Dàyúnshānfáng wéngǎo chūjí 大雲山房文稿初集
Prose Drafts from the Great Cloud Mountain Studio, Initial Collection by 惲敬 (撰)
About the work
The initial-collection (chūjí 初集) of the collected prose of 惲敬 Yùn Jìng (1757–1817, zì Zǐjū 子居, hào Jiǎntāng 簡堂, native of Yánghú 陽湖, Chángzhōu, Jiāngsū), 4 juan, the principal biéjí representing the Yánghú 陽湖 school of gǔwén prose. Yánghú is the second of the two great early-Jiāqìng gǔwén schools, sister-and-rival of Tóngchéng: founded by Yùn Jìng in partnership with 張惠言 Zhāng Huìyán KR4f0066, it diverges from Tóngchéng by integrating HànWèi piánsàn (Han-Wei parallel-and-prose blend) into the gǔwén line, and by drawing more freely on the zǐ (philosophical-masters) literature alongside the canonical jīng and shǐ. The chūjí is organized into zázhù 雜著 (philosophical-essay, modeled on the zǐjiā tradition), xùjì 序記 (prefaces and records), bēizhì 碑志 (stelae and epitaphs), chuán 傳 (biographies), dàzhuàn 大傳 (major biographies), xiǎochuán 小傳 / wàichuán 外傳, yíshì 遺事 / shù 述, and mùbiǎo 墓表 / bìjì 壁記. The companion volumes — Dàyúnshānfáng wéngǎo èrjí (second collection) and Dàyúnshānfáng wéngǎo yánshì 言事 (memorials and administrative writings) — are bibliographically distinct sub-collections.
Prefaces
Following the mùlù (table of contents), the chūjí contains an unusually elaborate Tōnglì 通例 (“General Conventions”) explaining Yùn Jìng’s editorial principles in over twenty articles, each addressing one bibliographic-formal question (how to refer to oneself in different genres; how to record the names of contemporaries; how to handle stele-vs.-biography conventions for an ancestor’s name; how to format the title-line for bēizhì listing rank, office, fief, and posthumous title; how Manchu and Mongol names should be treated; how mourning-place inscriptions differ from common stele-inscriptions; etc.). The Tōnglì is itself a primary document of late-Qiánlóng / early-Jiāqìng bibliographic-genre theory: Yùn writes that zázhù wén (miscellaneous philosophical essays) belong to the zhūzǐjiā zhī liú 諸子家之流 (lineage of the masters-school), citing the Wáng Zǐyuān method; that xùjì wén uses the Sòng-style bǐ rén yuē xián, zìchēng yuē yú (others called “worthy,” self “unworthy”) convention; that bēizhì wén follows HànWèi tradition by omitting the composer’s name in the inscription itself, but recording it in the collection (per Hán Yù’s method); that chuán wén following the biographies appends a lùn yuē (commentator’s note) in the manner of Bān Gù 班固. The treatise distinguishes dàzhuàn (major biography, treated as proto-historiographical and so omitted from the collection per Hán Yù’s example with Lù Zhì and Yáng Chéng) from xiǎochuán / wàichuán (lesser biographies, retained), and provides systematic conventions for recording zì and hào.
Abstract
Yùn Jìng was a jǔrén of Qiánlóng 48 (1783) but never advanced to jìnshì. He served as a sub-prefect (tóngzhī 同知) and then as a county magistrate in Jiāngxī (in Wǔníng 武寧 and Nánfēng 南豐), gaining a strong administrative reputation. His mature literary partnership with 張惠言 Zhāng Huìyán — both natives of Yánghú, both jǔrén of 1783, both members of the same Chángzhōu cífù circle — produced the Yánghú prose school as a programmatic alternative to Tóngchéng. The crucial point of departure is the role of pián (parallel-prose) within gǔwén: Tóngchéng (especially 姚鼐) had treated pián as fundamentally distinct from gǔwén; Yánghú reintegrates them, on the philological-historical ground that HànWèi prose itself was piánsàn jiānxíng 駢散兼行 (parallel-and-prose intermixed). The Yánghú position is closely allied with 阮元 Ruǎn Yuán’s Wényán shuō 文言說 (in KR4f0062) and supplied the early-nineteenth-century theoretical basis for the piánwén revival that culminated in 袁枚 Yuán Méi’s followers and the late-Qīng Chángzhōu cí pài.
The chūjí’s philosophical-essay (zázhù) juan contain Yùn Jìng’s most ambitious theoretical writings, notably the Sān dài yīnyáng wǔxíng shuō 三代陰陽五行說 (a kǎozhèng reconstruction of pre-Qín cosmology, arguing against the orthodox Sòng integrated yīnyáng wǔxíng system); the Shàngshū gǔjīn wén shuō 尚書古今文說 (on the Old-vs-New-Text Shàng shū); essays on Lǎo Zhuāng and the Ǎn yǐ rán shēngfēng (sceptical-Daoist) tradition; and the Sān guó zhì zhū rén shū hòu 三國志諸人書後 (postfaces to Sān guó zhì biographies). The xùjì and bēizhì juan contain his prose for the Yánghú / Chángzhōu network, including biographies of Zhāng Huìyán and the early Chángzhōu cí-school masters.
Composition window: c. 1785 (Yùn’s earliest mature prose, in his late twenties) through 1817 (his death in Chángzhōu). The chūjí is the first of the three SBCK sub-collections; the èrjí and yánshì extend the recension. The editio princeps is the Dàoguāng-era imprint by Yùn’s son and disciples.
Translations and research
Susan Mann Jones, “Hung Liang-chi (1746–1809)” (PhD diss., Stanford, 1972) — Yùn Jìng appears as administrator and Yáng-hú peer.
Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism (Berkeley, 1990) — discusses Yùn Jìng within Cháng-zhōu intellectual networks.
Theodore Huters, “From Writing to Literature: The Development of Late Qing Theories of Prose,” HJAS 47.1 (1987): 51–96 — substantial treatment of the Yáng-hú school in its rivalry with Tóngchéng.
Cài Yǐng 蔡瑛, Yùn Jìng yán-jiū 惲敬研究 (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue, 2010).
Wáng Yíng-zhì 王英志 ed., Yáng-hú wén-pài xuǎn-jí 陽湖文派選集 (Yangzhou, 1996) — anthology with substantial introduction.
ECCP 962–963 (Tu Lien-che).
Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.8 (Qīng prose schools).
Other points of interest
The studio name Dàyúnshānfáng 大雲山房 (“Great Cloud Mountain Studio”) refers to the Dàyún Mountains south of Chángzhōu, near Yùn Jìng’s ancestral village. The Tōnglì — Yùn’s bibliographic-formal manual — is one of the most systematic statements of premodern Chinese biéjí compilation theory in any author’s collected works; it is virtually a literary-bibliographic treatise in miniature. Scholars of Qing book-historical convention regularly cite it as documentation of the gǔwén school’s self-conscious formalization in the early nineteenth century.
Links
- Wikidata Q11199829 (Yun Jing)
- ECCP 962–963
- Wilkinson 2018, §28.8
- CBDB id 65949 (1757–1817)