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Yuchi Jing 玉尺經(平砂玉尺經) falsely ascribed — Ming (per Siku)

The Jade Ruler Classic: the book the Three Harmony 三合 line built on, the book the Siku cataloguers called a forgery, and the book Jiang Dahong opened his canon by attacking. Every layer of it is a lesson in attribution.

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Identity card

FieldValue
Title玉尺經 Yuchi Jing ("Jade Ruler Classic"), fully 平砂玉尺經 Ping Sha Yuchi Jing
attributed_authorOld tradition attributes the text to Liu Bingzhong 劉秉忠 (Yuan) and the notes to Liu Ji 劉基 (Ming)
attribution_statusfalsely ascribed 偽托 — Ming (Siku verdict, quoted below; the register records the attribution as late, propped up by Liu Bingzhong's name)
SchoolThree Harmony 三合 — the register calls it the school's pillar 三合之宗
Full textctext.org (uncorrected OCR — do not quote its wording)

What it contains

Per the collation register:

What the Siku cataloguers concluded

「晚出,特依託於秉忠」 — "a late composition, merely propped up on Bingzhong's name"; on the commentary: 「是注之偽託,亦不問可知」 — "that the notes are likewise a forgery goes without saying"; and, naming the fraud in the 地理大全 notice: 「所謂劉註即國木假為之以欺世也」 — "the so-called Liu notes are in fact [guomu] counterfeited to deceive the world." Siku Quanshu Zongmu (shushu lei).

And yet the same notice contains the sentence that explains this book's historical weight — and that our own planning documents require to be quoted alongside the condemnation:

「自此書盛行,江南地學,率皆以三合為正宗。」 — "once this book prevailed, the geography of the Jiangnan region took Three Harmony as the orthodox line, almost to a man."

The trial by Jiang Dahong

The Xuankong editor Jiang Pingjie 蔣平階(大鴻) devoted the fifth juan of his 地理辨正 to a formal attack, the 平砂玉尺辨偽, opening: 「地理多偽書,平砂玉尺者,偽之尤者也」 ("geography abounds in forged books, and the Pingsha Yuchi is the worst of them"). So the ledger reads: a Ming forgery, per the Siku; the doctrinal pillar of the Three Harmony school, per its own century of dominance; and a condemned book, per its chief rival — all three at once. The Three-Harmony-versus-Three-Cycle fault line this trial opened runs straight into the lineage questions our engine must disclose; see the School Dispute Register.

A source-handling caution

The ctext text linked above is uncorrected OCR with heavy character corruption per our collation; it is linked for locating the work only, and its wording is never quoted into our rule layer.

Related

地理辨正 (the prosecutor) · 催官篇 (Three Harmony, clean attribution) · 葬書 (another Song-era attribution problem) · full register · School Dispute Register