Bào shì Zhànguó cè zhù 鮑氏戰國策注
Mr. Bào’s Annotated Stratagems of the Warring States by 鮑彪 (annotator)
About the work
A complete re-annotation of the KR2e0003 Zhànguó cè by the Southern-Sòng scholar Bào Biāo 鮑彪 (zì Wénhǔ 文虎, fl. early 12th c.), completed in Shàoxīng dīngmǎo 紹興丁卯 (= Shàoxīng 17 = 1147). Where Yáo Hóng 姚宏’s contemporary recension stayed close to the inherited Liú Xiàng 劉向 → Zēng Gǒng 曾鞏 sequence and limited itself to plugging gaps in the surviving Hàn-period commentary of Gāo Yòu 高誘, Bào Biāo discarded the Liú Xiàng arrangement entirely, rearranged the chapters chronologically by his own historical reckoning, and produced a brand-new continuous commentary in 10 juǎn (against the 33-juǎn Liú Xiàng arrangement). The work is the first thoroughly Sòng-Confucian re-reading of the late–Warring-States intriguers’ speeches and is the basis on which the next Yuán recension by Wú Shīdào 吳師道 KR2e0005 was built.
Tiyao
Composed by Bào Biāo 鮑彪 of Sòng. According to Huáng Hè 黃鶴’s Dù shī bǔzhù 杜詩補注 and Guō Zhīdá 郭知達’s Jí zhù jiǔ jiā Dù shī 集注九家杜詩, both citing Bào’s remarks under the rubric “Bào Wénhǔ’s saying,” his zì was Wénhǔ 文虎. He was a man of Jìnyún 縉雲 (in Zhèjiāng) and held office as a Director (shàngshū láng 尚書郎). The Zhànguó cè was redacted by Liú Xiàng 劉向 and annotated by Gāo Yòu 高誘. By Sòng times Gāo Yòu’s annotation was deficient. Zēng Gǒng 曾鞏 first collated the recensions of various hands, but added or subtracted nothing from the annotation. Yáo Hóng 姚宏 began to fill out the gaps in Gāo Yòu, but his work consists mostly of textual collation and only a little of glossing. Bào Biāo’s annotation was completed in Shàoxīng dīngmǎo 紹興丁卯 (1147); his preface does not refer to Yáo Hóng’s recension at all. The two were contemporaries, and Yáo Hóng died after defying Qín Huì 秦檜, so his work was not yet widely circulated; that is why Bào Biāo had not seen it. Although Bào’s text opens with the prefaces of Liú Xiàng and Zēng Gǒng, the chapter sequence has been altered at his own discretion and is no longer that of Liú or Zēng. The garbling of the ancient text begins indeed with Bào. Yet Liú Xiàng’s preface itself records that the surplus juǎn of the Imperial Library copy were jumbled together with [the variant title] Jǔ 莒 — (editorial note: the character jǔ is unclear; we follow the original text here for the time being) — and that there were eight further chapters arranged by state but incomplete; that he, Liú Xiàng, took those state-arranged ones and roughly ordered them by date, the unsequenced ones being used to fill out the rest, and after deduplication he obtained 33 piān. The Imperial Library copies were variously titled Guócè 國策, Guóshì 國事, Duǎncháng 短長, Shìyǔ 事語, Chángshū 長書, Xiūshū 修書 — so Liú Xiàng’s redaction was itself a compilation of various state records, an editing-out of duplicates, and an arrangement into bound volumes; the so-called “33 piān” is not their original sequence. Bào, then, in checking the events and dates and rearranging accordingly, is yet a step removed from those who simply garble the ancient texts wantonly. His revision of the Eastern and Western Zhōu sections he himself regarded as a special feat of scholarly evidential investigation. The Yuán scholar Wú Shīdào 吳師道, in his Bǔzhèng 補正 KR2e0005, severely criticizes Bào Biāo’s errors. Examining Zhào Yǔshí 趙與時’s Bīntuì lù 賓退錄: “the Zhànguó cè in the older transmission with Gāo Yòu’s annotation is fragmentary, sketchy, and not worth looking at; Yáo Lìngwēi Kuān 姚令威寬’s supplemented annotation — (editorial note: the bǔzhù is by Yáo Kuān 姚寬’s elder brother Yáo Hóng 姚宏; the writing of “Yáo Kuān” here is a clear error, here corrected) — is also not exhaustive; only Mr. Bào of Jìnyún’s collated annotation is excellent, even though it has small flaws, these do not damage the whole, except that the chapter on the Eastern and Western Zhōu is exceedingly garbled and gravely misleads scholars; on this one point the other two are better.” So even Southern-Sòng readers had already pointed this out. The “bǔ” 補 in Wú Shīdào’s title means bǔ of Bào, and “zhèng” 正 means correction of Bào; his rigor really exceeds Bào’s. But Bào’s work is a thorough explication that genuinely embodies a lifetime’s labor; in his own colophon he says that after the fourth revision of the manuscript he finally realized that the Zhōucè 周策 figure Yánshì Yángshù 嚴氏陽豎 is the same as the Háncè 韓策 figure Yán Suì Yángjiān 嚴遂陽堅, and he sighs at the way “collating books is like dust and wind-blown leaves.” Even though those who came after him refined the work further, the originator’s contribution is not to be dismissed.
Abstract
The Bào shì Zhànguó cè zhù, completed by Bào Biāo 鮑彪 (zì Wénhǔ 文虎, fl. mid-12th c., from Jìnyún 縉雲 in Zhèjiāng) in Shàoxīng 17 (1147), is the second of the three principal Sòng–Yuán annotated recensions of the KR2e0003 Zhànguó cè, alongside 姚宏 Yáo Hóng’s contemporary xùzhù 續注 KR2e0003 and 吳師道 Wú Shīdào’s later Bǔzhèng 補正 KR2e0005. Bào Biāo did not see Yáo Hóng’s recension — Yáo Hóng died in Qín Huì 秦檜’s prison around the time Bào was writing, and his work circulated little before Bào’s was complete — and he therefore worked directly from the post-Zēng Gǒng 曾鞏 / pre–Yáo Hóng base of the Zhànguó cè. Bào’s two distinctive contributions are: (i) a complete and continuous original commentary, replacing the Hàn-period 高誘 Gāo Yòu fragments rather than supplementing them; and (ii) a thoroughgoing rearrangement of the work into 10 juǎn organized chronologically by his own historical analysis, abandoning Liú Xiàng’s 33-juǎn by-states arrangement. The chronological rearrangement was already controversial in the Southern Sòng — Zhào Yǔshí 趙與時 in the Bīntuì lù 賓退錄 praised Bào’s annotation overall but condemned his treatment of the Eastern and Western Zhōu chapters as “exceedingly garbled” — and was the principal target of Wú Shīdào’s Bǔzhèng a century later. The Sìkù editors take a balanced position: Bào did genuinely jumble the inherited transmission, but Liú Xiàng’s “33 piān” was itself an editorial assemblage and not a primordial unit, and Bào at least worked from historical evidence rather than caprice. The Sìkù editors also catch and correct an old error in Zhào Yǔshí’s Bīntuì lù: the bǔzhù attributed there to 姚寬 Yáo Kuān is actually by his elder brother 姚宏 Yáo Hóng. The dating bracket here covers the time of composition (work begun in the 1140s, completed in 1147 per Bào’s own colophon).
Translations and research
- Crump’s Chan-kuo Ts’e (1970/1996) and Intrigues (1964) — see KR2e0003 — discuss Bào Biāo’s recension and chronology throughout.
- Miào Wényuǎn 繆文遠. 1995. Zhànguó cè kǎo biàn 戰國策考辨. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú. (Includes substantial discussion of the Bào Biāo–Wú Shīdào tradition.)
- Zhū Zǔgēng 諸祖耿. 1985. Zhànguó cè jíjí zhù huìkǎo 戰國策集注彙考. Reproduces and discusses Bào Biāo’s annotation.
- No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
Bào Biāo’s chronological rearrangement is the earliest sustained Sòng-Confucian effort to historicize the Zhànguó cè — to read it as a chronologically reconstructable record of historical events rather than as an anthology of rhetorical exercises. The very fact that 20th-century Zhànguó cè editions still discuss Bào Biāo’s rearrangement of the Eastern and Western Zhōu chapters reflects the persistence of the question he raised.