Yán Càn 嚴粲
Zì Tǎnshū 坦叔. Native of Shàowǔ 邵武 (modern Fújiàn). Held office as magistrate of QīngXiāng 清湘 (Quánzhōu). Lifedates not recoverable; CBDB fl. index year 1193, but the Shī jí’s preface (sometimes dated Chúnyòu 8 = 1248) places his maturity in the mid-thirteenth century — the catalog meta gives fl. 1248.
Author of Shī jí 詩緝 in 36 juǎn (KR1c0023), the most accomplished thirteenth-century jí jiě commentary on the Classic of Poetry and the only Sòng Shī commentary that the Sìkù editors rank as a peer to Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Dú Shī jì. Methodologically Yán Càn took the Dú Shī jì as his base, adjudicated among the various schools of the late twelfth century, and where the older readings were not satisfactory rendered his own judgement. The Sìkù editors single out his readings on Bǎizhōu (柏舟 as a metaphor for the state, fànfàn as the absence of supporting elements), Gānjīng (the “good horses four / good horses five” as four or five carriages of riders, hence the multiplicity of those who delight in good), and Zhōnggǔ yǒu tuī (the dried-up tuī as drought-and-famine forcing dispersal) as “deeply getting at the poet’s original intent.”