A Study of Liu Shipei's 'Exegesis on a Conglomeration of the Old Commentaries to the Zhouli'
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Tan, Yin-Hoe
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of Liu Shipei’s （劉師培，1884-1919）‘Exegesis on a Conglomeration of the Old Commentaries to the Zhouli’ （《周禮古注集疏》）. By ‘Old Commentaries’, we mean those which were made prior to that of Zheng Xuan （鄭玄，127-200）, a Confucian scholar near the end of the Han dynasty, whose annotations to the Scriptures came to eclipse those of old.
Liu Shipei’s project was to reconstruct and revive obscure interpretations to the Zhouli or Rites of Zhou from the recesses of history, thereby providing an alternative to those of Zheng Xuan, which had dominated the scene for centuries since, despite their sporadic incongruity and inaccuracies. The work purports to serve yet another purpose, namely, to prove the reliability of the Zhouli as a source of history – one which has been passed down by the Ancients from the epoch of the Duke of Zhou（周公）. This was specifically meant to counter the claims of the New Text School （今文家）led by Kang Youwei（康有為，1858-1927）and Liao Ping（廖平，1852-1932）, who alledged that the Old Text Scriptures（古文經）, to which the Zhouli belonged, were counterfeit.
This dissertation argues that the Exegesis, a work started on in his twilight years, is a display of magnanimity and scholarship which passes as an embodiment of wisdoms gathered through Liu Shipei’s short but eventful life. This explains why Liu thought highly of the work. The latter part of this dissertation deals with a specific issue brought up in the Exegesis which seems unresolved. The issue invloves the discrepancy between two systems under which land area can be tabulated – the Chengtong（成同）and the Qiudian（丘甸）system. By tracing each to its own sources through a careful analysis of the Treatise to Penalty and Law chapter in Han History（《漢書‧刑法志》）, a text which Liu Shipei counted as one of the Old Commentaries, this dissertation offers to show that Liu’s overemphasis on the virtues of the Old Commentaries causes him to be inclined toward seeing the Old Commentaries and those of Zheng Xuan as necessarily antagonistic to one another, which is often not the case. Such skewed outlook inevitably distorts facts and discounts the value of the work.
Subjects
Old Commentaries
Zheng Xuan’s Commentaries
Old and New Text Scriptures
Chengtong system
Qiudian system
Type
thesis
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