Yúdōng xuéshī 虞東學詩
by 顧鎮 (Gù Zhèn, zì Bèijiǔ 備九, hào Gǔqiū 古湫 / Yúdōng 虞東, 1720–1792, 常熟)
About the work
A 12-juan commentary on the Shījīng 詩經 / Máoshī 毛詩 (KR1c0001) by Gù Zhèn, mid-Qiánlóng. The book is constructed as an explicit mediation between two warring schools of Qīng Shī scholarship — Sòng-style “study learning” (講學), which exalts Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 Shī jí zhuàn 詩集傳 and dismisses the Xiǎo xù 小序, and Hàn-style evidential learning (博古), which defends the Xiǎo xù against Zhū Xī. The volume opens with a long lìyán 例言 setting out Gù’s methodological premises and ten programmatic essays (詩說) on, in order, the Xù, Zhèng Xuán’s Shī pǔ, the rhymes, the textual divisions, the xìng trope, the orthodox/altered (正變) sequence, the relation of Shī to music, the “sī wú xié” 思無邪 maxim, the tradition of the loss of the Shī, and the “trace one’s own intent to grasp the poet’s intent” (以意逆志) principle. Only after these essays does the standard line-by-line commentary begin.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Yúdōng xuéshī in twelve juan was composed by Gù Zhèn of the present dynasty. Gù (zì Bèijiǔ, hào Gǔqiū, native of Chángshú 常熟; since Chángshú anciently lay in the Hǎiyú 海虞 region and Gù lived east of the city wall, he also styled himself Yúdōng) was a jìnshì of the Jiǎxū year of Qiánlóng [甲戌, 1754] and rose to zhǔshì in the Imperial Clan Court (宗人府主事). The general thrust of this book is that the “study” houses defer to Zhū Xī’s Jí zhuàn and disparage the Xiǎo xù, while the antiquarian houses endorse the Xiǎo xù and impeach the Jí zhuàn; but the Jí zhuàn itself dares neither wholly to follow nor wholly to abolish the Xiǎo xù. Gù therefore mediates with diplomatic restraint, riding two horses, holding that the two schools’ positions are not so different in fundamentals — surely one method of dispute resolution. He cites several dozen authorities, drawing most from Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修, Sū Zhé 蘇轍, Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙, and Yán Càn 嚴粲. Although he forges his own readings out of the welter of opinion, when an interpretation derives from a particular predecessor he notes the source under the line. Further: the Jí zhuàn concerns itself with moral meaning and slights philology, paleography, and philological phonology; on these matters Gù conducts careful evidential research, with real foundations, and does not merely talk past the Shī with empty argument. Among Hàn and Sòng schools he can be called a fair holder of the balance. The book is late, but of no small benefit to readers of the Shī.
Respectfully revised and submitted, eleventh month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng [1779].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Gù Zhèn (1720–1792, zì Bèijiǔ, hào Gǔqiū / Yúdōng) was a Chángshú native, a jìnshì of 1754 (Qiánlóng 19), who rose to zhǔshì in the Imperial Clan Court (宗人府主事) and directed both the Báilùdòng 白鹿洞 and the Zhōngshān 鍾山 academies. His other surviving works include the Sānlǐ zhájì 三禮札記 and a literary collection Yúdōng xiānshēng wénlù 虞東先生文錄. (The catalog meta gives 1718 as his birth year; CBDB and Wikidata give 1720, which is followed here.)
The work is one of the better-known Qīng “mediating” treatments of the Máoshī tradition: rather than choose between the Hàn-learning defence of the Xiǎo xù (associated above all with Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊’s Jīngyì kǎo 經義考 milieu) and the Sòng-learning rejection of the Xiǎo xù (associated with Zhū Xī’s Shī jí zhuàn), Gù argues that the Xiǎo xù’s opening sentence is genuine and authoritative (he attributes it to 國史 record-keepers, not to Zǐxià 子夏 nor to Wèi Hóng 衛宏), and that the rest of each Xù is later overlay — a position drawn explicitly from Sū Zhé and Chéng Tài 程泰之. He cites widely from Ōuyáng Xiū, Sū Zhé, Lǚ Zǔqiān, Yán Càn, and many others, and the prefatory ten essays make this in effect a summa of Gù’s Shī-scholarship method. The Sìkù editors’ verdict — a balanced mediator between Hàn and Sòng learning — became the standard frame for the work in subsequent histories of Qīng Shī studies.
The text was edited and submitted in the 11th month of Qiánlóng 44 (1779) under the standard Sìkù imprimatur.
Translations and research
No English translation exists. No standalone modern punctuated edition has been located; the text circulates in the Wényuāngé Sìkù photo-reprint and in digital transcriptions (ctext.org, Wikisource, Shídiǎn gǔjí SK0288). The work appears in survey treatments of Qīng Shījīng scholarship as a representative “持平” (balanced) mediation between Hàn and Sòng — see general histories such as Xià Chuáncái 夏傳才 Shījīng yánjiū shǐ 詩經研究史 and Hóng Zhànhóu 洪湛侯 Shījīng xué shǐ 詩經學史 — but no dedicated monograph or article on Yúdōng xuéshī has been confirmed.
Other points of interest
Gù’s position on the authorship of the Xiǎo xù (opening sentence by the guóshǐ 國史 chroniclers, the rest accreted by Hàn-era teachers) is closer to a modern critical position than to either of the eighteenth-century factions he sought to reconcile, and the ten prefatory shī shuō essays anticipate methodological concerns (textual layering, the relation between editor and reciter) familiar from later philology.