Tàishī Chéngyìbó Liú Wénchéng gōng jí 太師誠意伯劉文成公集
The Collected Works of Sir Liú Wén-chéng, Grand Preceptor and Earl of Sincere Resolve by 劉基 (撰)
About the work
The SBCK Lóngqìng-era (1572) recension of the collected works of Liú Jī 劉基 劉基 (1311–1375), titled with his full set of honorifics: Tàishī 太師 (Grand Preceptor — a posthumous honour), Chéngyìbó 誠意伯 (his Hóngwǔ-era fief), Wénchéng 文成 (his posthumous title). The collection contains substantially the same body of material as the WYG-Sìkù Chéngyìbó wén jí KR4e0005 — Liú’s six component works (Yùlí zǐ, Fùbù jí, Xiěqíng jí, Líméi jí, Chūnqiū míngjīng, Yìyùn lù) — but reorganized and re-cut by Xiè Tíngjié 謝廷傑 (the Qiúfēng 虬峯 of the postface), Patrol Censor of the Two Zhèjiāng, in Lóngqìng 6 (壬申, 1572). The transmission line is independent of the Chénghuà Zhèjiāng Cháyuàn line that underlies the WYG.
Prefaces
The collection opens with a long postface by the Pīyuè 闢嶽 (named Wáng Liè 王烈 in the text), submitted to Xiè Tíngjié on the completion of the recutting. Wáng’s postface explains the transmission history: the first cutting was by Wáng Jǐnghòu 王景後 (the Wáng tàishǐ 王太史) of the early Yǒnglè period (c. 1403–1424), after which there had been three further cuttings, all gradually obscured by time and editorial disorder. In Jiājìng 38 (己未, 1559) the senior local elder Fán Dǒushān 樊斗山 had reprinted the collection at the Běijī xúnyuàn 北畿巡院, but copies had remained scarce in the Southeast and that recension had moreover dropped the Chūnqiū míngjīng fascicle, making it not a complete collection. The Lóngqìng 6 reissue under Xiè Tíngjié therefore re-collated from multiple base texts, restored the dropped fascicle, and produced the complete recension printed here. The opening preface by 宋濂 宋濂 to the original Fùbù jí (Hóngwǔ-era) is also preserved.
Abstract
This SBCK collection is the canonical Wàn-lì-era (more precisely, late Lóngqìng) transmission line of Liú Jī’s collected works, parallel and complementary to the Chénghuà-based line that underlies the WYG-Sìkù KR4e0005. The postface of Wáng Liè dates the recutting to Lóngqìng 6, third month (i.e. spring 1572). The Patrol Censor Xiè Tíngjié 謝廷傑 of Yùzhāng 豫章 (Nánchāng, Jiāngxī) is the principal sponsor; the actual editorial work is credited to Wáng Liè (a local administrator of Chǔzhōu 處州, Liú’s home region). The contents are: the Yùlí zǐ 郁離子 (Liú’s most famous work, the Yuán-period political-allegorical fable collection of c. 1356–1358); the Fùbù jí 覆瓿集 (his gǔwén); the Xiěqíng jí 寫情集 and Líméi jí 犁眉集 (his verse); the Chūnqiū míngjīng 春秋明經 (his classical-exegetical writing on the Chūnqiū); and the Yìyùn lù 翊運錄 (the post-mortem documentary record compiled by Liú’s grandson 劉廌 from imperial documents related to Liú Jī’s fief and posthumous honour).
The text-historical significance of the SBCK recension is that it preserves the Wànlì-era restoration of the Chūnqiū míngjīng — a fascicle that the Sìkù editors found in a related Lóngqìng line and that the Chénghuà-era Cháyuàn line had also retained, but the intervening Jiājìng Běijī xúnyuàn reprint had dropped. For all matters of Liú’s biography, school-lineage, and modern scholarship, see the 劉基 person note and the parallel entry at KR4e0005.
Translations and research
- Hok-lam Chan. 1976. Entry on Liú Jī in Goodrich & Fang, Dictionary of Ming Biography 1:932–938.
- William L. Idema. 1986. Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period. Leiden: Brill. On the Yù-lí zǐ.
- Hú Zōnghé 胡宗鶚 (ed.). 2003. Liú Jī jí biān-nián jiào-zhù 劉基集編年校注. Hángzhōu: Zhèjiāng gǔjí. Standard modern critical edition, using both the Chénghuà and Lóngqìng lines.
- Lǐ Lìpíng 李立平. 2008. Liú Jī yán-jiū 劉基研究. Zhèjiāng dàxué chū-bǎn-shè.
Other points of interest
This is the parallel SBCK transmission to the WYG-Sìkù KR4e0005; the two should be read together, since differences in selection and ordering bear directly on the editorial politics of Wàn-lì-era literary canon-formation.
Links
- Liu Ji (Wikipedia)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).