聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

尚書稗疏

10 min read

Text ID
KR1b0047
Date
1670–1692
Dynasty
清

Shàngshū bài shū 尚書稗疏

Tares-and-Weeds Subcommentary on the Documents by 王夫之 (zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 4-juǎn late-Míng / early-Qīng critical sub-commentary on the Shàngshū by Wáng Fūzhī 王夫之 (Chuánshān 船山, 1619–1692), the major Yáo-loyalist philosopher and prolific classical scholar of the Hǔnán 湖南 mountain seclusion. Title format (“bài shū” = “weeds-and-grass subcommentary,” self-deprecating) parallels his other Sìkù-preserved canonical works: the Zhōuyì bài shū 周易稗疏 (already cataloged in the Sìkù), the Shī jīng bài shū 詩經稗疏, and others. The work is composed in Wáng Fūzhī’s distinctive philological-critical mode: each entry is a self-contained note on a specific phrase or passage, often correcting Cài Shěn’s Shū jízhuàn (KR1b0017) or Sū Shì’s Shū zhuàn on the basis of broader HànTáng evidence.

The Sìkù tíyào’s assessment is unusually detailed and unusually sympathetic: it enumerates a series of Wáng Fūzhī’s substantive philological achievements (corrections of Cài Shěn’s misattribution of shuǐ běi yuē ruì 水北曰汭 to the Erya; the yīn / lèi distinction refusing Zhōu lǐ glosses on the Yú shū; the bīn zhū 蠙珠 / bàng zhū 蚌珠 jiǎ jiè 假借 distinction; the Zhōu lǐ astronomical fix of Tài shì 13 as xīnmǎo year; etc.) and notes that on these “his words have a foundation, unlike rambling chatter.” The compilers also flag two “over-forced” (tài záo 太鑿) excesses: a strained reading of the Yú shū musical entries as a complete Sháo music score; and an over-speculative Hóng fàn / Luò shū number-cosmology that contradicts canonical numbers; plus one wild claim (Kūnlún identified with the Yānzhīlǐng 胭脂嶺 in Táozhōu 洮州). The verdict — “chún cī hù jiàn ér kě qǔ zhě jiào duō yān” 醇庛互見而可取者較多焉 (“pure and dross intermingle, but the part one can take is comparatively the larger”) — is one of the more positive Sìkù assessments of an early-Qīng critical work.

Tiyao

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

Précis. Your servants etc. respectfully submit: the Shàngshū bài shū in four juǎn — by Wáng Fūzhī of our State. Fūzhī has the Zhōuyì bài shū, already entered in our catalog. The present compilation, in glossing the canonical text, also brings out many new readings.

Among them are passages too strained: e.g. holding that the Yú shū from “jiá jī míng qiú” 戛擊鳴球 down to “shù yǐn yǔn xié” 庶尹允諧 is the whole score of the Sháo music; that the two characters “yǒng” 詠 carry on through the next three lines “zǔ kǎo lái gé” etc. as the shēng gē 升歌 [vocal], to be matched with the shēng and sè [as] Shī; that “niǎo shòu qiāng qiāng” 鳥獸蹌蹌 is the dance for the xià guǎn 下管 (lower pipes); that “fèng huáng lái yí” 鳳凰來儀 is the dance for the ninth completion of the panpipe-playing; that “bǎi shòu shuài wǔ shù yǐn yǔn xié” is the dance for the closing music of the chime-stones; further that “zuò gē gēng gē” 作歌賡歌 is the surviving sound of the Dà Sháo shēng gē, which Kuí 夔 set into pipes-and-strings, hence its placement after “shù yǐn yǔn xié”; that the prior several phrases, not using rhyme, are like the yàn 艷, hé 和, chàng 唱 of yuèfǔ; and where there are three-line rhymed segments, these are like yuèfǔ’s cí 詞 — this whole reading is forced, fragmented, and has no textual sense. Again, his discussion of the Luò shū paired with the Nine Categories’ numbers, taking lǚ yī 履一 as 5-Huáng jí 皇極, and the central 5 as 1-Wǔ xíng 五行 — though he extends this in a hundred ways, drawing diagrams and setting up arguments, in the end it is at variance with the canonical-text numbers. On geography, his calling Kūnlún the Yānzhīlǐng of Táozhōu is even more arbitrary.

But where the Cài zhuàn cites the Ěryǎ “shuǐ běi yuē ruì” 水北曰汭 — there is no such text [in the Ěryǎ], as everyone knows. Fūzhī presses to its origin and concludes that this is a mistaken transcription of Kǒng Ān’guó’s commentary on “Jīng shǔ Wèiruì” 涇屬溈汭. He holds that “yīn” 禋 is not the Zhōu lǐ’s yīn; that “lèi” 類 is not the Zhōu lǐ’s lèi; that “wǔ fú wǔ zhāng” 五服五章 is not to be glossed by Zhōu institutions for the Yú institutions — agreeing with 陳第’s argument (KR1b0043) that the Zhōu “five jades” cannot gloss the Yú “five jades.” This is something earlier writers had not brought out. He cites the “Quèxiāng zhī shè” 矍相之射 [of Lǐ jì] to show hóu 侯 — that participation-or-not in the archery is the criterion of honor-or-disgrace, not whether one hits the target. He cites the Zhōu lǐ sun-moon-stars-and-stations to fix Tài shì 13 as xīnmǎo 辛卯 year. He cites the Shuōwén and the Dà Dài lǐ jì to show that bīn zhū 蠙珠 is not bàng zhū 蚌珠 — Cài zhuàn did not know about jiǎ jiè 假借. He cites the Zhōu lǐ Wángfǔ 王府’s “[duty of] supplying the king with food-and-jade” to gloss yù shí 玉食. He cites the Zuǒ zhuàn to show that 奄 [a polity] and 淮夷 are two distinct entities. He cites the Sàng dà jì 喪大記 to gloss Dí rén 狄人. He cites the Shuōwén’s gloss on the character 美 to gloss měi ruò 美若. In refuting the errors of Sū Shì’s zhuàn and the Cài zhuàn, on the whole his words have foundation, unlike empty discourse. Pure and dross intermingle, but what is worth taking is comparatively the larger part. 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 bài shū is one of the principal early-Qīng critical Shàngshū commentaries by a private scholar, written by Wáng Fūzhī 王夫之 (Chuánshān 船山, 1619–1692) during his post-1644 mountain seclusion in Hǔnán 湖南 as a Míng loyalist. The composition window in the frontmatter (1670–1692) brackets Wáng Fūzhī’s mature productive period. The Sìkù submission was Qiánlóng 46 / 1781.

The work is structurally a notes-collection (bài shū 稗疏 = “tares-and-weeds subcommentary,” in self-deprecating parallel to Wáng Fūzhī’s Zhōuyì bài shū, Shī jīng bài shū, etc.). Each entry treats a specific canonical phrase, with broad evidentiary support drawn from across the HànTángSòng commentarial tradition.

The Sìkù tíyào’s detailed enumeration of Wáng Fūzhī’s substantive contributions is the most extensive granular catalog of any single private commentary’s readings in the Shū lèi sequence. The compilers identify roughly twelve specific philological achievements, of which the most consequential are:

  1. The Càizhuàn / Erya misattribution. Cài Shěn had attributed the gloss “shuǐ běi yuē ruì” 水北曰汭 (“water-north is ruì”) to the Erya — but no such text exists in the Erya. Wáng Fūzhī traces the error to a misreading of Kǒng Ān’guó’s gloss on the Yǔ gòng phrase “Jīng shǔ Wèiruì” 涇屬溈汭. This is one of the cleanest cases in the early-Qīng kǎojù tradition of catching a Sòng commentator in a fabricated source citation.

  2. The Zhōu lǐ / Yú shū refusal. Wáng Fūzhī, like Chén Dì (KR1b0043) before him, insists that the Yú shū should not be glossed using Zhōu institutions: yīn 禋 in the Yú shū is not the Zhōu lǐ’s yīn; lèi 類 not the Zhōu lǐ’s lèi; the Wǔ fú Wǔ zhāng 五服五章 not the Zhōu institutional system. This is methodologically the early-Qīng version of historical-stratigraphic awareness — refusing to project later institutions onto earlier canonical text.

  3. The bīn zhū / bàng zhū 蠙珠 / 蚌珠 distinction. Citing the Shuōwén and Dà Dài lǐ jì to show that the Yǔ gòng bīn zhū (a kind of pearl) is not the bàng zhū (mussel-pearl) Cài Shěn glossed it as. The argument is grounded in jiǎ jiè 假借 (graphic-loan) theory — Cài didn’t recognize the loan relationship.

  4. The Tài shì astronomical fix. Using the Zhōu lǐ’s sun-moon-stars-and-stations apparatus to fix Tài shì year 13 as the xīnmǎo year — a precise Shàngshū chronological computation that anticipates Qing kǎojù astronomical apparatus.

The compilers also list three over-strained readings: (a) the elaborate reading of the Yú shū musical-passage as a complete Sháo music score (with yuèfǔ analogues for the rhyme structure); (b) the Hóng fàn / Luò shū number-cosmology contradicting the canonical numbers; (c) the wild geographic identification of Kūnlún with the Yānzhīlǐng in Táozhōu (modern Gānsù). These represent characteristic xīnxué-influenced overreaches in Wáng Fūzhī’s method.

The work’s institutional position is unusual. Wáng Fūzhī was a Míng loyalist who never served the Qīng; his works circulated in manuscript among Hǔnán scholars until the late-Qīng nationalist republication of his complete works (Zēng Guófān 曾國藩, Zēng Guóquán 曾國荃, Tāng Pèngshēng 湯鵬生, etc., from the 1860s). The Sìkù compilers’ decision to preserve the Shàngshū bài shū in 1781 — and to write a sympathetic tíyào — represents an unusually generous Qiánlóng-era gesture toward a Míng-loyalist work, presumably because Wáng Fūzhī’s purely philological contributions could be detached from his political stance.

Translations and research

No substantial Western-language translation of the Shàngshū bài shū is known. For Wáng Fūzhī broadly the standard Western reference is Alison H. Black, Man and Nature in the Philosophical Thought of Wang Fu-chih (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989); also Ian McMorran, “The Patriot and the Partisans: Wang Fu-chih’s Involvement in the Politics of the Yongli Court,” in Jonathan Spence and John Wills, eds., From Ming to Ch’ing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). For the Shàngshū bài shū specifically see Cài Gēnxiáng 蔡根祥, Sòngdài Shàngshū xué àn 宋代尚書學案 (Taipei: Huámùlán, 2006), Qing-section, and Zhū Hànmín 朱漢民, Wáng Fūzhī jīng xué yánjiū 王夫之經學研究 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2014).

Other points of interest

The Shàngshū bài shū is the immediate philological precursor to the much more famous Yán Ruòqú Shàngshū gǔwén shū zhèng 尚書古文疏證 (1745) on the question of evidentiary method. Wáng Fūzhī’s Erya misattribution argument and the bīn zhū / bàng zhū jiǎ jiè analysis are exactly the kinds of granular philological moves that Yán Ruòqú scaled up to a comprehensive case against the Gǔwén Shàngshū.

The Sìkù’s comparison of Wáng Fūzhī’s Yīn / Lèi / Wǔ fú refusal of Zhōu lǐ glosses to Chén Dì’s parallel argument (KR1b0043) is methodologically significant: it identifies a small but consistent late-Míng / early-Qīng tradition of historical-stratigraphic refusal — anticipating modern source-criticism — that ran independently in different scholarly networks.

The compilers’ explicit preservation of the work despite its author’s loyalist politics is one of those Qiánlóng-era Sìkù moments where philological merit overrides political sensitivity. (For other examples in the Shū lèi see KR1b0048 and successors.)

Graph View

Backlinks