[Bao Pu]

Hi

I'm not sure if this is the best subforum to ask this questions in, but...

Can someone please list the chapters of the Shangshu 尚書 which are regarded as being forgeries? There are a number of chapters in my Chinese copy of this classic for which I have no information and I suspect that these are the so-called "Old Text" forgeries of the 4th century CE.

Thanks

[Yun]

The 25 forged chapters (out of 58):

大禹谟
五子之歌
胤征
仲虺之诰
汤诰
伊训
太甲 (3 chapters)
咸有一德
说命 (3 chapters)
泰誓 (3 chapters)
武成
旅獒
微子之命
蔡仲之命
周官
君陈
毕命
君牙
冏命

[Bao Pu]

Thanks Yun
My suspicions were correct. However, I have only one chapter of 胤征, only one chapter of 伊訓, and one chapter of 咸有一德. But I have 3 chapters of 太甲, 3 chapters of 說命, and 3 chapter of 泰誓.
Do you have any explanation?

I also have some other chapters not mentioned:
Yi Ji 益稷
Kang Wang Zhi Gao 康王之誥
Jun Ya 君牙

any info on these (anybody)?

This post has been edited by Bao Pu: 15 August 2006 - 03:13 PM

[Yun]

Quote

Thanks Yun
My suspicions were correct. However, I have only one chapter of 胤征, only one chapter of 伊訓, and one chapter of 咸有一德. But I have 3 chapters of 太甲, 3 chapters of 說命, and 3 chapter of 泰誓.
Do you have any explanation?

Yes, I made a mistake in my reading of the list. Sorry about that. The numbers of chapters you gave is correct. I've edited my original post.

Quote

Yi Ji 益稷
Kang Wang Zhi Gao 康王之誥

These are regarded as authentic, but each originally formed the second half of its preceding chapter. They were split off in order to increase the number of chapters to the 58 that the Old Text was supposed to have. This also happened for two other chapters, Yaodian and Pan'geng - they were split into two and three respectively.

Quote

Jun Ya 君牙

I think this was also a forgery. It is not in my list of authentic chapters, but was left out of the list of forged chapters. Since there are only 24 chapters in that list, this must be the 25th one. I'll add it to my earlier post.

[lifezard]

Yun, on Aug 16 2006, 10:36 AM, said:

Yes, I made a mistake in my reading of the list. Sorry about that. The numbers of chapters you gave is correct. I've edited my original post.
These are regarded as authentic, but each originally formed the second half of its preceding chapter. They were split off in order to increase the number of chapters to the 58 that the Old Text was supposed to have. This also happened for two other chapters, Yaodian and Pan'geng - they were split into two and three respectively.
I think this was also a forgery. It is not in my list of authentic chapters, but was left out of the list of forged chapters. Since there are only 24 chapters in that list, this must be the 25th one. I'll add it to my earlier post.

would u care to explain briefly how the forgeries were identified... were they actually made up and 'inserted' amongst the original remnants found by Fu Sheng and Kong Anguo or were they at least based on the originals chapters?

also, confucius was said to have compiled 100 chapters, do we have at least any information from other sources on what the missing chapters was about?

[Yun]

The 100 chapters list does exist, and I have it in my book, but it is not regarded by scholars as a credible indication of the original Shangshu. It is from the Collected Chapter Introductions of the Shangshu, believed to be a Qin-Han forgery. However, even in the Eastern Han the Confucian scholars took these Introductions seriously as having been written by Confucius himself, and this made it easy for the forger(s) to later forge 'missing' chapters from the 100.

The forgeries used 19 chapter names from 'missing' chapters in the 100 chapters list, but made up the contents or cobbled them together from scattered Shangshu quotes in pre-Qin texts.

The process of proving the forgeries to be fake was a long one stretching across the Song, Yuan, Ming and early Qing, involving many scholars who identified the various contradictions in the forged chapters.

[Bao Pu]

Yun, on Aug 15 2006, 08:36 PM, said:

These are regarded as authentic, but each originally formed the second half of its preceding chapter. They were split off in order to increase the number of chapters to the 58 that the Old Text was supposed to have. This also happened for two other chapters, Yaodian and Pan'geng - they were split into two and three respectively.

Thanks again. So Yi Ji 益稷 is part of Gao Yao Mo 皋陶謨 (of the Yushu 虞書 section) and Kang Wang Zhi Gao 康王之誥 is part of Gu Ming 顧命 (of the Zhoushu 周書 section)?

Lifezard:

Quote

would u care to explain briefly how the forgeries were identified... were they actually made up and 'inserted' amongst the original remnants found by Fu Sheng and Kong Anguo or were they at least based on the originals chapters?

The 15/16 extra documents said to have been found in Confucius' house walls, although mentioned in the Han, are quoted by no one, so we don't know what they said. In the 3rd century CE they were engraved in stone (referred to as the Santishijing 三體石經), but they were destroyed in 311, in addition to the imperial library itself. In 317 CE Mei Ze 梅 賾 donated a Shangshu text called the Kong Anguo Shangshu and has served as the received text ever since. Ed Shaughnessy says, "The first scholar to recognize problems with these [16, 17 including the different Tai Shi chapter] "Old Text" chapters was Wu Yu 吳域 (died 1155) ... he noted that whereas the 28 chapters that had originally been transmitted by Fu Sheng were difficult to read, the 17 chapters exclusive to the "Old Text" tradition were quite easy to read." Song scholar Zhu Xi agreed with him and wrote more about it. Numerous others followed Zhu. "But it was in the early stages of the Qing dynasty that the "Old Text" chapters were definitively shown to be forgeries [especially the work of Yan Ruo-qu 閻若璩 and Hui Dong 惠棟]" (Shaughnessy)

[Yun]

Quote

In the 3rd century CE they were engraved in stone (referred to as the Santishijing 三體石經), but they were destroyed in 311, in addition to the imperial library itself.

This was the second set of Stone Classics, erected by the Western Jin dynasty. The first set was erected in 175 by the Eastern Han, and used the New Text (which did not contain the 'lost 16 chapters'). The Wei dynasty also commissioned one in the 240s, but it was not completed.

Quote

In 317 CE Mei Ze 梅 賾 donated a Shangshu text called the Kong Anguo Shangshu and has served as the received text ever since.

Mei Ze's text actually did not completely follow the '16 lost chapters' of the Han Old Text, but instead forged some other 'lost chapters' from the '100 chapter list' while omitting 5 of the '16 lost chapters'.

The Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties used the forged Shangshu, while the Northern Dynasties used the authentic Old Text. Unfortunately, the Tang dynasty chose to use the Kong Anguo version, and the authentic Old Text was thus lost because no one continued to study it.

Opinions are divided on who did the forgery. Some identify Mei Ze himself (who was a low-level prefectural offical in the South), while others identify the prominent Wei classical scholar Wang Su 王肃 (d. 256), who is believed to have forged five texts: The Family Sayings of Confucius (Kongzi Jiayu 《孔子家语》), The Anthology of Kong Family Masters (Kong Congzi 《孔丛子》), and the ‘Kong Anguo’ 孔安国 commentaries on the Documents, Analects, and Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing 《孝经》). The key question is whether Wang Su's forged Kong Anguo commentary is the same as the one Mei Ze presented to the Eastern Jin court, but we have too little information to be sure.

[lifezard]

Question, what benefits did all these forgers got out of this business of forging the Shangshu? was it prestige, promotion, power or wealth...

wasn't there anyone around to raise doubts about their authencities during those periods?

[Yun]

Wang Su made his forgeries to strengthen his commentaries against supporters of the commentaries of the late Zheng Xuan, whom he opposed.

As for Mei Ze, we don't know for sure but it seems that the Eastern Jin court was making great efforts to recover the thousands of texts that had been lost in the fall of Luoyang to the Xiongnu. Perhaps Mei stood to gain a promotion for recovering the Old Text Shangshu. Perhaps he just found Wang Su's forgery and didn't know it was a forgery.