| Comment | Rem.: Admonitions to the bureaucracy composed by the Tang empress Wu Zetian. The text is comprised of ten sections (zhang 章) entitled 同體, 至忠, 守道, 公正, 匡諫, 誠信, 慎密, 廉潔, 良將, 利人. Each sentence is followed by a short explanatory comment; the author of the comments is not known. There is an undated imperial preface. The date of composition has been said to be 685 (at the end of the Japanese copies) or 693 (in the Tang huiyao); Luo Zhenyu rejects both dates on internal evidence from the preface. While the Chengui was lost in China since the Yuan period at the latest, the text circulated continuously in Japan, where it was part of the scholars’ curriculum. The modern Chinese editions are based on various Japanese copies; the first of these copies acquired from Japan was a movable type ed. (possibly the one edited by Hayashi) described by Ruan Yuan 阮元 in his Siku quanshu weishou shumu (1822). Among the numerous works attributed to Wu Zetian one also notes a Bailiao xinjie 百僚新誡 in 5 j. |
