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周禮注疏

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Text ID
KR1d0003
Date
650–655
Dynasty
唐

Zhōulǐ zhùshū 周禮注疏

The Rites of Zhōu, with Annotation and Sub-Commentary

by 鄭玄 (注) · 賈公彥 (疏) · 陸德明 (音義)

About the work

The full annotated Zhōulǐ in 42 juan, comprising the canonical text, Zhèng Xuán’s 鄭玄 (127–200) Eastern-Hàn annotation (zhù 注), Jiǎ Gōngyàn’s 賈公彥 (fl. 650–655) Táng sub-commentary (shū 疏), and Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 (ca. 550–630) phonetic glosses (yīnyì 音義) extracted from the Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文. This is the standard zhùshū layered presentation of the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001) and one of the cornerstone texts of the Shísān jīng zhùshū 十三經注疏. The Wényuāngé Sìkù copy adds a Qīng-period editorial kǎozhèng 考證 sub-layer compiled by Wú Fù 吳紱 (fourteen juan equivalent, distributed throughout).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Zhōulǐ zhùshū in forty-two juan was annotated by Zhèng Xuán of the Hàn and given a sub-commentary by Jiǎ Gōngyàn of the Táng. Zhèng’s Yì zhù has already been catalogued. Gōngyàn was a native of Yǒngnián in Míngzhōu, who in the Yǒnghuī era held office up to tàixué bóshì of the Imperial Academy; his career is given in the Jiù Tángshū Rúxué chapter.

The Zhōulǐ alone, of all the classics, surfaced latest — first under Liú Dé, the Princely-River Prince Xiàn 河間獻王 — and the disputes over its authenticity have been so disorderly that they cannot be enumerated in detail. Only Zhāng Zài 張載 (Hèngqú 横渠) wrote in his Yǔlù: “The Zhōulǐ is a wholly proper book, but among its passages there must be some inserted by men of the late ages.” Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 in the Tōngzhì 通志 cited Sūn Chǔ 孫處 to the effect that the Duke of Zhōu, after the six years of his regency, on completing the book returned it to Fēng without ever putting it into actual practice — like the Táng Xiǎnqìng and Kāiyuán ritual codes, drawn up to await future use. Hence its building-of-capitals does not match the Shàogào and Luògào; its enfeoffment plan does not match Wǔchéng and Mèngzǐ; its officialdom does not match the Zhōuguān; its jiǔjī zoning does not match the Yǔgòng (a critical note observes that of these allegedly-conflicting works, the Shàogào, Luògào and Mèngzǐ may indeed conflict, but the Yǔgòng is a TángYú text, the Wǔchéng and Zhōuguān belong to Méi Zé’s Old-Text Shàngshū, and the Wángzhì is a recovered piece by the bóshì of Hàn Wéndì — none weighty enough to count against the Zhōulǐ; but the argument is half-right, half-wrong).

This view comes near the truth without exhausting it. The Zhōulǐ was composed in the early Zhōu, but the verifiable Zhōu records reach back only to the Chūnqiū and after. In the three-hundred-odd years before the eastward removal, the changes in offices and the additions and reductions to administration are uncountable. At the start, with King Chéng and Kāng not yet far past, the alterations were minor. But the men making the alterations were not all the Duke of Zhōu, so later-age legislation was inserted, and the book grew impure. Then as time passed and circumstances changed, more and more of it became unenforceable, and the book fell into desuetude — much as later codes are revised every few decades, with each revision adding something. The history of recent revisions can be checked, but the remoter alterations leave no trace, and the whole has come down to us as if it were the original work of the Duke of Zhōu. Once the institutions had been replaced, the bamboo-strip text remained, and antiquarians preserved it as a literary monument; this is why it has come down through the ages — exactly as the Kāiyuán liùdiǎn and the Zhènghé wǔlǐ are no longer in operation, yet still survive in transmitted copies. There is nothing strange in that. If forgers had been at work, why would they have forged only five of the six ministries and pointedly left the Dōngguān missing — to the point of offering a thousand pieces of gold for it without success?

Forgers also pillage older texts and use the genuine to authenticate the spurious — as in the case of the Old-Text Shàngshū. Liú Xīn revered the Zuǒzhuàn, but the rituals named in the Zuǒzhuàn are nowhere in the Zhōulǐ. The seventeen chapters of the Yílǐ are all inside the seventy-chapter gǔjīng listed in the Qīlüè, and the forty-nine chapters of the Lǐjì are all inside the 214 chapters listed by Liú Xiàng. Yet the Yílǐ Pìnlǐ’s account of guests being received with grain, fodder, and provisions, and the lists of biān, dòu, fǔ, guǐ, xíng, hú, dǐng and wèng vessels, do not match the Zhōulǐ’s Zhǎngkè; the Yílǐ Dàshèlǐ’s account of the king’s and feudal lords’ targets and shooting positions does not match the Sīshè; the Lǐjì Záji’s mention of the zǐ and the nán lords holding guī tablets does not match the Diǎnruì; the Lǐqì’s seating-counts for the king and feudal lords do not match the Sījīyán. Such discrepancies between the Zhōulǐ and the other two ritual classics are many. If Liú Xīn had really fabricated this book in the name of the Duke of Zhōu, what would have prevented him from forcing the wording into harmony with the other classics in order to corroborate it? The fact that he left such inconsistencies tells us that the Zhōulǐ is not entirely original, but it is also not a fabrication.

The Kǎogōngjì mentions the daggers of the state of Zhèng and “Qín has no lú”; Zhèng was enfeoffed under King Xuān, and Qín under King Xiào. So the Kǎogōngjì is plainly not the original work of the Duke of Zhōu. But the Nán Qí shū records that Crown Prince Wénhuì, when garrisoned at Yōngzhōu, recovered from a robbed tomb of a King of Chǔ a set of bamboo strips written in kēdǒu (tadpole) script, two chǐ and a fraction long; he showed them to Wáng Sēngqián 王僧虔, who identified them as a kēdǒu version of the Kǎogōngjì. So the Kǎogōngjì is also a pre-Qín text, and although it cannot stand for the Dōngguān, the “hundred crafts” are one of the nine classics and Gònggōng is one of the nine offices; the early kings esteemed craft-making, and the Kǎogōngjì still preserves something of ancient design. Yú Tíngchūn 兪庭椿 and his successors who carved up the five surviving ministries are merely ignorant.

Zhèng’s note in the Suí zhì is given as twelve juan; Jiǎ’s sub-commentary, being more verbose, was split into fifty juan, and the Old and New Tángshū both follow that figure. The present text in forty-two juan is of unknown amalgamation. Zhèng was a specialist in the Three Ritual Classics, so his exegesis is particularly fine. His one shortcoming is a fondness for citing the wěi (apocrypha); Ōuyáng Xiū’s collected works contain a memorial requesting the editing of the Five Classics with a view to deleting them. But the apocrypha are not all unreliable, nor all reliable — the proper procedure is to discriminate, not to silently alter the ancient text. Zhèng also liked to emend the wording of the classic, which is another defect. But his notes only say “should read as such-and-such” and do not, like the post-Northern-Sòng scholars, casually invoke “displaced strips” by the page. He need not be censured too harshly. Gōngyàn’s sub-commentary is also exhaustively learned and substantial: it brings out and develops Zhèng’s learning. Zhū Xī’s Yǔlù says that “of the zhèngyì on the Five Classics, the Zhōulǐ shū is the best.” It seems that of the Sòng Confucians, only Zhū Xī had a deep grasp of the rituals, and so could appreciate the merits of Zhèng and Jiǎ.

Respectfully revised and submitted, third month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng [1777].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xíxióng 陸鍚熊 (a typographical slip in the source for 錫熊), Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Zhōulǐ zhùshū is the canonical Sānlǐ commentary on the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001) in its received form: Zhèng Xuán’s late-Eastern-Hàn note as the textual foundation, Jiǎ Gōngyàn’s mid-Táng sub-commentary as the exegetical superstructure, and Lù Démíng’s yīnyì gloss as the philological layer. Together with KR1d0028 Yílǐ zhùshū (ZhèngJiǎ) and KR1d0053 Lǐjì zhùshū (ZhèngKǒng Yǐngdá), it constitutes the official Three Ritual Classics layer of the canonical Shísān jīng zhùshū corpus. The Wényuāngé Sìkù copy was further provided with a Qīng kǎozhèng sub-layer (the work of Wú Fù 吳紱, identified as the corrector by his self-naming “(臣紱/)”) integrated as side-notes; this layer addresses textual variants in the Imperial Stone Classics and points of controversy raised by the early-Qīng Hàn xué revival.

The Sìkù editors’ tíyào mounts an extended defence of the Zhōulǐ’s essential authenticity against the long lineage of Chinese scepticism running from Hàn-period objectors (Lín Xiàocún 林孝存, Hé Xiū 何休) through Sòng (Zhāng Zài, Zhèng Qiáo) to the late-Míng. Their argument — that the text reflects an early-Zhōu institutional core overlaid by accretions from many periods, but is not a single late forgery — is essentially the position of modern philology, as anchored in the modern study of pre-Qín state institutions, manuscript finds, and the Kǎogōngjì’s independently datable Warring-States-period strata.

The tíyào contains two minor typographical slips, preserved here in the translation as in the source: 鄭元 for 鄭玄 (Táng-period taboo on the name of Emperor Xuánzōng’s grandson) and 陸鍚熊 for 陸錫熊.

Translations and research

  • Édouard Biot, Le Tcheou-li, ou Rites des Tcheou, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1851) — based on the Zhèng-Jiǎ zhùshū layered text.
  • Sūn Yírǎng 孫詒讓, Zhōulǐ zhèngyì 周禮正義, 88 juan (Zhōnghuá shūjú 1987) — the indispensable late-Qīng critical commentary that absorbs and supersedes the Zhèng-Jiǎ tradition; the most thorough single Three-Rites scholarly work of the Qīng.
  • Wáng Wénjǐn 王文錦 (ed.), Zhōulǐ zhùshū, in the Shísān jīng zhùshū zhěnglǐ běn 十三經注疏整理本 (Běijīng dàxué chūbǎnshè 1999, 2000) — punctuated standard edition.
  • Yáng Tiānyǔ 楊天宇, Zhōulǐ yìzhù 周禮譯注 (Shànghǎi gǔjí 2004) — modern Chinese translation following Zhèng-Jiǎ.
  • Wéi Tāo 韋韜 (Hú Wěichí 胡偉馳), “Jiǎ Gōngyàn Zhōulǐ shū yánjiū” 賈公彥《周禮疏》研究 (Bāshǔ shūshè 2007) — modern monograph on Jiǎ’s sub-commentary technique.

Other points of interest

The Wú Fù 吳紱 kǎozhèng notes incorporated into the Wényuāngé copy are valuable for tracking exactly which textual variants the imperial Sìkù editors registered as already-recognised problems. Wú flags, for instance, that the Stone Classics give “周禮鄭氏注” five characters at the head of every juan, but the Imperial Academy text drops them after juan 1; he restores from the Stone Classic. He also notes that 冬官 is a label added by Hàn editors to the Kǎogōngjì, which originally bore neither the chapter heading nor the dynastic-organ label.

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