Zuǒshì shì 左氏釋
Glosses on the Zuǒ Tradition
by 馮時可 (撰)
About the work
The Zuǒshì shì 左氏釋 in two juǎn is a focused xùngǔ 訓詁 (“philological gloss”) commentary on selected difficult passages of the Zuǒzhuàn, by the late-Míng Huátíng 華亭 official-and-scholar Féng Shíkě 馮時可 (jìnshì 1571, Húguǎng cānzhèng 湖廣參政). The work originally circulated bound together with two other Féng Zuǒ studies — Zuǒshì tǎo 左氏討 and Zuǒshì lùn 左氏論 — under the umbrella title YuánMǐn Tiānchí jí 元敏天池集; the Sìkù editors disaggregated the bundle, retaining only the present Shì in the main catalogue and listing the other two in cún mù 存目. The work is item-by-item rather than continuous: Féng selects passages where Dù Yù’s 杜預 Jí jiě 集解 or Kǒng Yǐngdá’s 孔穎達 Zhèng yì 正義 seem deficient and offers an alternative reading.
Tiyao
The Sìkù tíyào (translated):
By Féng Shíkě of the Míng. Shíkě, zì Mǐnqīng, hào Yuánchéng, of Huátíng. Jìnshì of Lóngqìng xīnwèi (1571); rose to Húguǎng bùzhèngsī cānzhèng 湖廣布政司參政. His career-record appears as an appendix to the biography of [his father] Féng Ēn 馮恩 in the Míng shǐ. This book is throughout devoted to elucidating the philology of the Zuǒzhuàn. For instance, on the Zhuānggōng 25 entry “qiū dà shuǐ, gǔ yòng shēng yú shè, yú mén 秋大水鼓用牲於社於門” (“Autumn, great floods; the drum was used and a victim sacrificed at the altar of the soil and at the gates”), he holds that “in the king’s service of spirits and governance of people, there is shèn 神 (worship of spirits) but no qí 祈 (entreaty), there is shěng 省 (introspection) but no ráng 禳 (apotropaic ritual); to use the drum is wrong, much less to use it for an attack [on the spirits]“. Both Dǒng Zhòngshū’s 董仲舒 and Dù Yù’s readings, he says, are mistaken. But examining the Zhōu lǐ, the Dàzhù 大祝 (Grand Invocator) presides over six qí (entreaties): one called lèi 類, two zào 造, three kuì 禬, four jì 祭, five gōng 攻 (attack), six shuō 說 (declaration). Zhèng Kāngchéng’s 鄭玄 note remarks: “gōng and shuō mean rebuking the spirits in words, like the rumbling of the drum.” Then gōng is in fact one of the six qí. Féng’s claim is plainly under-researched.
But on the Zhāogōng 29 entry “imposing a tax on Jìn-state of yī gǔ tiě 一鼓鐵 (one gǔ of iron) to cast the xíngdǐng 刑鼎 (penal cauldron)” — Dù’s note and Kǒng’s shū both gloss “smelting stone into iron, with a bellows fanning the fire, is called gǔ (drumming); for one penal cauldron, one gǔ would suffice” — Féng cites Wáng Sù’s 王肅 note to the Jiā yǔ 家語: “thirty jīn make one jūn 鈞, four jūn one shí 石, four shí one gǔ” — i.e. the tax was 480 jīn of iron used to cast the penal-text, just sufficient for the purpose; this far surpasses the readings of the zhù and shū.
In sum: although there are occasional unjustified leaps, the precise and well-grounded passages predominate; the work is in fact second only to Zhào Fǎng’s 趙汸 KR1e0070 Chūnqiū jīng zhuàn bǔ zhù 春秋經傳補注. This work originally went together with Zuǒshì tǎo and Zuǒshì lùn in a single bound work titled YuánMǐn Tiānchí jí; it appears that they were originally collected within his jí (literary works), so the manuscript still preserved the old title. We now record only the present text; the Tǎo and Lùn are listed in the cún mù, hence we now distinguish their titles. Respectfully presented for collation in the eleventh month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editors-in-chief Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; supervising collator Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The catalog meta gives the date 1571, presumably reflecting Féng’s jìnshì year (the date at which he is conventionally located). The actual composition window for the Zuǒshì shì is harder to pin down: Féng was active well into the Wànlì period, and the work belongs to his mature career; the bracket 1571–1610 is conservative. The work is significant in its own right as a serious mid-Wàn-lì xùngǔ engagement with the Zuǒzhuàn — one that does not slavishly follow Dù Yù but corrects him on specific readings using parallel evidence (the Zhōu lǐ, the Jiā yǔ, the Hàn shū). The SKQS editors’ verdict — “second only to Zhào Fǎng’s Bǔ zhù” — places Féng with the better Míng Zuǒ philologists; on the cases where Féng is wrong (the SKQS editors themselves point out the Zhōu lǐ counter-evidence on gōng zhī jì 攻之祭), this is the kind of philological correction the SKQS editors most enjoy executing.
The Zuǒshì shì belongs to the same general moment of late-Wàn-lì Zuǒ scholarship as Fù Xùn’s KR1e0084 Chūnqiū Zuǒzhuàn shǔ shì — the two are roughly contemporary, and represent two complementary methods (event-arrangement vs. philological gloss) of moving past Dù Yù’s Jí jiě without rejecting it.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The recovery of the Zuǒshì shì as an independent canonical work by the SKQS editors is a small but characteristic example of how the Sìkù compilation re-organised the late-Míng literary collections to surface their canonical components — a process that often required substantial editorial decisions about what counted as a freestanding jīng work versus a subordinate component of a biéjí literary collection.
Links
- Sìkù tíyào in the source file
KR1e0086_000.txt.