Wáng Yán 王炎 (1138–1218)
Zì Huìshū 晦叔. Hào Shuāngxī 雙溪 (after the Wǔshuǐ river-bend at Wùyuán where the Double-Stream joins). Native of Wùyuán 婺源 (modern Jiāngxī). Lifedates 1138–1218, CBDB id 16692. Not the same person as the Chúnxī-era Guānwéndiàn dàxuéshì 王炎 (a different, more senior official with the same surname-and-given-name) — the Sìkù editors are explicit on this point.
Jìnshì of Qiándào 5 (1169). Career: rose to Jūnqì shǎojiān (Junior-Director of the Office of Military Equipment).
A senior correspondent of Zhū Xī 朱熹: Zhū’s Hè Yán jì dì shī — replying to a letter Wáng addressed to his younger brother — preserves the line “zhī jīn xīnshì tóng qiānlǐ / jìng duì dānpiáo dú kuìrán” (“now our hearts and affairs match across a thousand li / in still confrontation with the gourd-and-bamboo we sigh together”). Numerous back-and-forth poems and letters with Zhū Xī are preserved in his collection.
His most ambitious project was the Shuāngxī lèigǎo — an integrated biéjí in which the literary corpus was bundled with a full classical-and-historical scholarly corpus of 16+ separately-titled works on the Yì, Shàngshū, Lǐjì, Lúnyǔ, Xiàojīng, Lǎozǐ, Chūnqiū, Yǔgòng, Kǎogōngjì, xiāngyǐnjiǔ ritual, the chronological-record genre, Tiānduì, HánLiǔ polemic, and the Shānghán lùn medical-canon. All the appended scholarly works are now lost; only the literary kernel survives.
Surviving in Kanripo:
- KR4d0250 Shuāngxī lèigǎo (27 juǎn, WYG; literary corpus only — 1 fù + 9 poetry-and-cí + 17 prose; Wànlì bǐngshēn / 1596 recension by Wáng Lín from a Shěn Yīguàn family-archive běn).