Shàn lù 剡錄
Records of Shàn [Shèng-xiàn] by 高似孫 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A 10-juan county-level gazetteer of Shèngxiàn 嵊縣 (Yuèzhōu 越州 / Shàoxīngfǔ 紹興府, modern Shèngzhōu 嵊州 in eastern Zhèjiāng) — historically the Hàn county of Shàn 剡 — composed in Jiādìng 7 (1214) by Gāo Sìsūn 高似孫 (jìnshì 1184; zì Xùgǔ 續古, hào Shūliáo 疎寮) and printed in Jiādìng 8 (1215) at the instance of the magistrate Shǐ Ānzhī 史安之 of Yín 鄞, who supplied the printer’s preface. Gāo titled the work Shàn lù in deference to the antique name Shàn — Shèng having been altered from “Shàn” in Xuānhé (1119–1125) on the grounds that the graph 剡 was inauspicious (it analyses as “two fires plus one knife”). The Sìkù tíyào ranks the work above Kāng Hǎi’s 康海 Wǔgōngxiàn zhì KR2k0030 and the other foundational Míng county-gazetteers in compositional sophistication, regards Gāo’s xiānxián and shānshuǐ sections as model methodologies for the gazetteer treatment of biographies and topography respectively, and rebukes the dismissive verdict of Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題 as out of step with the work’s actual quality. The work is one of the most important specimens of the Southern-Sòng xiànzhì (county gazetteer) — the genre being then a generation younger than the prefectural-level zhì.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: the Shàn lù in 10 juan is by Gāo Sìsūn 高似孫 of the Sòng. Sìsūn, zì Xùgǔ 續古, hào Shūliáo 疎寮; the Sòng shī jìshì 宋詩紀事 records him as a man of Yúyáo 餘姚, but this work’s self-preface calls him a man of Mào 鄮 (Yínxiàn, modern Níngbō) — Lì È 厲鶚 [the Sòng shī jìshì compiler] is in error. Jìnshì of Chúnxī 11 (1184), he advanced through the offices to jiàoshū láng 校書郎 and prefect of Chǔzhōu 處州.
Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 says of Sìsūn: “While serving in court office, he submitted nine birthday-poems for Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄, each poem secretly using the graph xī 錫, with the [seditious] intention of [encoding] the jiǔxī 九錫 [nine imperial regalia]; for this he was scorned by the public discussion.” As prefect of Chǔzhōu he was particularly grasping and harsh; his reading is àopì 奧僻 (obscure and out-of-the-way) but he passes for bó 博 (broadly learned), is guàisè 怪澀 (perversely difficult) but passes for unusual, with results that are at times patently absurd. Among his writings the poetry is still presentable. Zhōu Mì’s 周密 Guǐxīn zázhì 癸辛雜識 likewise records that during his tenure as prefect of Chǔzhōu he illicitly took possession of the official courtesan Hóng Qú 洪渠. His rénpǐn 人品 (moral character) is therefore not worth speaking of. His Shūliáo xiǎojí 疎寮小集 has surviving copies for his poetry, but his prose-writings have not generally come to view.
This book is the xiànzhì he composed for Shèngxiàn 嵊縣 — Shèng being the Hàn-period Shàn 剡, hence the title Shàn lù. It has prefixed Sìsūn’s own preface dated jiǎxū of Jiādìng (1214), and the Jiādìng yǐhài (1215) preface of Shǐ Ānzhī 史安之, magistrate of Shèng. The work was completed in jiǎxū and printed in yǐhài, hence the year-difference between the two prefaces. The first juan is the jìnián 紀年; juan 2 the chéngjìng tú 城境圖; juan 3 the guānzhì zhì 官治志, with the lists of magistrates, deputies, registrars, and inspectors appended; juan 4 the shèzhì 社志 and xuézhì 學志, with jìnshì tímíng appended; juan 5 the lǐnyì 廩驛, lóutíng 樓亭, fàngshēngchí 放生池, bǎntú 版圖, bīngjí 兵籍; juan 6 the shānshuǐ zhì 山水志; juan 7 the xiānxián zhuàn 先賢傳; juan 8 the gǔqíjì 古奇跡 and gǔqiān 古阡; juan 9 the shū 書, wén 文, shī 詩, huà 畫, zhǐ 紙, gǔwù 古物, wùwài jì 物外記; juan 10 the cǎomù qínyú 草木禽魚.
The citations are extremely comprehensive; pre-Táng anecdotes and lost texts often survive thanks to it. The xiānxián zhuàn notes for every event the source-text on which it draws, and is a model for the fāngzhì treatment of biographies. The shānshuǐ jì imitates Lì Dàoyuán’s 酈道元 Shuǐjīng zhù style: the topographical lineages are clearly set out, and the scenery comes alive as if seen in person — likewise a model for the fāngzhì treatment of mountains and rivers. Taking the book as a whole, the narration is methodical, the prose concise and antique-elegant, far above the run of later Wǔgōng and similar [Míng] zhì. We see no perverse difficulty or absurdity here; even his Zǐ lüè 子略 is not greatly remote from human reason. Chén Zhènsūn’s verdict cannot quite be made out — perhaps because in the late Southern Sòng the Dàoxué school transmitted only its yǔlù and the jiānghú school exchanged only its modern-style poetry, while what Sìsūn drew on was material from the WèiJìn poetic and prose tradition, at variance with contemporary fashion: hence they were startled and turned away.
Reverently collated and submitted, seventh month of Qiánlóng 43 (1778). 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 Shàn lù is a meticulous classical-style gazetteer of one of the most literarily resonant counties in Sòng China: Shàn 剡 was the location of Wáng Xīzhī’s 王羲之 Lántíng gathering, of Wáng Huīzhī’s 王徽之 famous “snow-night visit” to Dài Kuí 戴逵, and of major Six Dynasties literary settlement; the entire region is thick with WèiJìn cultural memory. Gāo Sìsūn explicitly frames his project (in his self-preface) as a salvage operation: in the more than thousand years from Wáng Xīzhī’s Yǒnghé 永和 to Sòng Jiādìng, Shàn had never had a zhì, and Shǐ Ānzhī (the magistrate) sought him out to compile one. His own preface, signed Jiādìng jiǎxū Gāo Sìsūn (1214), provides the terminus a quo of the composition; Shǐ Ānzhī’s printer’s preface of Jiādìng yǐhài (1215) the terminus ad quem of publication. The bracket notBefore 1214 / notAfter 1215 captures both. Shǐ Ānzhī’s preface emphasises that “should this woodblock last a hundred years, do not let later men withdraw the book through the wearing of the print” — a striking contemporary statement on the political economy of the early-thirteenth-century fāngzhì print run.
The structural innovation is methodological. Gāo cites every source he uses in the xiānxián zhuàn, transforming what might be a biographical sketch into a footnoted philological reconstruction; the shānshuǐ zhì is consciously modelled on Lì Dàoyuán’s Shuǐjīng zhù, organising the topography by river-system rather than by political boundary. The Sìkù editors place these two innovations among the canonical methods of fāngzhì writing. Gāo’s bibliographic instincts (visible in his other works, the Zǐ lüè 子略, Shǐ lüè 史略, Shī lüè 詩略, Wěi lüè 緯略) likewise inform the very dense citation apparatus of the Shàn lù. Beyond the literary geography, the work is a primary witness to the late-Southern-Sòng administrative organisation of a small but populous Yangtze-delta county: the zhèngshí in juan 1, the magistrate-registers in juan 3, and the bǎntú and bīngjí in juan 5 are all sober administrative documents.
The Sìkù editors mount an unusual defence of Gāo’s reputation. The dismissive verdict of Chén Zhènsūn’s Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí — itself echoed in Zhōu Mì’s Guǐxīn zázhì, where Gāo is accused of misappropriating an official courtesan during his Chǔzhōu tenure — is balanced against the evident quality of the Shàn lù itself, and the editors propose that the late-Southern-Sòng dichotomy between Dàoxué and Jiānghú poetic factions left no room for Gāo’s Wèi-Jìn-flavoured antiquarianism, generating both the contemporary hostility and the survival of his bad reputation into the early Qīng. The catalog meta gives no birth and death dates for Gāo; the standard reference works place his floruit ca. 1158–1231, but neither bracket is firmly attested.
The Sìkù base text is from a Sòng or early-Yuán print; the principal modern editions are the SòngYuán fāngzhì cóngkān (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1990) reprint and the punctuated Shàn lù in the Shèngzhōu wenxian congshu series (2010s).
Translations and research
No complete English translation. The work is regularly cited in Six Dynasties and Tang-Song studies that touch on the Shàn region, e.g. in Stephen Owen’s work on the Lán-tíng tradition. In Chinese, principal studies include: Cài Líng 蔡玲, Gāo Sìsūn yǔ Shàn lù yánjiū 高似孫與《剡錄》研究 (MA thesis, Zhèjiāng Dàxué, 2007); Liú Wěiyì 劉緯毅 (in Sòng-dài xiàn-zhì kǎo, 1996); and the substantial introduction to the Sòng-Yuán fāngzhì cóngkān edition. Joseph R. Dennis, Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100–1700 (Harvard, 2015), discusses the Shàn lù as one of the earliest specimens of the xiànzhì (county-level gazetteer) form and as a counter-example to the assumption that the early xiànzhì are administratively thin.
Other points of interest
The Shàn lù’s preservation of fragments of the long-lost WèiJìn literary record, especially items associated with Xiè Língyùn 謝靈運, Dài Kuí, Sūn Chuò 孫綽, and the Wáng family of Lántíng, makes it (alongside the closely contemporaneous Jiātài Kuàijī zhì and Bǎoqìng Kuàijī xùzhì) the principal Sòng documentary anchor for the early-medieval cultural geography of eastern Zhèjiāng. The cǎomù qínyú in juan 10, parallel to Luó Yuàn’s natural-history work in the Xīn’ān zhì, is also a notable specimen of the Sòng fāngzhì incorporation of bówù writing. The county had been renamed from Shàn 剡 to Shèng 嵊 in Xuānhé (1119) on cosmological grounds; Gāo’s pointed retention of “Shàn” in the title is a piece of cultural archaism in itself.