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五經疑問

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Text ID
KR1g0039
Date
400–700
Dynasty
南北朝

Wǔjīng yíwèn 五經疑問

Questions on the Five Classics (author uncertain; reconstructed by 馬國翰)

About the work

A 1-juàn compilation of fourteen wèn-yuē 問曰 (Q & A) sets, each posing a sharp classical-doctrinal conundrum and giving an elaborate piánwén 駢文 (parallel-prose) response. The topics range across all five classics — Shū (the Yǐn zhēng 胤征 eclipse; the Hóng fàn succession of virtues), Shī (the Shíyuè zhī jiāo 十月之交 eclipse; the Táoyāo / Biāo méi marriage-season odes), Yì (the absence of an abdication hexagram against the presence of a revolution hexagram), Lǐ (continuation of mourning for a re-married stepmother; mourning for a grandparent one has never met), Chūnqiū — with each of the Zuǒ, Gōngyáng, and Gǔliáng commentaries getting its own question (the killing of Aī Jiāng 哀姜; the post-sānwáng sub-canonical jiāo tiān sacrifice; the Lǔ Xī gōng 31st-year failed sacrificial divination), and Lúnyǔ (Confucius weeping over the qí lín and over the Hé tú). Author and Qīng compilation source are both insecure; the work is logged to UNCERTAIN.md for follow-up.

Tiyao

No tiyao in source (post-WYG fragment collection).

Abstract

The Wǔjīng yíwèn is a problem-cycle of fourteen sets, each in wèn-yuē 問曰 form: a question that lays out a doctrinal paradox in elevated parallel-prose, followed by a yuē 曰 answer (the answer is not always a resolution; in several cases it merely sharpens the paradox by exhibiting the apparent self-contradiction of the canonical position).

The fourteen questions, in source-file order:

  1. Cosmic succession. Why does the xiāng-shēng 相生 (mutual-engendering) of the Wǔ-xíng — by which dynasties succeed peacefully under Heaven’s mandate — coexist with the case of Tāng and Wǔ overthrowing their predecessors by xiāng-kè 相剋 (mutual-conquest), i.e. by force of arms? The xiāng-kè path and the xiāng-shēng path give incompatible accounts of dynastic legitimacy.

  2. Yǔ sacrificing his criminal father Gǔn at the jiāo. If the principle is “the high virtue ascends to share the jiāo sacrifice”, why does Shùn not honour his own father Gǔ-sǒu 瞽叟 the same way? And how can Yǔ raise to the jiāo the criminal Gǔn 鯀 who was banished and killed by Heaven’s judgement?

  3. Tāng abolishing Zhù 柱 from the agricultural altar. If the principle is “ancient meritorious figures continue to receive worship”, why does Tāng replace Zhù with Hòu Jì 后稷 — and could Yǔ likewise be displaced by anyone after enough generations?

  4. Why Wǔ-wáng preserves the Yīn altar. Why does Tāng wish to relocate the Xià altar but cannot, while Wǔ-wáng preserves the Bó-altar 亳社 as a warning relic of the conquered? The two cases give incompatible answers about whether the conquered dynasty’s altars are honoured or abolished.

  5. The Yì’s asymmetry. The Yì has a gé 革 (revolution) hexagram-and-image but no yī-ràng 揖讓 (abdication-and-yielding) image. Does this teach revolution as preferable to abdication, or are the abdications of Yáo and Shùn somehow defective?

  6. The Sī-xuǎn-shì 司烜氏 capital execution. The Zhōulǐ permits the execution of a criminal’s whole clan (“wū zhū” 屋誅). But the Hóng fàn and the Lǐ jīng both teach mercy. How can the execution of a clan be reconciled with classical doctrine on “xíng bù jí zǐ” 刑不及子 (punishment does not reach the children)?

  7. Mourning a re-married stepmother. The Yílǐ Sāngfú requires a continuation of mourning for the stepmother who remarries; the rationale is “completion of the original kindness”. But by remarrying she has broken the relation and become attached to another lineage. How can the mourning still be required?

  8. The “not knowing one’s grandparents” rule. Lǐjì says that one whose grandparents died before one was born does not don the heavy shuāi 縗 for them. But surely some mourning is still required for the proper transmission of family piety?

  9. The killing of Aī Jiāng 哀姜. The Zuǒ zhuàn records that the men of Qí killed Aī Jiāng (the Lǔ ruler’s mother), and the jūnzǐ 君子 commentary says it should not have been done. But she was guilty of grave moral failings. By what principle is the jūnzǐ commentary correct?

  10. The Gōngyáng’s sub-dynasty jiāo. The Gōngyáng permits the post-sānwáng royal descendants — the yī-ràng zhī zhòu 揖讓之冑 — to perform their own jiāo tiān sacrifice. But it can be said that jiāo is uniquely for the reigning dynasty. By what doctrine are these descendants permitted?

  11. The Gǔliáng’s failed-divination gloss. When Lǔ Xī-gōng’s jiāo divination failed three times in 631 BCE, the Gǔliáng glosses nǎi 乃 (“then”) as “indicating the absence of the human element”. But Xī-gōng was Lǔ’s exemplary ruler, performing the rite reverently — by what doctrine is the failure of the human element attributable to him?

  12. The Yǐn zhēng 胤征 eclipse. The Shàngshū records the autumn eclipse for which the astronomers Xī and Hé were executed. But the question argues that a single mis-calculation should not have entailed clan execution; the punishment exceeds the offence; the doctrine of “proportional justice” is violated.

  13. The Shíyuè zhī jiāo 十月之交 eclipse. The Máo shī poem treats the xīn-mǎo day eclipse as profoundly ominous, but eclipses are simply astronomical recurrences with no moral content. By what doctrine is the xīn-mǎo eclipse uniquely ominous when an eclipse on shuò day is not?

  14. Confucius weeping. The Lúnyǔ records Confucius weeping over the appearance of the qí lín and the failure of the Hé tú to emerge. But the shèng-rén 聖人 (Sage) is said to be “equanimous toward life and death; equal in glory and shame; ranks all opposites as one.” How can the equanimous Sage weep?

Attribution and date. The work is not the better-known Míng Wǔjīng yíwèn of 姚舜牧 Yáo Shùnmù (an entirely different Cheng-Zhu exegetical compilation, on ctext.org); that is a prose commentary, not a parallel-prose problem-cycle. The Kanripo work is not listed in the standard Yùhánshānfáng jíyì shū table of contents (main or 續編); it most likely derives from 黃奭 Huáng Shì’s 《漢學堂叢書》 / 《漢學堂經解》 (Qīng), the parallel Qīng jíyì corpus to Mǎ Guóhàn’s, or possibly from direct extraction by the Kanripo editors from 嚴可均 《全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文》 or 《全唐文》. The heavily piánwén register and the topical overlap with the Tōngdiǎn / Suí-Táng yì-shū polemics suggest a Liù-cháo to early-Táng composition (ca. 400–700); a more precise bracket would require identifying the source compilation. The work has been logged to UNCERTAIN.md for follow-up.

Translations and research

No substantial secondary literature located. The work’s attribution is sufficiently uncertain that no dedicated scholarship has formed around it. The topics overlap heavily with the Tōngdiǎn ritual debates and with Liú Xié’s Wénxīn diāolóng / Shǐ chuán chapter, and any future identification would proceed through cross-comparison with those corpora.

Other points of interest

The form — fourteen wèn-yuē problem-cycles, each a small parallel-prose set-piece — resembles the cèwèn 策問 (court-examination question) tradition more than the yìshū (sub-commentary) tradition; the work may originate as a teaching compilation or court-debate primer rather than as an exegetical treatise per se. The fact that the answers do not always resolve the paradoxes — they sometimes simply sharpen them — is itself an interesting genre marker.

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