詩序

Shīxù 詩序

Prefaces to the Mao Recension of the Classic of Poetry attributed to 卜商 (Bǔ Shāng / Zǐxià 子夏, fl. 5th c. BCE), with the Biànshuō 辨說 of 朱熹 (Zhū Xī, 1130–1200)

About the work

A Sìkù recension of the Shī prefaces — the so-called Máo xù 毛序 — published as a stand-alone work in two juǎn. It collects the prefatory paragraphs (xù 序) prefixed to each of the 305 odes in the Máo recension of the Shījīng (KR1c0001) and pairs them, paragraph by paragraph, with Zhū Xī’s Shī xù biànshuō 詩序辨說 (1177), the systematic refutation that animated Zhū Xī’s larger reform of Shī exegesis in the Shī jí zhuàn 詩集傳 (KR1c0015). The Sìkù editors’ decision to detach the Xù and the Biànshuō from their respective parent works and to publish them together is itself a piece of Qīng editorial argument: it makes the Xù available as an independent canonical object, sets Zhū Xī’s critique alongside it for direct comparison, and leaves the question of the prefaces’ authorship and authority for the reader to weigh.

The traditional ascription to 卜商 Zǐxià is followed in the title and frontmatter; the tíyào itself, however, surveys nine competing positions on the prefaces’ authorship and concludes that only the opening one or two sentences of each xù can plausibly be traced to a teacher in the line from Xún Qīng 荀卿 (Xúnzǐ) downward, while everything beyond that is a Hàn-period accretion. The work thus stands on the boundary between attributed primary text and editorial reconstruction.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the controversies over the prefaces of the Shī are tangled like a litigation. Zhèng Xuán’s 鄭玄 Shīpǔ 詩譜 holds that the Great Preface was made by Zǐxià and the small prefaces by Zǐxià and Máo Gōng together; Wáng Sù’s 王肅 commentary on the Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ 孔子家語 holds that Zǐxià prefaced the Shī, and that this is the present Máoshī; the Hòu Hànshū · Rúlín zhuàn 後漢書·儒林傳 says that Wèi Hóng 衞宏 received the learning from Xiè Mànqīng 謝曼卿 and made the prefaces; the Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 says that Zǐxià initiated them and that Máo Gōng and Wèi Hóng then polished and supplemented; Hán Yù 韓愈 holds that Zǐxià did not preface the Shī at all; Chéng Bóyú 成伯璵 holds that Zǐxià cut only the opening line and that what follows derives from Máo Gōng; Wáng Ānshí 王安石 holds that the prefaces were made by the poets themselves; Chéngzǐ 程子 (Míngdào 明道) holds that the small preface preserves the older record of the State Historian and that the Great Preface is by Confucius; Wáng Déchén 王得臣 holds that the first sentence is what Confucius personally inscribed; Cáo Cuìzhōng 曹粹中 holds that when the Máo zhuàn first appeared there was no preface, and that the disciples afterward each set down what they had received from their teacher; and as for those who hold the prefaces were made by ignorant village louts and openly attack them, the initiator is Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵, with Wáng Zhì 王質 in concord and Master Zhū in agreement.

But Qiáo’s Shī biànwàng 詩辨妄, once published, was met by Zhōu Fú 周孚 with a Fēi Zhèng Qiáo Shī biànwàng 非鄭樵詩辨妄 in one juǎn, taking up forty-two of his cases and demolishing them; Zhì’s Shī zǒngwén 詩總聞 (KR1c0014) likewise did not circulate widely. Master Zhū’s contemporaries — Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙, Chén Fùliáng 陳傅良, Yè Shì 葉適 — were close friends but each held a different view; Huáng Zhèn 黃震, a firm believer in Master Zhū, in his Rì chāo 日鈔 still defended the xù. Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨 in his Jīngjí kǎo 經籍考 made no investigation of other works but on the matter of the Shī xù alone went back and forth in attack for thousands of words. From the Yuán and Míng down to the present day, after centuries, scholars are still ranged on opposing sides — is this not the prime quarrel of the schools of classical exegesis?

We have considered: Zhèng Xuán’s gloss on the lost Nán gāi 南陔 says, “Zǐxià prefaced the Shī, the meanings collected together; through the Warring States down to the Qín, the Nán gāi and the Six Shī were lost; Máo Gōng compiled the zhuàn, drawing each preface to head its piece, so that even though the poems are lost their meanings remain.” Chéng Dàchāng’s 程大昌 Kǎogǔ biān 考古編 likewise says, “today the prefaces of the six [lost odes] explicitly note ‘meaning present, no words’ below — we know they are by those who, after the Qín conflagration, saw the prefaces but not the poems.” Zhū Hèlíng 朱鶴齡’s preface to Máoshī tōng yì 毛詩通義 (KR1c0048) notes that the Wǎnqiū 宛邱 piece’s xù opening sentence differs from the Máo zhuàn. These all sufficiently prove that the opening sentence of each small preface originally precedes the Máo zhuàn. Qiū Guāngtíng 邱光庭’s Jiānmíng shū 兼明書 cites the Zhèngfēng · Chū qí dōngmén 鄭風·出其東門 piece, where the Máo zhuàn and the xù are out of register; and Cáo Cuìzhōng’s Fàngzhāi shīshuō 放齋詩說 cites the Zhàonán · Gāoyáng 召南·羔羊, the Cáofēng · Shījiū 曹風·鳲鳩, and the Wèifēng · Jūnzǐ xié lǎo 衛風·君子偕老 — the zhuàn’s sense and the xù’s sense not corresponding. Were the xù by the same hand as Máo, why should they contradict each other? This makes a still stronger case that the elaborated continuation derives from after Máo.

Note also that Cài Yōng 蔡邕, originally a Lǔ Shī scholar, in his Dú duàn 獨斷 records the prefaces of the thirty-one Zhōu sòng pieces — and they each have only the first two sentences, and these differ from the Máo prefaces only in length, not in content. For Zǐxià is five generations from Sūn Qīng [Xúnzǐ], and Sūn Qīng taught Máo Hēng, and Máo Hēng taught Máo Cháng — so the Máoshī is two generations from Sūn Qīng. Shēn Péi 申培 had as his teacher Fú Qiūbó 浮邱伯, who had as his teacher Sūn Qīng — so the Lǔ Shī is also two generations from Sūn Qīng. That is why the prefaces of these two schools agree in essentials and differ in detail: that they descend from Sūn Qīng onward through teacher-pupil transmission can be inferred, and that what they received was only the first two sentences and that all that follows derives from the elaborations of each particular school can also be inferred. Furthermore the Tángshū yìwén zhì 唐書藝文志 lists “Hánshī: Bǔ Shāng prefaced, Hán Yīng annotated, twenty-two juǎn” — so the Hánshī also had a preface, and it too is said to derive from Zǐxià, though the surviving fragments of Hánshī doctrine often differ wildly from Máo. Is this not because the transmitters of the learning continued to add and emend?

We have therefore consulted the various positions and fixed it that the opening two sentences of each xù are what the masters before Máo Cháng transmitted, and that what follows is what the disciples after Máo Cháng appended. Still we record the xù at the head of the Shī division, to make the source clear; and at the same time we record Master Zhū’s Biànshuō, to make plain whence the schools’ divisions derive — for the partisan war of these centuries has its origin here.

The Suí zhì lists Gù Huān’s 顧歡 Máoshī jíjiě xùyì in 1 juǎn, Léi Cìzōng’s 雷次宗 Máoshī xùyì in 2 juǎn, Liú Xuàn’s 劉炫 Máoshī jí xiǎoxù in 1 juǎn, and Liú Yǎn’s 劉巘 Máoshī xùyì shū in 1 juǎn (note: 序 / 敘 alternate in the source — this is a textual blemish, retained as is). The Tángshū zhì gives “Bǔ Shāng Shīxù 二卷.” Now since Zhūzǐ’s biànshuō makes the text fairly long, we keep the division into 2 juǎn. As for the merits and demerits of the various positions, the schools’ arguments are exhaustive, set out fully in their own books — we will not rehearse them here.

Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Sìkù Shīxù in 2 juan is best read as a Qīng editorial intervention rather than a transmitted Hàn-period text. The “received Máo xù” — the prefatory paragraph attached to each of the 305 odes — was already a controversial object by the early Hàn (the Hàn shū yìwén zhì preserves only the Máo preface, but the alternate Hán xù and Lǔ xù are partially recoverable from later citation), and the xù’s authorship had become the single most disputed question of the Shī tradition by the High Sòng. Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 (1104–1162) launched the systematic attack in his Shī biànwàng 詩辨妄 (lost; the basis of the modern position is reconstructed); Wáng Zhì 王質 in Shī zǒngwén 詩總聞 (KR1c0014) seconded; Zhū Xī 朱熹 codified the position in Shī jí zhuàn 詩集傳 (1177) and Shī xù biànshuō 詩序辨說 (also 1177).

The Sìkù editors take a mediating position — already foreshadowed in the Táng by Chéng Bóyú 成伯璵 (see KR1c0007) and developed by 顧鎮 in KR1c0065 — in which only the opening one or two sentences of each xù are credited to a pre-Máo teacher in the Xún Qīng line, the rest being Hàn-period accretion. The textual argument they marshal is striking and is now the standard scholarly position: comparison between the xù of the lost Six Odes (liù shī 六詩, Nán gāi etc.), which preserve only an opening line, and Cài Yōng’s Dú duàn 獨斷 transcript of the Zhōu sòng prefaces, which likewise preserve only opening lines, indicates that the long elaborations are post-classical school commentary.

Zhū Xī’s Biànshuō — paired with each xù in the Sìkù arrangement — is one of his most consequential exegetical works. It dismisses the moralizing-allegorical readings characteristic of the received xù (above all the routinely repeated formulas “měi mǒu gōng yě 美某公也” / “cì mǒu gōng yě 刺某公也”) and reads many of the Guófēng odes as ordinary love-songs and folk-poetry. The position became orthodoxy after the Yuán placed the Shī jí zhuàn on the curriculum and the Míng cemented it through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and Sìshū wǔ jīng dàquán; it was the standard target of Qīng Hànxué counter-revival from KR1c0049 Máoshī jīgǔ biān onward.

The text was edited and submitted in the 10th month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781) under the standard Sìkù imprimatur.

Translations and research

The Shī xù / Máo xù has been studied exhaustively in Chinese; in Western scholarship the foundational study is Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China (Stanford, 1991), which gives a full English translation of the Great Preface (Dà xù 大序) and treats the development of the Shī preface tradition through the Hàn–Sòng. Edward L. Shaughnessy, “Mao (commentary),” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Confucianism (2003), is a compact reference. Achilles Fang, “Mao Shi xu” entry in Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (1993), surveys the textual situation. The Dà xù itself has been translated in Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Harvard, 1992), 37–49, with extensive commentary; this is the standard English point of reference.

For Zhū Xī’s Biànshuō specifically, see Lin Yeh-lien 林葉連, Zhū Xī Shī jí zhuàn yánjiū 朱熹詩集傳研究 (Taipei: Wenshizhe, 1991); for the post-Sòng reception of the question, Hé Dìngshēng 賀定生, Shīxù xué shǐ 詩序學史 (Wenshizhe, 2009).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ textual reasoning — that the surviving xù of the lost odes (which preserve only an opening sentence) and the parallel Lǔ Shī version preserved in Cài Yōng’s Dú duàn (which likewise preserves only an opening sentence per ode) jointly demonstrate that the long-form xù are later school accretions — is one of the Sìkù tíyào’s most often-cited pieces of philological argument and effectively settled the question for subsequent Qīng scholarship.

Links

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Commentary
• Sìkù tíyào in Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù 1781, juan 15.
• Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality (Stanford, 1991), chs. 4–5.