《说文解字 · 叙》“五帝” 段注献疑 Doubts on the Notes by Duan Yucai to the “Five Emperors” in the Preface of “Shuowen Jiezi”

Abstract

许慎在《说文解字 · 叙》开篇，采用了“三皇-五帝-三王”的论序结构来叙述文字起源与发展史，个中所谓“五帝”，指的原是以少昊为首的谱系，黄帝在其语境中则隶属三皇之末。这从许慎经术师承所授受的古史帝德谱系，古文经学派对三皇时期文字书契发展情状的认知，以及《叙》篇的原始结构行文中，都不难获得印证。段玉裁未察许慎经术师承流派等因素，仅基于东汉谶纬与今文经说的“三皇无文”论调，便将仓颉“作书”的黄帝之世划入“五帝”世代并以此注解、阐说《叙》所认为的历史，又对“以迄”强作未能成立的特殊训释以使前后文自洽，无疑悖离许慎本意，且失之草率。

At the beginning of the preface of “Shuowen Jiezi”, Xu Shen adopted the order and structure of “three emperors-five emperors-three kings” to describe the origin and developmental history of Chinese characters. The so-called “five emperors” originally referred to pedigrees headed by Shaohao, and the Yellow Emperor belongs to the end of the three Emperors in this context. It is not difficult to confirm from the pedigree of ancient historical emperors as understood by Xu Shen through his inheritance of Confucian classics. This is seen in his cognition of the old Confucian texts on the development of written deeds during the three emperors’ period, and the original structure of the preface section. Duan Yucai did not observe such factors when examining the genre of Xu Shen’s preface. Based on the viewpoint of Chen Wei and the school of modern script on Confucian classics in Eastern Han that “no writing during the three emperors”, he classified Cangjie’s “affected written deeds” of the Yellow Emperor into the “five emperors” generation. and based on this, he annotated and explained the history considered by preface section. He also forced special explanations that failed to hold on to “Yiqi” to make the context self-consistent, which undoubtedly deviated from Xu Shen’s original intention and was therefore considered to be sloppy.