水經注釋

Shuǐjīng zhù shì 水經注釋

Annotated Edition of the Shuǐjīng zhù (with Kānwù 刊誤 in 12 juan attached) by 趙一清 (Zhào Yīqīng, 1710–1764) — zhuàn 撰

About the work

A 40-juan critical and re-annotated edition of Lì Dàoyuán’s Shuǐjīng zhù (KR2k0058), with an attached 12-juan Kānwù 刊誤 (Errata Volume) — together one of the three principal Qián-Jiā-era critical editions of the Shuǐjīng zhù (alongside Quán Zǔwàng’s posthumous edition and Dài Zhèn’s Yǒnglè dàdiǎn–based Sìkù official edition). Zhào Yīqīng’s distinctive contribution is twofold: first, the implementation of Quán Zǔwàng’s claim that Lì Dàoyuán’s commentary contains “commentary within commentary” (zhùzhōng zhī zhù 注中之注), which Zhào set off typographically by alternating large- and small-character printing; second, the recovery of 21 lost watercourse-entries — among them the Fǔ 滏, Míng 洺, Hūtuó 滹沱, Pài 派, Zī 滋, Yī 伊, Chán 瀍, Jiàn 澗, Luò 洛, Fēng 豐, Jīng 涇, Ruì 汭, Qú 渠, Huò 獲, Zhū 洙, Chú 滁, Rìnán 日南, Ruò 弱, Hēi 黑 — bringing the total to 137, matching the figure given in the Táng liùdiǎn commentary (and corroborating the Chóngwén zǒngmù’s notice that the Sòng Shuǐjīng zhù had lost 5 juan). The Kānwù records 40 critical edition collations, including some attributions (e.g. to Huáng Zōngxī, Gù Yánwǔ, Gù Zǔyǔ, Yán Ruòqú, Huáng Yí) that the Sìkù tíyào identifies as inflated or fabricated.

Tiyao

We respectfully note: this is the work of Zhào Yīqīng 趙一清 of our dynasty. Yīqīng, zì Chéngfū 誠夫, of Rénhé 仁和. The transmission of Lì Dàoyuán’s Shuǐjīng zhù through manuscript copying has long been corrupt; the various private copies have all been collated, and on the whole do not differ greatly. Ōuyáng Yuángōng (Xuán) and Wáng Wěi only said that the classic and commentary were intermixed, without distinguishing among the commentary itself.

In recent times, Quán Zǔwàng 全祖望 of Níngbō first claimed to have inherited from his ancestors a tradition that Dàoyuán’s commentary contains commentary-within-commentary, originally written in double-line interlinear form, but now mixed in as large characters and almost indistinguishable. Yīqīng then followed his account, scrutinizing the meaning to separate out this inner commentary, distinguishing in the printing by large and small characters: so that the language is no longer mixed, while the text remains continuous.

We note: Shěn Yuē’s Sòngshū states that the Hàn Náogē originally had large characters as text and small characters as performance-indication; later transmitters wrote them combined, and so they could no longer be distinguished. Thus mixed transmission is a phenomenon known in antiquity. As also the Míng Jiājìng-era cut Qímín yàoshù in which the marginal note “the Zhōushū says: in the time of Shénnóng heaven rained millet…” is read as belonging to the main text; or the Chóngzhēn-era cut Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ’s “Běn xìng 本姓 commentary” with “five characters Wēiguómíng zǐjué” mixed and printed as text — these too occur from time to time. But that an entire massive volume of forty juan, fully double-line interlinear, should everywhere be mistakenly written as principal text — this seems implausible by ordinary reckoning.

Yáo Hóng’s supplementary commentary on the Zhànguó cè, and Fàn Chéngdà’s Wújùn zhì, both indeed have commentary-within-commentary, and earlier authors have cited these as precedent. But never since the Sòng has anyone cited the Shuǐjīng zhù. What Zǔwàng describes as “ancestral oral tradition” — we cannot tell from what generation or what writing it came; it likely arose from his own reasoning, dressed up as transmission. Yet just as Ní Sī’s BānMǎ yìtóng mixed large and small print so as to be hard to disentangle, and Míng Xǔ Xiāngqīng changed it to ShǐHàn fāngjià, putting parallel matter in the centre and one-sided matter at the sides, so that additions and deletions become evident on opening — most felicitously transformed — Yīqīng’s book is essentially of this kind. So long as the principal text and side meaning are clearly ordered, this too is a contribution to Lì Dàoyuán; why need it be ascribed to an “original text” in imitation of Fēng Fáng’s old trick?

Further, the Táng liùdiǎn commentary cites Sāng Qīn as listing 137 waters of the empire, including the Jiāng and the Hé. The present version lists only 116 waters. Examining the Chóngwén zǒngmù: it records the Shuǐjīng zhù in 35 juan. Evidently in the Sòng era 5 juan had already been lost; the present text has been later sub-divided by hand to make up the original count. These twenty-one waters were within the lost portion. Yīqīng, examining Lì’s own commentary and gathering miscellaneous citations from other works, recovered 18 waters: Fǔ, Míng, Hūtuó, Pài, Zī, Yī, Chán, Jiàn, Luò, Fēng, Jīng, Ruì, Qú, Huò, Zhū, Chú, Rìnán, Ruò, Hēi (19 in the count above, but the original lists 18). In the entry on Yúshuǐ 㵎水 he distinguished Yúyúshuǐ 㵎餘水 separately. Further examining the Shuǐjīng itself, he ascertained that Qīngzhāngshuǐ, Zhuózhāngshuǐ, Dà Liáoshuǐ, and Xiǎo Liáoshuǐ were originally each separated into two — a total of 21 waters, agreeing with the Liùdiǎn commentary’s original number. Their evidentiary investigation and restorative supplementation are likewise extremely refined and accurate.

The opening volume lists 40 sources used as the basis of collation. Even though some of these involve overstatement and exaggeration of multiplicity (e.g., the so-called “Huáng Zōngxī edition” was originally not a finished compilation; the editions of Gù Yánwǔ, Gù Zǔyǔ, Yán Ruòqú are simply works that quote evidence — in fact no printed editions exist; further the so-called “Huáng Yí edition” is said now to have entered the Chíběi shūkù of Wángshì of Xīnchéng — but the books of Wáng Shìzhēn’s Chíběi shūkù were all dispersed after his death, as the Yīnyuán jí of Zhào Zhíxìn shows; so his descendants would never have collected them. If acquired during Wáng Shìzhēn’s lifetime, the books would have entered the Wáng family before Kāngxī xīnmǎo (1711) — by which date, given Yīqīng’s age, he could not possibly have seen them.) Nevertheless, his broad citation and extensive proofs are notably penetrating and integrative; in matters of correction and rectification, the rectifications are abundant. Outside the official Sòng-edition collation, of all the externally circulating editions, this work must take first rank.

Abstract

The Shuǐjīng zhù shì of Zhào Yīqīng (1710–1764) is one of the three great critical editions of the Shuǐjīng zhù produced in the mid-eighteenth century. It was completed by 1754 and circulated in manuscript before being submitted to the Sìkù through the Zhèjiāng provincial channel. The work’s two principal innovations are (i) the typographic separation of “commentary-within-commentary” (following Quán Zǔwàng’s hypothesis), and (ii) the kǎogé recovery of 21 lost watercourse entries, restoring the Shuǐjīng zhù’s waters to the count of 137 given in the Táng liùdiǎn commentary.

The work is the eye of a famous storm in Qīng intellectual history: the polemic over Dài Zhèn’s alleged plagiarism. Dài Zhèn’s Yǒnglèdàdiǎn-based Sìkù Shuǐjīng zhù (1774) employs the same separation of jīng from zhù by typographic convention, and Zhāng Mù 章穆 and others accused Dài of having stolen Zhào’s principles. Hú Shì devoted thirty years and several thousand pages to defending Dài Zhèn against the charge. The current scholarly consensus (Chén Qiáoyì 陳橋驛 and others) is that the two scholars worked independently from a common methodological matrix and reached convergent conclusions on the jīngzhù separation principle, though Dài’s edition is much more extensive in its Yǒnglè materials.

The Sìkù tíyào’s lengthy and acidly precise critique of Zhào’s inflated source-list (his “Huáng Zōngxī edition” was a non-existent compilation; his references to Gù Yánwǔ, Gù Zǔyǔ, and Yán Ruòqú “editions” are simply citations from their other works; his alleged Huáng Yí edition could not chronologically have reached him) is a model of Sìkù editorial scrutiny. The text is preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vol. 575.1).

Translations and research

No English translation. The work is the principal scholarly object of: Hu Shih, Hu Shi quanji (Anhui jiaoyu, 2003) vol. 13, the magisterial three-volume Shuǐjīng zhù monograph; Yáng Shǒujìng 楊守敬 and Xióng Huìzhēn 熊會貞, Shuǐjīng zhù shū 水經注疏 (Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1989, with extensive engagement with Zhào’s edition); Chén Qiáoyì 陳橋驛, Lì xué yán-jiū 酈學研究 (Zhèjiāng dàxué, 2003). For the Dài Zhèn / Zhào Yīqīng controversy in English see Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology (rev. 2001) §6, and On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Harvard, 2005), with the Shuǐjīng zhù taken as a case study of mid-Qīng kǎojù methodology.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s chronological scrutiny of Zhào’s “Huáng Yí edition” claim — demonstrating that the Wángshì Chíběi shūkù was dispersed before Zhào Yīqīng could have seen it — is one of the most pointed pieces of editorial analysis in the entire Sìkù tíyào corpus and a notable instance of the compilers’ scholarly rigor.

Links

• Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60771049 (水經注釋)
• Hu Shih’s Shuǐjīng zhù studies (Anhui jiaoyu, 2003 vol. 13).