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讀書叢說

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Text ID
KR1b0028
Date
1320–1337
Dynasty
元

Dúshū cóng shuō 讀書叢說

Miscellaneous Discourses on Reading the Documents by 許謙 (zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 6-juǎn Yuán Shàngshū commentary by Xǔ Qiān 許謙 (Báiyún 白雲, 1270–1337), the fourth and last of the BěiShān sì xiānsheng 北山四先生 in the Wùzhōu ZhūXué transmission Hé Jī → Wáng Bǎi → Jīn Lǚxiáng → Xǔ Qiān. The title’s “cóng shuō” 叢說 (“miscellaneous discourses”) encodes the method: where post-Cài-Shěn Shàngshū commentary had largely consolidated around the Shū jízhuàn (KR1b0017) as a single doctrinal arbitrator, Xǔ Qiān pushes back by drawing widely on earlier philology and on his teacher Jīn Lǚxiáng’s chronological apparatus. The Sìkù tíyào singles the work out as preserving “xiānrú dǔshí zhī yí” 先儒篤實之遺 (“the earnest-and-substantive heritage of the earlier Confucians”) in a Yuán intellectual climate it characterizes as having drifted into “empty discourse” (xū tán 虛談).

The work was originally printed in Zhìzhèng 6 / 1346 (posthumously, alongside Xǔ Qiān’s Shī míngwù chāo and Sì shū cóng shuō) on a single set of blocks; the blocks are lost. The Sìkù copy is a transcription from the Zhèjiāng Wú Yùchí 吳玉墀 family library, with substantial lacunae (4 missing leaves in juǎn 2, 2 in juǎn 3, 4 each in juǎn 5–6, all of which the compilers were unable to fill in from any other extant copy).

Tiyao

Imperially Authorized Sìkù Quánshū. [Classics, division 2.] Dúshū cóng shuō. [Books-class.]

Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Dúshū cóng shuō in six juǎn is by Xǔ Qiān of the Yuán. Qiān, zì Yìzhī, was a man of Jīnhuá. In the Yánȳòu era he was famous in his time for lecturing — the man whom the Confucians called “Báiyún xiānsheng.” His record is fully given in the Yuánshǐ Rúxué zhuàn. Since Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn came out, those who explained the canon, on the whole, took satisfaction in its simplicity-and-clarity, and no longer compared the various books. Qiān alone made wide investigation of facts and institutions, and did not bind himself to any one school’s reading; hence “cóng shuō.”

For example: in glossing the Yáo diǎn, Mr Cài drew on Master Zhāng [Zǎi]‘s claim of “the heavens revolve to the left; what is at the center, when slightly slow, conversely revolves to the right” — not realizing that “leftward revolution” is east-west motion, while “rightward” is north-south motion: utterly different things, not produced by mere “slowness.” The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, following the great atmospheric qì in its leftward [diurnal] revolution, thereby producing day and night: this is not the sun’s own motion. The sun’s own motion is, after the winter solstice, to gather northward from the south; after the summer solstice, to release southward from the north; thereby producing cold-and-heat. The moon’s following the great qì in its leftward motion, and its own motion, are likewise so. Qiān could not refute every error, but in the entry “Qī zhèng yí” 七政疑 (doubts on the Seven Heavenly Bodies) he says that “if the Seven Heavenly Bodies all moved westward with the heavens, [the calendar] would be confused and disordered, scattered and without unifier” — one may say he does not lightly assent.

The old reading on Luò gào’s “I now divine [a site] east of the Jiàn River and west of the Chán River as the royal city” — based on Shào gào and Luò gào both saying that Zhōu Gōng arrived at Luò on a yǐmǎo day, and that on the fifth day after Shào Gōng had received the divination and surveyed the site for the royal city, the layout was completed — was that the royal city did not need to be divined again. Qiān argues that at this point the royal city was already settled, but the divination was for a place to settle the [transferred] Yīn populace: hence first the area near the Héshuò and Líshuǐ as the closest to the old Yīn capital and convenient for the populace’s relocation; then the lands east of the Jiàn and west of the Chán; then the lands east of the Chán — all of them with Luò proper as the reference for the divinatory ink-marks and all of them showing “auspicious only at Luò.” The Chán and Jiàn flow as they reach Luò over already considerable distance; one cannot tell exactly where Zhōu Gōng was divining.

Again, the Lǚ xíng’s “first to make the five oppressive punishments and call them the law: namely, beginning to lustfully practice nose-cutting, ear-cutting, castration, and tattooing” — the old reading takes those punishments as having been originally created by the [Sān] Miáo. Qiān argues that the Miáo merely over-applied punishment as a method of governing the state, beginning to use it excessively — they did not invent the punishments as such. Such cases also show his unwillingness to be enclosed by the conventionally heard. As for his discussions of the Liù lǜ 六律 and Wǔ shēng 五聲 (where he digresses into [Cài Yuándìng’s] Lǜlǚ xīn shū); on YáoShùn’s revision of the Wǔ lǐ (where he digresses into the Zhōu lǐ Dà zōngbó 大宗伯); on the Jiǔ gào’s Tài shǐ and Nèi shǐ (where he digresses into the Zhōu lǐ Tài zǎi 太宰’s six standards, eight precepts, eight regulations, eight reins) — these are particularly diffuse extensions [from the canon].

The book records his teacher Jīn Lǚxiáng’s explanations the most often. The opening Shū jì nián 書紀年 chapter is calculated on the basis of [Jīn] Lǚxiáng’s Gāngmù qián biān. Among his particular gains and losses, mixed results emerge — they are not all entirely accurate. Yet in late-Sòng / early-Yuán canonical exegesis many tended to empty discourse, and Qiān, in investigating the names-of-things in the Odes and the institutions in the Documents, still preserves the earnest-and-substantive heritage of the earlier Confucians: this is something of value.

The Shū and Shī míngwù chāo and Sì shū cóng shuō were all printed in Zhìzhèng 6 [1346]; the blocks have long since been lost. The present copy is one transcribed at the Wú Yùchí family in Zhèjiāng. In juǎn 2 there are four leaves missing; in juǎn 3 two leaves missing; in juǎn 5 and juǎn 6 four leaves each are missing. On comparing with another copy, the same lacunae are present in that one as well; we have no means of supplementary collation, and have left the original lacunae as found. 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 Dúshū cóng shuō is the Shàngshū component of the BěiShān sì xiānsheng school’s late-Yuán teaching corpus, by its fourth and last master Xǔ Qiān 許謙 (1270–1337). The work was composed in Xǔ Qiān’s mature productive period — defensibly bracketed 1320–1337 — and printed posthumously alongside his Shī míngwù chāo and Sì shū cóng shuō in 1346.

The work’s signature contribution is a refusal of the Cài zhuàn monopoly that the Yuán Yánȳòu (1313+) examination reform had institutionalized. Where contemporary commentators (e.g. Chén Lì in KR1b0027) had retreated into Cài-loyalist subcommentary, Xǔ Qiān draws widely on Jīn Lǚxiáng’s chronological apparatus (Tōngjiàn qián biān / Gāngmù qián biān), on Cài Yuándìng’s Lǜlǚ xīn shū 律呂新書, on the Zhōu lǐ 周禮 institutional details, and on his own astronomical reasoning to disagree with Cài on specific philological and substantive points. The Sìkù compilers’ detailed reading of the Yáo diǎn astronomical case — Xǔ’s correction of Cài Shěn’s misuse of Zhāng Zǎi’s “tiān zuǒ xuán” 天左旋 doctrine — preserves a small but methodologically clean instance of independent late-Yuán philology.

The work’s substantive criticisms of Cài are catalogued by the tíyào: (1) the astronomical reading of Yáo diǎn, with explicit correction of the left-right revolution confusion in Cài’s gloss on Zhāng Zǎi; (2) the Luò gào divination geography, where Xǔ Qiān argues that Zhōu Gōng was divining sites for the displaced Yīn populace (Héshuò 河朔 / Líshuǐ 黎水, then east-Jiàn / west-Chán, then east-Chán), not for the royal city itself, which was already settled at Luò; (3) the Lǚ xíng corruption-of-punishments passage, where Xǔ argues the Miáo over-applied punishments rather than inventing them. The compilers also flag two of his characteristic excesses: his digressions into the Lǜlǚ xīn shū and Zhōu lǐ materials beyond their canonical-textual relevance.

The opening Shū jì nián 書紀年 chapter — a chronological-tabular layout placing each Shàngshū chapter in absolute and relative time — is essentially a digest of Jīn Lǚxiáng’s parallel chronological work, and represents the dominant BěiShān method of treating the Shàngshū as a continuous historical source rather than as a doctrinal compendium.

The transmission situation is poor. The 1346 print blocks were lost; the surviving Sìkù copy comes through the Zhèjiāng Wú Yùchí 吳玉墀 family library and has substantial lacunae (4 + 2 + 4 + 4 = 14 missing leaves across juǎn 2, 3, 5, and 6); the tíyào notes that no second copy could be found to fill these gaps. The submission was Qiánlóng 46 / 1781.

Translations and research

No substantial Western-language translation of the Dúshū cóng shuō is known. For Xǔ Qiān within the Běi-Shān lineage and Yuán-Wùzhōu Zhū-Xué see the Sòng-Yuán xué àn 宋元學案 sections on the Báiyún xué àn 白雲學案; and Lóu Mín 婁敏, Yuán-dài Wùzhōu xué pài yánjiū 元代婺州學派研究 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2017). For the late-Yuán intellectual climate within which the Dúshū cóng shuō was a counter-cultural achievement see John D. Langlois, Jr., ed., China under Mongol Rule (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

Other points of interest

The work is one of the few Yuán Shàngshū commentaries that meaningfully sits outside the Cài-Shěn-orthodox examination tradition. Its reception in the Míng was restricted accordingly — the Yǒnglè Shū dàquán (1415) absorbs little of its substantive arguments, and the work was already rare by Zhū Yízūn’s day. The Sìkù’s decision to recover and transmit it is itself a small instance of Qiánlóng-era kǎojù sensibility favoring philological breadth over examination-orthodoxy convenience.

The Wú Yùchí 吳玉墀 (early 18th century, Zhèjiāng) provenance is notable: the Wú Yùchí family was one of the principal Zhèjiāng book-collecting houses to provide manuscript and rare-print materials to the Sìkù compilers, and several of the Shū lèi recensions in the present sequence (KR1b0017–KR1b0028) trace through Wú-family transcriptions.

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