Máoshī míngwù jiě 毛詩名物解
Explanation of the Names and Things in the Mao Recension of the Classic of Poetry by 蔡卞 (Cài Biàn, zì Yuándù 元度, 1058–1117)
About the work
A Shī natural-history dictionary in 20 juǎn, organized in eleven categories: Shì tiān 釋天 (heaven and weather), Shì bǎi gǔ 釋百穀 (grains), Shì cǎo 釋草 (plants), Shì mù 釋木 (trees), Shì niǎo 釋鳥 (birds), Shì shòu 釋獸 (beasts), Shì chóng 釋蟲 (insects), Shì yú 釋魚 (fish), Shì mǎ 釋馬 (horses), Záshì 雜釋 (miscellaneous glosses), Zájiě 雜解 (miscellaneous explanations). Methodologically the work is the Shī counterpart to Lú Diàn’s Pí yǎ 埤雅 — both grow out of Wáng Ānshí’s Zì shuō 字說 (etymological dictionary) and rely heavily on graphic-etymological readings of míngwù 名物 vocabulary. Chén Zhènsūn already faulted the work for being “speculative and pedantic in argument, fragmentary in citation, contributing nothing to the meaning of the Classic.”
Tiyao
Sòng Cài Biàn. Zì Yuándù, native of Xìnghuà Xiānyóu. Passed the jìnshì in Xīníng 3 (1070) with his elder brother Jīng. Rose to Guānwén diàn xuéshì. The Sòngshǐ gives his life. From the time of Wáng Ānshí’s xīn yì and Zì shuō the literary climate of the Sòng changed; those who pursued míngwù xùngǔ learning were only Biàn and Lú Diàn. Diàn was Ānshí’s guest, Biàn was Ānshí’s son-in-law. So Diàn made the Pí yǎ, Biàn made this work — both grounded in the Zì shuō. Chén Zhènsūn called Biàn’s argument speculative and his citations fragmentary, of no use to the Classic’s sense, denouncing it strongly. Indeed, although Diàn’s learning derived from Ānshí, he resisted the New Policies and quarrelled with them — gentlemen still take something from him. Biàn was wicked, sycophantic, drew the empire’s hatred, and his book has been dragged down with him; the universal rejection is self-inflicted. Yet though his learning is Wáng-school, his citations and elucidations occasionally go beyond Kǒng Yǐngdá’s zhèngyì and Lù Jī’s natural-history shū. An inch has its strength; we should not throw away the word for the man’s sake. As for Xíng Bǐng’s 邢昺 servility, his Ěryǎ shū still stands in the academy — how could Biàn’s book be discarded? The book has eleven categories: Shì tiān, Shì bǎi gǔ, Shì cǎo, Shì mù, Shì niǎo, Shì shòu, Shì chóng, Shì yú, Shì mǎ, Záshì, Zájiě. Chén’s Shū lù jiětí says ten categories — a single character lost in transmission.
Abstract
This is the principal Shī-natural-history work of the Wáng Ānshí school, working alongside Lú Diàn’s Pí yǎ (1125). Both works subordinate philological identification to graphic-etymological derivation drawn from Wáng Ānshí’s Zì shuō — a method the post-Sòng tradition has consistently criticized as forced and unreliable. The Sìkù editors mount a notably strict-but-fair defence: Cài Biàn’s political reputation should not be allowed to obscure the genuine philological material the work preserves, much of it independent of KR1c0004 and KR1c0005. The work is now consulted principally as a witness to the Wáng-school Shī exegesis and as a comparison-point with the more accomplished Pí yǎ.
Translations and research
No translation. Treated in modern surveys of Sòng Shī commentary; for Wáng Ānshí’s Zì shuō and its scholarly milieu, see Peter Bol, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford, 1992), 240–53. The work itself has not received a dedicated study in any Western language.
Links
- Sìkù tíyào: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0029801.html
- CBDB person id: 8131