Han Shih Wai Chuan: Han Ying's Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the "Classic of Songs"

374 Pages·1952·12.347 MB·English

by  James Hightower

HARVARD-YENCHING INSTITUTE
MONOGRAPH SERIES
VOLUME XI
HAN SHIH WAI CHUAN
HanYing's Illustrations of the
Didactic Application of the
Classic of Songs
An Annotated Translation
by
JAMES ROBERT HIGHTOWER
Associate Professor of Far Eastern Languages
Harvard University
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1952
Copyright, 195 z
by the Harvard Yenching Institute
Printed in the United States of America
b
J. H. Fürst and Company
Baltimore, Maryland
PREFACE
The first draft of this translation was made in 1941-42 when I
was studying in Peking äs a； fellow of the Harvard-Yenching
Institute. It was revised during my second stay in Peking in
1947. As it now goes to press after a further lapse of three years
I am very conscious of. the need for another revision. In fact if
I were beginning the translation today I would proceed on rather
different principles, especially in the annotation. The reader will
find much that betrays the novice, as often in what is included
as requiring a note as in the significant omissions. The text in­
cludes considerable interesting material for studies which I have
not undertaken; in publishing it in this form it is with the hope
that an English version of the Han shih wax chuan will attract
the attention of those more competent than I to deal with its
many problems, sociological, institutional and philosophical.
I wish to thank Professor Hsii Wei-yii of National Tsing Hua
University and Professor Wang Li-ch4i of National Peking Uni­
versity for giving me the benefit of their wide knowledge of the
Han shih wax chuan and related texts. Mr. Hsii made some useful
suggestions about bibliography, which I have incorporated in my
account of the history of the text. My indebtedness to Mr. Wang
is acknowledged in the notes to the specific passages about which
I consulted him. To Mr. Achilles Fang I owe a debt not so easily
discharged. Mr. Fang read the entire manuscript, and nearly
every page incorporates corrections which he has suggested.
The first two chapters of this translation were presented to the
Department of Far Eastern Languages ai Harvard University as
a doctoral thesis. They were read by Professor J. R. Ware and
were much improved by his criticism. I wish here to thank these
teachers and friends who have been so generous with their time
and knowledge. Without their help this translation would be much
poorer than it is.
J.R.H.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950
V

TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
Preface V
Introduction 1
Chapter I 11
Chapter II 38
Chapter III . 75
Chapter IV 125
Chapter V 159
Chapter VI . 191
Chapter VII 奴2
Chapter Vin 252
Chapter IX _ 290
Chapter X 317
Appendix 347
Bibliography 351
Finding List 359
Index of Proper Namrs 361

INTRODUCTION1
The text here translated is a heterogeneous collection of ethical,
ritual, and anecdotal materials not easily characterized. Its title,
“ Exoteric commentary on the Han school text of the of
/Songf^，” claims a rdationship with one of the basic works of the
Confucian canon that on examination turns out to be tenuous at
best. The place of the Han shih wax chttan in Han dynasty Con-
fucian scholarship can be clarified only by briefly describing the
activities of the classical schools of the time.
The Ch^n dynasty (B. C. 221-206) had placed a ban on the
private study of the books particularly venerated by the Con­
fucian school. During the disorders and civil war following the
downfall of the Ch^n some of these classics disappeared entirely
and had to be recovered wholely or in part from the memories of
aged scholars. The Shih ching (Classic of Songs) was one so
recovered, and in the second century B. C. it existed in four
recensions, each known by the name of either the founder of a
school of interpretation of the text or by the name of the locality
of which the founder was a native. Only the text of the Mao
school survives to the present, but the four texts of the Shih ching
were probably essentially the same; the schools owed their identity
to their divergent interpretations of the text. Of the nearly thirty
exegetical works mentioned in the catalogs and histories as be­
longing to the four schools during the Han dynasty, there survive
only two of the Mao school, and the Han shih wax chwmy attri­
buted to Han Ying (ß. B. C. 150) founder of the Han school.
There is no reason to doubt the attribution, but, as it will appear.
aIn a separate article, **The Havrshih wai-chuan and the San chia shih** HJAS
11 (1948) .241-810, I have already given a general account of the HSWC, its sources
and imitations, along with a theory about the nature of the work and its relation
to the Han School of the Shih. There is no point in repeating the arguments and
data presented at length in that article, and I shall confine myself in this introduction
to briefly identifying the text and stating my practice in dealing with certain technical
terms. Some remarks on editions and the history of the text are appended. For
abbreviations and editions of texts cited see the Bibliography.
1
2 HAN SHIH WA1 CHÜAN
the HSWC is more an anthology than an original composition,
and it certainly is not primarily a work of exegesis on the Shih
ching. It was a textbook used by Han Ying^ school, not to pre­
sent his interpretations of the Classic (other works performed
that function) but to demonstrate the practical use of the Classic:
a tag to clincli an argument, a stanza to sum up a philosophical
principle, a punning line to delight or confuse. Quotations from
the Shih ching had been so used in pre-Han times and continued
in use in Han writings. Han Ying provided his disciples with a
convenient handbook from which they could study to perfect
their technique of the apt quotation.
If my theory of the purpose and use of Han Ying^ sole sur­
viving work is correct, it explains though it does not entirely
resolve, the difficulty of properly classifying it. Usually it is listed
with the commentaries on the Shih ching, for the reason suggested
with some annoyance by the &su-k(u editors,2 If you do not put
it with the works on the Shih, there is no other place for How­
ever, a more appropriate category would be that catchall of the
Chinese bibliographer, the Section of Philosophical Writings (子
pß), where one finds the similar collections Shuo yuan and Hsin
hsii. One would hesitate to classify the HSWC and its congeners
as primarily literary works, though they are of interest as repre­
senting an early phase of the development of the anecdote and
story form in the literary language. It is in them that the anecdote
begins to appear, occasionally at least, as a story for its own sake,
not as in the pre-Han philosophers solely to illustrate a point of
doctrine, nor as in the romanticized histories (Kuo yü9 Chan-
few t以） as an episode in a historical context intended to account
for the motives of a principal actor. By sometimes calling atten­
tion to anachronisms and contradictory versions, I may seem to
be implying that I attribute to these stories a historical character,
to the ones at least where no obvious contradiction occurs. In fact,
I regard all these anecdotes as unhistorical， though I do not deny
the possibility that many may be based on actual events and deal
with historical persons. It is rather that such stories were pre-
2 Ssu-k*u ch^iian-shu tsung-muy 16.11a (Ta Tung Shu-chü ed.) ; see the Appendix
for a complete translation.
INTRODUCTION 3
served not as a record of events, but as themes illustrative of
ritually prescribed conduct. As such they could be applied to any
person, historical or fictional, whose activity fitted a given role.
The materials for the HSWC were derived for the most part
from pre-Han dynasty sources, sometimes rewritten, more often
reproduced without significant change. Only a part of the ffSTFP
is anecdotal; rather more than half is made up of philosophical
essays plagiarized with a fine indifference to doctrinal consistency
from the writings of several different schools. As Hsün-tzü is the
favored source, the book takes on a character strongly reminiscent
of the collection Hsiin-tzu9 where the formula the Ode says
(詩曰） is of common occurrence. As a whole the ffSTTC shows
some similarity to the more miscellaneous chapters of the Li chi9
and to the Ta-Tai li-chi; but the most closely related works are
Shuo yüan9 Hsin h$ü9 and Lieh-nii-chuan, in all three of which
occur passages borrowed directly from HSWC. They differ chiefly
in having their contents classified in chapters devoted to special
topics, such classification being Liu Hsiang^ contribution to the
development of the form.
Technical Terms
In a text of this sort technical terms offer a special problem.
Technical words, even within the limits of usage of a single school
at a given period, seldom have a single equivalent translation
word. The HSWC is as heterogeneous as its sources, and it is too
much to expect to find terms like jéri 仁， Zi 禮， f 義 used with any
consistency. Originally I had planned to leave them untranslated.
However, some of them occur in contexts where they may ade­
quately be translated by an English word—li9 for example, in
1/12 ciearly is “ etiquette, courtesy ’’一and it seems misleading not
to translate such occurrences, even though translation involves
the sacrifice of consistency. Hence the word i9 will be found as
“ etiquette,” “ ritual，’’ “ rites ’’~in each case with the romanized
(li) in parentheses after the translation—and also simply as u li*9
is used with connotations so vague as to defy English
rendering, even the most inconsistent, though occasionally I have
written the humane (jên) man/* in preference to the awkward
4 HAN SHIH WA1 CHUAN
circumlocution “ the man endowed with jén.” The word i 義
used of behavior means the act appropriate to the situation and
the individual involved; when it is used to denote an abstract
virtue, I have left it untranslated. Other terms, such as hsmo
孝 “ filial piety，’’ A▲ 信 “ trustworthiness,” dizmgr 忠 ‘‘ loyalty,”
Zien 廉 ‘‘ integrity ’’ （adj. “ scrupulous ’’） are used with a narrower
range of meanings that correspond to those of their single English
equivalents. TFarigr 王， except as a title, is used in contrast with
pa 霸 “ hegemon，’’ and I have translated as “ the True King.”
The terms for Confucian adepts are awkward to handle. I use
“ saint’’ for ®, “ sage’’ for 賢 （but “ worthy’’ in
contrast to 不肖） ， “ superior man ” for c/iün-taü 君子， and “ gen­
tleman ” for 没 AiA 士， except where an emphasis on military virtues
makes the archaic value ‘‘ soldier ” more appropriate, or where the
context calls for “ official.”
In its technical use, the word tao M seems to mean the u True
Way,” “ the Kingly Way ” to Han Confucians. It occurs with a
metaphysical Taoist use a few times in the text, as in 1 /23. Where
it is used other than technically, I have translated it variously to
fit the context. Yin and yang are too well established to require
a note. Anatomical and medical terms occur in 3/9 and 10/9; they
are dealt with in the notes to those sections. Chei M* seldom
occurs simply as “ breath，” and out of ignorance of its true force
I have usually left it untranslated • 丑WeA 血 likewise carries more
weight than the English “ blood.” I have translated 沒德 some­
times in accordance with Waley’s note on the use of the word in
The Analects of Conjucius, p. 33, and sometimes as virtue
when the context has demanded a vaguer word. It must be re­
membered that by Han times such words liad already a long
history and were seldom used in a strictly technical or etymological
sense.
An expression that occurs very frequently in ffSWÜ is 傳曰.
It cannot be taken as referring to ÄS WC itself in the way 左傳曰
is sometimes used to introduce a passage in that work, since
ffSTFC is not a “commentary” following a line of the SAiA;
instead the quotation normally follows the passage which illu­
strates it. Nor can it be referred to a single specific source. In