Máoshī (zhèngwén) 毛詩(正文)
The Mao Recension of the Classic of Poetry — Main Text Only
About the work
The base text of the Shījīng 詩經 / Máoshī 毛詩 — 305 odes traditionally divided into the three large sections Fēng 風 (160 “Airs of the States”), Yǎ 雅 (105 Xiǎo yǎ 小雅 + Dà yǎ 大雅 court odes), and Sòng 頌 (40 dynastic hymns of Zhōu, Lǔ, and Shāng). This is the bare text proper of the Máo 毛 recension, transmitted without the Máo zhuàn 毛傳, Zhèng jiān 鄭箋, or any later commentary; the small xù 小序 prose summaries before each ode are included, but the line-by-line gloss apparatus is not. It is the canonical referent of every Kanripo Shī commentary that follows in the KR1c sequence.
Abstract
The Shī circulated as four parallel exegetical traditions in the early Western Hàn — three in the jīnwén 今文 (Modern Script) line, attached to Lǔ 魯, Qí 齊, and Hán 韓 teachers (the Lǔ Shī, Qí Shī, Hán Shī of the Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志); and one in the gǔwén 古文 (Old Script) line, attributed to 毛亨 (Máo Hēng, “the Greater Máo,” Dà Máo gōng 大毛公) and 毛萇 (Máo Cháng, “the Lesser Máo,” Xiǎo Máo gōng 小毛公). The Three-Family (sānjiā 三家) traditions atrophied between the late Hàn and the Northern-Sòng — the Hán Shī survived only through its outer chapters (KR1c0066 Hánshī wàizhuàn 韓詩外傳) — while the Máo recension, transmitted with 鄭玄 Zhèng Xuán’s jiān 箋 of 187 CE, became the unique received form. As Wilkinson notes (Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4), the work was customarily called simply Shī 詩 or Máoshī 毛詩 and only infrequently Shījīng 詩經.
The 305 odes themselves cover roughly the eleventh through the sixth centuries BCE, the Sòng hymns being the earliest layer and parts of the Guófēng the latest. The “received” Máo redaction reflects an Eastern Hàn philological settlement of a text whose Zhōu-period oral and ritual matrix had long since disappeared; modern phonological work (Baxter, “Zhou and Han phonology in the Shijing,” 1991) has shown that the rhyme system and orthography embed a Hàn editorial layer over the original Zhōu phonological substrate. The traditional ascription of the Shī’s editing to Confucius (Kǒngzǐ 孔子) — that he selected 305 from an original 3000 — derives from the Shǐjì · Kǒngzǐ shìjiā 史記·孔子世家 and is universally rejected in modern scholarship.
The present digital text is sourced from the Harvard-Yenching Index Series (custom_id H15-27-0095) and is presented as the Mandoku TLS (Text-Linguistic Sequence) base edition, juan-divided in 20 juǎn. It carries no apparatus and is intended as the reference layer against which the commentaries KR1c0002 (Máoshī, SBCK), KR1c0004 (Máoshī zhùshū 毛詩注疏, the standard zhèngyì), and the later imperial Shījīng compendia (KR1c0044 Qīndìng Shījīng zhuànshuō huìzuǎn 欽定詩經傳說彙纂, KR1c0045 Yùzuǎn Shīyì zhézhōng 御纂詩義折中, etc.) are read.
Translations and research
The Shījīng is the most-translated work of the Confucian canon. Standard English translations: James Legge, The She King, or the Book of Poetry, vol. 4 of The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong / London, 1871; rev. ed. 1893); Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs (London: Allen & Unwin, 1937); Bernhard Karlgren, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950, with full philological glossary); Ezra Pound, The Confucian Odes / Shih-ching (Harvard, 1954, idiosyncratic verse); Stephen Owen, ed., An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (Norton, 1996, partial). The most influential modern French translation is Marcel Granet, Fêtes et chansons anciennes de la Chine (Paris: Leroux, 1919).
Modern critical scholarship is vast. Foundational philology: Karlgren, “Glosses on the Book of Odes,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 14 (1942), 16 (1944), 18 (1946); William G. Boltz, The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System (American Oriental Society, 1994), on the Shī as an early script witness. Literary-historical studies: C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as Formulaic Poetry in an Oral Tradition (Berkeley, 1974); Pauline Yu, The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition (Princeton, 1987); Martin Kern, “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts,” in Text and Ritual in Early China, ed. Kern (U. Washington Press, 2005); Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (SSEC, 1993), s.v. “Shih ching” (by Jeffrey Riegel). The most thorough recent Chinese surveys are Xià Chuáncái 夏傳才, Shījīng yánjiū shǐ gàiyào 詩經研究史概要 (Zhōngzhōu, 1982; rev. ed. 2007); Hóng Zhànhóu 洪湛侯, Shījīng xué shǐ 詩經學史 (Zhōnghuá, 2002); Liú Yùqìng 劉毓慶, Lìdài Shījīng zhùshù kǎo 歷代詩經著述考 (Zhōnghuá, 2002–2010, multi-volume).
Excavated manuscripts: the Ānhuī Dàxué Bamboo Strip Shī (安大簡《詩經》, c. 4th-c. BCE) published from 2019, and the Shanghai Museum Kǒngzǐ shī lùn 孔子詩論 (published in Shànghǎi bówùguǎn cáng Zhànguó Chǔ zhúshū 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書, vol. 1, 2001) have transformed scholarly understanding of the pre-Hàn textual situation.
Other points of interest
The Mao recension’s small xù 小序 (preserved here) became the single most disputed feature of the Shī commentarial tradition. Hàn-learning defenders (e.g. 陳啟源 in KR1c0049 Máoshī jīgǔ biān 毛詩稽古編) treat the xù as authoritative; Sòng-learning critics following Zhū Xī 朱熹’s Shī jí zhuàn (KR1c0015) reject most of it as Hàn-era allegoresis. The mediating position represented by 顧鎮 in KR1c0065 Yúdōng xuéshī 虞東學詩 — that only the opening sentence of each xù is genuine — became the standard balanced view in late Qīng scholarship.
Links
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Poetry
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q629107
- Chinese Text Project: https://ctext.org/book-of-poetry
- Harvard-Yenching Index Series, vol. 9: A Concordance to Shih Ching (Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1934)