BānMǎ yìtóng 班馬異同
Variations Between Bān [Gù] and [Sī]mǎ [Qiān] by 倪思 (Ní Sī, 1147–1220), with critical evaluations (píng 評) by 劉辰翁 (Liú Chénwēng, 1232–1297)
About the work
A 35-juǎn parallel-text comparison of those passages in the Hànshū (KR2a0007) which Bān Gù 班固 took over from the Shǐjì (KR2a0001), exhibiting Bān’s emendations, additions, deletions, and rearrangements. The first systematic Sòng-era jiàokān 校勘 of the Shǐjì-Hànshū relationship and a methodological pioneer of comparative-textual kǎozhèng. The píng (critical evaluations and piāndiǎn punctuation marks) by the late-Sòng / early-Yuán literary critic Liú Chénwēng were added in the late thirteenth century.
Tiyao
Older copies sometimes ascribe this work to Ní Sī of the Sòng, sometimes to Liú Chénwēng. Yáng Shìqí’s 楊士奇 colophon says: “BānMǎ yìtóng, in 35 juǎn, is by tradition the work of Xūxī [= Liú Chénwēng]; observing its evaluations and punctuation marks, perfect and exquisite as they are, I am confident that none but Xūxī could have produced them; yet the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo enters it as Ní Sī’s. Could it perhaps be that the work is Ní’s but the evaluations are Xūxī’s?” — Yáng kept the question open. We note that the Tōngkǎo in fact enters this work on the basis of the Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí of Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫. If it were really Liú’s, then how could Chén Zhènsūn have entered it earlier than Liú’s lifetime? The point requires no further argument.
The general intent is this: since Bān Gù’s Hànshū often follows the older Shǐjì but adds, prunes, and emends its text, the work collates word-for-word divergences in order to weigh the gains and losses. Its method is to print the Shǐjì text in large characters; what the Hànshū adds and the Shǐjì lacks, in small characters; what the Shǐjì has and the Hànshū deletes, marked alongside in inked strokes; where the Hànshū moves the order of passages, the note reads “the Hànshū connects this above with such-and-such, and below with such-and-such”; where the Hànshū has moved a passage to another chapter, the note reads “see the Hànshū biography of so-and-so”. The two works thus inter-checked, their respective merits and shortcomings stand forth — a real contribution to historical scholarship.
Long ago Ōuyáng Fēi 歐陽棐 [= Ōuyáng Xiū’s son] in compiling the Jí gǔ lù báwěi 集古錄跋尾 placed the original transcripts and the printed text side by side, that readers might trace the intent of the editorial deletions and emendations and so see the working of the predecessor’s mind. Ní Sī’s design is the same — except that what Fēi laid out was the variants of one author with himself, whereas what Ní lays out is the variants of two authors with each other; this is the new precedent. Among the recorded variants — lùlì 戮力 written lùlì 勠力, chén 沈 written zhàn 湛, yóu shì 由是 written yáo shì 繇是, wú zhuàng 無狀 written wáng zhuàng 亡狀, fū zhì 鈇質 written fǔ zhì 斧質, shù què 數却 written shù què 數卻 and so on — these are simply ancient-versus-modern variant orthography; bàn shū 半菽 written yù shū 芋菽, jiāo lóng 蛟龍 written jiāo lóng 交龍 are just transcriptional corruptions; and Qín jūn 秦軍 written Qín zú 秦卒, rén yán 人言 written rén wèi 人謂, sān liǎng rén 三兩人 written liǎng sān rén 兩三人 — these have no bearing on sense, are not deliberate emendations, and to enumerate every one risks pedantry. But once the work is named “yìtóng” no single character or word may be skipped; over-density is in any event preferable to over-laxity. The omission of the biographies of Yīng Bù 英布 and Chén Shè 陳涉 was first supplied by Xǔ Xiāngqīng’s 許相卿 ShǐHàn fāngjià 史漢方駕 of the Ming — a real lapse in an otherwise thousand-fold consideration.
Sī, zì Zhèngfǔ 正甫, a man of Guī’ān 歸安 in Húzhōu, jìnshì of Qiándào 2 (1166), held office through to Bǎowéngé xuéshì 寶文閣學士; posthumous title Wénjié 文節. Particulars in his Sòngshǐ biography.
(Submitted Qiánlóng 46, 10th month, 1781. Chief compilers as above.)
Abstract
The BānMǎ yìtóng is the first systematic comparative analysis of how the Hànshū reworks its principal source, the Shǐjì. Ní Sī’s method is editorial in the strict sense: the Shǐjì base text is set in large script; Hànshū additions appear interlinearly in small script; Hànshū deletions are marked in the margin; Hànshū rearrangements are flagged with explicit cross-reference to the chapter where the moved passage now stands. This is the foundational work for all subsequent comparison of the two histories — Xǔ Xiāngqīng 許相卿 of the Ming continued and supplemented it as ShǐHàn fāngjià 史漢方駕 (35 juǎn); the modern parallel-edition tradition (e.g. Hán Zhàoqí 韓兆琦, Shǐjì jiānzhèng 史記箋證; Wáng Lìqì 王利器, Shǐ Hàn lùngǎo 史漢論稿) all descend from Ní Sī’s example.
The composition window is bracketed by Ní Sī’s career: jìnshì of 1166 (Qiándào 2) is the terminus post quem; he died in 1220 (CBDB id 24788, dates 1147–1220). The catalog meta gives the same lifedates. The work is referenced in Chén Zhènsūn’s Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題, completed by 1249, which fixes its terminus ante quem well before that point. The Sìkù tíyào uses precisely this fact to refute the misattribution to Liú Chénwēng (1232–1297): Liú was only a teenager when Chén’s catalog already entered the work under Ní’s name.
Liú Chénwēng’s contribution is the addition of píng 評 (critical-aesthetic evaluations) and piāndiǎn 批點 (punctuation-marks for emphasis), in the late-Sòng píngdiǎn 評點 tradition that Liú himself was instrumental in popularising for narrative prose. Yáng Shìqí 楊士奇 (1365–1444) of the Ming was the first to disentangle the two layers; the Sìkù compilers follow him.
Ní Sī’s other surviving works include the Jīngchú jì 經鉏堂雜誌 (a bǐjì-style miscellany) and a substantial body of memorials and fù; his collected works Wénjié jí 文節集 are partly preserved.
Translations and research
No translation. Standard scholarly study: Lù Yàn 陸燕, “Ní Sī BānMǎ yìtóng yánjiū” 倪思《班馬異同》研究, MA thesis (Húběi Dàxué, 2009); Wáng Yǒngnián 王永年, “BānMǎ yìtóng yǔ Sòngdài ShǐHàn xué”, Wénxiàn 1995.4. Discussed in Stephen W. Durrant et al., The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy (Washington, 2016) and in Hans van Ess, Politik und Geschichtsschreibung im alten China (Harrassowitz, 2014). The standard modern edition of Ní Sī is the photo-reprint of the WYG in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū facsimile (Shanghai Gǔjí, 1987); no separate punctuated edition has been issued.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the earliest substantial pieces of Chinese literary-textual kǎozhèng and one of the first to use a typographic apparatus (large script vs. small script vs. marginal marks) to convey textual relationships. It anticipates by several centuries the visual-comparative methods of European Renaissance philology. Liú Chénwēng’s píngdiǎn layer is also of independent interest as one of the earliest sustained applications of the píngdiǎn technique to a zhèngshǐ; the technique would be more famously applied to fiction (e.g. Liú’s commentary to the Shìshuō xīnyǔ).