Shī zhuàn tōngshì 詩傳通釋
Comprehensive Explanation of the Commentary on the Classic of Poetry by 劉瑾 (Liú Jǐn, zì Gōngjǐn 公瑾)
About the work
A 20-juǎn Yuán-period synthetic commentary on Zhū Xī’s Shī jí zhuàn, written from within the ZhūXī school. Liú Jǐn’s stated aim, like Fǔ Guǎng’s a generation earlier (KR1c0021), is to make the Jí zhuàn manifest. But where Fǔ Guǎng confined himself to yìlǐ (doctrinal exposition), Liú Jǐn additionally adjudicates gùshí (textual parallels and historical referents) — and accordingly takes substantially more kǎozhèng risk. The work was the principal source-base for Hú Guǎng 胡廣’s Yǒnglè imperial Shījīng dàquán (1415), which “uses this work as its blueprint and adopts its readings throughout”; it therefore became, through that intermediary, the dominant late-medieval reading of the Shī. Chén Qǐyuán’s seventeenth-century Máoshī jīgǔ biān (KR1c0064) systematically attacks Liú Jǐn’s specific errors of fact, several of which the Sìkù editors enumerate (see below).
The Sìkù tíyào enumerates Liú Jǐn’s documented errors of fact: (1) on Hé bǐ nóng yǐ he treats Qí Huángōng as the son of Xiānggōng (a generation off); (2) on Wèi fēng he treats Wèi as the Warring-States Wèi (post-403 BC), contradicting the Shī xù’s pre-Chūnqiū placement; (3) on Zhì hù he claims the Máo zhuàn is earlier than the Ěryǎ (a chronological inversion); (4) on Chóumóu he gives a confused triangulation of the heart-asterism’s three stars; (5) on Lù míng he treats Èr Nán as universal-use music against the Dà Yǎ’s royal-only use; (6) on Jié nán shān he identifies the Shī’s Jiāfù and the Chūnqiū’s Jiāfù, and the Shī’s Yǐnshì with the Chūnqiū’s Yǐnshì (the Sìkù editors note that this is in fact Xiàng Ānshì 項安世’s reading, given in Zhū Shàn’s Shī jiě yí, which Liú Jǐn has silently appropriated); (7) on Chǔ cí he misreads Zhèng Xuán’s Yùzǎo note and identifies the Chǔ cí with the Cǎi qí; (8) on Fǔtián he misreads the Máo zhuàn on chēliáng as the Xiǎo róng’s liángzhōu; (9) on Yīn wǔ he invents an entire genealogy for the Yīn ancestral temples and zhāomù succession.
The Sìkù editors are fair: they grant Liú Jǐn that “his evidentiary learning is insufficient, but his investigation of the doctrine has genuine pedigree, and his discussions are often substantial; on the Shī poets’ praise-and-blame intent, he has things to add — he cannot simply be discarded.” The work is therefore preserved despite its errors, in part because of its enormous historical influence through Hú Guǎng’s compendium.
Tiyao
By the Yuán Liú Jǐn. Jǐn zì Gōngjǐn, of Ānfú. His learning’s origins are from Master Zhū. So this book’s general intent is to make the Jí zhuàn manifest — the same as Fǔ Guǎng’s Shī tóngzǐ wèn. Chén Qǐyuán’s Máoshī jīgǔ biān attacks both writers heavily. But Fǔ Guǎng’s book always extends from the text into the meaning, so the attack is on the gloss-words. Liú Jǐn’s book also adjudicates gùshí, so the attack is on the kǎozhèng points.
[Detailed list of errors translated above as About the work.]
But — Hàn scholars devotedly held to their teacher-transmissions; Táng commentaries all followed the zhù-meanings. This book is exclusively for Master Zhū’s zhuàn; its forced bending and approximations are an inevitable consequence. There is no need to be too harsh.
Abstract
The Shī zhuàn tōngshì is the principal Yuán-period Zhū-Xī-school Shī commentary and the direct source-base of Hú Guǎng’s Yǒnglè imperial Shījīng dàquán (1415) — through which it became the standard reading of the Shī in the Míng examination system from 1415 to the late seventeenth century. Its scholarly weakness lies in kǎozhèng — the Sìkù editors enumerate roughly nine specific errors of fact, most of which Chén Qǐyuán had already caught — but its doctrinal coherence with the Jí zhuàn and its institutional adoption made it the indispensable intermediary text. The composition window is necessarily late-Yuán, before the work’s transmission to early-Míng compilers; we set the bracket from 1300 (mature Zhū-Xī-school career) to 1380 (an outer-bound terminus to allow the work to be in circulation by Hú Guǎng’s 1415 use of it).
Translations and research
No translation. Treated in studies of the Yuán-Míng Shījīng dàquán and its sources: Hé Hǎiyàn 何海燕, Qīng-rén Shīxué yǔ Sòng-rén Shīxué; Bao Lǐlì, Yuándài Shī xué shǐ. The work is the principal subject of dedicated study in Liú Yùyīng 劉毓英, Liú Jǐn Shī zhuàn tōngshì yánjiū (Wén jīn, 2012).
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ extended parenthetical note that Hú Guǎng’s Shījīng dàquán used Liú Jǐn’s Tōngshì as its blueprint — and that Chén Qǐyuán failed to compare the two and so missed the connection between his attacks on Liú Jǐn and the actual content of the Dàquán — is one of the more substantive corrections of seventeenth-century scholarship by the Sìkù editors. The note also exposes the Dàquán’s lack of editorial originality, a recurring theme in Sìkù-period evaluation of the Yǒnglè commentary compendia.