Shàngshū 尚書 (SBCK recension)
The Documents of Antiquity (Sìbù cóngkān edition with Kǒng Ānguó zhuàn and Lù Démíng yīn yì) nominally by 孔安國 (傳); with 陸德明 (音義)
About the work
The standard medieval-imperial recension of the Shàngshū with two interleaved layers of commentary: (1) the Kǒng Ānguó zhuàn 孔安國傳 (the so-called “Pseudo-Kǒng” commentary) attributed to Kǒng Ānguó 孔安國 (early Western Hàn) — but in fact a late-Western-Jìn 西晉 forgery transmitted through Méi Zé 梅賾 of Yùzhāng 豫章 (early fourth century CE); (2) the Yīnyì 音義 (phonological-meaning glosses) of Lù Démíng 陸德明 (557–627) of the early Táng. The Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊 (SBCK) recension reproduced here is the conventional thirteen-juàn arrangement.
The composite recension is the foundational Méi Zé recension of the Shàngshū — covering the conventional 58-pian arrangement (28 jīn wén pian transmitted from Fú Shēng + 25 disputed gǔ wén pian + the Shū xù 書序 preface). For the broader textual history of the Shàngshū canon and the Yán Ruòqú demolition of the Méi Zé gǔ wén pian, see KR1b0001.
The commentary is the principal medieval imperial-orthodox Shàngshū commentary, transmitted through Kǒng Yǐngdá’s 孔穎達 Shàngshū zhèng yì 尚書正義 (Táng-period subcommentary) into the Shísān jīng zhùshū 十三經注疏 standard text. The Lù Démíng Yīnyì — drawn from his Jīng diǎn shì wén 經典釋文 — provides the standard medieval phonological apparatus for the canonical text and the zhuàn.
Tiyao
This is a base canonical recension and does not carry a Sìkù tíyào of its own; the tíyào for the related Shàngshū zhèng yì and other gǔ wén Shàngshū commentaries are preserved separately.
Abstract
The recension as transmitted in SBCK is the Méi Zé / Pseudo-Kǒng standard form, with Lù Démíng’s phonological notes interleaved. As a textual witness to the medieval reception of the Shàngshū, it documents the dominance of the Méi Zé recension in the Six Dynasties → Sòng / early Qing imperial-examination tradition. As a textual witness to the canonical text itself, it preserves the Méi Zé arrangement of 58 pian.
The Yán Ruòqú demolition of the Méi Zé gǔ wén pian (1700) does not invalidate the SBCK recension as a textual witness — the Méi Zé recension is the historically dominant medieval form — but does make it methodologically necessary to distinguish the genuine Hàn-period jīn wén core (28 pian) from the disputed Western-Jìn gǔ wén additions (25 pian).
The Shàngshū jì (record of textual recensions of the Shàngshū) is one of the principal subjects of high-Qīng kǎozhèng — Sūn Xīngyǎn 孫星衍, Wáng Niànsūn 王念孫, Wáng Yǐnzhī 王引之 etc. — building on Yán Ruòqú’s foundational work.
Translations and research
See KR1b0001 for the broader Shàngshū bibliography.
Other points of interest
The pairing of the (forged) Pseudo-Kǒng commentary with Lù Démíng’s substantively useful Yīnyì in the SBCK recension is itself a small case in the textual history of Chinese classical learning: the genuine Lù Démíng phonological apparatus survived through the medieval transmission alongside (and partially propping up) the false Kǒng commentary, with consequences for both the Shàngshū’s canonical reception and for the Lù Démíng Jīng diǎn shì wén’s own transmission.