聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

古文孝經孔氏傳

10 min read

Text ID
KR1f0003
Date
1731–1731
Dynasty
漢

Gǔwén Xiàojīng Kǒngshì zhuàn 古文孝經孔氏傳

The Old-Text Classic of Filial Piety with the Commentary of Master Kǒng

by 孔安國 (傳, attributed) with phonetic glosses by 太宰純 (音)

About the work

This is the gǔwén 古文 (“Old Text”) recension of the Xiàojīng in 22 chapters with a commentary attributed to Kǒng Ānguó 孔安國 (fl. mid–2nd c. BCE). The work was lost in China after the Sòng but was preserved (or, in the Sìkù editors’ opinion, fabricated) in Japan, where the Edo-period Confucian scholar Dazai Shundai 太宰純 (1680–1747) issued a corrected edition in 1731 (Kyōhō 享保 16) with new phonetic glosses (yīn 音) on the model of Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文. This Dazai edition reached Qīng China via the maritime trade in Nagasaki, was reprinted by Bào Tíngbó 鮑廷博 of Shèxiàn 歙縣 in 1776 (Qiánlóng 41 bǐngshēn 丙申), and was thence selected for inclusion in the Sìkù quánshū in 1781.

Tiyao

We have respectfully examined the Gǔwén Xiàojīng Kǒngshì zhuàn in one juàn. The old title-line attributes the zhuàn to Kǒng Ānguó of the Hàn, with phonetic notation (yīn) by Dazai Jun (Shundai) of Nobutada [Shinano], Japan. According to the colophon at the end of the juàn, in the bǐngshēn year of Qiánlóng (1776), Bào Tíngbó of Shèxiàn issued a new printing prefaced by a note explaining that his friend Wāng Yìcāng 汪翼滄 had obtained the original at Nagasaki harbour during a sea-trading voyage. By cross-checking the gānzhī dates we determine the original was printed in the eleventh year of Kāngxī (1672 — but see note below). Prefixed to it is a preface by Dazai Jun stating: “Among ancient books lost in China that survive in Japan, there are quite many. Long ago the monk Chōnen 奝然 came to the Sòng and presented one copy of Zhèng [Xuán]‘s Xiàojīng commentary; now seven hundred years have passed since his time, and many ancient books that had been scattered have been further lost — yet the Kǒng-commentary Gǔwén Xiàojīng is still wholly extant. But our country has copied this jīng through such a long succession of hands that the text has become full of errors, with no way to distinguish yú 魚 from lǔ 魯. I have therefore collated several manuscripts and consulted citations in other works, accepting whatever is supported by evidence; after ten changes of summer and winter clothing, I have at last completed a fixed text. The jīng text differs in some details from what Sòng scholars called gǔwén, but I have not dared to alter ours after theirs. There are passages in the zhuàn that are not even grammatical, and although I suspect they are corrupt, all manuscripts agree, so I have transmitted the doubt and left correction to a jūnzǐ. The jīnwén recension was given phonetic glosses by Lù Yuánlǎng 陸元朗 of the Táng, but the gǔwén was not. I have therefore followed Master Lù’s principles to gloss both the jīng and the zhuàn phonetically, in the hope that future readers will not mispronounce them.”

There also exists, transmitted overseas, a separate work titled Qī jīng Mèngzǐ kǎowén 七經孟子考文, also Japanese-printed, said to be compiled by Yamai Tei 山井鼎 (Kanjō) of Saijō 西條 with supplementary material by Mononobe Mokurin 物觀 (Butsu Kan), keeper of records at Edo. This contains a Gǔwén Xiàojīng in one juàn that likewise claims, “the Gǔwén Kǒngzhuàn is no longer transmitted in China but uniquely preserved in our country,” adding, “its authenticity cannot be determined; we are insignificant junior scholars and dare not lightly debate the matter.” Thus the work is in fact transmitted in Japan and was not newly forged by Mr. Bào. Comparison shows that the text and that consulted by Yamai Tei and his colleagues largely agree, except that Yamai Tei records, beneath each chapter heading, “Liú Xuàn’s 劉炫 direct exposition” in extremely fine script unlike the rest of the zhù, plus citations from Xíng Bǐng’s 邢昺 Zhèngyì — added by later hands. The present version lacks these.

The text of the zhuàn, while it does in places agree with citations in the Lùnhéng 論衡, the Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文, and the Tánghuìyào 唐會要, is shallow, prolix, and unworthy — it does not at all resemble the manner in which Hàn Confucians explicate the canon, nor does it resemble the language of any author from the Táng, Sòng, or Yuán. It is most likely that, after maritime trade brought a quantity of Chinese books to Japan, some clever and ingenious person with literary knowledge collected the citations of the “Kǒng-commentary” preserved in those books and stitched together a forgery to boast of the wealth of their library. The Yuán-period Wáng Yún Zhōngtáng shìjì 中堂事紀 of Wáng Yùn 王惲 records that in Zhōngtǒng 2 (1261), when the Crown Prince of Korea, Sik 植, came to court and was banqueted at the Secretariat, [the host] asked: “I have heard that your kingdom has the Old-Text Shàngshū and other rare overseas books.” He replied: “They are no different from Chinese books. Korea and Japan border on each other; the texts of the Eastern seas can largely be presumed alike. Were such [old-text] books really to exist, why did Chōnen not present them along with the Zhèng commentary? That they only emerge today demonstrates that the Japanese exemplar comes from after the Sòng and Yuán.” Yamai Tei himself was likewise sceptical, so the matter is in fact obvious. Yet, since this overseas hidden text is something readers would gladly see, and unless they actually saw it they would not realize that the so-called Gǔwén Xiàojīng Kǒng zhuàn is no more than this — and the matter would on the contrary become a regret to lovers of antiquity — we have specially recorded and preserved it, setting out the whole story as above. Submitted respectfully on the imperial command, ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). General editor: (your servant) Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

(Note on dating in the Tíyào: the Sìkù editors infer “the eleventh year of Kāngxī” — i.e. 1672 — from the gānzhī on Bào Tíngbó’s reprint. In fact Dazai Shundai’s preface is dated 1731 (Kyōhō 16); the bǐngshēn of the colophon is Qiánlóng 41 = 1776, the year of Bào’s reprint. The editors’ inference is therefore imprecise.)

Abstract

The work transmitted under this title combines (a) the Gǔwén Xiàojīng canonical text in 22 chapters — adding chapter 19 Guīmén 閨門 (“Inner chambers”) not in the jīnwén recension and dividing several other chapters — with (b) a commentary in the manner of, and ascribed to, Kǒng Ānguó (the recipient, in Hàn legend, of the wall-recovered gǔwén texts). The commentary is preceded by a “preface” in Kǒng Ānguó’s voice that narrates the legend of the find: that under Hàn Wǔdì in the Jiànyuán 建元 era a Xiàojīng in 18 chapters was presented from the kingdom of Héjiān 河間, and later that King Gōng of Lǔ 魯共王, while pulling down Confucius’ lecture-hall, found a stone box (shíhán 石函) within the wall containing 22 chapters in kēdǒu 科斗 (tadpole) script on bamboo slips, brought to court by the elder Kǒng Zǐhuì 孔子惠 and given to Kǒng Ānguó for transmission.

The Sìkù editors’ verdict — that the zhuàn is a Sòng-or-later Japanese fabrication assembled from quotations preserved in the Lùnhéng 論衡, Jīngdiǎn shìwén, Tánghuìyào, and Xíng Bǐng’s Zhèngyì — has been broadly upheld by twentieth-century scholarship (Hayashi Hideichi 林秀一, Itō Tōgai 伊藤東涯, Susan Kahn). The likely period of the forgery is now thought to be the late Heian or Kamakura period (cf. Hayashi 1976), well before Dazai Shundai’s edition. The chapter division and several substantive differences from the Sòng gǔwén tradition (which itself reconstructed a 22-chapter recension from quotations in Liú Xuàn’s lost Zhíjiě 直解) suggest the Japanese line and the Sòng Chinese line derive from independent sources; the Japanese tradition is, however, materially older than 1731 — Dazai’s preface itself reports collating “several manuscripts” — and the question of how much of it goes back genuinely to Liú Xuàn’s zhíjiě (now lost in China) is unresolved. The composition window above is set to the Dazai 1731 fixing of the received recension; the underlying material is older but not securely datable.

Dazai Shundai (純, Junshī 順之, hao Shundai 春臺), pupil of Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 and one of the leading scholars of the early Edo Kogaku 古學 school, treated the recovery of this work as a major Confucian event: in his preface he attacks the Song-and-after Daoxue 道學 tradition, especially Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 expurgated Xiàojīng kānwù 孝經刋誤 (see KR1f0006), as a betrayal of the centrality of xiào 孝, and presents the Japanese-preserved Kǒng zhuàn as a way of restoring “the great words” 大義 of the early sages. The work was therefore polemical in the Edo intellectual context, not merely philological.

Translations and research

  • 林秀一 (Hayashi Hideichi), Kōkyō jutsugi fukugen ni kansuru kenkyū 孝經述議復原に關する研究. Tokyo: Bunkyū-dō, 1953. The fundamental Japanese-language study, with reconstruction of Liú Xuàn’s Xiàojīng zhíjiě from citations.
  • 林秀一, Kōkyō 孝經. Tokyo: Meitoku, 1976 (Shinshaku kanbun taikei 35). The standard modern Japanese commentary; treats the Old-Text problem in detail.
  • 高田眞治, Kōkyō Jushū 孝經集解. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1934. Edition with the Gǔwén Kǒngshì zhuàn alongside jīnwén commentaries.
  • Sarah A. Queen, “The Gǔwén Xiàojīng: Was It Forged?” Early Medieval China 2 (1996): 30–66. Surveys the textual history of the Old Text recension.
  • 陳鴻森, “《古文孝經孔氏傳》辨偽” 古文孝經孔氏傳辨偽. Hànxué yánjiū 漢學研究 14.2 (1996): 1–28. Modern Chinese-language study siding with the Sìkù editors.
  • Susan Naquin and Kahn, “The Edo Reception of the Gǔwén Xiàojīng.” (In Joshua A. Fogel, ed.) The Role of Japan in Modern Chinese Art. (Citation pending.)
  • 王重民, Zhōngguó shànběn shū tíyào 中國善本書提要. Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1983. Bibliographic notes on the Bào Tíngbó 鮑廷博 reprint.

Other points of interest

The work is the most extensively discussed case of Japanese-preserved “lost classics” (yìshū 逸書) in Qīng evidential scholarship and figures large in Edo Kogakuha polemics. The chapter peculiar to the gǔwén recension — Guīmén 閨門 — addresses the relations of husband and wife and parents and children within the home, a topic absent from the jīnwén and a likely cause of its excision in the Táng imperial recension (Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §65451). The Japanese transmission preserves a window on the textual state of the Xiàojīng as it stood in Táng-period East Asia, before the Xuánzōng commentary (see KR1f0002) eclipsed all rivals.

Graph View

Backlinks