Tōngjiàn shìwén biànwù 通鑑釋文辨誤
Corrections to the Phonetic Glosses on the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance by 胡三省 (Hú Sānxǐng, 1230–1302, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A 12-juan polemical companion to Hú Sānxǐng’s standard Yīn zhù commentary on the Zī zhì tōng jiàn (KR2b0007). The book systematically corrects the errors of the late-Southern-Sòng Tōng jiàn shì wén of Shǐ Zhào 史炤 (KR2b0016) and the related forged Sīmǎ Kāng recension of the same. Composed alongside the Yīn zhù during Hú Sānxǐng’s late Yuán-period years at Yìnxiàn, completed by 1295.
Tiyao
Tōngjiàn shì wén biàn wù, 12 juǎn. (Imperial palace copy.) By Hú Sānxǐng of the Yuán. The Tōngjiàn shì wén was originally made in the Southern Sòng by the Shǔ man Shǐ Zhào — exceptionally shallow and crude. There was also at the time a Shì wén printed at Hǎilíng, captioned as the Sīmǎ Kāng text; and the Shǔ Guǎngdū Fèishì Jìnxiūtáng Tōng jiàn edition also added notes — the world calls this the “dragon-claw Tōng jiàn.” All these are slightly more concise than Shǐ Zhào’s text, but in fact follow him verbatim. Sānxǐng, having himself made the Tōng jiàn yīn zhù, and finding the Sīmǎ Kāng Shì wén a fabrication and Shǐ Zhào’s work a transmitted-error machine, feared they would mislead later students; so he composed this work to set them right. Each entry first cites Shǐ Zhào’s error, then in fine notes identifies what the Hǎilíng or Dragon-claw versions agree with. Where the matter is already in this book, the Yīn zhù does not repeat the explanation. Yet, e.g., in the Táng Dézōng jì under “Hán Mín chū Luòyì,” the Yīn zhù says: “Shǐ Zhào takes this for the Luògǔ guān post-station; but on examination, if Hán Mín had passed through Luògǔ guān-station, he would have already been south-west via Fèngtiān; Zhào is wrong” — items like this, settled in line, are not all reproduced in the Biàn wù. Apparently the two works were intended to run together with each providing some details and some omissions, so as to cross-collate.
His citations are precise; many serve as openings for the historical reader. He says: the discipline of phonetic and lexical commentary, taking sense from text, has its proper application — one cannot stay fixed in one quarter. He further says: the territorial divisions of Jìn, Sòng, Qí, Liáng, and Chén cannot be used to explain the territory of Táng. These statements stand as a method for all annotation in all ages — established not for Shǐ Zhào alone.
Abstract
The Tōngjiàn shìwén biànwù is the polemical companion to Hú Sānxǐng’s standard Yīn zhù commentary on the Tōng jiàn. Hú Sānxǐng’s preface (which the Sìkù editors quote in their tíyào, here translated above) identifies three corrupt or partial commentaries circulating in the Southern Sòng — Shǐ Zhào’s Tōng jiàn shì wén (the principal target, the only substantial entrant; cf. KR2b0016), the so-called Hǎilíng forgery falsely attributed to Sīmǎ Guāng’s son Sīmǎ Kāng 司馬康 (1050–1090), and the ShǔGuǎngdū “Dragon-Claw” edition of the Tōng jiàn with attached notes. The latter two are derivative of the first; Hú Sānxǐng treats them in tandem.
The Biàn wù and the Yīn zhù (the latter integrated into the WYG transmitted Tōng jiàn, KR2b0007) were designed as complementary works: errors detailed at length in the Biàn wù are simply omitted from the Yīn zhù, and vice versa. Their joint composition runs roughly through the 1280s and 1290s; the manuscript was famously sealed in a cellar during the Jǐchǒu / 1289 coastal raids and recovered. The Biàn wù in its preface contains the methodological dicta that the Sìkù editors single out as canonical: that phonetic-lexical glossing must take sense from context and cannot be rigidly applied; and that the territorial geography of one dynasty cannot be used to explicate that of another — both fundamental principles of Chinese textual scholarship that Hú Sānxǐng formulates here perhaps for the first time.
The work is the principal documentary witness, after the Yīn zhù itself, for Hú Sānxǐng’s exceptional command of the geographical, institutional, and prosopographical apparatus of the Tōng jiàn; and it is essential for understanding the textual history of the late-Southern-Sòng Tōng jiàn commentaries.
Translations and research
No translation. The principal study of Hú Sānxǐng’s commentary as a whole is Chen Yuán 陳垣, Tōng jiàn Hú zhù biǎo wēi 通鑑胡注表微 (Kēxué, 1958), which extensively cites the Biàn wù alongside the Yīn zhù and demonstrates the political subtext of Hú’s whole annotative enterprise as covertly anti-Yuán. Further treatment in Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (CUP, 2021).
Other points of interest
The methodological dicta — that the territory of one dynasty cannot be used to explicate another, that phonetic-lexical glossing must take sense from context — are foundational statements of Chinese historical-textual method; the Sìkù editors single them out as canonical for “all annotation in all ages.”
Links
- Wikidata Q11084089
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào 0103001.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §49.5.