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揚子雲集

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Text ID
KR4b0001
Date
1595–1595
Dynasty
漢 (recompiled 明)

Yáng Zǐyún jí 揚子雲集

Collected Works of Yáng Zǐyún (Yáng Xióng) by 揚雄 (撰), 鄭樸 (編)

About the work

Yáng Zǐyún jí 揚子雲集 in six juǎn is a Míng-dynasty re-compilation of the surviving writings of the Western-Hàn polymath Yáng Xióng 揚雄 (53 BCE – 18 CE), edited by the Wànlì-era 萬曆 scholar Zhèng Pǔ 鄭樸 of Suìzhōu 遂州. The six-juǎn recension printed in the Sìkù quánshū combines Yáng’s fù and miscellaneous prose with three of his major treatises — the Tài xuán 太玄 (KR5f0017), Fǎ yán 法言, and Fāng yán 方言 — together with the Shǔ wáng běn jì 蜀王本紀 and Qín qīng yīng 琴清英 fragments preserved in lèishū, and a closing list of titles known to be lost. Although the catalog formally classes the volume under bié jí 別集類 (individual collections), it is in effect a reconstructed corpus rather than a continuous transmission of the Hàn original.

Tiyao

The jí of Yáng Zǐyún 揚子雲 in six juǎn was composed by Yáng Xióng of the Hàn. His collected works are catalogued in five juǎn in the bibliographic treatises of the Hànshū, the Suíshū, and the Tángshū; the original was long since lost. The Sòng scholar Tán Yù 譚愈 first took the forty-odd pieces preserved in the Hànshū and the Gǔwén yuàn 古文苑 and edited them into five juǎn, but this was already not the old recension. In the Wànlì period of the Míng, Zhèng Pǔ 鄭樸 of Suìzhōu 遂州 took Yáng’s three works Tài xuán 太玄, Fǎ yán 法言, and Fāng yán 方言, together with such items as the Shǔ wáng běn jì 蜀王本紀 and the Qín qīng yīng 琴清英 quoted in encyclopaedias, and combined them with the various prose pieces and fù, dividing them into six juǎn and appending at the end a list of the lost titles — this is the present recension.

The Gǔwén yuàn and Zhōngxīng shū mù 中興書目 both record Yáng’s various zhēn 箴 as twenty-four pieces; only Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Dúshū zhì 讀書志 gives twenty-eight, including four extra — Sīkōng 司空, Shàngshū 尚書, Bóshì 博士, and Tàicháng 太常. The present collection further adds Tàiguānlìng 太官令 and Tàishǐlìng 太史令, making thirty in all. The Lǐ Xián 李賢 commentary to the Hòu Hànshū, Bān Gù zhuàn, cites Yáng’s Shàngshū zhēn, and the Tàipíng yùlǎn cites the Tàiguānlìng and Tàishǐlìng admonitions, so Zhèng’s additions are not unfounded. However, the Hànshū, Hú Guǎng zhuàn 胡廣傳, says that Yáng made the twelve Zhōu zhēn 州箴 and twenty-five guān zhēn 官箴, of which nine are lost — so in the Hàn there were only twenty-eight pieces, and Liú Xié’s 劉勰 Wénxīn diāolóng 文心雕龍 gives twenty-five for the QīngYǐnZhōumù group, with three further losses. They should not have re-emerged afterwards. Moreover, the Sīkōng and the other three zhēn in the Gǔwén yuàn are explicitly attributed to Cuī Zǐyù Yuàn 崔子玉瑗 in interlinear note, so the citations in the Yìwén lèi jù and other works may be misattributions and cannot be hastily fixed as Yáng’s compositions.

The collection is prefaced by a Yáng Xióng shǐmò biàn 揚雄始末辯 by Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 (from his Bǐ chéng 筆乘), which holds that the Hànshū records of Yáng serving Wáng Mǎng, composing the Fú mìng 符命*,* and “throwing himself from the tower” 投閣 at the age of 71 in the fifth year of Tiānfèng 天鳳 (= 18 CE), do not square with the chronology: when Yáng came to the capital and saw Emperor Chéng he was already over forty; from Chéng’s first reign-year (Jiànshǐ 1) to Tiānfèng 5 are fifty-two years, so 52 + 40-something is close to a hundred, contradicting the figure 71. Further, DàSīmǎ Wáng Yīn 王音 was struck by Yáng’s writings, and Yīn died in the early years of Yǒngshǐ 永始, so Yáng must have arrived at the capital before Yǒngshǐ; the claim that Yáng survived to serve Mǎng is, on this view, fabricated. Recent commentators have repeated this argument to defend Yáng’s reputation.

But the Wén xuǎn 文選, in Rén Fǎng’s 任昉 Wáng Wénxiàn gōng jí xù under “jiā dié 家牒,” carries Lǐ Shàn’s 李善 note quoting Liú Xīn’s Qī lüè 七略: “consulting Zǐyún’s family record, he was born in the first year of Gānlù 甘露.” The Hànshū, Chéngdì jì, records the imperial progresses to Gānquán and Chángyáng both in the first year of Yuányán 元延, the jǐyǒu year. From Xuāndì Gānlù 1 (wùchén) to Yuányán 1 is exactly forty-two years — agreeing with “over forty.” Thereafter Yuányán ran five years, Suíhé two, Āidì Jiànpíng four, Yuánshòu two, Píngdì Yuánshǐ five, Rúzǐ Yīng three, Wáng Mǎng Shǐjiànguó five — adding to Tiānfèng 5 totals 71 years exactly, which agrees with “died at 71.” That Yáng served Mǎng for ten years is therefore beyond doubt. Jiāo Hóng failed to reckon by the years of the Gānquán sacrifice and the Chángyáng hunt and instead counted from the first year of Chéngdì’s accession (Jiànshǐ 1) — a serious error. Only the year of Wáng Yīn’s death does not agree with the Yáng Xióng zhuàn, but as Sòng Qí 宋祁 already noted, “Yīn 音” is a graphic corruption of “Gēn 根,” and the corrected form is now found in current editions of the Hànshū commentary — has Jiāo not seen it?

Reverently collated and submitted in the tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief compilers (zǒng zuǎn guān 總纂官): Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief collator (zǒng jiào guān 總校官): Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The historical Hàn collection of Yáng Xióng 揚雄 — five juǎn, recorded in Hànshū yìwén zhì, Suíshū jīngjí zhì, Tángshū yìwén zhì — disappeared early. The Sòng scholar Tán Yù 譚愈 reassembled forty-some pieces from the Hànshū (especially the Yáng Xióng zhuàn in juǎn 87) and the Gǔwén yuàn 古文苑 into a five-juǎn surrogate. The present six-juǎn recension is the work of Zhèng Pǔ 鄭樸 of Suìzhōu, dated by his preface to the ninth month of Wànlì yǐwèi (1595). Zhèng’s signal innovations were (a) absorbing into the jí the three philosophical / lexicographic treatises Tài xuán, Fǎ yán, and Fāng yán, which had circulated independently, (b) gathering surviving fragments of the Shǔ wáng běn jì 蜀王本紀 and Qín qīng yīng 琴清英 from the great Sòng lèishū, and (c) listing known-but-lost titles at the volume’s end as a kind of catalog of the desideratum.

The opening matter (preceding the Sìkù tíyào) bundles a Qiánlóng-era yùzhì 御製 poem on Yáng’s Gānquán fù and a substantial Yáng Xióng shǐmò biàn 揚雄始末辯 by the late-Míng scholar Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 (1540–1620), preserved from his Jiāoshì bǐchéng 焦氏筆乘. Jiāo, following the Tàihé 泰和 scholar Hú Zhèngfǔ 胡正甫, attempted to clear Yáng of the charge of having served the usurper Wáng Mǎng 王莽 by arguing that the Hànshū dates do not add up. The tíyào compilers (Jì Yún 紀昀 et al., Qiánlóng 46 = 1781) reject Jiāo’s defense in detail by re-anchoring Yáng’s chronology on Liú Xīn’s Qī lüè citation in Wénxuǎn Lǐ Shàn’s commentary, which preserves Yáng’s jiā dié 家牒 birth-year (Gānlù 1 / 53 BCE), and conclude that Yáng did indeed serve under Mǎng for ten years.

The text-historical implications of this tíyào are substantial: it is one of the strongest editorial defenses of the Hànshū “Mǎng dàfū 莽大夫” verdict in Qing scholarship, framed against the late-Míng / early-Qīng tendency to rehabilitate Yáng. The collection itself is best treated as a Wànlì-era mosaic, not a Hàn book; readers consulting Yáng’s Tài xuán jīng 太玄經 should rely on the dedicated edition KR5f0017 in the shùshù division.

Translations and research

  • David R. Knechtges, tr. and annot. 1982. The Hanshu Biography of Yang Xiong (53 B.C. – A.D. 18). Tempe: Arizona State University Center for Asian Studies. The standard English translation of the biography that frames every reading of the collection.
  • David R. Knechtges. 1976. The Han Rhapsody: A Study of the Fu of Yang Hsiung (53 B.C.–A.D. 18). Cambridge UP. Foundational monograph on the fù.
  • Michael Nylan, tr. 2013. Exemplary Figures: Fayan. UWP. Annotated translation of the Fǎ yán.
  • Michael Nylan. 2011. Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China. American Oriental Society.
  • Béatrice L’Haridon, tr. 2010. Maîtres mots. Les Belles Lettres. French translation of the Fǎ yán.
  • Michael Nylan, tr. 1993. The Canon of Supreme Mystery (Tai hsüan ching). SUNY Press. Translation of the Tài xuán jīng.
  • Hua Xuecheng 華學誠 et al., eds. 2006. Yáng Xióng Fāngyán jiào shì huì zhèng 揚雄方言校釋彙證. 2 vols. Zhōnghuá. The principal modern variorum on the Fāng yán.

Other points of interest

The collection’s prefatory matter has the distinctive editorial quirk of carrying both Zhèng Pǔ’s defense of Yáng (in the original Wànlì preface) and the Sìkù compilers’ explicit rejection of that defense (in the tíyào) — Zhèng argued from Hú Zhèngfǔ that “Mǎng dàfū” was a slander, the tíyào scolds him for it. The internal contradiction is preserved in the WYG print exactly as it stood, which makes this volume a useful witness to the long Míng–Qīng debate over the moral standing of one of the great Western Hàn writers.

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