Máo Jūzhèng 毛居正
Style name Yìfù 誼父 (also given as Yìfǔ 義甫; the WYG tíyào notes that yì 義/誼 and fù/fǔ 父/甫 are interchangeable in classical script). Native of Qúzhōu 衢州 (modern Zhèjiāng). Miǎnjiě jìnshì 免解進士 (passed without prefectural-level examination, on family privilege). Son of Máo Huǎng 毛晃, the lexicographer responsible for the Zēng zhù lǐbù yùn lüè 增註禮部韻略 and the Yǔ gòng zhǐ nán 禹貢指南; Jūzhèng inherited his father’s specialism in the liù shū 六書 (the six categories of Chinese character formation) and graphic philology.
In the sixteenth year of Jiādìng 嘉定 (1223) the imperial directive ordered the Imperial Academy (Guózǐjiàn 國子監) to re-edit and re-cut the canonical books; the Director (司業) personally invited Jūzhèng to serve as chief collator. Four classics had been completed when Jūzhèng was forced into retirement by an eye disease, and the Lǐjì and the three Chūnqiū commentaries were left unedited. Even of the four edited classics, the Sìkù tíyào records that the engravers had falsified collation slips to deceive the supervisors, leaving twenty or thirty per cent of the errors uncorrected. Jūzhèng accordingly compiled what he had collated into the Liù jīng zhèng wù 六經正誤 (KR1g0007) in 6 juàn. Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 wrote a preface, but the canonical preface is by Wèi Liǎowēng 魏了翁 of Línqióng 臨邛, dated the first month of Bǎoqìng 寶慶 (December 1225).
The Sìkù compilers note that some of his liù shū doctrines are mistaken — e.g. taking chì 勑 to derive from “two rù 入” rather than “two rén 人”; arguing that xiǎng 享 (sacrifice) and hēng 亨 (penetrate) are unrelated when they are graphically continuous; arguing for the antiquity of the rare graph 巛 for kūn 坤 — but the work’s overall achievement in collating canonical text remains unimpeachable.