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毛詩序義

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Text ID
KR1c0070
Date
400–423
Dynasty
劉宋

Máo Shī xù yì 毛詩序義

The Significance of the Preface(s) to the Mao Recension of the Poetry by 周續之 (撰)

About the work

A reconstructed single-juǎn exegetical fragment-collection on the Máo Shī by 周續之 Zhōu Xùzhī (377–423), the celebrated Eastern-Jìn / Liú-Sòng classicist recluse, one of the “Eighteen Worthies of the Eastern Grove” (Dōnglín shí-bā xián 東林十八賢), disciple of Huì Yuǎn 慧遠 at Mount Lú 廬山, and patroniser of Confucian Shī studies at the early-Sòng court. The fragment carries Zhōu’s gloss-and-explanation on the Máo Shī prefaces (Shī xù 詩序) and on selected poem-lines, integrated with phonological glosses (which overlap with Liú Chāngzōng’s 劉昌宗 work); the title Xù yì (significance of the prefaces) is the principal-text title, but the surviving fragment is in practice a mixed-content collection of Zhōu’s Shī-exegesis and his correspondence on ritual questions (specifically, the doctrine of mourning-attire and three-year-mourning conventions).

Abstract

The work is recorded in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì (《隋書‧經籍志》) under Zhōu Xùzhī’s name; it was lost as a freestanding text by the Sòng period and survives only in fragmentary citations. The reconstruction collected here draws on three principal sources: (i) the Shū chāo 書鈔 (Yú Shìnán’s 虞世南 Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔) citation of Zhōu’s Jiě Shī 解詩 (a parallel or alternative title for the Xù yì); (ii) Yán Zhītuī’s 顏之推 Yán-shì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓 zǐ-wén 字文 chapter, which preserves Zhōu’s reading “cú huì fǎn 徂會反” for 叢 and disputes it; (iii) Yán Shīgǔ’s 顏師古 Kuāng miù zhèng sú 匡謬正俗, which similarly disputes Zhōu’s gloss-readings on multiple lines; and (iv) ritual-exegetical correspondence preserved in collections under the names “Mèng-shì wèn” 孟氏問 (queries by Mr. Mèng with Zhōu Xùzhī’s responses).

Composition is anchored to Zhōu’s mature career. The Sòng shū j. 93 (隱逸傳) records that Zhōu was summoned by Sòng Wǔ-dì 宋武帝 (Liú Yù 劉裕) and his successor Wén-dì 文帝 to lecture on the Five Classics at court, and his Shī exegesis was the principal product of those years. A notBefore of c. 400 (when Zhōu was in his mid-twenties at Mount Lú with Huì Yuǎn) and a notAfter of 423 (year of his death) gives a defensible bracket; the more focused court-period (after c. 420, when Liú Yù took the throne) is the most likely composition window.

The fragment’s interest is twofold. (i) For Shī hermeneutics, Zhōu’s prefatory definition — “Fú fēng yǎ zhě tǐ tóng, ér yóu wǒ huà wù, zé wèi zhī fēng; wù yóu wǒ zhèng, zé wèi zhī yǎ” (the fēng and the yǎ are bodily one, but when I transform things-and-affairs we call it fēng; when things-and-affairs are corrected by me we call it yǎ) — is a major Eastern-Jìn / Liú-Sòng restatement of the fēng / yǎ distinction that the Máo preface and Zhèng Xuán had left only schematic. It frames the distinction as a direction-of-influence (subject-on-object vs. object-on-subject) rather than a generic-political (popular vs. court) distinction. (ii) For ritual studies, Zhōu’s correspondence on three-year-mourning and on the regular zhǎn cuī 斬縗 question of whether mourners should retain the most severe mourning-attire across all three years (Zhōu’s answer is no: heavy mourning zhǎn cuī gives way to qí cuī 齊縗 after the zú kū 卒哭 ritual) is one of the early-medieval ritualist authorities cited by later Táng-Sòng lǐ xué writers.

Translations and research

No Western-language translation located.

Modern Chinese-language treatment: Lín Qìngzhāng 林慶彰, Liù-Cháo Shī-jīng xué shǐ (modern monograph), gives an extended discussion of Zhōu Xùzhī’s place in the early-medieval Shī-exegesis history; further treatment in the Sòng shū rúlín / yǐnyì zhuàn commentaries by Yáng Shūdá 楊樹達 and others. For Zhōu’s place in the Dōnglín shí-bā xián and the Buddhist-Confucian intellectual exchange at Mount Lú, see Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Brill, 1959, repr. 2007), where Zhōu is one of the named lay-scholars in Huì Yuǎn’s circle. For the Yán-shì jiāxùn citation of Zhōu’s readings, see Teng Ssu-yü, Family Instructions for the Yen Clan (Brill, 1968).

Other points of interest

The very high frequency with which later commentators (Yán Zhītuī, Yán Shīgǔ, Lù Démíng) cite Zhōu’s Shī-readings — usually only to dispute them — gives the work a paradoxical importance: Zhōu’s glosses are preserved precisely because his later commentators wanted to refute them. Yán Zhītuī’s complaint that Zhōu’s “cú huì fǎn” reading of 叢 is “chuān záo” (forcing the text) is the most famous: Yán’s Jiā xùn uses it as an exemplary case of Six-Dynasties southern fǎnqiè over-cleverness. This pattern — preservation-through-refutation — is typical of much Six-Dynasties exegetical material that survives only in the Tang philological lèishū tradition.

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