Máo Shī pǔ zhù 毛詩譜注
Annotations on the Genealogical Chart of the Mao Recension of the Poetry by 徐整 (撰, attributed)
About the work
A fragmentary single-juǎn lineage-and-transmission text on the Máo Shī 毛詩 school, traditionally attributed to the Three Kingdoms 孫吳 court historian 徐整 Xú Zhěng (fl. mid 3rd century). The work is not a poem-by-poem commentary but an annotation on the Máo Shī pǔ — i.e., a gloss / supplement to the Máo Shī genealogical chart (lineages of teachers and students), the genre whose canonical form is Zhèng Xuán’s 鄭玄 Máo Shī pǔ 毛詩譜 (a biǎo listing the Shī recension’s transmitters from Zǐxià 子夏 / Bǔ Shāng 卜商 downward). Xú Zhěng’s zhù sets out two parallel accounts of the Máo transmission: the standard lineage (Zǐxià → Gāo Xíngzǐ 高行子 → Xuē Cāngzǐ 薛蒼子 → Bó Miàozǐ 帛妙子 → “Greater” Máo Gōng of Hé-jiān → “Lesser” Máo Gōng), and an alternative chain (Zǐxià → Zēng Shēn 曾申 → Wèi Lǐ Kè 李克 → Lǔ Mèng Zhòngzǐ 孟仲子 → Gēnmóuzǐ 根牟子 → Sūn Qīngzǐ 孫卿子 [= Xún Qīng 荀卿] → Greater Máo Gōng); these are then cross-checked against the Hàn shū rúlín zhuàn lineage running from Máo Gōng through Guàn Cháng-gōng 貫長公, Xiè Yán-nián 解延年, Guó Xú Áo 虢徐敖, and Jiǔjiāng Chén Xiá 陳俠.
Abstract
The work is recorded in early bibliographies but lost as a freestanding text; the surviving fragment — a single coherent paragraph reproducing the two lineages and the Hàn shū genealogy — is preserved in the medieval lèishū and reconstructed by Qīng compilers (the standard reconstruction is in Mǎ Guóhàn’s 馬國翰 Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書). The attribution to Xú Zhěng is uncertain: the CHANT/Hanji series lists the work as “anon-prefix” with Xú Zhěng prefixed editorially, indicating that the fragment as it survives carries no internal author-statement; the attribution is drawn from secondary cross-listings (Xú Zhěng’s Máo Shī pǔ annotation appears in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì and Jiù Táng shū yìwén zhì listings of Three-Kingdoms Shī-school works). For lifedate evidence on Xú Zhěng (whose dates are not precisely transmitted), see the person note: he is conventionally dated to the reign of Sūn Quán 孫權 (r. 222–252), giving a notBefore of 220 and notAfter of 280 (the end of Wú) as the defensible composition bracket.
The fragment’s principal historical value is twofold. First, it preserves a non-standard version of the Máo Shī transmission lineage — the second chain (via Zēng Shēn / Mèng Zhòngzǐ / Gēnmóuzǐ / Sūn Qīng) is unusually detailed and links the Máo Shī school to Xún Qīng 荀卿 (Xún Zǐ) directly, an attribution that has been the subject of substantial later Confucian-historiographical debate. Second, it cross-cites the Hàn shū rúlín zhuàn genealogy, giving evidence for the Hàn-Wèi compilation of the Máo Shī school-records into systematic genealogies. The work is consequently an important — if fragmentary — witness to the early-medieval Máo Shī school’s self-understanding of its own transmission.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language scholarship located specifically on the Máo Shī pǔ zhù.
Modern Chinese-language studies of the Máo Shī lineage traditions (Hú Píngshēng 胡平生, Liú Yùcái 劉毓才, and others) treat this fragment as one of the primary witnesses for the Sān Guó / Six-Dynasties Máo Shī lineage. The fragment is regularly cited in modern philological discussions of the Máo–Xún connection.
Other points of interest
The fragment’s claim that the Máo Shī transmission ran through Xún Qīng 荀卿 (Sūn Qīngzǐ 孫卿子) is the principal early textual basis for the broader thesis — much elaborated by later Confucian historiographers from Hán Yù 韓愈 through Wāng Zhōngwáng 王中王 — that the Máo school’s intellectual genealogy descends from the Xún Zǐ line of Confucian thought rather than the Mèng Zǐ line. The status of this claim is contested; the fragment is too short to support it definitively, but the connection becomes a leitmotif of later Máo Shī hermeneutics.
Links
- Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū reconstruction: https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=gb&res=89175
- CHANT Hanji record: CH2e1055