Yuan Liaofan

Life

His paternal line included 袁順, listed as a great-great-grandfather or fourth-generation ancestor, followed by 袁顥, 袁祥, and his father 袁仁; his mother was 李氏, and he also had a stepmother, 王氏. His elder brothers were 袁衷, 袁襄, and 袁裳, and his younger brother was 袁袞; his wife was 朱氏, and his sons were 袁天啟 and 袁儼. A later descendant was 袁璉, identified as a sixth-generation grandson.

At first he intended to study medicine. After meeting Kong, a man from Yunnan, who transmitted the learning of Shao Yong's Huangji jingshi and calculated his examination prospects, he turned to the civil examinations. In 1569, he visited the Chan master Yun'gu at Qixia; he was taught that moral action could alter one's allotted destiny, received the gongguoge, and learned the Zhun Ti mantra, after which he adopted Liaofan as a sobriquet.

In 1570 he passed the juren examination. In 1586 he became a jinshi, placing 193rd in the third class.

After the examination, he was appointed magistrate of Baodi. He petitioned for reductions in the county's heavy taxes and also cut onerous exactions, built embankments against the sea, and brought wasteland under cultivation; he later became a secretary in the Ministry of War's Bureau of Military Affairs and also held the post of guanzheng in the Ministry of Rites. During the war in Korea, he assisted Song Yingchang's army in aiding Korea against Japan and went to Korea with the expedition.

Feng Zhongying and Jin Xiang served as his aides. After he opposed Li Rusong's military handling, Li impeached him on ten charges in 1593, and Yuan Huang was suspended and returned home. After returning, he took part in compiling the Jiashan county gazetteer. During the Tianqi period, his military service in the eastern expedition was reviewed and he was posthumously awarded the rank of Shaoqing in the Court of Imperial Treasurers, a fifth-rank office.

Scholarship and religion

His expertise extended across astronomy, mathematical arts, medicine, hydraulics, pitch theory, and calendrical calculation, as well as law, geomancy, and military strategy. He studied under Chen Rang and wrote the five-volume New Book on Calendrical Methods; its calculations combined Huihui methods with the Shoushi system and treated the accumulated cycles of the three yuan, the difference of the year, and the accumulated degrees of the lunar mansions.

Works and legacy

His works included 《皇都水利》, 《群書備考》, and 《評注八代文宗》, as well as 《攝生三要》, 《詩外別傳》, 《河圖洛書解》, 《訓兒俗說》, 《勸農書》, 《新嗣真詮》, 《淨行別品》, 《靜坐要訣》, and 《袁生懺法》. His poetry and prose collections included 《兩行齋集》, also known as 《兩行堂集》; more than half of his poetry and prose was lost, and only several juan were said to remain.

At the age of sixty-nine, he turned his life experience into the moral exhortation 《了凡四訓》. He also promoted the printing of the 《嘉興藏》, while the merit-and-demerit ledger associated with his practice became widely current in the late Ming.