Kǎogǔ zhìyí 攷古質疑
Doubts and Queries on the Investigation of Antiquity
by 葉大慶 (Yè Dàqìng, fl. early 13th century; zì Róngfǔ 榮甫; Education Officer at Jiànzhōu 建州 state school)
About the work
A Southern Sòng kǎozhèng 考證 bǐjì in the Sìkù recompilation as 6 juan (74 entries: 8, 12, 11, 20, 10, 13). The original juan-count is unknown — the work was lost to public circulation by YuánMíng times and survived only in scattered passages of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; the Sìkù editors gathered these into the present six-juan recompilation. Two prefaces survive embedded in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn materials: one by Yè Wǔzǐ 葉武子 of Qiáoyáng 樵陽 (style-name Wénzhī 文之) dated Bǎoqìng bǐngxū (1226), and one by the author’s son Yè Shìzhī 葉釋之 dated Chúnyòu jiǎchén (1244). The book ranges from the Six Classics and the standard histories down to Sòng zhūjiā 諸家 writings, citing detailed evidence and offering original judgments — many of which the Sìkù editors describe as “qián rén wèi fā zhī mì 前人未發之祕” (secrets not previously broached). Methodologically the work explicitly emulates Chéng Dàchāng’s 程大昌 Kǎogǔ biān 攷古編 (c. 1180), and the Sìkù editors judge that “the two books may be set side by side without the one yielding precedence to the other.” Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division (subdivision zákǎo 雜考).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Kǎogǔ zhìyí was composed by Yè Dàqìng of the Sòng. Dàqìng has no biography in the Sòng shǐ, and this book is not entered in its Yìwén zhì. Only by examining the scattered passages preserved in various rhyme-categories of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, together with two prefaces — one by Yè Wǔzǐ 葉武子 of Bǎoqìng bǐngxū (1226), and one by the son Yè Shìzhī 葉釋之 of Chúnyòu jiǎchén (1244) — can we know that Dàqìng’s zì was Róngfǔ 榮甫, that he was known in his time for cífù 詞賦 prose-and-poetry, and that he once held office as Education Officer of Jiànzhōu state school (zhōuxué jiàoshòu 建州州學教授). His native place is not made plain in the prefaces and so we cannot determine it.
The book ranges from the Six Classics and various histories above, down to the writings of Sòng zhūjiā below; wherever a passage of doubtful sense occurs, he picks it out and investigates it. His evidence is detailed and his arbitration is exact; many of his solutions are secrets the predecessors had not broached, and his prose is also extremely full and dialectically-supple, an observable pleasure. Where he cites ancient books or assembles cross-references, he places these as small interlinear notes beneath the main text, so the reader takes them in at a glance — a maximally accomplished editorial procedure, and within the Sòng shuō 宋說 (Sòng bǐjì) genre this book is fully entitled to the description “wide-and-clear” (yāntōng 淹通).
In former times Chéng Dàchāng 程大昌 made the Kǎogǔ biān 攷古編, and was praised for its precision; Dàqìng was born after him and named his book accordingly — clearly modelling himself on the predecessor. We may set the two books side by side: in fact neither yields precedence. Since the Sòng a great mass of Qíxié zhìguài 齊諧志怪 fiction has continued to circulate throughout the literary world, but this book has alone slept in obscurity, all but lost — perhaps because Dàqìng’s name was not famous and the ear-and-mouth crowd, not knowing how to value the book, threw it aside. We have now collected and edited it, corrected its corruptions, and ordered it into six juan. Although the original mù 目 is not transmitted and we cannot know the entire missing portion, the surviving leaves — jíguāng piànyǔ 吉光片羽 (rare phoenix-feathers) — are not unworthy resources for the inquirer into antiquity.
Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].
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.
[Two prefaces follow in the source: Yè Wǔzǐ’s preface dated Bǎoqìng bǐngxū liángyuè (1226 tenth month), Qiáoyáng 樵陽 — a fellow-officer at Jiànzhōu who recommends Yè Dàqìng’s cífù eminence and frames the work as “not made for examination success alone”; and Yè Shìzhī’s Chúnyòu jiǎchén (1244 mid-autumn) reissue-postface, which records that the father drafted the manuscript three times without daring to commit it to print, that the Yè gentleman who sponsored the first cutting acted before the father’s death, and that the original blocks had become unreadable, prompting the second engraving here marked.]
Abstract
Yè Dàqìng 葉大慶 (fl. early 13th century), zì Róngfǔ 榮甫, was a Southern Sòng schoolteacher (Education Officer of the Jiànzhōu 建州 state school in modern Jiàn’ōu, Fújiàn) who attained distinction in his lifetime as a cífù 詞賦 stylist on the prefectural examination circuit, but whose major reading-notes work disappeared from public circulation and survives only via the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The Sòng shǐ gives no biography; the Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì does not record the work; the Sìkù editors reconstructed both author and book from prefaces preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn materials. The two prefaces — by Yè Wǔzǐ 葉武子 (1226) and by the author’s son Yè Shìzhī 葉釋之 (1244) — establish the dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 1200, notAfter 1244): the manuscript was substantially complete and engraved at Jiànzhōu by 1226, but the father continued to revise and was working on it close to his death; the second engraving in 1244 represents the textual terminus ad quem.
The book is methodologically modelled on Chéng Dàchāng’s 程大昌 Kǎogǔ biān 攷古編 (the title is an explicit homage), but tackles a wider range of materials — including down to “Sòng zhūjiā writings” (i.e., contemporary or near-contemporary works) — and uses a notably refined editorial procedure of two-tier text-plus-interlinear-citation that the Sìkù editors single out for praise. The 74 surviving entries treat textual cruxes in the Confucian classics, the standard histories, and Sòng-era exegesis, and are largely organized as confrontations between competing source-authorities resolved by appeal to a third witness — a procedure the Sìkù editors describe as “zhé zhōng zhì dāng 折衷至當” (arbitration to perfect balance).
The 6-juan Sìkù recompilation is the only text we have. The original juan-count and the original organization (whether by topic, by source, or by miscellany) cannot be reconstructed from the surviving fragments.
Translations and research
- Líu Quèshān 劉確山 (punct.), Kǎogǔ zhìyí 攷古質疑 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, Tángsòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān 唐宋史料筆記叢刊, 1985). The standard punctuated critical edition.
- Included in Zhū Yìxuán 朱易安 et al. (eds.), Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記, ser. 6 (Dàxiàng chūbǎnshè, 2013), with collation notes.
- Bríefly treated in Liú Yèqiū 劉葉秋, Lìdài bǐjì gàishù 歷代筆記概述 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1980; rev. ed. 2003).
No Western-language monographic study has been devoted to Yè Dàqìng or this work.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Kǎogǔ zhìyí entry.
- Wikidata: no entry located.