孔子之子“伯鱼出妻”说考辨

A Critical Reading of the Legend ‘Boyu Divorcing His Wife'

针对《礼记·檀弓》"子思之母死于卫"两章,郑玄、孔颖达等人注疏的信息为:伯鱼死后,子思之母嫁于卫。《孔子家语·后序》所言"伯鱼亦出妻",属于误传,没有文献依据。"庶氏"并非"庶出"之意,"庶氏之母"也非"庶出之母"。按礼文规定,子思有义务承担"嫁母之丧"的"丧主"。《左传》记载的多次女子再嫁事例,反映出女子是否再嫁取决于女子的娘家人,这是春秋社会的通例。伯鱼死后,子思之母的"再嫁"符合春秋时期社会的通例。

Through a critical textual study of the'Tan Gong'chapter of the Book of Rites and the commentaries and annotations by Zheng Xuan and Kong Yingda,as well as the'Postface'of Confucius’s Family Discourse,this paper draws the conclusion that the story of'Boyu divorcing his wife'is based on a misreading and that,instead,Zisi’s widowed mother was remarried to a person in Wei.Moreover,a further conclusion of this research is that the'mother of the Shu family'in historical literature is not a reference to a concubine.The cases of women’s remarriage recorded in Zuo’s Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals show that in the Spring and Autumn period a woman’s remarriage depended on her family of origin rather than her husband’s,and thus it was possible for Zisi’s widowed mother to be remarried.Based on textual research into the two passages in the'Postface'of Confucius’s Family Discourse,the present author contends that the second passage does not withstand evidentiary criticism.In his view,the legend of'Boyu divorcing his wife'might be an anachronism introduced by Ming–Qing scholars and does not tally with the textual evidence from the'Tan Gong'chapter or conform to common marriage practices in pre-Qin Chinese society.