Kǒngshì zǔtíng guǎngjì 孔氏祖庭廣記
Expanded Record of the Ancestral Hall of the Kǒng Lineage by 孔元措 (撰)
About the work
A twelve-juàn expanded gazetteer-cum-genealogy of the Kǒng descent line and the Qūfù 曲阜 ancestral cult-site, compiled by Kǒng Yuáncuò 孔元措 (51st-generation descendant of Confucius and Yǎnshènggōng 衍聖公 under the Jīn) and completed in Zhèngdà 4 (dīnghài 丁亥, 1227), tenth month, the day of the full moon. The work belongs to the same family as the Dōngjiā zájì 東家雜記 (KR2g0002) compiled by Kǒng Chuán 孔傳 of the southern Kǒng branch a century earlier; in his preface, Yuáncuò explicitly invokes the two earlier private Kǒngshì zǔtíng compilations (one by his 46th-generation ancestor Kǒng Zhīhóng 知洪州軍州事, and a fragmentary continuation by his 49th-generation kinsman, the Xiángfúxiànbù 主祥符縣簿) and notes that both books circulated together (兩書並行) until the wars of the SòngJīn collapse devastated the Qūfù compound and burned much of the Kǒng family’s textual archive. Drawing on these two earlier works and on materials gathered in consultation with the Tàicháng 太常 ritualists, he expanded the body of material by 302 episodes, prefixed images of the Sage’s portrait and of the temple buildings and hand-planted cypresses, and gave the consolidated work the title Kǒngshì zǔtíng guǎngjì. The text also reproduces the texts (not merely the names) of inscribed steles in the temple compound and the Kǒng family cemetery, both Hàn and post-Hàn, “lest length of time efface them and they cannot be recovered.” This is the principal Northern (Jīn) counterpart to Kǒng Chuán’s southern Dōngjiā zájì.
Prefaces
The work is prefixed by Kǒng Yuáncuò’s own yǐn 引 dated Zhèngdà 4 (1227), tenth month, full-moon day, signed “Zīzhèng dàfū, hereditarily enfeoffed Yǎnshènggōng, Director of the Academy of Worthies (Jíxián yuàn 集賢院) and concurrent Tàicháng chéng 太常丞, fifty-first-generation descendant Yuáncuò.” It records an ancillary editorial team: the Tàixué student Mǎ Tiānzhāng 馬天章 of Jièshān 介山 prepared the portraits; ritual officers Wáng Róulì 王柔立 of Xùnyí 浚儀 and Jīn Táng 靳唐 of Zhōngshān 中山 collated; the Tàichángsì Tàiqírì zhào 太常寺太祈日照 Zhāng Lù 張簵, the Jíxián yuàn sīyì and concurrent Tàichángsì fènglǐláng 奉禮郎 quán bóshì 權博士 Mǎ Suìliáng 馬遂良 of Gǔyàn 古燕, and the Huìmín sī lìng 惠民司令 with concurrent Tàicháng bóshì 太常博士 Mǐ Zhāng 米章 of Fùpíng 富平, also collated. The preface remarks that the dates given in the work are reckoned from the conventional Confucius birthyear (Zhōu Língwáng 21 = gēngxū 庚戌, i.e. 551 BCE) to the year of compilation, “1,778 years in all.” There is no Sìkùtíyào: the work is preserved here in the SBCK reproduction of the Jīn-period printed edition, which had been deposited in the Kōnoike-bunko 鴻池文庫 collection.
Abstract
The Kǒngshì zǔtíng guǎngjì is the principal Jīn-dynasty gazetteer-and-genealogy of the Kǒng family at Qūfù and one of the most important records of the Northern Yǎnshènggōng line that remained in the ancestral seat after the Sòng court withdrew south in 1127. The author Kǒng Yuáncuò (CBDB record uncertain; standard prosopographical sources give him as 51st-generation descendant of Confucius, holder of the Jīn enfeoffment of Yǎnshènggōng, with floruit centred on the Zhēnyòu and Zhèngdà reigns of the late Jīn) was the senior representative of the Northern Kǒng branch under Jīn rule. The work supersedes both of the earlier private Kǒngshì zǔtíng compilations (now lost) and supplements the southern Dōngjiā zájì. Its 302 added episodes, drawing on the Tàicháng ritualists’ working files for materials on imperial honours and ritual privileges, reflect the institutional perspective of the Jīn imperial ritual office; the prefatory portraits and architectural illustrations make the work a key visual source as well. The 1227 date precedes by only six years the Mongol sack of Kāifēng (1233) — Kǒng Yuáncuò was subsequently brought to the Mongol court and, under Ögödei, helped re-establish the Yǎnshènggōng enfeoffment under early Yuán rule. The compilation is therefore among the last major textual products of late-Jīn imperial scholarship.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation located. For the Northern Yǎnshèng-gōng line and the place of the Guǎng-jì in the Kǒng-family literature, see Thomas A. Wilson, On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius (HUP, 2003), and Christopher Agnew, “Migrants and Mutineers: The Rebellion of Kǒng Yǒu-dé and Seventeenth-Century Northeast Asia” (2009). Modern critical editions include the Zhōnghuá shū-jú reprint and the Sì-bù cóng-kān 四部叢刊 photographic reproduction of the Jīn imprint, which is what is preserved in the present source file.
Other points of interest
The text incorporates the texts of pre-Sòng steles standing in the Kǒnglín 孔林 cemetery and the temple compound — many of which were subsequently lost to fire, war, or weather — and is therefore a primary witness for early epigraphic materials at Qūfù. The 1233 Mongol assault and the subsequent transfer of Kǒng Yuáncuò to the Mongol court make this 1227 imprint a kind of terminus for in-house Jīn Kǒng-family scholarship.
Links
- Wilkinson 2018, Chinese History: A New Manual §49.