The History of the Xunzi Text

This is one of a series of pages discussing Classical Chinese philosophy during the period from before Confucius (ca. 650 B.C.) to the early Han dynasty (ca 200 B.C.). This page provides a description of the works of the 3rd century B.C. Ru (Confucian) philosopher Xun Kuang, also known as Xunzi and Hsün-tzu.

This is a woodblock print of the Xunzi dating from the late Song dynasty (960-1278). This edition, known as the Zuantu huzhu edition, was intended for students and featured illustrations such as this one which depicts the famous "warning vessel on the right." When empty the vessel inclines on its sides, when half full it is upright, when completely full it overturns, and when empty again is inclined.

Today Xun Kuang's writings survive in a work known as the Xunzi which contains 32 books. Xun did not compose the works in the form we have them today. The form of the present text is the work of Liu Xiang, who collected those of Xun's writings that existed in the Han dynasty, edited and collated them, and arranged them to form the corpus we now know as the Xun Kuang. We do not know the original state of the materials that Liu Xiang collected nor whether they were written by Xun Kuang himself or were compiled from the notes of his students or from fragments actually written by Xun. But however originally compiled, some books are today, through transmission if not original compilation, composite and heterogeneous entities.

The popularity of Xun's work is confirmed by the fact that when Liu started to prepare a standard edition of the works of Xun Kuang, he found in the Imperial Library some 322 manuscripts of Xun Kuang's writings. Liu collated and compared all these manuscripts, finding that the bundles of bamboo slips and silk scrolls of various origins contained many duplications. Of the 322 manuscripts, he eliminated 290 as duplicates and established the standard text for 32 books, which were recorded on freshly prepared bamboo strips. From what we know, his procedure was to examine all independent manuscripts on bamboo and silk that were thought to have a common origin or authorship. After examining all the manuscripts, he established a definitive text and prepared a table of contents. His work was then reported to the emperor in the form of a memorial of presentation that described the manuscripts and how they were collated; gave a biography of the author based, in the case of Xun Kuang and the other philosophers, on Sima Qian's Shiji, which contains a brief historical background; and concluded with a discussion of the authenticity, transmission, and value of the work. These reports were appended to the edited text and function as a Preface to the works. All modern editions of the Xunzi derive from the redaction of Liu Xiang.

Toward the end of the Tang dynasty, the learned Yang Liang, who held a minor office and is otherwise unknown, wrote the first commentary for the Xunzi. In his Preface, dated December, A.D. 818, Yang gives his reasons for preparing a commentary: "Alone among the ancient texts, the Xunzi has never been provided with a commentary and explanation. Further, the work contains repetitions. Its bamboo slips have been damaged, some having rotted and others being lost. The received text contains inaccuracies from mistakes in copying. Even if a man of good intentions had the time and, in addition, were equal to the task, he would come to passages whose purpose was baffling and there would often be inclined to close the book." Yang's commentary is a masterpiece of Tang scholarship. Exhaustive and lacking doctrinaire biases, its interpretations are almost always correct, and it never fails to offer profitable insights into the significance of Xun Kuang's point. An understanding of the Xunzi would be possible without Yang's commentary, but it is certainly made much easier thanks to his efforts.

Yang found Liu Xiang's arrangement of the text inappropriate when transferred from bamboo to silk: "The divisions of the text were troublesomely numerous, so I redivided the old twelve silk scrolls and 32 bundles into twenty scrolls. The sequence of the bundles has been changed as a result of grouping together bundles with similar topics into the same scroll." Yang rearranged only two of the first 23 books, putting the "Working Songs" with the "Rhyme-Prose Poems" and the "Discourse on Ritual Principles" before the "Discourse on Music." But he had serious reservations about the authenticity of the books at the end of the Liu Xiang edition. He regarded "Man's Nature is Evil" as genuine, so he placed it earlier in the text. He suggested that "The Great Compendium" was an assemblage by Xun Kuang's students from miscellaneous quotations that belong to no particular book but which brought out important points. He thought that "On the Gentleman" had become mistitled in the course of transmission since its subject was the "Son of Heaven." Other works he regarded as the efforts not of Xun Kuang, but of his students, who had culled material from various historical texts and scholarly traditions. These works comprised Books 28-32 in his arrangement given in the Table, below.

There are a number of woodblock printed editions of the Xunzi made during the Song (960-1278) and Yuan (1260-1368) dynasties. A significant number of these survived until the nineteenth century when they were studied in detail by Chinese philologists. Many were lost in the turmoil of the last years of the Qing dynasty, but a few still survive today. By studying all these ancient printed texts, the text of the Xunzi was established by two Qin scholars: Lu Wenchao and Gu Guangqi. At the same time an extensive range of scholarly philological exegesis of philosophical texts was made by Qing dynasty scholars. By the end of the 19^th century it was imperative that these be combined with the established text of the Xunzi. This was done by Wang Xianqian at the end of the last century in his Xunzi jijie ("Collected Explanations on the Xunzi"; 1891) which includes virtually all Chinese work on the Xunzi text up to his time. In Japan a comparable and related tradition of scholarship developed. On the basis of the Lu Wenchao collation and his own study of old editions, Kubo Ai (1759-1832) prepared an edition with a detailed commentary incorporating the substance of earlier Japanese scholarship that is indispensable to serious study of the Xunzi. Kubo made use of his acquaintance with old editions to introduce additional paragraph divisions where indicated by internal textual evidence and by quotations in parallel texts. His Junshi zôchû ranks with Wang Xianqian's edition, and the two scholars often reach the same conclusions.

During this century serious study, independent of old prejudices against Xun Kuang, has proceeded with more than a dozen excellent studies of textual and interpretative problems. Among the most important are those of Zhong Tai, Liang Qixiong, Liu Shipei, Tao Hongqing, Yu Xingwu, Ruan Tingzhuo, Gao Heng, Kanaya Osamu, Zhang Heng, Fujii Sen'ei, and Yan Lingfeng. A complete concordance, with a collation of the complete text, was published as part of the Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Xunzi yinde (1950). In Taiwan, Xiong Gongzhe has produced a contemporary edition providing the complete text, brief annotations, and full translation, Xunzi jinzhu jinshi (1975). In China, Xun Kuang's "materialism," in Marxist terminology, makes him an attractive thinker and has resulted in a new edition of his works, Xunzi xinzhu (1979), prepared by Beijing University, the reprinting of several older works, and the publication of several studies. In 1977, Yan Lingfeng issued a 49-volume reprint of editions and critical studies on the Xunzi. He included four editions of the Xun Kuang without the Yang Liang commentary, reprints of the Song dynasty Taizhou and Zuantu editions, the Ming dynasty Shide tang edition, and numerous critical studies, for a total of 72 titles by Chinese authors and 11 by Japanese writers.

The study of Xun Kuang has been neglected in the West. There is in English a partial translation by H. H. Dubs, The Works of Hsüntze (1928), and his general study Hsüntze: The Moulder of Ancient Confucianism (1927). J.J.L. Duyvendak provided detailed corrections to Dubs' translation, a study on the life of Xun Kuang, and a translation of the book "On the Correct Use of Names." Burton Watson published an uncommonly readable translation of many of the most important books from the Xunzi (1963). Herman Köster has produced a complete translation into German, Hsüntzu (1967). A complete translation and study of the Xunzi is to be found in my 3 volume study, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford, 1988-1994).

This material is abridged from John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols., Stanford, 1988-1994. Please do not reproduce without permission.

For a select bibliography of Western language works on the Xunzi click button

CAUTION: The two files which follow require a Chinese display program such as TwinBridge Partner. The character codes are Big-5. Without such a program, the file will be nonsense.

For a select bibliography of Chinese and Japanese works on the Xunzi click button

For an annotated critical edition in Chinese of book 6 of the Xunzi, the "Fei shier zi" click button

John Knoblock
Department of Philosophy
University of Miami
P.O. Box 248054
Coral Gables, FL 33124

Office: Ashe 723D
Messages: (305) 284-4757
Fax: (305) 284-5594
email address: knoblock@umiami.ir.miami.edu