CHAPTER SEVEN

“THE’VE STOLEN MY PHOENIX POOL,” 284–289 AND BEYOND

Biangong 變宮: The Base Now Changed In ac- tual practice, the last, seventh, note of the Zheng- sheng scale has none of the closure and cadential power of the modern Western leading-tone. In early China biangong did not define an accompaniment or a new mode. It was a fillip and a decoration, to be discarded. It engendered few theoretic or poetic references. During his last years, tried to forge ahead but ultimately ran aground, and his base of operations was taken from him.

After about 283 Hua’s ambit was a broad, evolving web of peo- ple and groups. There was no strictly factional aspect to it, although some scholarly opinions against Xun Xu could reflect Wu War bitter- ness. Zhang’s key proteges were Zhi Yu and Shu Xi. We saw that Shu, about ten or fifteen years younger than Zhi, took a strong interest in Ji Tomb studies beginning in about 296, when he saw the bamboo slips and encountered Wei Heng’s corrected transcription. As for Zhi Yu, we saw his reaction to the discovery of yet another old foot-rule; in my interpretation he seemed to signal the end of Xun’s program of re- forms. Antiquity, for Zhi, was worthy of respect on its own terms, an opinion that had a strong meaning for the post-Xun Xu scholars who lived through the end of Western Jin. This chapter helps to confirm Zhi Yu’s anti-Xunism. It examines the continuing interests of Zhang Hua’s proteges and offshoot schol- arly circles, in particular Zhi Yu and his own friends. For these schol- ars, historiography remained important, thus in 284 Zhi offered the court an analysis of the faults of earlier scholarship on the Rites 禮. Compendia of music, rites, laws, and the like can be thought of as his- toriography, since a chief function of that research was to assert the histories of institutions. Zhi’s 284 memorial in fact talks of methodol- ogy—specifically the way commentaries should function to help main- tain those histories of institutions. Although a devotee of antiquity, he recognized a place for contemporary scholars. 352  

First we shall look at Zhi’s analysis and how it served as anti-Xun Xu criticism. Next comes an episode that I believe reveals Xun Xu’s last intellectual position at court concerning court scholarship. It shows that in about 286 he was still vetting and reviewing historiography. Subsequently, we learn about Xun’s demotion and death, and then, in about 298, a revival of the 284 debate between Xun Xu and Wang/Fu Zan over where to begin chronicling Jin history. The person respon- sible for that revival, in which Xun was posthumously voted down, was another of the later offshoots of the Zhang Hua ambit, , whom we have already met as well. The chapter ends by considering the meaning of Xun Xu’s life in scholarship and his prisca Zhou. I of- fer my own evaluation of how the latter might have been interpreted by Xun Xu’s peers in light of their personal notions of antiquity, and in light of the mentoring and literary bonds that had helped cement them as a group.

Z ’     - With Zhang Hua in exile, and with ’s death in 284, a new group of scholars emerged. Among such men Ji Tomb studies, and particu- larly Xun Xu’s disturbing control of the project, were of great concern. Shu Xi was at this time still young: it would be several years before he came under Zhang Hua’s patronage and take over the Ji Tomb studies of Wei Heng. It is not clear what Wei Heng’s position was in 283 or 284, and in fact there are no episodes or anecdotes linking him with Xun Xu or with Shu Xi and others. Buried inside the opening pages of the “Treatise on Rites” in Jinshu 晋書, however, is evidence of Zhi Yu’s creation of a direct anti-Xun opposition. The previous chapter showed that only two contemporary remarks were even indirectly suspicious of Xun Xu’s Ji Tomb competence—Du Yu’s and Shu Xi’s. Edward L. Shaughnessy’s study shows in a convinc- ing way that the “other” edited transcription of Zhushu jinian 竹書紀 年 (Bamboo Annals) was attempting to eliminate the intrusions com- mitted by Xun’s “first” edition, especially the use of Zhou regnal dates. Yet neither those nor other remarks about Xun Xu’s scholarship, all ed- ited in the fifth through seventh centuries, state specific faults of Xun Xu. We do not have whole passages from letters, notes, or discussions that show exactly how Xun Xu’s approach to paleography and restora- tion, or indeed his entire prisca Zhou program, was perceived. To gain insight into anti-Xunism, we must follow the outer edges of comments