He Guan Zi (鶡冠子) · Volume 3

【臣】等謹案鶡冠子書漢書藝文志列於道家注曰楚人居深山以鶡為冠劉勰文心雕龍稱鶡冠緜緜亟發深言韓愈集有讀鶡冠子一首稱其博選篇四稽五至之說學問篇一壺千金之語且謂其施於國家功德豈少栁宗元集有鶡冠子辨一首乃詆其言為鄙淺謂其世兵篇多同鵩賦據司馬遷所引賈生二語以決其偽然古人著書徃徃偶用舊文古人引證亦徃徃偶隨所見如谷神不死四語今見老子中而列子乃稱為黃帝書克己復禮一語今在論語中左傳乃謂仲尼稱志有之元者善之長也八句今在文言傳中左傳乃記為穆姜語司馬遷惟稱賈生蓋亦此類未可以單文孤證遽斷其偽惟其書漢志稱一篇隋志始為三卷或漢以來有所附益則未可知耳至其說雖雜刑名而大防本原於道德其文亦博辯宏肆自六朝至唐劉勰最號知文而韓愈最號知道二子稱之宗元乃以為鄙淺過矣此本為宋陸佃注凡十九篇其序謂愈但稱十六篇未睹其全佃北宋人其時古本韓文初出當得其真今本韓文乃亦作十九篇殆後來反據此書以改韓集猶劉禹錫河東集序稱編為三十二通而今本栁集亦反據穆修本改為四十五通也佃注惟陳振孫稍及之通考不著録晁公武讀書志亦但稱有八卷一本前三卷全同墨子後兩卷多引漢以後事公武削去前後五卷得十九篇則似亦未見佃注者殆宋時已罕傳矣乾隆四十二年五月恭校上

Your servants respectfully note: the book Heguanzi is listed under the Daoist school in the Treatise on Literature of the Book of Han, with a note saying: a man of Chu who lived deep in the mountains and made a cap of he-bird feathers. Liu Xie in the Wenxin Diaolong says that the Heguan runs on and on, and often utters deep words. Han Yu's collected works contain a piece, Reading Heguanzi, which praises its statement of the four checks and five arrivals in the Bo Xuan chapter and the words "one gourd worth a thousand in gold" in the Learning chapter, and says that if it were applied in a state, its merit would not be small. Liu Zongyuan's collected works contain a piece, Discrimination of Heguanzi, which on the contrary slanders its words as vulgar and shallow, says the Shi Bing chapter is mostly the same as Jia Yi's Fu on the Owl, and on the basis of two lines of Jia Yi quoted by Sima Qian judges it a forgery. Yet when the ancients wrote books they often happened to borrow older texts, and when the ancients cited, they often happened to follow what they themselves had seen. For example, the four lines beginning "the valley spirit does not die" are now found in the Laozi, yet the Liezi calls them a book of the Yellow Emperor; the line "overcome oneself and return to ritual" is now in the Analects, yet the Zuo Commentary says Zhongni cited it as "the records have it"; the eight lines beginning "Yuan is the chief of goodness" are now in the Wenyan Commentary, yet the Zuo Commentary records them as words of Mu Jiang. Sima Qian's citing only Jia Yi is probably of this kind, and one cannot decide on the basis of a single text and a lone proof that it is a forgery. Only, this book is listed as one chapter in the Han Treatise, and the Sui Treatise first has it as three volumes, so perhaps additions were made since the Han, which cannot be known. As for its teaching, though it is mixed with xingming, its main purport is rooted in Dao and De (the base text has "da fang ben yuan" where the Siku edition has "da zhi"), and its writing is broad, argumentative and expansive. From the Six Dynasties to the Tang, Liu Xie was called the best at understanding literature and Han Yu the best at understanding the Way, and both praised it, but Zongyuan took it as vulgar and shallow, which is going too far. This edition is Lu Dian's commentary of the Song dynasty, in nineteen chapters in all. In Lu Dian's preface he says Han Yu spoke only of sixteen chapters and had not seen the complete text. Lu Dian was a man of the Northern Song, when the old text of Han's works had just come out and should have gotten the true appearance. The present text of Han's works also has nineteen chapters, probably changed later according to this book to alter Han's collection, just as Liu Yuxi's preface to the Hedong Collection says it was compiled into thirty-two sections, and the present edition of Liu's collection was likewise changed according to the Mu Xiu edition into forty-five. Lu Dian's commentary is mentioned only slightly by Chen Zhensun and is not recorded in the Tongkao; Chao Gongwu's Dushu Zhi says only that there is an eight-volume version, with the first three volumes entirely the same as the Mozi and the last two citing many events after the Han; Gongwu cut away the first and last five volumes and got nineteen chapters, so he too seems not to have seen Lu Dian's commentary, which probably already circulated very little in the Song. Respectfully collated and submitted in the fifth month of the forty-second year of Qianlong.