Shījīng jí zhuàn 詩經集傳
Collected Commentary on the Classic of Poetry by 朱熹 (Zhū Xī, zì Yuánhuì 元晦, hào Huì’ān 晦菴, 1130–1200)
About the work
The 8-juǎn WYG version of Zhū Xī’s Shī jí zhuàn — the same work as KR1c0009 (which is the 20-juǎn SBCK photo-reprint of an early Sòng edition). The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì records the work as 20 juǎn; the 8-juǎn form is a Míng commercial-shop conflation that became the standard reading text. The Sìkù editors note that Zhū Xī, like his Yì zhuàn, drafted the Shī commentary twice — the first draft, preserved through Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Dú Shī jì (KR1c0017) under the citation “Mr. Zhū says” (Zhūshì yuē 朱氏曰), entirely accepts the small preface. After encountering Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵’s anti-xù arguments Zhū Xī revised wholesale, producing the second draft (the present text), which discards the xù and pursues the “ancient origin” of each ode. The work appears on this position from the date of the Chúnxī 4 (1177) preface onward.
Tiyao
By the Sòng Master Zhū. The Sòngshǐ lists 20 juǎn; the present edition is 8 juǎn — a book-shop collation. Zhū Xī’s Yì had two drafts: the first, the Yì zhuàn, listed in the Sòngshǐ but lost, agreement or difference unknown. His Shī commentary also has two drafts. Wherever Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Dú Shī jì cites “Mr. Zhū says,” it is the first draft; that one entirely follows the small preface. He then changed to follow Zhèng Qiáo (the Sìkù editors note: that Zhū Xī used Zhèng Qiáo on attacking the xù is recorded in the Yǔlù; Zhū Shēng’s claim that he used Ōuyáng Xiū is mistaken). The result is the present text. The work’s own preface is dated Chúnxī 4 (1177); not one word in it denounces the small preface — so this preface still belongs to the first draft. The preface ends “I am at present compiling the Shī zhuàn” — proof. His commentary on Mèngzǐ takes Bǎizhōu as “the man of rén unmet”; his Bái Lù Dòng fù takes Zǐjīn as “satire on the dereliction of the schools”; his Shī xù biànshuō on Zhōu sòng·Fēngnián fully argues the error of the xù — yet the present jí zhuàn still uses the xù reading. The disagreement front and back is from incomplete revision of the older draft. Yáng Shèn’s Dānqiān lù says “Master Zhū, because Master Lǚ over-revered the small preface, in the end overturned all of it.” A speculative claim — yet not without basis.
From this work onward, Shī commentary divides into two camps, anti-xù and pro-xù, locked horns and unable to dispense with either. The imperial Shījīng huìzuǎn (Kānglǐ era) places the jí zhuàn first but appends the xù readings as well — perfectly fair to a thousand-year balance. The old text appended the Shī xù biànshuō at the end; recent prints have all dropped it. Zhèng Xuán records that “Máo Gōng put the xù at the head of each ode” — so the pre-Máo xù was a separate juǎn; the Suíshū and Tángshū catalogues list it apart from the Máoshī. The Biànshuō is now separately catalogued and not redoubled here.
In the body of the jí zhuàn are scribal corrupts that Féng Sìjīng 馮嗣京 corrected in 12 places: Yōngfēng “終然允臧” (然 misprinted as 焉); Wángfēng “牛羊下括” (括 → 栝); Qífēng “不能辰夜” (辰 → 晨); Xiǎo Yǎ “求爾新特” (爾 → 我); “朔月辛卯” (月 → 日); “胡然厲矣” (然 → 為); “家伯家宰” (家 → 冢); “如彼泉流” (泉流 → 流泉); “爰其適歸” (爰 → 奚); Dà Yǎ “天降滔德” (滔 → 慆); also “如彼泉流” (likewise 流泉); Shāng Sòng “降予卿士” (予 → 于) — in all twelve. Chén Qǐyuán 陳啟源 (KR1c0064) corrected another 14 jīng-text and 11 zhuàn-text errors; Shǐ Róng 史榮 corrected another 10 in the zhuàn-text. Of the Five Classics the Shī is the most learned and recited, so the printers’ editions are the most numerous, and the transmitted errors are accordingly the worst. We have reset all and made it accurate.
For the rhyme-glosses, Zhū Xī first used Wú Yù 吳棫’s Shī bǔ yīn (the Sìkù note: Wú Yù’s Shī bǔ yīn and his Yùn bǔ are two separate works, as the Shū lù jiětí clearly says — the Jīngyì kǎo’s merger is wrong). Zhū’s grandson Zhū Jiàn 朱鑑 then made his own additions and deletions, with much damage. Shǐ Róng’s Fēngyǎ yíyīn 風雅遺音 has dealt with this in detail; we will not repeat.
Abstract
KR1c0015 is the Sìkù-edited canonical version of Zhū Xī’s Shī jí zhuàn, the single most important Southern-Sòng Shī commentary and the work that defined the imperial reading of the Classic of Poetry from the Yuán Yánjīng curriculum (1313) through to the abolition of the imperial examination in 1905. The Sìkù tíyào’s long forensic note — establishing that Zhū Xī’s 1177 self-preface still belongs to the first draft (which followed the xù), and that the present jí zhuàn must therefore have been completed somewhat later, after Zhū’s encounter with Zhèng Qiáo — is a rare piece of Sìkù dating philology. The Sìkù editors also use the entry to settle a long-running dispute: the imperial Huìzuǎn (1727) prints both the ZhūXī commentary and the xù-readings together precisely because the Sìkù editors do not regard the dispute as decidable on either side. The work survives in two distinct editions — this 8-juǎn WYG conflation and the 20-juǎn SBCK (KR1c0009) early-Sòng print — both reproducing the same final-draft text but with different juǎn-divisions and the SBCK preserving the original Shī xù biànshuō (KR1c0003) appendix. The notBefore of 1177 marks the preface; the notAfter is set to Zhū Xī’s death.
Translations and research
For research and translations, see the entry on KR1c0009 (the parallel SBCK edition). Bernard Karlgren’s English-language Glosses on the Book of Odes (BMFEA 14, 16, 18, 1942–46) repeatedly engages with Zhū Xī’s jí zhuàn readings; James Legge’s The She King (1871) appendices give a reasonably complete Victorian-era translation of the jí zhuàn glosses. Modern critical work in Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality (Stanford, 1991), and the Western-language secondary literature on the Zhū-Xī Shī exegesis is substantial.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ detailed list of Féng Sìjīng’s, Chén Qǐyuán’s, and Shǐ Róng’s textual corrections to the jí zhuàn — 12 + 25 + 10 emendations in all — is in effect a miniature critical edition embedded in the tíyào and the most accessible single index of the late-Míng to mid-Qīng philological work on Zhū Xī’s Shī. The Sìkù editors’ parenthetical on the two distinct works of Wú Yù — Shī bǔ yīn and Yùn bǔ, which Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo erroneously merges into one — is similarly characteristic.