聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

文心雕龍輯註

9 min read

Text ID
KR4i0002
Date
1738–1738
Dynasty
清

Wénxīn diāolóng jí zhù 文心雕龍輯註

Collected Commentary on the Wenxin diaolong by 黃叔琳 (撰)

About the work

The Wénxīn diāolóng jí zhù 文心雕龍輯註 is Huáng Shūlín’s 黃叔琳 (1672–1756) consolidated commentary on Liú Xié’s 劉勰 Wénxīn diāolóng KR4i0001, the foundational treatise on literature in the Chinese tradition. Cast in ten juǎn matching the parent work’s chapter divisions, it gathers, prunes, and supplements the two principal Míng commentaries — Méi Qìngshēng 梅慶生 (zì Zǐgēng 子庚, late Wànlì) and Wáng Wéijiǎn 王惟儉 — adds collation against further variants, and remains the standard early-Qing scholarly recension of the Wénxīn diāolóng until the modern critical editions of Fàn Wénlán 范文瀾 and Zhān Yīng 詹鍈 superseded it. Huáng’s preface, dated Qiánlóng 3 (1738), explains that the book grew out of casual textual emendation on the basis of Méi’s shūtōng zhèngmíng and was finalized over months of comparison against multiple witnesses; the Sìkù recension entered the imperial library forty-one years later at the recommendation of the Jiāngsū provincial governor.

Tiyao

Wénxīn diāolóng jí zhù, by Huáng Shūlín of our dynasty (本朝). Shūlín wrote also the Yánběi yì chāo 研北易鈔, already entered [in the Sìkù]. (Note: the surviving WYG copy’s own internal Tíyào names this prior work as Shǐtōng xùngǔ bǔ 史通訓故補, not the Yánběi yì chāo; the Zinbun text reflects an editorial slip.) The Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì records a Wénxīn diāolóng zhù in ten juǎn by Xīn Chǔxìn 辛處信; that work is no longer extant. The Míng commentary of Méi Qìngshēng 梅慶生 gave only an outline and was widely incomplete. Taking Méi’s recension as his base, Shūlín cut and supplemented to produce the present edition; orthographic errors and missing characters were everywhere corrected against the various house collations.

In one curious case, the closing note to the Zōng jīng 宗經 chapter argues at length against Méi’s text, holding that one should follow Wáng Wéijiǎn 王惟儉’s recension — yet the body of the chapter as printed still follows Méi, not Wáng. The two halves contradict each other.

Of his other annotations the following are weakly grounded:

  • In the Zōng jīng chapter, on the line Shū shí jì yán, ér xùn gǔ máng mèi; tōng hū Ěryǎ, zé wén yì xiǎo rán 書實紀言而訓詁茫昧通乎爾雅則文義曉然, the note says: “The Ěryǎ was originally a key to the Shī jīng and has nothing to do with the Shàngshū’s glosses.” But the Ěryǎ’s very second character is glossed by Guō Pú 郭璞 with reference to the Shàngshū zāi shēng pò 哉生魄, and other entries glossing the Shū are too numerous to count. How can one say it is unrelated to the Shū?

  • In the Quán fù 詮賦 chapter, on tuò yǔ yú Chǔ cí 拓宇於楚辭, the phrase tuò yǔ 拓宇 derives from Yán Yánzhī’s 顏延之 Sòng Jiāosì gē 宋郊祀歌. Huáng has altered the text to kuò yǔ 括宇 and adduces the Xījīng zájì’s saying — that the fù-writer’s mind “embraces (kuò 括) all heaven and earth” — by way of corroboration. This is splicing and farfetching.

  • In the Shǐ zhuàn 史傳 chapter, on zhēng huì yù bǐ zhī qiān, Gōnglǐ biàn zhī jiū yǐ 徵賄鬻筆之愆，公理辨之究矣: “Gōnglǐ” 公理 is the zì of Zhòngcháng Tǒng 仲長統. Tǒng’s Chāng yán 昌言 must have contained a discussion refuting the charge that Bān Gù 班固 took bribes — but the Chāng yán is lost, and we no longer have anything to check. Liú Zhījī’s 劉知幾 Shǐ tōng 史通 also records the “Bān Gù took gold” story, in agreement with this book: clearly Liú Zhījī had still seen the Chāng yán in the Táng. Huáng quotes none of this; he glosses with the unrelated story of Chén Shòu’s 陳壽 demanding rice (suǒ mǐ 索米), which belongs to the HòuHàn shū tradition, not this passage. Of what relevance is the QiánHàn shū here?

  • In the Shí xù 時序 chapter, Liú discusses the lack of an Imperial Ancestor (tàizǔ) or Middle Ancestor (zhōngzōng) for the Qí dynasty. In the Xù zhì 序志 chapter Liú says Lǐ Chōng 李充 was not zì Hóngfàn 宏範. In neither case does Huáng cross-check the assertions against the parent work. In Zhǐ xiá 指瑕 chapter on Xījīng fù — the Wénxuǎn note by Xuē Zōng 薛綜 calls the heroes Zhōng Huáng 中黃 and Bēn Huò 賁獲 “eunuchs”: this charge against Xuē’s gloss is not in any Wénxuǎn text we now have, but Huáng does not flag it.

Other small errors abound. In the Zhēng shèng 徵聖 chapter, on Sì xiàng jīng yì yǐ qū yǐn 四象精義以曲隱, Huáng’s note quotes the Yì xìcí “the Yì has four images, by which to indicate”, and Zhū Xī’s Běn yì: “Sì xiàng refers to yīnyáng lǎoshào”. But Kǒng Yǐngdá’s 孔穎達 sub-commentary to the same passage cites Zhuāng Shì 莊氏 — “the sì xiàng are the shí xiàng, jiǎ xiàng, yì xiàng, yòng xiàng found within the sixty-four hexagrams” — and Hé Shì 何氏, who reads “Heaven generates spirit-things” (the eight lines following) as sì xiàng. On liǎngyí shēng sìxiàng, the same gloss gives “sì xiàng are the four elements — metal, wood, water, fire — that arise from Heaven and Earth.” Before the Táng, no one had yet given the yīnyáng lǎoshào reading: Liú Xié, a man of the Liáng, could not possibly know of Shào Yōng’s 邵雍 Sòng Yì-system. — Again, on bǐng wén zhī jīn kē 秉文之金科, Huáng quotes Yáng Xióng’s 楊雄 Jù Qín měi Xīn — jīn kē yù tiáo — and a note reading “jīn kē yù tiáo refers to laws and ordinances; jīn yù means flattering words.” But Lǐ Shàn 李善’s Wén xuǎn commentary glosses this as “jīn kē yù tiáo refers to laws; jīn yù honors them as precious.” The reading “flattering words” — defensible for the satirical Jù Qín měi Xīn in its own context — is here cited under the Zhēng shèng 徵聖 chapter and inverts what Liú Xié means. Other slips: under Zōng jīng on the Sān fén wǔ diǎn bā suǒ jiǔ qiū, Huáng does not cite the Zuǒzhuàn (the locus classicus) but the pseudo-Kǒng-Ānguó Shū xù; under Xié yǐn 諧讔* on Xún Qīng’s 荀卿 Cán fù, he does not cite the Xúnzǐ Fù piān (Liú’s actual source) but a Míng anthology Fù yuàn. Still, taken as a whole, the work is far fuller than Méi’s notes.

Abstract

Huáng Shūlín’s Jí zhù is the standard early-Qing recension of the Wénxīn diāolóng. Composed in the late 1730s and prefaced in Qiánlóng 3 (1738) at Běipíng (Beijing), it builds on three prior strata of commentary: the lost Sòng Wénxīn diāolóng zhù of Xīn Chǔxìn 辛處信 (10 juǎn, recorded only in Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì); the late-Míng Yīn zhù 音注 of Méi Qìngshēng 梅慶生 (the Wànlì 1622 Xiàotāng edition); and the Wànlì / Tiānqǐ annotations of Wáng Wéijiǎn 王惟儉. Huáng preserved Méi as the textual base and supplemented from Wáng and from his own consultation of further variants, producing a unified reading apparatus that explains yòng diǎn (allusions) and zì jù (textual cruxes) in an integrated way no previous edition had attempted. Yáo Píngshān 姚平山, governor at Yúnjiān 雲間 (Sōngjiāng), saw the manuscript in Huáng’s preface period and underwrote the engraving. The 1739 edition entered the imperial library in 1779 via the Jiāngsū xúnfǔ and became the Sìkù base text.

The Sìkù editors’ assessment is unusually frank for an imperial tíyào. They concede that Huáng’s annotation is “fuller than Méi’s” but list seven specific failures of glossing: a contradiction between his commentary on the Zōng jīng chapter and the body text he prints; an arbitrary emendation of tuò yǔ to kuò yǔ in Quán fù; a misdirected note on the Bān Gù gold-charge in Shǐ zhuàn (which should cite Liú Zhījī’s Shǐ tōng preserving Zhòngcháng Tǒng’s defense, rather than the unrelated Chén Shòu story); inattention to Liú’s own commentary apparatus on Shí xù and Xù zhì; a failure to flag a missing Wén xuǎn note in Zhǐ xiá; and most damningly, an anachronistic note on Zhēng shèng glossing Liú’s sì xiàng through Zhū Xī’s Sòng yīnyáng lǎoshào reading — when no such reading existed before the Táng. Despite these criticisms, the Sìkù editors retain the Jí zhù and acknowledge that it remains the best available commentary on the Wén xīn until that point.

Huáng’s recension fixed the early-Qing reading of the Wénxīn diāolóng and remained the canonical printed text for almost two centuries; modern Chinese scholarship (Fàn Wénlán’s 范文瀾 Wénxīn diāolóng zhù of 1936, and especially Zhān Yīng’s 詹鍈 Wénxīn diāolóng yì zhèng of 1989) takes Huáng as the principal early-modern witness against which SòngYuánMíng variant readings are weighed.

Translations and research

  • Fàn Wén-lán 范文瀾, Wénxīn diāolóng zhù 文心雕龍註, 2 vols. (Kāimíng shū-jú, 1936; rev. Rénmín wénxué, 1958) — the modern critical edition that supersedes Huáng but takes him as the proximate base.
  • Zhān Yīng 詹鍈, Wénxīn diāolóng yì zhèng 文心雕龍義證, 3 vols. (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1989) — the standard variorum, listing Huáng’s readings throughout.
  • Yáng Míng-zhào 楊明照, Wénxīn diāolóng jiào zhù shí yí 文心雕龍校註拾遺 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1982) — collation supplement that includes Huáng’s edition in its witness apparatus.
  • No dedicated monograph on Huáng’s commentary located in Western languages. For Huáng himself see Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 350.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào is unusually critical for an imperially-commissioned notice — listing in detail seven specific glossing errors. This frankness reflects the Sìkù editors’ broader project of textual-critical correction. Huáng nonetheless remained the standard Wénxīn edition through the late Qing.

Graph View

Backlinks