歲時廣記

Suìshí guǎngjì 歲時廣記

Extensive Records of the Seasons by 陳元靚

About the work

A four-juan late Southern Sòng compilation of textual material on the seasonal festivals and observances of the year, arranged by month, by the jūshì 居士 Chén Yuánjìng 陳元靚, who signs himself “scion of the Guǎnghán immortals” (廣寒仙裔). Together with Yùdìng yuèlìng jíyào 御定月令輯要 (KR2j0002), it is one of only two titles the Sìkù editors retained in the shǐbù shílìng 史部時令 (“Seasonal Ordinances”) category — the category itself was a Sòng innovation, having previously been folded into agricultural books in the zǐbù (Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §39.15.1). The work’s distinctive contribution to the festival-literature tradition is the comprehensiveness of its month-by-month coverage: by Wilkinson’s reckoning, the Suìshí guǎngjì lists every major festival enumerated in Zōng Lǐn’s 宗懍 sixth-century Jīng Chǔ suìshí jì 荊楚歲時記 plus roughly thirty more (Wilkinson §9.12.1).

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Suìshí guǎngjì in four juan is by Chén Yuánjìng of the Sòng. His native place is unknown; he himself signs as “scion of the Guǎnghán immortals” (廣寒仙裔). Liú Chún’s postface calls him a “concealed gentleman” (yǐn jūnzǐ 隱君子), but does not say in detail who he was, so we cannot ascertain it. The book has, prefixed, a preface by Zhū Jiàn 朱鑑, who was zhī Wúwéijūn Cháoxiàn shì 知無為軍巢縣事 (administrator of Cháo county in Wúwéi commandery). Zhū Jiàn was a grandson of Master Zhū (Zhū Xī 朱熹), the very person who once edited the Shī zhuàn yí shuō 詩傳遺說; he afterwards served as HúGuǎng zǒnglǐng 湖廣總領. Since Yuánjìng was acquainted with him, he must have been a man of Lǐzōng’s 理宗 reign (1224–1264).

The book is not registered in the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì 宋志. It is found only in Qián Zēng’s 錢曾 Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記, which records it as having illustrated diagrams (tú shuō 圖說) prefixed and divided according to the four seasons into four juan. The present copy comes from Cáo Róng’s 曹溶 Xuéhǎi lèibiān 學海類編 and has no diagrams at the head of the juan — these must have been lost in transmission by later copyists.

The book takes up Yuèlìng 月令, Xiàojīng wěi 孝經緯, the Sāntǒng lì 三統曆, and other such works as its principal threads (gāng 綱), and arranges what miscellaneous books record concerning the festive sequence by month: in all 46 entries for spring, 50 for summer, 32 for autumn, 38 for winter. By and large it is set up for the practical use of memorial-and-letter composition (qǐzhá yìngyòng 啟劄應用), and accordingly draws heavily on the bàiguān shuōbù (informal narrative literature). The Ěryǎ 爾雅 and the Huáinán[zǐ] 淮南 — works whose contents are sufficient for textual evidence — are by contrast much neglected and incomplete, so that one cannot say it is a “good edition” (shàn běn 善本). What is distinctive, however, is that for the references it does cite, it preserves the full text in every case and records the source in detail — it has not lost the spirit of earlier compilers. This sets it apart from later lèishū that arbitrarily prune and alter their materials, and so we have included it among the others to provide for examination.

Reverently collated and submitted, twelfth month, Qiánlóng 46 (early 1782). Editors-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collation officer: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Suìshí guǎngjì is a topically arranged anthology of textual extracts on the seasonal festivals and observances (suìshí 歲時) of the Chinese year. The author, Chén Yuánjìng 陳元靚, is best known as the compiler of the household encyclopedia Shìlín guǎngjì 事林廣記 (Extensive records of the forest of affairs), one of the foundational Sòng–Yuán rìyòng lèishū 日用類書, surviving in a 1330–33 Jiànyáng print (Wilkinson §72.1.3.1). The two titles share an organizing impulse — the encyclopedic sorting of practical knowledge by category — and both signal Chén’s Fújiàn / Mǐnběi book-trade milieu rather than any official career.

Two paratexts frame the present recension. The preface is by 朱鑑 (1190–1258), eldest grandson of Zhū Xī 朱熹 and at the time zhī Wúwéijūn Cháoxiàn shì; Zhū Jiàn there praises Chén for going beyond the regional limitations of Jīng Chǔ suìshí jì and beyond the lacunae of the Qín–Táng festival treatises by drawing on the classics, transmissions, unofficial histories, and “strange books” (yìshū). The postface is by Liú Chún Jūnxī 劉純君錫, Wénlín láng and supervisor (jiānmén 監門) of the Tàipíng Huìmín Héjì jú 太平惠民和劑局 — the imperial pharmacy in the Southern Sòng xíng zài (i.e. Línān). The Sìkù editors infer from Zhū Jiàn’s career that Chén must have flourished under Lǐzōng (r. 1224–1264). This is the primary basis for the dating; the work is not registered in the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì and surfaces only in Qián Zēng’s 錢曾 Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記 (Qīng) under the title Suìshí guǎngjì.

The architecture of the book is a gāngmù 綱目 grid: the heads (gāng) come from canonical-and-quasi-canonical seasonal authorities (the Yuèlìng, the Xiàojīng wěi, the Sāntǒng lì); under each, miscellaneous matter — drawn from informal narrative literature, regional records, and folk lore — is arranged by month. Coverage is asymmetrical (春 46 / 夏 50 / 秋 32 / 冬 38), reflecting both the festival density of the calendar and the compiler’s letter-writing utility-rationale. The Sìkù editors are blunt about the work’s defects (uncritical reliance on bàiguān, light use of Ěryǎ and Huáinánzǐ) but credit it with two virtues that justified its preservation: full quotation rather than paraphrase, and explicit source attribution. The Sìkù-edition descends not from Qián Zēng’s illustrated copy but from Cáo Róng’s 曹溶 Xuéhǎi lèibiān recension, in which the prefatory diagrams have been lost — a transmission detail acknowledged in the tíyào.

Within the broader history of Chinese festival writing, the Suìshí guǎngjì sits at the threshold of the late-Sòng festival canon. Wilkinson treats it as the bibliographic landmark by which the principal annual festivals reach the form they will keep into late imperial times, including the firm attachment of Qū Yuán to the Duānwǔ and the centralization of dragon-boat racing as lóngzhōu jìngdù 龍舟競渡 (Wilkinson §9.12.4). The Suìshí guǎngjì also functions as a transmission vessel for the earlier Jīng Chǔ suìshí jì of Zōng Lǐn, large portions of which are preserved within it (Wilkinson §39.15.1).

Translations and research

• Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual. 6th ed. Endymion Wilkinson c/o Harvard University Asia Center, 2022. §§9.12, 39.15.1, 72.1.3.1 — the principal English-language anchor for the work, its category, and its place in the Sòng festival corpus.
• Suìshí xísú yánjiū zīliào huìbiān 歲時習俗研究資料彙編. Yìwén yìnshūguǎn 藝文印書館, Taiwan, 1970. Reprints the Suìshí guǎngjì alongside the Jīng Chǔ suìshí jì and other festival sources.
• Zhōngguó fēngtǔ zhì cóngkān 中国风土志丛刊. Guǎnglíng shūshè, 2003. Standard mainland reprint series; includes Suìshí guǎngjì.
• Chittick, Andrew. Entry on Zōng Lǐn’s Jīng Chǔ suìshí jì in Cynthia L. Chennault et al., eds. Early Medieval Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (EMCT). Berkeley: IEAS, 2015 — discusses Suìshí guǎngjì as the principal vehicle for the partially-lost Jīng Chǔ text.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the earliest sources to record the literary-historical association of the Duānwǔ 端午 dragon-boat festival with Qū Yuán 屈原 and the link of the Chóngyáng 重陽 hill-climbing custom with Fèi Chángfáng 費長房, both already singled out in Zhū Jiàn’s preface (“競渡之繇楚靈均, 登髙之因費長房”). The Cáo-Róng-via-Sìkù recension lacks the prefatory illustrations described by Qián Zēng; researchers seeking the diagrams must look outside the Sìkù tradition.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (6th ed., 2022).
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11062817 (歲時廣記)
• ctext.org Wikisource