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六經正誤

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Text ID
KR1g0007
Date
1223–1225
Dynasty
宋

Liù jīng zhèng wù 六經正誤

Corrections of Errors in the Six Classics by 毛居正 (撰)

About the work

A 6-juàn Southern-Sòng work of canonical-text collation, recording the variants and miswritings detected during Máo Jūzhèng’s tenure as chief collator (1223) for the Imperial Academy’s re-cutting of the Six Classics. The work was written when his collation work was cut short by eye disease before the Lǐjì and the three Chūnqiū commentaries could be edited; and when even the four classics he did manage were corrupted by the engravers’ falsifications. Wèi Liǎowēng 魏了翁’s preface (1225) frames the work as the indispensable companion to the actually-cut Imperial Academy texts.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Liù jīng zhèng wù in 6 juàn was composed by Máo Jūzhèng of the Sòng. Jūzhèng’s style name was Yìfù — sometimes rendered Yìfǔ; yì (義) and yì (誼), fù (父) and fǔ (甫), are anciently interchangeable. He was a man of Qúzhōu, miǎnjiě jìnshì. He was the son of Máo Huǎng, who had compiled the Zēng zhù lǐbù yùn lüè and the Yǔ gòng zhǐ nán; Jūzhèng inherited his father’s family learning and made a serious study of the liù shū. In the sixteenth year of Jiādìng (1223) the imperial mandate ordered the Imperial Academy to re-edit the canonical books; the responsible officials engaged Jūzhèng as chief collator. Four classics had been re-edited when Jūzhèng was incapacitated by eye disease and forced to retire, leaving the Lǐjì and the three Chūnqiū commentaries unfinished. Even of the four edited classics, the engravers falsified the slips to deceive the supervisors, and twenty or thirty per cent of the errata were never corrected. Jūzhèng accordingly compiled what he had collated to make this book.

Yáng Wànlǐ wrote a preface giving a thorough account of the project. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiě tí says that Jūzhèng’s work consists merely in adjudicating doubtful radicals (piān páng 偏旁). But examination of this book shows that its collation of variants and correction of errors is genuinely valuable to classical learning. Among the discussions there are inevitably some looseness — for instance, chì 勑 in archaic script is chì 敕, in clerical script chì 勑; Jūzhèng, on the basis of an erroneous transcription in Sòng Gāozōng’s yùshū shíjīng, concludes that the inner element of lái 來 is two rù 入 not two rén 人; the character xiǎng 享 derives from archaic 亯 in clerical-script xiǎng 享, sometimes shortened to hēng 亨, but Jūzhèng asserts that xiǎng means “sacrifice” and hēng means “penetrate” and that the two never coincide; kūn 坤 derives anciently from 土 over 申 and clerically from 巛, but Jūzhèng asserts that 巛 is the gǔ form, with the Qián, Lí, Kǎn etc. all having pictographic gǔ forms; chí chí 遲遲 anciently was one and the same character, and the Shuōwén says it is chí 遲 with the seal-script form chí 遟; Jūzhèng asserts that they are half right and half wrong, “I dare not change” them; lài 賴 anciently followed bèi 貝 and cì 刺, miswritten in vulgar usage as lài 頼; Jūzhèng asserts that lài 頼 follows shù 束 and fù 負 — none of these is correct liù shū analysis. Furthermore, of the Lǐ on the dà xíng rén 大行人 ritual: “stands as the qián jí 前疾”, jí should in fact be hóu 矦 — hóu being the timber projecting from the front of the chariot-shaft, the so-called “downward-hanging hu-protrusion” of Zhèng Xuán’s gloss; Jūzhèng takes it as wù 軏, the front board of the carriage frame, which has nothing to do with hóu. Such instances do not match the canonical sense.

But the Shuōwén jiězì of Xǔ Shèn (KR1g0001) and the Jīngdiǎn shìwén of Lù Démíng (KR1g0003) are likewise not exempt from minor lapses to be picked up by later persons; how could Jūzhèng of all writers be expected to give exhaustive treatment? The general burden of his book — the work of fixing the strokes and structure of the canonical text — is one whose merit cannot be effaced. Respectfully collated and submitted in the fifth month of the forty-second year of Qiánlóng (1777). — Editors-in-chief: your servants Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. — Chief proof-reader: your servant Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Liù jīng zhèng wù is the most consequential single Sòng-period work of xiǎo xué 小學 applied to canonical-text collation, comparable in importance to Yuè Kē’s 岳珂 Jiǔ jīng sān zhuàn yán’gé lì (KR1g0008) but technically more demanding in its philological method. The 1223 Imperial Academy re-cutting of the Five Classics is one of the great editorial events of the Southern Sòng — comparable in scope to the Northern Sòng directorate cut — and Máo Jūzhèng’s role as chief collator under Sīyè (Director of Imperial Academy education) places him at the centre of that project. The book preserves what would otherwise have been lost: the running record of the variants he caught and the corrections he proposed, including the substantial fraction (per the tíyào, 20–30%) that the engravers falsified back into the cut text.

The work’s structural arrangement (presumably 1 juàn per jīng = 6 for the Liù jīng, though juan-distribution varies in transmission) covers Yì, Shū, Shī, Zhōulǐ, Yílǐ, and the Lǐjì / three Chūnqiū commentaries — the latter, however, only partially, on account of his eye disease. Wèi Liǎowēng’s 魏了翁 preface (Bǎoqìng 1, 1225) is the standard frame — he places the Liù jīng zhèng wù in the lineage descending from Cài Yōng’s 蔡邕 stone classics through Zhāng Cān’s 張參 Wǔ jīng wén zì and through the Jīngdiǎn shìwén itself.

Translations and research

  • Cherniack, Susan. “Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China.” HJAS 54 (1994): 5–125. Standard treatment of Sòng canonical-text collation; Máo Jūzhèng features.
  • Liú Yùcái 劉玉才. Sòngdài jīngshū kèběn yǔ wénběn xíngtài yánjiū 宋代經書刻本與文本形態研究. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2014. Pages on the 1223 Imperial Academy re-cutting and the Liù jīng zhèng wù.
  • Li Zhihong 李致忠. Sòng bǎn shū kǎo lùn 宋版書考錄. Beijing: Shūmù wénxiàn 1997.

Other points of interest

The very deceptive practice the tíyào records — engravers falsifying collation slips to deceive their supervisors — is independently attested in Sòng technical printing: Máo’s frustration is one of the more vivid first-person accounts of what late Sòng jiānběn (Imperial-Academy edition) collation was actually like.

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