尚書表注

Shàngshū biǎozhù 尚書表注

Tabular Annotation of the Documents by 金履祥 (zhuàn 撰)

About the work

The late-life definitive Shàngshū commentary of Jīn Lǚxiáng 金履祥 (Rénshān 仁山, 1232–1303), the principal Shàngshū exegete of the BěiShān sì xiānsheng 北山四先生 — the late-Sòng / Yuán Wùzhōu line of Zhū Xī orthodoxy that runs Hé Jī 何基 → 王柏 → Jīn Lǚxiáng → Xǔ Qiān 許謙. Distinguished by an unusual marginal-tabulated annotation format (biǎozhù 表注 = “tabular notation”): the canonical text occupies the body of the page, while Jīn’s commentary appears in fine characters in the four margins (top, bottom, left, right) of every leaf, lattice-fashion, with no running line of continuous prose commentary. The Sìkì tíyào notes that “as for ancient classical exegesis, this stands as a category of its own” (yú gǔlái zhù jīng zhī jiā bié wéi yī tǐ 於古來著經之家別為一體). The work was published during the Qīng in the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě 通志堂經解 (Nà Lánxìngdé 納蘭性德 / Xú Qiánxué 徐乾學 ed., 1670s–1680s) and is one of the four major Sòng commentaries which the Sìkù tíyào on Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn (KR1b0017) cites as systematically correcting the Cài commentary.

Tiyao

Imperially Authorized Sìkù Quánshū. [Classics, division 2.] Shàngshū biǎozhù. [Books-class.]

Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Shàngshū biǎozhù in two juǎn is by Jīn Lǚxiáng of the Sòng. Lǚxiáng, zì Jífǔ, hào Rénshān, was a man of Lánxī. He studied under Wáng Bǎi. In the early Déyòu era he was summoned to the office of Shǐguǎn biānxiū, and refused to take it up. Entering the Yuán, he lived in retreat as a teacher and so passed his end. His record is fully given in the Yuánshǐ Rúxué zhuàn. Earlier, Lǚxiáng composed a Shàngshū zhù in twelve juǎn; the xíngzhuàng by Liǔ Guàn says “the Zhāng shì jù jiě he composed in his early years was already a complete book” — i.e. this earlier work. Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo says it is still extant, but we have not now seen it. What we have is solely this book, cut into the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě with the autograph preface at the front, in which it says: “I cast off the explanations of the various schools, alone embraced the surviving canon, and on re-reading and savoring it I corrected the punctuation, divided up the paragraphs, raised the chief points of each chapter together with the subtleties of its principles, and for the events to which they refer set out the verifications; for textual errors I displayed them in the four margins” — so this is his definitively-revised work of his late years.

The book inscribes fine characters along the top, bottom, left and right margins of every page, intersecting in a lattice and dropping in at varying angles, with no fixed line-format — among the writers of canonical exegesis from antiquity onward, this is a category of its own. In broad outline he selects from the old explanations and arbitrates with his own considered view; he has not a few divergences from Cài Shěn’s jízhuàn. His citations of [the textual differences between] Mr Fú [Shēng] and Mr Kǒng have certain genuine roots, and the chronology of when each canonical chapter was composed follows his own Tōngjiàn qián biān, which collates [Hú Hóng’s] Huáng wáng dà jì fore and aft — although not necessarily every detail is exactly right, the work is in the main not without grounds.

As for places where his argument runs to extremes, seeking to differ from earlier writers — for example his wish to set the preface of Kāng gào at the head of the Zǐ cái chapter, treating the earlier portion as Zhōu Gōng’s “xián qín” 咸勤 (“entirely diligent”) affair and the later portion as the “hóng dà gào zhì” 洪大誥治 (great proclamation of administration) text; jí shù bāng 集庻邦 he reads as the founding of the Eastern Capital in order to equalize the four-corners’ tribute-routes; xiān hòu mí mín 先後迷民 he reads as “what is meant by bì Yīn qiān Luò — confining the Yīn populace and shifting them to Luò in order to bring them close to the imperial transformation”: his arguing is acute, but for the three characters at the head of the chapter “Wáng yuē Fēng” 王曰封 he ultimately has no gloss, so he goes on to claim that the three characters should read “Zhōu Gōng Fēng” 周公封, supposed to have been redundantly inserted from the previous chapter Jiǔ gào — that does not avoid the charge of altering the canonical text to fit one’s own meaning. This is a case where his merit does not cover his blemish. Respectfully submitted, Qiánlóng 54 / 1789, second 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 Shàngshū biǎozhù is the principal late-life Shàngshū commentary of Jīn Lǚxiáng 金履祥 (1232–1303) and the most important Wùzhōu / Jīnhuá BěiShān school Shàngshū work of the late-Sòng / early-Yuán transition. Composed after the Mongol conquest of the Sòng (1279), during Jīn’s recluse-teaching years in Lánxī, the work supersedes his earlier 12-juǎn Shàngshū zhù / Shàngshū zhāng shì jù jiě — a comprehensive running commentary of his youth, recorded by his student Liǔ Guàn 柳貫 in the xíngzhuàng and seen by Zhū Yízūn in the early Qīng but lost since. The composition window in the frontmatter (1285–1303) covers Jīn’s loyalist-recluse period; an earlier draft would still be plausible (the project’s chronology overlaps with Jīn’s Tōngjiàn qián biān 通鑑前編, a comprehensive pre-Zhōu chronological history likewise composed in this period), but the autograph preface explicitly identifies the Biǎozhù as the late-life definitive form (wǎnnián dìngběn 晚年定本).

The two distinguishing features of the work are physical and substantive.

Physical: the biǎozhù annotation format. The canonical Shàngshū text occupies the body of each page; Jīn’s commentary appears as marginalia in the four margins, in fine characters, with cross-references and corrections set at varying angles. The Sìkì tíyào describes this layout as “yú gǔlái zhù jīng zhī jiā bié wéi yī tǐ” — a class of its own among classical commentary formats. The closest parallel is the biǎo 表 layout in standard-history tables (e.g. Shǐjì’s “Shí biǎo 十表”); the format never became influential in Shàngshū exegesis, but is a striking documentary witness to Jīn’s project of reading the canon “alone, embracing only the surviving text” (dú bào yí jīng 獨抱遺經) — i.e. without the apparatus of running scholastic commentary.

Substantive: the work is one of the most pointed and methodologically self-conscious post-Cài-zhuàn commentaries from a Zhū-Xī-orthodox author. Jīn’s own preface explicitly frames the Biǎozhù against Cài Shěn (KR1b0017): “Master Zhū’s commentaries on the various canons were nearly comprehensive, only the Shū he had not yet completed; he had separately set out the Xiǎo xù, distinguished and corrected its doubtful errors, indicated the gist, and handed it to Mr Cài for the Jízhuàn — at that point the various explanations had at last reached arbitration. But the book was completed after Master Zhū had already passed away, and before the disciples’ Yǔlù had been gathered — there cannot but be regrettable lapses.” The Biǎozhù fills these lapses by going back to Hàn-period textual scholarship: it gives serious weight to the jīnwén 今文 (modern-text Fú Shēng) / gǔwén 古文 (Kǒng Ān’guó) variants and arbitrates between them with philological evidence rather than doctrinal preference. Its chronological dating of each chapter draws on Jīn’s parallel Tōngjiàn qián biān, itself anchored on Hú Hóng’s Huáng wáng dà jì.

The Sìkì compilers’ substantive criticism is precise: Jīn’s most idiosyncratic position — wanting to relocate the preface of Kāng gào 康誥 to head Zǐ cái 梓材 (so that the geographical difficulty of the Kāng gào opening is resolved by treating it as a Zhōu Gōng founding-of-Luò document rather than a Wǔ Wáng enfeoffment-of-Wèi document) — required him to emend the canonical Wáng yuē Fēng 王曰封 (“the king said: Fēng [= Kāngshū]!”) at the chapter’s head as Zhōu Gōng Fēng 周公封 (“Zhōu Gōng enfeoffed [Kāngshū]”), claiming the three characters had been redundantly carried over from Jiǔ gào 酒誥. The compilers find the philological emendation unjustified — a rare case of textual conjecture not supported by manuscript variants — and conclude that on this single point Jīn’s “merit does not cover the blemish” (qí yú bù yǎn xiá 其瑜不掩瑕). The judgment is balanced and appears in essentially this form in the parallel tíyào on Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn.

The 1789 submission date (Qiánlóng 54 / 1789.II) is unusually late for a Sìkù Shū lèi entry: most are submitted in 1774–1781. The Biǎozhù’s late submission reflects its inclusion via the Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě recension rather than via the regular Yǒnglè dàdiàn / Zhèjiāng-presentation channels.

Translations and research

No substantial Western-language translation of the Shàngshū biǎozhù is known. Modern scholarship on Jīn Lǚxiáng tends to focus on the Tōngjiàn qián biān and on his role as a transitional figure between late-Sòng and early-Yuán Zhū-Xué; for the Biǎozhù specifically see Cài Gēnxiáng 蔡根祥, Sòngdài Shàngshū xué àn 宋代尚書學案 (Taipei: Huámùlán, 2006); Lóu Mín 婁敏, Jīn Lǚxiáng yánjiū 金履祥研究 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2017). For the Běi-Shān lineage within which Jīn Lǚxiáng worked see the Sòng-Yuán xué àn 宋元學案 sections on the Běi-Shān xué àn 北山學案 and Rénshān xué àn 仁山學案.

Other points of interest

The unusual biǎozhù page-format had no successors in canonical exegesis: the dominant commentarial layout from the Yuán curriculum (1313) onward followed the running-commentary or interlinear-annotation tradition of Cài Shěn / Hú Guǎng. This is unfortunate — Jīn’s lattice-of-marginalia format is in retrospect well-suited to the kind of cross-reference-rich philology he wanted to do — but its institutional legacy is essentially nil.

The work’s xīngfáng 興廢 (“rise-and-fall”) chronology of when each Shàngshū chapter was composed, drawing on the Tōngjiàn qián biān, anticipates the much-later Qīng kǎojù tradition of dated-chapter analysis exemplified by Yán Ruòqú 閻若璩 and Wáng Mǐngshèng 王鳴盛.

The Sìkù compilers’ criticism of the Wáng yuē Fēng / Zhōu Gōng Fēng emendation is preserved with the same wording in their parallel tíyào on Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn (KR1b0017), as evidence of the four-corner correction-of-the-Cài tradition: Huáng Jǐngchāng → Chén Lì → Dǒng Dǐng → Jīn Lǚxiáng.

Links

• CBDB id 10731
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11129222 (金履祥)
• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Shū lèi, Shàngshū biǎozhù entry (Kyoto Zinbun digital edition)