聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

孝經問

6 min read

Text ID
KR1f0013
Date
1685–1716
Dynasty
清

Xiàojīng wèn 孝經問

Questions on the Classic of Filial Piety

by 毛奇齡 (撰, 1623–1716)

About the work

A polemical Qīng critique of Zhū Xī’s Xiàojīng kānwù (see KR1f0006) and Wú Chéng’s Xiàojīng dìngběn (see KR1f0008) by Máo Qílíng 毛奇齡 (1623–1716), one of the leading early-Qīng evidential scholars and a notorious opponent of Zhū Xī orthodoxy. The work is set as a series of ten questions posed by Máo’s disciple Zhāng Suì 張燧 with Máo’s answers — a wèndá 問答 form characteristic of Máo’s polemics. Each section refutes a specific point of Zhū Xī’s or Wú Chéng’s editorial intervention in the Xiàojīng canon. The work is undated but falls in Máo’s mature productivity (post-1685, after his retirement from the Bóxué hóngcí 博學鴻詞 examination programme of 1679).

Tiyao

We have respectfully examined the Xiàojīng wèn in one juàn, composed by Máo Qílíng of our dynasty. Qílíng’s Zhòngshì Yì 仲氏易 has already been recorded. This work is throughout a refutation of Master Zhū’s Xiàojīng kānwù and Wú Chéng’s Xiàojīng dìngběn. It is set in the form of questions by his disciple Zhāng Suì with Qílíng’s answers; ten items in all: (1) The Xiàojīng is not a forgery. (2) The jīnwén and gǔwén are not two different texts. (3) Liú Xuàn did not forge a Xiàojīng. (4) The origin of the Xiàojīng’s chapter divisions. (5) Zhū’s separation of jīng and zhuàn has no foundation. (6) The canon should not be edited. (7) The xiào of the Xiàojīng does not mean xiào 效 (“emulate”). (8) Zhū’s and Wú’s editing of the canon are equally unjustified. (9) [The argument over] xián jū 閒居 versus shìzuò 侍坐. (10) Zhū’s exhaustive discussion of the abuses of editing the canon. The tenth section, however, actually discusses Míng-period scholars who dared to vilify Liú Xuàn but did not dare to vilify Zhū or Wú, and incidentally addresses Master Zhū’s reverence for the two Chéngs as exceeding his reverence for Confucius — neither of which agrees with the topic title. The titles must have been added by his disciples and not chosen by Qílíng himself, hence sometimes lose his original intent.

The Hàn Confucians, in glossing the canon, treated their teachers’ transmission as authoritative — what their teachers did not say, they dared not change one character of. The Sòng Confucians, in glossing the canon, treated lǐ 理 as the criterion: where there was good reason, even the Six Classics could be edited. But those who guard their teachers’ transmission only suffer at worst from a kind of fixed rigidity, while those relying on lǐ may carry it to runaway license that cannot be controlled. The cases of Wáng Bó 王柏 and others, defacing the Shàngshū and excising the Èr nán 二南, brashly seeking to surpass Confucius — the seeds of all this ran back through stages. Qílíng’s book here is contentious in its tone and clamorous in its delivery, and in truth not free of overreach; but his intention in standing firmly on the inherited text and refusing to license the corruption of the ancient canon — his standpoint cannot be called other than correct. Submitted respectfully on the imperial command, tenth 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.

Abstract

Máo Qílíng’s Xiàojīng wèn is the most important early-Qīng critique of the SòngYuán Xiàojīng editorial tradition. Each of the ten sections takes up a specific SòngYuán claim and rebuts it with citation evidence: the Lǚshì chūnqiū and other early-Hàn citations are deployed to defend the antiquity of the Xiàojīng (against Zhū Xī’s suspicions); Huán Tán’s character-counts are deployed (as Wú Chéng had also done, see KR1f0008) to show that jīnwén and gǔwén differ only marginally; the Hàn-period attribution of forgery to Liú Xuàn is shown to be a Suí- and Táng-period polemical construction; the structural division into “1 jīng + zhuàn” is shown to lack textual warrant; the etymology of xiào 孝 (filial piety) is defended against Zhū’s attempted derivation from xiào 效 (emulate). The work is a key document in the Qīng kǎozhèngxué project of restoring the jīnwén canonical tradition against SòngYuán Daoxue editorial liberty.

The Sìkù editors’ assessment is characteristically nuanced. They acknowledge Máo’s polemical excess (“contentious in tone and clamorous in delivery, not free of overreach”), but explicitly endorse his core position (“standing firmly on the inherited text and refusing to license the corruption of the ancient canon — his standpoint cannot be called other than correct”). They use the entry, as elsewhere in the Xiàojīng sub-canon, to register the Sìkù’s general suspicion of post-Sòng editorial liberty with the canonical text. The argument that “those who guard their teachers’ transmission only suffer at worst from a kind of fixed rigidity, while those relying on lǐ may carry it to runaway license that cannot be controlled” reflects the Sìkù editors’ broader kǎozhèng-school skepticism toward Daoxue.

The composition window is set from c. 1685 — Máo Qílíng’s mature post-Bóxué hóngcí period — to his death in 1716. The work was likely composed in the 1690s, but no internal evidence dates it precisely.

Translations and research

  • See KR1f0001 for general Xiàojīng translations and research.
  • 陳鐵凡 Xiàojīng xuéshǐ 孝經學史. Taipei: Guólì biānyìguǎn, 1986. Treats Máo’s polemic as a key Qīng intervention.
  • 林慶彰 (Lín Qìngzhāng), Qīng chū qún jīng biàn wěi xué 清初群經辨偽學. Taipei: Wàn juàn lóu, 1990. Contextualizes Máo’s Xiàojīng wèn in the early-Qīng evidential project.
  • 楊向奎 (Yáng Xiàngkuí), Qīngrú xué àn xīn biān 清儒學案新編. Jǐ’nán: Qí Lǔ, 1985. Treats Máo Qílíng in detail.
  • Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1984; rev. ed. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2001. Frames Máo’s polemic in the longer history of evidential scholarship.

Other points of interest

The Xiàojīng wèn is one of the most polemical works in the Sìkù and one of the few that attacks Zhū Xī by name. The Sìkù editors’ defence of Máo’s position (despite his “clamorous” tone) — even at the cost of contradicting the imperial commentary tradition (see KR1f0006) which had endorsed Zhū’s Kānwù — is notable. Máo Qílíng’s role in the formation of Qīng kǎozhèngxué also placed him in the curious position of being simultaneously a literary contributor to the Kāngxī court (he served briefly on the Mingshǐ 明史 commission) and a major polemicist against Zhū Xī orthodoxy.

Graph View

Backlinks