Ěryǎ zhù 爾雅註
Annotations to the Ěryǎ by 鄭樵 (Zhèng Qiáo)
About the work
A three-juàn re-annotation of the Ěryǎ by the polyhistoric Sòng scholar Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 (1104–1162), dwelling chiefly on errata in Guō Pú’s commentary and on the rectification of natural-history terms by reference to the categories of his own Liùshū lüè 六書略 and Tōngzhì 通志. The Sìkù compilers list it under 訓詁之屬 of the Xiǎoxué class.
Tiyao
Your servants etc. respectfully report: Ěryǎ Zhèngzhù in three juàn. Composed by Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 of the Sòng. Qiáo’s zì was Yúzhòng 漁仲; he was a man of Pútián 莆田 who lived in the Jiājì 夾漈 mountains, and accordingly took the place as his hào; he also styled himself the “Untrammelled Recluse of the Western Stream” Xīxī yìmín 西溪逸民. In the Shàoxīng era (1131–62), on a recommendation, he was summoned to court audience and appointed Yòudí gōngláng and Bīngbù jiàgé; soon afterward he was reassigned to oversee the Nányuè temple at Tánzhōu, granted writing-paper and dispatched home to copy out his work. After the Tōngzhì was complete, he was brought back as Shūmìyuàn biānxiū. The Southern-Sòng rú generally exalted moral philosophy and skimped textual research, so Qiáo, on the strength of his erudition, came to look down upon his contemporaries and at last gave free rein to his cleverness, abusing Máo Hēng 毛亨 and Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄; his Shī biànwàng 詩辨妄 opened a centuries-long shortcut to fabricated Classics-exegesis, and was deeply censured by the great rú. But when he wrote this present book, [he restricted himself to] expounding what was tractable and leaving open what was not — the diction is plain and free from forced or far-fetched glosses, and among the Ěryǎ-school it counts as a sound recension. He corrects passages of the old text — as the postface lists, on zhānhú xùnyán jiǎnpáo gǔnfǔ 饘餬訉言襺袍衮黼 (four entries), and on éé zhēngzhēng yīngyīng 峩峩丁丁嚶嚶 (two entries); and within the notes, on Shìgǔ “Tái, zhèn, yáng” 台朕陽, the yú 予 read as 我; on lài, bì, bǔ 賚畀卜, the yú 予 read as 與 — one entry; on yuèyuè, yōngyōng 閲閲噰噰 (which should belong in Shìxùn) — one entry; on Shìqīn, drawing on the Zuǒzhuàn to rectify dìsì 娣姒 — one entry; on Shìtiān, on the jǐngfēng 景風 sentence having a missing graph above; on the names of stars, lacking Shíchén 實沈, Chúnshǒu 鶉首, Chúnwěi 鶉尾 (three asterisms) — one entry; on Shìshuǐ, on “the Son of Heaven’s tied-boats” zàozhōu 造舟 — one entry; on Shìyú, on lǐzhān 鯉鱣 — one entry; on Shìchóng, on the root-eating máo 食根蟊 — one entry; on the viper fùhuǐ 蝮虺 with a head as big as an arm — one entry. All these corrections are extremely accurate. Only on the entry “fish are called dīng 丁” — one entry — he forces the reading to fit the doctrine of his own Liùshū lüè, and on the basis of the words dòngyǔ 涷雨 he asserts that the Ěryǎ was composed after the Lísāo and stubbornly insists that its author was a Jiāngnán man, refuting wholesale every passage where Guō Pú had identified Shǔ-language or Hé-zhōng-language readings — these are biased excesses, his old habit not yet quite shed. With those caveats it can be read [profitably]. Respectfully edited and presented in the tenth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). Editor-Generals: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Editor-in-chief: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Ěryǎ zhù is a product of Zhèng Qiáo’s mature scholarship, written alongside the Tōngzhì (presented to court 1161). Zhèng’s polemical preface (preserved here) proposes a radical historicization: the Ěryǎ presupposes the Shī and Shū and so cannot have been composed by Zhōugōng but only by a (probably Jiāngnán) Hàn glossator working backward from those texts. He further argues that Ěryǎ and jiānzhù (Mao’s zhuàn and Zhèng Xuán’s annotations) are two parallel modes of glossing the Classics: when Ěryǎ glosses what needs glossing, then jiānzhù may be discarded; conversely when Ěryǎ glosses what does not need glossing, jiānzhù takes over. The book gives substantive emendations on terminology in Shìqīn, Shìtiān, Shìshuǐ, Shìyú, Shìchóng, etc., often anchoring its corrections in the Zuǒzhuàn and observed natural history. The Sìkù editors find Zhèng’s natural-history work admirable but flag two excesses: (1) forcing readings to fit his Liùshū taxonomy, and (2) the chronological argument from dòngyǔ and the assumption of a Southern provenience, which leads him to wholesale rejection of Guō Pú’s regional glosses. The work was used by the Qiánlóng compilers to collate corrections into the standard zhùshū edition KR1j0004.
Translations and research
- Trauzettel, Rolf. 1964. Ts’ai Ching (1046–1126) als Typus des illegitimen Ministers. Bamberg: Aku-Fotodruck. — older but contains observations on Zhèng Qiáo’s institutional context.
- Zhèng Hè-shēng 鄭鶴聲 and Zhèng Hé-shū 鄭鶴叔. 2008. Zhèng Qiáo wén-jí 鄭樵文集. Beijing: Shū mù wén-xiàn.
- Zhū Zǔyán 朱祖延, ed. 2014 (1996–99). Ěryǎ gǔlín 爾雅詁林. Hubei jiaoyu — collates Zhèng’s emendations.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, §6.2.1.2 and §73.6.2.