Qiántáng yíshì 錢塘遺事
Surviving Records from Qiántáng by 劉一清 (compiler)
About the work
A 10-juǎn miscellaneous record of the Southern Sòng compiled in the early Yuán by Liú Yīqīng 劉一清, a man of Lín’ān 臨安 (= Qiántáng 錢塘, the Southern-Sòng capital) about whom nothing else is known. Despite the title’s apparent local-historical focus on Qiántáng, the work covers Southern-Sòng history broadly. The early reigns (Gāozōng 高宗, Xiàozōng 孝宗, Guāngzōng 光宗, Níngzōng 寧宗) are sketchy; the late Sòng (Lǐzōng 理宗 onward) is treated in detail. The principal narrative thrust is critique of Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道’s chancellorship and of the late-Sòng shìdàfū 士大夫 class. Juǎn 9 reproduces verbatim Yán Guāngdà 嚴光大’s record of the Déyòu bǐngzǐ (1276) “supplication mission” (qíqǐng shǐ xíngchéng 祈請使行程) to the Mongol court; juǎn 10 catalogs the late-Southern-Sòng examination regulations (kēmù tiáogé 科目條格). The work is a heavy compilation drawing on Sòng literary collections and bǐjì — most conspicuously Luó Dàjīng 羅大經’s Hèlín yùlù 鶴林玉露 — without acknowledgment.
Tiyao
Composed by Liú Yīqīng 劉一清 of Yuán. Yīqīng was a man of Lín’ān; nothing of his career can be traced. Although the book is named for Qiántáng, in fact it records the affairs of the entire Southern Sòng. The four reigns Gāozōng 高宗, Xiàozōng 孝宗, Guāngzōng 光宗, and Níngzōng 寧宗 are treated thinly; from Lǐzōng 理宗 and Dùzōng 度宗 onward the narration is most detailed. The work is largely a compilation from the bǐjì of Sòng authors, hence it overlaps frequently with the Hèlín yùlù 鶴林玉露 KR3j0085, the Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語, the Gǔháng záji 古杭雜記, and similar works. Even where there are differences in detail, often the original wording is reproduced. The “Ten lǐ of lotus” 十里荷花 entry in juǎn 1, and the “cí of Xīn Yòu’ān 辛幼安” entry, the “Hán Píngyuán 韓平原” entry, and the “Big graph ‘great’ becomes ‘dog’” entry in juǎn 2, are all from the Hèlín yùlù — though this is not acknowledged. The internal first-person phrases “I, your servant Yú, said,” and “I myself wrote a piece,” etc., are first-person remarks of Luó Dàjīng 羅大經 [author of the Hèlín yùlù], left uncorrected by Liú Yīqīng — so events some seventy or eighty years apart are reported as if witnessed firsthand, just as if Liú had not edited out Gě Gōng 葛龔. Furthermore, the work calls the Mongol soldiers “northern troops” (běi bīng 北兵) and the Mongol court the “northern court” (běi cháo 北朝), and refers to [Sòng] Xiànzōng 憲宗 (i.e. Mongol Mongke 蒙哥) as “the emperor” 帝, and to [Sòng’s young surrendered] Yǐngguógōng 瀛國公 as the “successor sovereign” (sì jūn 嗣君), and to Empress Dowager Xiè 謝后 as the “Grand Empress Dowager” — all of which sounds like a Sòng man’s wording. But it then refers to Yuán as the “Great Yuán” 大元, to Yuán troops as “great army” 大兵 or “Great Yuán imperial troops” 大元國兵, and to the Yuán Shìzǔ 世宗 as “the emperor” — quite the language of a Yuán subject. The compiler must have culled from miscellaneous older texts and collected them into a single bound volume; the inner and outer terms could not be made consistent, and corrections to the diction were missed throughout. Yet on the great policies of the late-Sòng court and on the ascent and descent of worthies and villains, his thread-by-thread analysis includes much that the standard history does not. Living through the end of the dynasty, an eyewitness to the catastrophe, his record is more complete than that of those reporting at second hand. The work’s principal critique is of Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道. Juǎn 9 in full reproduces Yán Guāngdà 嚴光大’s record of the Déyòu bǐngzǐ (Déyòu 2 = 1276) supplication-mission journey (qíqǐng shǐ xíngchéng 祈請使行程). Juǎn 10 in full reproduces the Southern-Sòng examination regulations and ranks (kēmù tiáogé gùshì 科目條格故事), and the work ends. Perhaps the point is that the Sòng nourished its scholar-officials so generously, yet from the supplication mission onwards none of them could think of a single useful plan — a covert satire on the shìdàfū. Kǒng Qí 孔齊’s Zhìzhèng zhíjì 至正直記 lists the Yuán-period records that could be of use to the Office of History: Liú Yīqīng’s book is one of them. There is no print edition; manuscript transmission is rare. Táo Zōngyí 陶宗儀’s Shuōfú 說郛 reproduces only a few items. The present is an old manuscript and is complete. There is no preface or colophon front or back, only a few lines of marginal annotation at the head: “Alas that Gāozōng did not establish his capital at Jiànkāng but at Hángzhōu, so that the shìdàfū sang and danced amid lakes and mountains and considered the affairs of the empire of no consequence, so that in the end they surrendered the territory and sold the country.” No name is given; the wording suggests, indeed, a Sòng loyalist (yímín 遺民).
Abstract
The Qiántáng yíshì of Liú Yīqīng 劉一清 (early-Yuán; native of Lín’ān 臨安) is a 10-juǎn loyalist-critical compilation of the political and cultural history of the late Southern Sòng. The author is otherwise unrecorded. The body of the text covers the Southern Sòng broadly but is concentrated on the late reigns (Lǐzōng 理宗, Dùzōng 度宗, Gōngdì 恭帝, and the surrender of 1276). The dominant editorial perspective is hostile to the chancellor Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道, whose mismanagement is repeatedly identified as the principal cause of dynastic collapse. The work is heavily compiled from late-Southern-Sòng bǐjì — most conspicuously Luó Dàjīng’s Hèlín yùlù KR3j0085, from which whole entries are taken without acknowledgment, leaving Luó’s first-person phrases (“I, your servant Yú, said”) in the text as if Liú himself were the speaker. The work’s verbal register oscillates between Sòng-loyalist diction (the Mongols are běi bīng 北兵, běi cháo 北朝) and Yuán-subject diction (the same are dà yuán guó bīng 大元國兵, the Yuán Shìzǔ is “the emperor”) — confirming the compiled rather than authored character of the work. Juǎn 9 reproduces verbatim Yán Guāngdà 嚴光大’s account of the 1276 surrender mission’s journey to the Mongol court; juǎn 10 catalogs the late-Sòng examination regulations. The Sìkù compilers read this terminal arrangement as deliberate satire — the dynasty’s lavish nurturing of its scholar-officials, juxtaposed with their final inability to save it. Date bracket here is set conservatively from 1290 (after the Sòng collapse and time enough for the late-Sòng bǐjì tradition to have been collated) to 1330 (well within the early Yuán). The work is mentioned in Kǒng Qí’s Zhìzhèng zhíjì among the Yuán-period works of historical use. The Sìkù base text is a complete Old Manuscript — there was no print edition.
Translations and research
- Charles Hartman. 2014. “Sōng Government and Politics,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5.2. (Discusses the Qiántáng yíshì as a late-Sòng critical compilation.)
- Richard L. Davis. 1996. Wind against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Cites the work in apparatus.
- Hilde De Weerdt. 2015. Information, Territory, and Networks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
- Modern editions: Qiántáng yíshì (Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, in Tángsòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān); Wényuàn-gé photo-reprint.
- The 1276 surrender-mission record reproduced in juǎn 9 is also separately preserved in the Yán Guāngdà sì míng kuáng kè jí and is one of the principal sources for the late-Sòng diplomatic collapse.
Other points of interest
The work’s covert use of Hèlín yùlù material is one of the more candid examples of the way late-Sòng / early-Yuán bǐjì compilations were assembled by harvesting from earlier collections without attribution; it is also evidence of how rapidly the Hèlín yùlù circulated in the early Yuán. The marginal annotation found at the head of the Sìkù base manuscript — lamenting Gāozōng’s choice of Hángzhōu over Jiànkāng — is a classic early-Yuán Sòng-loyalist verdict and may have been added by an early reader or by the (anonymous) compiler himself.