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孔子家語

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Text ID
KR3a0001
Date
220–256
Dynasty
魏

Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ 孔子家語

Sayings of the Confucian School by 王肅 (Wáng Sù, zì Zǐyōng 子雍, 195–256, 魏) — commentator and de facto compiler of the received recension

About the work

A ten-juan, forty-four-篇 collection of dialogues, anecdotes and ritual prescriptions framed as conversations between Confucius and his disciples. Although a Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ in twenty-seven juan is recorded already in the Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志, that text is not the one transmitted today: the received forty-four-篇 recension is universally accepted by post-Sòng critical bibliography as the work of Wáng Sù in the mid-third century, drawing material from the Zuǒ zhuàn 左傳, Guóyǔ 國語, Xúnzǐ 荀子, Mèngzǐ 孟子, the two Dài lǐjì 大戴禮記 and 小戴禮記, and other extant sources. It is in effect a Wèi-period anthology of pre-Hàn Confucian zǐ-style narratives, edited under a Wèi commentator’s polemical agenda against Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄 (127–200).

Tiyao

The Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ in ten juan — copy from the Inner Storehouse (內府藏本).

Annotated by Wáng Sù 王肅 of the Wèi. Sù, zì Zǐyōng 子雍, was a man of Dōnghǎi 東海. He rose to Palace Counsellor (中領軍) and Cavalier Attendant-in-Ordinary (散騎常侍). His career is in his Sānguó zhì biography. In his own preface, Sù wrote: “The school of Master Zhèng [Zhèng Xuán] has flourished for fifty years now, but the underlying meanings are unsettled and the contradictions many. Therefore I have set them aside and replaced them. A twenty-second-generation descendant of Confucius named Kǒng Měng 孔猛 had in his keeping a book belonging to his ancestor; we had earlier studied together, and when he recently went home and brought it back, what we discussed agreed with my own argument as if matching tally to tally.” So this recension begins its transmission with Sù.

The Hàn shū yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 records a Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ in twenty-seven juan, on which Yán Shīgǔ 顏師古 noted: “this is not the Jiāyǔ now extant.” The “Yuèjì” 樂記 chapter of the Lǐjì says that Shùn 舜 strummed a five-stringed qín 琴 and sang of the southern wind, and Zhèng Xuán’s note states that the words are no longer known; Kǒng Yǐngdá’s 孔穎達 sub-commentary records that Sù in writing the Shèngzhèng lùn 聖證論 cited the Jiāyǔ’s “fùcái jiěyùn” 阜財解慍 ode to refute Kāngchéng 康成 (= Zhèng Xuán), and likewise records Mǎ Zhāo 馬昭’s contention that the Jiāyǔ was augmented by Wáng Sù and was not what Zhèng had seen. Hence Wáng Bǎi’s 王柏 Jiāyǔ kǎo 家語考 says: “the forty-four-篇 Jiāyǔ is a tissue Wáng Sù himself stitched together by cutting up the Zuǒ zhuàn, Guóyǔ, Xúnzǐ, Mèngzǐ, and the two Dài Lǐjì. Even Kǒng Yǎn’s 孔衍 preface is a piece Sù composed himself.”

Shǐ Shéngzǔ 史繩祖’s Xuézhāi zhànbì 學齋佔畢 alone holds the contrary line, observing that the Dà Dài lǐjì 大戴禮記, though listed among the fourteen classics, is itself substantially built up out of the Jiāyǔ by analytical re-arrangement; in its “Gōng guàn” 公冠 chapter the coronation prayer for King Chéng 成王 contains the words “former emperor” (先帝) and “your majesty” (陛下), terms inconceivable in early Zhōu, while the Jiāyǔ says only “the king” — proof, on his account, that the Jiāyǔ preserves the older form. But, the present compiler observes, the Lǐjì passage from “陛下離顯先帝之光曜” onward is plainly identified within the chapter itself as the coronation prayer for Hàn Xiàozhāo 孝昭; Shéngzǔ misread it as a continuation of Zhù Yōng’s 祝雍 prayer. In fact Wáng Sù copied the “Gōng guàn” chapter wholesale to make his own “Guàn sòng” 冠頌, mistakenly conflated the Xiàozhāo coronation prayer with the King Chéng one, and so cut out the words “先帝” and “陛下” and altered the offending characters to “王”. Therefore the Jiāyǔ draws on the Dà Dài and not the reverse — a single passage suffices to demonstrate it. His other dismemberings of earlier books proceed in similar fashion. Repeated investigation leaves no doubt that the work issued from Sù’s own hand. But it has been long in circulation, and lost passages and dispersed traditions are very often preserved within it; from the Táng onward men have known it to be spurious yet have not been willing to discard it.

By the Míng period transmitted copies were quite scarce. Hé Mèngchūn 何孟春, who wrote a commentary on the Jiāyǔ, himself states that he had not seen the Wáng Sù recension; Wáng Áo 王鏊 in his Zhènzé chángyǔ 震澤長語 likewise says that the current Jiāyǔ had been hacked about by ignorant later editors and that the Wáng Sù-annotated text contained much not present in the current one — so even he had only seen it in glimpses. Two recensions circulated in the Míng: the Mǐn Xú 閩徐 family copy, defective by twenty-some pages in the middle, and the Hǎiyú Máo Jìn 海虞毛晉 family copy, slightly different but complete from start to finish. The Xú copy is no longer of known location. The present text is what Máo Jìn collated and printed; compared with the workshop editions, it is closer to the old.

Abstract

The textual situation is one of the most thoroughly debated in the Confucian canon. A Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ of twenty-seven juan is listed in the Hàn shū yìwén zhì under the Lùnyǔ 論語 family, and Yán Shīgǔ in the early Táng already remarked that it differed from the work then in circulation. The forty-four-篇 received text first appears with Wáng Sù’s commentary and his own preface — included in the SBCK edition (see KR3a0001_000.txt) — in which Sù presents the text as an ancestral book recovered from a twenty-second-generation Kǒng descendant named Kǒng Měng 孔猛. Already in the third century Mǎ Zhāo 馬昭, recorded by Kǒng Yǐngdá, accused Sù of fabricating it to provide ammunition against Zhèng Xuán. From the Sòng onward the consensus has been that the received recension is essentially Sù’s own composition, assembled from the Zuǒ zhuàn, Guóyǔ, Xúnzǐ, Mèngzǐ, the two Dài Lǐjì, and other extant sources, with editorial adjustments that frequently align the resulting passages with Sù’s positions in the Shèngzhèng lùn 聖證論. Wáng Bǎi 王柏 (Sòng) in his Jiāyǔ kǎo 家語考 articulated this view in the strongest terms; the SKQS tíyào endorses it and supplies a detailed demonstration from the “Guàn sòng” / “Gōng guàn” parallel.

For dating, this means the relevant composition window is the received recension, not the lost Hàn version. Wáng Sù was active at the Wèi court ca. 220–256; the preface itself is undatable but presupposes long study, so the bracket 220–256 is the safest. Earlier in the twentieth century the consensus that Sù forged the text was so dominant that the work was sidelined; the discovery of bamboo and silk manuscripts at Bāwángcūn 阜陽雙古堆 (1977), Dìngzhōu 定州 (1973), and elsewhere has since shown that several “Jiāyǔ” passages have pre-Hàn or early-Hàn analogues in materials Sù could not have manipulated, prompting a revisionist current — chiefly in mainland Chinese scholarship since the 1980s — that treats the text as an authentic if heavily edited Confucian collection. The mainstream Western and Japanese view remains that of the SKQS editors: a Wèi-period reconstruction whose individual paragraphs sometimes preserve genuine pre-Wèi material but whose received form is Sù’s.

The standard premodern bibliographic record, in addition to the Hàn shū yìwén zhì, is Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 (j. 32, 子部 儒家), Jiù Táng shū jīngjí zhì, Xīn Táng shū yìwén zhì, and Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì. The bibliographically decisive Sòng entry is at Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 j. 1.

Translations and research

  • Robert P. Kramers, K’ung tzŭ chia yü: The School Sayings of Confucius — Introduction, Translation of Sections 1–10 with Critical Notes (Sinica Leidensia 7), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1950. The standard Western critical study; the introduction is the canonical English-language statement of the textual situation.
  • Yáng Cháomíng 楊朝明 and Sòng Lìlín 宋立林 (eds.), Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ tōngjiě 孔子家語通解, Jǐnán: Qí-Lǔ Shūshè, 2009; rev. Běijīng: Rénmín Chūbǎnshè, 2011. The standard mainland critical-revisionist edition, treating the text as substantially pre-Wèi.
  • Wáng Chéngluè 王承略, Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ shū zhèng 孔子家語疏證, Nánjīng: Fènghuáng Chūbǎnshè, 2017. Comprehensive collation and source-tracing.
  • Lǐ Xuéqín 李學勤, “Zhújiǎn Jiāyǔ yǔ Hàn-Wèi Kǒngshì jiā xué” 竹簡《家語》與漢魏孔氏家學, Kǒngzǐ yánjiū 孔子研究 1987.2: 60–64. Foundational article on the manuscript-vs-received question.
  • Hú Píngshēng 胡平生, “Bāwáng-cūn Hàn jiǎn Rúzhě tànlùn yǔ Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ” 阜陽漢簡《儒者談論》與《孔子家語》, Wénwù 文物 2000.5.

Other points of interest

The Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ’s relation to the Bāwángcūn (Fùyáng) Hàn bamboo strips and the Dìngzhōu Rújiā zhě yán 儒家者言 — both Western Hàn manuscripts containing parallel passages to several Jiāyǔ chapters — has reopened questions long thought settled by Wáng Bǎi and the SKQS editors. The case is now best understood as: a real Western Hàn anthology of Confucian dialogues existed and is partially recoverable from manuscript witnesses; Wáng Sù in the third century edited and supplemented this material into the forty-four-篇 form transmitted down to us, and the transmitted text is therefore neither a clean Western Hàn artefact nor a freshly invented Wèi forgery, but a Wèi recension of older materials.

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