JapSin I, 9
Wengong jiali yijie 文公家禮儀節.
Composed by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130– 1200) and abridged by Yang Shen 楊慎 (1488–1559). Eight juan in four ce; Chinese bamboo paper. No date or place of publication.

The title page is missing. There are nine columns in each half folio with eighteen characters in each column. The format seems to indicate a Wanli (1573–1620) edition.
Next to a preface by Qiu Jun (dated 1474, see Jap-Sin I, 31), there is a preface by Yang Shen himself, dated the day renyin in the seventh month of the gengyin year during the Zhengde reign 正德庚寅七月壬寅. Zhengde is the reign title of emperor Wuzong 武宗, whose reign lasted from 1506 to 1521, but there was no gengyin year during his reign. The nearest gengyin year is Jiajing 嘉靖 9 (1530). The preface mentions that it was written at the time when Yang was about to return to Yunnan. But the earliest date Yang arrived in Yunnan was the first month of Jiajing 4 (23 January–21 February 1525), when Yang was disgraced in the controversy known as the Daliyi 大禮議. He was one of the group of 134 ministers who received beatings in prison and was later bastonadoed in public in the imperial courtyard. He was then exiled “for life” to Yongchang wei 永昌衛, a guard post near the western border of Yunnan. On 25 July 1529, Yang’s father (Yang Tinghe 楊廷和, b. 1459 [DMB 2:1543–1545]) died and Yang obtained permission to go home to Sichuan for the funeral. He returned to Yunnan in the eleventh month of that same year. Granted that Yang had written this preface in a gengyin year after his return to his place of exile, the reign title should not have been Zhengde (1506–1521), but Jiajing (in the seventh month of Jiajing 9, 1530, there was a renyin day, 7 August).
The Naikaku Bunko owns two editions with the same title (NBC, p. 17): 文公家禮儀節 (The abridged edition of the “Family Rites” written by Zhu Xi), both in eight juan and four ce. The first, by Qiu Jun 丘濬 (1420–1495), was collated by Yang Tingyun 楊廷筠 (1562–1627), prefaced and published in 1608 (Wanli 36). The second, a Ming edition, is by Yang Shen. Furthermore, it owns a revised edition entitled Chongding Wengong jiali yijie 重訂文公家禮儀節 in eight juan, by Chen Renxi 陳仁錫 (1579–1634).
In regard to Qiu Jun’s book, the Siku tiyao 四庫提要 comments that by adding notes on Ming contemporary rites to the original writings of Zhu Xi the book has lost its originality. Furthermore, Zhu Xi’s book consists of five juan and does not contain illustrations. In Qiu’s book, however, illustrations are given at the beginning of the first juan and it makes no mention of the author of them. Some of the illustrations do not even agree with Qiu’s explanations. These indications all lead to the conclusion that the book had not the originality of Zhu Xi’s Family Rites nor does it correspond to the abridged work of Qiu Jun. It is an adulteration of a book publisher of the Ming period (SKTY 1:505–506).
Yang Shen’s book is not mentioned in the Siku tiyao. The Complete Works of Yang Shen 升庵全集 does not give the preface of this book under the section of collected prefaces written by Yang Shen. Nor does it make any mention of this abridged work of Zhu Xi’s Jiali. There is every reason to doubt the authenticity of this book.
Shao Yichen (TTSK, p. 98) mentions a Jiali in eight juan, but adds the caution that formerly the book was attributed to Zhu Xi. However, he proceeds, that according to Wang Maohong 王懋竤 (1668–1741), in his writing Baitian zazhu 白田雜著, this book of Zhu Xi is not a genuine one. Since the Ming period, it has been so adulterated by publishers that the book is not reliable. We refer our readers to the learned article of Wang Maohong, the “Jiali kao” 家禮考 in Baitian caotang cunkao 白田草堂存稿 (photographic copy of the Qianlong ed., Taipei, 1972), vol. A, juan 2, pp. 85–128, where Wang begins with the statement that the Jiali has not been written by Zhu Xi (家禮非朱子書也).
Translations (French): Charles de Harlez, Kia-li, Paris, 1889 (167 pp.); P. G. von Möllendorff, Le droit de famille chinois 家禮集要 (Jiali jiyao), Paris, 1896 (106 pp.). The Jiali has been partly translated (before 27 May 1732) by Jean-François Foucquet: Rituale domesticum Sinensium ad litteram ex sinico latine versum cum notis (Vatican Library, Vat.lat.12851, 1–131). The copy of the Chinese text with notes by Foucquet is preserved also in the Vatican Library (Borg. Cin. 154): Jiali yijie, with preface by Qiu Jun (dated 1474), eight juan in four vols. See Witek 1982, p. 355, 455.

Cf. Jap-Sin I, 31 and 32; Courant 3204.
Source: Albert Chan, SJ, Chinese Books and Documents in the Jesuit Archives in Rome, pp. 7-9.