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古列女傳

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Text ID
KR2g0017
Date
-34–-8
Dynasty
漢

Gǔ liènǚ zhuàn 古列女傳

Biographies of Eminent Women, Ancient Recension by 劉向 (撰)

About the work

The earliest Chinese collective biographical work devoted to women, by the Western Hàn imperial editor and scholar Liú Xiàng 劉向 (zì Zǐzhèng 子政, original name Gēngshēng 更生; 77 BCE – 6 BCE). The work survives in the form transmitted by the Sòng jiāyòu 嘉祐 (1056–1063) editorial labour of Sū Sòng 蘇頌 and Wáng Huí 王回 — seven juàn (= the original Liènǚ zhuàn of Liú Xiàng) plus one supplementary juàn of Xù liènǚ zhuàn 續列女傳 (twelve later biographies) — eight juàn in total in the WYG. The work organizes 105 women’s biographies under seven categorical headings, each preceded by a xù of its theme: mǔyí 母儀 (motherly exemplars), xiánmíng 賢明 (worthy and intelligent), rénzhì 仁智 (humane and wise), zhēnshùn 貞順 (chaste and obedient), jiéyì 節義 (steadfast and righteous), biàntōng 辯通 (eloquent and discerning), and nièbì 孽嬖 (depraved favourites — the negative exempla). Each biography concludes with a four-character sòng (verse-eulogy) summarizing the moral. The original was illustrated and arranged on a screen (a 屏風); the surviving illustrated tradition includes the celebrated Gù Kǎizhī 顧愷之-attributed scrolls.

Tiyao

[Translated from the Sìkù tíyào held in Kyoto Zinbun’s digital archive, since the SBCK source-file in the repository carries Liú Xiàng’s small prefaces and table of contents but not the Sìkù tiyao itself.]

By Liú Xiàng of the Hàn. Liú Xiàng, courtesy name Zǐzhèng, original name Gēngshēng, was a descendant of Liú Jiāo, the King of Chǔ; through his father’s official privilege he was appointed niǎnláng 輦郞 and rose through Zhōnglěi xiàowèi 中壘校尉. His career is given in the Hànshū biography. The Hànshū yìwénzhì in the Rújiā class lists Liú Xiàng’s compilations in 67 piān, the editor’s note giving them as Xīnxù, Shuōyuàn, Shìshuō, Liènǚ zhuànsòngtú. The Suízhì in the Zázhuàn class lists Liènǚ zhuàn in 15 juàn, with the note “by Liú Xiàng, with annotations by Cáo Dàgū 曹大家 [Bān Zhāo 班昭].” The work has been many times re-copied: by the Sòng it was no longer the ancient text. Hence Zēng Gōng’s 曾鞏 xùlù states that what Cáo Dàgū annotated had been split into 14 from its original 7 piān, plus one Sòngyì — so 15 piān total — and supplemented with 16 further biographies running from Chén Yīng’s mother through Eastern-Hàn women, no longer Liú Xiàng’s own work. In the Jiāyòu (1056–1063), the Jíxián xiàolǐ Sū Sòng began re-arranging by the Sòngyì and re-fixed the work as 8 piān — these and the 15-piān version both being kept in the imperial collections. So when Zēng Gōng was collating, two recensions already existed. Wáng Huí’s preface says: “The book has the seven categories mǔyí through nièbì, each with a sòng and an illustration; in form, the prose is like Sīmǎ Qiān, the sòng like the Shī’s four-character lines, and the illustrations were displayed on a folding screen. But what circulates today as Liú Xiàng’s book has the zhuàn of each piān divided into upper and lower halves, the sòng attached to the end as 15 juàn; of these, 12 zhuàn lack sòng; 3 zhuàn are of women contemporary with Liú Xiàng; 5 are of women later — all under the rubric of Liú Xiàng’s authorship; the sòng is attributed to his son Liú Xīn 劉歆, contradicting the Hànshū. The Chóngwén zǒngmù therefore takes the 16 biographies from Chén Yīng’s mother on as later additions. Examined by the sòng, each piān should have 15 zhuàn; therefore all those without sòng are presumably not Liú Xiàng’s submitted text.” Liú Xiàng’s compiled writings have mostly been lost; this alone has fortunately survived, though again disordered by other hands. We therefore record the table of contents, verify by the sòng, and reduce the work to 8 piān, naming it Gǔ liènǚ zhuàn. The remaining 12 biographies, which are also in fine archaic style, we order by date and add as a separate piān, named Xù liènǚ zhuàn. Wáng Huí also says: “Mr Lǚ Jìnshū the Zhímìgé and Sū Zǐróng [Sū Sòng] the Jíxián xiàolǐ, and Mr Lín Cìzhōng the magistrate of Xiàngshān, all reported having seen Mǔyí and Xiánmíng sections in the homes of Jiāngnán people, the figures painted in archaic robes and pendants, with the sòng inscribed at the side of each illustration. So Wáng Huí saw one recension, heard of another, and deleted-and-fixed yet another.” Qián Zēng’s 錢曾 Dúshū min-qiú jì says: “This copy begins with the Two Consorts of YǒuYú and ends with Empress Zhào the Wicked under the heading Gǔ liènǚ zhuàn; from the wife of WàngSuí of Zhōu through the women of the Eastern Hàn (Liáng Yìn etc.) it orders by date as Xù liènǚ zhuàn. The grand preface to the Sòngyì is placed before the mùlù; the seven small prefaces are scattered among the mùlù; the sòng appears after each woman’s biography; each biography has its illustration. The volume bears the heading ‘Painted by the Jìn Dàsīmǎ cānjūn Gù Kǎizhī.’ Sū Zǐróng saw an old Jiāngnán copy with figures in archaic robes and pendants, the sòng inscribed at the side of each illustration — agreeing precisely with the present. Without doubt this is the ancient form.” This copy is from Qián Zēng’s old library; the inscriptions and seals are preserved; verifying the typeface and paper, it is genuinely a Sòng-block edition. But the Jiāngnán copy that Sū Sòng and others saw was prior to Wáng Huí’s collation; this copy’s count of 8 piān matches Wáng Huí’s edition, the heading Gǔ liènǚ zhuàn / Xù liènǚ zhuàn matches Wáng Huí’s edition — that is, this is the Jiāyòu 8 (1063) re-edition by Wáng Huí, mistaken by Qián Zēng for a Jiāngnán original. — Even so, on the question of the sòng: it is in fact by Liú Xiàng; Zēng Gōng’s and Wáng Huí’s argument is correct, and Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武’s Dúshū zhì, which uses the Suízhì note to argue that they were misled by Yán Shīgǔ 顏師古, is wrong. (The original Hànshū notes that read “Shīgǔ said” are Yán Shīgǔ’s; those without an attribution are Bān Gù’s own. Crediting the sòngtú to Liú Xiàng is Bān Gù’s note, not Yán Shīgǔ’s.) Examining the Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓: “The Liènǚ zhuàn was made by Liú Xiàng; his son Xīn made the sòng” — the false transmission of the sòng to Xīn dates already from the Six Dynasties, only forty or fifty years from the Suízhì’s drafting; the latter merely follows the error. There is no warrant for using it to refute the Hànshū. The supplementary juàn of Xùzhuàn: Zēng Gōng believed it was by Bān Zhāo, but he gave no evidence; this was his guess. Cháo Gōngwǔ thought it was by Xiàng Yuán 項原 — even more mistaken: the Suízhì lists Xiàng Yuán’s Liènǚ hòuzhuàn as 10 juàn, not 1. To follow such adventitious cross-attributions is fanciful: the Suízhì also lists a Liènǚ zhuàn by Zhàomǔ in 7 juàn, by Gāoshì in 8 juàn, by Huángfǔ Mì in 6 juàn, by Qíwú Suì in 7 juàn, plus Cáo Zhí’s Liènǚ zhuànsòng in 1 juàn and Móu Xí’s Liènǚ zàn in 1 juàn — by such reasoning the supplementary zhuàn could be ascribed to Zhàomǔ et al., the sòng to Cáo Zhí et al., and not just to Liú Xīn, Bān Zhāo, or Xiàng Yuán! In this present edition, the seven core juàn and the sòng are credited to Liú Xiàng; the supplementary juàn alone has no compiler — keeping faithful to the doubtful and avoiding fanciful attribution.

Abstract

The Gǔ liènǚ zhuàn is the foundational work in the Chinese tradition of women’s biography; it survives in seven juàn of original Liú Xiàng material plus one juàn of post-Liú-Xiàng additions (the Xù liènǚ zhuàn). Liú Xiàng compiled it as part of his great editorial labour at the imperial library in the late Western Hàn, c. 34–8 BCE; the customary date bracket for his editorial output runs from his recall to the imperial library in 26 BCE down to his death in 6 BCE, with 16 BCE often given as the date of presentation. The 105 biographies in 7 thematic categories, each ending with a four-character sòng and accompanied by an illustration on a folding-screen format, served as a moral handbook for the imperial harem and was intended (per Liú Xiàng’s Hànshū biography) as a remonstrance to Emperor Chéng on the dangers of imperial favouritism — so the nièbì category is not adventitious. The work was extensively re-edited in the Sòng — the Jiāyòu (1063) reduction by Wáng Huí, with consultation of Sū Sòng’s textual collations, established the eight-piān form transmitted to the Sìkù. The illustrated tradition (the so-called Gù Kǎizhī-attributed scrolls now in the Beijing Palace Museum) descends from the Sòng. The principal source for Liú Xiàng’s life is Hànshū juàn 36; CBDB id 450753 attests his lifedates as 77–6 BCE.

Translations and research

  • Anne Behnke Kinney, Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü zhuan of Liu Xiang (Columbia UP, 2014) — complete annotated English translation, the standard English-language version.
  • Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (SUNY, 1998), and her further studies, the principal English-language critical study.
  • Zhāng Tāo 張濤, Liè-nǚ zhuàn yì-zhù 列女傳譯注 (Jǐ-nán: Shāndōng dà-xué chū-bǎn-shè, 1990) — modern Chinese annotated edition.
  • Marc Kalinowski et al., Le Compendium des cinq agents (Wuxing dayi) (Paris, 1991) and other studies illuminate Liú Xiàng’s broader editorial program.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ painstaking analysis of the editorial layers — specifically that the Wáng Huí reduction of 1063 is the immediate ancestor of the WYG copy, mistakenly identified by the Qīng connoisseur Qián Zēng as a “Jiāngnán original” — is a textbook example of Qīng philological reconstruction of Sòng editorial practice.

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