The Old Chinese poetic anthology Shījīng: Towards a linguistic-philological commentary

Abstract

The paper offers a brief justifcation for a new type of “linguistic-philological” commentary that could be a useful companion for classic Old Chinese texts. Within such a commentary, elements of a purely philological analysis, inherited from the Chinese tradition itself, could be organically and systematically integrated with and cross-checked against the latest achievements in Old Chinese etymology, lexicology, and grammatical studies. More specifcally, I discuss the basic structure of such a commentary for the Shījīng (“Book of Songs”), the oldest and one of the most culturally signifcant collections of Chinese poetry, and one that has been the object of detailed philological study for more than 2000 years, as well as being the principal provider of material for historical studies on Early Old Chinese phonology, grammar, and lexicon in the 20th century. The structure is then illustrated with an actual example (several stanzas from the very frst poem of the Shījīng, Cry of the Ospreys).