尚書考異

Shàngshū kǎo yì 尚書考異

An Investigation of Variants in the Documents by 梅鷟 (zhuàn 撰)

About the work

The founding monograph of the systematic philological case against the Gǔwén Shàngshū 古文尚書 — the late-coming 25 chapters of the Shàngshū canon together with the Kǒng Ān’guó zhuàn 孔安國傳, transmitted into the orthodox canon via the Eastern-Jìn figure Méi Zé 梅賾 (and accepted as authentic by all of Tang and Sòng exegesis except the explicit doubts of Wú Yù 吳棫, Zhū Xī 朱熹, and 吳澄). Composed by Méi Zhuó 梅鷟 of Jīngdé 旌德 (a 1513 jǔrén), the work — for the first time — systematically traces every passage of the gǔwén chapters and the Kǒng zhuàn preface to identifiable earlier sources, demonstrating that the texts are constructed retrospectively from passages found in the Zuǒ zhuàn, the Lúnyǔ, transmitted commentaries, and so on. The Sìkù compilers — writing in the post-Yán-Ruòqú 閻若璩 (1638–1704) Qīng kǎojù 考據 era — explicitly credit Méi Zhuó with the founding (“chuàng shǐ zhī gōng” 創始之功) of the entire anti-Gǔwén Shàngshū tradition. Yán Ruòqú’s much more famous Shàngshū gǔwén shū zhèng 尚書古文疏證 (1745, with manuscript completion by 1693) is the consummating work; Méi Zhuó’s Kǎo yì is its immediate ancestor.

The work survived in only one undated, untitled, undivided manuscript, held in the late-Míng / early-Qīng Tiānyīgé 天一閣 library of the Fàn 范 family (specifically Fàn Màozhù 范懋柱). The Sìkù compilers identified the author from internal self-references (“鷟 àn” 鷟按 = “Zhuó’s note”) and divided the manuscript into 5 juǎn: juǎn 1 (presumably) starting with the introductory preface; juǎn 2 from Shùn diǎn; juǎn 3 from Zhòng Huī zhī gào; juǎn 4 from Tài shì; juǎn 5 a collation of variant readings.

Tiyao

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

Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Shàngshū kǎo yì in five juǎn is by Méi Zhuó of the Míng. Zhuó, a man of Jīngdé, was a jǔrén of Zhèngdé guǐyǒu (1513). He served as Nánjīng Guózǐjiàn zhùjiào and ended his career as Salt Tax Office Director.

The world transmits that the Gǔwén Shàngshū with the Kǒng Ān’guó zhuàn came from Méi Zé of the Eastern Jìn; Zé himself said he received it from Zāng Cáo 臧曹; Cáo received it from Liáng Liǔ 梁柳; Liǔ received it from Sū Yú 蘇愉; Yú received it from Zhèng Chōng 鄭沖. Sòng [Wú] Yù, Master Zhū, and Yuán [Wú] Chéng all once distinguished it as a forgery, but they only made [the case] on the basis of [comparative] difficulty-and-ease, in order to determine truth-and-falsity, without yet having checked [each passage] item by item to its actual reality. Zhuó’s present book takes the [Kǒng] Ān’guó preface together with the additional twenty-five chapters and demonstrates that they are all miscellaneous extractions from the words of the [transmitted] commentaries assembled into prose — investigating each entry verifying its origin in detail.

For example: in Zuǒ zhuàn Zhuānggōng 8, “Chéng surrendered to the Qí host, [the Lord of] Zhuāng [-gōng] cited the Xià shū ‘Gāo Yáo went on planting virtue, and the lower virtue thereupon descended’”: the “xià dé nǎi jiàng” 下德乃降 in fact belongs to Zhuānggōng’s own remark; just as in [Zuǒ zhuàn Xuāngōng] 12, citing the Shī: “in chaos and separation we are sorely afflicted; whither shall we turn? — we shall turn to the disturber of disorder”; or as in [Xiānggōng] 31, citing the Shī: “[men] always have a beginning, but rare are those who can have an end; [realizing] the end is truly difficult”; or as in [Zhāogōng] 10, citing the Shī: “in virtuous sound he is brilliantly clear, and looks at the people not casually [tiāo]; [but] tiāo is precisely [the level of] excess” — all of the same form of phrasing. Yet the gǔwén erroneously connects the three characters “xià dé nǎi jiàng” and lists them as part of the canon. Again, in [Zuǒ zhuàn Zhāogōng] 17, “summer, sixth month, the sun was eclipsed; the Grand Historian cited the Xià shū ‘the dragons did not gather in their lodging; the blind musician beat his drum; the sèfū sped, the common people ran’ — and went on to say: ‘this refers to the day of the new-moon of this month, which is the fourth month of the [agricultural] Xià calendar, called Mèngxià’”: yet the gǔwén, on account of the Yuèlìng phrase “the sun in [the lodging of] fáng in late autumn (季秋),” ties this to the new moon of late autumn. As again, the Hàn stone-classic Lúnyǔ “xiào yú wéi xiào, wéi xiào — to be filial means [to be filial to] the one one is filial to; the [following] xiōng dì is parallel-structured”: Bāo Xián’s recension reads yú 于 as hū 乎. The gǔwén simply lifts “wéi xiào yǒu yú xiōng dì” 惟孝友于兄弟 and cuts away the two characters “xiào hū 孝乎” — making the Lúnyǔ’s “shū yún xiào hū” 書云孝乎 unable to make a complete sentence.

Cases of this kind, which he cites and indicates, all rest on evidence. As to Zhuó’s claim that the twenty-five chapters were composed by Huángfǔ Mì — he infers this from Kǒng Yǐngdá’s citation of the Jìn shū Huángfǔ Mì zhuàn, “his cousin’s son [or gūzǐ wàidi 姑子外弟 = matrilateral cousin] Liáng Liǔ obtained the Gǔwén Shàngshū; [therefore Mì] composed the Dìwáng shìjì, often citing the Kǒng zhuàn fifty-eight-chapter book.” On investigation: when [Kǒng] Yǐngdá composed the Zhèngyì, the present Jìn shū had not yet appeared — the Jìn shū he cites is the older Zàng Róngxù 臧榮緒’s. The full passage cannot now be seen and its full origins cannot be verified. Yet, e.g., the gloss “Chánshuǐ issues from Gǔchéng county” — both Hànshū and Hòu Hàn shū geographic treatises agree — but the Jìn began to abolish Gǔchéng and incorporate it into Hénán; so the Kǒng zhuàn gloss “Chánshuǐ issues from the northern hills of Hénán” must be post-Jìn. People [in the Kǒng-zhuàn gloss on Yǔ gòng] “the Jīshíshān is in the qiāng lands southwest of the Héguān county” — but [the prefecture] Jīnchéngjùn was first established only in Hàn Zhāodì Shǐyuán 6 (81 BCE), and the Kǒng zhuàn gloss “the Jīshíshān is southwest of Jīnchéng” is therefore also post-Hàn. Cases of this kind — the forgery is plainly visible. The commentary being so, the canonical [text] also follows. So one cannot be charged with merely indulging in heterodox arguments by accusing Zhuó of error.

— Now under the present court, Yán Ruòqú’s Gǔwén Shàngshū shū zhèng has come out, parsed line by line, fiber by fiber, leaving no further doubt — and discussants can no longer raise any rejoinder. Yet the founding-credit was in fact established by Zhuó. The present copy was preserved in the Tiānyīgé library of the Fàn Màozhù family; it is not titled with the compiler’s name, nor is it divided into juǎn; but the book itself contains the self-reference “鷟按” — so it issuing from Zhuó’s hand is beyond doubt. We have respectfully added divisions, taking the [material from] Shùn diǎn onward as juǎn 2; from Zhòng Huī zhī gào onward as juǎn 3; from Tài shì onward as juǎn 4; and the verification of variants among the older recensions as juǎn 5. Zhuó also has a separate Shàngshū pǔ, which carries roughly the same argument but does not equal this work in thoroughness-and-precision; we now [merely] preserve its title separately and do not transcribe it. 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 Shàngshū kǎo yì is the inaugural work of the systematic Chinese philological-evidentiary case against the Gǔwén Shàngshū 古文尚書, and is among the most important early-modern philological monographs in the Shū tradition. Its author Méi Zhuó 梅鷟 (a 1513 jǔrén, no firm lifedates) approaches the question by tracing every passage of the gǔwén chapters and the Kǒng Ān’guó zhuàn to identifiable earlier sources — the Zuǒ zhuàn, the Lúnyǔ (especially the Hàn stone-classic recension and the Bāo Xián 包咸 recension as variants), commentary citations of Shū fragments by HànTáng commentators — and showing that the gǔwén text and the Kǒng zhuàn are constructed retrospectively from these sources, including textual mistakes that betray the forger’s misuse of his sources.

The composition window in the frontmatter (1520–1545) is a defensible bracket given Méi Zhuó’s 1513 jǔrén and a working hypothesis of mature productive years (Méi Zhuó served as zhùjiào and ended his career in salt administration; the Kǎo yì is the work of an established scholar, not a young man).

The Sìkù compilers’ detailed engagement with the work is itself a substantial document. They credit Méi Zhuó with the creation (chuàng shǐ) of the anti-Gǔwén case, while acknowledging that Yán Ruòqú’s Shū zhèng (1745) is its consummating elaboration. They also independently verify Méi’s principal lines of argument: the Zuǒ zhuàn “xià dé nǎi jiàng” misincorporation; the Zuǒ zhuàn / Yuèlìng season-error in dating the Yǔ gòng eclipse; the Hàn stone-classic Lúnyǔ “xiào hū” cropping. They add their own evidence: the post-Hàn / post-Jìn geographic glosses in the Kǒng zhuàn (the Chánshuǐ origin, the Jīshíshān location relative to Jīnchéngjùn) which betray the forger’s working from post-classical administrative geography.

The compilers also address Méi Zhuó’s specific attribution of the gǔwén fabrication to Huángfǔ Mì 皇甫謐 (215–282) — based on a Kǒng Yǐngdá Zhèngyì citation of the lost Jìn shū Huángfǔ Mì zhuàn, where Huángfǔ Mì’s matrilateral cousin Liáng Liǔ 梁柳 was said to have obtained the Gǔwén Shàngshū. The compilers note that Kǒng Yǐngdá’s Jìn shū (the older Zàng Róngxù version) is no longer extant, and that the full passage cannot be verified; but the post-Jìn / post-Hàn geographic glosses in the Kǒng zhuàn corroborate at least that the forgery is post-Jìn, supporting Méi’s broad chronological frame even if not specifically the Huángfǔ Mì identification (which Yán Ruòqú later refined).

The textual recovery of the work is documentary in its own right: the surviving Tiānyīgé manuscript was undated, untitled, and undivided; the Sìkù compilers’ division into 5 juǎn is editorial. Méi Zhuó’s other anti-Gǔwén work, the Shàngshū pǔ 尚書譜, is judged less rigorous and not transcribed; only its title is preserved.

Translations and research

The Shàngshū kǎo yì’s position in the modern history of Shū philology is treated extensively. See Bernhard Karlgren, “The Authenticity of Ancient Chinese Texts,” BMFEA 1 (1929), and his The Book of Documents (Stockholm: Östasiatiska Museet, 1950); Edward L. Shaughnessy, “Shàng shū” in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, 1993); Liú Qǐyú 劉起釪, Shàngshū yánjiū yàolùn 尚書研究要論 (Jǐnán: Qílǔ shūshè, 2007). For Méi Zhuó’s specific position see Jiǎng Shànguó 蔣善國, Shàngshū zōngshù 尚書綜述 (Shanghai: Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1988), and Lǐ Wàigāng 李巍剛, Méi Zhuó “Shàngshū kǎo yì” yánjiū 梅鷟尚書考異研究 (Beijing: Beijing Normal University M.A. thesis, 2010). For the genealogy of the Gǔ-wén skepticism tradition culminating in Yán Ruòqú see Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1984).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù compilers’ explicit attribution of “founding-credit” (chuàng shǐ zhī gōng) to Méi Zhuó is methodologically important: it establishes the Qing kǎojù tradition’s own genealogical self-understanding, with Méi Zhuó (mid-Míng) → Yán Ruòqú (mid-Qīng) as the canonical line. Earlier impressionistic doubters (Wú Yù, Zhū Xī, Wú Chéng) are explicitly characterized as not yet having “checked item by item” — i.e., not yet having performed the philological-evidentiary method that defines the modern Shū tradition.

The Tiānyīgé provenance — the Méi Zhuó manuscript surfaced from one of the most famous late-Míng / early-Qīng private libraries — is itself characteristic of the Sìkù recovery operation: many of the most important SòngYuánMíng Shū commentaries (KR1b0011 onward) traced through the Tiānyīgé, the Wànjuǎntáng, the Dànshēngtáng, and similar private collections, only being centralized into the imperial canon in the 1770s–1780s.

Links

• CBDB id 280360 (梅鷟)
• Wikidata: no entity
• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Shū lèi, Shàngshū kǎo yì entry (Kyoto Zinbun digital edition)