Jiāng Yǒng 江永 (1681–1762), zì Shènxiū 慎修, was a major early-to-mid-Qīng classicist of Wùyuán 婺源 (modern Wùyuán, Jiāngxī, formerly Huīzhōu 徽州 — the same county as Dài Zhèn 戴震, his student). One of the founding figures of the Wǎnpài 皖派 (“Anhui school”) of kǎozhèng 考證 (evidential research), Jiāng’s classical work concentrates on ritual, music, calendrical and geographical matters. Major works: Lǐjīng gāngmù 禮經綱目 (88 juan, on the ritual classics); Zhōulǐ yíyì jǔ yào 周禮疑義舉要 (in the SKQS); Yílǐ shìlì 儀禮釋例; Jīnshuǐ jí 近水集 (collected works); the Jìnsī lù jízhù 近思錄集註 (KR3a0044), composed late in his life. The SKQS tíyào describes him as “deeply versed in classical learning, with mind set on ancient meanings and bored deep into the texts” — and notes that even the Jìnsī lù jízhù, which he “wrote with surplus strength” (yú lì 餘力), “still has its editorial structure, unlike those who merely talk emptily of revering Zhūzǐ.” Biography: Qīng shǐ gǎo j. 481. CBDB id 33184, dates 1681–1762.
In mathematics-and-astronomy, Jiāng Yǒng was the principal mid-Qián-lóng critical extender of 梅文鼎 Méi Wéndǐng’s synthesis. His Shùxué 數學 (KR3f0031) in 8 + 1 juàn — composed mid-life under the new authority of the KR3f0018 Yùzhì lìxiàng kǎochéng (1724) — works systematically through Méi Wéndǐng’s positions on the secular variation of the annual real-year, the use of constant-vs-fixed seasonal-nodes, the geometry of planetary epicycles, and the synthesis of Chinese-and-Western methods. The Sìkù 提要 of his Shùxué judges him as continuing-and-improving the Méi tradition: “the more pushed-and-extended the more dense”. Through his student Dài Zhèn (1724–1777) and other Wǎnpài followers, Jiāng Yǒng’s mathematical-astronomical synthesis entered the central currents of mid-and-late-Qīng kǎojù mathematical scholarship.