The Lu-school reading of "Guanju" as preserved in an eastern Han fu.

• Author: Asselin, Mark Laurent

"Guanju" [Chinese Text Omitted] ("The Calling Ospreys") is the first poem in the Shi jing [Chinese Text Omitted] or Classic of Songs, an anthology at the core of the classical Chinese canon.(1) As the first poem in that collection, "Guanju" holds a place of special importance. Seeming to belie its importance is its apparently simple theme. Fundamentally, "Guanju" is a celebration in song of finding a good and fair maiden as a match for a young gentleman (junzi [Chinese Text Omitted]). The first two lines of the poem evoke a scene from nature, ospreys calling on a river islet.(2) This image was interpreted by the four schools dominating Shi jing hermeneutics in the Han era - the so-called "Three Schools," Lu [Chinese Text Omitted], Qi [Chinese Text Omitted], and Han [Chinese Text Omitted], and the Mao School [Chinese Text Omitted](3) - as containing a moral pertinent to the relationship between the good maiden and the "exemplary man" (as the term junzi had come to signify).(4)

The interpretation of this poem by the Commentary on Mao's "Songs" (Mao shi zhuan [Chinese Text Omitted]), probably composed in the middle of the second century B.C., has dominated much of the subsequent criticism of the piece. In this reading, which is supported by the preface to "Guanju" (or "The Great Preface," "Mao shi daxu" [Chinese Text Omitted]), compiled at the beginning of the first century A.D., the good maiden is a lovely and modest consort whose maintaining a chaste distance from her lord is owing to her respect for his virtue.(5) Her self-seclusion, the Commentary explains, is like the separation of mates among ospreys. Later in the Mao School tradition, scholars adopted specific identifications of the two figures in the poem. The consort was identified as Taisi [Chinese Text Omitted], queen of the illustrious King Wen of Zhou [Chinese Text Omitted]. The earliest Mao texts, the Commentary, and the preface to "Guanju," in expounding on this poem, do not name these historical figures, nor are they mentioned in Zheng Xuan's [Chinese Text Omitted] (127-200) notes to this piece.(6) The preface to "Guanju" associates the poem with the Duke of Zhou [Chinese Text Omitted], a son of King Wen, but the connection is left vague.(7) By the Tang era and Kong Yingda's [Chinese Text Omitted] (574-648) subcommentary to the Mao shi, the Mao shi zhengyi [Chinese Text Omitted] or Correct Significance of the Mao "Songs," the associations with Taisi and King Wen are firmly established, and the Duke of Zhou's role is defined as having used this song as part of his program for transforming the realm.(8) The evolving Mao interpretation so came to dominate Shi jing hermeneutics that the other schools' readings were in time virtually forgotten. Today, discussions of "Guanju" generally take up reference to the Taisi-King Wen reading with little if any attention paid to the earlier Han interpretations. This paper will demonstrate that the Lu School reading of "Guanju" was actually the dominant Han-era reading by tracing and examining the evidence - in particular, a response fu [Chinese Text Omitted] of the late Eastern Han.

Among the extant works of the great polymath scholar-official, Cai Yong [Chinese Text Omitted] (132?-192), is the short, lyrical "Qingyi fu" [Chinese Text Omitted] ("Rhapsody on a Grisette").(9) This fu in tetrasyllabic lines celebrates the beauty and talents of a lowly maidservant, and the illicit love between the maid and the poem's male persona. A lesser-known contemporary, Zhang Chao [Chinese Text Omitted], composed a response to Cai Yong's fu, the "Qiao 'Qingyi fu'" [Chinese Text Omitted] ("Reproaching the 'Rhapsody on a Grisette'").(10) Zhang Chao was a minor military official who participated in the campaign to subdue the Yellow Turbans. He is said to have possessed literary talent, and had gained a reputation in his time as a calligrapher.(11) Only a handful of his literary works are now extant; the "Qiao 'Qingyi fu'" undoubtedly survives by sharing Cai Yong's limelight. As a response piece, it testifies to the circulation of belles lettres in the late Han. The "Qiao 'Qingyi fu'," like the piece that it criticizes, is written almost entirely in uniform, rimed tetrasyllabic verse; the sentiments are, of course, almost stridently contrary. One of the curious features of Zhang Chao's fu, in addressing an allusion made in Cai Yong's piece, is that it presents a seemingly unusual reading of "Guanju," a reading that we may identify as belonging to the Lu School.(12)

We know nothing of the date or circumstances of the composition of "Qingyi fu." Furthermore, we do not know whether Cai Yong intends this piece to be allegorical, nor do we know whether the maidservant, the "grisette" of the title, is actually a maidservant, or is rather a concubine from a family of low social station.(13) We also cannot say with confidence that the male voice expressing affection and desire is Cai Yong's own. Without a commentarial tradition to guide us - or lead us astray we may read the poem as the exaltation of a lowly maidservant by a gentleman of the upper class, and a description of his illicit love for her. The first half of Cai Yong's "Qingyi fu" borrows liberally from the Shi jing: lines five through eight, and ten, in describing the maidservant, reflect "Shiren" [Chinese Text Omitted] ("A Stately Woman"; Mao shi 57):

An engaging smile and animated eyes, a fair beauty, Gleaming teeth, lovely brows, Black hair, shiny and sleek, Neck long and white like a grub. Across and down, brushing her hair, Are leaves like falling mallow. Longish and dainty-delicate, "A stately woman of goodly height."(14)

Shortly after (lines 25-30), Cai Yong tums from the maidservant's physical beauty to her moral qualities. He boldly ventures to compare this lowly woman with the ideal consort of "Guanju":

With the purity of "The Calling Ospreys," She does not act perverse or contrary. Behold how she conducts herself, he's a rarity in this world. It'd be fitting that she make a Lady, Act as instructress to a host of women.(15)

Cai Yong's fu continues with historical allusions (it seems the text may be corrupt here, and that one or more allusions may now be missing), and then tums to a painterly, erotic description of the male voice's obsession with this woman. This passage and the poem conclude with a reference to the famous myth of the Oxherd and the Weaving Maid. In contrast to Oxherd and Weaving Maid, who despite their painful loneliness and frustration could still meet once a year, the ill-starred lovers of this fu are fated to remain forever separate: "We are not like Oxherd and Weaving Maid, / Separated by the Sky River. / I think about you, muse about you, / Aching for satisfaction, I'm utterly famished."(16)

Zhang Chao is outraged at the liberties he sees Cai Yong taking in this poem. At the beginning of "Reproaching the 'Rhapsody on a Grisette'," Zhang Chao aims caustic criticism at the poet:

"What sort of man is he"(17) Who delights in such pulchritude? His gorgeous words are praiseworthy, His elegant phrases ornately figured. The style is laudable, But the intent is base, its meaning frivolous. "Oh Phoenix! Oh Phoenix! How thy virtue has waned!"(18)

Zhang Chao directs the first portion of his composition to the stock argument that sociopolitical misfortune stems from profligacy, the onus for which is not so much on male moral weakness as on female licentiousness. He writes: "Successively examining past and present, / We see that the route to calamity / Is mostly due to / Wretched concubines and wanton wives." To explain the cyclical risings and fallings of the traditional Three Dynasties, he reiterates the old argument that the cause of a dynasty's fortunes can be traced to a consort. Zhang Chao then devotes several lines to a brief discussion of "Guanju." By reviewing the putative historical basis of the poem's composition, he reveals its latent meaning, and thereby admonishes Cai Yong for making a reckless comparison between the royal consort of "Guanju" and a lowly maidservant:

As Zhou gradually neared decline, King Kang was late in rising. The Duke of Bi, repining with sighs, Deeply pondered the Way of old. He was moved by "The Calling Ospreys," By nature they don't go together in pairs. He hoped to get a Duke of Zhou, Who'd make a consort of a coy and comely lady,(19) To prevent degeneracy and reproach its progress, He tactfully criticized and admonished the lord, his father.(20) Mister Kong thought it the best, Arranging it to cap the head of the book.(21)

Zhang Chao presents here the Lu School reading of "Guanju" as it had evolved by the late Eastern Han. It is useful to compare Zhang Chao's outline of this tradition with other extant Han sources that mention this reading.

From scattered textual references, most of which have been compiled by Pi Xirui [Chinese Text Omitted] (1850-1908) in Jingxue tonglun [Chinese Text Omitted], we can reconstruct an outline of the Lu School reading of "Guanju."(22) According to this interpretation, "Guanju" was written in the time of King Kang of Zhou [Chinese Text Omitted] (ob. 978? B.C.).(23) Kang was only the third king of Zhou after the great Wen, and his reign is described as peaceful and secure in the "Basic Annals of Zhou" ([Chinese Text Omitted]) of Sima Qian's [Chinese Text Omitted] (145-ca. 86 B.C.) Shi ji [Chinese Text Omitted]. The Shi ji adds that following his reign, the Zhou began to decline.(24) Elsewhere in the Shi ji, in the preface to the "Shier zhuhou nianbiao" [Chinese Text Omitted], and echoed in the preface to the "Rulin liezhuan" [Chinese Text Omitted], it states, "The Way of Zhou was deficient. The poet took bedding and mat [i.e., boudoir relations] as the root cause, and 'Guanju' was composed."(25) Huainanzi [Chinese Text Omitted] has a similar passage: the "Fanlun xun" [Chinese Text Omitted] states, "The Way of the Kings became deficient and the Songs were composed. The Zhou...