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史通通釋

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Text ID
KR2o0002
Date
1750–1750
Dynasty
清

Shǐtōng tōngshì 史通通釋

Comprehensive Annotation of the Shitong

by 浦起龍 (Pǔ Qǐlóng, 1679–c. 1762)

About the work

Pǔ Qǐlóng’s Shǐtōng tōngshì is the standard Qing annotated edition of KR2o0001 Shǐtōng 史通 by 劉知幾 (Liú Zhījǐ, 661–721). Pǔ assembled, corrected, and supplemented the three earlier Ming and early-Qing annotated recensions — those of Guō Yánnián 郭延年 (= 郭孔延 Guō Kǒngyán of the Wànlì era), Wáng Wéijiǎn 王維儉 (also Wànlì), and Huáng Shūlín 黃叔琳 (1672–1756) — and printed his own consolidated edition in Qiánlóng 15 (1750) under the studio name Sānshān cǎotáng 三山草堂. The work runs to 20 juàn, faithfully tracking the inner-then-outer structure of the parent text. From the eighteenth century onward Pǔ’s commentary has been the most widely reproduced apparatus to the Shǐtōng and is incorporated as the base layer in all major modern editions.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Shǐtōng tōngshì in twenty juàn was composed by Pǔ Qǐlóng of the present dynasty. Qǐlóng, zì Èrtián 二田, was a native of Wúxī. Of the annotated recensions of the Shǐtōng there were of old three — those of Guō Yánnián, Wáng Wéijiǎn, and Huáng Shūlín — handed down with successive emendations and additions, having mutually their merits and defects. Qǐlóng’s annotation here is later than all three. While it likewise has its omissions — for instance, in the Qū bǐ 曲筆 chapter, the reference to “the men of Qín, who do not die, give the lie to the calumny on Fú Shēng (符生); the elders of Shǔ, who still survive, prove the wrongs visited on (Zhūgě) Liàng” — the three earlier hands all lack annotations, and Qǐlóng cites only the Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞, which says Wáng Yīnglín did not know the source, and assumes it cannot be traced; he was unaware that the Qín story comes from the Luòyáng qiélán jì 洛陽伽藍記, and the Shǔ-elders story from the Wèishū biography of Máo Xiūzhī 毛修之. Likewise the phrase lán dān shī lì 闌單失力 — he cites only Lú Zhàolín’s 盧照鄰 Fù 賦 as side evidence, not knowing that the Qīngyì lù 清異錄 contains the explicit gloss, no borrowing required. Such small omissions are not absent. But on the whole his citations are detailed and clear, and may be called comprehensive and well-grounded.

Only in his treatment of the Yígǔ 疑古 and Huòjīng 惑經 chapters does he go further down the slippery slope, and is excessively fond of difference from received opinion. He is also too quick to alter old books, often missing the original sense — e.g., in the Liù jiā 六家 chapter, the Shàngshū entry, after the four characters yǔ wú kě shù 語無可述, before the two characters ruò cǐ 若此, there is plainly an elision; he changes cǐ 此 to zhǐ 止 and conjecturally inserts a yǒu 有 character. Or again in the Lièzhuàn 列傳 chapter, the line “Xiàng Wáng was set up with a biography but called by the title of an Annal” (Xiàng Wáng lì zhuàn ér yǐ běnjì wéi míng 項王立傳而以本紀為名), where lì 立 (“set up”) is not in error but he conjecturally changes it to yí 宜 (“ought”). Such errors are many, all from insufficient caution. As for his sentence-glosses interleaving with chapter-evaluations, run together as in popular printers’ editions of the ancient prose anthologies, this further violates the conventions of an annotated edition. Had he separated commentary and evaluation as two books, they would each shine the better for it.

Abstract

Pǔ Qǐlóng was promoted jìnshì in the jiǎchén year of Yōngzhèng 2 (1724) and held office as Instructor at the Sūzhōu prefectural school (Sūzhōu fǔ jiàoshòu 蘇州府教授). His scholarly reputation rests almost entirely on this commentary on the Shǐtōng and on his Dúshī xīnjiě 讀杜心解 (a commentary on Dù Fǔ’s poetry). Both are products of the same evidential and source-tracking method: aggregate the prior commentaries, correct them where they can be corrected, and supply citations from the broader textual tradition. The 1750 edition was reprinted multiple times in the Qing and into the Republican period, and Lǚ Sīmiǎn’s 呂思勉 1934 Shǐtōng pínglín 史通評林 follows Pǔ as its base text.

The Sìkù tiyao, while admiring the work’s breadth and philological care, registers two complaints. First, that Pǔ inherits and even amplifies Liú Zhījǐ’s most controversial heterodoxies — particularly the “Doubting Antiquity” (Yígǔ 疑古) and “Confounding the Classics” (Huòjīng 惑經) chapters — under cover of clarifying them; in the Qiánlóng court’s view this was mere zeal for difference (hào yì 好異). Second, that Pǔ tampers too freely with the received text, conjecturally emending characters where the surviving recensions are unanimous — most notoriously his alterations in the Liù jiā and Lièzhuàn chapters. The Sìkù editors also faulted his page layout for blurring the distinction between sentence-gloss (jù jiě 句解) and chapter-evaluation (zhāng píng 章評), running them together “in the manner of vernacular printers’ editions of classical prose anthologies.”

Despite these critiques the Tōngshì has been the editorial backbone of Shǐtōng studies for nearly three centuries. Modern critical editions (Zhào Lǚfù 趙呂甫, Shǐtōng xīn jiàozhù 史通新校注, Chóngqìng, 1990; the 2008 Shànghǎi gǔjí Shǐtōng with Lǚ Sīmiǎn’s marginalia; Hú Wéiyì Shǐtōng quányì, Guìzhōu, 1997) all take Pǔ as the base of their textual apparatus. CBDB id 87762 for Pǔ Qǐlóng confirms his birth in 1679; the death year is uncertain but Wilkinson’s “c. 1762” is followed in modern reference works.

Translations and research

  • Damien Chaussende, “L’historiographe Liu Zhiji et son commentateur Pu Qilong”, in his Traité de l’historien parfait (Les Belles Lettres, 2014), introduction.
  • Pǔ Qǐlóng’s commentary is itself the framework around which all modern Shǐtōng scholarship in Chinese is organised; substantial discussions appear in Zhào Lǚfù, Shǐtōng xīn jiàozhù (Chóngqìng, 1990), and in the prefatory matter to all twentieth-century reprints.
  • Pǔ Qǐlóng 浦起龍, Dúshī xīnjiě 讀杜心解, ed. Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1961 (sister work, often discussed alongside the Tōngshì).

No book-length Western-language study of Pǔ as a commentator has been located.

Other points of interest

Pǔ’s Tōngshì is also of interest because it was completed and printed at almost exactly the moment when the Sìkù project was being conceived — the work is therefore one of the latest substantive Qing scholarly editions to be incorporated into the WYG canon at first hand rather than as a residue of earlier transmission, and the Sìkù editors’ critique reveals their evolving attitude toward conjectural emendation in the era of Hàn-learning’s rise.

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