Kǎogǔ biān 攷古編
Examinations of Antiquity
by 程大昌 (Chéng Dàchāng, 1123–1195; jìnshì of 1151, eventually Lóngtú gé zhíxuéshì and acting Minister of Personnel)
About the work
A philological-antiquarian bǐjì in ten juan by the Southern-Sòng polymath Chéng Dàchāng — companion volume to his much larger Yǎnfán lù 演繁露 (KR3j0040). Where the Yǎnfán lù covers names-and-things broadly, the Kǎogǔ biān concentrates on critical examinations of canonical exegesis (異同 between commentaries) and corrections of factual errors in the standard histories and biographical literature. The opening “Shī lùn” 詩論 in seventeen piān is the most ambitious piece — a sustained argument that the Shījīng originally distinguished only nán 南, yǎ 雅, and sòng 頌, with no separate guófēng 國風 category, the latter being a later editorial accretion. Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division, záyǎng zhī shǔ 雜考之屬.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Kǎogǔ biān in ten juan, by Chéng Dàchāng of the Sòng. Dàchāng’s Yì yuán 易原 is already catalogued. The present compilation discusses points of canonical exegesis where commentaries disagree, and notes errors in records and biographies, correcting many of them. His Shī lùn in seventeen piān, repeatedly elaborated, holds in essence that the Shī has the names Nán, Yǎ, and Sòng but no name Guófēng. The argument is wide-ranging and learned, but in the end fails to account for the citations preserved in the Lǐjì, and so was eventually challenged by later scholars. As for the Zhèngshuò lùn — that although Zhōu took the [winter] zǐ month for its calendrical first month, in the matter of star-divination, calendar-making, sacrifice, and the conduct of public business they still used Xià’s seasonal months; or the Xiàng xíng lùn — that the institution of “punishment by symbol” took its name from the Officer of Punishments suspending the legal code on the xiàng wèi 象魏 [the gate-towers where edicts were posted], and not from the alternative theory of marking dress and head-cover with distinguishing colours — his theses are novel but always supported by extended cross-reference. Other examples: he uses Bái Jūyì’s 白居易 yuèfǔ to correct Wéi Shù’s 韋述 record that the Táng liùdiǎn 唐六典 was never actually put into use; he argues that the “Xiānshuǐ” 鮮水 of [Hàn] Zhāngyè 張掖 is not the present Xiānshuǐ, refuting Prince Zhānghuái’s commentary on the Hòu Hàn shū · Duàn Jiǒng zhuàn; he holds that Bǐjǐng xiàn 比景縣 in the Hàn shū should follow Liú Xù’s 劉昫 Jiù Táng shū in reading Běijǐng 北景; and he argues that the Zǐgōng 子弓 named in Xúnzǐ is identical with Zhòng Gōng 仲弓 and not Hàn Bì Zǐgōng 馯臂子弓; and he uses the Lángyé tái 瑯琊臺 stele inscription to prove that stone-engraved monuments existed before Qín. All these arguments are precise and well-documented, not random pickings. Although the work is second to Róngzhāi suíbǐ 容齋隨筆, it is decidedly superior to the wild generalizations of Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 and his kind.
Respectfully revised and submitted, twelfth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Kǎogǔ biān is the more austere and exegetical of Chéng Dàchāng’s two large bǐjì, paired with the broader Yǎnfán lù 演繁露 (KR3j0040). It is a working scholar’s notebook of canonical and historical kǎozhèng 考證 essays — not a chronological diary but a thematic corpus, with the Shī lùn (seventeen piān) heading the work as the most sustained single argument. That essay’s claim that the guófēng 國風 designation is a post-Confucian editorial layer, and that the Shījīng in its original taxonomy knew only nán / yǎ / sòng, was unsuccessful but provoked later debate well into the Qīng. The remaining juan range across calendar reform (Zhèngshuò lùn), early penal institutions (Xiàng xíng lùn), the historical reception of the Táng liùdiǎn 唐六典, geographic identifications in the standard histories, the Xúnzǐ’s “Zǐ gōng,” and the dating of stone-engraved monuments to before the Qín on the strength of the Lángyé stele.
The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 1151, notAfter 1195) reflects Chéng Dàchāng’s active scholarly life from his jìnshì year to his death; the work bears no internal date but is consistently cited as a product of his maturity, alongside the Yǎnfán lù (whose preface is dated Chúnxī gēngzǐ = 1180). The Sìkù editors situate it just below Hóng Mài’s 洪邁 Róngzhāi suíbǐ 容齋隨筆 (KR3j0038) in the hierarchy of Sòng kǎozhèng bǐjì, and explicitly above Zhèng Qiáo’s 鄭樵 Tōngzhì 通志 in soundness of method. The text is recorded in Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題 and in the Sòngshǐ · Yìwén zhì. The Wényuān gé recension catalogued here is the standard Sìkù text in ten juan.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language secondary literature located. Modern Chinese scholarship treats the Kǎogǔ biān as a major Sòng kǎozhèng work, especially for its Shī-classical theses:
- Dài Jūnrén 戴君仁, “Chéng Dàchāng Kǎogǔ biān de Shī lùn” 程大昌《考古編》的《詩論》, in his collected essays on Sòng Shī studies.
- Liú Yèqiū 劉葉秋, Lìdài bǐjì gàishù 歷代筆記概述 (Zhōnghuá, 1980; rev. 2003), brief notice in the section on Sòng kǎojù bǐjì.
- Wáng Yìngmín 王應麟 and many subsequent Sòng-Yuán scholars cite the Kǎogǔ biān by name; the work is the source for several entries in the Wǔ jì 五紀-tradition literature.
- Zhōnghuá shūjú punctuated edition: Kǎogǔ biān; Yǎnfán lù; Yǎnfán lù xùjí, in the Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記 series, ser. 4 vol. 9 (Dàxiàng chūbǎnshè, 2008), with Lǐ Wěiguó 李偉國 as series editor.