Shèngzǔ rén huángdì yùzhì wénjí 聖祖仁皇帝御製文集
Imperial Compositions of the Kāngxī Emperor (Posthumous Title Shèngzǔ Rén) by 聖祖玄燁 (御製)
About the work
The collected prose and poetry of the Kāngxī emperor 聖祖玄燁 (1654–1722), assembled in four sequential collections (chūjí 初集 40 juan, èrjí 二集 50 juan, sānjí 三集 50 juan, sìjí 四集 36 juan; 176 juan total). The first three collections were compiled and printed under Kāngxī by the grand secretary 張玉書 and the Shāndōng governor 蔣陳錫, with the printing completed in Kāngxī 53 (1714); the fourth collection, covering writings from Kāngxī 51 (1712) onward, was edited under the supervision of the Héshuò Zhuāng prince 允祿 with 方苞 as principal proof-corrector, and printed in Yōngzhèng 10 (1732). The set arranges material thematically — imperial edicts and rescripts, prefaces, inscriptions, treatises, examinations of antiquities and classics, and gǔjīn tǐ shī 古今體詩 — under sixteen heads in each collection.
Tiyao
Your servants reverently submit the following: the Shèngzǔ Rén Huángdì’s poetry and prose written before Kāngxī 22 (guǐhài, 1683) was made the First Collection; that before Kāngxī 36 (dīngchǒu, 1697) the Second; and that before Kāngxī 50 (xīnmǎo, 1711) the Third, edited together with the grand secretary your servant 張玉書 and others, and proof-collated by the Shāndōng governor your servant Jiǎng Chénxī 蔣陳錫 and others, the printing being completed in the seventh month of Kāngxī 53 (1714). From rénchén of the fifty-first year (1712) to rényín of the sixty-first (1722) constitutes the Fourth Collection, edited by the Héshuò Zhuāng prince your servant 允祿 and others, proof-collated by the academician-reader your servant 方苞 and others, printed in the twelfth month of Yōngzhèng 10 (1732). From Imperial Edicts down to poems in ancient and modern forms, sixteen heads, totaling 176 juan, have been respectfully transcribed and made to crown the Collected Works section of past and present. There is moreover a separate edition of an Imperial Poetry Collection in twenty-eight juan, collated by the vice-minister of rites your servant Gāo Shìqí 高士奇, whose sequence of poems is wholly consistent with the present collection, so it has not been retranscribed. Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 39 (1774), second month. Chief editors your servants 紀昀, 陸錫熊, 孫士毅. Chief proof-collator your servant Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The compilation history is unusual in two respects. First, the work appears under the emperor’s posthumous title (Shèngzǔ Rén Huángdì), not under a reign-name title, because the corpus was finalized only after his death — the fourth collection was printed under his son the Yōngzhèng emperor. Second, the printing was managed in two distinct stages by two different editorial committees, a decade apart, which is reflected in the bipartite structure recorded in the Sìkù tíyào and the entry-list in the front matter.
The Kāngxī emperor was the most intellectually engaged of the early Qīng rulers; his wénjí preserves a substantial body of edicts on governance, prefaces to imperially-commissioned compilations (the Kāngxī zìdiǎn, Pèiwén yùnfǔ, Quán Tángshī, etc.), inscriptions for steles and temple-buildings, and yùzhì 御製 poetry. The corpus is of first-rank importance for the political-and-cultural history of the Kāngxī period, and supplies the imperial side of debates carried elsewhere by 李光地, 張英, 陳廷敬, and the Jesuit court-mathematicians (see 聖祖玄燁).
The 176-juan total given by the tíyào exactly matches both the WYG Sìkù arrangement and the original Yōngzhèng-period imprint. The separately-printed Yùzhì shījí 御製詩集 in 28 juan, edited by 高士奇, duplicates poems already included in the wénjí and is not part of the Sìkù recension.
Translations and research
Jonathan D. Spence, Emperor of China: Self-portrait of K’ang-hsi (New York: Knopf, 1974) — partial reordered translation drawing on this corpus and on the Shèngzǔ shílù.
Pei Huang, Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization, 1583–1795 (Ithaca, 2011) — contextualizes Kāngxī’s literary output within the Qīng cultural project.
Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (Oxford UP, 2012) — draws on Kāngxī’s prefaces and edicts collected here for the imperial mathematical/scientific project.
Links
- Wikidata Q39979 (Kangxi Emperor)
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào