Sūshì shī jí zhuàn 蘇氏詩集傳
Mr. Sū’s Collected Commentary on the Classic of Poetry by 蘇轍 (Sū Zhé, zì Zǐyóu 子由, hào Yǐngbīn yílǎo 穎濱遺老, 1039–1112)
About the work
Sū Zhé’s Shī commentary in 19 juǎn, written in his late period of forced retirement at Yǐngbīn 穎濱 (post-1102). Methodologically the most consequential pre-Zhū Xī Sòng Shī commentary: Sū Zhé argues that the small xù 小序 is a layered text in which only the opening sentence of each preface descends from the early Shī tradition (he attributes it to Máo Gōng 毛公) and the rest is a Hàn-period accretion (he attributes it to Wèi Hóng 衛宏). He therefore retains only the first sentence of each xù in his recension and silently drops the elaboration. This is the position later canonized by Chéng Bóyú in KR1c0007, adopted by Zhū Xī’s Biànshuō in KR1c0003, and finally given formal Sìkù endorsement.
Tiyao
Sòng Sū Zhé. He held that the small preface, repetitive and discursive, is not the work of a single hand; he suspected it of being collected by Wèi Hóng under the Máo school, and so retained only the opening sentence of each preface, deleting the rest. The Lǐjì references Zōuyú 騶虞 (“the music-officials being prepared”), Lí shǒu 貍首 (“the music for assemblies on time”), Cǎi pín 采蘋 (“the music for following the rite”) — showing that the ancients indeed glossed each ode in a single phrase, and that the small preface form originates here. Wáng Yīnglín’s Hánshī kǎo preserves Hán Shī prefaces such as: Guānjū — “satirizing the times”; Fúyǐ — “a wife mourning her husband’s foul disease”; Hàn guǎng — “a delight in the man”; Rǔ fén — “a farewell from home”; Dìdōng — “satire on a runaway woman”; Shǔ lí — “made by Bófēng”; Bīn zhī chū yán — “Wèi Wǔgōng repenting his drunkenness.” Liú Ānshì’s Yuánchéng yǔlù records that as a youth he read the Hán Shī (note: the Chóngwén zǒngmù shows the Hán Shī was still extant in the early Northern Sòng — Fàn Chùyì’s claim in KR1c0013 Yìzhāi shī bǔ chuán that “the Hán Shī is rarely seen in the world” cannot be trusted): for Yǔ wú jí, the preface ran “the chief minister satirizes Yōuwáng,” with the opening “the rains have no end, hurting our harvests…”; this confirms that the Hán Shī prefaces also captured each ode in a single phrase. Cài Yōng’s stone-classics, all based on the Lǔ Shī, in Dú duàn preserve thirty-one Zhōu sòng prefaces, mostly identical with Máoshī but having only the opening sentence; this confirms the same for the Lǔ Shī.
Sū Zhé’s identification of the opening sentence as the genuine Máo layer is therefore not without foundation. The Hòu Hànshū — closer to antiquity than the standard histories — says in the Rúlín zhuàn that Xiè Mànqīng was skilled in Máoshī and made its glosses; Wèi Hóng studied with Mànqīng and made the Máoshī xù. Sū Zhé’s view that Wèi Hóng was the collector also has support. Chéng Bóyú in Máoshī zhǐshuō (KR1c0007), although also taking the small preface opening to derive from Zǐxià, says explicitly: “the small preface of the various odes — Zǐxià cut only the opening sentence; Géhé ‘the queen-consort’s basis,’ Hóngyàn ‘praising King Xuān,’ and the like; what follows is by the Greater Máo, who attached his words from the meaning of the ode.” So this view of taking only the preface-opening was already stated by Bóyú; it was not invented by Sū Zhé. After him, Wáng Déchén, Chéng Dàchāng, 李樗 Lǐ Chū all took Sū Zhé’s view as their ancestor — and rightly so. Sū Zhé’s own preface says: “I selected only what is acceptable, and let the rest be seen in the present transmission; what is most unacceptable I have made fully clear in its faults” — so toward the Máo school he is neither hot nor compliant, holding the balance. But Zhū Yì’s Yī jué liáo zájì says “Sū Zǐyóu glosses the Shī without using the xù” — this misses Sū Zhé’s actual position entirely.
Abstract
Sū Zhé’s Shī commentary is the major Sòng-era development of the layered-xù hypothesis between Chéng Bóyú in the Táng and Zhū Xī in the late twelfth century. The work is structured as a jí zhuàn 集傳 (“collected commentary”): for each ode Sū Zhé gives a summary gloss, retains the opening sentence of the small preface, and discusses the principal exegetical questions. He preserves the Máo zhuàn readings where he finds them defensible, replaces them where he does not, and is more willing to draw on the Hán Shī fragments preserved in the Hòu Hànshū and Wáng Yīnglín’s later Hánshī kǎo than is usual for early-Northern-Sòng commentators.
The work was widely read in the Southern Sòng, cited by Lǚ Zǔqiān in KR1c0017 and prominent in the post-Zhū Xī partisan exchange. Its YuánMíng circulation contracted but the position it codified — only the first sentence of each preface is genuine — became the standard mediating reading from Gù Zhèn (KR1c0065) onward. The Sìkù tíyào’s defence of Sū Zhé against Zhū Yì’s misreading is part of the Sìkù editors’ larger effort to give Sū Zhé credit as the predecessor of the orthodox Qīng position.
Translations and research
No English translation. Treated in Mǐn Zéwǎng 閔澤萬, Běi-Sòng Shī xué chuánshì kǎo 北宋詩學傳世考 (Wén jīn, 2003); Hé Hǎiyàn 何海燕, Qīng-rén Shīxué yǔ Sòng-rén Shīxué (Wuhan dà., 2008). On Sū Zhé as a Classics exegete more broadly: Yáng Shèngmào 楊生茂, Sū Zhé sān jīng kǎo lùn 蘇轍三經考論 (Sìchuān, 2010), with a chapter on the Shī jí zhuàn.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù tíyào’s long demonstration that Liú Ānshì’s report of seeing the Hán Shī in his youth must be dismissed as faulty memory (Fàn Chùyì’s “rarely seen in the world” cannot be trusted because the Chóngwén zǒngmù shows it still extant in the early Northern Sòng) is a small but characteristic piece of Sìkù philological forensics. The episode also shows how thoroughly the Hán Shī had vanished by the late Northern Sòng: only the wàizhuàn (KR1c0066) and stray citations survive.