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毛詩徐氏音

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Text ID
KR1c0069
Date
370–397
Dynasty
晉

Máo Shī Xú-shì yīn 毛詩徐氏音

Master Xú’s Phonological Glosses on the Mao Recension of the Poetry by 徐邈 (撰)

About the work

A reconstructed single-juǎn collection of Eastern-Jìn fǎnqiè 反切 phonological glosses on the Máo Shī 毛詩 by 徐邈 Xú Miǎo (344–397), zì Xiānmín 仙民. Xú Miǎo composed yīn (phonological glosses) for all of the Five Classics; the Máo Shī yīn — one juǎn — was originally an integral phonological treatise but had been lost as a freestanding text by the Sòng. What survives is a reconstruction made from the citations in 陸德明 Lù Démíng’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文, and the present 1-juǎn fragment is the standard form drawn from Mǎ Guóhàn’s 馬國翰 Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書.

The work is organised by Máo Shī poem sequence (the surviving fragment runs Guófēng 國風 / Zhōunán 周南 → Zhàonán 召南 → onward) and for each gloss preserves: the source-phrase from the Shī (or from Máo’s zhuàn / Zhèng’s jiàn commentary upon it); the character glossed; and Xú’s fǎnqiè spelling, sometimes with a brief usage-note (“後皆同” — “the same in all subsequent occurrences”). The attribution-tag for each gloss in the reconstruction is “陸德明《釋文》” — i.e., each fragment is drawn from the Jīngdiǎn shìwén citation-stratum.

Abstract

The Máo Shī Xú-shì yīn is one of seven or eight Xú Miǎo phonological treatises catalogued in early bibliographies (the others — Zhōuyì yīn, Gǔwén Shàngshū yīn KR1b0061, Lǐ jì yīn, Chūnqiū Zuǒshì yīn, Lùnyǔ yīn, Zhuāngzǐ yīn, Liè zǐ yīn — are similarly reconstructed in the Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū). All were lost as integral treatises after the Táng but survive in extensive citations in Lù Démíng’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén. The Máo Shī yīn is recorded in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì (《隋書‧經籍志》) under Xú Miǎo’s name in 1 juǎn.

Composition is during Xú Miǎo’s mature career: he was the principal classical tutor of the heir-apparent Sīmǎ Dézōng (the future Ān-dì 安帝) at the Eastern-Jìn court under Xiào-wǔ-dì 孝武帝, and the yīn treatises were composed for that pedagogical setting; a notBefore of 370 (roughly his prime-of-court period) and a notAfter of 397 (year of his death) gives a defensible bracket for composition.

The work’s principal scholarly value lies in two related areas. (1) For historical phonology, Xú’s fǎnqiè readings are one of the most important witnesses to the southern Eastern-Jìn pronunciation of the late fourth century — the Jiànkāng 建康 court dialect specifically — and are a foundational source for the modern reconstruction of Qièyùn-shìjì pre-history. Xú is famously able (per modern phonologists working with the Shìwén citation stratum) to distinguish heavy-and-light labials, a contrast that becomes only systematised in the Qièyùn tradition two centuries later. (2) For Shī readings, the phonological glosses sometimes preserve textual variants and Xú’s interpretive choices on disputed zhāng — the fǎnqiè of a character can disambiguate the Shī line’s reading from one of two or three competing parses.

Translations and research

No Western-language translation located; the fragment is too brief and technical for monograph treatment.

Modern Chinese-language scholarship has produced substantial work on Xú Miǎo’s phonology and its place in the late-fourth-century southern court-language: see particularly Zhōu Zǔmó 周祖謨, Wèi Jìn Nán-Běi-Cháo yùnbù zhī yǎnbiàn and the long line of work building on his collection of Six-Dynasties fǎnqiè glosses; also Jiǎng Xī 蔣希文, Xú Miǎo yīnxì yánjiū 徐邈音系研究 (modern monograph); Chéng Bīngyán 程炳琰, Xú Miǎo yīnzhù yánjiū (PhD dissertation series); and the contributions to Yīnyùn xué tōnglùn 音韻學通論 series edited by various Chinese phonologists. For the place of Xú’s Máo Shī yīn in the broader history of Shī-recension phonology, see also Lín Qìngzhāng 林慶彰 ed., Jīngdiǎn shìwén yánjiū lùnjí 經典釋文研究論集.

Other points of interest

The reconstruction’s organisation by Shī-poem-sequence with explicit “陸德明《釋文》” attribution-tags shows the methodological care of Mǎ Guóhàn’s nineteenth-century jíyì (collected-lost-fragments) workshop: each gloss is sourced to its citation-locus, allowing a modern reader to verify the reconstruction against the Jīngdiǎn shìwén itself. This methodological transparency makes the Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū the standard reference for all the lost Six-Dynasties jīng yīn treatises, not just Xú Miǎo’s.

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