Zhōuyì jǔzhèng 周易擧正
The Zhōuyì with Errors Corrected
attributed to 郭京 Guō Jīng (traditionally said to be a Sūzhōu sīhù cānjūn 司戶參軍 of the Táng; almost certainly a Sòng pseudonym)
About the work
A short text in three juàn presenting itself as a corrective collation of the Zhōuyì — claiming, in the self-preface, that “郭京 Guō Jīng” had access to manuscript autograph copies of 王弼 Wáng Bì and 韓康伯 Hán Kāngbó’s Yì zhù and used them to correct one hundred and three (variant counts give 135 / 273 characters) errors in the received recension. Marked emendations were originally distinguished in red ink against black (after the Jīngdiǎn shìwén convention), although the surviving recension reduces all to black ink.
The Sìkù tiyao and the bulk of post-Sòng critical opinion treat the work as a Sòng-period pseudepigraphic fabrication: the work is not in either of the Tángshū bibliographic monographs, the claim of access to Wáng-Hán autographs is intrinsically implausible, the Hòu Hànshū citation 王應麟 Wáng Yīnglín brings against the Lǚ 旅 hexagram emendation is decisive, and 惠棟 Huì Dòng’s Jiǔjīng gǔyì 九經古義 refutes it line by line. “Guō Jīng” the Táng sīhù cānjūn of Sūzhōu may be an entirely fictitious figure. But the work survived because some of its proposed emendations are textually reasonable, and Sòng readers — including 洪邁 Hóng Mài and 李燾 Lǐ Tāo, who took it for genuine; 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ, who recognised it as forgery but used it anyway; and 朱熹 Zhū Xī, whose Zhōuyì běnyì 周易本義 (KR1a0031) silently adopts several of its readings — gave it lasting influence.
The work first surfaces in the canonical record when 宋咸 Sòng Xián acquired the manuscript from 歐陽修 Ōuyáng Xiū in the early Northern Sòng (Tiānshèng to Qìnglì, 1023–1048), per 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí; the Chóngwén zǒngmù (1042) is its earliest catalogue listing. The composition window 950–1023 reflects a mid-tenth-to-early-eleventh-century terminus consistent with the Sòng-forgery hypothesis (the latest possible date is the moment the work entered Ōuyáng’s library, the earliest is the late Five-Dynasties span when Yì-textual fabrication was already a known activity). The catalog dynasty is Táng by the work’s own claim and the Sìkù registration convention; the actual composition window is Northern Sòng.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuyì jǔzhèng in three juàn is by tradition titled to 郭京 Guō Jīng of the Táng. Where Jīng came from is not known; the Chóngwén zǒngmù says his office was Sūzhōu sīhù cānjūn. According to the self-preface — which speaks of “the imperially-annotated Xiàojīng” and “the redacted Yuè lìng” [referring to 玄宗 Xuánzōng’s editions] — he must be a man post-Kāiyuán. The preface says he obtained the manuscript autographs of Wáng Fǔsì [王弼 Wáng Bì] and 韓康伯 Hán Kāngbó, compared them against the recensions current in his day and against the recensions used in the National Academy and in the regional-tribute examinations, and corrected the errors. Whatever he changed, he marked off in red and black ink. The Chóngwén zǒngmù is the first catalogue to record the book; under 陳振孫 Chén Zhènsūn’s entry on 宋咸 Sòng Xián’s Yì bǔzhù 易補注, [Chén] notes that Xián obtained the present book from 歐陽修 Ōuyáng Xiū — meaning that it began to circulate in the world only in the Tiānshèng / Qìnglì span [1023–1048].
洪邁 Hóng Mài and 李燾 Lǐ Tāo both took it as genuine. 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ argues, by way of the consequential alignment of yáo line-statements with Tuàn statements, that the lacunae [the present text claims to fill] could simply have been inferred — and accordingly suspects the appeal to Wáng-Hán autographs as a fiction. 石繼 Shí Jì and 趙汝楳 Zhào Rǔméi also denounce the work as relying on the Wáng-Hán names to alter the canonical text. 王應麟 Wáng Yīnglín, again, in support of the Hòu Hànshū Zuǒ Xióng zhuàn line “zhí sī lù bó 職斯祿薄,” rebuts the present book’s emendation of sī 斯 to cī 㒋 in the Lǚ 旅 hexagram. In recent times 惠棟 Huì Dòng in compiling his Jiǔjīng gǔyì refutes it most vigorously.
We have now examined the matter. The book is not in the Tángshū. Lǐ Tāo holds that “Jīng was a man post-Kāiyuán, and so the book was not registered” (note: Tāo’s argument is in the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo). But this would explain only the Jiù Tángshū jīngjí zhì; the Xīn Tángshū yìwén zhì records every late-Táng book, and there is no reason it would have left this one out on the ground of being post-Kāiyuán. We suspect therefore that the book emerged from a Sòng-period attribution, and that not only is the Wáng-Hán autograph claim unbelievable but even the very name “Guō Jīng of the Táng” stands between existence and non-existence.
Yet his proposed readings push at the textual sense and often approach reason. So Cháo Gōngwǔ, although he knew the work was an attribution, in his presented Yì jiě still extensively cites it; even Zhū Zǐ [朱熹 Zhū Xī]‘s Běnyì 本義 at the Kūn xiàng zhuàn “treading frost, hard ice” passage, at the Bì xiàng zhuàn “firm and yielding interlocking” passage, and at the Zhèn tuàn zhuàn “not losing the [sacrificial] ladle and the goblet” passage, also goes substantially with this text. So it is not without things to take.
Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì records an original preface that claims “the corrections amount to 135 places, 273 characters”; Hóng Mài’s Róng zhāi suíbǐ 容齋隨筆 and Zhào Rǔméi’s Yì xù cóng shū 易序叢書 both give 103 [places]; the present text’s preface also says “errors in 103 sections” — so what Cháo says appears slipshod in numbers. The original is described as marked in red and black, in keeping with the Jīngdiǎn shìwén convention; the present text in circulation, however, is wholly in black ink — not the original. Since this is not bound up with the great purpose, we still register it according to the recent print.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: 紀昀 Jǐ Yún, 陸錫熊 Lù Xīxióng, 孫士毅 Sūn Shìyì. General Reviser: 陸費墀 Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Zhōuyì jǔzhèng is one of the most thoroughly investigated and most consistently rejected pseudepigraphic Yì-textual works in the Sòng-Qīng evidential tradition. The Sìkù editors’ summary judgment (“we suspect even the very name ‘Guō Jīng of the Táng’ stands between existence and non-existence”) catches the position to which the cumulative critique of 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ, 趙汝楳 Zhào Rǔméi, 王應麟 Wáng Yīnglín, and 惠棟 Huì Dòng converged. Three lines of argument:
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Bibliographic. The work is absent from both Tángshū bibliographic monographs (the Jiù Tángshū jīngjí zhì and the Xīn Tángshū yìwén zhì), neither of which would plausibly have omitted a Táng Yì commentary that a Sūzhōu sīhù cānjūn signed under his own name. It first appears in Sòng catalogues (Chóngwén zǒngmù, 1042), and in narrative record only from 宋咸 Sòng Xián’s acquisition of it from 歐陽修 Ōuyáng Xiū in the early Northern Sòng.
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Source-claim implausibility. The asserted access to 王弼 Wáng Bì and 韓康伯 Hán Kāngbó autographs — manuscripts that would have been six and four centuries old respectively at any plausible date for the work’s composition — has no parallel in Táng or early-Sòng manuscript culture. Cháo Gōngwǔ, the first critical reader to set this aside, observes that what the work treats as autograph-derived emendations are derivable by simple inference from the yáo–Tuàn parallel structure, with no manuscript witness needed.
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Internal-textual. Wáng Yīnglín’s Hòu Hànshū Zuǒ Xióng zhuàn citation against the Lǚ hexagram emendation is decisive: the variant the Jǔzhèng prescribes contradicts a securely datable Hàn citation. Huì Dòng’s Jiǔjīng gǔyì extends this method across the work and dismantles emendation after emendation.
The Sìkù editors’ decision to retain the work despite this consensus is grounded in two facts: first, that several of its proposed readings are textually reasonable independently of the autograph fiction, and have been silently adopted by Cháo Gōngwǔ and (more consequentially) by 朱熹 Zhū Xī’s Běnyì; second, that the work is now part of the historical record of how the Yì received text was contested in the Sòng. They register it under the Táng by author-attribution convention while documenting at length the case for Sòng forgery.
The original red-and-black-ink scheme — emendation marked in red against the base text in black, after the Jīngdiǎn shìwén practice — was a costly editorial production conventional in pre-print manuscript form; reduction to all-black ink on transmission and printing is itself a Sòng phenomenon, and the Sìkù registers the modern text in its all-black state.
The composition window 950–1023 is conjectural: the latest possible date is when Ōuyáng Xiū gave the work to Sòng Xián (mid-Tiānshèng); the earliest is whenever in the late Five Dynasties or early Sòng Yì-textual fabrication was a sufficiently mature genre to support so elaborate an attribution.
Translations and research
No European-language translation. Specialist literature treats the work primarily as a Sòng-pseudepigraphic problem.
- Huì Dòng 惠棟, Jiǔjīng gǔyì 九經古義 (1758) — the most thorough refutation, work-by-work and emendation-by-emendation.
- Wáng Yīnglín, Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞 (Sòng) — the locus classicus for the Hòu Hànshū Zuǒ Xióng refutation.
- Zhāng Bóqián 張伯潛 / Zhāng Tāo 張濤 et al., specialist articles in Zhōuyì yánjiū 周易研究 — assessments of which Zhū Xī Běnyì readings depend on the Jǔzhèng.
- Zhū Bóqūn 朱伯崑, Yìxué zhéxué shǐ (Huáxià, rev. 1995) — chapter context on Sòng Yì-textual debates and the role of the Jǔzhèng in them.
Other points of interest
The work is the textbook example of how a Sòng-period pseudepigraphic Yì commentary, while securely identified as forgery by the late Northern Sòng, can nevertheless leave a permanent imprint on canonical reception via a single influential acceptance — in this case, Zhū Xī’s Běnyì, which silently transmits several of its emendations into the Yuán-Míng-Qīng Yìjīng examination tradition.
The variation in reported emendation-counts (Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 135 places / 273 characters versus the present preface and the Hóng Mài / Zhào Rǔméi witnesses’ 103 places) suggests that the work circulated in different recensions in the Northern Sòng, with later editorial pruning reducing the cumulative emendation list — itself a small evidence trail for late-Sòng dissatisfaction with the work’s inflated scope.