Yùzhào dìngzhēn jīng 玉照定眞經
Jade-Reflection True-Determination Classic (pseudepigraphic xīngmìng divinatory text) pseudepigraphically attributed to 郭璞 (Guō Pú, 276-324, 晉); annotated by Zhāng Yóng 張顒 (likely the actual author, SòngYuán)
About the work
A 1-juan late-pseudepigraphic xīngmìng divinatory text attributed to the Jìn-period Guō Pú but in fact (per the Sìkù 提要) a Sòng-or-Yuán composition by Zhāng Yóng 張顒, who used Guō Pú’s name to enhance the work’s authority.
The 提要’s textual-critical case:
(a) Bibliographic absence: the work is not recorded in the Jìnshū Guō Pú zhuàn, the Suí zhì, the Tang zhì, the Sòng zhì, or any standard catalog. First catalog appearance: Yè Shèng 葉盛’s Lùzhútáng shūmù (Míng) — without authorial attribution.
(b) Linguistic evidence: the work contains “much Jiāngnán dialect”, suggesting composition in the Jiāngnán region during the SòngYuán period — incompatible with Guō Pú’s late-Jìn northern-Chinese context.
(c) The Zhāng Yóng commentary: there is no other documentation of Zhāng Yóng. Both the work itself and its annotation are likely by the same hand — Zhāng Yóng — with the Guō Pú attribution being his pseudepigraphic device.
The Sìkù preserves the work despite its acknowledged late-pseudepigraphic origin because “[its] saying of auspicious-and-inauspicious correspondences are close-and-fitting to principle; also has many take-able [items]. Its discussion of niányí, yuèyí, liùhài, sānqí, sānjiāo, sìxiàng and other categories — especially many disclosures”. The work transmits substantive xīngmìng technical doctrines worth preserving despite its attributional complications.
The 提要 takes a more skeptical view of the work’s “deductions to outside-relatives and son-in-laws — by twisted-explanation and forced-interpretation, not avoiding the strained-and-loose mutual-attachment” — indicating that the work occasionally over-extends its methodology in reaching divinatory conclusions about distant relatives.
For the parallel xīngmìng tradition, see KR3g0033 Lǐ Xūzhōng mìngshū (similarly pseudepigraphic).
Tiyao
[Full text in source file. Dated Qiánlóng 46 (1781), ninth month.]