Xù Shī zhuàn niǎo míng juǎn 續詩傳鳥名卷
Continuation Volume on the Bird Names in the Tradition on the Poetry by 毛奇齡 (Máo Qílíng, zì Dàkě 大可, hào Xīhé 西河, 1623–1716)
About the work
A 3-juǎn Shī-natural-history work by Máo Qílíng, derived from a single surviving juǎn (devoted to bird-names) of his lost Máo Shī xù zhuàn 毛詩續傳 (38 juǎn; written in his early years and lost while he was avoiding enemies). The single fortunate surviving juǎn was recovered from a neighbor’s son surnamed Wú, after which Máo and his pupils Mò Chūnyuán 莫春園 and Zhāng Wénfēng 張文檒 expanded it together into the present 3 juǎn.
The methodology: each entry first cites Zhū Xī’s Jí zhuàn gloss, then critiques it. The work continues the Máo zhuàn line on natural-history identification, and corrects Zhū Xī’s Jí zhuàn — Zhū Xī’s Jí zhuàn, in Máo’s view, was strong on praise-and-blame interpretation but weak on míngwù xùngǔ (natural-history glossing).
The Sìkù editors register both strength and weakness:
- Strength: The detailed kǎozhèng on bird-identifications is broadly substantial, with extensive evidentiary citation; useful for kǎo dìng (corrective collation).
- Weakness: Self-contradiction with Máo’s other works (e.g., on the Qí fēng Jī míng — Máo elsewhere identifies it as a chán rén (slanderer) poem, here he uses the old reading of the wife informing the husband of the dawn); over-strained etymologies (e.g., the jiāo liáo / táo chóng identification, with the verb táo 掏 = jiāo / cuò the worm out from inside the reed); and the egregious yīnyáng / xiàngshù style etymology of yīng 鸎 (deriving the character from the lí 離 = “two eyes” and gèn 艮 = “eight” trigrams, and citing the Hóngfàn wǔ shì doctrine to justify it) — which the Sìkù editors describe as exceeding even Wáng Ānshí’s notorious etymologies in zì shuō 字説.
The Sìkù conclusion: useful for kǎo dìng (corrective collation), even if the wilder readings should be set aside.
Tiyao
Your servants etc. respectfully present: Xù Shī zhuàn niǎo míng juǎn in 3 juǎn. By the guócháo (Qīng) Máo Qílíng. Qílíng’s Máo Shī xù zhuàn, written while avoiding enemies, was lost; afterwards, from a neighbor’s son surnamed Wú, he recovered the final juǎn on bird-names — a single juǎn — and together with his pupils Mò Chūnyuán and Zhāng Wénfēng he edited and expanded it, producing the present 3 juǎn.
The principal direction is to continue Máo zhuàn and to correct Zhū Xī’s Jí zhuàn. Each entry first cites the Jí zhuàn’s text, then in turn critiques its rights and wrongs. Considering the works that have annotated the míngwù of Máo Shī’s plants-trees-insects-fish, since Wú’s Lù Jī (Lù Jī of the Sān Guó period) onward, the authors are indeed many; Zhū Xī’s Shī jí zhuàn mainly directs měicì’s zhǐ, and míngwù xùngǔ is what he passes over. This work is centrally evidential, and its readings are accordingly more detailed.
Only relying on his own broad arguments, he often raises charges against the Jí zhuàn; and his own statements unavoidably also have flaws. For instance, in his earlier Máo Shī shěng piān, he identified the Qí fēng Jī míng as a chán rén (slanderer) poem; here this work uses the old reading of the worthy consort announcing the dawn — front and back contradictory in his own works. Jiāoliáo (the wren) is named táo chóng (peach-worm) just as the qiè zhī (cuckoo-shrike) is named sāng hù (mulberry-protector) — not on account of the bird’s roost or food. Qílíng’s reading — that its roost and food are not at peach, but its beak is sharp like an awl, specifically used to tāo (extract) worms inside reeds, hence called tāo chóng; tāo and táo characters interchange — is especially unfounded.
As for the gloss of xiàn huàn huáng niǎo: he uses Máo Cháng’s old gloss — the meaning is fundamentally well-supported. Yet he says: “the character yīng 鸎 is from two eyes plus yī bā (one and eight); the two-eyes element being lí’s 離 = “two eyes”; the yī bā element being gèn’s 艮 = “eight”; further the beak is from these”; he says the character yīng 鶯 is from two fires; lí = “fire eye”; the eye is fundamentally lí-fire; the Shàngshū Hóngfàn doctrine of the five-affairs-eye-belonging-to-the-five-elements-fire — the yīng-head’s wearing two fires being the same as yīng’s wearing two eyes. This — even Wáng Ānshí’s zì shuō — does not over-strain to this degree.
Yet on the whole his evidentiary citation is comprehensive and pertinent — there are many points with grounding. To record and preserve it widens the basis for kǎo dìng — which is, after all, not against the duō shí (knowing many things — the Lúnyǔ on the Shī’s natural-history learning) sense. Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 3rd month, respectfully collated. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Editor: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Xù Shī zhuàn niǎo míng juǎn is Máo Qílíng’s natural-history-focused Shī monograph, surviving as a 3-juǎn expansion of a single recovered juǎn from his lost early Máo Shī xù zhuàn (38 juǎn). The expansion was done collaboratively with Máo’s pupils Mò Chūnyuán and Zhāng Wénfēng. The work focuses on the identification of bird-species in the Shī, in the tradition of Lù Jī’s 陸璣 Máo Shī cǎo mù chóng yú shū — but with the added polemic edge of correcting Zhū Xī’s Jí zhuàn.
Composition is undatable beyond the broad bracket of Máo’s mature scholarship (the recovery of the lost juǎn postdated his return to scholarly life from his post-Míng exile period, but was before the Sìkù collation of 1781). The work shares with Máo’s other Shī writings — KR1c0051, KR1c0052, KR1c0053 — a polemic temper directed at Lǐxué orthodoxy, and a willingness to construct elaborate etymological arguments. It is the only one of Máo’s Shī works to focus specifically on natural-history identification.
Translations and research
No translation. The work is treated in the standard Qīng natural-history-of-the-Shī surveys, alongside Yáo Bǐng’s Shī shí míng jiě (KR1c0055), Chén Dà-zhāng’s Shī zhuàn míng wù jí lǎn (KR1c0056), and Gù Dòng-gāo’s Máo Shī lèi shì (KR1c0060). On the broader natural-history tradition see Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (SUNY, 2002), with discussion of the Shī natural-history identification corpus.
Other points of interest
The unusually elaborate trigram-based etymology of yīng 鸎 / yīng 鶯 — the Sìkù editors compare it (unfavorably) to Wáng Ānshí’s Zì shuō — registers Máo Qílíng’s idiosyncratic temper. Máo’s Yìxué methodology (the wǔ yì 五義 doctrine in KR1a0126) likewise involved heavy use of trigram-and-image reasoning; the Niǎo míng juǎn etymologies show that this approach extended into his philology of the Shī as well.