誠意伯文集

Chéngyìbó wén jí 誠意伯文集

Collected Works of the Earl of Sincere Resolve by 劉基 (撰)

About the work

Chéngyìbó wén jí 誠意伯文集 in twenty juǎn is the consolidated edition of the literary works of Liú Jī 劉基 (1311–1375), titled after his enfeoffment by the Hóngwǔ emperor as Chéngyìbó 誠意伯 (“Earl of Sincere Resolve”). Liú was the second of the founding-Míng literati after Sòng Lián 宋濂 KR4e0002 and the principal military-political strategist of the Zhū Yuánzhāng 朱元璋 camp during the wars of unification (1356–1368). The collection is a Chénghuà-era (1465–1487) Zhèjiāng Cháyuàn 浙江察院 consolidation of six previously separate Liú Jī works — the famous Yùlí zǐ 郁離子 (4 juǎn, his Yuán-period political-allegory work), Fùbù jí 覆瓿集 (10 juǎn), Xiěqíng jí 寫情集 (2 juǎn), Chūnqiū míngjīng 春秋明經 (2 juǎn), Líméi jí 犁眉集 (2 juǎn), and the Yìyùn lù 翊運錄 (compiled by Liú’s grandson 劉廌) — bundled under a single title. The Sìkù compilers moved the Yìyùn lù (which is not Liú’s own composition) from the head to the tail of the collection in their re-edition.

Tiyao

Examined respectfully: Chéngyìbó wén jí, twenty juǎn, by Liú Jī 劉基 of the Míng. (Liú’s Guóchū lǐxián lù 國初禮賢錄 is already recorded in our catalog.) His poetry, prose, and miscellaneous writings — the Yùlí zǐ in four juǎn, the Fùbù jí in ten juǎn, the Xiěqíng jí in two juǎn, the Chūnqiū míngjīng in two juǎn, the Líméi jí in two juǎn — were originally each their own work. During the Chénghuà 成化 reign-period (1465–1487), the Zhèjiāng Cháyuàn 浙江察院 [Branch Censorate] reissued them in a new cut and for the first time combined them in a single bundle, prefixing the Yìyùn lù 翊運錄 compiled by Liú’s grandson Liú Zhì 劉廌 and others. The reason for placing it first was that it contains zhào, zhì, and chì [imperial documents]. But that book is in fact Liú Zhì’s composition, and using it to count the juǎn-numbers means that the collection bears Liú Jī’s name on its title page while the first juǎn belongs to another’s authorship — a serious breach of editorial decorum. We have therefore moved the Yìyùn lù to the tail of the collection to correct the error; the remaining nineteen juǎn follow the original sequence to preserve the established order.

Liú Jī met with the rise [of the Míng], participated in confidential strategy, deeply assisted the campaigns, and the age then mistakenly held him to be a qiánzhī [a knower-in-advance, i.e. a diviner]; every saying from the chènwěi 讖緯 and shùshù 術數 [prophetic-apocryphal and numerological] traditions has been falsely attached to him. The supernatural and ridiculous attributions have piled up beyond limit; the practitioners in those arts have circulated them one to another in a chaos of mutual confusion — of a hundred such stories, not one is genuine. Only this present collection still issued from Liú’s own hand. His verse is brooding and stately, self-contained as a style of its own, fully able to stand against 高啟 高啟. His prose is broad, deep, dignified, and tight — a near-equal to 宋濂 宋濂 and 王禕 王禕. Yáng Shǒuchén 楊守陳’s preface says: “Of [Zhāng] Zǐfáng’s strategies we see no literary record; of [Fáng] Yuánlíng’s prose we see only military dispatches and proclamations; but we have not seen anyone who simultaneously raised dynasty-founding merit and transmitted prose to posterity — Liú Jī can be called a literary giant of all the ages.” This judgment is sound. In substance, Liú’s learning and stratagems are of the order of Yēlǜ Chǔcái 耶律楚材 and Liú Bǐngzhōng 劉秉忠, but his prose is of an order those two cannot match. Reverently collated on the fourth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). General compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Liú Jī’s collection had a complicated transmission. Each of his six principal works (the Yùlí zǐ, Fùbù jí, Xiěqíng jí, Líméi jí, Chūnqiū míngjīng, and the post-mortem family compilation Yìyùn lù) had circulated separately through the early Míng; by the late Chénghuà period (c. 1470s–80s) the wooden blocks of the various editions were decaying. The Branch Censorate of Zhèjiāng undertook a unified recut under the supervision of three Patrol Censors — Dài Yòng 戴用, Xuē Qiān 薛謙, and Yáng Láng 楊琅 — with Zhāng Xǐ 張僖, prefect of Hángzhōu, executing the printing. The Hànlín scholar Yáng Shǒuchén 楊守陳 (1425–1489) supplied the preface (preserved here). This is the textual basis for the present Chéngyìbó wén jí. The Sìkù WYG copy is a re-collation of that line, with the Yìyùn lù moved to the back. Liú’s lifedates (CBDB: 1311–1375) accord with the catalog meta (1311–1375); the Sìkù tíyào style “1311–1375” is here followed. The Sìkù tíyào’s reading of Liú as a parallel figure to Yēlǜ Chǔcái 耶律楚材 and Liú Bǐngzhōng 劉秉忠 (the great JīnYuán political strategists) — but as the literary superior of both — is the Sìkù canonical evaluation of Liú’s place in the founding-Míng tradition.

The contents include the famous Yùlí zǐ (a Yuán-period political-allegorical fable-collection of 195 pieces, written in the 1350s as Liú observed the disintegration of the Yuán); the Fùbù jí (Liú’s principal gǔwén and cífù prose); the Xiěqíng jí and Líméi jí (Liú’s shī, particularly his celebrated qīlǜ); the Chūnqiū míngjīng (a short and atypical classical-exegetical work); and the Yìyùn lù (Liú Zhì’s post-mortem compilation of imperial documents related to Liú Jī’s enfeoffment and the Hóngwǔ court’s recognition of his services).

Translations and research

• F. W. Mote. 1962. “The Growth of Chinese Despotism: A Critique of Wittfogel’s Theory of Oriental Despotism as Applied to China”. Oriens Extremus 8/1, 1–41. Discusses Liú’s political prose.
• Hok-lam Chan. 1967. The Historiography of the Chin Dynasty: Three Studies. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Has substantial treatment of Liú’s reading of the Jīn-Yuán transition.
• William L. Idema. 1986. Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period. Leiden: Brill. Treats the Yù-lí zǐ as a key proto-fictional text.
• Goodrich & Fang. 1976. Dictionary of Ming Biography. Columbia UP, 1:932–938 (entry on Liú Jī by Hok-lam Chan).
• Hú Zōnghé 胡宗鶚 (ed.). 2003. Liú Jī jí biān-nián jiào-zhù 劉基集編年校注. Hángzhōu: Zhèjiāng gǔ-jí. The standard modern critical edition.
• Lǐ Lìpíng 李立平. 2008. Liú Jī yán-jiū 劉基研究. Zhèjiāng dàxué chū-bǎn-shè.

Other points of interest

• The Hóngwǔ-era folklore tradition of Liú Jī as supernatural diviner (the Shāobǐng gē 燒餅歌 “burnt-cake prophecy” and other apocryphal texts) is explicitly repudiated by the Sìkù tíyào — only the works in this collection are accepted as Liú’s authentic writings. The Shāobǐng gē circulated under his name from at least the late Míng but is universally judged spurious.
• Liú’s Yuán-era Yùlí zǐ (written c. 1356–1358, before his attachment to Zhū Yuánzhāng) is the most studied of his works in modern scholarship and survives in numerous separate editions outside the present collection.

Links

• Liu Ji (Wikipedia)
• 劉基 (Wikidata)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).