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楚辭章句

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Text ID
KR4a0002
Date
89–158
Dynasty
漢

Chǔ cí zhāng jù 楚辭章句

Sectional and Phrasal Commentary on the Chu ci by 王逸 (撰)

About the work

The Chǔ cí zhāng jù 楚辭章句 (Sectional and Phrasal Commentary on the Chu ci) by Wáng Yì 王逸 (fl. 89–158) is the earliest surviving complete commentary on the Chǔ cí anthology and the textual platform on which all subsequent Chǔ cí scholarship rests. Wáng Yì added his own Jiǔ sī 九思 as the seventeenth and final section, fixing the seventeen-juan structure of the received corpus, and provided sectional headings, sentence-by-sentence glosses, and section-end summaries (xù 序) for each piece. The commentary is the parent edition for KR4a0001 (the bare text), KR4a0003 (Hóng Xīngzǔ’s bǔ zhù supplement), KR4a0004 (Zhū Xī’s jí zhù), KR4a0007 (Jiǎng Jì’s Shāndàigé commentary), and KR4a0008 / KR4a0009 (Zhū Xī’s Hòu yǔ and Biàn zhèng).

Tiyao

From the Sìkù tíyào (兵部侍郞紀昀家藏本 — Jì Yún’s family-held copy):

By Wáng Yì 王逸 of the Hàn, zì Shūshī 叔師, of Yíchéng 宜城 in Nánjùn 南郡, who under Emperor Shùn rose to the office of Palace Attendant (shì zhōng 侍中); his career is documented in the Hòu Hàn shū, Wén yuàn liè zhuàn. The old text-block ascribes the work to the office of xiào shū láng zhōng 校書郞中, evidently the post he held when he annotated the book.

Originally, Liú Xiàng 劉向 collected together Qū Yuán’s 屈原 Lí sāo, Jiǔ gē, Tiān wèn, Jiǔ zhāng, Yuǎn yóu, Bǔ jū, and Yú fù; Sòng Yù’s 宋玉 Jiǔ biàn and Zhāo hún; Jǐng Chā’s 景差 Dà zhāo; Jiǎ Yì’s 賈誼 Xī shì; Huáinán Xiǎo Shān’s 淮南小山 Zhāo yǐn shì; Dōngfāng Shuò’s 東方朔 Qī jiàn; Yán Jì’s 嚴忌 Āi shí mìng; Wáng Bāo’s 王褒 Jiǔ huái; and his own Jiǔ tàn — together making sixteen pieces, the Chǔ cí. This was the very first general anthology (zǒng jí 總集) in Chinese letters. Wáng Yì then added his own Jiǔ sī, plus two prefaces by Bān Gù 班固, to make a work of seventeen juǎn, supplying a commentary to each.

The commentary on Jiǔ sī was suspected by Hóng Xīngzǔ 洪興祖 to be the work of Wáng’s son [Wáng] Yánshòu 延壽. But the Hàn shū “Treatise on Geography” and “Treatise on Bibliography” both bear self-commentary, and that precedes Wáng Yì; Xiè Língyùn 謝靈運’s Mountain-Dwelling Rhapsody is also self-annotated — who is to say Wáng was not following the same convention? In the absence of clear documentary evidence, one cannot summarily ascribe the Jiǔ sī commentary to Yánshòu.

Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shū lù jiě tí 書錄解題 records an Old-Script Chǔ cí Shìwén (古文楚辭釋文) in one juǎn, whose section order begins with Lí sāo, then Jiǔ biàn, Jiǔ gē, Tiān wèn, Jiǔ zhāng, Yuǎn yóu, Bǔ jū, Yú fù, Zhāo yǐn shì, Zhāo hún, Jiǔ huái, Qī jiàn, Jiǔ tàn, Āi shí mìng, Xī shì, Dà zhāo, Jiǔ sī — utterly different from the present recension. Hóng Xīngzǔ, citing Wáng Yì’s note in Jiǔ zhāng that “all is explained in Jiǔ biàn,” concluded that in the old recension Jiǔ biàn came first and Jiǔ zhāng second.

Chén further cites Zhū Xī to the effect that, on the evidence of Chén Shuōzhī’s 陳說之 preface of Tiānshèng 10 (1032), the old text’s section-numbering had been muddled and combined; he investigated each author’s chronology and reordered the sections. So the present arrangement is the work of Chén Shuōzhī, and from the Sòng onwards we have not had Wáng’s original text. Huáng Bósī’s 黃伯思 Dōngguān yú lùn 東觀餘論 likewise reports that in Wáng Yì’s Chǔ cí commentary the xù (prefaces) all came at the end of each section, in the manner of the old recension of the Fǎ yán 法言, and that some unknown later hand moved them to the front. So not only the section-order, but even the placement of the prefaces, has been altered.

That said, Hóng Xīngzǔ’s Kǎo yì 考異 notes under Lí sāo jīng that the Shìwén edition omits the character jīng 經, whereas Wáng Yì’s commentary plainly states “lí: to part; sāo: sorrow; jīng: a path”; so Wáng’s commented text certainly carried the jīng, differing from the Shìwén. To insist that the Shìwén is the older recension is therefore not certain — best to record the matter and leave it open.

Wáng Yì’s commentary, though not exhaustive, is close to antiquity and preserves much of the early-Hàn philological tradition; that is why Lǐ Shàn 李善 in his Wén xuǎn 文選 commentary uses it wholesale. From Chōu sī 抽思 onward, his notes often rhyme by alternate clauses — for example: “Sorrowful and bound up — anxiety presses heart,” “Grief and great sighs — the lungs and liver suffer,” “Knotted within — like linked rings” — and dozens of similar instances. The form imitates the Yi jīng’s Xiàng 象 commentary, and is also evidence for Hàn-period rhyme; yet from Wú Yù 吳棫 onwards, no scholar of ancient rhyme has cited him. This deserves to be brought out and made plain.

Abstract

The Zhāng jù is a structural-and-glossary commentary in the conservative Eastern Hàn manner, dividing each poem into named units (zhāng 章), then giving a paraphrase, prosodic notes, and historical / geographical / botanical glosses for each unit (jù 句). It established the Chǔcí’s seventeen-section canon, fixed the loyal-minister-in-exile reading of Qū Yuán that became orthodox for two millennia, and fixed Sòng Yù as the canonical second voice. Modern scholarship (Du 2019) treats the Zhāng jù as the primary site at which the figure of “Qū Yuán” was constructed: Wáng Yì’s prefaces to each section did much of the assembly work that grounded the anthology around a single biographical hero.

The transmitted text is not Wáng’s autograph: as the Sìkù tíyào notes (above), the section order and the placement of the section-prefaces were both rearranged by Chén Shuōzhī 陳說之 under Tiānshèng 10 of Renzong (1032), and Wáng’s son Wáng Yánshòu 王延壽 may have written or revised the Jiǔ sī commentary. The Kanripo file carries the SBCK base (collated against the WYG); the section list at the front of _000.txt shows both the present sequence and the alternative sequence of the Shìwén recension preserved by Lù Démíng 陸德明.

The Zhāng jù survives in the Sòng print tradition through Hóng Xīngzǔ’s Bǔ zhù (KR4a0003), which reproduces the entirety of Wáng Yì’s commentary while supplementing it with later glosses and the Kǎo yì — for many practical purposes Hóng’s edition has been the standard medium of transmission for Wáng’s text since the twelfth century. The independent SBCK Zhāng jù witness in this Kanripo file is therefore especially valuable.

Translations and research

  • Heng Du. 2019. “The Author’s Two Bodies: The Death of Qu Yuan and the Birth of Chuci zhangju 楚辭章句.” T’oung Pao 105: 259–314 — the principal recent reassessment.
  • David Hawkes. 1985 (rev. ed.). The Songs of the South. Penguin — translates the entire Chǔ cí on the basis of Wáng Yì’s text and freely cites his commentary in the apparatus.
  • Nicholas Morrow Williams, ed. and tr. 2022. Elegies of Chu. OUP.
  • Cui Fuzhang 崔富章 and Li Daming 李大明, chief eds. 2003. Chǔ cí jí jiào jí shì 楚辭集校集釋. 4 vols. Hubei jiaoyu — collates Wáng Yì’s text and commentary against all major witnesses.
  • Huáng Língēng 黃靈庚. 2007. Chǔ cí zhāng jù shū zhèng 楚辭章句疏證. 5 vols. Zhonghua — full modern critical edition with annotation.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s observation that Wáng Yì’s commentary contains rhymed sequences (“如哀憤結縎，慮煩冤也”) is a small but suggestive datum for the history of Eastern-Hàn rhyme — and the tíyào’s complaint that Wú Yù 吳棫 and the gǔyùn 古韻 tradition never cited it remains a fair criticism: even Duān Yùcái 段玉裁 and Wáng Niànsūn 王念孫 do not draw on the Zhāng jù for rhyme evidence.

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