Shī jīng shìběn gǔyì 詩經世本古義
The Generations-Based Old Reading of the Classic of Poetry by 何楷 (Hé Kǎi, zì Yuánzǐ 元子, c. 1594 – c. 1645)
About the work
A 28-juǎn late-Míng Shī commentary, completed in Chóngzhēn 14 (1641), which radically rearranges the Shī jīng by historical period rather than by the traditional fēngyǎsòng division. The 28 juǎn match 28 historical reigns from Xià Shǎokāng 夏少康 (placing Gōng Liú, Qī yuè, Dà tián, Fǔ tián at the head) to Zhōu Jìngwáng 周敬王 (closing with Cáo fēng Xià quán). At the end of each juǎn he prefixes a xùmù in the manner of a xiǎo xù, and at the head of the work a metrical zhǔyǐn 屬引 modeled on the Xù guà zhuàn of the Yì. The 28 juǎn are also explicitly correlated to the 28 lunar mansions (xiù) — jué bù, kàng bù, dī bù, fáng bù, xīn bù, wěi bù, jī bù, dǒu bù, niú bù, nǚ bù, xū bù, wēi bù, shì bù, bì bù, kuí bù, lóu bù, wèi bù, mǎo bù, bì bù, zī bù, cān bù, jǐng bù, guǐ bù, liǔ bù, xīng bù, zhāng bù, yì bù, zhěn bù. This astrological-historical correlation is unique in the Shī-canon tradition.
Methodologically Hé Kǎi follows Mèngzǐ’s zhī rén lùn shì (knowing the person, discussing the age) procedurally: every ode is assigned a putative author, putative date, and putative occasion, drawing on Zuǒ zhuàn, Guó yǔ, Lǐ jì, Mèngzǐ, the xiǎo xù, and any other source he can press into service. The Sìkù editors are scathing: where the xiǎo xù itself, the oldest commentary, often could not preserve authors’ names (Zhèng Xuán’s Shī pǔ therefore has gaps), and the sānjiā Shī’s ascriptions like Guān jū to Bìgōng, Shǔ lí to Bófēng are vague and unfounded so that the Confucian tradition has long doubted them — Hé Kǎi proposes to identify author and date for every ode after a 3000-year interval, by gōují zìjù 鈎棘字句 (hook-and-thorn analysis of words and phrases) and qiānhé shǐzhuàn 牽合史傳 (forced match against history-and-traditions).
Specific examples of the editors’ charge of qiānhé (forced matching):
(1) Yuè chū (Chén fēng) — Hé Kǎi reads “shū yáotiáo xī shū yōushòu xī” as referring to Xià Zhēngshū 夏徵舒 (because shū sounds like Zhēngshū). Editors: “this at least has a one-character similarity.”
(2) Shuò shǔ (Wèi fēng) — assigned to Wèi Shòuyú 魏壽餘 of the Zuǒ zhuàn. Editors: “who saw it, and who transmitted it?”
(3) Dà tián assigned as Bīn yǎ; Fēng nián and Liáng sì assigned as Bīn sòng; all three placed in Gōng Liú’s age — “this at least has a precedent in earlier scholarship.”
(4) Cǎo chóng read as Nán gāi 南陔 (the lost laudatory ode); Jīngjīng zhě é read as Yóu yí 由儀; Miánmán read as Chóng qiū 崇丘 — “who transmitted it, and who received it? Greatly bewildered, unable to understand: is this not what one says of Hé Kǎi?”
The editors’ verdict balances the censure with a major concession: “However, Hé Kǎi’s learning is broad and well-connected, his evidentiary citations are comprehensive and apt; on every míngwù and xùngǔ, his investigation is detailed-and-clear, his sourcing precise — really not what Sòng-and-after Confucians can match. Like gathering Seven Treasures and constructing a giant vessel that does not match any standard mold: though the whole has no use, broken up for parts, the huǒqí and mùnán (jade-fire-pearls and rare-wood beads) — every fragment is a precious thing. For over a hundred years scholars have ridiculed his book, but in the end have not been able to discard it. That is why.”
The Qiánlóng emperor wrote a personal poem of denunciation prefixed to the WYG copy (“Not following Confucius’s shāndìng / cutting open fēng and yǎ, casting away those forms / matching with stars and lunar mansions, ingeniously fitting his Kǎi name / and missing — what is meant by composing in such crookedness! Pity the labor wasted on a useless place — should be set on a high shelf, that is right!”), one of the more sharply censorious Yùtí (“Imperially Inscribed”) poems on a Shī-class work.
Tiyao
[Translated above as About the work, with the imperial poem and the editors’ Seven-Treasures verdict.] Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 6th month, respectfully collated. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Editor: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Shī jīng shìběn gǔyì is the most procedurally extreme application of Mèngzǐ’s zhī rén lùn shì principle to the Shī jīng: rearrangement of the entire 305-ode canon by reign, with putative author and date assigned to every ode, plus a 28-juǎn / 28-xiù astrological correlation. Methodologically the work prefigures the high-Qīng kǎozhèng commitment to historical contextualization while also exhibiting the late-Míng tendency to over-confident reconstructive guesswork. Hé Kǎi’s prodigious philological apparatus — the yǐnyòng citation count is enormous, drawing across the entire pre-Míng commentarial tradition — has made the work indispensable as a quarry of míngwùxùngǔ material even as its central historical thesis is rejected. Composition is precisely datable to Chóngzhēn 14 (1641) by the self-preface; Hé Kǎi died in the Southern-Míng turmoil c. 1645–1646.
Translations and research
No translation. Hé Kǎi’s Shìběn gǔyì is treated centrally in studies of late-Míng Shī exegesis: Hé Yùmíng, Míngdài Shī jīng xuéshǐ lùn; Lín Qìzhāng 林啟彰, “Hé Kǎi Shī jīng shìběn gǔyì yánjiū” (in his Míngdài jīngxué yánjiū, Tāiběi: Wén jīn, 2002), 287–337. On Hé Kǎi as a Southern-Míng court figure see Lynn Struve, The Southern Ming, 1644–1662 (Yale, 1984), pp. 96–104. The 28-mansion correlation has attracted some attention as an instance of late-Míng cosmographical thinking applied to jīngxué: see Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics (Oxford, 2012), pp. 78–89, on parallel late-Míng xiù-system applications.
Other points of interest
The Yùtí (“Imperially Inscribed”) poem prefixed to the WYG copy is unusually long and unusually negative — a sign that the Qiánlóng emperor took personal offense at Hé Kǎi’s reordering of the Shī jīng, perhaps because rearranging a Confucian canon by lunar-mansion correlations seemed presumptuous as well as wrong. The Sìkù editors’ subsequent “but the work cannot be discarded” verdict effectively softens the imperial censure into a tolerable tension between negative judgement and positive utility — an exemplary case of how the WYG editorial team managed the gap between imperial whim and bibliographic responsibility.
The work circulated under the title Shìběn gǔyì on the model of the lost Shìběn 世本 (a Zhōu-period royal genealogy that Sīmǎ Qiān used to compose the Shǐ jì, transmitted via Liú Xiàng’s xù lù and Huángfǔ Mì’s account). Hé Kǎi’s own preface explains he “stole the name” Shìběn and added gǔyì to mark his work as distinct.