Húshì Shàngshū xiángjiě 胡氏尚書詳解
Mr Hú’s Detailed Exposition of the Documents by 胡士行 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A teaching commentary on the Shàngshū 尚書 (KR1b0001) in 13 juǎn by Hú Shìxíng 胡士行 of Lúlíng 廬陵 (Jiāngxī), composed during his post as instructor at the Línjiāngjūn 臨江軍 prefectural military academy. The work circulated under three different titles in the YuánMíng catalog tradition — Shū jí jiě 書集解 (Jiāo Hóng 焦竑, Guó shǐ jīngjí zhì 國史經籍志), Chū xué Shàngshū xiángjiě 初學尚書詳解 (“Detailed Exposition of the Documents for Beginners,” Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊, Jīngyì kǎo 經義考), and Shàngshū xiángjiě (the Sìkù-adopted form) — all referring to the same work. The Chū xué title preserves the original pedagogical orientation: this is a primer-commentary built around supplementing the Kǒng Ān’guó zhuàn 孔傳 with the major Sòng exegetes that an examination student needed to know — Yáng Shí 楊時, Lín Zhīqí 林之奇, Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙, and Xià Shàn 夏僎 (KR1b0011) — and adding clarifying diagrams (four star-position charts for the astronomical phrases of Yáo diǎn and a Tàijí tú 太極圖 to elucidate the Wǔ xíng 五行 of Hóng fàn) where useful. The Sìkù tíyào judges it sound, evidentially patient, and refreshingly free of the abstract mínglǐ 名理 chatter that had become endemic in mid-thirteenth-century Shàngshū exegesis.
Tiyao
Imperially Authorized Sìkù Quánshū. Classics, division 2. Shàngshū xiángjiě [Mr Hú]. Books-class.
Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Shàngshū xiángjiě in thirteen juǎn is by Hú Shìxíng of the Sòng. Shìxíng, a man of Lúlíng, served as instructor at the Línjiāngjūn prefectural military academy. The present compilation is recorded in Jiāo Hóng’s Guó shǐ jīngjí zhì as Shū jí jiě and in Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo as Chū xué Shàngshū xiángjiě — the names mutually differ, but the book is one. His exegesis of the canon takes the Kǒng zhuàn as the chief authority, reserving differing positions afterward; where the Kǒng zhuàn is not adequate, he draws on the explanations of Yáng Shí, Lín Zhīqí, Lǚ Zǔqiān, Xià Shàn and other writers to supplement; and where these various explanations are still incomplete he glosses on his own authority. For the stars and constellations of Yáo diǎn, their setting and rising, he sets out four charts in order to verify the equinoxes-and-solstices; for the Hóng fàn’s opening line “first, the Five Phases” he fills in a Tàijí tú alongside, in order to gloss the word chū 初 (“the beginning”) and to display that the production-and-suppression cycles of the Five Phases have a foundation. Although [his work] is grounded in earlier explanations, he is essentially able to bring them together to compose an account of one school’s teaching — still one of the more honest-and-substantive among canonical exegeses. Among the Hàn and Jìn glosses he cites there are sometimes variant graphs: e.g. on the Yì Jì chapter, citing Zhèng Kāngchéng [Zhèng Xuán]: “zhǐ 黹 — zhì 紩, the stitch zhì taking the meaning xiù 繡 (embroidery)” — this differs from what is recorded in the zhùshū. Cases of this kind also show that he attended to the old meanings — and not merely engaged in vacuous debate over names and principles. Respectfully submitted, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, tenth 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.
Abstract
The Húshì Shàngshū xiángjiě is a self-consciously pedagogical Sòng Shàngshū commentary, composed by an obscure Lúlíng scholar (Hú Shìxíng — no Sòngshǐ biography, no firm lifedates, only the modest provincial post of Línjiāngjūn jūnxué jiàoshòu 臨江軍軍學教授 = “instructor at the Línjiāngjūn prefectural military academy”) for the use of his students. Its title in the Zhū Yízūn Jīngyì kǎo — Chū xué Shàngshū xiángjiě 初學尚書詳解 (“for beginners”) — is presumably the work’s original self-description; the Sìkù compilers shorten this to Shàngshū xiángjiě, which produces an unfortunate collision with several of the other works of the same name preserved in the Sìkù (Xià Shàn’s KR1b0011 and Chén Jīng’s KR1b0019). Internally the Sìkì compilers refer to the work as “Cài jiě” or “Hú jiě” to distinguish.
The work’s editorial logic is straightforward: take the Kǒng Ān’guó zhuàn as the unmarked authority; supplement with Yáng Shí 楊時, Lín Zhīqí 林之奇 (KR1b0010), Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 (KR1b0013), and Xià Shàn 夏僎 (KR1b0011) where the zhuàn falls short; and add original glosses where all of these are inadequate. This is precisely the kind of curated Shū-bibliography a southern-Sòng prefectural-academy student needed to memorize, and the work’s selection of Sòng authorities is an useful index of which post-Cài Shěn commentaries actually mattered in mid-thirteenth-century Jiāngxī examination preparation. Notably, Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn (KR1b0017) — whose Yuán curricular canonization in 1313 still lay several decades in the future — is not among Hú’s chief sources, even though his floruit is post-Cài.
The work’s distinctive substantive features are two. First, the four star-position charts (sì tú 四圖) prefixed to the Yáo diǎn commentary, designed to help students cross-reference the canonical text’s astronomical phrases against the actual cardinal-direction stars at the equinoxes and solstices; this kind of diagrammatic apparatus, common in YuánMíng Shū commentaries (Jīn Lǚxiáng’s Shàngshū biǎozhù, etc.), is unusual in mid-Sòng, and Hú is one of its earliest substantial Shàngshū practitioners. Second, the insertion of a Tàijí tú 太極圖 into the gloss on the Hóng fàn phrase “chū yī yuē Wǔ xíng” 初一曰五行 (“first: the Five Phases”), so as to make the chū 初 graphically depend on the Tàijí and visualize the mutual production-and-suppression of the Phases — a graphic move that anticipates Cài Shěn’s Hóng fàn huáng jí nèi piān 洪範皇極內篇 in spirit if not in detail.
The tíyào’s observation about variant graphs in cited HànJìn glosses (the zhǐ 黹 / zhì 紩 / xiù 繡 case in Yì Jì) is significant: it indicates that Hú Shìxíng was working from a recension of the zhùshū tradition with variants from the standard Tang printed zhèngyì, suggesting access to a pre-Tang, possibly manuscript, line of Shàngshū commentary transmission still circulating in southern Jiāngxī in the mid-thirteenth century.
The composition window in the frontmatter (1240–1279) covers a defensible bracket for a Sòng commentator working post-Wèi Liǎowēng (KR1b0022, 1233–1235) and post-Chén Dàyóu (KR1b0023, 1230–1260) but pre-Yuán-conquest (1279).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation of the Húshì Shàngshū xiángjiě is known. Modern scholarship is sparse; the work’s principal value is documentary — as a witness to mid-thirteenth-century Jiāngxī Shàngshū pedagogy and to the circulating canon of Sòng Shàngshū secondary literature in the southern provinces. See Cài Gēnxiáng 蔡根祥, Sòngdài Shàngshū xué àn 宋代尚書學案 (Taipei: Huámùlán, 2006).
Other points of interest
The triple-title transmission (Shū jí jiě / Chū xué Shàngshū xiángjiě / Shàngshū xiángjiě) is itself a useful case-study in late-Imperial bibliographic practice: the Míng Guó shǐ jīngjí zhì and the Qīng Jīngyì kǎo preserved different alternative titles, and the Sìkù compilers rationalized to a third — losing the pedagogical “Chū xué” qualifier in the process and creating the present collision with Xià Shàn’s Shàngshū xiángjiě (KR1b0011) and Chén Jīng’s Shàngshū xiángjiě (KR1b0019).
Links
- CBDB ids 43263 / 543606 (two homonymous Sòng 胡士行s; the present author is most likely id 43263)
- Wikidata: no entity
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Shū lèi, Shàngshū xiángjiě (Hú) entry (Kyoto Zinbun digital edition)