Máoshī LǐHuáng jíjiě 毛詩李黃集解
Lǐ and Huáng’s Joint Commentary on the Mao Recension of the Classic of Poetry by 李樗 (Lǐ Chū, zì Ruòlín 若林) and 黃櫄 (Huáng Chūn, zì Shífū 實夫), with phonetic glosses by Lǐ Yǒng 李泳 after Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙
About the work
A 42-juǎn compilation that splices together two independent twelfth-century Fújiàn Shī commentaries — Lǐ Chū’s Máoshī xiángjiě 毛詩詳解 in 36 juǎn (the principal layer) and Huáng Chūn’s Shī jiě 詩解 in 20 juǎn with a Zǒnglùn 總論 in 1 juǎn (the supplementary layer) — and appends Lǐ Yǒng’s edition of Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Shījīng yīnshì 詩經音釋 phonetic glosses. The compiler is anonymous; the Sìkù editors infer it was assembled in a Jiànyáng 建陽 commercial print-shop, since Lǐ Chū, Huáng Chūn, and Lǐ Yǒng were all Fújiàn natives and the three works lend themselves to side-by-side mounting. The juxtaposition is doctrinally unusual: Lǐ Chū follows Sū Zhé (KR1c0010) in the layered-xù hypothesis (only the opening sentence of each preface is genuinely Máo, the rest is Wèi Hóng); Huáng Chūn follows Wáng Ānshí 王安石 and the Chéng brothers in holding that “only a sage” could have made the xù, so the entire preface is authoritative. The two commentaries thus represent diametrically opposed positions on the central question of Sòng Shī exegesis, yet the compiler — by drawing on the xiángjiě for míngwù and historical-philological glosses and on Huáng’s jiě for synthetic doctrinal exposition — produced a working compendium that was widely consulted in the late Sòng and Yuán.
Tiyao
(Editor and printer not recorded.) Combines the two Sòng Shī commentaries of Lǐ Chū and Huáng Chūn into one edition, with Lǐ Yǒng’s edition of Lǚ Zǔqiān’s yīnshì phonetic glosses appended. Chū, zì Ruòlín, of Mǐnxiàn, was a xiānggòng nominee; he wrote the Máoshī xiángjiě in 36 juǎn. Chūn, zì Shífū, of Lóngxī, in Chúnxī (1174–89) entered the imperial audience by shèxuǎn selection, rose through the two jìnshì grades, was appointed Instructor at Nánjiànzhōu, and ended as Xuānjiào láng; he wrote the Shī jiě in 20 juǎn and a Zǒnglùn in 1 juǎn. Yǒng, zì Shēnqīng, with no biography recoverable, was likewise a Fújiàn man — so this book was probably compiled for the Jiànyáng book trade. Chū was the maternal cousin (wàixiōng 外兄) of Lín Zhīqí (per Shū lù jiětí) and a pupil of Lǚ Běnzhōng (per Hé Qiáohuán’s Mǐnshū); his learning had a clear lineage. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí says of his work that it “broadly assembles the various schools’ glosses on names, things, and meaning, and at the end gives Chū’s own judgement.” Reading Huáng Chūn’s jiě now, the format is the same — it looks like a continuation, picking up Lǐ Chū’s gaps. They neither attack each other nor follow each other. On the small preface, Lǐ Chū takes Sū Zhé — that Máo Gōng made it and Wèi Hóng continued it. Huáng Chūn takes Wáng Ānshí and the Chéngs — that none but a sage could have made it. The two views are utterly opposed. Although Huáng’s learning seems slightly inferior to Lǐ’s, his exposition genuinely supplements the other. The compiler took only the yīnshì from Lǚ Zǔqiān, but for the gloss-text set aside the Dú Shī jì and used Lǐ and Huáng — perhaps because the two commentaries continue each other like a pair of trace-horses, and he did not want to mix in a third voice.
Abstract
The work is the principal late-Sòng compendium of the Fújiàn provincial Shī tradition that grew up alongside, but largely independent of, the Mǐn-school orthodoxy of Zhū Xī (KR1c0009 / KR1c0015). Lǐ Chū, a pupil of Lǚ Běnzhōng 呂本中 (the bridge figure between Northern-Sòng Yìluò learning and the Southern-Sòng Mǐn academies), and Huáng Chūn, a Lóngxī examination success of the Chúnxī era, represent two distinct Fújiàn responses to the central problem of Sòng Shī exegesis: how much of the small preface is authoritative. Lǐ takes the philological-historical line of Sū Zhé and assigns most of the xù to Wèi Hóng; Huáng takes the conservative line of Wáng Ānshí and the Chéngs and treats the xù as a sagely text. The Sìkù editors note that the work is most usefully read as a compendium of míngwù and historical glosses (Lǐ’s strength) flanked by doctrinal commentary (Huáng’s strength) — the editorial decision to set aside Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Dú Shī jì (KR1c0017) for the gloss-text but retain it for phonetic notes is a sign that the compiler treated the LǐHuáng pair as a self-sufficient unit. The notBefore is set to 1175 (Huáng Chūn’s shèxuǎn date) and the notAfter to 1250 (the terminus ante quem given by Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí, which already lists the xiángjiě and jiě as separate works — the joint compilation is plausibly somewhat later but had to circulate before the late-Sòng catalog tradition closed).
Translations and research
No translation. Treated together with KR1c0010 and KR1c0017 in studies of the Mǐn-school Shī tradition; see Mǐn Zéwǎng 閔澤萬, Běi-Sòng Shī xué chuánshì kǎo (Wén jīn, 2003), and Hé Hǎiyàn 何海燕, Qīng-rén Shīxué yǔ Sòng-rén Shīxué (Wuhan dà., 2008). The dual-author structure has occasionally been used as a test case in Chinese-language studies of Sòng commercial publishing (e.g. Inoue Susumu 井上進’s work on Jiànyáng print culture).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ parenthetical “Hé Qiáohuán” 何喬還 should read “Hé Qiáoyuǎn” 何喬遠 (1558–1632), author of the Mǐnshū 閩書 — a typographical slip preserved here without correction.