聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

孝經(正文)

5 min read

Text ID
KR1f0001
Date
-350–-200
Dynasty
周

Xiàojīng 孝經

The Classic of Filial Piety (canonical text)

(canonical text — no single author)

About the work

The Xiàojīng 孝經 is the shortest text in the Confucian canon, only c. 1,800 graphs in eighteen short chapters (zhāng 章). It opens with a dialogue between Confucius (Kǒngzǐ 孔子) and his disciple Zēngzǐ 曾子 in which Confucius defines filial piety (xiào 孝) as the root of all virtue and the foundation of moral government. The Kanripo recension carried under this id is the bare canonical text without commentary, prepared on the Sìbù bèiyào / Shísān jīng zhùshū base and circulated as the TLS digital text. The conventional textual ancestor is the Jiāngxī Nánchāngfǔ 江西南昌府 1816 reprint of the Sòng Xiàojīng zhùshū 孝經注疏 — i.e. the Ruǎn Yuán 阮元 Shísān jīng zhùshū 十三經注疏 line. This is the so-called jīnwén 今文 (“New Text”) recension in 18 chapters, which became dominant after the Táng court adopted Xuánzōng’s commentary; the rival gǔwén 古文 recension in 22 chapters survived only in transmission via Japan and was rediscovered in the Qīng (see KR1f0003).

Abstract

Authorship of the Xiàojīng has been disputed since at least the Táng. The classical attribution, voiced in the Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書·藝文志, is to Confucius himself (“Zhòngní 仲尼 spoke and Zēngzǐ 曾子 wrote it down”); a subsidiary attribution makes Zēngzǐ or his disciples the redactor. Modern scholarship (William Boltz in Early Chinese Texts 141–153; Henry Rosemont and Roger Ames 2009) places the received eighteen-chapter recension in the late Warring States period, no later than the 4th c. BCE, with the Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋 (239 BCE) already citing the work by name (Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.4.4). The text circulated in two main recensions in the Hàn — a jīnwén 今文 (New Text) version in 18 chapters transmitted by Yán Zhī 顏芝 and Yán Zhēn 顏貞, and a gǔwén 古文 (Old Text) version in 22 chapters said to have been recovered from the wall of Confucius’ house and transmitted with a commentary attributed to Kǒng Ānguó 孔安國 (see KR1f0003). The jīnwén recension became canonical when the Táng emperor Xuánzōng 玄宗 issued his imperial commentary in 722 (revised 743), and again when Xíng Bǐng’s 邢昺 zhèngyì 正義 was attached to the Sìshū wǔjīng curriculum under the Sòng (see KR1f0004). The gǔwén recension survived in Japan, was reintroduced via Dazai Shundai’s 太宰純 1731 edition, and stimulated extensive Qīng evidential-scholarship debate.

The text was prescribed primary reading in the Hàn imperial school (where it was studied alongside the Lúnyǔ 論語), was carved on the Kāichéng stone classics 開成石經 of 837, and from the Hàn through the late Qīng functioned as the standard primer with which Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese children began their classical education. Eleven of its eighteen chapters address how filial piety articulates the social hierarchy from emperor (tiānzǐ 天子) downward through feudal lords (zhūhóu 諸侯), grand officers (qīngdàfū 卿大夫), shi (shì 士), and commoners (shùrén 庶人); the remaining seven treat broader topics including remonstrance (諫諍), filial conduct in mourning (喪親), and the cosmological grounding of filial piety in heaven and earth (三才). Four Chinese emperors composed annotations to the work — Táng Xuánzōng (twice), Sòng Zhēnzōng, Qīng Shìzǔ (Shùnzhì, see KR1f0011), and Qīng Shìzōng (Yōngzhèng, see KR1f0012) — making the Xiàojīng the most heavily imperially annotated of all the classics.

Translations and research

  • James Legge, tr. The Hsiao King, or Classic of Filial Piety. In Sacred Books of the East, vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879. The first complete European translation; still routinely cited.
  • Richard Wilhelm, tr. Hiao Ging: Das Buch der Ehrfurcht. Peking: Verlag der Pekinger Pappelinsel, 1940.
  • Henry Rosemont, Jr. and Roger T. Ames, tr. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. The standard contemporary English translation, with extensive philosophical introduction.
  • Patricia Buckley Ebrey, tr. (excerpts) in Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng, eds. Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History. Berkeley: UCP, 2001. Translates the Xiàojīng alongside the Nǚ xiàojīng 女孝經.
  • Charles Le Blanc and Rémi Mathieu, tr. Philosophes confucianistes = Ru jia. Paris: Gallimard (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), 2009. Includes a French translation of the Xiàojīng.
  • William G. Boltz, “Hsiao ching 孝經.” In Michael Loewe, ed. Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley: SSEC and Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993, pp. 141–153. The standard English-language survey of textual history.
  • Keith Nathaniel Knapp, “The Ru Reinterpretation of xiao.” Early China 20 (1995): 195–222.
  • Alan K. L. Chan and Sor-Hoon Tan, eds. Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
  • 陳鐵凡 Xiàojīng xuéshǐ 孝經學史. Taipei: Guólì biānyìguǎn, 1986. The standard Chinese-language history of Xiàojīng scholarship.
  • 舒大剛 (ed.), Xiàojīng wénxiàn jíchéng 孝經文獻集成. Chéngdū: Bāshǔ shūshè, 2014. A comprehensive collection of Xiàojīng commentaries and editions.

Other points of interest

The Xiàojīng is unique among the Thirteen Classics in retaining the word jīng 經 in its title down to the present (see Wilkinson §28.4.4). Imperial annotation of the Xiàojīng by Táng Xuánzōng and Qīng Yōngzhèng was paralleled by imperial annotation of the Dàodé jīng 道德經 by four emperors — a sign of the Xiàojīng’s function as a kind of Confucian mirror to the Daoist primer.

Graph View

Backlinks