Jíjiù piān 急就篇
The Quick Mastery Primer by 史游 (Shǐ Yóu, 撰) with 顏師古 (Yán Shīgǔ, 注) and 王應麟 (Wáng Yìnglín, 補注)
About the work
The earliest extant Chinese children’s primer / character-list. The base text was composed under Hàn Yuándì (r. 49–33 BCE) by the eunuch Huángmén lìng Shǐ Yóu 史游 in 32 four-syllable rhymed sections (some editions of 31 sections), grouping ~2,000 graphs by topic — surnames and given-names; clothing, food, vessels, body parts; agriculture; statecraft; punishments; and so on — with no graph repeated. The Sìkù WYG edition is the standard four-juàn recension based on Yán Shīgǔ’s Táng-period commentary supplemented by Wáng Yìnglín’s Sòng-period bǔzhù 補注.
Tiyao
Jíjiù piān in four juàn. — Composed by Shǐ Yóu of the Hàn. The Hànshū yìwénzhì note says that Yóu was Huángmén lìng under Yuándì — i.e. a eunuch; the rest of his career cannot be retrieved. The Hànzhì lists the work simply as Jíjiù in one piān, but the closing summary of the Xiǎoxué class explicitly says “Shǐ Yóu composed the Jíjiù piān”; hence Jìn-period Xiàhóu Zhàn 夏侯湛’s Dǐyí says: “the country folk and lone scholar can recite the Jíjiù and master the Jiǎzǐ [calendar]”; the BěiQí shū says of Lǐ Xuàn 李鉉 that “at nine he entered school and learned the Jíjiù piān.” Whether the piān graph is included or omitted varies. The Suízhì gives Jíjiù zhāng in one juàn; the Wèishū Cuī Hào zhuàn also says “many used to commission copies of the Jíjiù zhāng” — so the change of piān 篇 to zhāng 章 begins in the post-Wèi period. But Zhāng Huáiguàn’s Shūduàn says: “Zhāngcǎo is the [script] made by Hàn Huángmén lìng Shǐ Yóu. Wáng Yīn says (citing his Wénzì zhì): ‘In the Hàn Yuándì era, Shǐ Yóu composed the Jíjiù zhāng; he loosened the clerical-script structure; the Hàn vulgar [script], being abridged and lazy, gradually adopted it.‘” — that is, what is called zhāngcǎo (cursive-section script) takes its name from the very fact that Shǐ Yóu composed this book and used the variant cursive-script he was developing for it; later, since the variant had emerged from the Jíjiù zhāng, it came to be called zhāngcǎo. The present text begins each section with “zhāng dìjǐ” X, so Jíjiù zhāng is the original title; “Jíjiù piān” or simply “Jíjiù” are casual variants. — From start to finish there is not a single repeated graph; the diction is elegant and recondite, far surpassing later child-primers like the Méngqiú. The Yùtái xīnyǒng records Liáng Xiāo Zǐxiǎn 蕭子顯’s Wūqī qū with the line “the skirt-side mixed-jade is hǔpò lóng 琥珀龍”; Féng’s collated edition emends lóng to hóng 紅; but checking the present Jíjiù, we have “the wrist-bound lánggān and hǔpò lóng” — so Xiāo Zǐxiǎn was using Jíjiù’s vocabulary, and Féng’s emendation is wrong. So the work serves more than primer-purposes. — There were old commentaries by Cáo Shòu, Cuī Hào, Liú Fāng, and Yán Zhītuī, all lost; only Yán Shīgǔ’s commentary in one juàn survives. Wáng Yìnglín supplemented it (bǔzhù) and divided into four juàn. Yán Shīgǔ’s edition has 63 graphs more than the Huáng Xiàng stele but lacks two zhāng (Qíguó and Shānyáng), totaling 32 zhāng. Wáng Yìnglín’s Yìwénzhì kǎozhèng identifies the lines from “Zhēndìng” through “Chángshān to Gāoyì” as belonging to two zhāng arising in the Eastern Hàn — extremely precise. His commentary is critically sound and supplements Yán’s gaps. There are also Huáng Tíngjiān’s edition, Lǐ Tāo’s edition, and Zhū Zǐ Yuèzhōng edition — the wording differs slightly. Wáng Yìnglín’s commentary mostly follows Yán’s text, evidently because of its critical depth.
Abstract
The Jíjiù piān is the most influential pedagogical text of late-Western-Hàn lexicography and arguably the source of the zhāngcǎo (章草) cursive script via Shǐ Yóu’s own writing of the primer. Its ~2,000 unique graphs in 32 four-syllable sections constitute a controlled-vocabulary lexicon for elementary literacy and an early thematic taxonomy that influenced both the Ěryǎ’s topical organization and the later Shuōwén jiězì. Yán Shīgǔ’s 顏師古 commentary (mid-7th-c.) is the standard medieval commentary; Wáng Yìnglín’s bǔzhù (Southern Sòng) supplements it with documentation from the Hànshū, Wèishū, Suíshū jīngjízhì, and the surviving HànWèi stele transmissions of the text (notably Huáng Xiàng 皇象’s Jíjiù zhāng stone-rubbing). The Jíjiù piān survives in multiple recensions (Yán Shīgǔ’s, Lǐ Tāo’s, Huáng Tíngjiān’s, Zhū Xī’s Yuèzhōng edition) which differ slightly in graph-count and zhāng division. Wilkinson §6.2.1 (Box on §6.2.1.1) identifies it as the type-specimen of pre-Hàn xìngshū / wordbook lexicography. The dating bracket here uses the canonical reign of Hàn Yuándì (49–33 BCE) for composition.
Translations and research
- Loewe, Michael, ed. 1993. Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley: SSEC. — Standard reference; the Jí-jiù piān entry surveys all major editions.
- Greatrex, Roger. 1994. “An Early Western Han Synonymicon: The Fuyang Copy of the Cang Jie pian.” In Outstretched Leaves on his Bamboo Staff: Studies in Honour of Göran Malmqvist. Stockholm: Foreningen för Orientaliska Studier. — Sets the Jí-jiù piān alongside the recently excavated Cāng-jié-piān fragments.
- Yáng Bóqiào 楊伯峻 et al. 1980. Jí-jiù piān. Beijing: Zhonghua. — The standard Chinese variorum.
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, §6.2.1, §24.2.4.
Other points of interest
By tradition the zhāngcǎo 章草 cursive script takes its name (zhāng = “section”) from this work, in which Shǐ Yóu first wrote out the cursive form he had developed; the link is asserted by Wáng Yīn (Wénzì zhì) and Zhāng Huáiguàn’s Shūduàn, both quoted at length in the Sìkù tíyào.