Jì Běn 季本
Zì Míngdé 明德, hào Péngshān 彭山. Native of Kuàijī 會稽 (modern Zhèjiāng). Senior pupil of Wáng Yángmíng 王陽明 (Yáojiāng 姚江) and one of the principal figures of the early Yáojiāng school. Jìnshì of Zhèngdé 12 (1517).
Author of:
- Yìxué sì tóng 易學四同 (KR1a0046 / KR1a0047, two related compilations on the Zhōuyì)
- Shī shuō jiě yí 詩說解頤 in 40 juǎn (KR1c0036)
- Shī jīng chéngxǐng cǎo 詩經程省草 (now lost in independent form)
- Various studies on the Lǐjì and Chūnqiū
The Sìkù editors are notably positive on Jì Běn: while they regard the late Wáng Yángmíng school as the principal source of “kuángChán (mad-Chán) gloss-the-Classic” excesses, they treat Jì Běn as evidence that the first generation of Yángmíng pupils were genuinely engaged with philological and evidentiary scholarship — “in the Yáojiāng school’s first establishment of teaching, the senior pupils’ investigation of the canonical texts and pursuit of xùngǔ was like this — when did they actually hold the [‘the Six Classics annotate me’ (liù jīng zhù wǒ)] doctrine and refuse to set up yǔyán wénzì (language and writing)?” This is one of the more carefully nuanced tíyào judgements on the Yángmíng school.