古經解鉤沉

Gǔ jīng jiě gōu chén 古經解鉤沉

Hooks-from-the-Depths of Old Classical Commentaries by 余蕭客 (撰)

About the work

A 30-juàn (effectively 33 with sub-volumes) systematic compilation by Yú Xiāokè (Zhònglín) of pre-Táng classical commentary fragments. The work is the methodologically most thoroughgoing high-Qing recovery-compilation of named-master commentary fragments preserved in the zhùshū, the dynastic histories, the lèishū (encyclopedias), and other secondary sources. Coverage: xù lù 1 juàn, Yì 1, Shū 3, Shī 1, Zhōulǐ 1, Yílǐ 2, Lǐjì 4, Zuǒ zhuàn 7, Gōngyáng 1, Gǔliáng 1, Xiàojīng 1, Lúnyǔ 1, Mèngzǐ 2, Ěryǎ 3 — total 30, with the xù lù and Zuǒ zhuàn further sub-divided giving 33. Title from the Yáng Xióng fǎ yán: gōu chén 鉤沉 — to “hook out the sunken matter”.

Tiyao

Your servants having respectfully examined: the Gǔ jīng jiě gōu chén in 30 juàn was composed by Yú Xiāokè of our reigning dynasty. Xiāokè’s style name was Zhònglín; he was a man of Chángzhōu. This compilation gathers the xùngǔ of the various Confucians of pre-Táng times. First the xù lù in 1 juàn; then Zhōu yì 1, Shàngshū 3, Máo shī 1, Zhōulǐ 1, Yílǐ 2, Lǐjì 4, Zuǒ zhuàn 7, Gōngyáng 1, Gǔliáng 1, Xiàojīng 1, Lúnyǔ 1, Mèngzǐ 2, Ěryǎ 3 — totaling 30 juàn; but the xù lù and Zhōu yì and Zuǒ divisions are each in sub-volumes (zǐ juàn), so in fact 33 juàn.

Since Sòng xué swept through, the pre-Táng xùngǔ tradition was generally pummelled, and the works themselves daily wandered into dispersal and loss. By Míng times, those who expounded the Classics had taken to “free-standing speculation” (píng yì kōng tán 憑臆空談), drifting outside the bounds of method. Our reigning dynasty’s Confucian arts have shone forth, the literati have re-built the substance of solid learning. Furthermore, having met with His Majesty’s surveyance of antiquity and patronage of letters, the imperial directive to collate and cut the Shísān jīng zhùshū and to promulgate it under the heavens — as a public-and-private exemplar — every house of authorship has accordingly aroused itself to seek to attain to antiquity. Xiāokè’s book is one of these.

His xù lù enumerates the senior Confucians’ names, native places, offices, and titles of their works. Where the work survives, he does not include it; where the name survives but the doctrine is not transmitted, also not included. Beyond this — for fragments cited in the various authors’ classical exegeses, extending to the dynastic histories and the lèishū — wherever a single phrase or word of pre-Táng jiù shuō (old explanation) can be ascertained, he registers the title. Even where the person’s name is given without book-title, or the book-title without the person’s name, he still includes them. He further cross-references zhuàn against jīng, painstakingly arranging and ordering — and for each fragment notes the exact source-text by juàn-number, on the model of the Zī xiá jí 資暇集 and Lóng kān shǒu jiàn 龍龕手鏡 — to provide verification. The canonical text is collated against Northern Sòng best-cuts in correction of the late-Míng Imperial Academy errors and lacunae.

His self-preface: “begun in jǐmǎo (Qiánlóng 24 = 1759), the draft completed in rénwǔ (Qiánlóng 27 = 1762); copying day and night, I came almost to qīng máng (cataract-blindness) before assembling the volumes.” His effort can certainly be called diligent.

We examine: Yamai Kanae’s Qī jīng Mèngzǐ kǎo wén (KR1g0020) records that the Liáng Huáng Kǎn 皇侃’s Lúnyǔ yì shū still has a complete text in Japan; and the Táng Shǐ Zhēng’s 史徵 Zhōu yì kǒu jué yì 周易口訣義 likewise has surviving text in the Yǒnglè dàdiàn. Xiāokè’s work places Huáng’s book among the lost and does not gather Shǐ’s work either — but the overseas cut he could only know by hearsay, and the Tiānlù (Imperial Cabinet) treasures had long been kept in secret seclusion, not for an obscure cold scholar’s force to behold. Yet within the range of the canonical scholar’s eyes and ears, his collection can fairly be called comprehensive. Respectfully collated and submitted in the fourth 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 Gǔ jīng jiě gōu chén is the principal high-Qing systematic recovery-compilation of pre-Táng classical commentary fragments. Three points of distinction:

(1) The methodological precision. Yú’s six methodological principles — (i) preface enumerating master’s particulars; (ii) extant works excluded; (iii) lost works’ fragments retained; (iv) name-without-title or title-without-name still included; (v) source-attribution by exact text and juàn; (vi) Northern-Sòng best-cuts as canonical-text controls — constitute the most precise statement of high-Qing source-criticism methodology in any work of its time. Wáng Niànsūn, Duàn Yùcái, Lú Wénzhāo all built on these principles.

(2) The lineage with the Wú school. Yú was a direct disciple of Huì Dòng (惠棟); the Gǔ jīng jiě gōu chén is the second-generation Wú school’s complement to Huì’s Jiǔ jīng gǔ yì (KR1g0024). Where Huì’s work focuses on selectively chosen old readings as substantive challenges to Sòng orthodoxy, Yú’s work is a comprehensive bibliographical reconstruction of the lost commentary tradition.

(3) The Sìkù compilers’ two corrections. The tíyào notes (i) the omission of Huáng Kǎn’s Lúnyǔ yì shū, which is in fact extant in Japan (per Yamai Kanae’s Qī jīng Mèngzǐ kǎo wén bǔ yí) — though Yú could not have known this without access to the Tokugawa cuts; (ii) the omission of Shǐ Zhēng’s Zhōu yì kǒu jué yì, fragments of which survive in the Yǒnglè dàdiàn — though Yú had no access to that. The Sìkù compilers are appropriately understanding of these limits.

The dating is precise: begun 1759, draft completed 1762. The work was first cut shortly after Yú’s death (1777) and was incorporated into the Sìkù in 1779. The scholarly importance of the work has only grown in modern study: Wáng Mò 王謨’s HànWèi yí shū chāo 漢魏遺書鈔 (1820s), Mǎ Guóhàn 馬國翰’s Yù hán shān fáng jí yì shū 玉函山房輯佚書 (1854), and Huáng Shì 黃奭’s Hàn xué táng cóng shū 漢學堂叢書 are all developments of Yú’s basic recovery-compilation method.

Translations and research

• Qing shǐ liè zhuàn 清史列傳, Rúlín zhuàn — biographical entry on Yú Xiāokè.
• Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philology. HUP, 1984; rev. UCLA 2001. Pages on the Wú school’s second generation.
• 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.
• Hummel, Arthur W., ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period. Library of Congress, 1943; repr. SMC, 1991. Entry on Yú Xiāokè.
• Wǔ Píngshū 武平書. Gǔ jīng jiě gōu chén kǎo 古經解鉤沉考. Modern PRC monograph, 1990s.

Other points of interest

The work’s extension of the fragment-recovery method to a comprehensive bibliographical project established a model that the late-Qing recovery-compilers (Mǎ Guóhàn, Huáng Shì, Wáng Mò, Wáng Rènjùn) all followed. Yú’s documenting of his own working method — the years of day-and-night copying that gave him cataracts — adds a compelling personal note to one of the more abstract of high-Qing scholarly works.

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Xiaoke
• (no Zinbun URL identified — searchable from Zinbun search interface)