聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

陳氏尚書詳解

8 min read

Text ID
KR1b0019
Date
1200–1230
Dynasty
宋

Chénshì Shàngshū xiángjiě 陳氏尚書詳解

Mr Chén’s Detailed Exposition of the Documents by 陳經 (zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 50-juǎn Southern-Sòng commentary on the Shàngshū 尚書 (KR1b0001) by Chén Jīng 陳經 (zì Xiǎnzhī 顯之, hào Cúnzhāi 存齋) of Ānfú 安福 — a Qìngyuán-era (1195–1200) jìnshì who lived under Níngzōng and into Lǐzōng. The work was composed in dialogue with Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn 書集傳 (KR1b0017, completed 1209): the Sìkù tíyào notes that “[Chén Jīng] was born in the age of Níngzōng, just at the time when the Cài commentary first came out — and his book draws heavily on the gǔshū 古疏 [old commentaries] while interleaving its own new readings, with not a few divergences from the Cài zhuàn.” Stylistically Chén’s prose is sober and patient; doctrinally, his preface foregrounds a xīnxué 心學 reading-method — “use the mind of the ancients to seek the book of the ancients” — that the Sìkù compilers explicitly link to the Lù Jiǔyuān (Jīnxī 金谿) lineage’s liù jīng zhù wǒ 六經注我 program, although the body of the work is far more eclectic than that allegiance would suggest. Among his other writings — a Shī jiǎngyì 詩講義 and a Cúnzhāi yǔlù 存齋語錄 — neither survives.

Tiyao

Imperially Authorized Sìkù Quánshū. Classics, division 2. Shàngshū xiángjiě. Books-class.

Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Shàngshū xiángjiě in fifty juǎn is by Chén Jīng of the Sòng. Jīng, zì Xiǎnzhī (one source: zì Zhèngfǔ), was a man of Ānfú. Jìnshì in the Qìngyuán era. His offices reached Fèngyì láng, Quánzhōu pòkàn. He composed a Shī jiǎngyì, a Cúnzhāi yǔlù, and other works, all already lost and not transmitted. The present compilation is what the Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì records at fifty juǎn. The manuscript copy still survives; on collation against [the yìwén zhì] the juǎn and chapter inventory matches, with no losses. So this is also a transmission that has just barely survived complete.

Jīng was born in the age of Níngzōng, exactly at the point when the Cài zhuàn had just come out, and this book draws heavily on the gǔshū with new readings interleaved — with some convergences and some divergences from the Cài zhuàn. In the middle [of the work] he often draws on later events to corroborate the canon: this follows the precedent set by Mr Chéng [Yí]‘s commentary on the Yì, but [Chén Jīng] glossing the line about “building [Fù Yuè 傅說 in] Fùyán” 傅巖 by citing Yīchuān [Chéng Yí]‘s anecdote of “going to call on Dǒng [Zhū] of the Five Classics” seems somewhat off-form. And in discussing Shùn’s banishment of the four wickednesses, his line “[Shùn] wished to set them at peace in their dwelling, freeing them from worry,” is not quite consonant with the sage’s intention to “punish the evil.” His autograph preface says: “Today let me say to my friends — the way to read this book is to use the mind of the ancients to seek the book of the ancients; once my own mind and this book are seamlessly in unity, then one knows that the Diǎn, Mó, Xùn, Gào, Shì, and Mìng are entirely within my breast — also they are what I am able to enact in daily practice” — which is particularly close to Lù Jiǔyuān’s “the Six Classics annotate me” position, all but inheriting the doctrine of the Jīnxī school. Yet the way he combs through clauses and orders the characters, the soundness and breadth of his argument, the thoroughness of his evidence — often catching meanings that earlier scholars had not brought out — these can stand alongside Lín Zhīqí (KR1b0010) and Xià Shàn (KR1b0011) as wing-supports of one another, and on the canonical meanings the work makes a substantial contribution. Respectfully submitted, Qiánlóng 4[5] / 1780, twelfth 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 date “Qiánlóng 4年 5年 12月恭校上” in the source carries a typographical slip: the intended date is Qiánlóng 45 / 1780, twelfth month. Preserved here as a slip and corrected in the brackets.)

Abstract

Chén Jīng’s Xiángjiě is the most substantial extant Southern-Sòng Shàngshū commentary not committed to either the dominant Cài zhuàn line (KR1b0017) or the radical xīnxué 心學 line (KR1b0015, KR1b0016). The work is methodologically a jíshì 集釋 (“collected explanations”) with substantial original argumentation; its principal structural feature is heavy reliance on the HànTáng gǔshū 古疏 — i.e. on the Kǒng / Kǒng Yǐngdá baseline traditionally rejected by Sòng lǐxué commentators — even as Chén argues against the Cài zhuàn on specific readings.

The Sìkù compilers’ assessment is balanced. They credit Chén with several substantive achievements: rigorous prose, sound argument, thorough evidentiary surveys, and the recovery of meanings (xiānrú suǒ wèi fā zhī zhǐ 先儒所未發之旨) that earlier commentators had missed. They also note two characteristic missteps: the inappropriate use of post-canonical anecdotes to “illustrate” canonical figures (a method legitimately practiced by Chéng Yí on the Yì but ill-suited to the Shàngshū) — Chén’s most cited example being the use of Chéng Yí’s “calling on Dǒng of the Five Classics” anecdote to illustrate Yǐn 殷 King Wǔdīng’s discovery of Fù Yuè 傅說 at Fùyán 傅巖 — and an overly indulgent reading of Shùn’s banishment of the Four Wickednesses as compassionate “settlement of the wicked in peaceful dwellings,” which softens the sage’s punitive intent. Most consequentially, the compilers identify the xīnxué 心學 tone of the autograph preface and link it directly to the Lù Jiǔyuān 陸九淵 (Jīnxī 金谿) tradition’s liù jīng zhù wǒ 六經注我 doctrine — even while conceding the body of the commentary is methodologically more eclectic than that programmatic statement would imply.

The text is one of the few major Sòng Shàngshū commentaries that survived the YuánMíng period without being absorbed into the Yǒnglè dàdiàn / Sìkù-reconstruction stream: the present 50-juǎn recension matches the Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì listing exactly, with no missing portions. The Sìkù’s submission was made in Qiánlóng 45 / 1780 (the date in the WYG copy carries a typographic slip — see the parenthetical note above).

The provenance of the surviving copy is recorded in the Qiánlóng emperor’s yùtí 御題 prefatory poem: in Kāngxī yǐmǎo (Kāngxī 14 / 1675) Wāng Sēn 汪森 of Xiūyáng 休陽 (better known as 婺源 / Wùyuán in Huīzhōu, Ānhuī, Wāng’s hometown), drifting through Pǔchuān 濮川, saw an old book being hawked at the market and bought it: it turned out to be a complete 50-juǎn manuscript copy of the Xiángjiě, which Wāng then preserved. Wāng’s colophon notes that Chén Jīng also wrote a Máo shī jiǎngyì 毛詩講義, but this was no longer in Wāng’s possession either. The Qiánlóng poem also conveys the modern Lóngxī 龍溪 county-gazetteer entry on Chén — that as magistrate of Xīnxīng he made jiàohuà 教化 (“moral transformation”) the foundation of administration.

The composition window is bracketed by Chén Jīng’s Qìngyuán jìnshì (1195–1200) and the death of Níngzōng (1224); the tíyào’s explicit claim that the work was written when the Cài zhuàn “had just come out” places it after 1209, with most of the actual composition probably in the 1210s–1220s. The frontmatter window 1200–1230 covers this defensibly.

Translations and research

No substantial Western-language translation of the Chénshì Shàngshū xiángjiě is known. The work is treated in Cài Gēnxiáng 蔡根祥, Sòngdài Shàngshū xué àn 宋代尚書學案 (Taipei: Huámùlán, 2006), and figures in the comparative Shū-school surveys of Liú Qǐyú 劉起釪, Shàngshū yánjiū yàolùn 尚書研究要論 (Jǐnán: Qílǔ shūshè, 2007). For Chén Jīng’s place in the Jiāngxī Lù-school adjacency see Sòng Yáng 宋陽, Lù Jiǔyuān hòuxué jīng xué yánjiū 陸九淵後學經學研究 (Beijing: Renmin University M.A. thesis, 2014), which treats Chén Jīng’s preface formula as a peripheral xīnxué document.

Other points of interest

The Qiánlóng emperor’s yùtí is unusually informative: it preserves the Kāngxī-era Pǔchuān market-rescue narrative for the surviving manuscript, the Lóngxī xiànzhì magistracy record for Chén Jīng’s career as a moral-suasion administrator, and the lost-list of his other works (the Shī jiǎngyì, lost; the Cúnzhāi yǔlù, lost). The poem’s miscalling of him as a “Chúnxī (1174–1189) jìnshì” is silently corrected in the tíyào body to Qìngyuán (1195–1200) — a small but characteristic instance of the tíyào compilers tightening up the imperial paratext without confronting it.

The work’s overall significance is as a documentary witness to the unsettled doctrinal field of Shàngshū exegesis in the first decades after the Cài zhuàn’s appearance: Chén Jīng absorbs the new Cài commentary’s existence, chooses neither to follow nor to reject it wholesale, and supplements it with HànTáng gǔshū and a strand of Lù-school xīnxué hermeneutic — a triangulation that became impossible after the Yuán institutional canonization of the Cài zhuàn in 1313.

Graph View

Backlinks