Lúnyǔ bǐjiě 論語筆解
Pen-and-Brush Glosses on the Analects
韓愈 (Hán Yù, 768–824) and 李翱 (Lǐ Áo, 772–841)
About the work
A short, two-juàn gathering of selected critical readings of Lúnyǔ passages in the form of dialogue-notes between Hán Yù and his disciple Lǐ Áo. The Sìkù tíyào treats it as a posthumous compilation: marginal notes recorded by Hán Yù in the course of an unfinished Lúnyǔ commentary, into which Lǐ Áo’s discussion-replies were inserted. Each entry is short — a single phrase from the Lúnyǔ, followed by “Hán yuē” 韓曰 (Hán says) and frequently a paired “Lǐ yuē” 李曰 (Lǐ says) — pre-empting in tone and method the Sòng yìlǐ 義理 reading-style.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Lúnyǔ bǐjiě in 2 juàn — the old text-line ascribes it jointly to Hán Yù 韓愈 and Lǐ Áo 李翱 of the Táng. The annotations distinguish “Hán says” from “Lǐ says”. Now Zhāng Jí’s 張籍 collection contains a jìHánYù 祭韓愈 poem — “His Lúnyǔ-notes were not yet finished; the manuscript today is faint” — and Shào Bó 邵博’s Wénjiàn hòu lù 聞見後錄 cites this as evidence that Hán’s Lúnyǔ commentary was never completed. But Lǐ Hàn 李漢, who composed the preface to Hán Yù’s collected works, says that there is a Lúnyǔ zhù in 10 juàn, contradicting Zhāng Jí’s poem. Wáng Mào 王楙’s Yěkè cóngshū 野客叢書 again cites this as evidence that the work was completed.
Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Dúshū zhì observes that the catalogues of the imperial Sìkù and of Hándān 邯鄲 record nothing; only the catalogue of the Tián 田 family records a Hán shì Lúnyǔ 韓氏論語 in 10 juàn and a Bǐjiě 筆解 in 2 juàn — i.e. the Bǐjiě is something distinct from the Lúnyǔ zhù. The Xīn Tángshū yìwénzhì 新唐書藝文志 records Hán’s Lúnyǔ zhù in 10 juàn but not the Bǐjiě. Only Zhèng Qiáo’s 鄭樵 Tōngzhì lists a 2-juàn version, agreeing with the present text — suggesting the work was put into circulation at the end of the Northern Sòng. Yet Lǐ Kuāngyì 李匡乂, a man of Xuánzōng’s Dàzhōng era [847–860], in his Zīxiá jí 資暇集 observes: “On ‘Zǎi Yǔ slept by day’ [Lúnyǔ 5.10] — Liáng Wǔdì read qǐn 寢 as ‘sleeping-chamber’ and the zhòu 晝 as huàguàfǎn, huà 畫, meaning ‘he painted his sleeping-chamber’; modern readers seldom know the source, and all attribute it to Hán Wéngōng’s exegesis.” And again in another passage: “On ‘Was anyone hurt? — He did not ask about the horses’ [Lúnyǔ 10.17, 廄焚] — modern readers also take it that Hán Wéngōng read the bù 不 as fǒu 否.” So before Dàzhōng there was already a Hán Yù reading of these passages — it is not Sòng-period forgery.
Yet the “zhòu qǐn” entry is in the present text, but the “jiù fén” (horse-stable burnt) entry is not. If the present text were a forgery, the forger would not have plucked one anecdote and left out the other; nor — given that they are continuous in the Zīxiá jí — does this look like later attribution. By inference, then, when Hán Yù was annotating the Lúnyǔ he sometimes wrote down notes in the margins; Lǐ Áo asked him questions about them and supplied additional discussion in the same place. After the book was completed, later readers obtained the draft and excerpted from it those entries that had not made it into the formal commentary, publishing them separately in 2 juàn — much as Chéngzǐ’s Yìzhuàn 易傳 has, in his collected Yíshū 遺書, a separate set of Lùnyì 論易 entries; or as Zhū Xī’s Shīzhuàn 詩傳 has Zhū Jiàn’s 朱鑑 Shīzhuàn yíshuō 詩傳遺說 as a parallel. The title bǐjiě “pen-and-brush gloss” itself suggests it was not Hán’s own arrangement.
That entries are sometimes present, sometimes missing, is because before Wáng Cún’s 王存 edition there was no printed text — the work circulated in manuscript and varied. The sānyuè zìyīn 三月字音 entry that Shào Bó saw, which Wáng Mào did not, is just such an instance — clear proof of textual divergence. Wáng Cún’s edition is no longer extant; Wèi Zhòngjǔ’s 魏仲舉 cutting of the Hán wén wǔbǎi jiā zhù 韓文五百家注 included this work as an appendix, and the present transmission is rare. The base text used here is the Míng cutting by Fàn Qīn 范欽, after Xǔ Bó’s 許勃 transmission. Zhào Xīshēng’s 趙希升 Dúshū fùzhì 讀書附志 says “where the entry reads Áo yuē 翺曰, this is Lǐ Xízhī 李習之”; in the old edition Hán Yù’s name was not affixed, and only Lǐ Áo’s entries were title-headed for distinction; the present text changes them to “Hán yuē” and “Lǐ yuē” — also no longer in their old form. — Respectfully revised, tenth month of the 46th year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Sìkù argument is consistent with modern scholarship: the Lúnyǔ bǐjiě is not Hán Yù’s projected 10-juàn Lúnyǔ commentary (which Lǐ Hàn’s preface attests was completed and which is now lost), but a separately circulating set of margin-notes and conversation-extracts from his draft work, with Lǐ Áo’s contributions interleaved. The textual history is intricate: pre-Dà-zhōng (847–860) circulation in some form is attested by Lǐ Kuāngyì; the present 2-juàn configuration first appears in Zhèng Qiáo’s Tōngzhì (mid-12th century); the dispersed transmission down to the Míng was through manuscript only, with significant inter-witness variation; the standard cutting derives from Fàn Qīn’s 范欽 Míng-period reprint of Xǔ Bó 許勃’s text. The Sìkù tíyào notes that the present text’s labelling — “Hán yuē / Lǐ yuē” — is itself a Míng innovation, replacing an older convention in which only Lǐ Áo’s entries were marked.
The intellectual interest of the Bǐjiě is its anticipation of Sòng-period Confucian yìlǐ readings of the Lúnyǔ. On Lúnyǔ 1.16 (“不患人之不己知, 患不知人也”), for example, Hán reads through to a Confucian self-cultivation interpretation that prefigures Zhū Xī’s. The Bǐjiě was important to Sòng readers (Cháo Gōngwǔ, Shào Bó, Wáng Mào, Wèi Zhòngjǔ all cite it) and to YuánMíng Lúnyǔ scholars (Lǚ Liùliáng 呂留良 cites Hán Yù through the Bǐjiě); but its most lasting impact is the symbolic one of placing Hán Yù in the dàotǒng 道統 lineage of Lúnyǔ exegesis that runs from him through the Sòng Neo-Confucians.
Translations and research
No standalone English translation. Modern Chinese: Wú Hóng-yī 吳鴻一, Lúnyǔ bǐ-jiě jiào-zhù 論語筆解校注 (Xué-yuàn 2014). Studies: Hsiao Kung-chuan / Xiao Gōngquán 蕭公權, “Hán Yù Lúnyǔ xué” 韓愈論語學, in his Zhōng-guó zhèng-zhì sī-xiǎng-shǐ 中國政治思想史; John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects (HUP, 2003), discussion of Hán Yù’s Lúnyǔ readings; Charles Hartman, Han Yu and the T’ang Search for Unity (PUP, 1986), incidental treatment.
Other points of interest
The Bǐjiě contains, among other anticipations of Sòng-period reading, a celebrated set of remarks on the Bāyì 八佾 chapter that re-read several passages by the supposed identity of the speaker — readings that Zhū Xī later rejected but that Wáng Yǎngmíng 王陽明 and the Míng xīnxué school revived. Its slim two-juàn compass conceals an important hinge in Lúnyǔ hermeneutics.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.7.3.
- Jiù Tángshū 160, Xīn Tángshū 176 (Hán Yù biographies).
- Charles Hartman, Han Yu and the T’ang Search for Unity (PUP, 1986).