Yānyì yímóu lù 燕翼詒謀錄
Record of Bequeathed Plans for the [Successor] of Swallows’ Wings by 王栐 (compiler)
About the work
A 5-juǎn selection of 162 founding institutional precedents (chénglǜ 成憲) of the early Northern Sòng — from Jiànlóng 建隆 (960) down to Jiāyòu 嘉祐 (1063) — compiled by Wáng Yǒng 王栐 (zì Shūyǒng 叔永; styled “Old Man Seeking the Will,” qiú zhì lǎo sǒu 求志老叟). The title alludes to the Shījīng phrase yī jué sūn móu, yǐ yān yì zǐ 詒厥孫謀，以燕翼子 (“bequeathing plans to one’s grandsons, sheltering one’s sons as with swallows’ wings”) and frames the work as a Sòng-loyalist attempt to remind the Southern-Sòng court of the ancestral institutional wisdom that had been lost in post-1127 makeshift rule. Each item is given with its specific date and a brief discussion of its later modification or repeal. The author’s preface insists that everything is drawn from the guóshǐ 國史, shílù 實錄, bǎoxùn 寶訓, and shèngzhèng 聖政 of the Sòng — i.e. from the official archive — to the explicit exclusion of bài guān xiǎoshuō 稗官小說 (unofficial anecdotal sources). The Sìkù compilers consider the work the most authoritative compilation of its kind among miscellaneous histories.
Tiyao
Composed by Wáng Bài 王栢 — read 王栐 — of Sòng (the Sìkù tiyao writes 王柡 for 王栐 throughout, preserved here). His zì was Shūyǒng 叔永; he styled himself a man of Jìnyáng 晉陽, residing at Shānyīn 山陰; his self-style was Old Man Seeking the Will (qiú zhì lǎo sǒu 求志老叟). His name and dates are not generally known from other sources. Examining the present book: there is an entry on Shàoxīng gēngxū 紹興庚戌 — when his paternal uncle Xuānshāngōng 軒山公 was Director of the Bureau of Military Affairs 知樞密院 with concurrent appointment as Joint Manager 兼參知政事. Gēngxū is Shàoxīng 1 (1131); checking the Sòngshǐ, in the first month jiǎwǔ of that year, Wáng Lìn 王藺 took the directorship of the Military Affairs Bureau. So Wáng Yǒng must be the cousin’s son (i.e. nephew) of Wáng Lìn. The Sòngshǐ has no Wáng Lìn biography; according to Xú Zìmíng 徐自明’s Zǎifǔ biānnián lù 宰輔編年錄, Lìn was a man of Wúwéijūn 無爲軍. The third juǎn of the present book describes the establishment of Wúwéijūn in particular detail — confirmation. The self-style “Jìnyáng” must be the ancestral seat reckoning. The book also contains the phrase “I once served at Shānyáng 山陽” — so he had once served in Huáiběi (north of the Huái), but in what office is now beyond record. The work’s gist is that, the Sòng having moved south, its institutions were largely abandoned, the ancestors’ fine laws and good policies all went uneffected and a temporizing rule by half-measures took its place. He therefore selected from among the inherited chénglǜ those that should be perpetuated, beginning with Jiànlóng (960) and running down to Jiāyòu (1063), 162 entries in all, with detailed treatment of how each was instituted, modified, or abolished, as a mirror of warning. This is the principle of the Yú zǎo 魚藻 ode (cf. Shī, Xiǎoyǎ). The author’s preface says everything was checked against the guóshǐ, shílù, bǎoxùn, shèngzhèng and the like; bài guān xiǎoshuō he discarded entirely. Looking now at the marshaling of established precedents — like silk-thread laced through a rope — the head and tail are crystal-clear; this is genuinely the most authoritative work among the miscellaneous histories.
Abstract
The Yānyì yímóu lù of Wáng Yǒng 王栐 (fl. early 13th c., zì Shūyǒng 叔永; styled qiú zhì lǎo sǒu 求志老叟; nephew of the Northern-Southern transition statesman Wáng Lìn 王藺) is a 5-juǎn compilation of 162 early-Northern-Sòng institutional precedents from Jiànlóng (960) to Jiāyòu (1063), drawn explicitly from the official Sòng documentary archive (the guóshǐ 國史, shílù 實錄, bǎoxùn 寶訓, shèngzhèng 聖政) to the exclusion of unofficial anecdotal sources. The work is dated by the author’s own preface to early Bǎoqìng 寶慶 (the catalog meta gives “fl. 1227,” approximately the date of the preface). The motivation is loyalist nostalgia: Wáng wrote in the late Southern Sòng, by which time many of the institutional refinements of the Northern Sòng had been allowed to lapse in the makeshift southern administration, and he intended his selection as a jiànjiè 鑑戒 (mirror of warning) to remind the court of the ancestral institutional wisdom. The title is a Shījīng allusion (yān yì 燕翼 = “swallow-winged,” i.e. sheltering of one’s descendants; yí móu 詒謀 = “bequeathed plans”). The Sìkù compilers regard it as the most rigorously documentary of all the late-Sòng works of its kind. The author’s connection to Wáng Lìn — established by the Sìkù compilers from internal evidence (the entry on his “paternal uncle Xuānshāngōng” assuming the Bureau of Military Affairs in Shàoxīng 1 [1131]) — means the work also belongs to the political memory of one of the loyalist family-lineages of the early Southern Sòng. The Sìkù tiyao writes the author’s surname-character as 柡 throughout (a transcriptional variant for 栐), preserved in our translation.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- The work is most often consulted through the Cóngshū jíchéng edition.
- Modern scholars writing on Northern-Sòng institutional precedents — e.g. Christian Lamouroux, Fiscalité, comptes publics et politiques financières (2003), and Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks (2015) — cite the Yānyì yímóu lù as a key Southern-Sòng documentary digest of Northern-Sòng institutions.
- Wáng Wénjǐn 王文錦, modern collated editions in the Tángsòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān 唐宋史料筆記叢刊 series (Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú).
Other points of interest
The work belongs to the late-Southern-Sòng “chénglǜ” (founding-precedent) genre alongside the KR2e0014 Tàipíng zhìjī tǒnglèi of 彭百川, and represents the loyalist intellectual movement that culminated in the early-Yuán historiographical project of Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考 — the explicit assemblage of the institutional memory of the Sòng for transmission and emulation.