Lì biàn 隸辨
Discrimination of Clerical Script by 顧藹吉 (Gù Ǎijí, hào Nányuán 南原, of Chángzhōu)
About the work
The most extensive printed dictionary of Hàn-dynasty clerical-script (lìshū 隸書) characters before the modern era. The work hand-copies (gōumó 鈎摹) all lì-script graphs Gù could collect from extant Hàn stone inscriptions, sequencing them by the Lǐbù yùnlüè 禮部韻略 rhyme order; under each graph he gives the source carving and quotes the surrounding inscription text. To this 5-juàn main dictionary he appends a 1-juàn piānpáng 偏旁 (radical) table after the Shuōwén’s 540 bù; a 2-juàn Bēi kǎo 碑考 cataloguing the inscriptions cited (with notes on which still survive in his day and where); and an essay-pair Lìbāfēn kǎo 隸八分考 / Bǐfǎ 筆法 on the calligraphic distinction between lì and bāfēn scripts. Together with Lóu Jī’s earlier Hànlì zìyuán it remained the standard Han epigraphic palaeographical reference until the great twentieth-century inscription corpora.
Tiyao
The Lì biàn in 8 juàn. Composed by Gù Ǎijí of the present dynasty, hào Nányuán, of Chángzhōu. The book hand-traces the lì-script of the Hàn carvings, arranging them by Sòng Lǐbù rhyme-order; under each graph it notes the inscription-name and quotes the inscription text. The author’s own preface says: “Setting my mind sharp and my thinking precise, I have gathered all the graphs of the Hàn carvings as an aid to expounding the Classics, and where any are missing I have sought them in the Hànlì zìyuán.” It also says: “The zìyuán has many errors — characters such as 舩 / 船, 爯 / 再 are sometimes not distinguished by form; 血 / 皿, 朋 / 多 are often confused — I have followed the Lìshì and Lìxù and given each form its position.” The compiler [紀昀] notes that on inspection the graph-shapes (in width and height) match those of Lóu Jī’s Hànlì zìyuán exactly — meaning Gù secretly used Lóu’s book as his copy-text. Among the carvings that have come to light after Lóu, only a handful (the inscribed stones at the Lǔ Xiàowáng tomb, the Tàishì and Shàoshì inscriptions, the Kāimǔ tower inscription, the Yǐnyín, Kǒngbāo, Cáoquán, Zhāngqiān, Hánrén carvings, etc.) appear here — perhaps a few percent of what Lóu had — yet of the 309 carvings Lóu listed, those still extant in Gù’s day (Jǐngjūn, Kǒnghé, Shǐchén, Hánchì, Kǒngqiān, Kǒnghóng, Lǔjùn, Zhènggù, Kǒngyín, Cāngjié, Héngfāng, Zhāngshòu, Kǒngbiāo, Pānqián, Wǔróng, Wánghuàn, Zhèng Jìxuān, Báishí Shénjūn, Xīxiásòng, Fǔgésòng — twenty-some) are less than one in ten of Lóu’s list. That Gù could have seen and traced the originals one by one, when even rubbings of these are scarce, is implausible. Many of the inscription quotations are also miscopied: 忠 quoted from the Kǒng Zhòu bēi drops 躬; 宿 quoted from the Kǒng[?] bēi runs the line on across a sentence break; 奎 from the Shǐ Chén qiánbēi is wrongly attributed to the hòubēi; 秦 from the Huáshān bēi is wrongly attributed to the Hán Chì bēi; 通 quoted from the Táng Fú sòng with the line “通天之祐” — but the Táng Fú sòng contains no such line: it is in fact taken (mis-aligned) from the Lì shì, where “通天” sat next to “之祐” in adjacent columns. These show that he was working not from the originals but from secondary printed copies of the Lì shì — and this even though Hóng Kuò’s 洪适 book, his actual source, was right there to cite. Even the carvings that do still survive show errors: the long-extant Hán Chì (Lǔ Yuǎn) carving, with its plentiful side-faces, is repeatedly mis-punctuated; the Bēi yīn line “陳國苦虞崇” — where 苦 is a place-name and 虞-崇 a personal name — is wrongly read as “陳國苦虞” (separating the surname from given name); the line “雒陽李申伯” loses 伯 to be read as “雒陽李申”; “蕃加進子髙” loses 蕃; the side-face line “河南匽師度徵漢賢” (where 匽-shī = the place 偃師, the graph 匽 having weathered to look like 厚) is read as “河南厚師” — Gù not realising that 匽 and 偃 are interchangeable, then adding a critical note arguing “Hénán has 偃師, not 厚師”!; and the jīnxiāngshī 金鄉師 line in the bēicè — actually a small-character later addition to the bēiyīn — is misread as a Hàn carving. Likewise the 廣率 reading of the bēiyīn (in fact 廣平 — only Wáng Yúnlù’s mis-cut copy of the Lìshì has 廣率) shows that even when working with surviving carvings he is just copying the old printed edition without verification. To say that he “gathered the Hàn carvings” is therefore a falsehood. Yet for the carvings that came to light after Lóu Jī, his tracings — in length, width, and proportion — preserve the original well, and these are a real supplement to the zìyuán. The piānpáng fascicle in 1 juàn (after the 540 Shuōwén radicals) is precise and well-organised. The appended Bēi kǎo in 2 juàn — listing extant carvings with current location, lost carvings with the source citing them, in chronological order — is more thorough than Lóu’s bēimù. The closing Lìbāfēn kǎo and Bǐfǎ essays compile older scholarship and are useful to students. The book complements Lóu Jī’s; one need not damn it as mere derivation. Presented Qiánlóng 46 / 10 (1781). General Editors Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Gù Ǎijí’s Lì biàn (8 juàn) is the standard pre-modern dictionary of Hàn clerical-script forms collected from stone inscriptions. The author’s own preface (translated in part by Wilkinson §15.4: “If you wish to read books, you must first be able to recognize characters; and to recognize characters, you must first scrutinize their forms 夫欲讀書必先識字欲識字必先察形”) frames the book as a tool for emending received Classical text where the medieval kǎi-script transmission has corrupted the Hàn original. The dictionary proper (5 juàn) lists each clerical-script graph by Lǐbù rhyme, with citation of source-inscription and quoted line; the appendices include a 540-bù radical concordance, a 2-juàn Bēi kǎo catalogue of cited inscriptions (with notations on whether each was extant or lost in 1718), and the calligraphic essays Lìbāfēn kǎo and Bǐfǎ. The Sìkù tíyào (Qiánlóng 46) is severely critical: comparing graph proportions, it concludes that Gù secretly traced his copy from Lóu Jī’s earlier Hànlì zìyuán (Sòng) rather than the originals as his preface claimed, and it documents many mis-citations stemming from reliance on the printed Lì shì of 洪适 rather than the carvings themselves. Yet the tíyào concedes the book’s real contributions: it adds the post-Lóu Hàn carvings, the radical concordance is solid, and the Bēi kǎo surpasses Lóu’s bēimù. Date notBefore = notAfter = 1718, the year of the author’s preface (Wilkinson §15.4 cites the standard Zhōnghuá 1985 edition).
Translations and research
- Endymion Wilkinson. 2022. Chinese History: A New Manual, §15.4 (cites Gù’s preface; standard reference work in the libian tradition).
- Lì biàn. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1985. Modern punctuated reprint based on the WYG text.
- Brückner, Annemarie. 1989. Schreibung und Aussprache des Chinesischen in den Inschriften der Hàn-Zeit (206 v.Chr.–220 n.Chr.). Wiesbaden: Steiner. — Uses the Lì biàn as a primary corpus for Hàn-period palaeography.
Other points of interest
The two-tier evaluation — preface and fánlì claim original-rubbing fieldwork; Sìkù tíyào shows the book is in fact derivative — is one of the more candid instances of tíyào connoisseurship: the imperial editors print the work and at the same time document its scholarly fraudulence, then close by recommending it for what it really does well. The line “If you wish to read books, you must first be able to recognize characters” became a stock motto of Qīng xiǎoxué learning, attributed to Gù.