Zhū Mùzhì 朱睦㮮
Style name Guànfǔ 灌甫, sobriquet Xītíng 西亭. Sixth-generation descendant of Zhū Sù 朱橚, Prince Dìng of Zhōu 周定王 (a son of Míng Tàizǔ Hóngwǔ); he inherited the hereditary title Zhènguó zhōngwèi 鎮國中尉 (Brigadier of the Imperial Defence) and was based at the Zhōu princely residence in Kāifēng. In the early Wànlì era he was nominated Zōngzhèng 宗正 (Master of the Imperial Clan).
He built the Wàn juàn táng 萬卷堂 (“Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes”) at his Kāifēng residence, which was one of the great late-Míng private book-collections — comparable in importance to Fàn Qīn 范欽’s Tiānyī gé 天一閣 and Hú Yīnglín 胡應麟’s Èryǒu shānfáng 二酉山房. He devoted his life to the editing, collation, and transmission of the imperial-clan’s rare-book holdings, producing a series of highly respected scholarly works.
His chief surviving works:
- Shòu jīng tú 授經圖 (Genealogical Tables of the Transmission of the Classics) — a systematic prosopography of the Hàn–Sòng commentary lineages on the Five Classics, separately catalogued in the Sìkù.
- Wǔ jīng jī yí 五經稽疑 (KR1g0017) in 8 juàn — covering classical doubts on the Wǔ jīng; partially completed (the Chūnqiū jī yí portion was finished earlier and circulated separately).
- Yì xué shí dú 易學識讀, Chūnqiū sù zhuàn 春秋諸傳, and other smaller works on individual classical books.
His Wǔ jīng jī yí self-preface, dated the tenth month of Wànlì 11 (1583), explicitly invokes Qū Yuán’s posture — “Qū Píng was of the imperial clan of Chǔ… being slandered, he composed the Lí Sāo” — to frame his own private scholarship: a scholar-noble of the imperial Zhū clan, denied an active role in court politics, taking refuge in classical learning. His scholarship is broad-ranging and citationally robust; the Sìkù tíyào notes some over-credulity (citing Guō Jīng’s Yì jǔ zhèng, a known forgery) but on the whole rates the work as carefully done.
CBDB id 127365; lifedates 1517–1586.