韓詩外傳の一考察 : 說話を主體とする詩傳の持つ意義

Abstract

The Han-shih wai-chuan is the oldest commentary on the Book of Odes still in existence. Though in the form of a commentary, the main interest of the work, as an examination of the contents will show, is actually in the numerous anecdotes which it contains, and the brief quotations from the Odes which are used to complete each anecdote are fragmentary and taken out of context. The reason that the book has been handed down for over two thousand years, and continues to attract readers today, is not that it is important as a commentary on the Odes, but that it constitutes an interesting collection of stories. This aspect of the work--its nature as a collection of stories--serves not only to attract the interest of the reader today, but may have a special significance in explaining how the book happened to come into being. The present writer, taking a hint from the biography of Han Ying 韓嬰, the author of the Han-shih wai-chuan, has put forward the hypothesis that the work was produced with one pariticular reader in mind. The anecdotes of which the work is made up are on the whole interesting and easy to read, picturing the famous men of early history involved in various incidents and activities. The stories are varied in subject and thought, while the quotations from the Odes which close them tend to follow a fixed pattern. Han Ying, we are told, was appointed tutor to Liu Shun 劉舜, the young king of Ch'ang-shan 常山. Considering the form of the Han-shih waichuan, the present writer wonders if Han Ying did not produce the book specifically for the instruction of his royal pupil. If this hypothesis is correct, it will help to explain why Han Ying, a recognized authority on the Book of Odes, should have put his hand to the compilation of a collection of stories of this type.