Yì Zhōushū 逸周書
Lost Book of Zhōu by 孔晁 (annotator)
About the work
A heterogeneous compilation in seventy-one piān (now seventy, with eleven of them surviving as titles only) traditionally regarded as the residue of pre-canonical Shū 書 chapters that fell outside Confucius’s redaction of the Shàngshū 尚書. The received text mixes early Western-Zhōu material (court protocols, the Shìfǎ 諡法 on posthumous epithets, the Wángkuài 王會 on the assembly of the four directions, and the famous Kèyīn 克殷 / Shìfú 世俘 on the conquest of Shāng) with substantially later, sometimes Warring-States-era didactic xùn 訓 chapters. The early Jìn scholar Kǒng Cháo 孔晁 (fl. late 3rd c. CE) supplied the only commentary that survives in continuous form, and the Sìkù edition is built on it.
Tiyao
Submitted by your servants, etc. The Yì Zhōushū in ten juǎn is in old copies entitled Jízhǒng Zhōushū 汲冢周書 (“Zhōu Documents from the Tomb at Jí”). The Suí Jīngjí zhì and Táng Yìwén zhì both call it so, on the ground that it was recovered in the second year of the Tàikāng 太康 reign of Jìn (281 CE) from the tomb of King Ānxī of Wèi 魏安釐王; thus the “Jí-tomb” tradition is of long standing. Yet the “Annals of Emperor Wǔ” in the Jìnshū 晉書 and the biographies of Xún Xù 荀勖 and Shù Xī 束晳 record that the bamboo-strip writings recovered at Jíjùn 汲郡 by Bù Zhǔn 不準 amounted to seventy-five piān, every one named — and none of them was a Zhōushū. Dù Yù’s 杜預 postface to his Chūnqiū jíjiě 春秋集解 likewise lists the Jí tomb books and again no Zhōushū appears. Plainly the Zhōushū did not come out of the Jí tomb. Examining the Hàn Yìwén zhì 漢書·藝文志, we find that a Zhōushū in seventy-one piān was registered already there; the present recension is short by exactly one piān against Bān Gù’s count. Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 says the work has seventy piān with a one-piān preface at the end, and that the Jīngkǒu print first broke the preface up and distributed it through the chapters; thus the total of seventy-one agrees with the Hàn catalog. Sīmǎ Qiān’s account of King Wǔ’s defeat of Shāng matches this book; Xǔ Shèn 許慎’s Shuōwén jiězì cites the Zhōushū on “great pinions like a kingfisher” 大翰若翬雉 and on “the wild boar has claws and dares not slash”; Mǎ Róng’s commentary to the Lúnyǔ cites the Zhōushū “Monthly Ordinances”; Zhèng Kāngchéng’s commentary to the Zhōulǐ cites the Zhōushū “Wánghuì”; and his commentary to the Yílǐ cites the Zhōushū “Běitáng yǐlǘ” 北唐以閭 — all of these antedate the Jí tomb find, which proves the work to have been an inheritance from Hàn times. Lǐ Shàn’s 李善 notes to the Wénxuǎn always cite it as Yì Zhōushū; one therefore knows the early Táng exemplar still did not bear the rubric “Jí tomb.” The conflation must have arisen because the Liáng scholar Rén Fǎng 任昉 obtained some bamboo-strip lacquer writing he could not decipher and showed it to Liú Xiǎn 劉顯, who pronounced it the residue of Confucius’s redaction of the Shū. The Nánshǐ 南史 was not yet in circulation at that date and the report was not properly checked, with the result that the Jí-tomb bamboo strips were incorrectly amalgamated with this book — and the compilers of the Suíshū monograph copied the error. The Wénxiàn tōngkǎo cites Lǐ Tāo’s 李燾 colophon and Liú Kèzhuāng’s 劉克莊 Hòucūn shīhuà both of which would have it that the work indeed existed in Hàn but went into eclipse and re-emerged only thanks to the Jí tomb find — but they too know that this is wrong, and the proposal is a clever mediation. Only the colophon of Dīng Fǔ 丁黼, dated Jiādìng 15 (1222), preserved in the old text, comes definitively to the conclusion, after careful sifting, that the work did not come from the Jí tomb; this is the settled view. The book records the affair of Crown Prince Jìn 太子晉 (a late Western Zhōu prince) and so must have taken shape after King Líng 靈王’s reign. It also has King Wén receiving the Mandate and styling himself “king”; King Wǔ and the Duke of Zhōu privately plotting an eastern campaign; the slaughtered Yīn captives; spendthrift carting-off of treasures by the hundred-million; the third dispatch of carts hanging up the head of Zhòu 紂; and Tàibái 太白 (the planet Venus) being employed in the southern suburb sacrifice — none of which the ancients can ever have done. Chén Zhènsūn’s view that the work was put together by post-Warring-States hands seems not without foundation. And yet the Zuǒzhuàn cites a Zhōuzhì 周志 on “the brave who offend their superiors not being ascended into the Bright Hall,” and cites the Shū on “be careful at the start and respectful at the end and one will not be in straits,” and on “in safety think of danger,” and credits the Zhōu with composing the Jiǔxíng 九刑 — and all these passages stand in our present text. So the materials existed already in Spring and Autumn times; only later, in the Warring States and after, did the work suffer accretion upon accretion, hence its mixed and uneven texture. Trace it to its origin and it remains a remnant of the writings of the Three Dynasties and is not to be discarded. The recensions current in recent times all lack eleven piān — Chéngwù 程寤, Qínyīn 秦陰, Jiǔzhèng 九政, Jiǔkāi 九開, Liúfǎ 劉法, Wénkāi 文開, Bǎokāi 保開, Bāfán 八繁, Jīzǐ 箕子, Shūdé 書德, and Yuèhé 月合 — and many of the rest are heavily lacunose. Examining the Shǐjì “Hereditary House of Chǔ” we find the Zhōushū cited “to make a beginning, take no precedent”; the biography of Zhǔfù Yǎn 主父偃 cites the Zhōushū “safety and danger lie in the issuance of orders, survival and ruin in their command”; the “Treatise on the Money-Makers” cites “if the farmer does not produce, food is short; if the artisan does not produce, implements are short; if the merchant does not move, the three precious things are cut off; if the forester does not produce, wealth is wanting”; the Hànshū cites the Zhōushū “be not the first to seize power lest you bear the blame,” and “if Heaven gives and you do not take you instead bear the blame”; the Táng liùdiǎn 唐六典 cites “Tāng banished Jié, called the lords together in great assembly, took the seal of the Son of Heaven and set it in the Son of Heaven’s seat” — none of which appear in today’s edition: all are evidently from the eleven lost piān. Lǐ Tāo’s colophon already speaks of the text being garbled and unreadable; thus the corruption was already present in the Sòng witnesses. Respectfully presented, first month of Qiánlóng 44 (January 1779). Chief compilers: your servants Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General editor: your servant Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Yì Zhōushū survives as the most substantial pre-canonical companion to the Shàngshū. The Hàn Yìwén zhì (Hàn 1st c. BCE) already lists a Zhōushū in 71 piān; the present text preserves 70 chapter titles, of which 11 are now lost beyond their headings. Despite the medieval rubric Jízhǒng Zhōushū 汲冢周書 and the consequent claim that it was unearthed from the tomb of King Ānxī of Wèi in 281 CE, the Sìkù editors and modern scholarship agree the work is independent of the Jí-tomb find: the Hàn catalog already lists it; the Jí-tomb inventory recorded in the Jìnshū and Dù Yù’s Chūnqiū jíjiě postface does not include any Zhōushū; and the conflation goes back no earlier than the Liáng scholars Rén Fǎng and Liú Xiǎn (early 6th c.). The settled view, anticipated already in Dīng Fǔ’s 丁黼 colophon of Jiādìng 15 (1222), is that the work is a Zhōu-to-Warring-States accretional compilation transmitted independently. Internally, the Kèyīn 克殷 and Shìfú 世俘 chapters preserve some of our most circumstantial early evidence for the Zhōu conquest of Shāng (matched in part by Sīmǎ Qiān); the Wánghuì 王會 catalogs the tribute brought by the four-directions peoples to the Zhōu court; the Shìfǎ 諡法 is the locus classicus for the system of posthumous epithets; and the Shíxùn 時訓 contains the earliest surviving listing of the seventy-two hòu 候 (climatic phenomena) ordered against the twenty-four jiéqì 節氣 (Wilkinson, Chinese History, §35.4). The chapters dealing with Crown Prince Jìn 太子晉 (which concern a late Western Zhōu prince of King Líng’s reign) and with elaborate didactic xùn 訓 sermons attributed to King Wén and to the Duke of Zhōu are clearly later strata, securely dated to the Warring States or even Hàn. The annotation by the Western Jìn scholar Kǒng Cháo 孔晁, the only commentary to survive in continuous form, anchors the textual transmission; later Qīng scholarship is dominated by Lú Wénchāo 盧文弨’s Yì Zhōushū jiàoběn and by Zhū Yòucéng 朱右曾 (1846)‘s Yì Zhōushū jíxùn jiàoshì 逸周書集訓校釋. (Date bracket here is set conservatively from the latest core stratum (Warring States, 4th–3rd c. BCE) to Kǒng Cháo’s commentarial sealing of the received form (late 3rd c. CE).)
Translations and research
- Robert H. Gassmann. 1988. Cheng-ming. Richtigstellung der Bezeichnungen. Zu den Quellen eines Philosophems im antiken China. Ein Beitrag zur Konfuzius-Forschung. Bern: Peter Lang. (Includes substantial discussion of Yì Zhōushū materials.)
- Yegor Grebnev. 2022. Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China: A Study of the Neglected Zhou Scriptures and the Grand Duke Traditions. New York: Columbia University Press. (The first English-language monograph devoted to the Yì Zhōushū; argues for the Yì Zhōushū as a coherent corpus alongside the Shàngshū.)
- Edward L. Shaughnessy. 1993. “I Chou shu (Chou shu).” In Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley: SSEC, pp. 229–233.
- Huáng Huáixìn 黄懷信, Zhāng Màorōng 張懋鎔, Tián Xùdōng 田旭東. 1995/2007. Yì Zhōushū huìjiào jízhù 逸周書彙校集注. Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí. The standard modern critical edition with collected commentaries.
- Huáng Huáixìn 黄懷信. 1992. Yì Zhōushū yuán liú kǎo biàn 逸周書源流考辨. Xī’ān: Xī’ān shīfàn dàxué.
Other points of interest
The Shìfǎ 諡法 chapter is the foundational text on posthumous epithets and is regularly cited by Hàn and Táng commentators on imperial titulature; it is the basis for all later shìfǎ literature. The Wánghuì 王會 chapter is one of the rare early descriptions of “tribute from the four directions” and has been heavily mined by historians of frontier ethnography.