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五經說

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Text ID
KR1g0013
Date
1280–1323
Dynasty
元

Wǔ jīng shuō 五經說

Discussions of the Five Classics by 熊朋來 (撰)

About the work

A 7-juàn compilation (titled Jīng shuō 經說 in the source 提要 but conventionally cited as Wǔ jīng shuō per the catalog) of recorded discussions on the Five Classics by the early-Yuán Confucian Xióng Pénglái 熊朋來. The work is broadly orthodox in its Sòng Dàoxué framework — the Yì readings include the xiāntiān/hòutiān and Hétú/Luòshū schemata, the Shū readings include the Hóng fàn cuò jiǎn (mistaken-bamboo-strip) hypothesis, the Shī discussion declines to follow the Máo preface, and the Chūnqiū discussion declines the three traditional commentaries — but its Lǐ exegesis is independently philological. The work was assembled posthumously by Xióng’s disciples and published in the early Yuán, surviving the dynastic transition into the WYG.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Jīng shuō in 7 juàn was composed by Xióng Pénglái of the Yuán. (Note: the Kanripo catalog meta records the author’s name as Xióng Mínglái 熊明來, a typographical slip; the source 提要 here, and the Yuán shǐ Rúlín zhuàn, give Xióng Pénglái 熊朋來 — followed here.) Pénglái’s style name was Yǔkě; he was a man of Nánchāng. He passed the jìnshì in the tenth year of Xiánchún of the Sòng, took office as Vice Magistrate of Fúqīng, and under the Yuán was Vice Director of the Records Office of Fúqīng County. His career is recorded in the Yuán shǐ Rúlín zhuàn.

Pénglái’s learning faithfully follows the Sòng masters: thus his Yì speaks of xiāntiān/hòutiān and Hé tú/Luò shū; his Shū discusses the Hóng fàn mistaken-bamboo-strip hypothesis; his Shī does not follow the Máo preface; his Chūnqiū does not follow the three commentaries. These were the routine teachings of the senior masters of the time, and the boundaries of his school confined him such that he dared not transgress an inch.

Huì Dòng’s Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì (KR1g0024) condemns Xióng’s discussion of the Dàxué’s qīn mín 親民: he did not realize qīn and xīn 新 are interchangeable. As to the MǎZhèng glossing of Jīn téng — that is “the perspective of the summer insect” (a proverbial figure for the parochial). Likewise Xióng’s discussion of “yán nǎi huān” 言乃讙: he did not check the Shǐjì Lǔ shìjiā 魯世家 citing the Wú yì 無逸 chapter, nor Péi Yǐn’s Jí jiě citing Zhèng’s annotation. Likewise his discussion of the Zhōulǐ Yuèshī gao 臯 character matching the Tàizhù gao — he did not investigate that gao 臯, gao 告, hao 嘷 are three forms of the same character, but instead concludes that Zhèng’s earlier and later readings differ. All these are reckless emendations. Xióng’s mastery of gǔ yì and gǔ yīn is also patchy.

Yet his book’s elucidation of doctrinal substance is mostly upright; his explication of the Lǐ jīng in particular is unmistakably clear and well-grounded. Within the Sòng-school framework his work is solid and not extravagant. Where strength exists it should not be denied; we may reasonably retain a copy as a record of one school. Respectfully collated and submitted in the fifth 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 Wǔ jīng shuō is the principal extant Wǔ jīng compendium of an early-Yuán Sòng yí mín 宋遺民 Confucian. The compositional bracket runs from Xióng Pénglái’s post-Sòng turn to teaching (c. 1280) through his death (1323). Its specific intellectual position — Sòng-orthodox in framework but selectively philological — is characteristic of the late-thirteenth-century Jiāngxī Confucian milieu (cf. Huáng Zhòngyuán 黃仲元 in KR1g0010; the Pútián and Nánchāng circles). The Sòng yí mín refusal of Yuán service shaped a pedagogical Confucianism focused on local academy teaching and the transmission of the canonical curriculum without a metropolitan platform.

The Sìkù tíyào’s verdict — that Xióng is reliable on Lǐ but more uneven on gǔ yì and gǔ yīn — is the standard scholarly view. The Huì Dòng critique referenced in the tíyào is in KR1g0024, and shows the typical Qing evidential scholar’s frustration with Sòng-school yí lǐ methodology applied to graphic philology.

The catalog meta gives the author’s name as 熊明來; this is a typographical slip — every other source (the source tíyào itself, the Yuán shǐ, CBDB id 30361, and modern scholarship) gives 熊朋來. The discrepancy is preserved in the 熊朋來 person note.

Translations and research

  • Sòng-Yuán xué àn 宋元學案 j. 88, Pó-yáng zhū rú 鄱陽諸儒. Standard biographical-doxographical entry on Xióng Pénglái.
  • Bol, Peter K. Neo-Confucianism in History. HUP, 2008. Pages on the early-Yuán Confucian transition.
  • Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. UHP, 1992.
  • Mote, F. W. Imperial China 900–1800. HUP, 1999. Pages on Sòng yí mín Confucianism.
  • Xióng Pénglái. Sè pǔ 瑟譜. Independent treatise on the sè zither, transmitted alongside the Wǔ jīng shuō but in a separate textual tradition; modern critical edition in the Cóng shū jí chéng series.

Other points of interest

The Sè pǔ 瑟譜 by the same author — though catalogued separately under the Yuè category — is among the most detailed surviving accounts of the sè zither in the imperial-cult context, an unusual and valuable byproduct of Xióng’s Lǐ scholarship.

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