Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2014

 

A Re-examination of Zheng Xuan's and Wang Su's Views on Suburban Sacrifice

 

 

(Abstract)

 

Ning Zhenjiang

 

 

 

The view that jiao (郊 the suburban sacrifice) is different from qiu (丘 the circular mound sacrifice) are Zheng Xuan's starting point of study and logic on this issue, which make some of his opinions on problems like "Zhou's first suburban sacrifice" (周之始郊) in Jiao Te Sheng (郊特牲) somewhat out of line with reality. Wang Su, on the contrary, claimed that jiao and qiu were the same and there were two suburban sacrifice sites in Zhou, which made his theory much more rational than Zheng's theory. Zheng made these mistakes because he based his views mainly on Wei Shu (纬书) and the Rites of Zhou. Wang Su's theory not only made extensive reference to books included classics, works of scholars, books of history, biographies, etc., but also to works of many Confucians such as Jia Kui, Ma Rong, Xu Shen and Zheng Xuan. Therefore, Wang’s theory is not only extensively literature-based, but also adherent to the consistent propositions in the Confucian classics. Although Wang Su made reference to the Homely Talks of Confucius (孔子家语), the book is not very important in his deduction. Scholars dedicated in distinguishing the genuine from the false had a biased and overstated opinions about the function of the Homely Talks of Confucius in this regard. They took the similar contents in the Homely Talks of Confucius and other books in Wang Shu’s deduction as the irrefutable evidence of his forgery. This is in fact logically wrong and is misled by method used in distinguishing the fake Book of Documents (古文尚书), an extension of the paradigm of classical study of forgeries. Therefore their conclusions are not reliable.