Tāngzǐ yí shū 湯子遺書
Posthumous Writings of Master Tāng by 湯斌 (撰), edited by 王廷燦 (編)
About the work
The posthumous collected works of 湯斌 Tāng Bīn (1627–1687, zì Kǒngbó 孔伯, hào Qián’ān 潛庵, posthumously Wénzhèng 文正) — the leading early-Qīng Lǐxué official, governor of Jiāngsū (1684–1686), and Lǐbù shàngshū (Minister of Rites) in his final year, who is bracketed in the Sìkù tíyào with 陸隴其 Lù Lóngqí as one of the two great “pure scholars” (chún rú 醇儒) of the founding Qīng generation. The collection comprises 10 juan: juan 1 yǔlù (recorded sayings), juan 2 zòushū (memorials), juan 3 xùwén (prefaces), juan 4 bēijì (stele inscriptions and records), juan 5 shūdú (letters), juan 6 fùsòng and lùnbiàn (rhapsodies and treatises), and continuing into the later juan with miscellaneous prose. The editor 王廷燦 explains in his colophon that Tián Kuìshān 田簣山 had printed Tāng’s yígǎo in central Hénán shortly after Tāng’s death (dīngmǎo, Kāngxī 26 / 1687), Péng Shàochéng had printed a jiéyào abridgment at Sūzhōu, and that he assembled the final fuller 10-juan recension in guǐwèi (Kāngxī 42, 1703).
Tiyao
Your servants reverently submit the following: the Tāngzǐ yí shū in 10 juan is by Tāng Bīn of our dynasty. Bīn’s Luò xué biān (KR3a0094) has already been separately catalogued. At the founding of our dynasty, Bīn together with 陸隴其 Lù Lóngqí were both styled chún rú (“pure scholars”). Lù’s learning rigorously held to ChéngZhū and attacked the LùWáng school without sparing effort. Bīn’s learning sourced from Sūn Qíféng of Róngchéng; his root was at Yáojiāng, yet he could hold the balance of Xīnān and Jīnxī. The great aim was to practice strenuously in real conduct and to seek practical use, without the boundless drift of mere Wáng learning. Thus the two scholars had different bearings yet arrived at the same goal. The yǔlù collected here suffice to show what he attained. Moreover, although Bīn lectured throughout his life, in jǐwèi of Kāngxī (1679) he was summoned to the court examination and entered the Hànlín through the cíkē (literary-talent track); his poems, fù, and miscellaneous prose are therefore equally elegant and refined, with no rustic-schoolroom vulgarity. As for his memorials and proposals — comprehensive in planning, clear in articulation — they are still vivid in living memory. The richness of his composition does not match Lù Lóngqí’s, but having both substance and use, Bīn is the more penetrating in matters of governance. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 44 (1779), third 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 work is a primary source for the early-Qīng synthesis of Wáng xué (the Yáojiāng tradition through Sūn Qíféng) with ChéngZhū orthodoxy. The opening yǔlù juan articulates Tāng’s signature thesis that the Zhōuyì, Shàng shū, and the Four Books are “all the recorded sayings of the ancient sages,” and that the Sòng Lǐxué tradition (centrally the Tàijí tú, Xī míng, and Jìn sī lù) gets closest to recovering the original zhìrén sense. Juan 2 contains the famous memorials Tāng submitted as Jiāngsū governor — including the petitions for tax remission (qǐngjuān) and famine relief (qǐngzhèn), which the Sìkù tíyào compares to those of Wáng Zhìguī, Lù Xuāngōng (Lù Zhì), and Zhāng Qūjiāng (Zhāng Jiǔlíng) as the rare body of memorials whose “loyalty and love overflow on the paper back.”
The editorial sequence — Tián Kuìshān (Hénán 1687) → Péng Shàochéng jiéyào (Sūzhōu, undated) → Cài Bīn / Tāng Jiǔxiá projected fuller edition (incomplete) → Wáng Tíngcàn final 10-juan recension (1703) — is reconstructed from the editorial colophon at the head of the WYG recension. The title yíshū (literally “left-behind writings”) follows Tāng’s clansman Jiǔxiá’s preferred designation.
Translations and research
Lynn Struve, “Confucian PTSD: A Confucian Family’s Trauma during the Ming-Qing Transition,” in Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature, ed. Idema, Li, Widmer (Harvard, 2006) — uses the yí-shū for Tāng’s psychological-religious autobiography.
Susan Naquin, Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900 (Berkeley: UC Press, 2000) — discusses the 1685 Tāng-led suppression of the Shàng-fāng-shān cult in Sūzhōu, drawing on the yí-shū memorials.
Ono Kazuko 小野和子, Min-shin shisō shi no kenkyū 明清思想史の研究 (Kyoto, 1996) — substantial chapter on Tāng’s intellectual filiation.
Yáng Zhèng-xián 楊正顯, Tāng Bīn yǔ Kāngxī cháo zhèng-zhì 湯斌與康熙朝政治 (Taipei: Daw Shiang, 2015).
Other points of interest
Tāng’s intellectual filiation through Sūn Qíféng (1584–1675) makes him a key transitional figure: Sūn Qíféng was himself a major late-Míng / early-Qīng Wáng xué survivor (associate of 黃宗羲’s teacher 劉宗周 Liú Zōngzhōu and of 孫慎行 Sūn Shènxíng), and Tāng’s bringing Sūn’s Yáojiāng synthesis into early-Qīng administrative service represents the institutional naturalization of the Wáng xué legacy under the Qīng.
Links
- Wikidata Q4456907 (Tang Bin)
- ECCP 705–707 (Fang Chao-ying)
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào