Shī kǎo 詩考
Investigations on the Classic of Poetry by 王應麟 (Wáng Yīnglín, zì Bóhòu 伯厚, hào Hòuzhāi 厚齋, 1223–1296)
About the work
A 1-juǎn monograph, the first comprehensive collection of fragments from the three lost Hàn Shī schools — Lǔ shī 魯詩, Qí shī 齊詩, and Hán shī 韓詩. The Suíshū jīngjízhì records the Qí shī as already lost in the Wèi period, the Lǔ shī as lost in the Western Jìn, and the Hán shī as still extant though without active transmitters. By Wáng Yīnglín’s time only the Hánshī wàizhuàn (KR1c0066) survived complete; the Hán gù, Hán nèi zhuàn, and Hán shuō had all perished, and the Lǔ and Qí fragments could only be reconstructed from quotations in other works.
Wáng Yīnglín ranges through the JīngShǐZǐJí corpus, gathers every available Shī-school fragment, and compiles them into a single volume. He adds two appendices — Shī yìzì yìyì 詩異字異義 (variant characters and meanings) and Yìshī 逸詩 (lost odes) — citing the source of every entry. The Hán shī citations far outnumber the Qí and Lǔ (which are reduced to a handful of items) — the Sìkù editors explain that the Hán shī perished latest, so Táng-and-after commentators continued to cite it most often. A bǔyí 補遺 (addenda) is appended at the end. The Míng scholar Dǒng Sīzhāng 董斯張 supplied another nineteen items, and the late-Qīng Sānjiā Shī shíyí 三家詩拾遺 of Fàn Jiāxiàng 范家相 (10 juǎn) — explicitly built on Wáng Yīnglín’s foundation — recovered still more, while criticizing some of Wáng Yīnglín’s “lost-ode” attributions (e.g. drawing material from the Chǔ cí Jià biàn, the Yuè lùn Wǎng gǔ fēng nián, the Mù Tiānzǐ zhuàn Huáng zhú, the Lǚshì chūnqiū Yān yān pò fǔ Gětiān bā què, and the Shàngshū dà zhuàn — works of the zǐbù category that should not be treated as canonical Shī sources, and certainly not for the pre-Yīn period).
Tiyao
(Translated above as About the work — the tíyào opens by surveying the loss of the three schools, traces the survival of the Hánshī wàizhuàn alone, then describes Wáng Yīnglín’s procedure: gathering citations from across the corpus, organizing into one volume; adding yìzì yìyì and yìshī as appendices; documenting each citation. Notes the disproportion in Hánshī citations vs. Qí and Lǔ — Hán perished latest, hence cited most. A bǔyí is appended. Dǒng Sīzhāng caught 19 omissions in the Míng. Recently, Fàn Jiāxiàng of Kuàijī expanded the collection in the Sānjiā Shī shíyí in 10 juǎn, gathering items Dǒng had not found, and criticizing some of Wáng’s yìshī attributions as drawn from zǐbù miscellany unsuitable as Shī evidence and inappropriate for citation about pre-Yīn antiquity. These reservations are not unreasonable. But ancient books are scattered and lost; gathering is hard. Later workers can elaborate; starting from scratch is harder. In the long road through the brambles, Wáng Yīnglín must finally be credited as the founder.)
Abstract
The Shī kǎo is the foundational late-Sòng monument of Shī-fragment scholarship and the principal direct ancestor of the entire Qīng-period Sānjiā Shī reconstruction tradition. Wáng Yīnglín’s editorial procedure — comprehensive trawl, source-attribution at each entry, separation of yì shī and yì zìyì into appendices, bǔyí gathering — became the standard for every subsequent collection of lost-school fragments (Fàn Jiāxiàng’s Sānjiā Shī shíyí, Chén Qiáocōng 陳喬樅’s Sānjiā Shī yíshuō kǎo, Wáng Xiānqiān 王先謙’s Shī sānjiā yìjí shū). The work is also the principal late-Sòng witness to the substance of the lost Hán shī outside the Wàizhuàn, including the Hán prefaces preserved at Guānjū, Fúyǐ, Hàn guǎng, Rǔ fén, Dìdōng, Shǔ lí, Bīn zhī chū yán — the same fragment-set that Sū Zhé (KR1c0010) had used a century earlier to argue for the genuineness of the xù-opening sentences. Composition cannot be precisely dated within Wáng Yīnglín’s late life; we set the bracket between his post-Sòng retirement (ca. 1270) and his death (1296). The work circulates in a single 1-juǎn form, both in WYG and in the various Qīng cóngshū; the original is sometimes cited as 5-juǎn, but this reflects later editorial expansion.
Translations and research
No translation. The standard modern critical edition is in the Wáng Yīnglín zhùzuò jíchéng 王應麟著作集成 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, multi-volume, 2008–). Treated extensively in studies of the Sānjiā Shī reconstruction tradition: see in particular Mǎ Bīnghuá 馬炳華 ed., Sānjiā Shī yíwén kǎo lùnsōu (Wén jīn, 2007), and Huáng Zhāncài 黃湛才’s older Wáng Yīnglín de Shī xué chéngjiù (Lánzhōu dà., 1985). The work has not received a dedicated study in any Western language, but its fragments are systematically used in Bernhard Karlgren’s Glosses on the Book of Odes.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ explicit acknowledgement that “those who came later can elaborate” but that “starting from scratch is harder” is a rare instance of generous credit in the tíyào tradition: Wáng Yīnglín is given the founder’s title even where his work is being criticized in detail. This editorial gesture mirrors the editors’ even-handedness on Sū Zhé (KR1c0010) and Yán Càn (KR1c0023).