Zìxī jí 字溪集
Collection from Word-Creek by 陽枋 (撰)
About the work
The collected writings of Yáng Fāng 陽枋 (1187–1267), a late-Southern-Sòng scholar of Bāchuān 巴川 (in modern Chóngqìng) and a third-generation pupil of the ZhūXī school via Dù Zhèng 度正 and Zhǎn Yuān 㬊淵. The work survives only in fragments recovered by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典, and is principally important as a witness to provincial ZhūXī transmission in the late Sòng west, with a strong leaning toward Yìjīng studies (xiàngshù 象數, guàqì 卦氣, nàjiǎ 納甲 methods) that diverges in part from Zhū Xī’s Běnyì 本義. The recension includes a year-by-year chronology (niánpǔ 年譜) and xíngzhuàng 行狀 of Yáng Fāng composed by his son.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Zìxī jí, eleven juàn with one juàn appendix, was composed by Yáng Fāng of the Sòng. Fāng, zì Zōngjì 宗驥, originally named Chāngcháo 昌朝, was a man of Bāchuān 巴川. He dwelt above the Xiǎolóngtán 小龍潭 of Zìxī 字溪 (“Word-Creek”), and so styled himself accordingly. In the first year of Duānpíng 端平 (1234) he stood at the head of the regional examination list; in the fourth year of Chúnyòu 淳祐 (1244), owing to the troubles in Shǔ 蜀, he was spared examination by special exemption and, after audience, was granted the equivalent of the jìnshì degree (賜同進士出身). The frontier-staff officers all sought to recruit him in turn: he served as wine-and-tax supervisor at Chāngzhōu 昌州, as administrative aide (lǐyuàn 理椽) at Dàníng 大寧, and as instructor (xuéguān 學官) at Shàoqìng 紹慶. Late in life, owing to the elevation of his son Yánmǎo 炎夘, he was honoured with the rank of Cháofèngdàfū 朝奉大夫 in retirement, and died at age eighty-one. His career does not appear in the [Sòng] dynastic histories. Only the Wényuāngé shūmù 文淵閣書目 records a Yáng Zìxī jí by name but does not give the juan-count; the Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù 千頃堂書目 of Huáng Yújì 黃虞稷 puts the collection at twelve juàn, but no transmitted copy was available for long. The present recension has been compiled out of what is preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, with the niánpǔ and xíngzhuàng composed by his son appended, and divided into twelve juàn, exactly matching the number in the old catalog. Though it has plainly suffered disruption, it cannot have lost overmuch.
Fāng formerly studied under Zhū Xī’s disciples Dù Zhèng 度正 and Zhǎn Yuān 㬊淵, and so in the collection his exchanges of correspondence with others are nearly all on the discussion of learning; what he says is plainly substantial and does not stray into the empty-and-abstract. His Yìxiàng túshuō 易象圖説 in one piece often draws upon guàqì 卦氣 and nàjiǎ 納甲 methods, and so does not in every respect agree with Zhū Xī’s Běnyì. We note: Lǐ Xìngchuán 李性傳, in his preface to the Zhūzǐ yǔlù 朱子語錄, observes that in Zhū Xī’s responses to disciples on various works there were many points where his pronouncements differed, and that on the Yì in particular the discrepancies were sharpest, with Zhǎn Yuān’s compilation differing from the Běnyì in three or four cases out of ten. Yáng Fāng most likely transmits what was orally received via Zhǎn Yuān, and so his positions are not identical. There is also a piece in which he discusses the Qǐméng xiǎozhuàn 啟䝉小傳 with Shuì Yǔquán 税與權; this was composed in his late years and shows all the more how he laboured at his studies right up to old age without diminishing. Within the Zǐyáng 紫陽 [= ZhūXī] school he indeed never strays from his teacher’s tradition.
Respectfully collated, ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief-Compiler Officers (ministers) Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer (minister) Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Zìxī jí belongs to the third generation of the ZhūXī school in the west of the empire. Yáng Fāng (1187–1267, CBDB 27800), a Sìchuān man whose career was disrupted by the Mongol incursions into Shǔ, did not pass a proper jìnshì examination; the Chúnyòu 4 (1244) special-honour degree was a wartime exemption awarded to scholars whose region could not hold its examinations. The text is thus also a useful witness to the practical operation of degree-substitution in the besieged late-Sòng Sìchuān frontier.
The composition window for the collection as a whole spans Yáng Fāng’s adult productive life — conventionally placed c. 1230–1267 — but no single date attaches to the work since it is a posthumous compilation. The transmission is severely compromised: by the Qīng the work was effectively lost, with only catalog mentions surviving (the Wényuāngé shūmù and the Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù); the Sìkù editors reconstructed it from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn citations and produced what is in effect a Qīng recension. The internal Yìxiàng túshuō preserves Yáng’s distinctive xiàngshù methods, which (as the tíyào notes) diverge from the orthodox Běnyì — likely transmitted via Zhǎn Yuān, whose oral instruction is itself a recognized variant tradition within the ZhūXī corpus.
For the period, see Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual), §63 on late-Sòng Sìchuān and the disruption of the regional examination system. Yáng’s place in the SòngYuán xuéàn 宋元學案 is in the school of Dù Zhèng (juàn 80, the LùshānHúshì xuéàn 鹿山胡氏學案 and surrounding cases).
Translations and research
- Sòng-Yuán xué-àn 宋元學案, juàn 80 (the school of Dù Zhèng), in which Yáng Fāng is recorded as a third-generation Zhū-Xī disciple.
- For the regional transmission of Zhū-Xī thought in late-Sòng Sìchuān, see Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1992).
- No substantial Western-language monograph or article devoted to Yáng Fāng has been located.
Other points of interest
The catalog meta and the tíyào together preserve a small textual oddity: the tíyào gives Yáng Fāng’s son’s name as Yánmǎo 炎夘 (with the unusual graph 夘 for 卯), the rare mao graph being a clerical idiosyncrasy that should be preserved in transcription. The Zìxī jí is also one of the relatively few late-Sòng collections in which the recovered xíngzhuàng and niánpǔ are by the son rather than a disciple, lending the appendix unusual biographical weight.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1183.5, p253.
- CBDB person 27800