of “opening up the heart and lungs of all ages, overturning the heroes of one’s day” is hardly mere extravagance. He and Master Zhū each followed his own path, and yet to the end Master Zhū prized the man — there must have been substance there. The Sòng míngchén yánxíng lù says he reached the imperial court six times under Xiàozōng to memorialise on great policy; the present collection contains only the four “Letters submitted to Xiàozōng” and the Zhōngxīng lùn; cross-checking the Sòngshǐ the same is recorded. The Yánxíng lù further says that when the Chuígǒngdiàn 垂拱殿 was completed he submitted a fù to extol the imperial virtue, and likewise a Jiāosì qìngchéng fù 郊祀慶成賦 — neither is extant in the present collection. Yè Shì 葉適 once said that Liàng’s collection was in forty juàn in all; the present collection has only thirty juàn, much having been lost in the long course of transmission. Since this is the only edition now in circulation, we record it here following its existing juàn-arrangement. Respectfully collated in the tenth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781]. Chief compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; general collator Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Chén Liàng was the central voice of the Yǒngkāng utilitarian school whose distinctive doctrine — that the Way is realised in concrete affairs and that the bà (hegemonic) achievements of Hàn Gāozǔ and Táng Tàizōng are continuous with rather than opposed to the wáng (kingly) ideal — found its sharpest expression in his correspondence with Zhū Xī between 1182 and 1185 (the wángbà yìlì exchange). The collection passed through significant attrition: Yè Shì, Chén’s contemporary and intellectual heir, recorded it as forty juàn; the Sìkù recension is thirty, and the editors note further internal losses (the fù on the Chuígǒng Hall and the Jiāosì qìngchéng fù mentioned in the Sòng míngchén yánxíng lù are missing). Chén’s lifedates 1143–1194 are well attested (CBDB; Sòngshǐ 436); he obtained the jìnshì zhuàngyuán in 1193 only a year before his death. The composition window for the collected pieces is therefore c. 1163–1194, the bracket adopted here. Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual §40, on Sòng statecraft writing) notes the Lóngchuān jí among the principal sources for the late-Xiàozōng frontier-policy debate, alongside the works of Yè Shì and Xīn Qìjí 辛棄疾. Modern scholarship has decisively rehabilitated the Yǒngkāng school as a major current of Sòng thought, no longer dismissable as a mere foil to dàoxué.

Translations and research

  • Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch’en Liang’s Challenge to Chu Hsi. Harvard East Asian Monographs 101, Harvard University Press, 1982 — the standard English-language monograph; close reading of the wáng-bà correspondence and a partial translation of the key letters.
  • Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. University of Hawai’i Press, 1992 — situates Chén Liàng within the broader landscape of Southern Sòng intellectual debate.
  • Tián Hào 田浩 (Hoyt Tillman), Zhū Xī de sīwéi shìjiè 朱熹的思維世界. Táiběi: Yǔnchén, 1996; expanded ed. Jiāngsū rénmín, 2009.
  • Dèng Guǎngmíng 鄧廣銘, Chén Lóngchuān zhuàn 陳龍川傳. Shànghǎi rénmín, 1997. Major Chinese-language biography.
  • Critical editions: Chén Liàng jí 陳亮集, ed. Dèng Guǎngmíng 鄧廣銘. 2 vols., Zhōnghuá, 1974; rev. ed. 1987 — the standard scholarly text, restoring some material from manuscript witnesses beyond the WYG.

Other points of interest

The collection’s treatises Zhuógǔ lùn 酌古論 (juàn 5–6), a series of historical essays on military and political crises from antiquity to the Five Dynasties, are unusually direct sources for Chén Liàng’s strategic thought and were widely cited by MíngQīng frontier statesmen.

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