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明本排字九經直音

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Text ID
KR1g0012
Date
1200–1287
Dynasty
元

Míngběn pái zì Jiǔ jīng zhí yīn 明本排字九經直音

Direct Phonetic Glosses on the Nine Classics, in the Míng [Míngzhōu] Recension’s Character Layout by 闕名 (撰; anonymous Sòng / Yuán)

About the work

A 2-juàn anonymous zhí yīn 直音 (direct phonetic gloss) handbook on the Nine Classics. Two technical innovations distinguish the genre: (1) phonetic glosses are given by zhí yīn (one-character pronunciation key by another character of the same sound) rather than by the older fǎnqiè 反切 spell-out method; (2) the work integrates Sòng-period glosses (Zhū Xī, ChéngZhū, Húyuán Hú Yuán 胡瑗, SīMǎ Guāng, Fāng Què 方慤) alongside Lù Démíng’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén tradition. The book’s title page identifies it as a Míngběn — the Sòng convention of identifying a cut by its city of origin (cf. Jiànběn = Jiànyáng cut, Hángběn = Hángzhōu cut) — pointing to Míngzhōu 明州 (modern Níngbō 寧波). The colophon dates the cut to dīng hài in the Méiyǐn shūtáng 梅隱書堂 — i.e. 1287, the twenty-fourth year of Yuán Shìzǔ’s Zhìyuán era, an early-Yuán cut.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Míngběn pái zì Jiǔ jīng zhí yīn in 2 juàn gives no compiler’s name. The Chūnqiū zhuàn entry, under the term sù wáng 素王, cites Sòng Zhēnzōng’s Xuān shèng zàn — referring to “Zhēnzōng” without “Sòng” and calling it “yù zhì” (composed by His Majesty) — making clear that the work is by a Sòng compiler. The title-page inscription “Míngběn” follows the Sòng convention of citing a cut by its city of origin (e.g. Jiànběn = Jiànyáng cut, Hángběn = Hángzhōu cut); this is therefore the Míngzhōu cut, today’s Níngbō prefecture. The colophon is dated dīng hài, “newly cut at the Méiyǐn shūtáng”, with no era-name. Dīng hài corresponds to the twenty-fourth year of Yuán Shìzǔ’s Zhìyuán (1287), so the cut is from the early Yuán.

The book does not use fǎnqiè but direct phonetic glosses (zhí yīn), partaking somewhat of the rustic-school custom. Yet its glosses are based throughout on the Jīngdiǎn shìwén and accordingly stay close to antiquity. Where Lù Démíng records multiple pronunciations for a single character, this book retains them all. Examples:

  • Jīn téng 金縢, on bì 辟: Kǒng’s reading is pì 闢, “law”; the Shuōwén reading is bì 必; Zhèng’s reading is pì 辟.
  • Dà gào, on bēn 賁: read fén 墳; Wáng [Sù] reads it as the bēn of the Bēn hexagram.
  • Lǐjì 內則: “jiē with the Tài láo sacrifice”, on jiē 接: Zhèng reads jié 㨗; Wáng [Sù] and Dù [Yù] both read jiē (= “to receive”).
  • Jì fǎ: “xiàngjìn yú kǎntán”, on kǎn 坎: the annotation has rángqí 禳祈; the Kǒng cóng zǐ reads it as zǔyíng 祖迎.

These are quite outside the reach of the later marketplace direct-gloss handbooks that gloss merely for reading-convenience by editorial fiat. There are some places where the zhí yīn and the jīn yīn fail to agree — the Lǐjì’s “Áo bù kě cháng” 敖不可長: the Shìwén gives áo per the annotation as wǔbào fǎn 五報反 (= proud); Wáng Sù gives wǔgāo fǎn 五高反 (= roam); Lú Zhí, Mǎ Róng, and Wáng Sù all read cháng 長 as zhúzhàng fǎn 竹丈反; this book gives áo, “Wáng’s reading is level-tone”, which is the Lù Démíng Wáng wǔgāo fǎn — but it then notes under cháng that “cháng is zhāng up-tone, also level-tone” — using simultaneously Zhèng’s zhúzhàng fǎn — and so the áo and cháng glosses no longer match each other. Examples like this do exist.

[The Tíyào continues with several columns of detailed comparison — roughly: the work also incorporates Sòng-period glosses (Zhū Xī for Shī, Zhōngyōng, Lúnyǔ, Mèngzǐ; Zhū Xī plus ChéngYí for Yì; Fāng Què for Lǐ; Hú Yuán and SīMǎ Guāng for the rest), and is the most useful Sòng-period sound-gloss apparatus to combine with Lù Démíng. Where the cut shows the Nine Classics in disordered sequence, that is a defect of the cutter’s shop, not of the substance.]

Of the Sòng-period direct-gloss compilations on the canonical books, this is the most carefully done. Where the Nine Classics are out of order in the printed copy, this is the cutter’s error and concerns nothing of substance. Respectfully collated and submitted in the ninth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng (1781). — Editors-in-chief: your servants Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. — Chief proof-reader: your servant Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The work is one of the more philologically interesting zhí yīn 直音 compendia of the SòngYuán transition, and is the principal late-medieval Nine Classics sound-gloss to combine the Lù Démíng tradition with the Sòng-period Confucian commentators. Its dating is fixed by two independent criteria: (1) the imperial inscription cited under sù wáng identifies the writer as a Sòng subject (referring to “Zhēnzōng” without dynastic prefix); (2) the colophon dates the actual cut to dīng hài of Zhìyuán = 1287. The compilation can therefore be dated to the late Southern Sòng (after Zhū Xī’s Shī commentary entered circulation, c. 1180) and the cut to early Yuán (1287), with terminus a quo c. 1200 and terminus ad quem 1287.

The author is unknown — no preface, no colophon. The Sìkù compilers’ identification of the cut as a Míngzhōu (Níngbō) cut is sound, and is one of the early instances of the běnběn (cut-name) typology in Sìkù tíyào practice. The Méiyǐn shūtáng 梅隱書堂 is otherwise unknown but is to be associated with the Hézhèngfǔ 河政府 / Sìmíng 四明 commercial-printing district active in the late Sòng and early Yuán.

Translations and research

  • Hsia, Adrian. Sino-European Studies in Translation. Brill, 1990s. Discussion of the zhí yīn genre.
  • Pulleyblank, E. G. Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese. UBC Press, 1991. The Jiǔ jīng zhí yīn is a relevant secondary source.
  • 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 UP, 2014.

Other points of interest

The book is one of the more useful SòngYuán zhí yīn manuals because it does not — unlike most of its commercial cousins — overrule Lù Démíng’s polysemy, but preserves multi-reading entries with the Lù-tradition apparatus intact. Its post-Yuán reception was muted (the work was already obscure by the early Míng) but the Sìkù compilers’ rehabilitation has restored its scholarly visibility.

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