Zhōuguān jíchuán 周官集傳
Collected Commentary on the Officials of Zhōu
by 毛應龍 (撰)
About the work
Máo Yìnglóng’s 毛應龍 (fl. Dàdé era ca. 1297–1307) Yuán-period anthology-commentary on the Zhōulǐ (KR1d0001), originally in 24 juan, surviving in 16 juan (with the Dìguān and Xiàguān sections lost) recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. Máo cites broadly across the Sòng commentary tradition, with particular density of citation from Zhèng È 鄭鍔, Xúshì 徐氏 (his yīnbiàn 音辨), and Ōuyáng Qiānzhī 歐陽謙之; his own readings are flagged with the rubric “Yìnglóng says” (Yìnglóng yuē 應龍曰). His separate Zhōuguān huòwèn 周官或問 in 5 juan also survives only in Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments and is in the Sìkù appended to the relevant sections of Jíchuán. The Zhōuguān jíchuán is the principal Yuán Zhōulǐ anthology — the Yuán counterpart to the Sòng Zhōulǐ dìngyì of Wáng Yǔzhī (KR1d0010) and Zhōulǐ jíshuō edited by Chén Yǒurén (KR1d0013).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhōuguān jíchuán in sixteen juan was composed by Máo Yìnglóng of the Yuán. Zhāng Xuān’s Nèigé shūmù records that Yìnglóng (zì Jièshí, native of Yùzhāng) in the Dàdé era held office as Lǐzhōu jiàoshòu; Jiāngxī gazetteers no longer preserve his name and the details of his career cannot now be checked. The book cites the Confucians’ glosses with great breadth, drawing especially heavily on Zhèng È’s commentary, Xúshì’s yīnbiàn, and Ōuyáng Qiānzhī’s interpretations. His own original interpretations are flagged with “Yìnglóng said” to distinguish them.
There are some places where he perpetuates received error and has not investigated the ancient meaning. For instance, on the Zhōngshī’s “responsible for jīnzòu 金奏 (bell-music) and the playing of the Nine Xià on bells and drums” — Dù Zǐchūn and Zhèng Kāngchéng both take the Nine Xià as musical pieces; but Yìnglóng alone cites Ōuyáng Qiānzhī’s argument that the Zuǒzhuàn Xiāng-4 says “jīnzòu SìXià of three; gōng sings the Wénwáng of three; Wénwáng” — that “gōng sings” indicates poetry that can be sung; “jīnzòu” indicates only sound that can be played but no poetry to sing. Now consulting Kǒng Yǐngdá’s Zuǒzhuàn shū, “in making music one first hangs the bells, hence one says jīnzòu. This is the Jìn way of making music: first sing the SìXià — SìXià being the start of music-making, hence on SìXià one says jīnzòu. Next gōng sings Wénwáng — the music has already begun, no longer needing the bells as start, hence gōnggē.” This explanation suffices to clarify Zhèng’s note. If one took the Nine Xià under the heading of jīnzòu as not musical pieces, then the Zhōngshī also has “for the king’s archery one plays Zōuyú, for dukes plays Lǐshǒu, for ministers plays Cǎipín, for officers plays Cǎifán” — all under jīnzòu — must we hold these as also not musical pieces?
Again on the Sàngzhù’s zhòu 禂 (sacrificial pledge for victims) and zhòu mǎ (for horses) — Zhèng’s note reads zhòu as zhū, the original zhūtài character; for animal-sacrifices it requests fat-and-sound, for horse-sacrifices it requests fat-and-sturdy. Yìnglóng follows Qiānzhī, taking zhòu as chóu “lush” — zhòu shēng being “lush growth” — and rejects Kāngchéng’s altered reading. But the characters zhòu and zhū are anciently homophonous, and Kāngchéng did not alter the reading; Yáng Xióng’s Guósānlǎo zhēn “carrying the rich and overturning the sù — wickedness covering the zhūzhāng”; the Jìnshū Mùróng Chuí zǎijì with Fú Jiān’s reply: “zhūzhāng both manifest and concealed”; the Wèishū Ēnxìng zhuàn: “zhūzhāng unceasing”; the Northern-Qí Yuán Biāo zhuàn: “the Wú thieves zhūzhāng” — zhūzhāng is just chóuzhāng, zhū and chóu sharing the same sound and hence semantically borrowed. How can this be charged to Kāngchéng’s altered reading?
Again on the Lìshì’s 㮚氏 fǔ 鬴 measure, Yìnglóng cites Zhèng È: “Yànzǐ said ‘six years and four shēng make a fǔ’; Guǎnzǐ said ‘one hundred shēng makes a fǔ’ — Kāngchéng says four shēng makes a dòu, four dòu makes a qū, four qū makes a fǔ — that is six dòu four shēng. Reading the following text shows the bottom one cùn and contains one dòu, then it should be a dòu; if a fǔ’s bottom is one cùn and contains one dòu, then a fǔ squared a chǐ on the inside contains ten dòu, beyond doubt — and ten dòu is one hundred shēng, exactly Guǎn Zhòng’s fǔ. Kāngchéng’s claim that four shēng makes a dòu, doubling each step, until the fǔ reaches six dòu four shēng, fails to consider the Zǐrén. The Zǐrén makes drinking-vessels: jué one shēng, gū three shēng, presented with jué and reciprocated with gū — one presentation and three reciprocations is one dòu. Now one presentation is one shēng, three reciprocations is nine shēng; combined with the one [from presentation] gives ten — if not ten shēng for a dòu, then what?” — Kāngchéng’s “four shēng for a dòu” is mistaken.
Now consulting Kāngchéng on the fǔ of six dòu four shēng, this is in fact based on the classical text “square chǐ, deep chǐ” calculated by the grain-rice formula. The grain-rice formula has it that “square one chǐ, deep one chǐ six cùn two fēn” suffices for one shí. È, taking the fǔ as one shí, would require the fǔ to be square chǐ deep chǐ six cùn two fēn — how then to explain the classical “square chǐ deep chǐ”? The Guǎnzǐ Hǎiwáng chapter “salt: one hundred shēng makes a fǔ”; Fáng Xuánlíng’s note holds that salt twelve liǎng seven zhū one shǔ one tenth makes a shēng, equivalent to rice six gě four sháo; one hundred shēng of salt is seventy-six jīn twelve liǎng seventeen zhū two léi makes a fǔ, equivalent to rice six dòu four shēng — so the Hǎiwáng one-hundred-shēng fǔ is in fact one hundred shēng of salt, not one hundred shēng of grain. È takes Guǎnzǐ’s salt-measuring fǔ and uses it to compare with the Lìshì’s grain-measuring fǔ — already incomparable. As to Kāngchéng’s note on Zǐrén, taking dòu as dǒu — this is precisely because the dòu stops at four shēng, never reaching the count of one presentation and three reciprocations; È mistakes dòu for a drinking-vessel and so forces the ten-shēng text, then turns around to attack the substitution of dòu for dǒu — without realising that the ancients used dǒu for drinking, not dòu. The Shī Xíngwěi piece, Máo’s note: “the great dǒu is three chǐ long”; the Zhànguó cè: “ordering the artisan to make a metal dǒu with a long tail to drink with the King of Dài, then turning the dǒu to strike him” — these prove dǒu as drinking-vessel. The Yuèyǔ: “shāngjiǔ dòuròu”; the Hánfēizǐ Wàichǔ chapter: “took one dòu of meat” — these prove dòu as eating-vessel, not drinking-vessel. How then can the text of Zǐrén be cited as cross-witness to the Guǎnzǐ?
All such cases unfortunately stick to received tradition and fall short of careful verification. As to the systems of crown-and-robe and chariot-and-banner, the temple-and-shrine zhāomù arrangement, the Sīzūnyí’s six zūn and six yí, the Sījīyán’s five jī and five xí, the discrepancy between fāng and gōng in yìgōng, the zhènglǐ and zhèngyuè both-being-used codes — his citation and verification are quite clear. The Sòng-since Zhōulǐ commentaries that have been scattered and lost can still be glimpsed in their broad outline through this text; so the merit of compilation-and-collection is by no means small.
The book in earlier catalogues is given as twenty-four juan; the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves it scattered, with the Dìguān and Xiàguān exactly missing, the other four ministries fairly complete head and tail. We have respectfully edited it as sixteen juan, calculating three juan per ministry totalling twenty-four juan and so retaining the original order. Yìnglóng’s other work, Zhōuguān huòwèn in five juan, is also outside the Jíchuán; the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn has cut and appended it after the Jíchuán. What survives is only nineteen entries on Tiānguān, fourteen on Chūnguān, and one each on Qiūguān and Kǎogōngjì — too sparse to form a separate volume. We attach them under the corresponding zhuàn, both to avoid loss of fragments and to allow the two parts of one school’s interpretation to corroborate each other.
Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Zhōuguān jíchuán is the principal Yuán-period Zhōulǐ anthology-commentary, structurally analogous to Wáng Yǔzhī’s KR1d0010 Zhōulǐ dìngyì but covering Yuán scholarship as well as Sòng. Máo Yìnglóng’s distinctive contribution is the high density of citation from Zhèng È — a Sòng commentator whose work survives largely through Máo’s quotations — and from Ōuyáng Qiānzhī, otherwise barely transmitted. The Sìkù tíyào mounts a substantial critical refutation of Máo’s adherence to Ōuyáng Qiānzhī’s reading of the Nine Xià and to Zhèng È’s calculations of the fǔ measure, demonstrating in detail that Zhèng Xuán’s original positions were correct.
The text was originally 24 juan, lost in its complete form by the early Míng. The Sìkù editors recovered four ministries (Tiānguān, Chūnguān, Qiūguān, Kǎogōngjì) substantially complete from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and reorganised them as 16 juan; the Dìguān and Xiàguān are entirely missing.
The catalog dating is given as the Dàdé era; the bracket adopted here (1297–1320) covers the most plausible composition window during Máo’s Lǐzhōu jiàoshòu tenure and immediately after.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Máo Yìnglóng is treated in surveys of Yuán-period classical scholarship; the Jíchuán is the principal source for the recovery of Zhèng È’s now-lost commentary.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù editors’ detailed refutation of Zhèng È’s fǔ-measure argument — including a calculation of the volume of one hundred shēng of salt versus one hundred shēng of grain, with citation of Fáng Xuánlíng’s note on the Guǎnzǐ Hǎiwáng — is one of the more sustained pieces of mathematical-philological argument in the Sānlǐ section of the Sìkù tíyào and a good representative of the Hànxué evidential method at its most quantitatively rigorous.
Links
- Chinaknowledge: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/zhouli.html