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Many woodcut illus. Mongnok in one kw?n & 14 numbered kw?n, in ten volumes. Small folio (300 x 223 mm.), orig. wrappers (wrappers a little soiled & stained), handwritten title & kw?n numbers in black ink on each upper cover, new stitching. [Chirye, Ky?ngsang-do]: [Ky?ngho y?ngdang], [Postscript dated 1824]. Possibly the first edition (see below) of this illustrated compendium of the Family Rituals (Ch. Jiali ??), popular in 19th-century Korea. Integrating a large number of earlier Chinese and Korean works on the subject, this compendium is one of the most comprehensive of its kind. The Family Rituals, a collection of ritual prescriptions compiled by the great Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi ?? (1130-1200), was one of the most influential ritual texts in Ch?son Korea, more widely read, studied, adapted, reprinted, and circulated than the earlier and more canonical Classic of Ritual (Ch. Liji ??) itself. This popularity of the Family Rituals was likely driven by the social influence of Confucian academies (K. s?w?n ??), local educational institutions that rendered Confucian learning available and accessible to aspiring scholars. As Martin Gehlmann observes in "Ritual and Confucian Academies in Korea" (in All About Rites, Collège de France, 2023), the Family Rituals figured largely in classroom curricula and was well represented in the library holdings of the academies, to a large degree because it was "eas[ier] to digest" than the "bulky classic" of rituals (p. 16). Furthermore, the practical and accessible nature of the Family Rituals lent itself to local adaptations by Korean scholars, as "many scholars continued to produce ritual works based on the Family Rit[uals] in order to simplify or recontextualize its concepts for the Korean readership" (p. 14). "Written by Korean authors with knowledge of local needs," these "partial derivatives" of the Family Rituals are best understood as reflections of the indigenization and vernacularization of Confucian knowledge systems in the Korean context, their humble self-designations as "commentaries," "summaries," or "explanations" of Chinese texts notwithstanding. The Family Rituals with Expanded Explanations, compiled by Yi ?i-jo (1727-1805, courtesy name Maeng-jong ??), is a summa of Korean family ritual texts available in the 18th century, particularly comprehensive in its inclusion of works from the noron ?? faction of the s?in ?? group of scholars. Its bibliography in the mongnok volume contains no fewer than 29 Chinese titles and 49 Korean titles, and the compilation reportedly took Yi decades to complete. The work, in 14 kw?n, teaches the ritually proper handling of every aspect of domestic life, from the designs of family shrines and everyday headwear to the processions of marriage and funerary rites. Drawing from vernacular ritual manuals, the work provides a number of illustrations (most but not all at the end of each volume) on the spatial arrangements of ritual grounds and objects, architectural diagrams of shrines, designs of everyday and ritual attires for men and women, and in the volume on sacrificial rites an illustrated guide for animal sacrifice. The Preface by Song Hwan-gi ??? (1728-1807) in the first kw?n, dated 1792 (??????, the third imja after the [late Ming emperor] Chongzhen), was composed when Yi showed him a completed copy of the work. But it is unclear if the woodblocks for the work had been carved at this point; in fact, Song laments how beneficial it would be to the world if this book were to put to print. Yi s own Preface follows and is undated. At the end of the last volume is a postscript composed by Chang Man-s?k ??? in 1824 (?????, the fourth kapsin after Chongzhen, upon being shown the original draft (pon go ??) of the work. The exact date when the woodblocks for this work were carved, traditionally held to be 1792 based on the first Preface, has been a topic of some scholarly debate in Korea. Kim Chong-su, for example, has pointed to a letter by.
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