《太玄》是一部“谤书”——“刺莽说”新证

Tai xuan was a satirical work: to further verify the work’s satirical quality

宋代以来,不少学者提出刺莽说,认为《太玄》是一部讥刺新莽的著作。但这些学者的方法,都是从《太玄》中找出只言片语,比附西汉末年的事实以成其说。对于其论据何以成立,缺乏进一步论证,其主张遂多不能成立。本文结合西汉末年盛行的五德终始之说,以《太玄》传文为根据,认为《太玄》确实是刺莽之作,刺莽说的成立,在《太玄》中可以找到内证,并结合《剧秦美新》、《解嘲》、《法言》等文章,对此加以补充。

Since the Song Dynasty, many scholars held that Tai xuan written by YANG Xiong living in the late Western Han Dynasty was a work satirizing WANG Mang, the emperor who then founded the Dynasty of Xin. But they all take use of few words from Tai xuan and draw a forced analogy between these words and the events and facts happened in the late Western Han Dynasty, lacking further verifications. Basing upon the contents of Tai xuan and the five-virtue-circulation theory popular in the late Western Han Dynasty, this paper points out that Tai xuan was indeed a work satirizing WANG Mang. The author finds tenable testimony in Tai xuan and takes use of Ju qin mei xin, Jie chao, and Fa yan as collateral evidences.