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明太祖文集

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Text ID
KR4e0001
Date
1368–1398
Dynasty
明

Míng Tàizǔ wénjí 明太祖文集

Collected Writings of Míng Tàizǔ (the Hóngwǔ Emperor) by 朱元璋 (撰), edited and collated by 姚士觀 (編校) and 沈鈇 (編校)

About the work

Míng Tàizǔ wénjí 明太祖文集 in twenty juǎn is the most fully extant edition of the literary remains of Zhū Yuánzhāng 朱元璋 (1328–1398), the founding emperor of the Míng. The collection is divided into sixteen genres — zhào 詔, zhì 制, gào 誥, shū 書, chìmìng 勅命, cèwèn 策問, chìwèn 勅問, lùn 論, yuèzhāng 樂章, yuègē 樂歌, wén 文, bēi 碑, jì 記, xù 序, shuō 説, zázhù 雜著, jìwén 祭文 and shī 詩 — comprising both the public, ceremonial pronouncements of the Hóngwǔ throne and a substantial body of personal prose and verse. Because Zhū Yuánzhāng is one of only two peasant-origin founding emperors in Chinese history (the other being Liú Bāng 劉邦) and because much of the prose was personally drafted rather than ghost-written, the corpus has an unusual ethnographic interest for the texture of fourteenth-century vernacular and the politics of early-Míng autocracy.

Tiyao

Examined respectfully: Míng Tàizǔ wénjí, twenty juǎn. Jointly edited and collated by Yáo Shìguān 姚士觀, Censor in Patrol of the Northern Metropolitan Region and Superintendent of Education, and Shěn Fū 沈鈇 (the Sìkù tíyào here writes the second graph as 鈇 — the catalog meta’s “鉄” is a misread), Director in the Nánjīng Ministry of Revenue’s Granary-Supervisory bureau. Arranged in sixteen categories: zhào, zhì, gào, shū, chìmìng, cèwèn, chìwèn, lùn, yuèzhāng, yuègē, wén, bēi, jì, xù, shuō, zázhù, jìwén, shī.

The Tàizǔ’s collection was first cut in Hóngwǔ 7 (1374). The prefaces preserved in the literary collections of 劉基 (Liú Jī) and 宋濂 (Sòng Lián) both report it as a five-juǎn work and credit the Hànlín Academician Yuè Sháofèng 樂韶鳳 with the editing. By the time of Huáng Yújì’s 黄虞稷 Qiānqǐngtáng shūmù 千頃堂書目, however, that early recension is already lost; Huáng records a Tàizǔ wénjí in thirty juǎn (sub-divided into a jiǎjí of 2 juǎn, a yǐjí of 3 juǎn, a bǐngjí of fourteen prose juǎn + one verse juǎn, and a dīngjí of 10 juǎn); a topical Tàizǔ wénjí lèibiān in twelve juǎn; a Tàizǔ shījí in five juǎn; and Tàizǔ yùzhì shūgǎo in three juǎn — none of which match the present transmission. Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Guóshǐ jīngjí zhì lists both a twenty-juǎn and a thirty-juǎn recension; the present text agrees in length with the former and is presumed to be the one Jiāo had seen. It was cut at the secondary capital Zhōngdū 中都 (Fèngyáng 鳳陽) in Wànlì 14 (1586) under the editorship indicated above, although the precise editorial provenance is otherwise unknown; the colophon by Yáo Shìguān and others claims only to be reproducing an old base text, without further documentation. Zhū Yízūn 朱彛尊 in his Míng shī zōng 明詩綜 records one Tàizǔ poem (Shénfèng cāo 神鳳操) that is not in the present collection, so coverage is incomplete; yet of the thirty-juǎn version no surviving copy has been seen in recent times, and the various copies privately preserved are essentially descendants of Yáo Shìguān’s printing. We therefore record this edition, as the principal monument of the literary output of the dynastic founder. Reverently collated on the tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). General compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The composition of the corpus belongs entirely to the Hóngwǔ reign (1368–1398; for the emperor’s lifedates and biography see the 朱元璋 person note). The original five-juǎn recension noted by Sòng Lián and Liú Jī appears to have been an authorized selection compiled at court in 1374, but it does not survive. The twenty-juǎn recension printed at Zhōngdū in Wànlì 14 (1586) by Yáo Shìguān 姚士觀 and Shěn Fū 沈鈇 — both relatively obscure middle-Míng officials — is the editio princeps of the corpus as we have it. The base text Yáo and Shěn used is not identified in the colophon, but the redactional structure (sixteen genre-categories, with the imperial ceremonial pronouncements foregrounded) suggests a Wànlì-period sense of what an imperial wénjí ought to look like, rather than a faithful reproduction of any one Hóngwǔ-era manuscript. The Wényuàngé Sìkù copy is descended from the Wànlì cut.

The 詔 (edicts), 誥 (investitures), and 勅命 (mandates) form the bulk of the public material; the zhào in particular include the foundational pronouncements of the dynasty, the cèwèn preserve Tàizǔ’s distinctive theoretical examination questions for the Hànlín, and the zázhù and xù contain the more personal prose — including the famous autobiographical preface to the Huánglíng bēi 皇陵碑 inscription for his parents’ grave, and the heavily edited drafts of his commentaries on the Dàodé jīng (preserved separately at KR5c0058) and the Heart and Diamond sūtras. The shī are mostly occasional verse in qīyánjuéjù form, technically rough but politically and historically valuable. Modern scholarship (see below) has long debated the question of authorship: a small minority of the most polished zhào and jì are clearly the work of court literati (Sòng Lián, Liú Jī, Wáng Yī 王禕), but Edward Farmer and Ho Yun-yi have shown that the majority of the corpus, especially the zázhù and the more colloquial zhào, is genuinely the emperor’s own draft work, characterized by his idiosyncratic vernacular, his harsh polemic against corruption, and his Buddhist-Daoist syncretic vocabulary.

Translations and research

  • Romeyn Taylor. 1975. Basic Annals of Ming T’ai-tsu. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center. Annotated translation of Míng shǐ j. 2–3.
  • Edward L. Farmer. 1995. Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule. Leiden: Brill. Translates and analyzes a substantial body of Tàizǔ’s legal edicts, many drawn from this wénjí.
  • John W. Dardess. 1983. Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty. Berkeley: University of California Press. The standard English-language treatment of the relationship between Tàizǔ and the early Míng literati who edited his prose.
  • Ho Yun-yi 賀允宜. 1976. “The Imperial Edicts of Ming T’ai-tsu”. Ming Studies 1976/1, pp. 1–18.
  • Anne Gerritsen et al. 2018. The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1. Cambridge UP. (Mote and Twitchett original 1988 edition; Gerritsen et al. updated reprint.) Chapter 4 (Mote on Hóngwǔ) is the standard English-language treatment of the reign and discusses the wénjí as a source.

Other points of interest

  • The catalog meta’s spelling 沈鉄 for the second editor is a low-frequency variant graph; the Sìkù tíyào itself writes 沈鈇 (the variant kept here in the person note).
  • The Tàizǔ’s three Buddhist-Daoist yùzhù (imperial commentaries) — on the Dàodé jīng, the Heart sūtra, and the Diamond sūtra — are not included in this collection. The Dàodé jīng commentary is preserved separately and is catalogued at KR5c0058; the two Buddhist commentaries circulate independently.

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