Bàojīngtáng wénjí 抱經堂文集
Collected Prose from the Hall of Embracing the Classics by 盧文弨 (撰)
About the work
The collected prose of 盧文弨 Lú Wénzhāo (1717–1796 by traditional reckoning; CBDB gives 1716–1795, followed here), zì Shàogōng 紹弓 (also Cháyú 磋餘 and Yígōng 矣公), hào Bàojīng 抱經, native of Yúyáo 餘姚, Zhèjiāng (later resident in Hángzhōu). One of the great textual-critical scholars (jiàokān xué 校勘學) of the Qiánlóng period, jìnshì of Qiánlóng 17 (1752), Hànlín shìjiǎngxuéshì; banished from office in 1771 on the charge of failure-of-supervision and thereafter devoted himself to jiàokān of classical and historical texts. 34 juan in the Bàojīngtáng wénjí, drawn entirely from his prose: xù and bá (the most important section — his xù and bá on collated editions are foundational documents of late-Qiánlóng textual criticism), bēizhuàn, mùzhìmíng, jì, shūzhá (correspondence), zá zhù. The companion Bàojīngtáng cóngshū 抱經堂叢書 (Lú’s own cóngshū of texts he had personally collated) is the principal vehicle of his textual work; the wénjí documents the editorial reasoning behind those collations.
Prefaces
The SBCK volume opens with a Zhùzǐ xìngshì 助梓姓氏 (list of sponsors who funded the printing) rather than a conventional preface. The 19 sponsors are drawn principally from the Lower Yángzǐ bibliophile and kǎozhèng circles: Qín Ēnfù 秦恩復 (Dūnfū, of Yángzhōu), Qín Zhènjūn 秦震鈞 (Wúxī), Liáng Tóngshū 梁同書 (Shānzhōu, the great Hángzhōu calligrapher), Wú Qiān 吳騫 (Chákè, of Hǎiníng, the famous Bàijīnglóu 拜經樓 bibliophile), Wú Yīngjìn 吳英進 (Hǎiníng), Jīn Yǒng 金泳, Jīn Yù 金棫, Chén Xīlián 陳希濂 (all of Rénhé/Hángzhōu), Yán Shùè 嚴樹萼 (Guīān), Wēn Chún 溫純 (Wūchéng), Jīn Déyú 金德輿 (Tóngxiāng), Zhāng Xiāng 張湘 (Jiāxìng), Gù Xiū 顧脩 (Shímén), Fāng Xūn 方薰 (Shímén), Liǔ Zhàoxūn 柳兆勳 (Lánxī), Dài Diànhǎi 戴殿海 (Pǔjiāng), and others. The sponsors-list dates the imprint to the early-1800s Hángzhōu-circle posthumous printing of Lú’s prose. The first item in the body is the Yǎyǔ Lúgōng mùzhìmíng 雅雨盧公墓誌銘 (epitaph for 盧見曾 Lú Jiàncéng, 1690–1768, the famous Yángzhōu salt commissioner and Yǎyǔ Shānrén 雅雨山人, who was a xiōngdì — sworn brother — of Lú Wénzhāo’s father; the epitaph is dated yǐwèi 乙未, i.e. Qiánlóng 40 = 1775); the SBCK also reproduces the Jiàodìng xìngshì 校訂姓氏 (list of textual collators).
Abstract
Lú Wénzhāo’s career falls into two halves: (1) the official phase, 1752 to 1771, during which he passed the jìnshì and rose to Hànlín shìjiǎngxuéshì (lecturer to the heir apparent), serving in various central-government philological roles, and (2) the post-1771 jiàokān phase, after his dismissal on grounds of supervisory negligence over a metropolitan-exam case. From 1771 until his death in 1795 Lú led successively the Zhōngshān 鍾山 academy in Nánjīng, the Lóngchéng 龍城 academy in Chángzhōu, the Yángzhōu Āndìng 安定 academy (after 杭世駿 Háng Shìjùn’s death), and the Hángzhōu Chóngwén 崇文 academy. During these academy years he personally collated a series of canonical and pre-canonical texts: the Yì lǐ zhù shū 儀禮注疏, the Zhōu lǐ zhù shū 周禮注疏, the Lǚ shì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋, the Báihǔ tōng 白虎通, the Xīn xù 新序, the Shuō yuàn 說苑, the Hán Fēi zǐ 韓非子, Yánzǐ chūnqiū 晏子春秋, and many others — and prefaced each with a jiàokān xù 校勘序 or bá explaining the textual history, witnesses consulted, and editorial principles applied. These prefaces, gathered in the Bàojīngtáng wénjí, are the principal documentary basis for understanding eighteenth-century Chinese textual-critical method.
Lú’s editorial method, sometimes called the Bàojīng school, holds that the responsible jiàokān editor must (a) survey all surviving witnesses, ranking them by historical-stemmatological priority; (b) record all significant variants in apparatus, not silently emend; (c) preserve the textual form of the principal witness even where corrupt, signaling problems by note rather than by replacement; and (d) prefer the manuscript-tradition witness (especially Sòng prints) over later correct-but-conjectured readings. This program — quite consciously opposed to the Wú Jífǔ 吳棫 / Méishān 梅山 style of conjectural emendation — was the proximate ancestor of modern Chinese stemmatic textual criticism.
The wénjí also contains Lú’s correspondence with the major figures of the QiánJiā network (戴震 Dài Zhèn, 錢大昕 Qián Dàxīn KR4f0059, 段玉裁 Duàn Yùcái, 孫星衍 Sūn Xīngyǎn, 紀昀 Jì Yún) and his bēizhuàn and mùzhìmíng of these scholars and their families.
Composition window: c. 1750 (earliest pieces, when Lú was finishing his jìnshì preparation) through 1795 (his death). The SBCK reproduces the early-1800s imprint sponsored by the Hángzhōu-circle bibliophiles listed in the front matter.
Translations and research
Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (Harvard, 1984; 2nd ed. 2001) — substantial treatment of Lú as Qián-Jiā jiào-kān exemplar.
Pierre-Étienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford, 1990) — uses Lú’s bēi-zhuàn for biographical material on the salt-administration officials he eulogized.
Zhāng Shùn-huī 張舜徽, Qīng-rén wén-jí bié-lù (1963), entry on Lú.
Wáng Zhōng-mín 王重民, Lú Wén-zhāo nián-pǔ 盧文弨年譜.
Liú Zhǎng-dōng 劉長東, Lú Wén-zhāo yán-jiū 盧文弨研究 (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue, 2008).
ECCP 549–551 (Tu Lien-che).
Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §66 (Qīng kǎo-zhèng), refs to Lú as paradigmatic jiào-kān scholar.
Other points of interest
Lú’s studio name Bàojīngtáng 抱經堂 (“Hall of Embracing the Classics”) names both his prose collection and his cóngshū; the latter contains Lú’s own collations of major pre-Tang texts and is one of the indispensable late-imperial collectanea. Together the wénjí (this work) and the cóngshū form a self-documenting textual-critical program: the cóngshū presents the corrected texts; the wénjí presents the editorial reasoning.
The 1775 Yǎyǔ Lúgōng mùzhìmíng (epitaph for Lú Jiàncéng) is itself a famous prose-piece: it documents the 1768 Lǎngzhōng yánzhèng àn 兩淮鹽政案 in which Lú Jiàncéng was implicated and from which the Qiánlóng emperor’s anti-corruption inquiry was substantially launched. Lú Wénzhāo’s careful treatment of his kinsman’s career — both vindicating his administrative competence and quietly acknowledging the legal verdict — is a model of high-Qīng bēizhuàn prose.
Links
- Wikidata Q11135013 (Lu Wenzhao)
- ECCP 549–551
- Wilkinson 2018, §66.4
- CBDB id 33851 (1716–1795)