Chen Di’s Investigations of the Ancient Pronunciations of the Mao Odes (Mao Shi guyin kao) and Textual Research in the Late Ming

Abstract

Chen Di’s 1606 masterwork of historical phonology, Investigations of the Ancient Pronunciations of the Mao Odes, has been identified as foundational for Qing dynasty text-critical scholarship, providing systematic evidence for historical sound change via comparative analysis of the Odes’ rhyme schemes. I argue, however, that this research was motivated and shaped by Neo-Confucian xinxue commitments to embodied moral knowledge, typically seen at odds with later Qing approaches. Both Chen and his Taizhou school collaborator Jiao Hong located the moral substance of a text not in the intention of its sagely authors, but rather in the authentic emotional experiences prompted by its historically specific phonological and narrative features. Although recent scholarship has begun to reveal how xinxue fostered philological enquiry to reveal universal sagely truths, less well recognized is how xinxue could also motivate investigation of historical contexts—unsettling the division of moral concerns from the production of textual and historical knowledge.