Shàngshū jīng yì 尚書精義
The Refined Meanings of the Documents by 黃倫 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A late-twelfth-century jíshì 集釋 (“collected explanations”) commentary on the Shàngshū 尚書 (KR1b0001) compiled by Huáng Lún 黃倫 (zì Yíqīng 彝卿) of Sānshān 三山 (Fúzhōu 福州). The book proceeds passage by passage through the canon, listing the views of earlier commentators in unranked sequence — the head opinion in each entry being from Zhāng Jiǔchéng 張九成 (1092–1159), to the point that Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫 already suspected the Jīng yì was “in fact a re-purposing” of Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s lost Shàngshū xiángshuō 尚書詳說. The Sìkù compilers reject the suspicion in principle but accept the implication for textual history: even if the work derives from Zhāng’s lost commentary, it is because of the Jīng yì that we now retain Zhāng. The same is true of more than two dozen other Northern- and Southern-Sòng commentators whose own Shàngshū writings have been lost: their fragments survive only because Huáng Lún anthologized them. As the Sìkù tíyào concludes, although the format is somewhat undisciplined (tǐcái shāo shè fànlàn 體裁稍涉汜濫), the editorial labor cannot be dismissed.
Tiyao
Imperially Authorized Sìkù Quánshū. Classics, division 2. Shàngshū jīng yì. Books-class.
Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Shàngshū jīng yì in fifty juǎn is by Huáng Lún of the Sòng. The Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì records the book in sixteen juǎn; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí also records it, calling it “edited by Huáng Lún Yíqīng of Sānshān” — from which we know he was a man of Mǐn [Fújiàn]. The present copy carries a Wànjuǎntáng of the Yú family imprint, and a preface that calls him “shìhè Huáng gōng” — meaning that he had at some point passed the jìnshì. But the Mǐn shū and the Fújiàn tōngzhì both record nothing of his career, so we cannot know it in detail. The Yú family who printed the book — we likewise do not know to which generation they belonged. According to Yuè Kē’s Jiǔ jīng sān zhuàn yán’gé lì 九經三傳沿革例, “the world’s transmitted nine-classics editions take Mr Yú of Xīngguó and Yú Rénzhòng of Jiàn’ān as the best”; further, Lín Zhīqí’s Shàngshū quánjiě (KR1b0010) likewise had only the Jiàn’ān Yú-family imprint as faithful — see the colophon by Lín’s grandson Lín Gēng. The Yú family invoked here ought to be that same family. So in Sòng-period bookseller imprints, this was still a fine recension.
The book gathers and arrays the various explanations, listing them under the canonical text without rendering an arbitration; where there are differences, both views are kept. The works it cites span from Hàn down to Sòng with great breadth, only its arrangement does not follow chronology. Each entry leads with the view of Zhāng Jiǔchéng, and seems to be a derivation and expansion of Zhāng’s own Shàngshū xiángshuō — Chén Zhènsūn already had some suspicion that the Jīng yì was a forgery passing under another’s name. But the title Xiángshuō is recorded only in the Sòng yìwén zhì and has long been buried in obscurity; even if [Huáng’s Jīng yì] is in fact derived from it, this is not a reason to dismiss the Jīng yì — for through it Zhāng’s Xiángshuō may be transmitted.
The other commentators it draws on — Yáng Huì 楊繪, Gù Lín 顧臨, Zhōu Fàn 周範, Lǐ Dìng 李定, Sīmǎ Guāng 司馬光, Zhāng Yí 張沂, Shàngguān Gōngyù 上官公裕, Wáng Rìxiū 王日休, Wáng Dāng 王當, Huáng Jūnyú 黃君俞, Yán Fù 顏復, Hú Shēn 胡伸, Wáng Ānshí 王安石, Wáng Pāng 王雱, Zhāng Gāng 張綱, Kǒng Wǔzhòng 孔武仲, Kǒng Wénzhòng 孔文仲, Chén Péngfēi 陳鵬飛, Sūn Jué 孫覺, Zhū Zhèn 朱震, Sū Xún 蘇洵, Wú Zī 吳孜, Zhū Zhèngdà 朱正大, Sū Zǐcái 蘇子才 etc. — their original compositions are now all dispersed and lost; remaining chapters and surviving phrases manage to preserve a tenth on the strength of this compilation. Although its format is somewhat undisciplined, the labor of compilation cannot be entirely dismissed. The transmitted copy had long been broken; Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo also records the title as “lost.” We have now extracted from the various yùn-categories of the Yǒnglè dàdiàn, gathered and rearranged the materials, and the rough shape is still preserved — but by Yǒnglè dàdiàn convention, where one passage has already been entered under a previous heading, the further citation in another book is recorded only as “Mr X said: see above”; whether this is a complete record or only an excerpt cannot be checked, and we have not made up the lost portion. Working from what is presently extant, we have arranged it into fifty juǎn, preserving the overall shape of Sòng-dynasty Shàngshū discourse as a body of evidence. Respectfully submitted, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, ninth month.
— Director-General, Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. — Director of Final Collation, Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
(The original Yú-family preface by Zhāng Fèng 張鳳, zì Cóngdào 從道, of Lóngxī 龍溪, is dated Chúnxī gēngzǐ chángzhì 淳熙庚子長至 — Chúnxī 7 / 1180, winter solstice; the Wànjuǎntáng colophon is dated the twelfth month, first day, of the same year.)
Abstract
The Shàngshū jīng yì is the most important Southern-Sòng jíshì 集釋 anthology of Shàngshū exegesis in terms of its preservation function: more than half its named contributors are scholars whose own Shàngshū writings have completely perished, so that the only access we have to their reading of any given canonical passage is through Huáng Lún’s quotations. The work was compiled in the late 1170s and printed at the Wànjuǎntáng 萬卷堂 of the Yú 余 family in Jiàn’ān 建安 (the same Yú family — descendants of Yú Rénzhòng 余仁仲 — that produced the standard recensions of the Nine Classics referenced in Yuè Kē’s 岳珂 Jiǔ jīng sān zhuàn yán’gé lì) by Chúnxī 7 / 1180 (preface dated to the winter solstice; colophon to the twelfth month). The composition window in the frontmatter (1175–1180) brackets the late phase of compilation up to the Mashā imprint.
The tíyào makes three substantive points beyond textual history. (1) The first opinion in every entry is Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s 張九成 (1092–1159), so consistently that Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫 suspected the entire Jīng yì of being a re-edition of Zhāng’s now-lost Shàngshū xiángshuō 尚書詳說. The Sìkù compilers — themselves not partisans of Zhāng — defuse this suspicion philosophically: even if it is true, the result is that Zhāng survives only through Huáng Lún. (2) The catalog of named contributors — Yáng Huì 楊繪, Gù Lín 顧臨, Zhōu Fàn 周範, Lǐ Dìng 李定, Sīmǎ Guāng 司馬光, Zhāng Yí 張沂, Shàngguān Gōngyù 上官公裕, Wáng Rìxiū 王日休, Wáng Dāng 王當, Huáng Jūnyú 黃君俞, Yán Fù 顏復, Hú Shēn 胡伸, Wáng Ānshí 王安石, Wáng Pāng 王雱 (Wang Anshi’s son), Zhāng Gāng 張綱, the brothers Kǒng Wǔzhòng 孔武仲 and Kǒng Wénzhòng 孔文仲, Chén Péngfēi 陳鵬飛, Sūn Jué 孫覺, Zhū Zhèn 朱震, Sū Xún 蘇洵 (Sū Shì’s father), Wú Zī 吳孜, Zhū Zhèngdà 朱正大, Sū Zǐcái 蘇子才 and others — is a substantial document in its own right of which Northern- and early-Southern-Sòng figures had written Shàngshū commentary, including major Wáng Ānshí–school and Sū-school participants whose work is otherwise inaccessible. (3) The original 16-juǎn recension recorded in the Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì is what existed in the Sòng; the surviving 50-juǎn recension is the Sìkù reconstruction from the Yǒnglè dàdiàn 永樂大典 (the original print having become extinct by Zhū Yízūn’s day), with the proviso that the Yǒnglè dàdiàn convention of replacing repeated quotations with “see above” cross-references means the reconstruction is partial.
The Sìkù compilers — pace their preference for Cài Shěn (KR1b0017) and the doctrinal commentary tradition — give the Jīng yì a remarkably positive verdict precisely because of its preservation function: “the labor of compilation cannot be entirely dismissed.”
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation of the Jīng yì is known. The work’s importance is documentary rather than doctrinal, and modern scholarship treats it accordingly: see Lǐ Yùgāng 李玉剛, Sòngdài Shàngshū xué wénxiàn yánjiū 宋代尚書學文獻研究 (Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2015), which makes systematic use of Jīng yì fragments to reconstruct lost Sòng commentators; and Cài Gēnxiáng 蔡根祥, Sòngdài Shàngshū xué àn 宋代尚書學案 (Taipei: Huámùlán, 2006). For the printing-history context (Yú-family Wàn-juǎn-táng) see Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Asia Center, 2002), particularly the chapters on the Mashā 麻沙 / Jiàn’ān 建安 imprint network.
Other points of interest
The Jīng yì is one of the few cases where the Yǒnglè dàdiàn’s editorial peculiarities materially affect the Sìkù reconstruction’s fidelity. Because the Dàdiàn substituted “see above” cross-references for repeated quotations, what the Sìkù compilers extracted is necessarily an under-representation of the original anthology: they explicitly declined to attempt restoration of the elided cross-references, on the grounds that “whether [a given citation] was a complete record or only an excerpt cannot be checked.” The 50-juǎn count is therefore generated by the surviving extractable material, not by any original Sòng-period division.
The book is also a methodological contrast to its near-contemporary Cài zhuàn (KR1b0017): the Jīng yì is doctrinally agnostic — it presents views without arbitration — at exactly the moment when the Cài zhuàn (commissioned in 1199, completed in 1209) was on the verge of inaugurating the dominant arbitrating-and-doctrinally-aligned mode of Sòng Shū commentary that would carry through to the YuánMíngQīng curriculum.
Links
- CBDB id 48604
- Wikidata: no entity
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Shū lèi, Shàngshū jīng yì entry (Kyoto Zinbun digital edition)