Shanhai Jing Commentaries
Also known as: Shanhaijing Zhu, Shanhaijing Jiaozhu, Commentaries on the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Notes on the Shanhai Jing, Shan Hai Jing Annotations, Shanhaijing Guangzhu
A layered tradition of annotations on the Shanhai Jing, beginning with Guo Pu in the Eastern Jin and continued by later scholars. These commentaries gloss geography, deities, monsters, and ethnography, reconciling divergent recensions and shaping China’s mythographic canon.
Description
The Shanhai Jing commentarial corpus centers on Guo Pu’s Early Jin notes, which systematized an already heterogeneous gazetteer of mountains, seas, spirits, and marvels. Later scholars expanded and illustrated the text, correcting toponyms, harmonizing variant readings, and aligning entries with classical cosmology, ritual lore, and philology. Across dynasties, commentaries sought to clarify the work’s geography, distinguish myth from supposed natural history, and integrate references from lost or fragmentary sources. Modern annotated editions collate premodern layers, provide textual apparatus, and situate the classic within early Chinese mythic, ritual, and cosmological discourse. As a tradition rather than a single book, these commentaries mediate how readers encounter the Shanhai Jing: supplying glosses to obscure names, identifying deities with wider pantheonic roles, and explaining wondrous creatures in relation to omenology and cosmography. They remain foundational for reconstructing the textual history and interpreting the mythic catalogue preserved in the Shanhai Jing.
Historiography
Guo Pu’s commentary established the baseline exegesis and transmitted wording for many chapters, often citing earlier authorities now lost. Song–Ming editors produced illustrated and collated editions, while Qing philologists re-examined toponyms and variant graphs through evidential scholarship. Modern scholars prepared critical annotated editions that compare editions across dynasties and provide extensive indices. The tradition’s reception oscillates between treating the work as geography, omenography, and mythography, with commentaries serving as the principal lens through which later eras read the classic.
Date Notes
Earliest comprehensive commentary by Guo Pu (c. 276–324 CE, Eastern Jin); augmented, illustrated, collated, and re-edited through Song–Qing eras and in modern scholarly editions.
Themes
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Guo Pu
- Huangdi
- Nüwa
- Fuxi
- Queen Mother of the West
- Yu the Great
Myths
- Guo Pu’s Explanatory Myths
- Origins of Spirits and Beings
- Etymologies of Divine Names
Facts
- Guo Pu’s Eastern Jin commentary is the earliest full-scale exegesis that survives for the Shanhai Jing.
- Later editions added diagrams and images, turning the text into an illustrated mytho-geography.
- Commentators used philology to reconcile variant toponyms and ethnonyms across recensions.
- Qing evidential scholarship re-evaluated difficult graphs and proposed emendations from bronze and stone inscriptions.
- Modern annotated editions collate multiple premodern prints and manuscripts with detailed indices.
- The commentaries often align entries with broader correlative cosmology (five phases, four symbols, directional spirits).
- Guo Pu frequently cites earlier sources now lost, preserving fragments of older mythic lore.
- Reception history oscillates between reading the work as geography, omenology, and mythography.
- Commentaries shaped the canonical identities of figures like Xiwangmu, Gonggong, and Yinglong.
- Illustrated editions influenced later visualizations of monsters and sacred landscapes.