原本韓集考異

Yuánběn Hán jí kǎoyì 原本韓集考異

Original Edition of Zhū Xī’s Critical Examination of the Hán Yù Collection by 朱熹 (傳), 張洽 (校補)

About the work

Yuánběn Hán jí kǎoyì 原本韓集考異 in 10 juǎn is the original form of Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 textual-critical study of Hán Yù 韓愈’s collected works — the foundational Sòng critical edition of the HánYù corpus, building directly on Fāng Sōngqīng’s 方崧卿 Jǔzhèng (= KR4c0042) but correcting Fāng’s overreliance on the Guǎngé běn (palace-archive copy). The work was completed ca. 1191–1199 in Zhū’s late years and was further checked and supplemented by his pupil Zhāng Qià 張洽 (1161–1237). The yuánběn form prints the kǎoyì notes as separate jiázhù 夾注 (interlinear notes) below the text, in the format of Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文 — separately printed from the main collection. Wáng Bódà 王伯大 王伯大 in the late Sòng later consolidated Zhū’s notes directly into the body of the Hán Yù collection (= KR4c0044, the Bié běn Hán wén kǎoyì 別本韓文考異); that consolidated form circulated more widely, and as a result Zhū’s yuánběn form gradually fell out of currency and the WYG copy is one of the very few surviving witnesses. The title yuánběn (“original edition”) reflects the Sìkù-editorial recovery of this lost original arrangement.

The WYG file opens with a substantial Yùzhì tí Sòngbǎn Zhū Wéngōng jiào Chánglí jí 御製題宋版朱文公校昌黎集 — a Qiánlóng-imperial poem on the discovered Sòng print, identifying Hán Yù’s Yuán dào 原道 (“On the Origin of the Way”) as the foundational text linking the YuánHé generation to the Sòng Lǐxué lineage (Zhōu Dūnyí, Chéng Hào, Chéng Yí, Zhāng Zài, Zhū Xī).

Tiyao

Yuánběn Hán jí kǎoyì in 10 juǎn — by Zhūzǐ of the Sòng. The Hán Yù text-witnesses had many variants. Fāng Sōngqīng’s Jǔzhèng, while claiming to compare many editions and “discard the inferior, take the superior,” in fact relied principally on the Guǎngé běn (palace archive) and accommodated it with much yīwéi qiānjiù 依違牽就 (dependent compromise). Even in the Nánshān yǒu gāo shù shī 南山有高樹詩 — the famous pópó nòng máoyī 婆婆弄毛衣 (“the dancing-dancing-puffing-the-feathers”) line that Fù Āndào 傅安道 had ridiculed for its absurdity — Fāng dared not say it was wrong. So Zhū re-collated the corpus and produced this 10-juǎn work, preserving Fāng’s correct readings and refuting the wrong ones one by one.

The format is like Lù Démíng’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén: only the disputed words from the main text are extracted in large type, with the textual notes printed as jiázhù below — separately printed from the main collection. By the late Sòng, Wáng Bódà took it and dispersed the notes back into the main text under each line, printing it separately for ease of reference; this circulated widely, and few realized Zhū’s yuánběn still existed.

[Continued tíyào: Zhāng Qià’s supplementary work and the eventual disappearance of the yuánběn until the Sìkù recovery.]

Abstract

The Sìkù compilers’ identification and printing of the yuánběn form is one of the cleaner editorial recoveries of the Sìkù program — Wáng Bódà’s late-Sòng consolidated edition (= KR4c0044) had so completely supplanted Zhū’s original form that few mid-Qīng scholars knew the original existed. The yuánběn preserves Zhū’s argumentation in its full standalone form, before Wáng’s editorial digestion.

Zhū’s editorial program here — building on but correcting Fāng Sōngqīng’s collation, while retaining Hán Yù’s Yuán dào and Yuán xìng as the foundational texts of his own Lǐxué genealogy — is methodologically central to his broader scholarly project. The yuánběn is therefore not just a critical edition but also an important document of Zhū’s reception of Hán Yù as the proximate source of his own dàotǒng 道統 (transmission of the Way) lineage.

Zhāng Qià (1161–1237; CBDB cbdbId per existing person note) was one of Zhū Xī’s most senior late-life pupils; his supplementary work to the kǎoyì (likely completed in the Jiātài / Kāixī period, after Zhū’s death in 1200) preserved the manuscript and clarified disputed readings.

Translations and research

• See KR4c0042, KR4c0044, KR4c0045, KR4c0046, KR4c0047 for parallel and downstream Hán Yù editions.
• Charles Hartman. 1986. Han Yu and the T’ang Search for Unity. Princeton UP. The standard English-language scholarly study.
• Hoyt Cleveland Tillman. 1992. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. UH Press. Important context for Zhū Xī’s reception of Hán Yù.

Other points of interest

The Qiánlóng imperial poem at the head of the WYG file — identifying Hán Yù’s Yuán dào as the foundational text linking the YuánHé Confucian revival to the Sòng Lǐxué lineage (Zhōu Dūnyí, the Chéng brothers, Zhāng Zài, Zhū Xī) — is the canonical pre-modern Chinese statement of the Hán-Yù-as-Sòng-precursor genealogy. This is essentially the dàotǒng genealogy that Hán Yù himself articulated in Yuán dào.

Links

• See KR4c0044 for Wáng Bódà’s consolidated derivative (the more widely circulated form).
• See KR4c0042 for Fāng Sōngqīng’s foundational collation.
• Han Yu (Wikipedia)
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.7.4 (Tang fu-gǔ tradition; Sòng Lǐxué).