Yuán Wén 袁文
Zì Zhìfǔ 質甫. Native of Yīnxiàn 鄞縣 in Sìmíng 四明 (modern Níngbō, Zhèjiāng). Lifedates 1119–1190 (Southern Sòng), confirmed in CBDB (id 10259) from the funerary memorial composed by his son Yuán Xiè 袁燮 in the latter’s Jiézhāi jí 絜齋集 (juan 16–17, with related entries in juan 21).
Yuán Wén never sat the jìnshì examinations and held no office. The Sòng shǐ records the careers of his son Yuán Xiè 袁燮 and grandson Yuán Fǔ 袁甫 (both significant late-Sòng officials and dàoxué affiliates) but does not give him a separate biography; his life and work were almost lost to the bibliographic record until the Sìkù editors recovered his identity by cross-referencing the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn-preserved fragments of the Wèngyǒu xiánpíng 甕牖閒評 against Yuán Xiè’s tomb-text. He is described by his son as a passionate and disciplined private scholar who declined to pursue official advancement, devoting himself instead to wide reading and miscellaneous philological notes. The Wèngyǒu xiánpíng (KR3j0042) is his sole surviving substantial work; the Sìkù editors prize it as a sharp kǎojù book, especially in matters of phonology, xiǎoxué, and the textual criticism of the Hàn shū and the Shǐ jì.