《孟子》尧舜故事与《尚书·尧典》的流变

摘要

An investigation into the stories of Yao and Shun in The Works ofMencius leads to the finding that The Canon ofYao during Mencius time was quite different from that during the West Han Dynasty,with more density of information,different internal structures and narrative sequences.Most of the stories of Shun quoted in The Works ofMencius are relevant to the Fu Sheng’s version of The Canon ofYao,and the stories of Shun quoted in the documents of Warring States Period,Qin Dynasty and Han Dynasty are primarily within the narrative temporal scope of Fu’s version.In view of this,if there had existed The Canon ofShun,it must have been oblivious to most scholars or mixed and dispersed into Fu’s version of The Canon ofYao.The Canon of Yao quoted by The Works ofMencius must have been a mainstream version.This suggests that during the middle of Warring States Period,the mainstream version of The Canon ofYao in the Qi and Lu districts was different from Fu’s version.The origin of the today’s canon,judging from Sima Qian’s adoption and Liu Xiang’s re-view analysis,occurred at least before the late Warring States Period,and must have been the mainstream ver-sion for Zoulu Confucian scholars.%通过对《孟子》中尧舜故事的考察，可以发现孟子时代《尧典》与西汉时代有很大不同，其文字信息要多于西汉今文本，内部结构、叙事顺序也有不同。《孟子》引述的舜故事多数与伏生本《尧典》相关，且战国、秦汉时代文献引述的舜故事，也多在伏生本《尧典》叙事时限之内，故战国时代若存在一篇《舜典》的话，它要么不为多数学者所知，要么混杂在伏生本《尧典》之中。《孟子》的引述间接指向的那个《尧典》当是一个很主流的本子。这说明，在战国中期，齐鲁地区《尧典》的主流版本与伏生本《尧典》不同。今本的顺序，从西汉司马迁的祖述及刘向的校书分析，至迟在战国晚期已经出现了，而且是邹鲁儒生的主流版本。