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箴膏肓

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Text ID
KR1e0011
Date
165–200
Dynasty
漢

Zhēn gāohuāng 箴膏肓

Needles for the Incurably Ill ([Zuǒ-tradition’s] Vital-Organ Diseases)

by 鄭玄 (撰)

About the work

The Zhēn gāohuāng 箴膏肓 in one juan is a Qīng-period reconstruction (probably eighteenth-century, possibly by Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟 or someone in his school) of Zhèng Xuán’s 鄭玄 (127–200) lost rebuttal to Hé Xiū 何休’s anti-Zuǒzhuàn polemic Zuǒshì gāohuāng 左氏膏肓 (“the Zuǒ-tradition is incurably ill”). The Sìkù base is the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 fragment-collation supplemented from later citations. The WYG presentation reproduces the Zhēn gāohuāng alone, but the title’s natural pairing is with two further reconstructed texts of the same Hé–Zhèng exchange (Qǐ fèi jí 起廢疾 against the Gǔliáng fèi jí, and Fā mò shǒu 發墨守 against the Gōngyáng mò shǒu), all three of which the SKQS tíyào covers in the same entry.

Tiyao

The Sìkù tíyào (text from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào):

By Zhèng Yuán of Hàn 漢鄭元 (the post-Táng convention writes his name 玄 as 元 to avoid the taboo on Táng Xuánzōng’s name, hence “Zhèng Yuán” in the tíyào). The Hòu Hàn shū biography of Zhèng Yuán records: “Hé Xiū of Rènchéng 任城 favoured Gōngyáng learning, and so composed Gōngyáng mò shǒu, Zuǒshì gāohuāng, and Gǔliáng fèi jí. Yuán then produced the Fā mò shǒu, the Zhēn gāohuāng (the tíyào writes 鍼 here, a graphic variant of 箴), and the Qǐ fèi jí. Hé Xiū saw them and exclaimed, ‘Has Kāngchéng entered my chamber and turned my own spear against me?‘” The Suí shū jīngjí zhì records Zuǒshì gāohuāng in ten juan, Gǔliáng fèi jí in three, Gōngyáng mò shǒu in fourteen — entries the old annotation gives to Hé Xiū’s authorship — and separately a three-juan Gǔliáng fèi jí with the note “Zhèng Yuán’s interpretation, with annotations by Zhāng Jìng 張靖,” apparently a separate work in which Zhèng’s interpretation was preserved with marginal notes. So in the Suí period and earlier the Hé original and the Zhèng rebuttal still circulated separately.

By the Jiù Táng shū jīngjí zhì, Gāohuāng and Fèi jí are recorded with the same juan-counts but Mò shǒu is given as two juan, and all three carry the editorial note “Zhèng Yuán’s zhēn, Zhèng Yuán’s fā, Zhèng Yuán’s shì” — meaning by Táng times the Hé and Zhèng works had been combined. By the Sòng the works gradually disintegrated; only the Chóngwén zǒngmù still records Zuǒshì gāohuāng in nine juan, and Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫 records a copy lacking the Xuān 宣, Dìng 定, and Aī 哀 dukes — Chén calling it “so corrupted as to be unreadable, and surely a later excerpt rather than the Suí-/Táng-era original.” By the late Sòng, even Chén’s defective copy could no longer be found.

The present text contains some twenty entries from the Zhēn gāohuāng, more than forty from the Qǐ fèi jí, and four from the Fā mò shǒu, gathered from quotations in other works. The compiler is unknown; some attribute the work to Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟 (1223–1296), but no firm evidence supports this — possibly the attribution arose because Wáng compiled the analogous Zhèngshì Zhōuyì zhù 鄭氏周易註 (KR1a0003 / KR1a0004) and the Sān jiā shī kǎo 三家詩考, so a similar reconstruction for the Zhèngshì Chūnqiū sān shū 鄭氏春秋三書 was assumed to be from the same hand. But the Yùhǎi 玉海 does not mention this work, which is odd if Wáng had compiled it. Collating the present text against various sources, only the citation in the Máo Shī Dà míng piān shū 毛詩大明篇疏 of the Sòng-Xiāng-gōng-at-Hóng-zhī-zhàn 宋襄公戰泓 entry has not been incorporated; the rest is exhaustively gathered. Even if not by Wáng’s own hand, the work is by someone deeply versed in ancient learning. We therefore treat the present text as a faithful reconstruction, registered here despite preserving only a tenth or so of the original.

Abstract

The Zhēn gāohuāng and its companions are the Hàn-period locus classicus of the debate over the relative authority of the Sān zhuàn. Hé Xiū’s 何休 three works — Gōngyáng mò shǒu, Zuǒshì gāohuāng, Gǔliáng fèi jí — were the ranking Eastern-Hàn defence of Gōngyáng hegemony. Zhèng Xuán’s three rebuttals turned the debate decisively against Hé and toward a more balanced reading-tradition that drew on all three commentaries; this position is the foundation of Zhèng Xuán’s enduring authority in classical scholarship. The famous remark Hé attributes to himself on reading Zhèng’s response — “Has Kāngchéng entered my chamber and turned my own spear against me?” (Kāngchéng rù wú shì, cāo wú máo yǐ fá wǒ hū 康成入吾室, 操吾矛以伐我乎) — became proverbial in subsequent Confucian scholarship for a definitive overthrow on one’s own ground.

The reconstructed text gives a partial but invaluable window onto Zhèng Xuán’s actual readings of disputed Zuǒzhuàn passages. As the Sìkù tíyào notes, “though it amounts to no more than a tenth or two of the original, the gathering and arrangement preserves a sketch outline; for those who study Zhèng-school learning, there is something to be considered.”

Translations and research

The Hé–Zhèng exchange is treated in:

  • Jack L. Dull, “Han Li Hsüeh (‘Han ritual scholarship’) and Cheng Hsüan,” Journal of Asian Studies 28.4 (1969).
  • Hans van Ess, Politik und Gelehrsamkeit in der Zeit der Han: Die Alttext / Neutext-Kontroverse (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993) — the standard German-language treatment of the Old-Text / New-Text controversy in which the Hé–Zhèng exchange is central.
  • Yáng Tiānyǔ 楊天宇, Zhèng Xuán sān lǐ zhù yánjiū 鄭玄三禮注研究 (Tiānjīn rénmín 2007) — places the Chūnqiū polemics in the wider context of Zhèng’s classical programme.
  • Cài Cháng-lín 蔡長林, Hé Xiū Zhèng Xuán Chūnqiū lùn zhàn yánjiū 何休鄭玄春秋論戰研究 (Tāiběi: Wànjuǎnlóu 2002).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào explicitly groups three reconstructed texts under one entry — Zhēn gāohuāng, Qǐ fèi jí, Fā mò shǒu — and prints them as a single juan. The Kanripo catalog records this as a one-juan work under KR1e0011 with the title Zhēn gāohuāng alone, following the SKQS practice in which the first work of a paired set serves as the lemma.

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