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九經古義

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Text ID
KR1g0024
Date
1740–1758
Dynasty
清

Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì 九經古義

Old Meanings of the Nine Classics by 惠棟 (撰)

About the work

A 16-juàn mid-Qing critical compendium by Huì Dòng 惠棟 (Sōngyá 松崖) of the recovered Hàn-period readings of the Nine Classics: Zhōu Yì, Shàngshū, Máo Shī, Zhōulǐ, Yílǐ, Lǐjì, Gōngyáng zhuàn, Gǔliáng zhuàn, Lúnyǔ. (The original work also covered the Zuǒ zhuàn in 6 juàn, but that portion was later separated out as the Zuǒ zhuàn bǔ zhù 左傳補註 and is the present 9-classic version of 16 juàn.) The work is the foundational programmatic text of the Wú-school Hàn xué 漢學 movement: its methodological premise, “Hàn-period commentaries are categorically closer to the canonical text than later Sòng readings”, became the working creed of the eighteenth-century evidential movement.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì in 16 juàn was composed by Huì Dòng of our reigning dynasty. Dòng has the Zhōu Yì shù and other works, all separately catalogued. This work explicates 10 Classics: Zhōu Yì, Shàngshū, Máo Shī, Zhōulǐ, Yílǐ, Lǐjì, Zuǒ zhuàn, Gōngyáng, Gǔliáng, Lúnyǔ. The Zuǒ zhuàn in 6 juàn was later renamed Bǔ zhù and printed separately, hence only 9 remain. The title “Gǔ yì” refers to the specialized xùngǔ (philological) learning of the Hàn Confucians, recoverable today.

In antiquity transmission was difficult — bamboo strips and lacquered books, taught teacher-to-disciple by oral instruction — so that homophones, copyist errors, and textual divergences arose readily. As the liù tǐ 六體 grew more elaborate and xíngshēng 形聲 categories more sophisticated, what later eyes distinguish as utterly different graphs were anciently easy substitutes; thus the loose graphic correspondences of antiquity became the springboard for later anachronistic chuān záo 穿鑿 (“forced and far-fetched”) interpretations. Therefore one who would read the books of the ancients must first know the ancients’ characters; only then can one make sense of the lines and gradually grasp the doctrine.

Dòng’s book throughout searches out the old text and cross-corroborates. Now and then his fondness for the rare and remote leads him to defects he cannot bring himself to crop. As, on the Yì’s Xū hexagram, he relies on the Guī cáng in writing rú 溽 (moist) — for the yì xiàng zhuàn’s yǐn shí (drink and food) sense the reading is consistent with the line-text — but for Xū ní 需泥 and Xū shā 需沙 the substitution does not work. As, on the Shū’s “yuē ruò jī gǔ” 曰若稽古, he uses Zhèng Kāngchéng’s reading — but in fact reading gǔ 古 as tiān 天 has no other classical witness. As, on the Yílǐ Shì hūn lǐ’s huáng jiù mǒu zǐ 皇舅某子, he extends the zhùshū of Zhāngzǐ and Lǐzǐ to refute Gù Yánwǔ — but in fact the Chūnqiū zhuàn’s “nán nǚ biàn xìng” (men and women distinguishing surname) refers to marriage, not to naming-titles. As, on the Lǐjì Tángōng’s Zǐxià sàng míng 子夏喪明, the Hàn Jìzhōu cóngshì Guō jūn bēi writes sàng míng 喪名 — actually a graphic substitution — but Dòng cites the Ěryǎ’s “above the eye is míng” gloss, taking míng to mean eye-pearl; he overlooks that the eye-pearl is not in the brow region. The Gōngyáng Yǐn 11 zhuàn: Cài Yōng’s stone classic writes shā 殺 as shì 試, citing the Báihǔ tōng — already over-stretched — and Dòng then cites the Xúnzǐ Yì bīng piān’s “wēi lì ér bù shì, xíng cuò ér bù yòng” as confirmation; in fact the shì there has a different sense, and Cài Yōng’s writing has nothing to do with it. The Chéngèr zhuàn “shì tǔ Qí yě”: he takes He Xiū’s annotation as the standard reading, citing the Zhōulǐ Sī mǎ fǎ to gloss tǔ as dù 杜 — when in fact “jìn dōng qí mǔ” is not “blocking the neighbouring states’ frontier” at all. The Lúnyǔ’s yǒng ér guī (chant and return), citing Zhèng Kāngchéng and Wáng Chōng as guī 歸 = kuì 饋 (food-offering) — when in fact fēngyú (the yú-rite) involves no offering. Such cases are all over-bending to the ancient and missing in fact.

Likewise on his having said: by Zhōulǐ niú rén the term rèn qì 任噐 derives from a canonical text and not from the masters and histories — refuting Sòng Qí’s Bǐ jì. The substance of this is no different from the genre of shuō bù (apocrypha) literature and has nothing to do with classical glossing. He cites the Xúnzǐ and Mòzǐ on the Xué jì’s “zhuàng zhōng” (struck bell), the Xúnzǐ to confirm Qín Mùgōng’s “kě biàn” (capable of change), the Mòzǐ to confirm Xǔ Zhǐ’s “bù cháng yào” (not tasting medicine), and Yáng Fāng’s Wǔ jīng gōu chén on the Lúnyǔ’s “shēng zhī” — all of these are dragging in side-evidence with no relation to xùngǔ; an inconsistent rule.

But beyond these few items, the body of the work is fundamentally rooted, with much that is rigorous and exact — better, on most measures, than Wáng Yīnglín’s Shī kǎo and Zhèng shì Yì zhù. Respectfully collated and submitted in the second month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng (1779). — Editors-in-chief: your servants Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. — Chief proof-reader: your servant Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì is the foundational programmatic text of the eighteenth-century Wú-school Hàn xué movement. Three points of distinction:

(1) The methodological premise. Huì Dòng’s preface enunciates the doctrine that came to define Wú-school Hàn xué: “the canonical text is preserved in the xùn (philological tradition); knowledge of characters and sounds is the only door to meaning; therefore the ancient xùn cannot be altered, the master classicist cannot be discarded.” This is the foundational program of “Hàn xué” as a recoverable corpus of antique reading from Hàn-period named commentators, against the Sòng yì lǐ 義理 alternative.

(2) The work’s reception. Once published, the Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì became the methodological touchstone of the entire Qing kǎozhèng movement. Wáng Yǐnzhī, Duàn Yùcái, and Wáng Niànsūn all built on it; Ruǎn Yuán’s Shísān jīng zhùshū jiào kān jì (1815) treats Huì’s readings as default options to be tested.

(3) The Sìkù critical apparatus. The Sìkù compilers’ enumeration of Huì’s individual stretches and over-extensions — eight or nine specific cases — is one of the more sustained pieces of kǎozhèng meta-criticism in the entire Sìkù tíyào. The compilers (Jǐ Yún and circle) are not partisans of the Wú-school; they recognize the work’s importance but flag the cases where Huì’s “fondness for the rare and remote” overrides his evidential good sense. The closing verdict — better than Wáng Yīnglín’s parallel reconstructions — gives the work its Qing-establishment imprimatur.

The work’s family-pedagogy origin (the preface notes that Huì wrote it to transmit the family’s inherited learning to his sons before they could lose it) explains some of its idiosyncratic emphases: it is genuinely a transmission text from a four-generation Hàn-learning family-line (great-grandfather Huì Yǒushēng, grandfather Huì Zhōutì, father Huì Shìqí, Huì Dòng himself). The dating bracket runs from c. 1740 (after Huì Dòng’s father’s death) through 1758 (Huì’s death); the work was first cut shortly after Huì’s death.

Translations and research

  • Sōng-yá xiānsheng nián pǔ 松崖先生年譜 — chronological biography of Huì Dòng.
  • Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philology. HUP, 1984; rev. UCLA 2001. The standard treatment of Wú-school Hàn xué; Huì Dòng is the central figure.
  • Henderson, John B. Scripture, Canon, and Commentary. Princeton UP, 1991. Pages on Huì Dòng’s hermeneutic programme.
  • Chow Kai-wing. The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China. Stanford UP, 1994. Background on the Sūzhōu Confucian milieu.
  • Hummel, Arthur W., ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period. Library of Congress, 1943; repr. SMC, 1991. Entry on Huì Dòng.
  • Yu Yingshi 余英時. “Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch’ing Confucian Intellectualism.” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 11.1–2 (1975): 105–146.

Other points of interest

The Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì is the most thoroughly researched 16-juàn book in the Wǔ jīng zǒng yì category; its citations are typically of the form “[ancient witness] writes [variant graph]; this matches [other ancient witness]; the standard zhùshū readings are wrong.” The methodological transparency makes the work eminently usable for further philological work — and is one reason it remained the working Hàn xué primer through the Qing.

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