Wǔjīng dàyì 五經大義
Great Meaning of the Five Classics by 戴逵 (撰), reconstructed by 馬國翰 (輯)
About the work
A jíyì reconstruction of the lost ritual-classical treatise of Dài Kuí 戴逵 (c. 331–396), an Eastern-Jìn 東晉 recluse-polymath better known to art historians as one of the first major painters and Buddhist sculptors of his generation. The Wǔjīng dàyì is a self-conscious anti-Zhèng treatise: its two surviving substantive fragments — both preserved in 杜佑’s Tōngdiǎn — argue against Zhèng Xuán’s 鄭玄 commentary on the Yílǐ Sāngfú 儀禮·喪服, on (i) the question of dài mourning a husband’s lord and (ii) the seven-month vs. nine-month dàgōng shāng 大功殤 distinction (the latter occasioned by a letter from Fàn Níng 范甯 raising the Mǎ Róng / Zhèng Xuán disagreement). Dài Kuí sides decisively with Mǎ Róng. The compilation as transmitted in this KR1g volume also contains, as a third fragment, a short geographical passage attributed by Yú Shìnán 虞世南’s Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔·地部 to a different Dài-Kuí work — 《雜義》 (Zá yì) — which Mǎ Guóhàn appended to the volume.
Tiyao
No tiyao in source (post-WYG fragment collection).
Abstract
Dài Kuí 戴逵, zì Āndào 安道 (c. 331–396), was a Qiáo-jùn 譙郡 Zhì-xiàn 銍縣 native (modern Sùxiàn in Ānhuī) who spent his life as a yìnzhě 隱者 in Kuàijī 會稽 Shàn-xiàn 剡縣 (modern Shèngzhōu), declining repeated court summons. Pupil of Fàn Xuān 范宣 (his wife’s paternal uncle), he is best remembered today as one of the first major Han-Chinese practitioners of Buddhist sculpture (the Wúliàngshòu 無量壽 image at Wǎguān-sì 瓦官寺 in Jiànkāng was his work) and as a qín 琴 player who broke his instrument rather than perform for Wáng Sī 王嗣 of the Wǔlíng 武陵 commandery. His standard biography is Jìnshū 晉書 卷94 隱逸傳; he appears also in Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 (品藻, 雅量, 棲逸 chapters).
In classical scholarship his position is in the Mǎ Róng 馬融 vs. Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄 debate over the Yílǐ Sāngfú mourning-garment chapter — specifically, the relation of the wife’s mourning duty to her husband’s mourning duty for his lord, and the question whether the dà gōng shāng (death of an immature relative aged 8–11) is seven months (as Mǎ Róng held) or nine months (as Zhèng held). The Tōngdiǎn j. 90 fragment begins with Dài’s restatement of the Zhèng position, then his blunt verdict — “Kuí wèi Zhèng Xuán zhù Sāngfú bù tōng” 逵謂鄭元注喪服不通 (“Kuí takes it that Zhèng Xuán’s commentary on the Sāngfú is incoherent”) — and his argument that since the wife’s yì is to recognize no two zūn (objects of supreme respect), she cannot simultaneously mourn her own lord and her husband’s lord. The Tōngdiǎn j. 91 fragment records Fàn Níng’s epistolary inquiry to Dài Kuí about the seven-vs-nine month dispute and Dài Kuí’s answer in favour of Mǎ Róng’s seven-month ruling, on the ground that Zhèng’s reading produces unworkable consequences for the lower mourning grades (e.g. sīmá zhī cháng shāng would require 200-plus days of weeping).
The fragment preserved in Běitáng shūchāo — “plodding through brushwood and wandering, lodging where caves are found; men have no fixed dwelling, women no constant place” — is explicitly attributed by Yú Shìnán to Dài Kuí’s 《雜義》, a different (also lost) work. Mǎ Guóhàn appended it to the Wǔjīng dàyì volume on the editorial principle of gathering Dài Kuí’s surviving exegetical fragments as a body.
The standard catalog reference is Suíshū jīngjízhì (j. 32, 經部·五經總義類), which records the Wǔjīng dàyì in 3 juàn; the work is lost by the Sòng. The Kanripo fragments are taken directly from Mǎ Guóhàn 《玉函山房輯佚書》, 經編·五經總義類, “五經大義一卷”. Yán Kějūn 嚴可均’s 《全晉文》卷137 collects Dài Kuí’s prose as an alternative locus.
Textual note: The source file writes “鄭元” 鄭元 throughout for 鄭玄 — this is the Sòng-era taboo-avoidance substitution (the character 玄 was tabooed under Sòng Zhēnzōng’s zūnhào of Zhào Xuán-lǎng 趙玄朗). The substitution is preserved here as in the source.
Translations and research
- Theobald, Ulrich. “Wujing dayi 五經大義.” ChinaKnowledge.de. September 2013. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Classics/wujingdayi.html . Concise overview of the four pre-Sòng Wǔjīng dàyì works (Dài Kuí; another by 樊文深 in Northern Zhōu; one by 沈文阿; one by 戴溪) and their bibliographic histories.
- 馬國翰 《玉函山房輯佚書》, 經編·五經總義類.
- 嚴可均 《全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文·全晉文》卷137 (戴逵).
Other points of interest
Dài Kuí’s reputation in art history (as a major Buddhist sculptor and one of the earliest Han practitioners of the qín tradition centred on the Guǎnglíng sǎn 廣陵散) tends to eclipse his role as a Mǎ-Róng-side ritualist in the Eastern-Jìn classical yì-shū debates. The Wǔjīng dàyì fragments are evidence that Dài was as much a serious classicist as he was an artist — and that his independence from Zhèng-Xuán orthodoxy was as much an intellectual posture as his refusal of court summons was a social one.