Qián Kūn záo dù 乾坤鑿度
The Chiseled Way of Qián and Kūn nominally by 鄭玄 (註)
About the work
A medieval Yì wěi 易緯 (apocryphal Yì-canon) text in two juàn, the first of the eight Yì wěi texts gathered as appendix (fù lù 附錄) to the Yì-class of the Sìkù quánshū by the editors. The work is nominally attributed to 蒼頡 Cāng Jié (the Yellow Emperor’s legendary scribe) with commentary by 鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán; both attributions are demonstrably false. Catalog meta records “Hàn dynasty” with Zhèng Xuán as commentator, following the conventional attribution.
The text was unknown in the Suí, Táng, and Sòng Chóngwén zǒng mù 崇文總目 catalogs; it first appears in the early Sòng Yuányòu 元祐 period (1086–1093), with the Shàoxīng xù shū mù 紹興續書目 listing a “Cāng Jié zhù Záo dù 蒼頡注鑿度 in 2 juàn.” The Qiánlóng emperor’s own poetic preface (preserved at the head) explicitly identifies the work as post-莊子 Zhuāngzǐ (taking the Zhuāngzǐ Yìng dì wáng 應帝王 chapter’s Shū-Hū-Hùndùn parable as the source of the záo 鑿 / chiseling-open metaphor) — i.e., not pre-Hàn but late-Warring-States or later. The Sìkù editors elaborate: comparison with the Lièzǐ, Báihǔ tōng, and Bóyǎ — all of which use the Tài yìTài chūTài shǐTài sù sequence for the four primal stages — suggests the work is a Sòng-period elaboration of the Zhuāngzǐ wài piān “Tài chū yǒu wú” passage with apocryphal-tradition embellishment.
The work is divided into two halves: the upper discusses the four “gates” (sì mén 四門) and the four cardinal directions (sì zhèng 四正), the symbol-and-thing extraction down to the hexagram-line milfoil-stalk numbers; the lower discusses Kūn’s ten properties (shí xìng 十性) and extends to dàng pèi 蕩配 and líng pèi 陵配 (cosmographic correspondence schemes), with miscellaneous citations from the Wàn xíng jīng 萬形經, Dì xíng jīng 地形經, Zhì líng jīng 制靈經, Shī chéng jīng 蓍成經, Hán líng yùn xù 含靈孕緒 — all fictitious wěi texts. The prose is “much hard-and-tooth, not easy to grasp” (詞多聱牙不易曉), characteristic of the wěi-genre.
The Sìkù editors’ methodological position: although the text’s authorship is doubtful (晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ suspected Sòng forgery; 胡應麟 Hú Yīnglín grouped it with Yuán bāo and Dòng jí as a Yì-imitation; 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì alone defended it as “Hàn-period therefore close to antiquity, with substantive transmission of value to Yì-pedagogy”), the work survives only through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 in their day, and they preserve and place it at the head of the eight Yì wěi texts in the appendix.
Tiyao
Imperial Poem (Qiánlóng), preface (translated, condensed): The two Záo dù — composed by I-don’t-know-whom — falsely attributed to the Yellow Emperor’s words, with Cāng Jié as the polisher. As I see it, the maker is later than Zhuāngzǐ: the Náncháng seventh chapter [Yìngdìwáng] already raised the import of “ShūHūHùndùn — chisel seven holes, the holes pierced, Hùndùn died.” Qián and Kūn are precisely ShūHū; Hùndùn in fact is the Greater Beginning. Qián and Kūn having been chiseled-open, Hùndùn therefore is dissolved. Speaks of the Yì-ancestor and Xìcí — quite feels close to reason. The Líng tú cè (text characters being古文 yīnyáng characters seen in the Qián Kūn záo dù with this character-form slightly different) — also someone narrates as chènwěi; has-pure also has-flaw; investigating-antiquity cannot rest on it. 黃震 Huáng Zhèn in Rì chāo discussed it — judging not despicably… If so, it is sufficient to evidence; rolling-up-the-volume to encourage examining-the-correct.
Sìkù tíyào (translated, condensed): The Qián Kūn záo dù in two juàn — the SuíTáng monographs and Chóngwén zǒng mù all do not catalog it. From the early Sòng Yuányòu period it began to appear; the Shàoxīng xù shū mù has Cāng Jié zhù záo dù in 2 juàn. Later, because Zhèngshì’s Qián záo dù note has a separate edition individually-circulating, this recension is also called Kūn záo dù. 程龍 Chéng Lóng says: “the Suí burning of the chènwěi — there is no longer a complete book; what circulates today is only the Qián and Kūn two Záo dù texts.”
The book is divided upper and lower, each as one chapter. The upper chapter discusses the four-gates and four-cardinals taking-symbol taking-thing, going on to the hexagram-line milfoil-stalk numbers. The lower chapter says Kūn has ten properties and pushes to dàng pèi and líng pèi; further miscellaneously citing Wàn xíng jīng, Dì xíng jīng, Zhì líng jīng, Shī chéng jīng, Hán líng yùn xù wěi texts. Words mostly hard-and-tooth, not easy to grasp.
Hence 晁公武 Cháo Gōngwǔ doubted it as a Sòng-man forgery; 胡應麟 Hú Yīnglín also took it as the Yuán bāo and Dòng jí stream; while 胡一桂 Hú Yīguì held that the Hàn was not far from antiquity, and there is still ancestral-narration with benefit to Yì-pedagogy. Critical placements being in chaos, true-or-false cannot be discriminated.
Respectfully reading the Imperial Poem on the Qián Kūn záo dù: it fixes the maker as later than Zhuāngzǐ and raises the Yìng dì wáng chapter’s ShūHūHùndùn — distributed as QiánKūn and Greater Beginning — to push for the meaning of why the character záo names it. The basis is examined-and-checked, the weighing-and-balancing utterly fitting. We furthermore considered that Lièzǐ, Báihǔ tōng, Bóyǎ, the various books all take Tài yì-Tài chū-Tài shǐ-Tài sù as the beginnings of breath, form, and quality, fitting with what the Záo dù says. Only Zhuāngzǐ in the outer-chapter Tiān dì slightly touches on Tài chū yǒu wú language, but the other names-and-categories are universally not seen — so ShūHūHùndùn is in fact the Nánchángshì variant-text; the Záo dù maker again rooted in its meaning and embellished it.
Above-bowing to august-clarity dissection-displaying refined-and-precise unalterable, indeed forever for this book the fixed verdict.
According to the seven canonical-wěi: all lost in the Táng. What survives is only the Yì; reaching the late Sòng all transmission was lost. Today the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn contains the Yìwěi fully-extant, mostly what Sòng-and-after Confucians have not seen. This book is in fact one of them. We respectfully collate-fix the errors-and-lacunae, examine-correct in detail, crown them at the head of the Yìwěi texts, and respectfully expound their great import at the section’s end.
Respectfully collated, [no date given in source as transcribed]. Editor-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Composition cannot be precisely fixed. The work was unknown before the Sòng; the catalog meta places it under Hàn (following the conventional Zhèng Xuán-commentary attribution); the Qiánlóng emperor and the Sìkù editors place it as substantively a late-medieval (Sòng-period) work with apocryphal-canon trappings. The bracket here adopts a wide range covering the plausible composition window from Hàn-period source materials to Sòng-period synthesis.
The work belongs to the Yì wěi 易緯 (Apocryphal Yì Canon) genre — texts that supplement or interpret the Yìjīng in cosmological-cosmographic terms drawing on Daoist and quasi-religious imagery. The Yì wěi corpus more broadly was substantially destroyed in the Suí persecution of chènwěi; what survives is principally what the Sìkù editors recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, in eight separate texts (KR1a0163 Qián Kūn záo dù; KR1a0164 Yì wěi jī lǎn tú; KR1a0165 Yì wěi biàn zhōng bèi; KR1a0166 Zhōuyì Qián záo dù; KR1a0167 Yì wěi tōng guà yàn; KR1a0168 Yì wěi Qián yuán xù zhì jì; KR1a0169 Yì wěi shì lèi móu; KR1a0170 Yì wěi Kūn líng tú).
The Sìkù editors’ classification of the eight Yì wěi texts as Yì-class appendix (fù lù 附錄) — rather than relegating them to the zǐbù chènwěi sub-section — is methodologically significant: it accepts the Yì wěi tradition as a substantive part of the Yì-canon’s reception even while questioning specific attributions and warning against the chènwěi tradition’s heterodox content. The Qiánlóng emperor’s poem — preserved at the head — provides imperial sanction for this classification.
The Qiánlóng emperor’s specific philological argument — that the záo 鑿 (chiseling-open) metaphor of the title derives from the Zhuāngzǐ Yìngdìwáng’s ShūHūHùndùn parable, making the work post-Zhuāngzǐ — is one of the more sophisticated imperial kǎozhèng contributions in the Sìkù corpus.
Translations and research
For the Yì wěi tradition more broadly see Anna Seidel, “Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments: Taoist Roots in the Apocrypha” (in Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein, vol. 2, 1983); for the textual tradition see Yasui Kōzan and Nakamura Shōhachi, eds., Wei-shu shū sei 緯書集成 (Shanghai, 1994). No major Western-language monograph specifically on the Qián Kūn záo dù located.
Other points of interest
The work’s combination of Daoist cosmographic imagery (the Hùndùn parable; the dàng pèi / líng pèi schemes) with apocryphal-canon framing (Cāng Jié-Yellow Emperor attribution; Zhèng Xuán-commentary attribution) makes it a small but instructive case in the medieval Chinese tradition of pseudo-scholarship attached to canonical texts. The Qiánlóng emperor’s careful philological reasoning to date the work later than Zhuāngzǐ is also one of the cleaner imperial kǎozhèng moments in the Sìkù.