Zhànguó cè jiàozhù 戰國策校注
Collated and Annotated Stratagems of the Warring States by 吳師道 (compiler)
About the work
A 10-juǎn critical re-annotation by the Yuán scholar Wú Shīdào 吳師道 (1283–1344) of KR2e0004 Bào Biāo 鮑彪’s Bào shì Zhànguó cè zhù, undertaken roughly two centuries after Bào completed his work. Wú took Bào’s recension and chapter-arrangement as the working substrate but interleaved two streams of corrective annotation throughout: bǔ 補 (“supplement”) for items Bào had passed over, and zhèng 正 (“correct”) for items Bào had mishandled — both tags placed inline beneath each entry. To preserve Liú Xiàng’s 33-piān / 486-shǒu sequence, which Bào had reorganized chronologically, Wú appended the original sequence list at the head of the book as a separate document. The work draws on Yáo Hóng 姚宏’s xùzhù KR2e0003, which Bào had not seen, and is generally regarded as the most rigorous of the three principal Sòng–Yuán annotated Zhànguó cè recensions.
Tiyao
Composed by Wú Shīdào 吳師道 of Yuán. Shīdào’s zì was Zhèngchuán 正傳; he was a man of Lánxī 蘭谿 (in modern Zhèjiāng). He took the jìnshì in Zhìzhì 1 (1321), rose through the offices to Erudite of the National University (guózǐ bóshì 國子博士), retired, and was later recalled as Director of the Bureau of Ceremonies (lǐbù lángzhōng 禮部郎中). His record is in the “Confucian Scholars” treatise of the Yuánshǐ. Shīdào considered that, although Bào Biāo’s annotation to the Zhànguó cè purported to correct Gāo Yòu 高誘’s errors and lacunae, much in it remained unsatisfactory. He therefore took Yáo Hóng 姚宏’s xùzhù and Bào’s annotation, cross-collated them, and brought in further evidence from miscellaneous sources to verify and correct. The chapter-sequence and the body-text annotation he left as Bào had them; under each entry, where he supplied something missing he marked it bǔ 補, where he corrected an error he marked it zhèng 正 — bǔ yuē 補曰 and zhèng yuē 正曰 respectively. He then took the original 33-piān / 486-shǒu sequence of Liú Xiàng 劉向 and Zēng Gǒng 曾鞏, which Bào had altered, and preserved it separately at the head of the book. Having taken Bào’s annotation as his manuscript base, had he changed the sequence the disorder would have multiplied and the section-headings would not match. To erase the traces of Bào’s rearrangement and pass over them in silence would have made the original sequence vanish; he therefore appended the original ordering as preserved record, on the model of Kǒng Yǐngdá 孔穎達’s Lǐjì zhèngyì, which appends to each chapter the Bié lù 別錄 numbering, and Lín Yì 林億’s new collation of the Sùwèn 素問, which does the same with the Quán Yuánqǐ 全元起 recension numbering. Wú’s own preface lists 19 of Bào’s gravest errors, with arguments of great precision. The other corrections, made ad hoc throughout the text, are equally orderly. Of all the annotators of this book in history, Wú Shīdào is the best. The older Qufu Kǒng-family print is much in need of correction; this present text follows the older Yuán block-print, which is in many respects more reliable than the Kǒng print.
Abstract
The Zhànguó cè jiàozhù by Wú Shīdào 吳師道 (1283–1344, zì Zhèngchuán 正傳, of Lánxī 蘭谿; the catalog meta classifies him as Sòng, but he was a Yuán scholar who took the jìnshì in 1321 and held office under the Yuán) is the third and historically most authoritative of the principal Sòng–Yuán annotated recensions of the KR2e0003 Zhànguó cè, after 姚宏 Yáo Hóng’s xùzhù and 鮑彪 Bào Biāo’s Bào shì Zhànguó cè zhù KR2e0004. Wú took Bào’s text and chapter-arrangement as substrate, layered systematic bǔ 補 (“supplement”) and zhèng 正 (“correct”) annotations atop, and explicitly preserved the original Liú Xiàng 33-piān / 486-shǒu sequence as an appendix at the head of the work — making this the first Yuán edition to discharge the philological obligation to record both the inherited sequence and Bào’s reorganization. Wú’s preface enumerates 19 grave errors of Bào (notably in the Eastern and Western Zhōu chapters, where Sòng-period readers had already noted Bào’s confusion). The work was written during Wú’s mature years and was complete by his death in 1344, hence the date bracket here. The Sìkù compilers used the older Yuán block-print rather than the corrupted Qufu Kǒng-family edition, considering it the most reliable transmission. The work consolidates the three-stratum 高誘 Hàn / 姚宏 Sòng / 鮑彪 Sòng annotation tradition into a single critical apparatus and is the basis of every subsequent Zhànguó cè edition.
Translations and research
- Crump (1970/1996, 1964) — see KR2e0003 — works extensively from Wú Shīdào’s annotation in establishing the standard English readings.
- Zhū Zǔgēng 諸祖耿. 1985. Zhànguó cè jíjí zhù huìkǎo 戰國策集注彙考. Reproduces and discusses Wú’s annotation throughout.
- Miào Wényuǎn 繆文遠. 1995. Zhànguó cè kǎo biàn 戰國策考辨. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú.
- He Jianzhang 何建章. 1990. Zhànguó cè zhùshì 戰國策注釋. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú. Reproduces the substance of Wú’s bǔzhèng layer in modern apparatus.
- No substantial dedicated Western-language study of the Wú Shīdào recension as such located.
Other points of interest
Wú Shīdào’s strict separation of bǔ 補 (“supplementing what was missing”) and zhèng 正 (“correcting what was mistaken”) is one of the earliest Yuán-period explicit codifications of the two-tier supplementary-annotation typology that becomes standard in Míng and Qīng bǔzhù 補注 / jiàozhèng 校正 work. The model owes something to Lín Yì 林億’s Sùwèn collation (cited in the tiyao itself).