Wang Anshi

Life

He was the son of Wang Yi and had a mother of the Wu clan, an elder brother, Wang Anren, and younger brothers, Wang Anguo and Wang Anli. His wife was from the Wu family and his father-in-law was Wu Fen; his wife's brother was Wu Xiandao, his sister's husband was Zhu Mingzhi, and his co-brother-in-law was Wang Ling. His sons were Wang Pang (王雱) and Wang Pang (王滂); his eldest daughter married Wu Anchí, and his other sons-in-law included Ye Tao and Cai Bian. His wider kinship network included the paternal relative Wang Guanzhi, the niece's husband Cai Jing, the nephews Shen Zhu and Shen Xi, the grand-nephew Wang Jing, the granddaughter's husband Lü Jiawen, the great-grandniece's husband Shi Douwen, the great-grandson Wang Jue, and the tenth-generation descendant Wang Xi.

He passed the jinshi examination in the second year of the Qingli era (1042) and entered office as qianshu Huainan jiedu panguan (簽書淮南判官). In the seventh year of Qingli (1047), he became magistrate of Yin County, where he built waterworks, lent grain to the people, and tightened the baojia system; he was later assistant prefect of Shuzhou, commandery herds judge, prefect of Changzhou, and inspector of criminal justice for the Jiangnan East Circuit. In the third year of Jiayou (1058), he became a judging official in the Fiscal Section of the Three Offices, submitted a ten-thousand-word memorial on the affairs of the day, and advocated reform and the cultivation of talent, but his proposals were not adopted; he later became drafter of edicts and left office during mourning for his mother.

After Emperor Shenzong's accession, Wang Anshi became prefect of Jiangning and was soon summoned as Hanlin Academician兼侍講. In the second year of Xining (1069), he was appointed Chief Councillor for State Affairs; the following year he became 同中書門下平章事, worked in accord with the emperor, and directed the reforms. The Three Offices Regulations Commission was established to reorganize finance and the military and seek a wealthy and powerful state; the successive measures included agricultural water-conservancy, Green Sprouts, Equal Transport, Baojia, commutation of labor service, Market Exchange, horse protection, and land surveys, together with reforms to the examination and school systems.

In the seventh year of Xining, strong opposition from Sima Guang, Wen Yanbo, Han Qi, and others led to his removal as chief councillor and appointment to Jiangning; he returned to the council in the eighth year and was removed again in the ninth, when he was sent to administer Jiangning. In the tenth year of Xining, he was relieved of the prefectural appointment, made superintendent of the Jixi Abbey, and lived at Zhongshan in Jiangning, later withdrawing to Banshan Garden. During the Yuanfeng era he was first made Duke of Shu and later Duke of Jing; one account dates the change of title to the third year of Yuanfeng. He died in Jiangning in the first year of Yuanyou (1086), at the age of sixty-six. He was posthumously granted the title Grand Tutor, received the posthumous name Wen during the Shaosheng era, and was posthumously made Prince of Shu in the third year of Chongning.

Political and intellectual thought

Wang Anshi advocated New Learning. With his son Wang Pang (王雱) and Lü Huiqing, he reinterpreted the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, and the Rites of Zhou, producing the Three Classics New Meanings; his Explanation of Characters (字說) often differed from earlier approaches to philology. His view of history emphasized change, stressed adapting to changing circumstances—the idea expressed as “權時之變”—and rejected adherence to precedent.

Literature and works

His poetry and prose often addressed social reality and expressed political aspirations; their style was vigorous and forceful, and his prose placed him among the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song. His transmitted collected works include the one-hundred-volume Linchuan Collection (臨川集), also called Wang Wengong's Collected Works (王文公文集), and the twenty-volume Tang Selection of a Hundred Poets (唐百家詩選), which he compiled.

The twenty-two-volume New Meaning of the Zhou Rites (新經周禮義) survives in fragmentary form, and the title also appears as Zhouguan xinyi (周官新義). The Three Classics New Meanings was lost; later editors reconstructed Zhouguan xinyi and Shiyi gouchen (詩義鉤沉). Other works included the eighty-volume Wang Family Daily Record (王氏日錄), the twenty-volume Explanation of Characters (字說), the two-volume Commentary on the Laozi (老子注), the one-volume Commentary on the Hongfan (洪範傳), the ten-volume Explanation of the Analects (論語解), and the thirty-volume New Meaning of the Book of Songs (新經詩義), co-written with Wang Pang (王雱); all were lost. Catalogued works also included Laozi zhuan (老子傳), the two-volume Explanation of the Kao Gong Ji (考工記解), the seventy-eight-volume Xining Memorials and Replies (熙寧奏對), the one-hundred-and-ten-volume Southern Suburban Regulations (南郊式), and the twenty-five-volume Xining Detailed Statutes and Other Texts (熙寧詳定編敕等); another work was Linchuan xiansheng gequ (臨川先生歌曲).

His poetry survives in two transmission systems, a collected edition and the edition with Li Bi's annotations. The editions involved in collation include the He family's Fuzhou reprint of the Shaoxing-era Zhan Dahe edition of the Linchuan Collection from the thirty-ninth year of the Jiajing era, the Southern Song Longshu edition of Wang Wengong's Collected Works, a facsimile made by Zhang Yuanji, the Qing edition from the Xiaopishan Studio of the Miu family, and the Korean movable-type edition held by Japan's Hosa Bunko. The editions contain poems shared with or mistakenly attributed to other collections; poems recovered from other works were placed in volumes 38 through 40.