The Yanshi jiaxun 顔氏家訓（ Family Instructions for the Yan Clan） is a book of advice for his descendants written by Yan Zhitui 顔之推, who served the Northern Qi dynasty after having been forcibly taken from the Liang dynasty of the Southern Dynasties and who eventually witnessed the unification of China under the Sui dynasty. His aim in writing the Yanshi jiaxun was to settle the family’s affairs and provide guidance for his descendants, whom he urged to apply themselves to “the way of former kings” and to succeed to “the family’s hereditary occupation” and pass it down to future generations. Although he himself was a believer in Buddhism, he placed Confucianism at the centre of the scholarship that he expected the Yan clan to preserve, and this was because, having reexamined the basis of the aristocrats’ existence at a time when the aristocracy was in decline, he gained a fresh appreciation of the stability of Confucianism, which lay at the centre of the cultural values constituting the basis of the aristocrats’ existence.
Aristocrats, whose greatest distinguishing feature was their autonomous social order that had evolved during the Wei-Jin period and was independent of the state and the ruler, applied themselves to the combined study of the three teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism and the four disciplines of Confucian studies, metaphysics, literature, and history. In contrast, Yan Zhitui rejected Daoism and metaphysics, which sometimes took a confrontational stance towards the state or the ruler. And even though he was a Buddhist, he valued above all else scholarship centred on Confucianism, aimed at serving the state, while also advocating the study of history and literature.
The three main fields of scholarship in the early Tang were the Liji 礼記, Hanshu 漢書, and Wenxuan 文選, with Buddhist beliefs also penetrating aristocratic circles, and the new image of aristocrats presented by Yan Zhitui, who had experienced the decline of the aristocracy during the Six Dynasties, accorded with the view of aristocrats during the Sui and Tang. The reason that the Yanshi jiaxun was widely read during the Tang was that Yan Zhitui’s view of aristocrats was welcomed by contemporary society.
雑誌名
東洋文化研究所紀要 = The memoirs of Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia
巻
175
ページ
1 - 37
発行年
2019-03-29
ISSN
05638089
書誌レコードID
AN00170926
著者版フラグ
publisher
出版者
東京大学東洋文化研究所
出版者別名
Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo
『顏氏家訓』における貴族像の展開と執筆意図
ioc175001.pdf
(7.85MB)
