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卷481 列傳二百六十八 儒林二 顾炎武 张尔岐附:马骕 万斯大兄:斯选 子:经 从子:言 胡渭子:彦昇 附:葉佩荪 毛奇龄附:陆邦烈 阎若璩子:咏 附:李铠 吴玉搢 惠周惕子:士奇 孙:栋 附:余萧客 陈厚耀 臧琳玄孙:庸 礼堂 任启运 全祖望附:蒋学镛 董秉纯 沈彤附:蔡德晋 盛世佐 江永程瑶田 褚寅亮 卢文弨顾广圻 钱大昕族子:塘 坫 王鸣盛附:金曰追 吴凌雲 戴震附:金榜 段玉裁附:钮树玉 徐承庆 孙志祖附:翟灏 梁玉绳 履绳 汪家禧 刘台拱附:朱彬 孔广森 邵晋涵附:周永年 王念孙子:引之 附:李惇 贾田祖 宋绵初 汪中附:江德量 徐復 汪光爔 武亿 庄述祖再从子:庄绶甲 同族:庄有可 戚学标附:江有诰 陈熙晋 李诚 丁杰附:周春 孙星衍附:毕亨 李贻德 王聘珍 凌廷堪附:洪榜 汪龙 桂馥附:许瀚 江声附:孙沅 钱大昭子:东垣 绎 侗 附:朱骏声

Volume 481 Biographies 268: Confucian Scholars 2: Gu Yanwu, Zhang Erqi With: Ma Su, Wan Sida Elder Brother: Si Xuan, Son: Jing, Cong Son: Yan, Hu Wei Son: Yan Sheng, With: Ye Peisun, Mao Qiling With: Lu Banglie, Yan Ruoqu Son: Yong, With: Li Kai, Wu Yujin, Hui Zhouti Son: Shi Qi, Sun :Dong, With: Yu Xiaoke, Chen Houyao, Zang Lin Xuan Sun : Yong, Li Tang, Ren Qiyun, Quan Zuwang With: Jiang Xueyong, Dong Bingchun, Shen Tong With: Cai Dejin, Sheng Shizuo, Jiang Yong Cheng Yao Tian, Chu Yinliang, Lu Wen Chao Gu Guang Qi, Qian Daxinzu Son: Tang, Dian, Wang Mingsheng With: Jin Yuezhui, Wu Lingyun, Dai Zhen With: Jin Bang, Duan Yucai With: Niu Shu Yu, Xu Chengqing, Sun Zhizu With: Di Hao, Liang Yusheng, Lv Sheng, Wang Jiaxi, Liu Taigong With: Zhu Bin, Kong Guangsen, Shao Jinhan With: Zhou Yongnian, Wang Niansun Son: Yin Zhi, With: Li Dun, Jia Tianzu, Song Mianchu, Wang Zhong With: Jiang Deliang, Xu Fu, Wang Guangxi, Wu Yi, Zhuang Shu Zu Zai Cong Son: Zhuang Shoujia, Tong Zu : Zhuang You Ke, Qi Xue Biao With: Jiang Yougao, Chen Xijin, Li Cheng, Ding Jie With: Zhou Chun, Sun Xingyan With: Bi Heng, Li Yide, Wang Pinzhen, Ling Tingkan With: Hong Bang, Wang Long, Gui Fu With: Xu Han, Jiang Sheng With: Sun Yuan, Qian Dazhao Son: Dong Yuan, Yi, Dong, With: Zhu Junsheng

Chapter 481 of 清史稿 · Draft History of Qing
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Chapter 481
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1
Biography 268.
2
Confucian Scholars, Part Two.
3
耀綿駿
This chapter treats Gu Yanwu; Zhang Erqi; Ma Su; Wan Sida, his elder brother Sixuan, his son Jing, and his nephew Yan; Hu Wei and his son Yansheng; Ye Peisun; Mao Qiling; Lu Banglie; Yan Ruoqu; Li Kai; Wu Yujin; Hui Zhouti, his son Shiqi, and his grandson Dong; Yu Xiaoke; Chen Houyao; Zang Lin and his great-great-grandson Yonglitang; Ren Qiyun; Quan Zuwang, Jiang Xueyong, and Dong Bingchun; Shen Tong; Cai Dejin; Sheng Shizuo; Jiang Yong; Cheng Yaotian; Chu Yinliang; Lu Wenchao; Gu Guangqi; Qian Daxin and his clansmen Tang and Dian; Wang Mingsheng; Jin Yuezhui; Wu Lingyun; Dai Zhen; Jin Bang; Duan Yucai; Niu Shuyu; Xu Chengqing; Sun Zhizu; Zhai Hao; Liang Yusheng and Lüsheng; Wang Jiaxi; Liu Taigong; Zhu Bin; Kong Guangsen; Shao Jinhan; Zhou Yongnian; Wang Niansun and his son Yinzhi; Li Dun; Jia Tianzu; Song Mianchu; Wang Zhong; Jiang Deliang; Xu Fu; Wang Guangxi; Wu Yi; Zhuang Shuzu, Zhuang Shoujia, and Zhuang Youke; Qi Xuebiao; Jiang Yougao; Chen Xijin; Li Cheng; Ding Jie; Zhou Chun; Sun Xingyan; Bi Heng; Li Yide; Wang Pinzhen; Ling Tingkan; Hong Bang; Wang Long; Gui Fu; Xu Han; Jiang Sheng; Sun Yuan; Qian Dazhao and his sons Dongyuan and Yitong; and Zhu Junsheng.
4
西 便
Gu Yanwu, styled Ningren, originally named Jiang, was from Kunshan. He was a licentiate under the Ming. He was born with double pupils, white in the center and black at the edges. When reading, his eyes could take in ten lines at once. Seeing the many troubles at the end of the Ming, he pursued learning for ordering the world. When the Ming southern capital fell, he took his adoptive mother, née Wang, to Changshu to avoid the fighting. When Yang Yongyan, magistrate of Kunshan, raised a loyalist force, Yanwu and Gui Zhuang joined him. The Prince of Lu appointed him clerk in the Ministry of War, but the cause failed and he narrowly escaped. His mother then refused food and died, admonishing Yanwu not to serve two dynasties. The Prince of Tang summoned him as a director in the Bureau of Operations of the Ministry of War, but because he was mourning his mother he did not go, and he then left home and did not return. Yanwu believed he possessed strategies for practical service to the age, but he never once fulfilled them; wherever he went, he tested them on a small scale. He opened fields below Changbai Mountain in Shandong and raised livestock north of Yanmen and east of Wutai in Shanxi, eventually accumulating a thousand in gold. He traveled through passes and frontiers, visited the Xiaoling four times and the Siling six times, and only then chose to live at Huayin in Shaanxi. He said, "The people of Qin admire classical learning, honor reclusive scholars, and uphold pure criticism, things truly rare in other regions. Huayin, moreover, controls the mouth of the passes and rivers; even without stepping outside one's door, one can see the people of the world and hear the affairs of the world. If there is suddenly an alarm, one can enter the mountains and hold the passes within no more than ten li; if one has ambitions in the four directions, then once one goes out through the pass, there is also the advantage of pouring water from a height." He then settled there.
5
'''' '' '' ''
His vitality was extraordinary: from boyhood to old age he was never without a book in hand. Wherever he traveled he loaded his books on two mules and two horses; at frontier posts and watchtowers he would summon old soldiers and question them about the terrain, and whenever their account disagreed with what he had learned he would open his books and check. On open plains he would recite from memory the commentaries on the classics as he rode. He once told friends in a discussion of learning: "For more than a century scholars have talked endlessly about mind and human nature, yet remain utterly confused about what these mean. Destiny and benevolence the Master rarely discussed; Nature and the Way of Heaven were what Zigong had not been able to hear. The principles of nature and fate are set forth in the Tradition to the Changes, yet the sage never made a habit of speaking of them to others. When answering students he urged them to 'conduct themselves with a sense of shame'; in study he taught them to 'love antiquity and pursue it diligently.' In instructing Duke Ai on the work of clarifying goodness, he began with broad learning. Yanzi came close to being a sage, yet still said, 'Broaden me with culture.' From Zengzi downward, none was so solid and practical as Zixia; when speaking of benevolence he said, 'Learn broadly and hold firm purpose, ask closely and think on what is near.' Today's scholars do the opposite: they assemble dozens or hundreds of guests and pupils and lecture them on mind and nature; they abandon wide learning for a shortcut to unity, ignore the suffering of the empire, and discourse on subtle metaphysical unity; This would require their Way to be higher than the Master's, and their disciples to be worthier than Zigong. The book Mencius too speaks earnestly of mind and nature, yet the questions posed by Wan Zhang, Gongsun Chou, Chen Dai, Chen Zhen, Zhou Xiao, and Peng Geng, and Mencius's answers, usually concern advancement and withdrawal, staying and leaving, refusing and accepting, giving and taking. Thus nature, fate, and Heaven—what the Master seldom mentioned—are what today's scholars never stop talking about. The distinctions of public service and retirement, staying and leaving, refusing and accepting, taking and giving are what Confucius and Mencius constantly discussed, but what today's gentlemen rarely discuss. What then do I mean by the Way of the sages? I say: 'Learn broadly in culture; conduct yourself with a sense of shame.' From the cultivation of the self to the ordering of empire and state—all belong to learning. From the duties of son, minister, younger brother, and friend to every social exchange of giving and receiving—shame applies everywhere. A scholar who does not put shame first is rootless; without love of antiquity and wide learning, his study is hollow. Rootless men pursuing hollow learning may daily invoke the sages, yet I see them only drifting farther from them." Yanwu's scholarship was, in general, devoted to stripping away ornament and returning to substance. In matters such as state institutions, local precedents, astronomy and instruments, rivers and transport, military affairs and agriculture, there was nothing whose sources and ramifications he did not exhaustively investigate, correcting successes and failures. He wrote 120 juan of Advantages and Ills of the Commanderies and States under Heaven. Separately, his Gazetteer of the Opened Realm was compiled after further research by combining maps and geographical texts. He was expert in rhyme studies and wrote three juan of Discussions of Sounds. Among those who discussed ancient rhymes, Chen Di of the Ming had opened new ground, but his work was still not profound or precise. Yanwu therefore traced the classics and commentaries and investigated their origins. He also wrote ten juan of Original Sounds of the Odes. That book accepted Chen Di's view that the Odes did not use accommodated rhymes; it did not contest Wu Yu's Original Sounds, nor did it use Wu's method, but simply compared rhymes within the classic itself and verified them with other books, showing that ancient sounds were originally read this way and were not the result of accommodation; hence it was called Original Sounds. He also wrote three juan of Sounds of the Changes, seeking ancient sounds directly from the Zhou Changes, with precise evidential scholarship. His Correcting the Tang Rhymes in twenty juan, Table of Ancient Sounds in two juan, and Correcting the Supplement to Rhymes in one juan could all recover sounds from the Three Dynasties onward, arranging divisions and volumes correctly and showing how they changed. He also wrote Record of Bronze-and-Stone Inscriptions and Seeking Antiquity, using them to verify the classics and histories. His thirty-juan Record of Daily Knowledge was an especially refined work, accumulated over more than thirty years before completion. In discussing government, he comprehensively examined names and realities, and he was especially earnest about ritual teaching. He held that when customs decline and the barrier of integrity and shame collapses, it is because ritual no longer regulates them, and he constantly wished to guide the empire by ancient institutions. Yanwu also believed Du Yu's Collected Explanations of the Zuo Tradition sometimes had omissions and errors, so he wrote three juan of Supplementary Corrections to Du's Explanations. His other works included Chronological Tables of the Twenty-One Histories, Record of Imperial Capitals through the Ages, Record of Place Names in Yingzhou and Pingzhou, Record of the Mountains and Waters of Changping, Archaeological Record of Shandong, Archaeological Record East of the Capital, Juegu, Notes from Within the Wild Rice, Tinglin Collected Prose, and a poetry collection, all of which contributed to scholarship and the ordering of the age. Among those at the beginning of the Qing whose learning was said to have firm roots, Yanwu was foremost, and scholars called him Master Tinglin.
6
滿 ''使使使
He also sought out worthy elders everywhere, discussing scholarship with an open mind and without pretension. In his "Broad Masters" he wrote: "In learning that exhausts Heaven and humanity, firm and unshakable, I am not the equal of Wang Yinxu; in reading for oneself and plumbing the deepest subtleties, I am not the equal of Yang Xuechen; in mastery of the Three Rites alone, standing out as a classicist, I am not the equal of Zhang Jiruo; in detachment from worldly things and natural possession of Heaven's workings, I am not the equal of Fu Qingzhu; in arduous scholarship, succeeding without a teacher, I am not the equal of Li Zhongfu; in tasting every hardship and bending or stretching with the times, I am not the equal of Lu Anqing; in broad learning, powerful memory, and being a storehouse of books, I am not the equal of Wu Zhiyi; in elegant prose and a mild and generous heart, I am not the equal of Zhu Xichang; in tireless love of learning and devotion to friends, I am not the equal of Wang Shanshi; in devoted mastery of the Six Scripts and faithful love of antiquity, I am not the equal of Zhang Lichen. As for eminent men in office, many are also worthy of praise, but that is not for a common scholar like me to judge." In Kangxi year seventeen an edict called for nominations to the Broad Learning and Vast Letters examination, and the Ming History was also being compiled; high ministers competed to recommend him, but he swore he would rather die. In year twenty-one he died, aged seventy. He had no son; Pan Lei of Wujiang wrote prefaces to his surviving works and circulated them. In Xuantong year one he was enshrined in the Confucian temple. Zhang Erqi, styled Jiruo, was from Jiyang. He was a Ming licentiate. His father Xingsu served as deputy magistrate of Shishou County and met with military disaster; Erqi wished to die with him, but refrained because his mother was old. In Shunzhi year seven he was presented to the Directorate of Education, but he too did not take office. Modest in ambition and fond of learning, he firmly upheld the teachings of Cheng and Zhu. His Treatise on the Way of Heaven and Treatise on the Doctrine of the Mean were praised at the time. He also wrote five chapters of Distinguishing Learning: Distinguishing Ambition, Distinguishing Methods, Distinguishing Occupations, Distinguishing Completion, and Distinguishing Evidence. He further wrote Refuting the Theory of Establishing Fate, rejecting the errors of Yuan's Merit-and-Demerit Register and Theory of Establishing Fate. At age thirty he gave deep thought to the Ceremonies and Rites. Because Zheng Kangcheng's commentary was ancient and terse and Jia Gongyan's explanations were diffuse, so that students could not find the thread, he took the classic and commentary, divided them by chapter, fixed the punctuation, outlined the sections, recorded the essentials, and stopped with clarifying the commentary; where there were doubtful meanings, he judged them by his own understanding and appended them at the end. This produced seventeen juan of Sentence Readings of Zheng's Commentary to the Ceremonies and Rites, with two appended juan of Corrections to the Directorate Edition and Corrections to the Stone Classics. When Gu Yanwu traveled in Shandong, he read it and praised it, saying: "Only after Yanwu passed fifty did he understand that 'without studying ritual one has no way to stand.' As for Sentence Readings of Zheng's Commentary to the Ceremonies and Rites, it is rooted in former scholars and states its arguments simply and aptly. Because its author did not seek fame or advancement, he has no contemporary reputation, but the book can truly be transmitted. If Master Zhu had seen it, he would have offered more than the praise once given by Xie the prison official." Erqi also wrote eight juan of Brief Explanations of the Zhou Changes, five juan of Brief Explanations of the Odes, three juan of Hao'an Collection, and two juan of Hao'an Informal Talks. He did not repair his ruined house, grew vegetables and fruit to support his mother, gathered his four younger brothers, and expounded the ancient texts of the Three Dynasties before his mother with cheerful ease. His wife, née Zhu, was gentle and fulfilled a wife's duties; she urged Erqi not to take office. Taking the meaning of the "Liao'e" poem, he named his room Hao'an, and then taught in his native village to the end of his life. In Kangxi year sixteen he died, aged sixty-six. During Qianlong, Lu Yao of Wujiang, the provincial judicial commissioner, built Hao'an Academy to sacrifice to him, and inscribed its hall "Distinguishing Ambition." Among Shandong scholars skilled in treating the classics, Erqi's contemporary was Ma Su. Su, styled Wansi, was from Zouping. In Shunzhi year sixteen he became a presented scholar and was appointed judicial officer of Huai'an Prefecture. Soon the office of judicial officer was proposed for abolition, and he was appointed magistrate of Lingbi County. He remitted taxes in famine and removed abuses, and refugees returned to their livelihoods. In Kangxi year twelve he died in office, aged fifty-four. Scholars and commoners enshrined him in the Shrine of Noted Officials. Su had thoroughly integrated the Zuo tradition and wrote twelve juan of Threads of Events in the Zuo Tradition, with eight juan of appendices. His discussions were orderly, and his charts and tables were also detailed in evidential scholarship. Su also wrote 160 juan of Interpreting History, compiling events from the opening of the world to the end of Qin and broadly citing ancient books. In clarifying and distinguishing evidence, it surpassed the Road History and Grand Chronicle of Emperors and Kings. People of the time called him "Ma of the Three Dynasties." In year forty-four, Shengzu ordered Grand Secretary Zhang Yushu to seek out Su's writings, and had someone go to Zouping to buy the printing blocks for the Inner Treasury. Wan Sida, styled Chongzong, was from Yin County. His father Tai was a juren of the bingzi year of Chongzhen and was famous together with Lu Fu. Tai truly opened the literary atmosphere of Ningbo. He assigned the classics and histories separately to his sons and had them study with Huang Zongxi, so that each became known as a school of his own. In treating the classics, Sida held that without mastering all the classics one could not master a single classic; without perceiving the errors of commentaries and annotations, one could not understand the classics; and without explaining the classics by the classics, there was likewise no way to perceive the errors of commentaries and annotations. In his scholarship he was especially expert in the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Three Rites. In the Spring and Autumn Annals, he had such principles as using the tradition to discuss the age, linking wording with events, and fixing guilt by tracing motives. In the Three Rites, he had such discussions as those on the altar of soil, the di sacrifice, ancestors, the Mingtang and great altar, and mourning dress. His corrections concerning Shang and Zhou changes of month and season, the Zhou Odes and the Zhou calendar, and brothers sharing the same zhao and mu generation were all extremely solid. His more than ten chapters on clan law also showed considerable elaboration. His letter answering Ying Huiqian, distinguishing why the court had no hall, was especially precise. Rooted in the Three Rites, he used them to explain the three traditions; this was quite different from Song and Yuan scholars' later empty talk about scribal method. Yet his explanations of the classics excelled through new views and were also flawed by forced views; setting aside what is wrong and preserving what is right, they still form a scholar's school. Sida was firm and resolute by nature and thirsted after righteousness. After the Ming minister Zhang Huangyan died and his bones were abandoned in the wilderness, Sida buried him at Nanping. His father's friend Lu Fu died without descendants, and Sida buried six coffins across his two generations. His works included ten juan of Notes from Studying the Spring and Autumn Annals, two juan of Questions on Studying the Rites, three juan of Discussions of the Ceremonies and Rites, three juan of Occasional Notes on the Book of Rites, and two juan of Distinguishing Errors in the Zhou Offices. In Kangxi year twenty-two he died, aged sixty. His elder brother Sixuan was styled Gongze. He studied under Huang Zongxi.
7
西 輿 沿
He held that learning must be tested in one's own conduct before it qualifies as genuine scholarship. Applying this in practice, he grasped that intent is the mind's abiding master, not something the mind produces. Principle resides within material force; it does not exist prior to qi. His moral cultivation was pure. He died at sixty. Huang Zongxi wept bitterly and said: "Among those who studied with me at Yongshang, only Si Xuan could continue the transmission of Jishan, and now he is gone!" Wan Sida’s son Jing had the courtesy name Shouyi. Huang Zongxi moved the Zhengren Academy to Yin and expounded the learning of Liu Zongzhou. Jing attended at the edge of his mat and was able to hear his teaching. When grown, he transmitted the learning of his father, his uncle, and his elder brother Yan, and also studied under Ying Huiqian and Yan Ruoqu. In Kangxi 42 he became a jinshi, was selected as a Hanlin Bachelor, and after leaving the Academy was appointed Compiler. In Kangxi 50 he served as associate examiner for the Shanxi provincial examination. In Kangxi 53 he was appointed Educational Commissioner of Guizhou. After returning, he exhausted his household resources because he had been assigned to repair the Tongzhou city works. Long skilled in clerical script, Jing sold his calligraphy to obtain money for daily food. Late in life he added several tens of thousands of words to Wan Sida’s Collected Explanations of the Record of Rites, and when the Spring and Autumn sections for Dukes Ding and Ai were unfinished, he continued compiling several tens of thousands more. He also revised Wan Sitong’s Chronology of Successive Ages and continued compiling his elder brother Yan’s Explanations of the Documents and Essentials of Ming History, all works left unfinished by the previous generation. At the beginning of Qianlong he was nominated for the Erudite Learning and Vast Letters examination but did not attend. At eighty-two his home suffered a great fire, and all his remaining manuscripts were burned. Jing wept all day, feeling that he had sinned against his forebears, and died the following year. He wrote Occasional Survivals of Fenli Script in two juan. Yan, whose courtesy name was Zhenyi, was the son of Si Xuan’s elder brother Sinian. He was a supplementary-list tribute student. In youth he followed his uncles in society lectures and was known for precise and extensive learning. He wrote Explanations of the Documents and Essentials of Ming History. He once participated in compiling the Ming History and alone completed the Long Compilation for the Chongzhen reign; descendants of former Ming chief ministers often offered bribes to reduce their forebears’ guilt, but Yan refused them all. He was especially skilled in ancient-style prose. Li Yesi of the same county once said: "In serving antiquity with trustworthiness and keeping firm purpose undivided, I am not equal to Chongzong; in pure attainment and being a Confucian even in haste, I am not equal to Gongze; in learning that penetrates ancient and modern and leaves nothing undistinguished, I am not equal to Jiye; in writings famous in the age and truly forming a great master, I am not equal to Zhenyi. Our district has the Wan family; they are truly the hope of the world." He had the Guancun Collected Writings. Late in life he went out to serve as magistrate of Wuhe, offended a high official, and was sentenced to death. His son Chengxun ran frantically for several thousand li, gathered five thousand in money, and redeemed him home; people of the time called him a filial son. Chengxun had the courtesy name Kaiyuan. He was a licentiate. Through recommendation he was employed as prefect of Cizhou. He was skilled in poetry and had the Ice and Snow Collection. Hu Wei, originally named Weisheng and courtesy-named Feiming, was a native of Deqing. Hu Wei was orphaned at twelve; his mother, surnamed Shen, took him to avoid the disorder among mountain valleys. At fifteen he became a county student, then entered the Imperial Academy, devoting himself to classical meaning and becoming especially expert in geography. He once taught in the household of Grand Secretary Feng Pu. When Minister Xu Qianxue was ordered by edict to compile the Unified Gazetteer and opened the bureau at Dongting Mountain, he invited Huang Yi and Gu Zuyu of Changshu, Yan Ruoqu of Taiyuan, and Hu Wei to divide the compilation work. Hu Wei wrote Pointed Explanations of the Tribute of Yu in twenty juan, with forty-seven maps. He held that the two Kong scholars of Han and Tang and Cai of Song had many omissions and errors in geography. For example, on the Three Rivers one should follow Zheng Kangcheng’s explanation; in the Tribute of Yu, "reaches the He," the character "He" should follow the Shuowen and be written "He"; "the Yingbo has already gathered" should follow Zheng Kangcheng and read "spread"; and the Blackwater of Liangzhou and the Blackwater in the Guiding the Rivers section cannot be confused as one. He therefore broadly examined written sources, investigated their agreements and differences, and reconciled them. The configurations of mountains and rivers, the divisions and mergers of commanderies and states, and the distances, accessibility, and hazards of roads are all discussed one by one in clear detail. Further, since the Han and Tang, shifts in the Yellow River course had been tied to the livelihood of the people and the state’s planning; therefore in the chapter on Guiding the River he fully examined breaches, floods, and altered channels, attending to practical statecraft unlike pedantic Confucians who did not understand current affairs. If amid a thousand considerations there was occasionally one error, it was the fault of not deigning to leave doubts unresolved. He also wrote Clear Discrimination of the Changes Diagrams in ten juan, specifically to settle the River Chart and Luo Writing. At first Chen Tuan extended the principles of the Changes into various diagrams; the diagrams were originally produced according to the Changes, so repeated investigation through hexagrams and lines found everything matching. Transmitters sought to make the theory mysterious and so attributed the diagrams to Fuxi, claiming instead that the Changes were made from the diagrams. Further, because the Appended Remarks mentions "the River Chart and Luo Writing," they took the Great Expansion calculations to make a fifty-five-dot diagram as the River Chart, and took the Taiyi Nine Palaces method from the Qianzuodu to make a forty-five-dot diagram as the Luo Writing; their yin-yang and odd-even patterns were also made to correspond one by one with the Changes. Transmitters further mystified the theory, truly treating the diagrams as what the dragon-horse and divine turtle bore, and claiming that from this Fuxi had the Prior Heaven diagram. In reality, books before the Tang contain not a single character of verifying evidence; the diagrams suddenly appeared at the beginning of the Northern Song. From Master Shao down to Zhu Xi, scholars merely took their numerical coincidences and had no leisure to investigate from whom they had been transmitted since high antiquity, so the Enlightenment of Changes Learning and the first nine diagrams before the Original Meaning of the Changes all followed this theory. At the same time Yuan Shu and Xue Jixuan both held different views. Yet the Confucian Scholars biographies in the Song History state that Zhu Xi originally entrusted Cai Yuanding to draft the Enlightenment of Changes Learning and did not write it himself, and the Complete Collection of Hui’an preserves his reply to Liu Junfang: "The Enlightenment originally wanted students to search from the hexagram drawings and milfoil numbers mentioned in the Great Commentary, without needing excessive floating explanations. But looking at it now, matters such as the River Chart and Luo Writing still inevitably contain surplus words." As for the nine diagrams at the head of the Original Meaning, they were appended by disciples; Zhu Xi himself did not firmly maintain the theory at the time. In the Yuan, Chen Yingrun wrote Meaning Stored in Line Changes and first identified the diagrams as Daoist borrowings. Wu Cheng, Gui Youguang, and others attacked them in succession, and Mao Qiling and Huang Zongxi argued against them with particular force.
8
使
Yet each attacked from his own angle without tracing origins fully or exposing every source. Hu Wei, in treating the River Chart, Luo Writing, Five Phases, Nine Palaces, Cantong, Prior Heaven, Supreme Ultimate, Dragon Diagram, Diagram Hooking Out the Hidden Numbers of the Changes, Enlightenment diagrams and writings, Prior Heaven and Later Heaven, hexagram transformations, and the abuses of images and numbers, cited old texts throughout and cross-checked them to silence those who relied on forgeries. He made scholars understand that theories of the Chart and Writing were side branches of Changes learning split off from alchemy and numerology, not the foundation on which the Changes was made; in this he was even more serviceable to classical learning than in Pointer to the Yugong.
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穿
He also wrote Correct Discussions of the Hongfan in five juan, arguing that Han scholars focused solely on disasters and auspicious signs, extrapolated the Five Phases, and forced connections, behaving like apocryphal weft texts and disturbing the classic that orders constant human relations: this was the first harm; the original text of the Luo Writing is fully present in the Hongfan and is not tortoise writing, yet Song Confucians invented black and white dots, square and round forms, and positions of nine and ten, changing writing into diagrams until Liu Mu and Cai Jitong repeatedly revised nine-number and ten-number schemes: this was the second harm; the Hongfan originally had no misplaced slips, but Wang Bai, Hu Yizhong, and others altered it at will: this was the third harm. Wei also wrote Wings to the Authentic Great Learning in seven juan. Its main thrust followed Master Zhu, only arguing that the chapter on investigating things and extending knowledge did not require a supplemental commentary, and forcefully refuting the Wang school's erroneous revised text. His views were concrete and practical, far surpassing vague talk of nature, fate, principle, and qi.
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西 西
Hu Wei’s classical learning was profound and had firm foundations, so everything he argued followed the track of correctness. He swept away the forced associations of Han scholars and the disordering arguments of Song Confucians. In Kangxi 43, when the Kangxi Emperor toured the south, Hu Wei presented Pointed Explanations of the Tribute of Yu at the traveling palace; the emperor praised him and bestowed the four large characters "aged and devoted to learning," which all Confucians regarded as an honor. In Kangxi 53 he died, aged eighty-two. Hu Wei’s son Yansheng had the courtesy name Guoxian. He became a jinshi in Yongzheng 8, was appointed Principal in the Ministry of Justice, and was transferred to become magistrate of Dingtao County in Shandong. He wrote Explanations of the Spring and Autumn, Near Correctness on the Four Books, and Essential Records from Collectanea. He also had especially deep insight into music and pitch standards, writing Subtle Expressions of Musical Pitch in eight juan. Hu Wei’s fellow prefectural man Ye Peisun, whose courtesy name was Danying, was a native of Guian. He too studied the ancient Changes but did not discuss the River Chart or Luo Writing, and wrote Guarding the Changes in forty juan. In the Changes he did not add one character beyond what the three sages had not said, and therefore called the work "Guarding." Mao Qiling, whose courtesy name was Dake and who was also named Shen, was a native of Xiaoshan. At four, when his mother orally taught him the Great Learning, he immediately memorized it. In childhood, when Chen Zilong served as judicial commissioner, Chen was extraordinarily fond of him, and Mao was accordingly admitted as a licentiate. When the Ming fell, he wept for three days in the school temple. When mountain bandits rose, he hid in the hills south of the city, built an earthen chamber, and read there. In Shunzhi 3, when the Ming Earl of Baoding Mao Youlun arrived at Xiling with Ningbo troops, Qiling entered his army. At the time Ma Shiying and Fang Guoan formed a mutual support with Youlun. Qiling said: "Fang and Ma are traitors to the state. My lord has raised the righteous banner for the southeast; how can you work together with these two traitors?" When Guoan heard this he hated him greatly and wanted to kill him, so Qiling escaped. Later enemies repeatedly framed him, so he changed his name to Wang Shifang and wandered in exile. When the affair was resolved, he entered the Imperial Academy under his original name. In Kangxi 18 he was recommended for the Erudite Learning and Vast Letters examination, ranked in the second class, was appointed Reviewer in the Hanlin Academy, and served as compiler for the Ming History. In Kangxi 24 he served as associate examiner for the metropolitan examination; soon he took leave and returned home, contracted paralysis, and did not serve again. He first wrote Continued Commentary on the Mao Odes in thirty-eight juan. After fleeing enemies and living as a sojourner between the Yangzi and Huai, he lost the manuscript and therefore wrote, from memory, Abridged Airs of the States, Notes on the Odes, and Records of Writing Offices for the Mao Odes. Later, at the residence of Jiangxi Circuit Intendant Shi Runzhang, he discussed the Odes with Yang Hongcai of Huguang and wrote Host and Guest Discuss the Odes at Bailuzhou in one juan. During the Jiajing reign of the Ming, Feng Fang of Yin forged Zigong’s Commentary on the Odes and Shen Pei’s Explanations of the Odes and circulated them; Qiling wrote Refutations of the Odes Commentary and Odes Explanations in five juan, citing many books and correcting many points. After entering official rolls, he submitted his Comprehensive Rhymes Ancient and Modern in twelve juan; the Kangxi Emperor approved it and ordered it delivered to the Historiography Institute. After retiring, he rented lodgings in Hangzhou and wrote Zhongshi Changes, composing one hexagram per day; the book was finished in sixty-four days and was attached to the unfinished teaching of his elder brother Xiling, hence the title "Zhongshi." He also wrote Beginning and End of Deducing the Changes in four juan, Divination in the Spring and Autumn in three juan, Brief Notes on the Changes in five juan, Rhymes of the Changes in four juan, Compilation on the Original Errors of the River Chart and Luo Writing in one juan, and Remaining Critiques of the Explanation of the Supreme Ultimate Diagram in one juan. His discussions of the Changes elucidated the schools of Xun, Yu, Gan, and Hou, and also touched on methods of hexagram change and hexagram synthesis. When Qiling served as a sectional examiner for the metropolitan examination, he read Spring and Autumn examination papers and privately rejected the bias of Hu’s commentary; intending to write on the subject, he now based his arguments directly on the classic text and wrote Mao’s Commentary on the Spring and Autumn in thirty-six juan, Corrections to the Spring and Autumn Bamboo Annals in two juan, and Record of Linking Phrases and Comparing Events in the Spring and Autumn in four juan, with clear rules and rigorous evidential study. He also wanted to write a complete work on the ritual classics, but because of age and illness he could not; instead he successively wrote questions and answers on wedding, mourning, sacrificial rites, clan law, temple systems, suburban sacrifice, soil altars, di and xia sacrifices, the Bright Hall, and schools, often reaching points earlier Confucians had not reached. As for the Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, and Mencius, each had evidential studies; in Evidential Text of the Great Learning and Questions on the Classic of Filial Piety, he cited ancient and modern sources, refuted later Confucians’ alteration of the classics, and argued very correctly. Qiling was broadly versed in many books and took greatest pride in classical learning, yet he loved refutation and argument; whatever others had already said, he would necessarily argue strongly against. Since Wu Yu of the Song, many had suspected the Old Text Documents of being forged; when Yan Ruoqu wrote his Evidential Commentary, Qiling vigorously argued that they were genuine and so wrote Grievance Plea for the Old Text Documents. He also abridged his earlier Broadly Heard Records on the Documents into five juan in an effort to surpass Ruoqu, while Qiling also held that the Rites of Zhou and Ceremonies and Rites were Warring States books. In his Questions on the Classics, the only men he attacked by name were Gu Yanwu, Yan Ruoqu, and Hu Wei. Because the three men had broad learning and weighty reputations, he considered them worthy of attack, while lesser figures were not worth mentioning; such was his arrogance. Long versed in music and pitch, he possessed at home a Tang music flute-color chart transmitted by a Ming imperial fief; while serving in the Historiography Institute he used it to write Jingshan Music Records in four juan. After returning to his registration, he heard that the Kangxi Emperor had instructed the ministers on music with the method of diameter one, circumference three, and generation by intervals of eight; he therefore expanded and verified it, writing Explanation of the Imperial Instruction on the Basis of Music in two juan and Record of Imperial Words Fixing Sounds in eight juan. In Kangxi 38, when the emperor toured the south, Qiling welcomed the imperial carriage at Jiaxing and presented the two-juan Explanation of the Basis of Music; the emperor warmly instructed, praised, and rewarded him. When the emperor’s third southern tour reached Zhejiang, Qiling again paid respects at the traveling palace and was given an imperial calligraphic scroll.
12
沿 輿 使 彿
He died at home in the fifty-second year of Kangxi, aged ninety-one. His disciple Jiang Shu edited his collected works into two parts, classics and literary writings: the classics section contained fifty works from the Zhongshi Changes onward, and the literary section combined poems, fu, prefaces, records, and other miscellany in 234 juan. The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries included more than forty titles by Mao Qiling. Mao Qiling’s correction of the River Chart and Luo Writing and his attacks on heterodox learning were especially valuable for classical meaning. Among recorded disciples were Li Gong, Lu Banglie, Sheng Tang, Wang Xi, Zhang Dalai, Shao Tingcai, and many others. Li Gong and Shao Tingcai have biographies of their own. Lu Banglie, whose courtesy name was Youchao, was a native of Pinghu. He once gathered material from Mao Qiling’s classical explanations into Record of Explanations of Errors in the Sage’s School in five juan, arguing that the Sage’s oral questions could not all be dismissed as wrong. Yan Ruoqu, whose courtesy name was Baishi, was a native of Taiyuan. His family had long worked in the salt administration and lived as sojourners in Huaian. His father Xiuling was known as a poet. Ruoqu was often ill in youth; when he read, he memorized silently without voicing the text. At fifteen he used his merchant registration to become a student member in Shanyang County. He studied the classics and histories and reached deep understanding on his own. He once combined sayings of Tao Hongjing and Huangfu Mi and inscribed them on his pillar: "To fail to know even one thing, I regard as deep shame; when I meet someone, I ask, so there are few idle days." Such was the resolve he set for himself. When famous men from across the empire passed through Huai, they invariably stayed at his home. At twenty, reading the Documents down to the twenty-five Old Text chapters, he immediately suspected they were corrupt. After more than thirty years of immersed study, he fully identified the crux of the matter and wrote Evidential Commentary on the Old Text Documents in eight juan. Citing classics and ancient evidence, he set out each contradiction one by one, making the forgery of the Old Text chapters completely clear. Against the 128 points he listed, Mao Qiling’s Grievance Plea for the Old Text Documents tried every tactic of opposition, but in the end forceful words could not overcome correct principle; arguments grounded in evidence had already taken an undefeatable position. In Kangxi 1 he traveled to the capital, then soon changed back to his old Taiyuan registration and became a stipend student. In Kangxi 18 he sat for the Erudite Learning and Vast Letters examination but was not selected. Gu Yanwu of Kunshan brought his Record of Daily Knowledge to Yan for review, and Yan immediately revised several entries; Gu accepted the corrections with an open mind. When Compiler Wang Wan wrote Textual Variants on the Five Mourning Grades, Ruoqu corrected its errors, and Minister Xu Qianxue sighed in admiration. When Xu Qianxue was ordered by edict to compile the Unified Gazetteer and opened the bureau at Dongting Mountain, Ruoqu participated in the work. Ruoqu was especially exact in geography: mountain and river configurations and the changes of prefectures and commanderies were as clear to him as his own palm. He wrote Explaining Places in the Four Books in five juan, and in human names, categories of things, exegesis, and institutions, every matter sought its root and every statement sought evidence, with broad cross-checking and much interconnection. He also used the seven chapters of the Mencius and compared them with the Records of the Grand Historian and other books to write Investigation of the Years and Months of Mencius’s Birth and Death in one juan. He also wrote Notes from Qianqiu in six juan and Mao-Zhu Explanations of the Odes in one juan, and hand-collated Notes from Hard Study in twenty juan, using the old Junyi edition while refuting, correcting, annotating, and expanding it. He also wrote Corrections and Supplements to the Record of Daily Knowledge, Variant Notes on Mourning Garments, Anecdotes of the Four Song Scholars Liu Ban, Li Tao, Ma Duanlin, and Wang Yinglin, Bohu Records, and other works. When the future Yongzheng Emperor was still in his princely residence, he heard Yan’s name, invited him into the residence, and asked to see his writings; whenever Yan submitted a piece, the prince praised it. When his illness became critical, he requested to be moved outside the city. A large bed was used as a litter, with a blue gauze canopy above it, and twenty men carried him out as steadily as if he were lying on an ordinary bed. In Kangxi 43 he died, aged sixty-nine. The Yongzheng Emperor sent an envoy to manage his funeral, personally composed four poems, and also wrote a sacrificial text for him. One line says: "His reading equaled his body in height, not one character was false; his thought was Kong’s and his feeling was Zhou’s, his meaning deep and his words great." Everyone said that no one but Ruoqu could be worthy of this. His son was Yong. Yong became a jinshi in Kangxi 48, served as Secretariat Drafter, and was also skilled in writing. Contemporary scholars from Shanyang included Li Kai and Wu Yujin. Li Kai’s courtesy name was Gongkai. He became a jinshi in Shunzhi 18 and was appointed magistrate of Gaiping County in Fengtian. In Kangxi 18 he was recommended for the Erudite Learning and Vast Letters examination, appointed Hanlin Compiler, participated in compiling the Ming History, and was eventually promoted to Grand Secretariat Academician. His writings include Miscellaneous Statements from Reading and Historical Judgments; Wang Shizhen called them learning with a foundation. Wu Yujin’s courtesy name was Jiewu. He served as Instructor of Fengyang Prefecture. He wrote Addenda to the Shanyang Gazetteer, Surviving Inscriptions on Metal and Stone, Investigation of Classics Cited in the Shuowen, and Investigation of Section Prefaces in Accounts of the Six Scripts, and also wrote Distinguishing the Erya in five juan; his discrimination of loan borrowing in the Six Scripts was profoundly valuable and not something vulgar scholars’ plagiarism could even approximate.
14
Hui Zhouti, styled Yuánlóng, originally named Shu, was a native of Wu County. His father Yousheng taught the Nine Classics in the countryside and was a friend of Xu Fang. Zhouti studied under Xu Fang in his youth and also studied with Wang Wan. In Kangxi 18 he was nominated for the erudition examination but was in mourning and did not compete. In the thirtieth year he passed the jinshi examination and was appointed a Hanlin Bachelor. After leaving the Academy he was appointed magistrate of Miyun County, where he governed well until he died in office.
15
谿
Zhouti was deeply versed in the classics; his prose was measured and disciplined. He wrote a Commentary on the Changes, Questions on the Spring and Autumn and Three Rites, and the Yanxi Poetry and Prose Collection. In his two-juan Commentary on the Odes, he held that the Greater and Lesser Ya sections are categorized by musical mode rather than by political theme. He argued that the "regular" and "variant" Ya odes, with their mingled praise and rebuke, need not be split at "Sixth Month"—treating everything above as regular and everything below as variant. Nor need one treat "King Wen" and what follows as regular, and "The People Are Weary" and what follows as variant. He maintained that all twenty-six poems of the Two Nan were pieces for the inner chambers, and that one should not rigidly insist on identifying specific persons they address. He argued that both the Son of Heaven and the feudal lords were entitled to Song odes, that the Lu Songs were not an act of presumption, and that each of these claims rested on solid evidence. For more than two centuries of Qing scholarship on Han Confucian learning, scholars invariably ranked the Hui family of eastern Wu at the forefront. The Hui family passed down classical learning through three generations, with Zhou Ti as its founder.
16
使
His son was Shiqi, styled Tianmu. He passed the jinshi examination in the fiftieth year of Kangxi, was selected as a Hanlin bachelor, and was appointed a compiler. He twice served as associate examiner for the metropolitan civil service examination. Kangxi once asked his ministers who were the finest composers of fu; Grand Secretary Jiang Tingxi named Wang Youling, Tang Youceng, and Shiqi. In the fifty-seventh year of Kangxi, after the enshrinement rites for Empress Xiaohuizhang were completed, Shiqi received a special commission to announce the event with sacrifices at the tombs of the Yellow Emperor Yan and Emperor Shun. By custom only officials of grand-secretary rank or higher were nominated as sacrificial envoys; that Shiqi went as a mere compiler was an exceptional honor. In the fifty-ninth year he served as chief examiner for the Huguang provincial examination, then was appointed educational commissioner of Guangdong, where he championed classical studies; within three years a great many candidates had mastered the classics. He also declared: "Local school officers were the ancient erudites; if school officers lack the talent of erudites, what model can their pupils follow?" Discovering the Haizhou jinshi Weng Tingzi, he memorialized the throne to appoint him professor at the Shaozhou prefectural school; the Ministry of Rites refused the request. The Kangxi Emperor replied: "Hui Shiqi’s recommendation is surely not self-serving; grant his request, but do not make it a precedent in future." Thus ended the imperial reply.
17
Early in the Yongzheng reign he was ordered to continue in office. Recalled to court, he failed to satisfy the emperor in audience and was assigned to supervise repairs on the Zhenjiang city walls; when his assets ran out and the work halted, he was struck from the rolls. In the first year of Qianlong he was reinstated as a reader, absolved of the outstanding repair levy, and charged with compiling the Three Rites. Four years later he retired to his home, where he died.
18
使
In his prime Shiqi pursued both classics and history; in later life he devoted himself above all to exegetical learning, producing a six-juan Commentary on the Changes, a fourteen-juan Commentary on the Rites, and a fifteen-juan Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals. In his work on the Changes he explicated the hexagrams and lines with imagery at the center, deliberately correcting the vague, abstract commentaries that had prevailed since Wang Bi. In the Rites he clarified archaic pronunciations and characters until every obscurity was resolved, drawing on texts from every school of thought—some to document Zhou institutions, others to verify the Han practices Zheng Xuan had cited—thereby reconstructing the Zhou order and explaining the deeper intent behind each ritual form. For the Spring and Autumn Annals he followed Zuo Qiuming for narrative facts but drew interpretive judgments chiefly from the Gongyang and Guliang traditions, building on Song Zhang Daheng's Categories of the Five Rites in the Spring and Autumn and Shen Fei's Parallel Events in the Spring and Autumn yet surpassing both in textual rigor. His one-juan Commentary on the Great Learning, a late work, reads qin min ("cherishing the people") rather than the alternative xin min ("renewing the people"). He held that "investigating things" is simply a matter of discerning root from branch, beginning from end, and sequence—and that "squaring the compass" means nothing more than knowing above from below, front from back, left from right—yet even in this simplicity he reached the heart of Neo-Confucian doctrine. He also authored Examples of Eclipses in three juan and an Investigation of the Principles and Numbers of the Qin and Di Flutes in four juan. He had seven sons, of whom Dong was the most celebrated.
19
Dong, styled Dingyu. He was a licentiate of Yuanhe district. From childhood he pursued learning with single-minded devotion; surrounded by the family's large library, he read and debated day and night. He ranged without omission across the classics and histories, the philosophers, unofficial histories, and the apocryphal "weft" texts attached to the seven classics. He took the Erya as his foundation in philology and the Shuowen jiezi as his foundation in the six scripts; beyond these he studied the Rapid Composition Primer, the Classic Glosses, and Han and Wei stele inscriptions—disdaining even to mention such later reference works as the Yupian and Guangyun. In Qianlong 15 an edict sought scholars distinguished for classical mastery and moral integrity; the governors Yin Jishan of Shaan-Gan and Huang Tinggui of Liangjiang both recommended him in separate memorials. When the grand secretaries and the nine ministers demanded to inspect his writings, he had not yet submitted them and was sent home without appointment.
20
Thoroughly at home in every classic, Dong maintained that only a true classicist could decipher archaic glosses, characters, and pronunciations; he compiled Ancient Meanings of the Nine Classics in twenty-two juan. He was deepest in the Changes; his eight-juan Han Learning on the Changes collected what remained of the commentaries of Meng Xi, Yu Fan, and Xun Shuang to recover the broad outlines of Han-dynasty Yijing scholarship. The final chapter added his own views to expound Han-dynasty Yijing doctrine and to refute the cosmological schemes of the River Chart, the Luo Document, Before Heaven, and the Supreme Ultimate. His two-juan Principles of the Changes synthesized earlier commentaries to define the fundamental interpretive rules of the Changes, serving as the programmatic preface to all his Yijing writings. His twenty-three-juan Exposition of the Zhou Changes took Xun Shuang and Yu Fan as its main authorities, supplemented by Zheng Xuan, Song Xian, and Gan Bao, distilling their views into commentary and elaborating them in subcommentary. He fell deathly ill just as the work neared completion, leaving the fifteen hexagrams from Revolution through Not Yet Fording unfinished, along with the Sequence and Miscellaneous Hexagram appendices. Imperfect though it was, the book restored to brilliant life a Han-dynasty tradition of Yijing study extinct for fifteen hundred years. He also wrote an eight-juan Record of the Bright Hall and Great Way and a two-juan Commentary on the Di Sacrifice, arguing that the di rite was conducted in the Bright Hall and that Bright Hall design derived from the Changes. His two-juan Investigation of the Old Text Documents argued that the twenty-four chapters in Zheng Xuan's recension were the authentic wall-text Shangshu, while the twenty-five-chapter version that surfaced in Eastern Jin was forged. He also authored a twenty-four-juan supplementary commentary on the Book of Later Han, a twenty-four-juan annotated compilation of Wang Shizhen's Essence Record, and works including Notes from the Nine Glories Studio and Literary Selections from Pine Cliff. Qian Daxin of Jiading once observed: "Since Song and Yuan times commentaries on the classics have filled every shelf—the eminent dismissing ancient glosses to parade their own insights, the humble passing off others' opinions as original thought. Only the Hui family, generation after generation, upheld the ancient learning—and among them Dong's achievements were the finest. Measured against the great exegetes of antiquity, he belongs between He Xiu and Fu Qian; scholars of the stature of Ma Rong and Zhao Qi cannot match him." Dong died at the age of sixty-two. His best-known pupils were Yu Xiaoke and Jiang Sheng, both noted for the purity and solidity of their scholarship.
21
Yu Xiaoke, styled Gunong, was a native of Changzhou. Xiaoke produced Recovery of Lost Ancient Classic Commentaries in thirty juan, recording every pre-Tang gloss he could recover from earlier commentaries, histories, biographies, and encyclopedias—down to the smallest fragment of a phrase. During the Qing revival of classical studies, scholarly families competed to recover antiquity; Xiaoke's work stands among the finest of that enterprise. He also authored Annals of the Wen Xuan in thirty juan and Pronunciation and Meaning of the Wen Xuan in eight juan. Jiang Sheng has a separate biography of his own.
22
耀 耀 耀
Chen Houyao, styled Siyuan, came from Taizhou. A jinshi of Kangxi 45, he served as professor at the Suzhou prefectural school. Grand Secretary Li Guangdi recommended him for his expertise in astronomy and mathematics; after an imperial audience he was reassigned as a drafting clerk in the Grand Secretariat. The emperor tested his computational skills by having him draw a triangle and calculate its median and the dimensions of its arc and chord; Houyao submitted a full set of answers, every one correct. He was appointed Hanlin compiler and entered service in the inner palace. Already a scholar of vast erudition, Houyao after entering the inner court also mastered Euclidean mathematics, and his learning advanced still further. He rose to vice director of the Directorate of Education, then to left mentor in the Eastern Palace, retired on grounds of age, and died at home.
23
耀 耀 退
Houyao applied astronomical reckoning to the Spring and Autumn Annals, extending Du Yu's Long Calendar into his ten-juan Long Calendar for the Spring and Autumn. The work has four sections. "Calendar Evidence" gathers statements from the Hanshu, Hou Hanshu, Jinshu, Suishu, Tang histories, Song and Yuan histories, Zuo commentary commentaries, Chunqiu Shuci, and Principles of the Celestial Origin Calendar to document divergences in calendrical calculation. In citing the Chunqiu Shuci he preserves a passage of Du Yu's on discrepancies in solar and lunar reckoning found nowhere in the standard commentaries. He also preserves a passage from the Dayan Calendar's Spring and Autumn Calendar Investigations that does not appear in the Tang dynastic records. Second is "Ancient Calendar": using the traditional nineteen-year cycle, he tabulated the Zhou calendar's new-moon and winter-solstice alignments at the start of each cycle, listed the computational methods first, then arranged the Spring and Autumn reign-years horizontally in four cycles and the twelve rulers vertically, building a table to locate the calendrical epoch. Third is "Calendar Compilation": for all 242 years of the Spring and Autumn period he calculated new moons, intercalary months, and month lengths, cross-checking against the sexagenary dates given in the classic and its commentaries while reviewing and critiquing Du Yu's conclusions. Fourth is "Calendar Preservation": the ancient calendar places the new moon of Duke Yin's first year on gengxu day, whereas Du Yu's Long Calendar gives xinsi—the twelfth-month new moon of the preceding year under the ancient reckoning, implying one intercalary month was omitted before Yin's first year, as can be verified by arranging all sexagenary dates in the classic and commentary. Houyao argued that while Du Yu's scheme fits many recorded dates from years one through seven, it fails to account for the gengchen day of the second year, eighth month, and the wushen day of the fourth year, second month. He further showed that Du Yu's calendar misses the solar eclipses recorded on yisi new moon, second month of Duke Yin's third year, and renchen new moon, seventh month of Duke Huan's third year. The problem, Houyao concluded, was not a missing intercalary month before Duke Yin's first year but an extra one; setting Yin's first-month new moon on gengchen day—two months earlier than Du Yu's calendar—he recalculated forward through Duke Xi's fifth year. From that point every new moon and intercalary month matched Du Yu's calendar exactly, so he carried the computation no further.
24
耀 耀
He also wrote Divergent Statements of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods in fifty-four juan, Comprehensive Tables in two juan, Gathered Remnants in one juan, and Genealogies of Spring and Autumn Clans in one juan. Ma Si of Zouping had compiled the Continuation of History by drawing on the Three Commentaries, Guoyu, and Strategies of the Warring States; Houyao's work drew exclusively on sources beyond those five texts—a far more difficult undertaking. His work on clan genealogies, cross-verified against Gu Donggao's Chronological Tables of Major Events, brought the study of Spring and Autumn clans nearly to completion. Houyao also wrote a Classified Record of the Rites of Zhou and Corrections to the Seventeen Histories, among other works, none of which survive today.
25
Zang Lin, styled Yulin, was a native of Wujin. He held licentiate status. He grounded his classical studies in Han commentaries and Tang subcommentaries and taught his pupils to begin with the Erya and Shuowen, declaring: "Without understanding characters, how can one read at all? Without mastery of philology and exegesis, how can one understand the classics?" Secluding himself at home to write, he remained unknown to the world. His works include a 120-juan Collected Explanations of the Documents and a 30-juan Miscellaneous Notes on Classic Meaning. Yan Ruoqu praised Zang Lin’s deep command of Han-dynasty scholarship; Qian Daxin, who edited his works, wrote: "He sought truth from concrete evidence, distinguishing issues with meticulous precision, yet never lightly disparaged earlier worthies; this is truly someone devoted to substance and not close to fame." Thus Qian Daxin concluded.
26
His fourth-generation descendant Yong, born Yongtang and styled Zaidong. He and his younger brother Litang both studied under Lu Wenjiao of Qiantang. Quiet and unassuming, his scholarship was rigorous and exacting. He revived his great-great-grandfather's nearly extinct tradition, modeling his eight-juan Diary of Veneration for the Classics on Zang Lin's Miscellaneous Notes on Classic Meaning—a work Wang Niansun of Gaoyou praised repeatedly. In his chronological biography of Mencius, where he corrected confusions between Kings Xuan and Min of Qi, Chen Shouqi of Min County hailed it as a work of singular insight. His other works include a four-juan Collected Writings on Veneration for the Classics, a one-juan Miscellaneous Notes on the Monthly Ordinances, a one-juan commentary on the twenty-three chapters of the Record of Music, a one-juan Investigation of Variants in the Classic of Filial Piety, a one-juan edition of Zixia's Commentary on the Changes, a four-juan Investigation of Variants in the Odes, a two-juan Remaining Sayings on the Han Odes with a one-juan volume of corrections, and a two-juan collated edition of Zheng Xuan's Commentary on the Changes. In his edition of Zixia's Commentary on the Changes he demonstrated that the text was the work of the Han scholar Han Ying, not the historical Zixia. His Investigation of Variants in the Odes follows the general approach of Wang Yinglin, but Yong independently verified every entry rather than simply following Wang's edition. Yong first met Ruan Yuan of Yizheng through the introduction of Liu Taigong of Baoying, and thereafter spent much of his time as a guest in Ruan's offices. Ruan Yuan copied Yong's manuscripts for his own use and returned the originals to the family. He died in Jiaqing 16 at the age of forty-five.
27
Litang, styled Hegui. He was devoted in his filial care for his parents. His father Jihong suffered from chronic malaria and could not bear the heat of a brazier in winter; Litang would quietly warm the bedding with his own body before his father retired. During mourning he observed every propriety, and even when he smiled he never showed his teeth. When his mother fell critically ill, he cut flesh from his thigh to mix into her medicine, prayed privately to the gods, and vowed to shorten his own life in exchange for hers. He married a woman of the Hu clan and on their wedding night lectured her at length on filial piety and sibling duty before they ever drank together from the nuptial cup—a gesture that moved the entire household to reform their conduct. He excelled at philology and textual collation, and men of learning everywhere held him in high regard. Under Qian Daxin as his master, his scholarship steadily deepened. An admirer of Xu Shen's Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters, he wrote An Examination of the Classics through the Shuowen in thirteen juan. Inspired by ancient tales of filial sons, daughters, and daughters-in-law, he compiled Biographies of Filial Devotion in more than a hundred juan. He also produced six juan of Notes on the Collected Explanations of the Documents, six juan collating characters in the commentaries on the Three Ritual Classics, and six juan correcting the Spring and Autumn Annals commentaries. He died at thirty.
28
Ren Qiyun, courtesy name Yisheng, was a native of Yixing. As a youth reading Mencius, he would break into sobs at the closing chapter, tormented by the fear that the sage's lineage might die with him. Poor and without a library of his own, he read whatever books he could borrow. When he had no lamp oil at night, he read by moonlight, following the shifting light along the wall without ever stopping. He was widely known for his devotion to his parents. He did not pass the provincial examination until he was fifty-four. In Yongzheng 11, while in the capital for the metropolitan exams, he came to the Yongzheng Emperor's attention when the emperor asked for scholars versed in moral philosophy and Minister Zhang Zhao recommended him by name. The emperor summoned him for a special court examination, where he answered the question 'What is the Great Ultimate like?'; his response was submitted to the throne and won imperial praise. Having passed the jinshi examination, he was received in audience the day before the results were proclaimed and was specially appointed Hanlin Academician Expositor, with duties in the princes' study hall. The emperor once asked him about the meaning of 'hear the Way in the morning and die content in the evening'; Qiyun answered with Confucius's words: 'Life and death are one principle—if you do not yet understand life, how can you understand death?' The emperor replied: 'That is the answer of a worthy man—it has not yet reached the level of a sage. Continue on this path, and in time you will understand it yourself.' The next year he fell ill, and the emperor sent medicine and physicians. When he came to offer thanks a month later, he was specially told to enter by the side corridor rather than the main hall. The emperor told him directly: "I know you would not dare present anything before the king unless it were Yao or Shun." He urged him to take good care of himself. He had attendants help him out and watched him from a distance until he was gone.
29
When Emperor Gaozong took the throne, Qiyun continued in the study hall, served as acting Daily Lecturer and Recorder of the Emperors Actions, and was soon promoted to Junior Subeditor. In Qianlong 4 he was made Reader-in-Waiting and then promoted to Academician Reader-in-Waiting. In Qianlong 7 he was promoted to Left Assistant Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate. In Qianlong 8 he became Associate Director of the Three Rites Bureau and soon after was promoted to Vice Director of the Imperial Clan Court. He died in Qianlong 9 at his imperially granted residence, aged seventy-five. The court provided treasury funds for his funeral and granted him the honors of state sacrifice and burial.
30
使 仿
Qiyun's scholarship followed Zhu Xi, who he felt had commented on every classic except the Ritual Classic; to fill that gap he wrote the Rites of Presentation, Libation, and Feeding Sacrifice in three juan. Because the Te Xing, Shao Lao, and Feeding Sacrifice rites in the Ceremonies and Rites are all commoner rituals, he reconstructed royal ritual by drawing on the Three Rites and other records that touch on kingship; where the classics fell short, he turned to commentaries. The work comprises five sections: Sacrificial Regulations, Auspicious Purification, Morning Presentation, the Main Sacrifice, and the Secondary Sacrifice. He took the title from the Zhou Rites phrases "to present libations and perform the guan offering to former kings" and "to make the food offering to former kings"; compared with Huang Gan's continuation of the Sacrificial Rites, his reconstruction is more rigorous. He also wrote An Examination of Palaces and Chambers in thirteen juan, organizing material beyond Li Rugui's Explication of Chambers into categories such as gates, watchtowers, courts, temples, sleeping quarters, schoolrooms, rest halls, rank and insignia, named objects, gate dimensions, the Bright Hall, the Square Bright Hall, and the Imperial Academy—backed by exceptionally careful evidence. The Ceremonies and Rites had long been a moribund field; Qiyun's painstaking research restored its coherence and fully earned him the reputation of a true classicist. His ten-juan Chapter-and-Sentence Commentary on the Record of Rites argued that since Zhu Xi had already done so for the Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean, the remaining forty-seven chapters from Qu Li onward could likewise be organized into chapter-and-sentence form. Because the transmitted chapter order was confused, he rearranged the text into forty-two chapters, following Zheng Xuan's method for ordering the Ceremonies and Rites. On points of major ethical import that dynasties from Qin through Ming had casually altered, he laid out competing views for future ritual scholars to judge and choose among. His other works include Cleansing the Mind through the Book of Changes in nine juan, Essential Guide to the Four Books in nineteen juan, Chapter-and-Sentence Commentary on the Classic of Filial Piety in ten juan, Commentary on the Xia Xiaozheng, Examination of the Bamboo Annals, Supplements to Lost Books, Investigation of Contemporary Events in Mencius, and the Qingfen Lou Collected Writings. Cleansing the Mind through the Book of Changes, written at sixty, contemplates the hexagram images and teases out their subtlest principles.
31
Qiyun pursued his studies with relentless austerity, and the extraordinary favor the throne had shown him only deepened his resolve to repay it. At seventy-two he still wrote words of self-reproach: 'Confucius, Zengzi, Zisi, and Mencius are your true masters. They instruct you every day, yet you remain dull and heedless—I punish myself in anguish, my face awash with tears. Alas, I am old—only closing my eyes awaits me.' When he was appointed Director of the Three Rites Bureau he was overjoyed; he threw open the imperial archives, revised the texts with impartial care, and copied them out by hand, often working until the small hours of the morning without pause. His commentaries always rooted themselves in Heaven's Way and human feeling, striving to honor Zhu Xi's original intent—but the strain wore down his mind and body, and in the end it killed him.
32
In Qianlong 14, when the court issued an edict summoning scholars of classical learning, the emperor singled out Ren Qiyun for 'exhaustive mastery of the classics and commendable plain sincerity.' In Qianlong 37, when the court ordered a nationwide search for books ancient and modern, Emperor Gaozong instructed: 'Famous ministers of past dynasties and long-respected scholars of our own, such as Gu Donggao, Chen Zufan, Ren Qiyun, and Shen Deqian, have each produced substantial collections of poetry and prose or deep studies of the classics and histories rooted in genuine literary tradition—they are not to be lumped together with plagiarized or empty verbiage. All such works should be located; those in bookshops might be purchased at fair prices, and those in private collections might be officially bound and printed. Where only manuscript copies existed and no printed edition had yet been cut, the court might transcribe a duplicate while returning the original to its owner. Copies would then be kept in the Shiqu Pavilion for imperial consultation.' Four of Qiyun's works were accordingly submitted and entered into the Siku Imperial Library.
33
谿 西
Quan Zuwang, whose courtesy name was Shaoyi, was a native of Yin County. At sixteen he was already able to compose ancient-style prose. He discussed the classics and histories and verified institutional precedents. He became a licentiate. In Yongzheng 7 Educational Commissioner Wang Lansheng selected him as a tribute student; he entered the capital and soon passed the Shuntian provincial examination. Vice Minister of Revenue Li Fu saw his writing and said: "This is the one man after Shenning and Dongfa!" In Qianlong 1 he was recommended for the Erudite Learning and Vast Letters examination. That spring he first became a jinshi in the metropolitan examination, was selected as a Hanlin Bachelor, and did not sit for the other examination. At the time Zhang Tingyu controlled the government; because he was at odds with Li Fu he also disliked Quan, and Quan likewise did not go to visit him. In Qianlong 2, when Quan left the Academy, Zhang placed him in the lowest class and returned him to the regular pool for use as a county magistrate, so Quan never served again. Before the men summoned for the special literary examination had assembled, Li Fu asked Quan about them, and Quan wrote notes on more than forty men, listing each person’s strengths. Upright and unbending by nature, after returning home he was poor and ill, without enough for morning and evening meals; when others offered gifts, he refused them. He presided over lectures at Jishan and Duanxi academies and was looked up to by the community of scholars. In Qianlong 20 he died at home, aged fifty-one. Quan’s learning was vast beyond measure, and no category of books lay outside his command. While in the Hanlin Academy, he and Li Fu borrowed the Yongle Encyclopedia and read it together, each completing twenty juan per day. When the Ming History Bureau opened, he again wrote six communications to it, first discussing bibliography, then tables, then the two collective biographies of loyal and righteous men and recluses; all his proposals were judged correct. Throughout his life he revered Huang Zongxi. Huang had brought to light the loyal martyrs of the late Ming, and Quan expanded this by compiling local precedents and surviving accounts of dynastic upheaval; the result was detailed, complete, verified, and worthy to stand as a continuation of history. Huang Zongxi had only begun a draft of the Cases of Learning in the Song and Yuan; Quan drew broadly from many books, supplemented and edited it, and compiled it into one hundred juan. He also collated the Commentary on the Water Classic seven times and annotated Notes from Hard Study three times, both showing the depth of his immersion in antiquity. He also answered questions from disciples such as Dong Bingchun, Zhang Bing, Jiang Xueyong, and Lu Hao on doubtful points in the classics and histories, recording them as Questions and Answers on Classics and History in ten juan. Ruan Yuan of Yizheng once said that mastery of classical learning, historical talent, or literary examination ability would be enough for transmission, and Quan possessed all three. His Questions and Answers on Classics and History truly sufficed to continue the ancient worthies and open the way for later learners, standing alongside Gu Yanwu’s Record of Daily Knowledge. In his later years he fixed his prose drafts, deleting seven tenths of them, and made the Collected Writings from Jieqi Pavilion in fifty juan. His disciple Jiang Xueyong, from the same county, had the courtesy name Shengshi. He became a provincial graduate in Qianlong 36. Studying under Quan Zuwang, he learned of the Huang and Wan schools, and Xueyong especially inherited the tradition of historical learning. Dong Bingchun, whose courtesy name was Xiaodun. In Qianlong 18 he became an elevated tribute student, was appointed assistant magistrate of Nadi Prefecture in Guangxi, and was promoted to magistrate of Qin’an County. Quan Zuwang’s inner and outer collected writings were both edited and fixed entirely by Bingchun.
34
Shen Tong, courtesy name Guotang, was a native of Wujiang. From youth he applied himself to learning with tireless energy, dedicating his life to mastering the classics. He wove together earlier scholars' agreements and disagreements and reconciled them with impeccable judgment. In Qianlong 1 he was nominated for the Erudite Literati examination but was not selected; he then helped compile the Three Rites and the Unified Gazetteer. When the compilations were finished he was given a ninth-rank post but went home to care for his aging parents.
35
祿沿 祿 祿
Tong was deeply versed in the Three Rites. Ouyang Xiu had questioned whether the Zhou Rites assigned too many offices to too little land for salaries to suffice; later scholars mostly followed him, and even dissenters could only invoke acting appointments as a reply. He therefore undertook a thorough investigation of Zhou institutions and wrote An Examination of Salary Lands in the Offices of Zhou to refute Ouyang's thesis. In three sections on the number of offices and ranks, public fields, and salary fields, its cumulative calculations are extraordinarily precise. Since the commentaries of Zheng Xuan and Jia Gongyan, no comparable argument had appeared. He also wrote a one-juan Brief Commentary on the Ceremonies and Rites, annotating the Capping, Wedding, Feasting, Mourning Garments, and Commoner's Funeral rites—enough to correct longstanding errors in interpretation. His twelve-juan Guotang Collection contains many essays correcting classical scholarship—On Agreements and Disagreements in Field Allotments, On the Five Ditches, On Well-Field Military Levies, Explicating the Land Tax in the Offices of Zhou, and others—all grounded in rigorous canonical evidence. He also wrote Brief Commentaries on the Zuo Tradition of the Spring and Autumn Annals and on the Documents, A Brief Examination of the Acupuncture Points, and Basic Treatises on the Inner Canon.
36
歿
Shen Tong was profoundly filial; after his parents died he ate no meat and slept outside the inner chamber throughout the three-year mourning period. In daily life he often discussed practical affairs of governance; Wu Dexuan later read his essay On the Baojia System and declared it the finest treatment of the subject. He died at sixty-five.
37
Cai Dejin, courtesy name Renxi, was a native of Wuxi. He passed the provincial examination in Yongzheng 4. In Qianlong 2, Minister of Rites Yang Mingshi recommended Dejin for clarity in the classics and rectitude in conduct; he was appointed Instructor at the Imperial Academy and later transferred to Clerk in the Ministry of Works. Dejin held that Zhang Zai's teaching through ritual best captured the Confucian balance of breadth and focus, and he therefore disciplined himself with exceptional rigor. His writings on the Three Rites broke ground on many points earlier scholars had not addressed. He wrote Original Meaning of the Ritual Classic in seventeen juan, Original Meaning of the Ritual Tradition in twenty juan, and Comprehensive Rites in fifty juan.
38
Sheng Shizuo, courtesy name Yongsan, was a native of Xiushui. He served as magistrate of Longli in Guizhou. He compiled the Ceremonies and Rites Collected Edition in forty juan, gathering and critically weighing earlier commentaries with careful and rigorous argument. Yang Fu's Diagrams of the Ceremonies and Rites had long circulated, but its explanations sometimes diverged from the commentaries on which they were based; Shizuo corrected these point by point and refuted other schools' errors with especial thoroughness.
39
谿
Jiang Yong, courtesy name Shenxiu, was a native of Wuyuan. A licentiate for decades, he mastered learning ancient and modern and devoted himself to the Thirteen Classics commentaries, achieving his deepest work in the Three Rites. Zhu Xi had spent his later years on ritual, producing the Comprehensive Explanation of the Ceremonies and Rites Classic and Tradition. He died before finishing it; the Huang and Yang families continued the work in turn, but the result was still incomplete. Jiang therefore undertook a wide-ranging investigation, organizing outline and detail according to the traditional sequence of the five rites—auspicious, inauspicious, military, festive, and guest—in his Outline and Details of the Ritual Classic, eighty-eight juan in all. Drawing on a wide range of sources to clarify and extend earlier scholarship, it truly completes the work Zhu Xi left unfinished. On a visit to the capital he was questioned on knotty points in the ritual classics by Fang Bao of Tongcheng and Wu Fu of Jingxi—and both were completely won over. He read with deep reflection, excelled at comparative analysis, and was versed in astronomical calculation, pitch standards, and phonology. The variation in the length of the tropical year had long been debated; Mei Wending cited the Shoushi Calendar but still had doubts. Jiang's solution was to use mean solar terms as the standard, calculating the fixed terms from their seasonal positions while setting aside variation in the tropical year—a theory of exceptional precision. In music he used the Guanzi and Lüshi Chunqiu to correct the Huainanzi on the Yellow Bell mode; in phonology he divided the level, rising, and departing tones of ancient rhyme into thirteen groups and entering tones into eight, bringing order to the sounds of the age before the Three Dynasties. In his later years he jotted down whatever insights reading brought him. He argued that the Book of Changes orders its hexagrams by opposition and that hexagram transformation should be read from opposing pairs. Pi transforms into Tai and Tai into Pi—hence 'the small departs and the great arrives' and 'the great departs and the small arrives' illustrate the principle. Whenever the text says 'comes,' 'descends,' or 'returns,' the outer trigram of the opposing hexagram moves into the inner position. When it says 'goes,' 'ascends,' 'advances,' or 'rises,' the inner trigram of the opposing hexagram moves into the outer position. He also argued that the separation of soldiers and farmers dated to the Spring and Autumn period and did not begin under Qin and Han. Evidence from the Guanzi and Zuo Tradition shows troops stationed near the capital while farmers in the countryside were not subject to military service. His meticulous investigations of the classics and commentaries follow this pattern throughout.
40
西
His works include Essential Points on Doubtful Passages in the Rites of Zhou in seven juan, Selected Interpretations of the Record of Rites in six juan, Corrections to the Deep-Garment Rites in one juan, Elucidation of Pitch Pipes in ten juan, New Discourses on Pitch Pipes in two juan, Verified Geography of the Spring and Autumn Annals in four juan, Illustrated Study of the Village Party in eleven juan, Reading Notes in twelve juan, Standard of Ancient Rhyme in four juan, Table of the Four Tones and Cut Rhymes in four juan, Subtle Distinctions in Phonology in one juan, Essence of the River and Luo Charts in nine juan, Explanation of Astronomical Calculation Methods in five juan, and one-juan treatises on the Seven Regulators, Mercury and Venus, Winter Solstice Measurements, Mean Solar Terms in Calendrical Annotation, Variation in the Tropical Year, Supplements to Calendrical Learning, and Draft Synthesis of Chinese and Western Methods, plus Collected Commentary on Reflections on Things at Hand in fourteen juan and Revised Genealogy of Master Zhu in one juan. He died in Qianlong 27, aged eighty-two. He had many disciples, but Dai Zhen, Cheng Yaotian, and Jin Bang above all inherited his scholarly lineage. Wu Lingyun and Jin Bang each have separate biographies.
41
Cheng Yaotian, whose courtesy name was Yichou, came from She County. In his studies he preferred profound reflection, training under Jiang Yong. He became a provincial graduate in Qianlong 35 and was appointed Director of Studies at Taicang Prefecture. He led by example in teaching and maintained personal integrity throughout his career. When he retired, Qian Daxin and Wang Mingsheng both sent him poems of high esteem, ranking him alongside Lu Longqi of Pinghu. In Jiaqing 1 he was nominated as a Filial and Incorrupt appointee. Of those nominated at the same time, Qian Dazhao, Jiang Sheng, and Chen Shan were the most respected, but Ruan Yuan alone declared that Yaotian stood foremost among them. His scholarly method favored wide-ranging research and subtle textual verification; he disdained leaning on traditional commentaries. Among his works are Mourning Garments with Full Evidence, Brief Record on Clan Law, Brief Record on Ditches and Fields, Investigation of the Three Rivers in the Tribute of Yu, Investigation of the Nine Grains, Ancient Meaning of the Bell-Angle, Brief Record on Water and Land, Brief Record on Character Analysis, Brief Record on Prosody, Brief Record on Craftsmen\u2019s Creations, and Brief Record on Interpreting Plants and Insects. Even when old and blind, he dictated to his grandsons to complete his Record of Qin Tones. Dai Zhen of Dongyuan himself acknowledged that his own scholarship still fell short of Yaotian's precision.
42
便
Chu Yinliang, whose courtesy name was Jinsheng, came from Changzhou. Summoned for palace examination as a provincial graduate in Qianlong 16, he became a Secretariat drafter and eventually rose to Vice Director in the Ministry of Justice. From youth Chu was renowned for erudition; his mind was penetrating, and he could spot and correct textual errors in historical works at a glance. In midlife he devoted himself to classical studies, grounding his work in traditional commentaries and subcommentaries. For nearly thirty years he worked on the ritual classics, adhering strictly to established methods and championing Zheng Xuan's school of learning. Zheng Xuan's commentaries on the Rites of Zhou and the Record of Rites drew widespread mockery from shallow critics, but the Ceremonies remained a neglected specialty: almost no one could truly expound it, and mistaken criticism was still comparatively rare. Only Ao Jigong's Collected Explanations stood out for subtly tampering with the text to fit his own interpretations. Later scholars, struggling with the difficulty of the original commentaries, welcomed Ao's accessible style and raised no objections. Wan Sida and Shen Tong also challenged Zheng's commentary in many places, while Zhang Erqi and Ma Jiong offered only rough paraphrases; none succeeded in correcting Ao's plausible but erroneous readings. Chu wrote Ceremonies: Personal Views in three juan, penetrating the heart of Ao's errors and clearing away his obscurities.
43
By then He Xiu's Gongyang learning had long lacked active followers; doctrines such as the Five Beginnings, Three Categories, Nine Purposes, Seven Grades, Six Aids, and Two Types had fallen out of transmission. Only Zhuang Cunyu of Wujin had silently recovered their meaning, and Chu was able to expound them in thirty chapters of Exemplary Patterns in the Gongyang. He held that of the Three Commentaries only the Gongyang represented authentic Han learning: Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn to provide models for future kings, and critics of the Gongyang in fact betrayed the classic's intent. Drawing on He Shao's claim that ritual had both Yin-dynasty forms and forms of the reigning king, distinct from the Rites of Zhou, he wrote Divergent Meanings between the Rites of Zhou and the Gongyang in two juan—a work hailed as a supreme achievement. He was also skilled in mathematics, writing Broad Questions on Right Triangles in three juan. In correcting the printed text of the Three Systems Calendar Derivations he found many errors, including a passage on the moon's phases where "six positions" should read "seven positions"; and a line reading "add ten to locate the intercalary remainder," where "add ten" should read "add seven"—these were all Chu's corrections.
44
His unpublished manuscripts included Collected Notes on the Thirteen Classics in ten juan, on various histories in eight juan, on various masters in two juan, and on collected works of famous authors in seven juan. In Qianlong 46 he retired on grounds of illness and headed Longcheng Academy in Changzhou for eight years. He died in Qianlong 55, aged seventy-six.
45
Lu Wenjiao, whose courtesy name was Zhaogong, came from Yuyao. His father Lu Cunxin passed the special erudition examination in the early Qianlong reign. Lu became a top-ranked jinshi in Qianlong 17, was appointed Hanlin Compiler, and served in the imperial Upper Study. He served successively as Left Assistant in the Left Secretariat and as Reader-in-Waiting and Academician in the Hanlin Academy. In Qianlong 30 he served as chief examiner of the Guangdong provincial examination. In Qianlong 31 he was appointed Educational Commissioner of Hunan; after submitting recommendations on educational policy, the ministry ordered his demotion by three ranks. In Qianlong 33 he retired to care for his parents.
46
使 便
Lu was filial, conscientious, and sincere, devoting himself to Han learning and maintaining close friendships with Dai Zhen and Duan Yucai. He loved textual collation. Among the fine editions he collated and published were the Lost Book of Zhou, Meaning of Mencius' Sounds, Xunzi, Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals, Jia Yi's New Book, Han Ying's Outer Commentary on the Odes, Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn, Fangyan, Baihu Tong, Du Duan, and Jingdian Shiwen. Finding it impractical to carve blocks for every work separately, he combined thirty-eight works from the classics, histories, masters, and collections into Collected Supplements from Various Books. His own works include Collected Works from the Baojing Hall in thirty-four juan, Detailed Collation of the Ceremonies with Commentary in seventeen juan, Zhongshan Miscellany in four juan, Longcheng Miscellany in three juan, and Commentary below "Interpretation of Heaven" in Guangya in two juan—works that helped scholars correct accumulated errors and resolve long-standing doubts. He observed: "When Tang scholars produced meaning subcommentaries, these were originally issued separately rather than combined with the classic commentary. Separate editions of commentaries remained common through the Tang, but from the Song onward subcommentaries were bound together with commentaries—and the commentaries used were not necessarily those Kong Yingda and Jia Gongyan had relied on. The two layers then conflicted with each other. After the Southern Song, Jingdian Shiwen was inserted among commentaries and subcommentaries, but Lu Deming's base text was again not what Kong and Jia had used—creating still more inconsistencies. Shallow editors try to harmonize everything, cross-correcting texts until the originals are lost. Yet precisely because complete harmonization is impossible, the remaining inconsistencies alert careful readers to investigate further. Combined editions of commentary, subcommentary, and Shiwen may seem convenient, but they depart from ancient practice." His distinctive insights were mostly of this kind.
47
Lu successively headed academies in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, guiding students through classical learning. Scholars across the region followed him, and academic practice shifted accordingly. He died in Qianlong 60, aged seventy-nine.
48
In collating texts Lu compared multiple editions and chose the best readings, often citing other works to emend the base text rather than adhering to a single theory. Yan Yuanzhao criticized his Detailed Collation of the Ceremonies, Gu Guangqi mocked his Evidential Study of Shiwen, and later Huang Pilie, in reproducing Song editions, listed variant readings separately for each edition. The two schools each had their principles and also complemented one another.
49
Gu Guangqi, whose courtesy name was Qianli, came from Yuanhe. He held licentiate status. In the Wu region, after the Hui family, Jiang Sheng carried on their tradition, and a new generation of scholars devoted to antiquity and classical learning flourished. Gu read the Hui family's works and mastered their methods completely. On classical learning he said: "Han scholars treated the classics above all through received master traditions. Old Text and New Text traditions differ in their explanations. Mix them together and the resulting confusion becomes unbearable." On philology he said: "The Shuowen merely outlines the Six Scripts; it was never meant to exhaust all character meanings."
50
輿
Gu's natural gifts surpassed ordinary scholars. He mastered classics, histories, exegesis, astronomy, mathematics, and geography without exception; in bibliography he was especially expert, and contemporaries ranked him alongside Wang Zhongbao and Ruan Xiaoxu. He was also an expert collator. Sun Xingyan, Zhang Dunren, Huang Pilie, and Hu Kejia engaged him to collate Song editions of the Shuowen, Record of Rites, Ceremonies, Discourses of the States, Intrigues of the Warring States, and Selections of Refined Literature; for each he produced reading notes verifying the text for the benefit of later scholars. Among Qian-Jia scholars famed for textual collation, Lu Wenjiao and Gu Guangqi were the most celebrated. At a time when many Han-learning scholars mocked Song Confucianism, Gu alone compiled practical passages from earlier Confucians into Bitter Words of the Recluse in one juan to instruct students. His works include Collected Writings from the Sishi Studio in eighteen juan. He died in Daoguang 19, aged seventy.
51
西 退 輿 西 廿 俿 輿 西 仿 沿 祿 輿 仿
Qian Daxin, whose courtesy name was Xiaozheng, was a native of Jiading. In Qianlong 16 he was summoned for examination as a provincial graduate and appointed Secretariat Drafter. In Qianlong 19 he became a jinshi, was selected as a Hanlin Bachelor, and after leaving the Academy was appointed Compiler. In the grand examination he ranked first in the second class and was promoted to Right Expositor in the Right Spring Secretariat. He repeatedly served as chief examiner for the Shandong and Hunan provincial examinations and as associate examiner for the Zhejiang provincial examination. In another grand examination he ranked third in the first class and was promoted to Hanlin Reader-in-Waiting. In Qianlong 32 he requested leave and returned home. In Qianlong 34 he was restored to his original office. He entered service in the Upper Study, was transferred to Junior Supervisor of the Household of the Heir Apparent, and served as chief examiner for the Henan provincial examination. Soon he became Educational Commissioner of Guangdong. In Qianlong 40 he went into mourning for his father; when that mourning ended, he again mourned his mother, and because of illness did not serve again. In Jiaqing 9 he died, aged seventy-seven. Daxin was intelligent from youth and skilled at reading. At the time Hui Dong of Yuanhe and Shen Tong of Wujiang were famed for classical learning; their learning sought evidence in the Thirteen Classics commentaries and subcommentaries, and also in pre-Tang masters, histories, and philology. Daxin extended and broadened this, interweaving and connecting the material and bringing out what earlier scholars had not. When he served as Secretariat Drafter, he studied the Mei family mathematics together with Wu Lang and Chu Yinliang. When he entered the Hanlin Academy, Minister of Rites He Guozong, whose family had long specialized in astronomy, was already old; hearing that Qian was good at calculation, he first went to see him and said: "Among the gentlemen now in the same academy, few discuss this Way." Daxin analyzed both Chinese and Western methods without omission. Using them to examine history, from the Taichu, Santong, and Sifen calendars, through Dayan, down to Shoushi, he omitted nothing in exposing and extracting issues concerning new and full moons, eclipses, occultations, advances, and retreats. The Han Santong method was the origin of more than seventy schools, but its corrupt text and deep meanings had no one able to correct them. Daxin expanded it, using Ban Gu’s treatise to clarify Liu Xin’s explanations and trimming away corruptions in the treatise text, so that learning cut off for two thousand years became clear as if a veil had been lifted. Daxin also said: "In the ancient method, suiyin and taisui are different. The twelve names from sheti onward in the Astronomical Instructions of the Huainanzi all refer to the location of suiyin. When the Records of the Grand Historian gives the year names for the first year of Taichu as yanfeng and shetige, these are suiyin, not taisui. After the Eastern Han, people no longer used suiyin to record years and also did not know the method by which taisui leaps stations; they therefore made the first year of Taichu a dingchou year, which contradicts the texts of both the Records and the Han History." He also said: "The Documents weft text’s theory of the four wanderings rising and descending is precisely the Western method’s theory of the sun’s highest and lowest path. Yang Zhongfu’s Song-era Tongtian method multiplied distance difference by path difference and subtracted solar-term common accumulation to make fixed accumulation; Mei Wending said Guo Shoujing’s method of adding and subtracting the year remainder came from this. But when Tongtian seeks common accumulation, it must first subtract a solar-term difference of nineteen days and more, which differs again from Guo, and Wending could not explain it. Daxin calculated that in all computation of solar terms and new moons, one must start from a jiazi day. Now the winter solstice of the Tongtian upper epoch falls on a wuzi day, not a jiazi day; following the Shoushi method, one should add a solar-term epoch of twenty-four days and more before one can start from jiazi. Now, subtracting the solar-term difference means starting from the jiazi day after the winter solstice of the upper epoch. If so, one should subtract a solar-term epoch of thirty-five days and more; the present subtraction of nineteen days and more leaves out the path-difference number. When seeking the standard new moon of the celestial first month, it also subtracts the intercalation difference because the standard new moon should be calculated from conjunction. Now calculation shows that the first new moon after the winter solstice of the Tongtian upper epoch was yichou, just before the second quarter of early xu; therefore one must subtract the intercalation difference and afterward divide by the true new-moon period, which is the Shoushi new-moon epoch." Daxin first became known for literary composition; in Shen Deqian’s Selected Poems of the Seven Masters of Wu, Daxin was one of them. Later he studied classics and histories with precision, and whenever classical meanings were disputed and difficult to settle, he could analyze their sources and development. Characters, phonology, exegesis, astronomy and mathematics, geography, clans, inscriptions, and the ranks, native places, facts, and ages of ancient people were all as clear to him as his own palm. Where the worthiness or wickedness, rights and wrongs, or doubtful resemblances of ancient people were hard to clarify, and where earlier scholars could not decisively explain institutions and systems, he always had firm views. Only he disliked the books of the Buddhists and Daoists. He once said: "Establishing virtue, establishing achievement, and establishing words are the immortality of us Confucians. Earlier Confucians said Buddhism is close to Mozi; I think Buddhism also ends with Yang Zhu’s concern for the self. They abandon father and mother to study the Way; this means they regard themselves as more important than father and mother." While Daxin was in the academy, he often participated in compiling works such as Subtle Exposition of Phonology, Continuation of the Comprehensive Examination of Documents, Continuation of the Comprehensive Treatises, the Unified Gazetteer, and Celestial Sphere Diagrams. His writings include Textual Variants in the Tang Stone Classics in one juan, Textual Variants in Classical Characters in one juan, Sound Categories in four juan, Textual Variants in the Twenty-Two Histories in one hundred juan, Table of Historiographical Officials in the Tang History in one juan, Chronological Table of Academicians of Tang and the Five Dynasties in two juan, Chronological Table of Song Academicians in one juan, Clan Tables of the Yuan History in three juan, Treatise on Bibliography of the Yuan History in four juan, Supplementary Omissions from the Three Histories in five juan, Supplementary Omissions from Various Histories in five juan, Verification of Notes to the Comprehensive Mirror in three juan, Investigation of New Moons and Intercalations in the Four Histories in four juan, Record of Old Worthies of Wuxing in four juan, Record of Ancestral Virtue in four juan, chronological biographies of Hong Wenhui, Hong Wenmin, Wang Bohou, and Wang Yanzhou in one juan each, Record of Doubtful Years in three juan, Collected Writings from the Qianyan Hall in fifty juan, poetry collection in twenty juan, Postscripts to Metal and Stone Texts from the Qianyan Hall in twenty-five juan, Record of Nurturing the New in twenty-three juan, Record of Constant Sayings in six juan, and Extracted Zhuting Diary in three juan. His clansmen Tang and Dian were able to transmit his learning. Tang’s courtesy name was Xueyuan. He became a jinshi in Qianlong 45, was transferred to educational office, and was selected as professor of the Jiangning prefectural school. Tang was seven years younger than Daxin and studied together with him; he also sharpened his learning with Daxin’s younger brother Dazhao and his own younger brother Dian, pursuing scholarship that sought truth from facts, with especially marvelous understanding of phonology, characters, pitch standards, and calendrical calculation. He wrote Ancient Meanings of Pitch Standards in six juan, using a Han bronze chi-ruler he had obtained to correct Xun Xu’s error in taking Liu Xin’s bronze hu-vessel ruler as the Zhou ruler. He held that the Zhou basic ruler was an eight-inch ruler and could not be used to make pitch pipes; pitch pipes must use a ten-inch ruler, which is what earlier people called the Xia ruler. Zhou followed Xia and Shang, and Xia and Shang followed Tang and Yu, so ancient pitch standards should not have differed in measure. He also wrote Resolving Doubts in the Three Treatises of the Records of the Grand Historian in three juan, investigating the original basis of sayings on pitch, calendar, and celestial offices and clarifying and proving them with other books. In the Treatise on Pitch, the phrases "upper nine, shang eight, yu seven, jue six, gong five, zhi nine" were not understood by commentators, and Sima Zhen suspected the numbers were wrong. Tang proved them from the Huainanzi and Taixuanjing, and only then could their correctness be trusted. He also wrote Explaining Pitch in Pangong Elegant Music in four juan, Sound Connections in the Shuowen in twenty juan, and Supplementary Notes to the Astronomical Instructions of the Huainanzi in three juan. His ancient-style prose was titled Compilation for Recounting Antiquity, in four juan. He died aged fifty-six. Dian’s courtesy name was Xianzhi. He was a supplementary-list tribute student. When he traveled to the capital, Zhu Yun received him as an honored guest. He served in Shaanxi as subprefect of a directly administered department, and discussed exegesis and geography with Hong Liangji and Sun Xingyan. Critics said Dian’s depth and breadth did not match Daxin’s, but his precision and aptness surpassed him. In Jiaqing 2, when sectarian rebels disturbed Shaanxi, Dian was acting at Huazhou; he led the people onto the walls and forcefully blocked their attack. The city had no bows or arrows, so he imitated antiquity by making strong laminated-bamboo bows and using thick-backed paper for fletching; two men fired them together, and they reached 150 paces. He also devised a method for launching stones, each weighing ten jin and reaching 300 paces; before and after, countless rebels were killed, and the city was preserved. Because accumulated exertion caused an illness of the extremities, he retired and returned home. He wrote Supplementary Notes to the Records of the Grand Historian in 130 juan, detailed in sounds and glosses, changes in commanderies and counties, and the locations of mountains and rivers. Shaanxi-Gansu Governor-General Songyun valued his character and learning, personally came to his sickbed to ask after him, and requested his unpublished writings; Dian took them out and handed them over. He said: "Thirty years of energy are all exhausted in this book!" In Jiaqing 11 he died, aged sixty-six. He also wrote Table of Odes Sounds in one juan, Investigation of Carriage Systems in one juan, Later Records on the Analects in five juan, Explanation of Meanings in the Erya in ten juan, Notes to the Four Chapters from Explaining Places Onward in four juan, Comprehensive Correction of Characters in the Ten Classics in fourteen juan, Collated Selections from the Shuowen in fourteen juan, Newly Collated Notes to the Treatise on Geography in sixteen juan, Notes to the Ten Tables of the Han History in ten juan, and Gazetteer of Tombs of Sages and Worthies in twelve juan. Wang Mingsheng, whose courtesy name was Fengjie, was a native of Jiading. In youth he studied poetry under Shen Deqian of Changzhou, and later asked Hui Dong about classical meaning, thereby mastering Han learning. In Qianlong 19, as a first-class jinshi, he was appointed Hanlin Compiler; in the grand examination for Hanlin and heir-apparent officials he ranked first and was promoted to Reader-in-Waiting. He served as chief examiner for the Fujian provincial examination, and was soon promoted to Grand Secretariat Academician with concurrent post as Vice Minister of Rites. For improperly drawing on postal horses he was demoted to Minister of the Court of Imperial Entertainments. When he went into mourning for his mother, he did not serve again. Mingsheng was frugal and plain by nature, with no pleasures of music, women, or fine objects; he sat quietly in one room, chanting like a poor scholar. He once said: "When Han people explained the classics, they necessarily preserved family methods. From the Zhenguan reign of Tang, when the subcommentaries to the classics were compiled, the family methods disappeared; when the Yuanfeng reign of Song used New Classical Learning to select officials, Han learning was nearly cut off. Now antiquarian Confucians all know to honor commentaries and subcommentaries, yet among them only the Odes, the Three Rites, and the Gongyang Tradition still preserve Han family methods; the commentaries on the other classics come from Wei and Jin people. They are not yet pure and complete." He wrote Later Cases on the Documents in thirty juan, devoted to expounding Zheng Kangcheng’s learning; where Zheng’s commentary was lost, he used the commentaries of Ma and Wang to supplement it. Although the Kong commentary came from the Eastern Jin, its exegesis still had transmission, so he occasionally adopted it. He also held that the Great Declaration presented in the Eastern Jin was forged, while the Great Declaration rejected by Tang scholars was not forged; therefore he appended one New Text chapter of Great Declaration to the Documents, preserving antiquity in a way he himself said was no less than the Hui family’s Exposition of the Zhou Changes. He also wrote Explanation of Military Levies in the Rites of Zhou in four juan, elucidating Zheng’s intent. He also wrote Discussions of the Seventeen Histories in one hundred juan; within each history he cross-checked annals, treatises, tables, and biographies to find their agreements and differences, and also used unofficial histories and miscellanies to verify their errors, giving especially detailed attention to geography, offices, institutions, and names of things. Separately he wrote Compilation of Ant-Like Arts in one hundred juan, with ten categories: explaining records, characters, places, systems, people, things, collections, inscriptions, connections, and lineages. It followed the intent of Wang Yinglin and Gu Yanwu, but cited even more broadly. In poetry he used talent to support learning and rhyme to convey feeling. In ancient-style prose he used the methods of Ouyang Xiu and Zeng Gong to elucidate the meanings of Xu and Zheng; he had a poetry and prose collection in forty juan. In Jiaqing 2 he died, aged seventy-six. His disciple Jin Yuezhui, from the same county, had the courtesy name Duiyang. He was a licentiate. Deeply versed in the Correct Meaning of the Nine Classics, he recorded every doubtful corruption as he encountered it, first completing seventeen juan of Correcting Falsehoods in the Commentary and Subcommentary to the Ceremonies and Rites. When Ruan Yuan was commissioned by edict to collate the Ceremonies and Rites stone classics, he adopted many of Jin's views.
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At the time another scholar from the same county who mastered the classics was Wu Lingyun, whose courtesy name was Deqing. In Jiaqing 5 he became an annual tribute student. He pursued his studies to great depth and mastered the transmitted teachings of classical masters without exception. Once lodging at Qian Daxin's Chanshou Studio, he read all the books Qian had collected, and his learning grew still deeper. His Textual Variants in the Thirteen Classics cites evidence with precision and rigor, and contains many insights not previously brought out. He also wrote Discourses on the Classics in three juan, and one juan each of Discourses on Philology and Discourses on the Guangyun; Chen Qigan of Haiyan combined and published them under the title Posthumous Writings of Wu. Dai Zhen, whose courtesy name was Dongyuan, was a native of Xiuning. In reading, he delighted in deep and penetrating thought; when his tutor taught him the Shuowen in youth, he mastered its structure completely within three years. At sixteen or seventeen he studied commentaries and subcommentaries with great care, seeking truth from facts and not adhering to a single school. Together with fellow prefectural men Zheng Mu, Wang Zhaolong, Fang Ju, Cheng Yaotian, and Jin Bang, he studied under Jiang Yong of Wuyuan; when Dai presented his learning to Jiang for judgment, Jiang was astonished and sighed in admiration. Jiang Yong was expert in the ritual classics, calendrical calculation, pitch pipes, phonology, and philology, and only Dai Zhen was able to grasp his learning in its entirety.
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His character was exceptionally upright and uncompromising. At twenty-eight he became a licentiate. Though his household was repeatedly destitute, his learning advanced daily. He formed friendships across generations with Hui Dong of Wu County and Shen Tong of Wujiang. Fleeing enemies, he went to the capital; northern scholars such as Ji Yun of Xian County and Zhu Yun of Daxing, and southern scholars such as Qian Daxin and Wang Mingsheng of Jiading, Lu Wenchao of Yuyao, and Wang Chang of Qingpu, all humbled themselves to associate with him. When Minister Qin Huitian compiled the Comprehensive Investigation of the Five Rites, Dai Zhen took charge of the work. In Qianlong 27 he passed the provincial examination; in Qianlong 38, when an edict opened the Siku Library and summoned broadly learned men from across the empire to take charge of editing and collation, the chief editors recommended Dai as a compiler. In Qianlong 40 he was specially ordered to attend the palace examination together with those who had passed the metropolitan examination, was granted the status of associate jinshi, and was appointed a Hanlin Bachelor. Dai was recognized for his literary learning and moved within the court of imperial compilation. Whenever the library encountered unusual texts or doubtful meanings, officials immediately consulted him. Dai likewise strove diligently to fulfill his office, opening and examining texts morning and evening without pause through heat or cold. The books and charts he submitted to the throne were arranged and assessed with exacting care. His collations of the Records of the Elder Dai and the Commentary on the Water Classic were especially precise. He also found within the Yongle Encyclopedia seven mathematical classics, including the Nine Chapters and the Five Departments Mathematical Classic, all unseen by Wang Xichan and Mei Wending. Dai corrected errors, supplied omissions, and submitted them; an imperial order had them printed and circulated. In Qianlong 42 he died in office, aged fifty-five. Dai Zhen’s learning sought exegesis through phonology and script, and sought principles through exegesis. He said: "Principles cannot be based emptily on one’s private thoughts; they must be sought in the ancient classics. When one seeks them in the ancient classics, but surviving texts are nearly severed and ancient and modern stand far apart, one must seek them in ancient glosses. When ancient glosses are clear, the ancient classics become clear; when the ancient classics are clear, the principles of worthies and sages become clear, and what is equally so in my own mind is then made clear through them. Principles are nothing else: they reside in institutions, regulations, and systems. If someone forks ancient glosses and principles into two, then ancient glosses no longer clarify principles, and principles no longer reside in institutions and systems; such a person will inevitably drift into heterodox learning and crooked theories without realizing it." Dai’s scholarship was precise, sincere, analytical, and discerning. Whenever he established a meaning, it at first seemed newly discovered; but when checked against evidence, it proved unalterable. In broad outline his learning had three branches: philology, mathematical astronomy, and institutions and systems. His philological works include Discourse on the Six Scripts in three juan, Investigation of Sounds and Rhymes in four juan, Table of Sound Categories in nine juan, and Evidential Commentary on Dialect Expressions in ten juan. After the Han, the doctrine of transferred annotation was lost; even so great a lover of antiquity as Gu Yanwu did not examine it deeply. Dai said: "The four categories indication, pictograph, phonetic-semantic compound, and compound ideograph are the forms of writing; loan borrowing and transferred annotation are the functions of writing.
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When one character serves several uses, that is jiajie; when several characters share one meaning, that is zhuanzhu. The forms chu, zai, shou, and ji all mean "beginning"; gongjie, wu, tai, and yu all mean "I"—their meanings mutually extend and annotate one another." From the Han onward ancient phonology gradually declined, leaving scholars no clear entry into the principles of the Six Scripts. In Gu Yanwu's Table of Ancient Sounds, entering tones stand opposite to those in the Guangyun. Dai Zhen said: "Rhyme groups with and without entering tones should be paired in twos, with entering tones serving as the pivot. The fourteen rhyme groups from zhen to xian share entering tones with zhi, wei, qi, jie, and hui; The four groups from dong to jiang and the eight from yang to deng share entering tones with zhi, zhi, jia, hai, xiao, xiao, yao, hao, you, hou, and you; The entering tones of the nine groups from qin to fan follow the Guangyun, with no corresponding open-tone groups. The six groups yu, yu, mo, ge, ge, and ma have no entering tones; today duo is uniformly assigned as their entering tone, which does not match Tang practice. Yet the successive shifts of ancient sounds and the principles of phonetic formation in the Six Scripts can all be recovered through this method." These were all insights not previously articulated by earlier scholars.
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西 西 '' 西 椿 椿 調 '''' '''' '''''''''' 西
His astronomical and mathematical works include Original Images in one juan, Record of Advancing the Sun and Calculating Periods in one juan, Record of Right Triangles and Circle Division in three juan, Calendrical Questions in one juan, Investigation of Ancient Calendars in two juan, Supplement to the Brief Account of Astronomy in three juan, and Rod Calculations in one juan. From the Han onward Chinese calendar experts did not know of a yellow pole. Only when Westerners entered China did they say that beyond the equatorial pole there was also an ecliptic pole, the pivot of the westward rotation of the seven regulators and fixed stars, and they marveled that it was not found in the Six Classics. Dai Zhen said: "What Westerners call the red pole is precisely the true north pole of the Zhoubi; the yellow pole is precisely the north-pole xuanji of the Zhoubi. The Yu Documents says, 'at the Xuanji and Jade Balance, to regulate the seven governors'; this means that the xuanji was set up to model the ecliptic pole. The yellow pole lies southeast of the Steward star, between Upper Assistant and Lower Assistant, never shifting with precession through the ages. The red pole stands at the center and the yellow pole circles around it; the Zhoubi already said this, and it did not begin with Westerners." Dai Zhen’s book on institutions and systems was not completed. His works include Supplementary Notes to the Two Nan of the Book of Odes in two juan, Investigation of Mao and Zheng on the Odes in four juan, Investigation of Meaning in the Documents in one juan, Corrections to the Ritual Classic in one juan, Diagrams for the Record of Artisans in two juan, Investigation of Accession and Era Change in the Spring and Autumn in one juan, Supplementary Notes to the Great Learning in one juan, Supplementary Notes to the Doctrine of the Mean in one juan, Evidential Commentary on the Meanings of Words in Mencius in three juan, Investigation of Characters in the Erya in ten juan, Classical Discourses in four juan, Record of Waters and Lands in one juan, Commentary on the Water Classic in forty juan, Supplementary Diagrams to the Nine Chapters in one juan, Commentary on Qu Yuan’s Rhapsodies in seven juan, Comprehensive Explanation in three juan, Original Goodness in three juan, Preliminary Words in three juan, Book on the Rivers and Canals of Zhili in 102 juan, Record of Acupuncture Points in one juan, Treatise on the Viscera Mathematical Classic in four juan, Superfluous Words on Burial Methods in four juan, and Collected Writings in ten juan. After Dai Zhen died, his philology was transmitted by Wang Niansun of Gaoyou and Duan Yucai of Jintan; his mathematical astronomy by Kong Guangsen of Qufu; and his learning on institutions and systems by Ren Dachun of Xinghua. All were his disciples. More than ten years later, Emperor Gaozong asked the ministers of the Southern Study about Dai’s collated Commentary on the Water Classic, saying: "Is Dai Zhen still alive?" They replied: "He is already dead." The emperor lamented this for a long time. Wang Niansun, Duan Yucai, Kong Guangsen, and Ren Dachun have biographies of their own. Jin Bang, whose courtesy name was Fuzhi, was a native of She County. In Qianlong 29 he was summoned for examination as a provincial graduate, appointed Secretariat Drafter, and assigned to serve in the Grand Council. In Qianlong 37 he ranked first in the first class of jinshi and was appointed Hanlin Compiler. After leaving the Academy he nursed illness and read, did not serve again, and died at home. He studied under Jiang Yong, befriended Dai Zhen, and wrote Notes on Ritual in ten juan; he excerpted several dozen major matters into three juan and sent them to Zhu Gui, who wrote a preface praising their precise wording and verified meaning. In treating ritual Jin Bang most honored Kangcheng, yet he investigated broadly, thought precisely, sought cautiously, and could make judgments. He once cited Zheng’s Records in answer to Zhao Shang: "Not believing is wrong; believing everything is also wrong." He said: "I dare take these words as the great method for studying the classics. Therefore wherever Zheng’s meaning has not hit the center, it must be corrected; with regard to the Zheng family method, I dare not misrepresent it." Duan Yucai, whose courtesy name was Ruoying, was a native of Jintan. He was outstanding from birth and had a capacity for reading that surpassed others. He became a provincial graduate in Qianlong 25; when he went to the capital and met Dai Zhen of Xiuning, he admired Dai’s learning and became his disciple. Through service as an instructor he obtained the magistracy of Yuping County in Guizhou, was soon transferred to Sichuan, acted in charge of Fushun and Nanxi counties, and also handled affairs of the Hualinping station. At the time, the great army was campaigning against Jinchuan and transport was continuous; whenever Yucai finished his administrative duties, he lit a lamp and wrote without stopping. He wrote Table of Sounds and Rhymes in the Six Scripts in five juan. Ancient rhymes had been divided by Gu Yanwu into ten groups, and later Jiang Yong further divided them into thirteen. Yucai held that zhi and jia formed one group; zhi, wei, qi, jie, and hui one group; and zhi and hai one group, and that Han people had not yet confused or borrowed them interchangeably. Only after the Jin and Song did there begin to be some variation. By the official regulations of the Tang, zhi was annotated "used together with zhi and zhi," jia was annotated "used together with jie," and hui was annotated "used together with hai"; from then on, few knew that in antiquity the three had been sharply distinct. He also held that zhen, zhen, and xian were separate from zhun, wen, yin, hun, and hen, and that you and you were separate from hou, yielding seventeen groups. His books were originally titled Rhyme Chart of the Book of Odes and Rhyme Chart of the Collected Classics. Qian Daxin of Jiading saw them and thought they had pierced primordial confusion; later Duan changed their format and added new material, but the seventeen groups remained as before. Dai Zhen admired the precision of his learning, saying it revealed what scholars of rhyme since the Tang had not brought out. He soon served in Wushan County; at forty-six, because his father was old, he cited illness and returned home, closing his door and ignoring worldly affairs for more than thirty years. Yucai read everything from the Zhou, Qin, and two Han periods and discriminated right and wrong among the philological writings of all schools. He therefore accumulated several decades of effort and devoted himself to explaining the Shuowen, writing Commentary on the Shuowen Jiezi in thirty juan. He said: "The Erya and what follows are books of meaning; the Sound Categories and what follows are books of sound; the Shuowen is a book of form. For each seal-script character, it first glosses the meaning, next explains the form, then explains the sound; by combining these three it completes one seal graph, and therefore it is called a book of form." He also said: "Xu takes form as primary, and through form explains sound and meaning. The meanings he explains differ completely from other books: other books often use loan borrowings, so many characters do not carry their original meanings, while Xu explains only each character’s original meaning. Only by knowing what is original meaning can one know what is loan borrowing; original meaning is the balance by which loan borrowing is weighed. The Shuowen and Erya are inner and outer to each other; only after studying the Shuowen do the Erya and the commentaries and subcommentaries become clear." He also said: "From the time Cangjie created writing through Tang, Yu, the Three Dynasties, Qin, Han, and down to Xu Shuzhong’s making of the Shuowen, statements such as 'with such-and-such sound' and 'read like so-and-so' are all unified in pattern and not confused. Therefore after using Xu Xuan’s fanqie sounds, I also note for each character which ancient-sound group it belongs to, and append the Table of Sounds and Rhymes in the Six Scripts afterward, so that form and sound become inner and outer to each other. At first I made a long compilation titled Readings in the Shuowen Jiezi, in 540 juan. Afterward I compressed and shaped it into this commentary." Yucai also held: "The Shuowen is a book explaining characters, so it has 'read like' and not 'read as'; books explaining classics and traditions must include both. When Han scholars made commentaries and raised doubts about characters to correct readings, their examples had three types: 'read like' and 'read as if' approximate the sound and are words of comparison; 'read as' and 'read called' change the character and are words of transformation; 'should be' determines that a character or sound is wrong and changes the character, being words of correction. Once these three are distinguished, Han commentaries can be read and the classics can be read." In setting out Investigations of Han Readings, he first completed six juan on the Rites of Zhou and also wrote one juan of Investigations of Han Readings in the Ritual Classic; the remaining sixteen juan were unfinished. Ruan Yuan of Yizheng said that Yucai’s books had three services to the world and later ages: first, his discussion of ancient sounds; second, his discussion of the Shuowen; third, his Investigations of Han Readings. Among his other books explaining the classics, because the Han bibliographic treatise lists the Mao Odes Classic and Mao Odes Ancient Gloss Commentary as separate works, he arranged the commentary text and restored its old form, producing a revised Mao Odes Ancient Gloss Commentary in thirty juan. He held that among all the classics, the Documents had suffered the worst disasters: the Old Text was nearly lost, and the works in which Jia Kui distinguished old and new and Liu Tao corrected the characters no longer survived. He therefore searched broadly to fill gaps, corrected reckless Jin and Tang alterations, preserved variant Zhou and Han texts, and wrote Compiled Variants of the Old Text Documents in thirty-two juan. He also recorded the Zuo classic text, took examples of old-text, new-text, and archaic-script traditions from Zheng’s commentaries on the Rites and Rites of Zhou, appended the textual variants of the Gongyang and Guliang classic texts, and wrote Ancient Classic Text of the Zuo Spring and Autumn in twelve juan, placing the fifty general principles of the Zuo Tradition afterward. Other works include Philology of the Mao Odes in thirty juan, Corrections to the Jiguge Shuowen in six juan, and Collected Writings from the Jingyun Tower in twelve juan. In Jiaqing 20 he died, aged eighty-one. At first Yucai and Wang Niansun both studied under Dai Zhen, so Dai’s learning had the Duan and Wang lines. Yucai was only four years younger than Dai, but he was humble and strictly observed the etiquette of a disciple; even in old age, whenever someone mentioned Dai, he would lower his hands and stand respectfully, and on the first and fifteenth of each month he would solemnly recite one of Dai’s handwritten letters. After Duan died, Wang Niansun told his disciple Chen Huan of Changzhou: "With Ruoying dead, there are no scholars left in the world!" Yucai’s disciples Xu Ting of Changzhou, Shen Tao of Jiaxing, and his son-in-law Gong Lizheng of Renhe were all known, but Chen Huan especially received his transmission; Huan has his own biography. Niu Shuyu, whose courtesy name was Feishi, was a native of Wu County. Resolute in purpose and fond of antiquity, he did not pursue examination studies and instead studied characters, sounds, and exegesis with precision. He held that the Shuowen was as fixed as the sun and moon and should not be altered; later people confused it with the New Additions and thereby slandered Master Xu. He therefore broadly examined written sources and wrote Investigation of the New Additions to the Shuowen in six juan, with a continuation in one juan. He also wrote Collation Record of the Shuowen Jiezi in thirty juan. After Shuyu saw Yucai’s book, he wrote Corrections to Duan’s Commentary on the Shuowen in eight juan; every point he refuted and corrected had evidence. Xu Chengqing, whose courtesy name was Mengxiang, was a native of Yuanhe. He became a provincial graduate in Qianlong 51 and rose in office to prefect of Fenzhou in Shanxi. He wrote Correcting Errors in Duan’s Commentary in fifteen juan; in attacking flaws and seeking blemishes it went even further than Niu’s book, but all of it strove to find what was right and was not deliberate fault-finding.
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仿 輿
Sun Zhizu, whose courtesy name was Yigu, came from Renhe. After passing the jinshi examination in Qianlong 31, he served in the Ministry of Justice, rose to director, was appointed Censor of the Jiangnan Circuit, then retired to care for his parents. Sun lived austerely and pursued learning rigorously, never resting until he had resolved every doubt in the classics and histories. His Miscellaneous Reading Notes in seven juan examine classics, masters, and miscellaneous schools with balanced precision, avoiding arbitrary judgments. In Family Sayings with Evidential Commentary in six juan, he argued that Wang Su wrote the Sheng Zheng Lun to attack Zheng Xuan and forged the Family Sayings to embellish his views and deceive the world. He gathered sources broadly and demonstrated every passage Wang Su had plagiarized. He also argued that the Kong Congzi was Wang Su's forgery, and that the Small Erya was Wang Su's borrowing from ancient texts to lend himself authority; he wrote evidential commentaries exposing both. From youth he knew the Wenxuan thoroughly; later, following the model of Han Yu's Textual Variants, he collated various explanations and corrected popular-edition errors in Textual Variants of the Wenxuan in four juan. He also compiled predecessors' and colleagues' discussions into Corrections and Supplements to the Wenxuan Commentary in four juan. He also wrote Supplement to the Origins of Neo-Confucian Learning in the Wenxuan in one juan. He compiled lost passages of the Customs and Mores in one juan and corrected Yao Zhi'er's compilation of Xie Cheng's Later Han in five juan. He died in Jiaqing 6, aged sixty-five.
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便
Zhai Hao, whose courtesy name was Dachuan, also came from Renhe. A jinshi of Qianlong 19, he served as professor at the Jinhua and Quzhou prefectural schools. Zhai's learning was broad and his citations ran to obscure sources. Once, discussing with Liang Yusheng of Qiantang Wang Su's forged Family Sayings and its challenge to the Zheng school, they took up pens and each noted sources—several dozen in moments. He was drunk at the time and left before finishing the draft; his scholarly energy was extraordinary. His Supplement to Guo's Erya in two juan addresses 142 entries where Guo's commentary was insufficient and Xing's subcommentary covered only ten, supplying full explanations from multiple sources. He also said: "The ancient Erya must have had an Explaining Ritual chapter, paired with the Explaining Music chapter. The three chapters on sacrificial names, military reviews, and banners and flags are remnants of Explaining Ritual, incomplete and out of order." He also wrote Textual Variants of the Four Books in seventy-two juan, a penetrating and precise work widely admired. His other works include Exposing the Family Sayings, Popular Essays, Illustrated Guide to Lakes and Mountains, and collected writings from the Wubuyi Studio. He died in Qianlong 53.
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Liang Yusheng, whose courtesy name was Yaobei, came from Qiantang. He held augmented tribute-student status. Though his family was prominent for generations, Liang did not aspire to wealth or rank, styling himself the Pure White Scholar. He once told his younger brother Lvsheng: "The Fan clan of Xiangyang in Later Han was prominent in its day. Though their descendants held no great office or famous virtue, they maintained a scholarly household for generations. I hope you and I will encourage each other in this!" Accordingly, before turning forty Liang abandoned the examination track and devoted himself to scholarship. His Brief Notes in seven juan mostly explain the classics and clarify ancient meanings. Liang was especially expert in historical texts, writing Doubts about the Records of the Grand Historian in thirty-six juan, correcting discrepancies against the classics and comparing Ban Gu and Xun Yue. Qian Daxin called it a meritorious servant of Sima Qian's tradition. In Investigation of the Tables of Persons in nine juan, he argued that Ban Gu borrowed the nine grades of field and tax from the Tribute of Yu, an idea originating with Ma Yuan. The Biography of General Li in the Records states: "Li Cai's character was lower-middle." This reading is quite correct.
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Lvsheng, whose courtesy name was Chusu. He became a provincial graduate in Qianlong 53. He and his elder brother Yusheng sharpened each other's scholarship, earning comparison to the Yuan brothers of the Cao Wei period. Among the classics he was especially expert in the Zuo Commentary. The Sui Records list Jia Kui's Exegesis and Fu Qian's Explanation in dozens of juan each, but both are now lost. Du Yu drew on Jia and Fu; Kong Yingda wrote the subcommentary with occasional citations, but their complete works were no longer available. The same is true of Ma Rong and other Han commentators, of whom only isolated phrases survive. Among post-Tang commentators on the Zuo, Zhang Qia and Zhao Fang were clearest, though they emphasized calligraphic method over historical narrative. Lvsheng surveyed all schools and gathered wide sources to supplement what Du Yu had omitted, producing Supplementary Explanations to the Comprehensive Zuo in thirty-two juan. He also planned five unfinished categories: Broadening the Tradition, Investigating Variants, Refuting Evidence, Ancient Sounds, and Speculative Discussions. Qian Daxin read the work and declared it a supreme achievement. He mastered the Shuowen and wrote with scarcely a vulgar character. He died at forty-six.
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Wang Jiaxi, whose courtesy name was Hanjiao, came from Renhe. He held licentiate status. Exceptionally quick-minded, he mastered the Han Changes and wrote Explanations of the Changes' Messages. His writings, several tens of juan in all, were destroyed by fire. His friend Zhuang Zhongfang of Xiushui and his disciple Xu Naigu of Renhe compiled his surviving writings into Collected Remains of the Dongli Scholar in three juan. The essays mostly expound the classics with pure and disciplined method.
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歿 椿
Liu Taigong, whose courtesy name was Duilin, came from Baoying. Deeply filial by nature, he grieved like an adult when his mother surnamed Zhu died at the age of six. He served his stepmother surnamed Zhong exactly as he would his birth mother. At nine he composed a eulogy to Yan Hui, already polished and accomplished; observers hailed him as a prodigy. He passed the provincial examination in Qianlong 35 but repeatedly failed the metropolitan examination. At that time the court opened the Siku Library, and renowned scholars from across the empire gathered in the capital. In the capital Liu associated with Academician Zhu Yun, Compiler Cheng Jinfang, Hanlin Bachelor Dai Zhen, Academician Shao Jinhan, and his fellow townsman Censor Ren Dachun and Censor-in-Chief Wang Niansun, investigating classics and antiquities in daily discussion. From astronomy and pitch pipes to phonology and philology, he mastered every field. In evaluating Han and Song Confucians, he did not adhere to any single school but sought only what was correct. Where his penetrating thought reached, it was as if conversing with ancient authors in one room and grasping their intent—roughly equal to Yan Ruoqu. Duan Yucai often said, "In devotion to the Three Rites, I am not his equal."
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漿
He was appointed instructor of Dantu County. He diagrammed each of the seventeen chapters of the Ceremonies except Mourning Garments and practiced ritual deportment with his students, elucidating the refined intent of ancient royal institutions. He brought both parents to live at the school office and cared for them with joyful devotion; though fifty, he retained a child's adoring affection. Once while away as a guest he felt sudden heart pain and rushed home. His mother's illness was critical; he nursed her day and night for weeks without removing his clothes, and she recovered. When mourning both parents, he took no food or drink. After the encoffining he slept on straw, drank thin gruel, and wept with a grief that moved the whole neighborhood. He ate only vegetables throughout five years of mourning, slept outside the inner chamber, and died at fifty-five from grief beyond what ritual required.
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歿
He shared a friendship in literature and moral principle with his fellow townsman Wang Zhong; when Wang died, Liu raised his orphan Xisun and saw him established in life. Zang Yong of Wujin often submitted essays on classical interpretation for Liu's guidance, which Liu warmly encouraged. He relieved Zang's poverty, fed and taught him for seventeen years without wavering, and Zang was deeply moved. Liu admired Huang Shudu's character; Wang Chang said he possessed the filial piety of Zengzi and Minzi. His works include Excess Branches of the Analects, Brief Notes on Classics and Traditions, Supplementary Collation of the Discourses of the States, Supplementary Commentary on Xunzi, Supplementary Collation of Fangyan, Supplementary Collation of Huainanzi, Remains of Han Learning, and collected writings—Duilin's Posthumous Writings in eight juan in all.
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Zhu Bin of the same district, whose courtesy name was Wucao. He became a provincial graduate in Qianlong 60. From youth Zhu showed exceptional conduct; at eleven, when his mother died, he grieved like an adult. As an adult he mourned his father with full encoffining and burial rites, eating vegetables for three years and dwelling outside the inner chamber. From youth to old age he loved learning without tiring. He inherited the classical methods of his townsman Wang Maozu and mutually sharpened his learning with his cousin by marriage Liu Taigong. Whenever he gained an insight, he debated it with Liu by letter until they reached a correct conclusion. He applied himself especially deeply to exegesis, phonology, and philology. His Evidential Investigation of Classics and Traditions in eight juan and Compiled Interpretations of the Record of Rites in forty-nine juan draw on the Tiger Watch Tower discussions, Zheng's disciples' questions, Wei-Jin and later commentators, and relevant passages from book excerpts, the Tongdian, and the Imperial Readings, taking the commentaries as primary and weaving in ancient and modern explanations. Where he added his own views, the evidence was precise and often broke new ground. He also wrote Collected Poetry and Prose from the Youdao Studio in four juan. He died in Daoguang 14, aged eighty-two. His son Shiyan, Minister of Personnel, has his own biography.
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Kong Guangsen, whose courtesy name was Zhongzhong, was a native of Qufu, a sixty-eighth-generation descendant of Confucius, grandson of the hereditary Duke for Continuing the Sage Chuanduo, and son of Ministry of Revenue Principal Jifen. He became a jinshi in Qianlong 36, was selected as a Hanlin Bachelor, and after leaving the Academy was appointed Reviewer. He entered office at a young age, was detached by nature, devoted himself to writing, and did not exchange visits with powerful people. After requesting leave to care for his parents, he returned home and did not serve again. While mourning his grandmother and father, he finally died from grief; this was in Qianlong 51, when he was thirty-five. Guangsen was exceptionally intelligent and penetrating. He studied the classics under Dai Zhen and Yao Nai, and in classics, history, and philology he read deeply and understood subtly. His own learning lay in the Gongyang tradition of the Spring and Autumn. He held that the old learning of the Zuo had been submerged by Du Yu, and that the original meaning of the Guliang had been muddied by Fan Ning. Wang Zuyou said that although He Xiu’s intent penetrated the Gongyang, he often became a sickness within the Gongyang tradition. As for Dan Zhu, Zhao Kuang, and their like, they generated interpretive rules arbitrarily and failed to match the classic; only Zhao Fang came closest to correctness. He Xiu’s system was grand and his thought refined, yet he was not free of inherited errors and rash conjecture. Accordingly Kong ranged through the various schools, adopted from both Zuo and Guliang, chose what was good and followed it, and wrote Comprehensive Meaning of the Gongyang Spring and Autumn in eleven juan with one juan of preface. Whenever meanings in other classics and books could be connected with the Gongyang, he often recorded them. Where he differed from He Xiu’s Exegesis, several major points stand out: he held that in antiquity feudal lords held divided lands and governed divided peoples, retaining a measure of independent authority, and therefore each could record years within his own domain. Yet He Shaogong held that only a true king could change the era and establish a title, and that when the classic writes "first year" it entrusts kingship to Lu; in this he fell into the very error he called contradicting the tradition. This is the first major difference. He held that the Spring and Autumn divides the twelve dukes into three ages. In the old explanation, "the age known by transmitted report" comprises Yin, Huan, Zhuang, Min, and Xi; "the age known by report" comprises Wen, Xuan, Cheng, and Xiang; "the age seen firsthand" comprises Zhao, Ding, and Ai. Yan Anle argued: in Duke Xiang's twenty-third year, the entry "Biwo of Zhulou came in flight" says, "Zhulou has no grandees; why is this written? Because it is recorded from nearby"; Again, in Duke Zhao's twenty-seventh year, "Kuai of Zhulou came in flight," the tradition says, "Zhulou has no grandees; why is this written? Because it is recorded from nearby." Since the two passages do not differ and should belong to the same age, he determined that after Confucius's birth it was already "the age seen firsthand," and Kong followed this. This is the second major difference. He held that in Duke Huan's seventeenth year the classic lacks "summer"; the two other classic texts both include "summer," and only the Gongyang omits it. Master He said: "Summer is yang, and the month is yin; removing summer clarifies that the wife is not subordinated to the duke." On this point Kong declined to follow He Xiu's explanation. This is the third major difference. He held that the Spring and Autumn takes Heaven's Way as its upper foundation, uses royal law in the middle, and orders human sentiment below. Heaven's Way comprises seasons, months, and days. Royal law comprises censure, demotion, and cutting off. Human sentiment comprises honoring, kinship, and esteem for worth. These constitute the three categories and nine purposes. Yet Master He's Examples of Civil and Posthumous Names says: "The three categories and nine purposes are these: taking Zhou as new and Song as old, and treating the Spring and Autumn as the new king. This is one category and three purposes." He also said: "What is seen, heard, and heard by transmission each has different wording." This yields three categories and six purposes. He also cited "making one's state inner and the various Xia outer, making the various Xia inner and the barbarians outer" as the three categories and nine purposes. This is the fourth major difference. In other cases where Master He's authorities sometimes erred, Kong often supplemented or corrected them to form the statement of his own school. He also held that the Zuo is detailed in events, the Gongyang excels in meaning, and the Spring and Autumn values meaning over events. All reflect deep learning and insight into the classic's intent. His explanations fuse and penetrate so that judgments of right and wrong never stray from the sage's great intent, as he explains in his preface. Ruan Yuan of Yizheng said that only after reading Kong's book did one know where the sage's true intent lay.
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He also wrote Supplementary Commentary on the Records of the Elder Dai in fourteen juan, Poetic Sound Categories in thirteen juan, Brief Words on Ritual Learning in six juan, Brief Words on Classical Learning in six juan, and Inner and Outer Chapters on Positive and Negative Methods of Shaoguang in six juan. His parallel prose combined the strengths of Han, Wei, Six Dynasties, and Early Tang style; Wang Zhong of Jiangdu read it and declared it the work of a peerless hand. Yet Guangsen was not self-satisfied. He built a hall at home and named it "Modeling Zheng," hoping to approach Kangcheng. Yao Nai of Tongcheng said that Kong, as a descendant of Confucius, would transmit Confucius's learning, and that even Kangcheng was not enough to define his limits. Alas, burdened by family troubles and worn down by overwork, he died young without fulfilling his ambition—a loss deeply regretted in the scholarly world.
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西
Shao Jinhan, whose courtesy name was Eryun, came from Yuyao. A jinshi of Qianlong 36, he returned home to await appointment. When the Siku Library opened, an imperial edict specially summoned Shao along with Zhou Yongnian of Licheng, Dai Zhen of Xiuning, Yu Ji of Renhe, and others to compile its contents. He became a Hanlin Bachelor and was appointed compiler. In Qianlong 45 he served as chief examiner of the Guangxi provincial examination. In Qianlong 56 he was promoted to Left Assistant in the grand palace examination. Promoted to Reader-in-Waiting and Academician, he served as Direct Attendant of the Wenyuan Pavilion and Daily Recorder of the Emperor's Actions.
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Shao suffered from cataracts in his left eye and was thin and frail. A voracious reader, he investigated everything from the Four Categories to the Seven Records. He held that the Erya is the gateway to the Six Arts, but Xing Shu's subcommentary was shallow and unworthy of the text; he therefore wrote his own Correct Meaning in twenty juan, taking Guo Pu as primary authority while drawing on She, Fan, Liu, Li, Sun, and other commentators, supplementing Guo wherever he was insufficient. Thereafter most scholars abandoned Xing and followed Shao.
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仿廿 使
He was especially skilled in history. Raised in eastern Zhejiang, he was steeped in the teachings of Liu Zongzhou and Huang Zongxi, and his accounts of late Ming affairs often went beyond orthodox histories. In the History Office, finding Xue Juzheng's History of the Five Dynasties in the Yongle Encyclopedia, he gathered and arranged it, recovering eight or nine tenths of the text, then supplemented the gaps from the Cefu Yuangui, Taiping Yulan, and other works. Drawing on the Comprehensive Mirror Long Compilation, various histories, Song anecdotal collections, and stele inscriptions, he verified and arranged the text to match the original one hundred fifty juan. When the work was complete, library officials proposed listing it among the Twenty-Three Histories following the precedent of Liu Xu's Old Book of Tang and publishing it for schools; the emperor approved. Thus Xue's History and Ouyang's History were both transmitted. He observed that the Song History after the southern crossing contained many errors; during the Qingyuan period praise and blame lost truth—not as reliable as Wang Cheng's Outline Events of the Eastern Capital. He planned first to compile Outline Events of the Southern Capital and also to write a gazetteer for the Zhao-Song dynasty—neither was completed. Later Bi Yuan of Zhenyang compiled the Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Song and Yuan and entrusted Shao to revise and verify it; traces of Shao's work appear in the Revised Continuation Comprehensive Mirror.
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退 輿
Shao was upright and uncompromising and would not defer to powerful men. Once discussing the purpose of compiling the Song History with Zhang Xuecheng of Kuaiji, Shao said: "Song factionalism and the vulgar style of recorded sayings are indeed contemptible. Yet their conduct in daily life arose from ordinary human relations—how can that be abandoned? Scholar-officials may be broadly learned and towering over their age, yet in accepting or declining gifts, advancing or withdrawing from office, they cannot avoid choosing between integrity and gain. Once the moral heart is lost, what else remains worth discussing! This is the true purpose of writing the Song History." Zhang Xuecheng was deeply struck by this. His other works include Exposition of Mencius, Correct Meaning of the Guliang, and Investigation of Han Ying's Inner Commentary on the Odes—works sufficient to correct Zhao Qi, Fan Ning, and Wang Yinglin and supplement their omissions. He also wrote Records of Posthumous Titles of Great Ministers of the Dynasty, Catalogue of Regional Steles and Metal Inscriptions, Diary from the Traveling Carriage, and collected writings from the Nanjiang Studio. He died in Jiaqing 1, aged fifty-four.
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歿
Zhou Yongnian, whose courtesy name was Shuchang, came from Licheng. Broadly learned and penetrating, he was highly esteemed in his time. A jinshi of Qianlong 36, he was summoned with Shao to compile the Siku books, became a Hanlin Bachelor, and was appointed compiler. In Qianlong 44 he served as associate examiner of the Guizhou provincial examination. In the library Zhou loved deep reflection. Across military, agricultural, astronomical, mathematical, and numerological works in the Four Categories, he investigated essential meanings with apt judgments and was esteemed by fellow compilers. Finding many lost Song and Yuan works in the Yongle Encyclopedia, he selected and edited them—from the Yongxin Liu brothers' Collections of What Is and Is Not onward, recovering more than ten previously unknown schools, all entered in the catalogue. He also observed that Buddhism and Daoism had scriptural repositories while Confucians had none. He therefore opened the Borrowing Books Garden, assembling one hundred thousand juan of ancient and modern books for public reading and copying to broaden transmission. Alas, after Zhou's death the collection gradually dispersed—he had not established a lasting institution.
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西 調 鹿
Wang Niansun, whose courtesy name was Huaizu, came from Gaoyou Prefecture. His father Wang Anguo, who rose to Minister of Personnel and was posthumously titled Wensu, has his own biography. At eight he had finished the Thirteen Classics and was already reading histories. When the Qianlong Emperor toured south, as a minister's son he welcomed the imperial carriage, presented a literary portfolio, and was granted provincial graduate status. A jinshi of Qianlong 40, he became a Hanlin Bachelor and after completing his academy term was appointed a clerk in the Ministry of Works. He rose to director, was appointed Censor of the Shaanxi Circuit, then Censor-in-Chief in the Department of Personnel. In Jiaqing 4, when the Jiaqing Emperor took power, teaching-bandits ravaged Sichuan and Hubei. Wang submitted six proposals for suppressing them, opening with an impeachment of Grand Secretary Heshen; the memorial's classical reasoning greatly accorded with the emperor's intent. That year he was appointed Commissioner of the Yongding River Circuit in Zhili. In Jiaqing 6, after a dike breach he was dismissed but retained by special edition to supervise river works. When the work was completed, he was rewarded with the rank of clerk. When the Hengjialou River in Henan breached, he was ordered to investigate and then rushed to Taizhuang to manage river affairs. Soon appointed Commissioner of the Shandong Transport River Circuit, he served six years before transferring to the Yongding River Circuit. When the Eastern Rivers Governor-General and Shandong Governor disagreed on diverting the Yellow River to benefit transport, Wang was summoned to the capital to decide the issue. Wang memorialized that diverting the Yellow River into the lake would inevitably cause some silting but could proceed temporarily without harm; the emperor approved. Soon the Yongding River flooded again as severely as in Jiaqing 6; Wang accepted blame and received permission to retire. At the repeat Lu Ming banquet in Daoguang 5 he died, aged eighty-nine.
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Wang was thoroughly versed in hydraulic engineering; while serving in the Ministry of Works he wrote Upper and Lower Discourses on Guiding Rivers. When ordered to compile the Outline of the River Source, some debaters misidentified the source; Wang forcefully corrected the error and settled the debate—the section on correcting errors in the Outline was his work. After retirement he devoted himself to writing Miscellaneous Reading Notes in eighty-two juan, covering the Lost Book of Zhou, Intrigues of the Warring States, Guanzi, Xunzi, Yanzi Spring and Autumn, Mozi, Huainanzi, Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Han, and Remains of Han Clerical Script. Obscure ancient meanings, copyist errors, and rash emendations—all were corrected one by one. Evidence for a single character could extend across ten thousand juan—such was his precision in textual collation.
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He first studied phonology, philology, and exegesis under Dai Zhen of Xiuning. In the classics he mastered Han-learning methods, personally compiling rhymes for the three hundred poems, Nine Classics, and Songs of Chu, dividing ancient sounds into twenty-one parts. In dividing the zhi, zhi, and zhi groups, Duan Yucai's Six Scripts Phonological Table also reached this insight; but Wang's division of zhi, ji, he, and ji into four parts went beyond Duan. Because Duan's book appeared first, Wang set his own work aside.
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Because Shao Jinhan had already written Correct Meaning of the Erya, Wang composed Evidential Commentary on the Guangya. At three characters per day, he completed the work in ten years—thirty-two juan in all. The book seeks ancient meanings through ancient sounds, extending by analogy into the Erya and Shuowen without limit. Yet the strictness of its phonological and philological divisions leaves not a thread out of order. It uses Zhang Yi's Guangya to gather explanations, yet contains much unknown to Zhang and beyond the reach of contemporaries Hui Dong and Dai Zhen.
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He once told his son Yinzhi: "The aim of exegesis lies in sound. Characters with the same or similar sounds in the classics are often phonetic loans. The scholar uses sound to seek meaning; break the loan character and read the original, and confusion melts like ice. Force an explanation through the loan character itself and the text becomes impenetrable. Master Mao's Commentary on the Odes often replaces loan characters with original ones—already opening the way to altered readings. By Zheng Xuan's commentaries, with repeated readings of 'X reads as Y,' the principle of phonetic loan was fully clarified. Later critics who fault Zheng Xuan for emending characters fail to recognize how common phonetic loan was in ancient texts." He also said: "Those who explain classics should seek only the classic’s meaning, not rigid adherence to one school." Yinzhi extended this instruction in Records of Classical Meaning in fifteen juan, Explanations of Terms in Classics and Traditions in ten juan, Exegesis of Zhou-Qin Ancient Characters, and Dictionary Verification. Critics say Qing classical learning stands alone through the ages; the Wang family of Gaoyou, with three generations of transmission, equals the Hui family of Changzhou.
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使 簿 使
Yinzhi, whose courtesy name was Boshen. A top-ranked jinshi of Jiaqing 4, he was appointed Hanlin Compiler. In the grand palace examination he ranked first and was promoted to Reader. He eventually rose to Minister of Works. In Fujian, acting Longxi magistrate Zhu Luzhong falsely accused Provincial Administration Commissioner Li Gengyun of taking bribes; Governor-General Wang Zhiyi and Governor Wang Shaolan joined the impeachment. At trial there was no corroborating evidence, yet the accusers pressed the case ever harder. Unable to endure the pressure, Li Gengyun hanged himself. Assigned to judge the case, Yinzhi reversed the verdict, exonerated Li, and dismissed both the governor-general and governor. As Vice Minister of Rites, when some proposed three years of full mourning for a living paternal grandmother, Yinzhi forcefully opposed it. While he was away on an imperial mission, proponents hastily memorialized and implemented the proposal. On his return Yinzhi memorialized that a concubine grandmother is not the grandfather's equal and cannot qualify for full-weight mourning. In sentiment, even lifelong mourning cannot repay boundless debt; but in ritual regulation, full-weight mourning cannot apply to branch-line descendants. He requested restoring the old one-year mourning precedent, and the policy was corrected. He died in Daoguang 14 and was posthumously titled Wensjian.
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使
Li Dun of Tongzhou, whose courtesy name was Chengyu. A jinshi of Qianlong 45. Li worked alongside his fellow townsman Wang Niansun and Jia Tianzu. As a licentiate he won the appreciation of Educational Commissioner Xie Yong. When about to be selected as an elevated tribute student, Jia Tianzu died at an inn; Li arranged the funeral and skipped the examination, prompting Xie Yong to sigh that he was like the ancients. Jiang Fan loved to revile earlier scholars. Li told him: "If Wang Su had not written the Sheng Zheng Lun to attack Zheng Xuan, would he not have been a pure Confucian?" He corrected others' faults to their face in just this way. His Small Recognitions among the Classics in eight juan examines more than two hundred twenty matters of ancient meaning, many not previously articulated. He died in Qianlong 49, aged fifty-one.
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Jia Tianzu, whose courtesy name was Daosun. He held licentiate status. He mastered the Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn and wrote Comprehensive Explanations of the Zuo Commentary.
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綿
Song Mianchu, whose courtesy name was Shouduan, also came from Gaoyou. An elevated tribute student of Qianlong 42, he served as instructor of Wuhe and Qinghe. Profound in classical learning and skilled in the Odes, he wrote Evidential Investigation of Han Ying's Inner Commentary in four juan. He also wrote Interpretation of Mourning Garments in two juan.
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Wang Zhong, whose courtesy name was Rongfu, came from Jiangdu. Orphaned at seven, his family was too poor to hire an outside tutor. His mother surnamed Zou taught him the Four Books. As a youth he helped a bookseller in the market and thereby read classics, histories, and the hundred schools; he memorized at a glance and became a comprehensive scholar. At twenty he became a licentiate. An elevated tribute student of Qianlong 42; at each examination Educational Commissioner Xie Yong placed Wang on a separate list ahead of the licentiates. Xie once said: "My deferring to Rongfu is courtesy. Judged by learning, I should serve him as my master." Such was his respect for Wang. Because his mother was old he never attended the metropolitan examination. In Qianlong 51, Vice Minister Zhu Gui presided over the Jiangnan examination and said: "On this trip I am sure to rank Wang Zhong first." He did not know Wang was not taking the examination.
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西
Wang devoted himself to classical learning and joined Wang Niansun of Gaoyou and Liu Taigong of Baoying in scholarly discussion. His work on the Documents includes Textual Variants of the Documents. His work on ritual includes collated texts of the Ceremonies and Records of the Elder Dai. His work on the Spring and Autumn includes Exposition of the Spring and Autumn. His philological works include Collated Text of the Erya and Seeking Origins in the Shuowen. Wang held that the rise of Qing ancient learning was opened by Gu Yanwu. Fabrications surrounding the River and Luo charts were refuted by Hu Wei. Chinese and Western astronomical calculation reached precision with Mei Wending. The forceful critic of Old Text learning was Yan Ruoqu. The specialist in Han Changes was Hui Dong. All were lost traditions untransmitted for over a thousand years until Dai Zhen gathered them into a great synthesis. He planned Eulogies of the Six Confucians but never completed it.
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使
He also broadly investigated pre-Qin texts and the rise and fall of Three Dynasties education, showing how the ancients studied. His plan comprised five parts: Yu and Xia, institutions of the Rites of Zhou, feudal states during Zhou decline, the disciples of Confucius, and later learners. He also planned six catalogues: General Discussions, Interpreting Classics, Old Reports, Canonical Records, Numerical Canons, and Hereditary Offices. He opened with: "Observing the Grand Historian passage in the Rites of Zhou—each act once had its book; later the book governed action; finally the act vanished and only the book remained. By Song Confucians' time, both the books and the acts they recorded were discarded." He also said: "There were government archives, scholars' archives, and transmitted reports of elders. Each act produced a book; transmitted to later ages as established statute—this was the government archive. When royal ritual, music, and government survived the age's decline, the Minister of Education guarded the texts and elders could speak of the affairs. Antiquarian gentlemen, fearing gradual loss, wrote accounts on bamboo slips—the archive of learned scholar-officials." He also said: "Ancient scholars were official teachers who taught practical affairs and recited only the Odes and Documents. Other canonical records were stored in government offices and hereditarily guarded; common people had none. Without holding the relevant office, one had no access. Scholars meant sons of the nobility or holders of minor office; beyond them were only district and primary schools. When the Bright Hall system vanished and the Grand Historian's office lost its charge, commoners began teaching disciples and unofficial scribes multiplied. Teaching and record-keeping passed from the court to private hands. In decline each master proclaimed his own learning, and the Way of former kings fell into desolation. When feudal lords lost their registers and Qin burned the books, official holdings were utterly destroyed. Yet scholars transmitted what they could, preserving fragments—fortune within misfortune." He also said: "Confucius taught what scholars could practice, preserving it as instruction for the age. Great matters of government and teaching he could not teach without office." He also said: "Ancient learning resided in government offices; men inherited offices and professions together. Once offices lost their charge, specialized learning collapsed." His drafts were roughly complete but remained unfinished. He later gathered his investigations of Three Dynasties ritual, philology, and numerology with discursive essays into Inner and Outer Chapters on Learning in six juan.
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Works serving classical meaning include Explaining the Three Nines, Questions and Answers on Women Without Masters, Discussion on Betrothed Daughters Whose Fiancés Died, and Explanations of Leaving Mourning and Removing Garments. Works highlighting classics and earlier Confucians include Evidential Text of the Rites of Zhou, Resolving Doubts in the Zuo Commentary, General Discourse on Master Xun, and Preface to Jia Yi's New Book. His other evidential essays are equally well grounded.
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Wang was also expert in historical geography, explaining mountain passes and strategic points with clarity. He wrote Comprehensive Gazetteer of Guangling in ten juan, Table of Qin's Gradual Conquest of the Six States, and Investigation of the Map of Jinling. He excelled in poetry, prose, calligraphy, and letters. His Reply on Guangling, Inscription for the Yellow Crane Tower, and Inscription for the Han River Zither Platform were all praised in his day. He also wrote Record of New Insights in Classical Meaning in one juan, Corrections to the Records of the Elder Dai in one juan, and posthumous poetry in one juan. He died in Qianlong 59, aged fifty-one.
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Wang was famed for filial service to his mother, performing every duty at her side without complaint. In mourning his grief exceeded others'; toward friends who fell into decline after bereavement he showed even greater care. In Daoguang 11 he received official commendation as a filial son. Wang's son Xisun has his own biography. Other Han-learning scholars from the same district included Jiang Deliang, Xu Fu, and Wang Guangxi.
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西
Jiang Deliang, whose courtesy name was Liangshu, came from Jiangdu. His father Jiang Xun loved epigraphic inscriptions. His uncle Jiang Yu mastered phonology and exegesis. From youth Jiang inherited family learning; as an adult he befriended Wang Zhong, devoted himself to the classics, and advanced daily. A top-ranked jinshi of Qianlong 44, he became Hanlin Compiler and then Censor of the Jiangxi Circuit. At court he knew much oral tradition and was broadly versed in institutional precedent. In spare time from official duties he immersed himself in books. He wrote Record of Ancient Coins in thirty juan. He died in Qianlong 58, aged forty-two.
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Xu Fu, whose courtesy name was Xinzhong, also came from Jiangdu. He mastered the Nine Chapters on Mathematical Procedures.
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Wang Guangxi, whose courtesy name was Jinfan, came from Yizheng. He held stipend-student status. Broadly versed in classics and histories, he refuted errors in the Hui family's line-position diagram for the Changes and wrote Explanations of Tares and Weeds; contemporaries admired his precision.
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洿 輿
Wu Yi, whose courtesy name was Xugu, came from Yanshi. His father Wu Shaozhou, a jinshi, served as a director in the Ministry of Personnel. While mourning his parents, Wu grieved deeply and emaciated himself, driving his studies through grief. When the Yi and Luo rivers flooded and his house collapsed, he built a platform over the mire to live on, warming himself with rotten wood while never ceasing his studies. Later he studied under Zhu Yun of Daxing and became even more broadly learned. A jinshi of Qianlong 45, he was appointed magistrate of Boshan County in Shandong in Qianlong 56. The county's hills were mostly barren and the people neglected farming. The area produced coal and alum for glassmaking, drawing merchants in crowds. Wu investigated local customs' benefits and harms, exempted glass tribute, abolished coal supply requisitions, and spared the people district-horse fodder burdens. He founded Fanquan Academy, selecting talented students to discuss ethics and practical learning. He decided cases without leaving prisoners in limbo, and rain came immediately when he prayed for it. When someone tried to bribe him, they hesitated; Wu knew their intent and, as thunder crashed, said: "Do you not hear the thunder? I have long prayed against such corruption." The briber stopped in fear, and public sentiment turned strongly in Wu's favor.
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In Qianlong 57 Grand Secretary Heshen headed Metropolitan Banner affairs; hearing a rumor that Shandong rebel Wang Lun might still be alive, he secretly sent banner agents to track him. Eleven banner agents led by Du Chengde ran rampant through the counties; in Boshan they gambled with iron rulers in hand until Wu arrested them all and severely punished the stubborn Chengde. Those who spread rumors about the affair said: "Yi rashly punished innocent men and will implicate his superiors." Governor Ji Qing impeached and dismissed him for wantonly punishing commoners, without stating the true facts. Wu served only seven months; when he left, over a thousand people begged the provincial office to keep "our good official," and when refused they daily brought firewood and rice until his gate resembled a market. Ji Qing was moved as well and, entering the capital for audience, traveled with Wu to arrange a donation for his reinstatement. Grand Secretary Duke Agui told Ji Qing: "Banner agents are forbidden outside the capital—why blame a magistrate for enforcing the law and impeach a strong official while concealing the facts?" Ji Qing deeply regretted it, but ministry deliberation blocked reinstatement and Wu returned home. In Jiaqing 4, month 10, the emperor ordered secret recommendations of upright, capable officials with verifiable records; Wu was among those recommended. In month 11 the appointment reached his door, but Wu had already died in month 10, aged fifty-five.
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Wu's learning was pure and refined; he could recite from memory the Seven Classics with commentary, the Three Histories, and Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror. After dismissal, too poor to return home, he taught classics, histories, and exegesis wherever he went. Prolific in writing, his works include Evidential Interpretations among the Classics in seven juan, Investigation of Variants in Classic Reading in nine juan, Three Postscripts on Metal and Stone in ten juan, Continued Postscripts on Metal and Stone Inscriptions in fourteen juan, Record of Metal and Stone at Yanshi in four juan, and Record of Metal and Stone at Anyang in thirteen juan. He also wrote Evidential Interpretations of the Three Rites, Notes from the Shoutang Studio, and collected writings—citing widely, probing the slightest textual crack, and forming general rules through precise expression. Zhu Gui of Daxing declared Wu worthy of the title of upright lover of antiquity.
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Zhuang Shuzu, whose courtesy name was Baochen, came from Wujin. His father's elder brother Zhuang Cunyu, who rose to Vice Minister of Rites, has his own biography. Shuzu, a jinshi of Qianlong 45, served as magistrate of Weixian in Shandong. Clear in administration, he balanced criminal cases and subdued the powerful. Surveying alkaline land thought saline, he pointed to roadside grass called horse-broom. He smiled: "The classic names this ping; the Xia Calendar's 'ping in flourish' marks the season—sandy soil with ping grass suits grain; how is this alkaline?" All were convinced. In jiayin he was cited for outstanding merit; returning, he was ordered appointed Taoyuan sub-prefect. Within a month he retired to care for his parents. For sixteen years he wrote while caring for his parents, never leaving their side. He died in Jiaqing 21.
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Shuzu inherited Cunyu's learning with precision; on matters others neglected he thought deeply, opening new paths and seeing through root and branch. His writings all reach broad principles beyond earlier sages. He held that though the Lianshan and Guicang were lost, the Xia Calendar Small Classic and Cang Jie's ancient script survive for tracing meaning. He therefore wrote Investigation and Explanation of the Xia Calendar Small Classic with Commentary, using the Dipper handle, Southern Gate, and Weaver Girl to record Heaven's unchanging motion; using Shen at culmination and the great culmination to record differences in the sun's degrees; using the dingmao day of the second month to determine the Xia season; using the jiayin day of the first month, when hibernating insects stir, as the calendrical epoch; taking the annual sacrifice as the suburban sacrifice; and taking Wanyong entering school as the di rite. In Ancient Script Parts A and B he argued that Xu Shuzhong's sequence from beginning through hai was the source of the radical rules; that the stems and branches of days were made by Dalao in the Yellow Emperor's age; that Jusong and Cang Jie named them to replace knotted cords; and that, after Fuxi drew the Eight Trigrams and framed his ten-word teaching, these thirty-two categories became the basis for correctly naming all things. The Guicang was the Yellow Emperor's Changes; following Xu's radicals and stem-branch order, he classified preserved and epigraphic material—the book unfinished but its structure largely complete. He also wrote on all the remaining Five Classics. He also treated the Lost Book of Zhou, Great Commentary on the Documents, Records of the Grand Historian, and Baihu Tong—correcting errors, lost passages, and displaced text with full evidence, as if consulting the ancients directly. His works include Investigation and Explanation of the Xia Calendar Small Classic with Commentary in ten juan, Evidential Investigation of Old and New Text Documents in seven juan, Evidential Investigation of the Mao Odes in four juan, Oral Exegesis of the Zhou Hymns in three juan, Account of Five Classics Philology in two juan, and nine other titles totaling over thirty juan.
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Cunyu's grandson Shoujia, whose courtesy name was Qingshan. He fully mastered the family learning and was especially cherished by Shuzu. He wrote Textual Variants of the Documents in three juan and Explaining the Book Title in one juan.
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Clansman Zhuang Youke, whose courtesy name was Dajiu. Diligent in learning and conduct, he grew more earnest in old age. Drawing on commentaries and traditions, he finely investigated principle, compared texts across Confucian schools, and formed his own explanations. He wrote on the Changes, Documents, Odes, Rites, and Spring and Autumn—forty-two works in over four hundred thirty juan.
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Qi Xuebiao, whose courtesy name was Hequan, came from Taiping. From youth he studied under Qi Zhaonan of Tiantai and was ranked a top student. When the Qianlong Emperor toured Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Qi presented an Ode on the Southern Tour. He became a jinshi in Qianlong 45 and served as magistrate of She County in Henan. The county suffered from broad-cloth levies; Qi obtained a quota reduction from the provincial office. Acting for Lin County, when brothers disputed an estate he satirized them with a Ballad of Fighting over Millet from Li Bai's lines—all repented. Unyielding by nature, he often clashed with superiors and was ultimately dismissed. Later appointed professor at Ningbo, he soon returned home to write.
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使 宿 便
Skilled in evidential study, he wrote Han Learning Phonetic Correspondence in twenty-three juan and General Discussion in one juan. Using the Shuowen to clarify ancient sounds, he held that in the Six Scripts xingsheng depends on form—form is the root of sound. Sound follows qi; with yin and yang qi, a character's sound may shift between yin and yang or take partial forms. Knowing this, ancients used 'with such-and-such sound' to show a character's phonetic origin and fix its root. 'Read like so-and-so' set up comparisons enabling seekers to find by category. Even when far removed, tracing the root sound reveals changes without mismatch. The Shuowen gives both phonetic root and comparative reading together in formulas such as 'from X with Y sound' and 'read like Z.' Nowhere is the study of sound more complete than this. Later scholars, confused by Sun Mian's fanqie added by the Xu family, ignored original readings; even Gu Yanwu and Jiang Yong analyzed mainly through rhyme books. They failed to see that the Shuowen links form and sound, while rhyme books discuss sound in isolation; the Shuowen seeks sound through qi, while rhyme books only discuss homophonic correspondence. Their departmental arrangements, chaotic in division and merger, mostly reflected subjective views. Scholars seeking convenience settled on a single reading. Clinging to fixed level, rising, departing, and entering tones, they abandoned phonetic correspondence and obscured Shuowen learning. His book takes Xu as basis, deducing changed from root sounds, listing original annotations and searching ancient readings as proof. Appended is Supplementary Investigation of the Shuowen in two juan, mostly correcting the two Xus' errors.
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He also wrote Verified Readings of the Mao Odes, Spectrum Fixing Yin and Yang of Poetic Sounds in four juan, Occasional Talks on the Four Books in four juan, Inner and Outer Chapters, Character Changes, and Literary Notes of Hequan in two juan each.
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使 稿
Jiang Youhao, whose courtesy name was Jinsan, came from She County. Mastering phonology, he devoured the works of Gu Yanwu and Jiang Yong. He held that Jiang supplemented Gu but divisions still had gaps; dividing Jiang's thirteen parts into twenty-one, he largely agreed with Dai Zhen and Kong Guangsen. He sent the work to Duan Yucai, who deeply valued it: "Gu and Kong focus on antiquity; Jiang and Dai also examine sounds. Jinsan chooses the best from earlier scholars without leaning to any faction, and he is also expert in hu, deng, letters, and initials. He not only makes ancient sounds brilliantly clear, but also explains why the modern rhymes divide into 206 sections. Rhyme learning is thus complete." His Jiang's Ten Books on Phonology include Rhyme Readings of the Book of Odes, the Classics, the Songs of Chu, Pre-Qin, and Han-Wei texts, plus tables of phonetic and entering tones—works Wang Niansun and his son both admired. In late life he wrote Record of the Six Scripts in the Shuowen and Rhyme Spectrum by Shuowen Divisions. Late in Daoguang a fire destroyed his house and burned his drafts. Youhao grew old and blind, fell into depression, and soon died.
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Chen Xijin, originally named Jin, whose courtesy name was Ximu, came from Yiwu. He was an outstanding tribute student. As a teaching instructor he served as magistrate of Kaitai, Longli, and Puding in Guizhou, sub-prefect of Renhuai, and was promoted to prefect of Yichang in Hubei. Acting for Kaitai, when teaching-bandit Jiang Changhua disturbed Liping, Chen bound ringleaders and pardoned the coerced, saving countless lives. At Longli a man had falsely confessed to killing someone with a nail-shoe, but wound evidence did not match—Chen was suspicious. While reviewing prisoners he spotted someone in the crowd dragging nail-shoes and glancing furtively; seized and interrogated, the wounds matched exactly and the true culprit confessed. At Puding groups dominated one another, calling their chiefs "Ox Clusters." When they caught thieves, they did not report to officials but burned them alive on piled firewood. Previously someone burned three corpses in revenge, and officials did not dare make arrests. Chen vowed to catch the culprits, punished them severely by law, and the custom was quickly reformed. As prefect of Yichang during a great Chu flood, he pacified refugees, repaired the walls, and used labor projects for relief. When his term ended he was kept six months to complete the work. Several thousand people saw him off, all in tears. He retired to care for his parents and soon died.
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Profound in learning, Chen amassed tens of thousands of books, correcting doubts and exhausting origins with precise judgment. He said Du Yu's Zuo commentary had three blind spots; Liu Guangbo corrected them, but Liu's book was long lost. Only the Correct Meaning cites 173 cases Kong Yingda rejected; Chen drew on classics, histories, and recent scholarship to clarify Liu's views. He expanded where Liu was right against Du, explained where Liu was wrong, and decided by his own judgment where both failed—forming Verified Investigation of Liu's Corrections in nine juan. He argued that Liu's Exposition of the Zuo listed in the Sui catalog likely included his corrections, based on Kong Yingda's preface. The Old Tang catalog lists the Exposition in 37 juan—three fewer than Sui but matching the three juan of corrections. Beyond the 173 anti-Du cases in the Correct Meaning, he found 143 more—all likely from Liu's Exposition. Only thirty cases differ from Du, with few refutations. Probably early Tang editors, favoring Du, deleted Liu's corrections when fixing the standard text. Comparing gains and losses across sources, he completed Supplementary Remains of the Exposition of the Zuo in eight juan.
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Other works include Exposition and Evidential Commentary on the Old Text Filial Classic, Annals of Emperors and Kings, Record of Guizhou Customs, and eight additional titles.
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Li Cheng, whose courtesy name was Jingxuan, came from Huangyan. An elevated tribute student of Jiaqing 18, he served in Yunnan and ended as magistrate of Shunning. He compiled Collected Explanations of the Thirteen Classics in 260 juan, drawing on Han-Wei commentaries, recent scholarship, and solid Tang-Song work. Observing that waterway books were plentiful but mountain geography lacked a comprehensive work, he wrote Comprehensive Outline of Ten Thousand Mountains in sixty juan. He also wrote Supplement and Revision of Waterway Compendium in 28 juan, Diary of Official Travel, Glimpses through a Tube in 36 juan, and Guide for Physicians.
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Ding Jie, originally named Jinhong, whose courtesy name was Shengqu, came from Gui'an. A jinshi of Qianlong 46, he served as professor of the Ningbo prefectural school. Deeply filial, he once rushed to Yunnan to bring his father's coffin home for burial. Poor from youth, he read in bookshops. He studied classics and histories along with the Shuowen, phonology, and mathematics. When the Siku Library opened he assisted collation and studied with Zhu Yun, Dai Zhen, Lu Wenjiao, Jin Bang, and Cheng Yaotian.
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Ding excelled at textual collation, most resembling Lu Wenjiao. For every book he fixed punctuation and collated variants across editions. He worked especially on the Records of the Elder Dai, writing Exposition of the Records of the Elder Dai. Zheng Xuan's Commentary on the Changes had long been lost; Wang Yinglin of Song compiled a recovery, augmented by Hui Dong. Ding found both recoveries interpolated passages from Zheng's Qianzao Du commentary and misattributed Han History notes. He corrected errors and supplemented gaps in Final Determination of Zheng's Commentary on the Changes in twelve juan. Hu Wei's Axe and Pointer to the Tribute of Yu was hailed as supreme learning; Ding pointed out many errors. He cited a weft classic: "Shifting the river as boundary, at Qi filling and blocking the eight streams to expand itself." River calamity stemmed from the Nine Rivers being blocked, with harm beginning in Qi. Guan Zhong was a capable minister and would not have brought such disaster on himself. Ban Gu's Treatise on Ditches and Channels says: "Shang exhausted, Zhou shifted, Qin broke the southern bank; from then to Han, the north lost eight branches." Thus the Nine Rivers were likely blocked during the Qin-Chu period. Hui Dong's compiled Great Commentary on the Documents contained grave errors such as misreading Kunxue Jiwen in "fresh degrees making Jing." The Five Elements Transmission text was corrupt; reading Later Han commentary showed it had been wrongly joined with Huanglan. With Weng Fanggang he corrected dates in Zhu Yizun's Evidential Investigation of Classical Meaning preface. With Xu Yanyan he elucidated Mozi's upper and lower canons with great progress. Dai Zhen began fine Fangyan editions; Ding contributed most, and Lu Wenjiao ranked him not below Dai. Qiantang said his Correct Investigation of the Origin of Han Clerical Characters grasped clerical principles.
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Ding held that the thirty-six initials cannot be increased, merged, or reversed: jian, duan, zhi, bang, fei, jing, and zhao are isolated clear initials and cannot take voiced counterparts; yi, ni, xiang, ming, wei, lai, and ri are isolated voiced initials and cannot take clear counterparts; fei is the light-labial form of bang and cannot merge with zhuan; wei is the light-labial form of ming and cannot merge with feng; ying and yu are deep-throat forms of xiao and xia and cannot be reordered as ying, xiao, yu, xia. He wrote Collected Writings from the Xiaoyou Mountain Studio and died in Jiaqing 12, aged seventy.
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His son Shoujing was an outstanding tribute student of Jiaqing 3; Chuanjing was an outstanding tribute student of Jiaqing 6. Both inherited the family learning and were known as the "Twin Ding." Shoujing assisted Yan Kejun in compiling the ABCD long compilation to collate the Shuowen.
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西 鹿 輿
Zhou Chun, whose courtesy name was Song'ai, came from Haining. A jinshi of Qianlong 19, he served as magistrate of Cenxi County in Guangxi. He abolished corrupt customs without disturbing the people, in the style of ancient conscientious officials. When he left on bereavement, Cenxi built a shrine in his honor. In Jiaqing 15 he again attended the Lu Ming banquet. He died in Jiaqing 20, aged eighty-seven. Broadly learned and loving antiquity, after mourning both parents he did not seek office though not yet fifty. His Outline of Sounds of the Thirteen Classics in thirteen juan, based on Lu Deming's Shiwen and Yupian and Guangyun, rigorously assigns every character to its initial. Other works include Chinese Filial Classic, Supplementary Commentary on Erya, Remaining Discourses on Philology, surname genealogies, and Outline of Alliteration in Du Fu's Poetry in eight juan.
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Sun Xingyan, whose courtesy name was Yuanru, came from Yanghu. From youth his literary gifts matched those of Yang Fangcan, Hong Liangji, and Huang Jingren. Yuan Mei called him a "genius under heaven" and formed a friendship across generations. Sun did not wish fame as a poet, devoting himself to classics, histories, philology, and the hundred schools. A top-ranked jinshi of Qianlong 52, he became Hanlin Compiler and collator of the Three Compendia Office. In Qianlong 54, leaving the Hanlin academy, he used Records' "like in fear" in his Fu on Firm Resolve; Heshen suspected a wrong character and demoted him to a ministry post. Precedent allowed top jinshi to remain in the Hanlin or rise to vice-director—Wu Wenhuan had done so. Heshen hinted he should visit; Sun refused: "A clerk eventually rises to vice-director—why seek favor?" Thereafter Hanlin compilers demoted to clerks became precedent.
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In the Ministry of Justice he was lenient in law; Agui and Hu Jitang valued him. For doubtful cases he judged by ancient principles, saving many lives. After duty he always pursued scholarship. He rose to director. In Qianlong 60 he was appointed intendant of the Yan-Yi-Cao-Ji Circuit in Shandong.
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In Jiaqing 1, month 7, floods breached at Shan County; Sun and Kang Jitian built upstream dikes in five days and nights to prevent a breakthrough. Kang Jitian said the work saved the state millions in treasury silver. Acting surveillance commissioner for seven months, he reversed scores of cases and saved more than ten death-row prisoners wrongly convicted. In Weixian a martial offender bribed Heshen's gate and sought protection from high officials. Sun searched him out, tried him, and shackled Heshen's messenger in the street. Returning to his post during Cao flood work, he was blamed for defense negligence but retained by special edict. Cao flood work divided three diversion rivers; Sun managed the middle section. When complete, his section saved over three hundred thousand compared with Jidong and Denglai sections. Where others took surplus "deduction fees" from river compensation, Sun took none and applied all funds to diversion work. Before Cao works were joined, superiors hurriedly reported completion and moved Sun; soon they reported the works had reopened. Reopening required sharing ninety thousand taels in dam compensation—half should fall on his successor, but officials assigned it all to Sun. Sun accepted it, saying: "Since I also manage river affairs, I cannot avoid bearing others' faults."
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In Jiaqing 4 he mourned his mother; Ruan Yuan engaged him to head the Gujing Jingshe Academy. He tested students on classical doubts, philology, astronomy, geography, mathematics, and composition; within ten years they became noted writers. After mourning he returned to Shandong; in Jiaqing 10 he became grain commissioner. In Jiaqing 12 he acted as provincial administration commissioner. When Vice Minister Guangxing visited, Sun refused improper disbursements for his entourage. When Guang later fell on bribery charges, many Henan and Shandong officials were punished for treasury disbursements—Sun was not. In Jiaqing 16 he retired citing illness.
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Sun was broadly read and prolific in writing. He loved collecting books and copied fine editions whenever he found them. He investigated the origins of every epigraphic inscription he encountered. Lamenting that the Old Text Documents were corrupted by Mei Ze of Eastern Jin, he began collecting Ma-Zheng commentary while at the Ministry of Justice. After retirement he completed Commentary and Subcommentary to Old and New Text Documents in 39 juan. Its methodological preface says: "The old commentaries to the Documents have scattered and disappeared. I now select from the traditions raised into commentary the views of five schools in three categories: first, Sima Qian, who asked Kong Anguo about old matters, represents the Old Text interpretation; second, Fusheng's Book Great Tradition, transmitted by Ouyang Gao, Elder Xiahou Sheng, and Younger Xiahou Jian, represents the New Text interpretation; third, Ma Rong and Zheng Kangcheng, though they have differences, mostly draw on Wei Hong and Jia Kui and represent the Kong-wall Old Text interpretation. All these are traced to their sources in the subcommentary. As for old Documents interpretations cited by pre-Qin masters, weft texts, Baihu Tong, and the like, the New Text interpretations of Han and Wei scholars, and the Kong-wall Old Text recorded in Xu's Shuowen, the commentary preserves their variant passages and variant characters, while their explanations are appended in the subcommentary." His aim was to recover lost tradition, chiefly Han-Wei fragments, also drawing on Wang Mingsheng, Jiang Sheng, and Duan Yucai. He excluded Song and later commentaries as lacking reliable transmission and prone to arbitrary invention. The work took twenty-two years to complete.
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Other works include Collected Explanations of the Changes in ten juan, Corrected Xia Calendar Small Classic Transmission in three, Investigation of the Bright Hall in three, Annotated Investigation of the Separate Canon of the Spring and Autumn in fifteen, Erya and Guangya Exegetical Rhyme Compilation in five, Investigation of Surviving Characters from the Wei Three-Script Stone Classics in one, Collected Sayings of Confucius in seventeen, Phonological Notes on Yanzi's Spring and Autumn in two, Evidential Investigation of the Heavenly Offices chapter of the Records of the Grand Historian in ten, Beginning and End of Establishing the Fu Classicist in two, Record of Searching for Steles throughout the Realm in twelve, Collected Metal and Stone Inscriptions in twenty, Continued Ancient Literary Anthology in twenty, and Collected Poetry and Prose in twenty-five. He died in Jiaqing 23, aged sixty-six. Late works were mostly completed by Bi Heng of Wendeng and Li Yide of Jiaxing.
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Bi Heng, originally named Yitian, whose courtesy name was Tianxi. A student of Dai Zhen of Huining, he mastered Han exegesis and especially the Documents. Sun's Documents commentary drew heavily on Bi Heng, whom he called unmatched in classical learning. A juren of Jiaqing 12, he was appointed to Jiangxi through grand selection in Daoguang 6 and served at Anyi County. In a fratricide case he upheld "confounding moral order—punish without pardon" and refused amnesty. The provincial office nearly impeached him, but Cheng Enze of She intervened. Later posted to Chongyi, he died in office from overwork, nearly eighty. He wrote Literary Remains from the Jiushui Mountain Studio in two juan.
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Li Yide, whose courtesy name was Cibai. A juren of Jiaqing 23. He lodged with Sun and they worked together happily. He wrote Compiled Exposition of Jia and Fu Commentary on the Zuo Exegesis in twenty juan. The work cites broadly and compares texts closely, refuting points he found unsatisfactory. Even Du Yu reborn would not dare raise Du's banner alone and abandon older Zuo traditions. Other works include Investigation of Variants in the Odes, Investigation of Names of Things in the Book of Odes, Remaining Rites of the Zhou, and several more titles.
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Wang Pinzhen, whose courtesy name was Zhenwu, came from Nancheng. From youth he was known for rigorous scholarship. In Qianlong 54, Weng Fanggang selected him as tribute student; he collated texts for Xie Qikun and Ruan Yuan. While guesting in western Zhejiang he discussed learning with Ling Tingkan, who deeply approved him. Grave, sincere, and incorruptibly self-restraining in character.
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Upholding Zheng Xuan's tradition, he wrote Exegesis of the Records of the Elder Dai in thirteen juan with a one-juan catalog. His words were: "Elder Dai and Lesser Dai both studied under Hou Cang, each drawing on Kong-wall Old Text interpretations. It is not the case that Lesser Dai abridged Elder Dai or that Ma Rong supplemented Lesser Dai. Investigation of Rites and Protector and Tutor mention Qin's fall, so they were jointly stored away by Kong Xiang and others. This means Jia Yi drew from ancient records, not that the ancient records drew from the New Writings. Record of Three Reigns and Master Zeng were assigned by the Liu clan among the nine streams; they were not collected by Elder Dai."
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He also said: "Recent collation does not understand school methods. Wang Su's edition tampered with this classic and privately fixed Confucius's Family Sayings, yet people instead rely on Wang's text to alter the classic. Others rely on Tang and Song encyclopedias such as Classified Gatherings from the Literature and the Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era to add or delete words and phrases, or claim that the Yongle Encyclopedia warrants changing one character into another. In all these cases, they use modern meanings to constrain ancient meanings, modern sounds to prove ancient sounds, and modern text to replace ancient text, thereby making the ancient and profound Kong-wall classic become smooth in wording while its meaning disappears." His principles: ritual codes and implements strictly followed Zheng; character exegesis relied on Erya, Shuowen, and Han commentators. Where uncertain he left blanks; he never fabricated readings. Examples include reading "five yi" as yi per Zhou Rites commentary, explaining "five zao" as wu, and Qing Shi Zi's citation of Han History "the gentleman nourishes them" as in "the center nourishes." All were grounded in classics and histories and dispelled confusion. Jiao Xun of Jiangdu praised him for preserving the text without arbitrary changes, listing him among thirty-two Reading Praises. Other works include Supplement to Evidential Investigation of Classical Meaning and Study of the Nine Classics.
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Ling Tingkan, whose courtesy name was Cizhong, came from She County. Orphaned at six, he began reading after coming of age, admiring Jiang Yong and Dai Zhen. A jinshi of Qianlong 55, he became professor of the Ningguo prefectural school. He took his mother to office and wrote devotedly for over ten years. He died in Jiaqing 14, aged fifty-three.
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沿 使 ''''''
His learning ranged from Six Scripts and calendrics to territorial and office history—all systematically arranged. He specialized especially in ritual learning, saying: "What the ancient sages used to restore people's nature was learning, and what was learned was ritual. When Yan Yuan asked about benevolence, what Confucius told him was only ritual; Yanzi sighed at the Way as high and hard, before and behind. Only when he reached 'broadly learning in culture and restraining oneself by ritual' was it then 'as if something stood before him'; this is precisely the standing in 'standing through ritual.' Ritual has regulated forms, measures, and numbers; it is not something that can be entrusted to empty talk of principle." He wrote Exemplifying the Ritual Classic in thirteen juan, saying: "Rites are intricate and weighty, so one must understand their patterns comprehensively. Village drinking, village archery, banquet rites, and grand archery differ, yet their patterns of offering, responding, toasting, traveling toasts, and limitless cups are the same; mission rites and audience rites differ, yet their patterns of suburban reception, holding jade, proceeding with offerings, and courtyard gifts are the same; single-victim feeding sacrifices and lesser-victim feeding sacrifices differ, yet their patterns of feeding the impersonator, the host's first offering, the hostess's second offering, the senior guest's third offering, and drinking after the sacrifice are the same." He divided rites into eight patterns—general, food and drink, guest, archery, variant, sacrifice, implements and dress, and miscellaneous—to clarify sameness within difference. Because Han commentators missed the honoring-the-honored principle, he added Investigation of Feudal Honoring-the-Honored Service System after the variant pattern. Zhu Gui of Daxing read the work and praised it in verse.
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Beyond ritual he studied music, holding that vulgar and elegant music were separated by Tang banquet music—unknown to Cai Jitong and Prince Zheng. Taking Zheng Yi's five keys and seven modes as basis and drawing on Duan Anjie, Zhang Shuxia, and Liao History Music Treatise, he wrote Investigation of the Origins of Banquet Music in six juan. Jiang Fan of Jiangdu called it "thought penetrating spirits and ghosts." Other works include Chronological Biography of Yuan Haowen, Collected Writings from the Jiaoli Hall in thirty-six juan, and Poetry Collection in fourteen juan. Ruan Yuan had his son study Scholar's Rites under Ling and praised his investigations of village archery, nine bows, nine sacrifices, and Chu Ci. Most outstanding were his three chapters on restoring ritual.
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Fellow townsman Hong Bang, whose courtesy name was Rudeng. A juren of Qianlong 23. In Qianlong 41 he ranked first in the Tianjin imperial test and became Secretariat Drafting Clerk. He died aged thirty-five. Pure in classical learning; his Clarifying Images remained unfinished, ending at the Yi hexagram. Following Zheng Xuan's Eulogy on the Changes he wrote Expository Eulogy in two juan. He also wrote Table of Balanced Four Tones in five juan and Children's Fanqie in one juan. Jiang Yong had 616 fanqie characters; Hong added 139 and marked initials above Guangyun entries to fix the five sound categories, extending Jiang and Dai. He regulated himself uprightly and treated others sincerely. All his life he devoted himself to Dai Zhen. When others could not grasp Dai Zhen's Evidential Commentary on the Meaning of Mencius, Hong alone ranked its achievement with Yu the Great. When he drafted Dai Zhen's biographical account, he included a letter to Peng Shaosheng. Zhu Yun saw it and said: "It need not be included; what can be transmitted of Master Dai does not lie here." Hong submitted a letter arguing in reply. Jiang Fan in Wu, reading it, sighed: "Master Hong is a Confucian defending the Way."
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Wang Long, whose courtesy name was Chenshu, was also from Ling Tingkan's county. A juren of Qianlong 51. Broadly learned in poetry, he rejected Zheng's miraculous birth explanation for Birth of the People and Dark Bird, preferring Mao's account of Jiang Yuan and Jiandi at the suburban Mei rite. After decades of work he completed Different Meanings of the Mao Odes in four juan and Upholding Mao in ten juan. He died aged eighty-two.
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Gui Fu, whose courtesy name was Donghui, came from Qufu. A jinshi of Qianlong 55, he was magistrate of Yongping in Yunnan and died in office.
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Broadly read, he devoted himself to philology and mastered sound and meaning. He said: "Without mastering classics a scholar cannot serve; without clear exegesis one cannot master classics." For forty years he daily compared Xu's Shuowen with classic meanings, producing Evidential Commentary on the Meaning of Shuowen in fifty juan. Exhausting textual roots, this was his life's work.
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Gui and Duan Yucai, contemporaries both studying Shuowen, were equally famed though they never met or read each other's books. Duan's work excels in both sound and meaning, especially sound; Gui's also treats sound but is especially broad in meaning. Duan boldly reconstructed characters and meanings, confident he matched Xu's intent; Gui assisted Xu's text, developing lateral connections so readers could extend meaning themselves. Duan is concise and hard to penetrate; Gui is elaborate and easier to use. In inward grasp Duan wins; in convenience for readers Gui may be ahead. Like Wang's Guangya Commentary and Ruan's Collected Glosses, he cited ancient books without imposing sole judgment.
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In Yunnan office he wrote fragmentary Notes from the Craftsman's Door in ten juan recalling old reports. Yet Gui Fu once cited Xu Gan's Discourses on the Mean: "Vulgar scholars are broadly learned, busy themselves with the names of things, are detailed about implements, and investigate exegesis, but they pluck out chapters and sentences and cannot unite them with the ultimate reach of the great meaning so as to grasp the mind of the former kings. Thus they make students labor in thought without knowing the Way, and spend days and months without accomplishing anything." He warned that Six Script fashion produced scholars proud of name objects and strokes but blank on classic great meaning. Few philologists of his day could speak so—enough to awaken the complacent. Other works include Late Learning Collection in twelve juan.
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Xu Han, whose courtesy name was Yinlin, came from Rizhao. A juren of Daoguang 15, he served as instructor of Yixian. Broadly versed in classics, histories, and epigraphy, with deep exegesis. In collating Song-Yuan-Ming editions he matched Huang Pilie and Gu Guangqi. Collating Gui Fu's Shuowen commentary for the Yang clan, he lost everything when blocks were destroyed by Nian bandits and died depressed, aged seventy. Other works include Collation of Errors in Han Poetry Outer Commentary and Essays from the Pangu Studio.
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退 歿
Jiang Sheng, whose courtesy name was Shujun, came from Yuanhe. At seven he asked his tutor why one read; told it was for rank, he sought how to advance beyond that. At twenty-nine, nursing his ill father, he never left the couch and even washed his father's garments to monitor his condition. In mourning he was emaciated with grief; after three years he still looked newly bereaved. He served his mother's illness and mourning with equal devotion. Clansmen pitied his utmost filial conduct. Orphaned, he abandoned the examination career.
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Reading the Documents, he found Old Text unlike New Text. He also doubted Kong's commentary came from Anguo. At thirty-five he studied under Hui Dong, learned Old Text was forged, and collected Han commentary to annotate twenty-nine chapters. He completed Collected Commentary and Phonological Subcommentary to the Documents in twelve juan with supplements and a lineage table of Documents classicists. He wrote classic text and commentary entirely in ancient seal script. Doubters of forged Old Text began with Wu Cailao of Song; later skeptics missed essentials. Yan Ruoju and Hui Dong finally revealed forgery and plagiarism. Correcting text and clarifying ancient commentary awaited Jiang Sheng's summation.
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Rejecting seal-trace zhuanzhu speculation, he wrote On the Six Scripts: establishing category with head means the 540 hai departments; same intent means all of a type follow that type. Sun Xingyan agreed, citing Erya words for beginning—zhao, zu, yuan, tai. Beginning forms a category; zhao, zu, yuan, and tai all mean beginning under same intent. Shuowen has many such pairs; yan and ai in the mouth department illustrate lao-zhuanzhu. Ai means yan. In the run department, zou and qu; qu means zou. Like lao and zhuanzhu mutually defining each other. Sharing the mouth or run department exemplifies establishing category with head. Jiang agreed, but Dai Zhen thought whole-department scope was too broad. Jiang replied: "If only lao is zhuanzhu, is that not too narrow? And does xingsheng not also span whole departments?" Jiang and Dai respected each other yet disagreed thus.
135
L0 便
He never wrote regular script, using ancient seal even in letters despite ridicule. For Documents water names not in Shuowen he used Huainan and Erya evidence; skeptics later accepted. Yet his seal-script Documents commentary did not circulate widely.
136
Upright and unyielding, he did not covet glory or profit. Wang Mingsheng, Wang Chang, and Bi Yuan valued him; he never used connections for private ends. In Jiaqing 1 he was recommended as Filial and Incorrupt. He died in Jiaqing 4, aged seventy-nine. In late life, at odds with custom, he styled himself Genting after the Gen hexagram's 'back'; scholars called him Master Genting.
137
His son Liu was a Wuxian student. Grandson Yuan was an outstanding tribute student. The family transmitted his learning for generations.
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使使 M1 沿
Yuan, whose courtesy name was Zilan. Duan Yucai of Jintan sojourned in Suzhou; Yuan studied under him for decades. Yuan first wrote Exemplifying Shuowen; commissioned by Duan, he itemized Duan's seventeen-part phonetic table; tracing sound from sound in sequence, producing Phonological Tables for Explaining Characters in seventeen juan. Yuan briefly annotated Duan's mistakes where they were defective, saying: "That zhi, zhi, and zhi form three groups, and that zhen, zhen, xian and zhun, wen, xin, hun, hen form two groups, are all Lu's old views; yet Duan prided himself on them as a secret he alone had obtained, strictly dividing their boundaries to set himself apart. Wherever Xu combined rhymes, Duan altered them in every possible way to separate them, and he also would not allow part one and part twelve to communicate. Thus he changed bi, read like mi, into bi; for yi having the sound yi, he deleted the character sheng; and for bi having yi also as its sound, he changed it into ba also as its sound. In the explanation of the opening seal graph, where one thing has three characters, this is the principle that parts one, twelve, and fifteen rhyme together; but there he absolutely dared not discuss the rhyme, and only explained it later under the repeated form of the character hai. For the communication between parts twelve and thirteen, only the two characters min and hun obstructed him, so he forcefully removed hun to fit his theory. The character bi has tian as its sound and belongs to part fifteen; qi takes its sound from bi, while liao is the ancient character qi and belongs to part one, so he changed bi to have M1 as its sound in order to avoid the combined sound of part fifteen and part one. All these are Duan's knotty points." He also said: "In discussing sounds, Duan says antiquity had no departing tone, and so in charting the books he makes level tones rise and enter. In Yuan's view, ancient sounds had departing tones and no entering tones: level was light and departing was heavy; drawn-out level became rising, and shortened departing became entering. The reason rising and entering characters are fewer than level and departing characters lies just in this. In northern speech, entering tones all become departing tones; this follows from ancient sounds and remains old usage down to the present. I do not dare be rashly different; comparing the evidence, it may be so." Yuan debated Duan in person; Duan allowed refutation—hence their differences. Yuan died aged seventy-two.
139
Qian Dazhao, whose courtesy name was Huizhi, came from Jiading and was Qian Daxin's younger brother. Qian Daxin mastered classics and histories; the Qian clan studied ancient learning and were luminaries of the southeast. Twenty years younger, Dazhao studied under Daxin like a strict teacher—they were compared to the two Sus. In the capital he collated the Siku Quanshu, viewing rare texts and greatly expanding his learning. Skilled at selection, his classic and philology works entered Han exegetical depths. When he wished to study Erya, Daxin wrote: "The Six Classics illuminate the Way; none can know the Way without exegesis. To exhaust the Six Classics one must begin with Erya." Dazhao wrote Supplement to Erya Shiwen in three juan and Commentary on the Meaning of Guangya in twenty juan.
140
He also wrote Unified Explanation of Shuowen in sixty juan with ten principles, first collecting classic meanings agreeing with Xu. Second, restoring ancient fanqie, correcting the two Xus' misreadings and Xu's 'read like' formulas; also preserving old Shuowen sounds cited in Sui catalog and Yan Family Admonitions. Pre-Tang commentators' Shuowen pronunciations were collected under each character. Third, reconciling ancient editions and citation variants. Fourth, distinguishing vulgar and erroneous characters including Xu's supplements, in a separate juan. Fifth, clarifying mutual borrowing in classics with textual proof. Sixth, marking derived initials for proliferating forms like wan, wan, kun, yue. Seventh, explaining variant forms in repeated entries—zhou, seal, ancient script, strange characters; where classics use both forms, citing proof. Eighth, correcting publication errors and characters Xu did not include. Ninth, noting ancient-modern character variants such as chen and dan where classics omit the bird radical. Tenth, supplementing thirty-nine missing phonetic parents such as you, xi, mian, lei in a separate juan.
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Dazhao especially mastered the two Han histories, holding that history annotation aims at events while classic annotation aims at principle through exegesis. History annotation must clarify events—precise exegesis alone is useless if events remain obscure. He lamented that Fu Qian, Ying Shao, Pei Yin, and Xu Guang failed to synthesize abundant early sources, and wrote Doubts on the Two Han Histories in forty juan. He also wrote Doubts on the Records of the Three Kingdoms in three juan. He also thought that the chronological tables Xiong Fang of the Song had supplied for the History of the Later Han drew only on Fan Ye's History and Chen Shou's Records. He therefore used, beyond the standard histories, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, geographical treatises, bronze-and-stone inscriptions, and masters' collections; he followed Ban Gu's old format while modifying it slightly, and wrote Supplementary Tables to the History of the Later Han in eight juan. His tables added 130 more nobles than Xiong Fang's—judged superior to Wan Sitong's dynastic tables. Other works include Ancient Exegesis of the Odes, Classic Explanations, Continued Han Bibliographic Treatise, and Nearby Words.
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Not fond of glory, he named his studio Ke Studio, seeking ancient contentment. In Jiaqing 1 he was recommended as Filial and Incorrupt.
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His son Dongyuan, whose courtesy name was Jiqin. A juren of Jiaqing 3. He served as magistrate of Songyang in Zhejiang and returned on bereavement. After mourning he was posted to Shangyu County. Dongyuan and brothers Yi and Tong studied classics, histories, and epigraphy—they were called the "Three Phoenixes." With Yi, Tong, and Qin Jian he collated Zheng's Gazetteer and the Comprehensive Catalog of Chongwen—both prized editions. Finding Mencius commentary corrupt, he compiled ancient commentators and recent scholars including Gu Yanwu and Yan Ruoju with his own views. Correcting readings and comparing variants, he produced Explanations of Mencius in fourteen juan. Other works include Collation of Small Erya, Supplement to Evidential Investigation of Classical Meaning, and Collected Writings from the Qinyou Hall.
144
歿
Tong, whose courtesy name was Tongren. He also mastered calendrics and calculation at their roots. Daxin's unfinished Calendar Intercalation in the Four Histories was augmented by Tong with 1,300 entries from books and epigraphy. He worked day and night until illness killed him.
145
駿
Zhu Junsheng, whose courtesy name was Fengqi, came from Wu County. At thirteen he mastered the Shuowen on first reading. Studying under Qian Daxin, he struck Qian as extraordinary at first sight, and Qian said: "The transmission of the robe and bowl will be with you!" A juren of Jiaqing 23, he served as director of Yi County. In Xianfeng 1 he entered the capital as selected magistrate, presenting Unified Explanation of Shuowen with Fixed Phonology and related works in forty juan. Emperor Wenzong praised the work and awarded him National University Doctor rank. Soon appointed professor at Yangzhou but declined citing illness. He died in Xianfeng 8, aged seventy-one.
146
駿
Prolific yet seeking no fame, he also mastered astronomy and calendrics. On Erya's "Grand Year in yin" he followed Daxin: the Year Star was observed in hai while Grand Year was fixed in yin as Sheti Ge. The Year Star shifts one sign every 144 years; by Qin-Han jiayin it was in chou and Grand Year should have been in zi. Han edicts kept the first year of Taichu as Sheti Ge because the sixty-year cycle could not suddenly skip a sign. Later people wrongly took yin and mao as Grand Year and Sheti Ge as Year Yin. Erya's Year Yang and Year Yin differ from later explanations. Other works include Lateral Connections to the Zuo, Small Records of Zuo Recognition, and supplements to the Xia Calendar and Encountering Sorrow.
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His son Kongzhang, whose courtesy name was Zhongwo. He inherited his father's work, writing Essence of Shuowen in three compilations, Han Commentary on the Thirteen Classics, and Separate Biographies of Restoration Generals.
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