Between Cooperation and Competition

A Comparative Reading of Eastern Han Commentaries to the Liji 禮記

Abstract

This study explores the “conspicuous disconnect” between different commentarial writings from the Eastern Han dynasty. Using Zheng Xuan and Lu Zhi as examples, it advances a comparative reading, noting the relative lack of engagement with other commentators’ opinions in commentaries to the classics despite evidence of intellectual exchange. One key reason for this is that such discourses seem to have been consciously excluded from commentaries, giving rise to a discursive sphere reflecting the author’s personal readings. Instead, more direct engagements with contemporaneous scholarly opinions took place in separate “opinion texts” rather than in commentaries. This study thus urges scholars to reconstruct the intellectual discourses surrounding the respective textual traditions and the genesis of commentaries, treating these as an integral part of them. It is crucial to shed light on the historical and personal influences that motivated commentary-writing and informed the way the practice was conducted. Finally, this study reflects on the phenomenon of the “survival of the fittest commentary”, observing that some contemporaneous commentarial writings enjoyed greater popularity than others. This effectively suppressed the other commentaries, which has meant those surviving commentaries came to be regarded as paradigms of textual scholarship, despite the fact that in their own time they represented but singular, and sometimes outlying, voices.

本研究聚焦於東漢時期不同經註之間的“脫節”現象。以鄭玄和盧植為例，本文通過比較分析發現，儘管當時存在思想互動的證據，但在他們的註釋中卻很少回應或討論同時期其他註釋家的觀點。同輩學者的觀點似乎被有意回避，這可能是為了在註釋中為個人見解的表達創造獨立的空間。值得註意的是，當時學術上的互動更多出現在非經註性質的作品而並非直接呈現於註釋文本之中。基於這一觀察，本文主張結合經註生成的歷史背景和學術脈絡，重新建構圍繞這一特定文本傳統的思想辯論。