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詩本義

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Text ID
KR1c0008
Date
1050–1072
Dynasty
宋

Shī běnyì 詩本義

The Original Meaning of the Classic of Poetry by 歐陽修 (Ōuyáng Xiū, zì Yǒngshū 永叔, hào Liùyī jūshì 六一居士, 1007–1072, Lúlíng 廬陵)

About the work

Ōuyáng Xiū’s Shī commentary, catalytic for the Sòng reinterpretation of the Shī tradition. Composed in his maturity, the work is structurally unusual: in 15 juǎn (the standard Sìkù arrangement, with an appendix in 1 juǎn), it consists of 114 individual shuō 說 (“essays”) on selected odes; 10 Tǒngjiě 統解 (“Comprehensive Explanations”) on broader exegetical issues; 2 essays on era and precedence (shíshì běnmò èr lùn 時世本末二論); 3 Bīn Lǔ xù sān wèn 豳魯序三問 (inquiries on the Bīnfēng, the Lǔsòng, and the xù); and an appended supplement to the lost Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄 Shī pǔ 詩譜, which itself includes the Shī tú zǒngxù 詩圖總序 (“General Preface to the Shī Diagrams”) that is sometimes attached to the work as a separate first piece.

Ōuyáng Xiū is not a systematic commentator on the Shī in the sense of Zhū Xī or the HànTáng zhèngyì tradition. He treats the Shī discursively and selectively, focusing on the cases where he finds the Máo zhuàn 毛傳 / Zhèng jiān 鄭箋 reading inadequate, and giving extended argument for an alternative — often grounded in moral or ritual common sense, sometimes in textual collation against the Sānlǐ 三禮 or the Chūnqiū 春秋, occasionally in his own reading of the larger structure of the Shī. He neither defends nor attacks the Máo xù 毛序 wholesale; his position is closer to Chéng Bóyú’s KR1c0007 than to Zhū Xī’s.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Máoshī běnyì in sixteen juǎn — by Ōuyáng Xiū of the Sòng. The book consists of 114 shuō essays, 10 Tǒngjiě, 2 essays on era and precedence (shíshì běnmò), 3 Bīn Lǔ xù wèn — with the bǔ wáng Zhèng pǔ (supplementing the lost Zhèng pǔ) and the Shī tú zǒngxù appended at the end. Xiū’s literary distinction was the foremost of his generation, but his classical learning was equally profound. Wáng Hóngzhuàn’s 王宏撰 Shānzhì 山志 records that in the Jiājìng era there was a proposal to give Xiū formal sacrifice in the Confucian temple. Opinion was unsettled, and Shìzōng instructed Grand Secretary Yáng Yīqīng 楊一清: “I have read the Shū · Wǔ chéng 武成 chapter, where Ōuyáng Xiū’s words are quoted — how can he be said to have done nothing for the Six Classics, no service to the Sage’s school?” Yīqīng replied that Xiū’s lùnshuō 論說 visible in the Wǔ chéng citation are the only ones found, and the question of cóng sì 從祀 (collateral sacrifice) had best not be hastily decided. In short, neither realized that Xiū had this book.

From the Táng onward, no one daring to gainsay Máo and Zhèng — even venerable masters and old scholars adhered firmly to the small preface. With the Sòng came new doctrine on doctrine, the old views set aside; and tracing this back, it began with Xiū. Yet what Xiū says is: “Later students, following the trace of what former generations transmitted and weighing the merits and faults — perhaps. But to clutch a jīng burnt to fragments and torn loose, to grope blindly in the dark a thousand and more years after the sage, not having seen the intervening commentary of the previous rú, and yet to want to set up an independent house of one’s own — that I have never believed possible.” And again: “the former rú on the jīng were not without error, but what they got was already much; let one exhaust their argument first, and then if reason still does not work, weigh and correct it.” So the book originated in a peaceful and balanced mind, “tracing the poet’s intent through one’s own intent” (yǐ yì nì zhì 以意逆志). His arguments never lightly debated the two houses, but neither did he yield to them; his glosses often capture the poet’s original intent.

Later students — striving to be novel, vaunting “spiritual insight” — took matters to the extreme of Wáng Bǎi 王柏 (cf. KR1c0009 context), who even doubted the canonical Zhōunán and Zhàonán and proposed deletions; this is the fault of “going from a stream to a flood,” but the trickle’s beginning cannot be blamed on Xiū.

Lín Guāngzhāo’s 林光朝 Àixuān jí 艾軒集 has a letter to Zhào Zǐzhí 趙子直 saying: “When I first got the Shī běnyì it was like washing my insides; reading it for three years I came to feel there were unsettled places. By and large, Ōuyáng, the two Sūs [Sū Shì 蘇軾, Sū Zhé 蘇轍], and Liú Gòngfù 劉貢父 in their classical exegesis are mostly like this.” Another letter rebuts the běnyì’s glosses on Guānjū 關雎, Liǔ mù 樛木, Tù jū 兔罝, Lín zhī 麟趾 with vigour. In general, when literary men preach the Shī, they mostly seek its meaning; when jiǎngxué jiā 講學家 (“learning-discussion masters”) preach it, they bind it strictly with reason; the two attack each other naturally, but neither’s view is final. (Translation of the Sìkù tíyào; Sìkù zǒngmù j. 15.)

Abstract

The Shī běnyì is the foundational text of the Sòng Shī reform. Composed during Ōuyáng Xiū’s mature years and circulating before his death in 1072, the work was the first major commentary since the Hàn–Táng to reject the unconditional authority of the Máo zhuàn and Zhèng jiān and to argue, on a piece-by-piece basis, that the inherited apparatus mistakes the “original meaning” (běnyì 本義) of the odes. Where the Sìkù editors are precise: Ōuyáng Xiū did not attack the Máo xù wholesale (that move belongs to Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 and Zhū Xī); he bracketed the questions of authorship and authority and read the odes as poems whose moral and ritual context could be reconstructed by careful argument. The methodological claim that opens his most influential preface — that one must “trace the poet’s intent through one’s own intent” (yǐ yì nì zhì 以意逆志, an explicit citation of Mèngzǐ · Wàn Zhāng shàng 5A.4) — became the slogan of Sòng Shī exegesis and resonated all the way through to Gù Zhèn’s Yúdōng xuéshī (KR1c0065).

The work was structurally innovative in another way: by treating the Shī through 114 selective shuō essays plus 10 thematic Tǒngjiě, Ōuyáng Xiū broke the zhāngjù 章句 (“chapter-and-verse”) format that had bound the Hàn–Táng commentary tradition. This is the same essayistic-discursive form that Sū Zhé would adopt in KR1c0010 Sūshì shī jí zhuàn 蘇氏詩集傳 and that would eventually structure most Northern Sòng Shī commentary. The appended bǔ wáng Zhèng pǔ 補亡鄭譜 (“Supplement to the Lost Zhèng pǔ”), with its Shī tú zǒngxù 詩圖總序, is a substantive scholarly contribution in its own right: starting from Zhèng Xuán’s lost Shī pǔ, Ōuyáng Xiū reconstructs a chronological-genealogical map of the 305 odes, dating them by Zhōu reign and locating them in the political history of the Western and early Eastern Zhōu. This is the basis of the standard chronological framing of the Shī that survives down to modern handbooks.

The text was promulgated in the Sìkù from a LiǎngJiāng presentation copy. Modern editions: Ōuyáng Wénzhōng gōng jí 歐陽文忠公集 (Sìkù SBCK base, repr. Shanghai guji 1985); Shī běnyì in Liú Yùqìng 劉毓慶 series (Zhōnghuá 2010).

Translations and research

No complete English translation. The work is treated at length in Mǐn Zéwǎng 閔澤萬, Ōuyáng Xiū Shī běnyì yánjiū 歐陽修詩本義研究 (Wén jīn 文津 chūbǎnshè, 2003); Hé Hǎiyàn 何海燕, Qīng-rén ‘Shījīng’ yánjiū yǔ Sòng-rén ‘Shī běnyì’ chuántǒng (Wuhan dà., 2008). For the broader frame: Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality (Stanford, 1991), ch. 5; Yáo Xiǎoōu 姚小鷗, Shījīng xué shǐ 詩經學史 sequence in Hóng Zhànhóu (cited at KR1c0001). Western treatment of Ōuyáng Xiū as a Classics exegete: Ronald Egan, The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (Cambridge, 1984); Egan’s later The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (Harvard, 2006) treats the Liùyī shīhuà but not directly the Shī běnyì.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s anecdote about Yáng Yīqīng’s response to the Jiājìng emperor — that the proposal to enroll Ōuyáng Xiū in the Confucian temple (cóngsì 從祀) was abandoned because “it could not be shown that Xiū did anything for the Six Classics” — is a striking illustration of how thoroughly the Shī běnyì had dropped out of mainstream consciousness in the late Míng. Its restoration to the Sìkù canon was an act of editorial recovery as much as inheritance.

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