Transmitted Sayings and Their Transmissibility : Patterns and Meanings of Zhuan yue 傳曰 Quotations in Early Chinese Texts

This article investigates the introductory formula zhuan yue 傳曰 (“a transmitted source says”) in early China, together with its “quotations” and their parallel texts. Rarely found in pre-imperial texts, the zhuan yue formula gained prominence especially from the mid-Western Han onward. As a vague, unspecific gesture of reference, the formula was flexibly applied to varying functions but also used with limited patterns and regularity. Both the formula and the quoted material are almost never found in the core texts of the “Five Classics” (wujing 五經); instead, zhuan yue appears to indicate sources that existed as an open repository outside of the emerging canon. Thus, in marking the non-canonical body, zhuan yue also helped define the canonical one. Finally, another usage of zhuan yue—which emerged in early Han times if not earlier—as an introduction to specific zhuan-commentaries of the classics is clearly a separate function altogether.

本文考察了「傳曰」這一早期中國的引文程式，包括其相關的引語以及這些引語的
平行文本。「傳曰」在前帝國文本中痕跡寥寥，自西漢中期以來始尤爲流行。作爲
一種模糊而不確定的引用形態，「傳曰」既靈活地適用於多種功能，亦受制於有
限的模式和規律。無論這一程式本身還是其所引材料的平行文本都幾乎從未在「五
經」正文中出現；相反，「傳曰」標記了處於這一經典文本群以外的開放性材料庫
中的資源。因此，在標識何者並非經典的同時，「傳曰」也參與了界定經典本身。
最後，還存在一種最晚在漢代早期已經出現的「傳曰」用法，該用法的特定功能是
引用出現在特定解「經」之「傳」中的文本。