Beyond the Mao Odes: Shijing reception in early medieval China.

• Author: Kern, Martin

In 1 B.C., close to the collapse of the Western Han Dynasty, the Mao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. tradition of the ancient Odes (Shi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) received a chair at the imperial academy, belatedly following the earlier patronage of the Lu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Qi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Han [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] exegetical lineages. Less than a century later, the History of the Han (Hanshu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "Monograph on Arts and Writings" (Yiwen zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in abbreviated form representing the late Western Han imperial library catalogue, included fourteen different works for the four officially recognized lineages: one text that comprised the Lu, Qi, and Han versions, two texts for the Lu version only, five for the Qi, three for the Han, and two for the Mao. (1) However, the History of the Han--presumably representing the Eastern Han perspective of its compiler Ban Gu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (32-92)--notes that the Lu, Qi, and Han versions had indiscriminately drawn on the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and selected "disparate explanations" (zashuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that "all missed [the songs'] original meanings" (xian fei qi benyi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Soon after Ban Gu, Xu Shen's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 55-ca. 149) character dictionary Shuowen jiezi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] a partisan work promoting the so-called ancient-script versions of the classics among which the Mao Odes were now included, clearly favored the Mao reading in its references to the ancient songs. (2) Zheng Xuan's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (127-200) most influential subcommentary was devoted to the Mao Odes (Mao shi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], as was Wang Su's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (195-256) subsequent exegesis.

As a result, by the time of the next major imperial catalogue still extant--the "Monograph on the Classics and [Other] Writings" (Jingji zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) in the seventh-century History of the Sui (Suishu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])--none of the Lu or Qi versions was listed anymore. While three Han versions were still noted (one of them differing in title from the three earlier ones), works on the Mao tradition of the Odes had multiplied to thirty-six titles. The History of the Sui concludes its brief account of officially recognized Odes scholarship with the following words:

The Qi Odes were already lost during the Wei dynasty; the Lu Odes were lost during the Western Jin; and while the Han Odes still exist, there is no one who transmits them. Just the Mao Odes with the Zheng Commentary alone have remained in place to the present day. There also are the Ye Odes for which the [Liu-Song] retired official Ye Zun had produced a commentary. The meanings it proposes are mostly aberrant, and it does not currently circulate. (3) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. In addition to the titles still extant in Sui times, the monograph also notes works from the earlier Liang imperial library that were now lost: one title associated with the Outer Tradition of the Han Odes (Han Shi waizhuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and no less than thirty-eight titles related to the Mao Odes. These thirty-eight lost works, together with the thirty-six listed as extant for the Mao tradition, included individual commentaries, collections of several commentaries, sub-commentaries to earlier commentaries, works specializing on phonology, expository writings that promoted or refuted particular interpretations, books devoted to the discussion of textual variants and doubtful characters, works that collected fragments of lost poems, and a text on the plants and animals in the Odes, attributed to an otherwise obscure third-century Lu Ji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (4)

In short, between the first and the seventh centuries, scholarship of the Odes had experienced periods of great proliferation alternating with times of loss and destruction. Terrible losses occurred at several times between the end of the second century and the fall of the Western Jin in 317, and then again toward the end of the Liang in 555, when Emperor Yuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Xiao Yi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], r. 552-555), his capital beleaguered, burnt his library. Thereafter, the transmission of the Odes eventually stabilized, though it was now firmly dominated by the Mao Odes. The Old History of the Tang (Jiu Tangshu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) lists three titles for the Han Odes, one for the Ye Odes, (5) and twenty-six for the Mao Odes; similarly, the New History of the Tang (Xin Tangshu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) lists four titles for the Han Odes, one for the Ye Odes, and thirty for the Mao Odes. (6) The situation changed only in Song times, when a large number of new commentaries, some of them explicitly challenging the Mao reading, were produced by individual scholars.

The catalogues of the Sui and Tang imperial libraries certainly give the impression that by late Six Dynasties times, the Mao-Zheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ) exegesis of the Odes had completely eclipsed the Lu and Qi traditions while leaving the Han interpretation with some marginal significance. The Mao-Zheng reading is thoroughly observed in Liu Xie's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 467-522) The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and became enshrined through the mid-seventh-century imperial compilation of the Correct Meaning of the Five Classics (Wujing zhengyi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), despite more than thirty instances in which Kong Yingda [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (574-648) and his collaborators noted that a certain Mao preface to a specific song "has no correspondence in the Classic" (yu jing wu suodang ye [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). (7) In the early Tang, the Han shu commentator Yan Shigu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (581-645) echoed the Mao-Zheng interpretations in his numerous explanations of Odes quotations included in Ban Gu's text, (8) as did, in the eighth century prominent poets like Li Bai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (701-762) and especially Du Fu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (712-770) in their references to the Odes. (9) Furthermore, the historicizing and moralizing interpretative style of the Mao Odes was forcefully extended to early medieval poetry, for example in the Tang-dynasty commentaries on the "Nineteen Old Poems" (Gushi shijiu shou [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), a series of songs included in the sixth-century anthology Selections of Refined Literature (Wenxuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Altogether, it is easy to get the impression that prior to Song times, a genuine, monolithic orthodoxy in the reception of the ancient Odes was securely in place.

I wish to add some qualifications to this standard version of medieval Odes reception, in part building upon the recent work by Wang Zuomin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Tanaka Kazuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] . In particular, I am concerned with the hermeneutically open "Airs of the States" (guofeng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that had received a range of very different readings already in Warring States through Han times. In this period, and arguably through much of Eastern Han times, the Mao interpretation was highly exceptional, even anomalous, with very little support in other early readings. For example, the extensive references to the Odes in Liu Xiang's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (79-8 B.C.) Biographies of Eminent Women (Lienu zhuan[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), composed by a man related to the imperial house, show no concern for the Mao reading; instead, the work reflects the interpretations of the Lu Odes, at the time the still dominant exegetical tradition of the ancient songs. In the following, I will briefly review the continuity of the Lu reading in Eastern Han and Six Dynasties times before returning to the literary reception of a particular group of songs from the "Airs"--songs that were considered morally problematic in the Mao tradition but seemed happily acceptable to Six Dynasties poets.

THE CONTINUITY OF THE LU READING

As has long been recognized, the Eastern Han official inscription of the classics on stone stelae, erected in A.D. 176 outside of the imperial academy, drew still on the Lu Odes. (10) While the Lu reading has survived only in fragments, (11) one of its characteristics was to explain a number of songs as satirical where the Mao commentary, by contrast, took the same songs as laudatory. (12) Thus, Sima Qian's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 145-ca. 87 B.C.) Records of the Historian (Shiji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), presumably representing the Lu reading of the Odes, (13) notes:

When the Way of the Zhou declined, the poets traced the roots [of the demise] to the [royal] sleeping mat (i.e., the king's sexual indulgence), and "Fishhawks" arose. When humaneness and rightness fell into decay, "Deer Cry" satirized about it. (14) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. This satirical reading of both "Fishhawks" (Guanju [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Mao 1) and "Deer Call" (Lu ming [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Mao 161)--the first song of the "Airs" and the first of the "Minor Court Hymns" (xiaoya, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), respectively--is in clear opposition to the Mao commentary that takes both songs as eulogistic: "Fishhawks" in praise of the virtuous queen (later interpreted as King Wen's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [r. 1099/56-50 B.C.] wife) and "Deer Call" in celebration of the royal feasting of high officials and distinguished guests at court. (15) Yet despite the rising stature of the Mao interpretation after 1 B.C., for both songs the Lu...