魯齋集

Lǔzhāi jí 魯齋集

Collection from [the Studio of] Lǔ by 王柏 (撰)

About the work

The collected works of Wáng Bǎi 王柏 (1197–1274), one of the most controversial Southern-Sòng neo-Confucian scholars — a second-generation Zhū-Xī-school transmitter via the Jīnhuá 金華 lineage of his grandfather Wáng Shīyù 王師愈 (Yáng Shí 楊時’s pupil) and his father Wáng Hàn 王瀚 (a pupil of Zhū Xī 朱熹 and Lǚ Zǔqiān 吕祖謙), but most famous for his textual-criticism reorganization of the classical canon: his Shīyí 詩疑 redivided the Shījīng 詩經, his Shūyí 書疑 attacked the authenticity of the Pángēng 盤庚 and Zhōugào 周誥 chapters of the Shàngshū 尚書, and his various works systematically questioned the received text of the classics in ways that scandalized the Sìkù editors. The collection in 20 juàn was reorganized for printing in the Míng Zhèngtǒng 正統 era (1436–1449) by Wáng Bǎi’s sixth-generation descendant Wáng Dí 王迪, Provincial Investigation Judge of Sìchuān.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Lǔzhāi jí, twenty juàn, was composed by Wáng Bǎi of the Sòng.

Bǎi was given to indulging private surmises and to cutting-and-disordering the ancient classics. He re-edited the Three Hundred Shī of the Shījīng, and on the Pángēng and Zhōugào chapters of the Shū he everywhere openly attacked them without restraint. This is in no way to be taken as a guide to teaching. His prose and verse, although too of an unbridled spirited cast, in their main tendency are uniformly bound to lǐxué (Neo-Confucian) discourse.

The Rúlín zhuàn 儒林傳 of the Sòngshǐ records: when young, Bǎi looked up to Zhūgě Liàng 諸葛亮 as his model, and styled himself Chángxiào 長嘯 (“Long-Whistler”). After thirty he came to know the source of his family’s learning — (note: Bǎi’s grandfather Shīyù studied under Yáng Shí, and his father Hàn was also a pupil of Zhū Xī and Lǚ Zǔqiān; hence the family-tradition reference) — and together with his friend Wāng Kāizhī 汪開之 composed the Lúnyǔ tōngzhǐ 論語通指. On reaching the section on “in dwelling-place being respectful, in handling-affairs being attentive” (居處恭, 執事敬), he sighed in alarm: “Chángxiào is not the Way of holding jìng (sustained attentiveness) in the Confucian gate”, and immediately changed [his sobriquet] to Lǔzhāi 魯齋 (“Studio of [Like] Lǔ”, i.e., the upright path).

He was by natural endowment outstanding, but in essence one of an unruly-and-unsubdued talent. Even after he turned to learning and refined his qìzhì 氣質, the inclination toward the lofty-and-different could not always be self-restrained. So at the moment when he stiffened and broke through, he dared to attack the canon hand-fixed by Confucius. Even as his prose and verse studied to be reined-in, forcing them into the carpenter’s measure, the marks of conscious stitching never let him reach the pure-mellow harmony of the masters from Liánxī 濂溪 [= Zhōu Dūnyí] downward, who naturally fall into the Way. Only his boldness in refining-and-quenching, in self-restraining the social-qì, in making the headlong-cross-stream into the orthodox — this alone is to be taken from him.

In the first juàn of the collection there is a Birthday poem to Jiǎ Qiūhè 賈秋壑 [= Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道], praising in detail his service in the relief of Èzhōu — fulsome panegyric, this too a flaw on the white jade. Yet on checking the other records, none reports any dependent-affiliation of Wáng Bǎi to the gates of power; it is not known why this piece exists. The collection was recompiled by Wáng Bǎi’s sixth-generation descendant Wáng Dí 王迪 of Sìchuān Investigation Bureau in the Míng Zhèngtǒng era. Why he should have included it without concealment is also unclear. The whole is best left as transmitted-with-doubt (yǐchuányí cúnyíérbúlùn 以傳疑存而不論可矣).

Respectfully collated, second month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). 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.

Preface to the recension by Yáng Pǔ 楊溥 (Míng, early 15th c., abridged in translation): Confucius said: “When we speak of lǐ, do we mean only the jade-and-silk? When we speak of yuè, do we mean only the bells-and-drums?” Prose’s being prose has to do with the Way (dào 道). When the ancient sages got their time and walked the Way — as Yáo, Shùn, Yǔ, Tāng, Wén, and Wǔ were as rulers, and as Gāo Yáo, Kuí, Jì, Xiè, Yī Yǐn, Fù Yuè, the Dukes of Zhōu and Shào were as ministers — their good policies and excellent counsels were recorded in the books-and-tablets; this we call prose. Or when the followers of the sages-and-worthies, not employed in their day, plumbed to the limit the principle of Heaven-and-man and examined the way of the ancient sage-kings — as Confucius and Yán, Zēng, Sī, Mèng down through generations of authors-and-editors edited and composed for the instruction of later ages — this too we call prose. All such [prose] does not lean on things; it endures in time alongside Heaven, Earth, sun, and moon. This lies with the Way.

When we descend to the Warring States, capable speakers each set up their disputatious essays, some at variance with the way of the sages-and-worthies: gentlemen must make a choice. Hàn, Táng, and after, in every age there were composers; weighed against the Way, those who are purely-pure are alas few indeed. Only after the appearance in the Sòng of the gentlemen of Lián, Luò, Guān, Mǐn 濂洛關閩 [= the four neo-Confucian schools — Zhōu Dūnyí, Cheng brothers, Zhāng Zǎi, Zhū Xī] did xìnglǐ (nature-and-principle) learning shine forth like the dawn, and learners had something to anchor on. Prose-and-discussion thereby all returned to the upright path: the Way being made plain, the words then rest with men.

Mr. Wáng Wénxiàn of Jīnhuá 金華王文憲公 [= Wáng Bǎi] was endowed with lofty-and-airy nature and worked his learning to the utmost. By the substance of what he saw, he gave forth in prose: enough to clarify dàodé 道德, enough — had he been employed — to establish service-and-merit. Yet he grew old in the hills-and-mounds at last. Alas! As to his poetry-and-songs, that was merely surplus matter.

His sixth-generation descendant Wáng Dí 王迪, Provincial Investigation Judge of Sìchuān, has gathered them into a volume. The Yìwū-county officer Liú Tóng of Lúlíng and Liú Jié of Póyáng, in the leisure of governance, used [the manuscript] to cut the blocks — they too may be called gentlemen who know where to place their attention. Yáng Pǔ of Nánjūn writes.

Abstract

The Lǔzhāi jí is one of the most ideologically charged late-Sòng biéjí in the Sìkù collection. Wáng Bǎi (1197–1274), known by his sobriquet Lǔzhāi 魯齋 (and earlier Chángxiào 長嘯), was a Jīnhuá 金華 scholar who emerged from a richly Zhū-Xī-school family — his grandfather Wáng Shīyù studied under Yáng Shí; his father Wáng Hàn studied under both Zhū Xī and Lǚ Zǔqiān. Wáng Bǎi himself was the senior pupil-line of Hé Jī 何基, with whom he is paired in the SòngYuán xuéàn as a transmitter of the Bei-Xī Mǐnxué 北溪閩學 of the ZhūXī tradition into the third generation.

What made Wáng Bǎi controversial in the Sìkù tradition was his textual-criticism reorganization of the canon. The Shīyí 詩疑 (2 juàn) treats the Shījīng as containing later interpolations, rearranges the order of poems, and questions the authenticity of certain pieces; the Shūyí 書疑 (9 juàn) attacks the historical authenticity of the Pángēng and Zhōugào chapters of the Shàngshū. To the Qīng Sìkù editors, this constituted an unforgivable violation of the canon’s authority — hence the tíyào’s sustained polemic. To 20th-century Chinese textual scholarship (Qián Xuántóng 錢玄同 and the Gǔshǐ biàn 古史辨 movement), Wáng Bǎi was rehabilitated as a pre-Qīng forerunner of kǎozhèng 考證 textual criticism.

The Jiǎ Sìdào panegyric problem. The first juàn contains a birthday-poem (shòu 壽) for Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道 (sobriquet Qiūhè 秋壑), praising his role in the (fictionalized) Èzhōu relief of 1259. The Sìkù editors find this puzzling given the absence of any evidence elsewhere for Wáng Bǎi’s affiliation with the JiǎSìdào regime. The text-historical explanation is most likely that Wáng Dí (Wáng Bǎi’s sixth-generation descendant and the MíngZhèngtǒng editor) included material from a manuscript witness without selective filtering — but the Sìkù editors preserve the textual problem for later resolution.

Composition window. Wáng Bǎi was active as a writer from his thirties onward (c. 1230) until his death in 1274. The Lǔzhāi jí was assembled posthumously by his family and survives in the Míng Zhèngtǒng (1436–1449) recension by Wáng Dí — therefore the work as we have it is a Míng-edited late-Sòng biéjí, with the textual problems that this implies.

For Wáng Bǎi’s place in Sòng Neo-Confucian intellectual history, see Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1992); and Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §63 on Sòng dàoxué networks.

Translations and research

• Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1992) — situates Wáng Bǎi in the Jīn-huá transmission of Zhū-Xī’s school.
• John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003) — touches on Wáng Bǎi’s commentarial method.
• Christian Soffel, Ein Stadthalter im Reich des Drachen: Die Untersuchungen des Wang Bo (1197–1274) zum Mengzi (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008) — German monograph specifically on Wáng Bǎi’s commentary on the Mèngzǐ; the principal Western-language work on Wáng Bǎi.
• For the Shī-yí and Shū-yí: Quán Hànshēng 全漢昇 and others; and the modern critical edition in the Sì-bù cóng-kān tradition.
• Sòng-Yuán xué-àn 宋元學案 juàn 82 (the Bei-Xī Hé-Wáng xué-àn 北溪何王學案).

Other points of interest

Wáng Bǎi changed his sobriquet from Chángxiào 長嘯 (“Long-Whistler”, which evoked Zhūgě Liàng’s iconic recitation in the Liángfù yín 梁父吟) to Lǔzhāi 魯齋 (“[Like] Lǔ Studio”) when, while composing the Lúnyǔ tōngzhǐ, he came to the section on jūchù gōng, zhíshì jìng 居處恭, 執事敬 and realized that his earlier flamboyant identity was incompatible with the Confucian doctrine of jìng (sustained attentiveness). This conversion-narrative is one of the most-cited cases of hào-change in Sòng intellectual biography.

The Sìkù tíyào’s hostility to Wáng Bǎi sets the tone for the Qīng kǎozhèng-orthodox reception of him — but the modern Gǔshǐ biàn movement of Qián Xuántóng 錢玄同 and Gù Jiégāng 顧頡剛 (1920s–1930s) explicitly reinstated Wáng Bǎi as their principal Sòng forerunner.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1186.1, p1.
• CBDB person 10706
• Wikidata, Wang Bo (philosopher)