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咸淳臨安志

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Text ID
KR2k0022
Date
1268–1274
Dynasty
宋

Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì 咸淳臨安志

Gazetteer of Lín’ān, [compiled in the] Xiánchún [reign-period] by 潛說友

About the work

A massive prefectural gazetteer of Lín’ān 臨安 — the Southern Sòng xíngzài 行在 / de facto capital, modern Hángzhōu 杭州 — compiled by Qián Yuèyǒu 潛說友 (1216–1277, zì Jūngāo 君高, native of Jìnyún 縉雲 in Chùzhōu) when he was prefect of Lín’ānfǔ in the Xiánchún 咸淳 era (1265–74) of Dùzōng. Originally in 100 juan; 93 are extant in the Sìkù recension (juan 1–95 with several lacunae). The first 15 juan are a Xíngzàisuǒ lù 行在所錄 dedicated to the imperial capital establishment (palace, ritual offices, court bureaucracy); juan 16–100 are the prefectural gazetteer proper, in highly clear and well-articulated rubrics. It builds on and supersedes two earlier Lín’ān gazetteers, the Qiándào Lín’ān zhì 乾道臨安志 (Zhōu Cóng 周淙, ca. 1169) and the Chúnyòu Lín’ān zhì 淳祐臨安志 (Shī È 施諤, 1252) — the three together being the earliest extant gazetteers of Hángzhōu and the foundational record of the Southern Sòng capital.

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì in 93 juan is by Qián Yuèyǒu 潛說友 of the Sòng (the Sìkù tíyào writes “Yuán” — a typographical slip; Qián was a Sòng prefect of Lín’ān during Xiánchún and died in 1277, before the work could enter Yuán transmission). Yuèyǒu, zì Jūngāo 君高, was a man of Chùzhōu 處州. He was jìnshì of the jiǎchén year of Chúnyòu (1244) of the Sòng. In the gēngwǔ year of Xiánchún (1270), he served as Zhōngfèng dàfū 中奉大夫 quán Hùbùshàngshū zhī Lín’ānjūnfǔshì 知臨安軍府事, with the enfeoffment Jìnyúnxiàn kāiguónán 縉雲縣開國男. At that time Jiǎ Sìdào’s 賈似道 power was at its height; Yuèyǒu insinuated himself into Jiǎ’s faction and so was promoted. Four years later, having mistakenly arrested Jiǎ’s sīzhú 私秫 (private millet), he was dismissed; the next year he was reappointed prefect of Píngjiāng. When the Yuán armies arrived, he abandoned the city and fled. After the Sòng fall, in Fúzhōu, he surrendered to the Yuán, accepting their commission as xuānfǔshǐ. Subsequently, when the army-rice supplies could not be obtained, [his subordinate] Wáng Jīwēng 王積翁 used the matter to inflame the troops, and Yuèyǒu was disemboweled to death by Lǐ Xióng 李雄. The man himself is not worth speaking of, but his book has order.

The first 15 juan are the Xíngzàisuǒ lù, recording the affairs of the palace gates and the bureaus; from juan 16 on it is the prefectural gazetteer proper, clear in its delineation and orderly in its rubrics — it can serve as a model for the recording of capital cities. The Sòng imperial edicts placed after those of preceding dynasties follow the precedent of Xú Líng’s 徐陵 Yùtái xīnyǒng 玉臺新詠, which placed Emperor Wǔ of the Liáng in juan 7. The other prefatory orderings are likewise rationally divided and well-suited for evidential consultation; thus when the Míng compilers wrote Xīhú zhì 西湖志 and other such works, they drew heavily on it. Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 noted that of the surviving Sòng gazetteers — Sòng Cìdào’s 宋次道 Cháng’ān zhì, Liáng Shūzǐ’s 梁叔子 Sānshān zhì, Fàn Zhìnéng’s (Chéngdà) 范致能 (成大) Wújùn zhì, Shī Wǔzǐ’s 施武子 Kuàijī zhì, Luō Duānliáng’s 羅端良 (願) Xīn’ān zhì, Chén Shòulǎo’s 陳壽老 Chìchéng zhì — every one is too brief; only this work of Qián is alone detailed. However, the book has been long in transmission and is often incomplete; there was no surviving complete set. Yízūn obtained from the Hú family of Hǎiyán 海鹽 and the Máo family of Chángshú 常熟 a Sòng print of 80 juan, then borrowed and copied a further 13; the seven juan of bēikè 碑刻 (stele inscriptions) at the end were lost, with no source to supplement; we now keep that condition unaltered.

Reverently collated and submitted, first month, Qiánlóng 46 (1781). 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 Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì is the largest and most fully-preserved Southern Sòng prefectural gazetteer, and arguably the single richest documentary source for the city of Hángzhōu in the late thirteenth century. The compilation was commissioned during Qián Yuèyǒu’s tenure as prefect of Lín’ān (Xiánchún 4–8 = 1268–72), and his autograph preface is dated under the offices Zhōngfèng dàfū quán Hùbù shàngshū jiān xiángdìng chìlìngguān jiān zhī Lín’ān jūnfǔshì jiān guǎnnèi quànnóngshǐ LiǎngZhèxīlù ānfǔshǐ Mǎbùjūn dūzǒngguǎn jiān diǎnjiǎn xíngzài shànjūn jīshǎng jiǔkùsuǒ Jìnyúnxiàn kāiguónán shíyì sānbǎi hù. The preface reads as a substantial historical essay on Hángzhōu’s relationship to the Sòng dynastic project, treating the city’s loyalty under the WúYuè 吳越 rulers, its surrender to the Sòng under Qián Chùyì 錢俶 (Zhōngyì 忠懿) in 978, its elevation to fǔ status in 1129, and its three-hundred-year role as the dynastic capital. The fánlì 凡例 (preserved in the prefatory matter) records six rubrics: imperial compositions and edicts entered only when explicit to the xíngzài establishment; court matters affecting institutional precedent and imperial virtue annexed to relevant categories; gōngquè jiāomiào entries restricted to imperial-commission compositions; subordinate offices reorganized with reference to the Guócháo huìyào 國朝會要; old prefectural designations corrected; and a tíyǒng 題詠 (literary excerpts) section appended only with materials of evidential value.

The work was originally in 100 juan; the Sìkù recension is 93 juan (with the seven juan of stele inscriptions lost, as the tíyào notes). The structure is exceptional: 15 juan of Xíngzàisuǒ lù (palace, court, capital institutions) followed by 85 juan of prefectural matter (territory, yángé historical evolution, shānchuān, fēngsú, fùyì taxes, xuéxiào schools, guānyǔ offices, guānzhí biǎo tables of officeholders, rénwù worthies, liènǚ exemplary women, Buddhist and Daoist establishments, jǐngquán wells and springs, products, and stele inscriptions). The Buddhist temple coverage in particular is exceptionally rich; recent geoparsing work (Dazhi Yang and colleagues, 2022) has used the work as the principal source for reconstructing the spatial distribution of Hángzhōu’s Buddhist landscape on the eve of the Mongol conquest.

The recension history: the Sìkù editors recovered the bulk of the text from a Sòng print of 80 juan held by the Hú 胡 family of Hǎiyán and the Máo 毛 family of Chángshú (Máo Jìn’s 毛晉 Jígǔgé 汲古閣 collection), supplemented by 13 juan transcribed elsewhere, with the seven juan of stele inscriptions left as a permanent lacuna. Zhū Yízūn was the principal modern Sòng-print collator. A complete typeset modern edition is in Sòng Yuán fāngzhì cóngkān 宋元方志叢刊, vol. 4 (Zhōnghuá, 1990), and the work is one of the cornerstones of Christine Moll-Murata’s 2001 monograph on the Hángzhōu prefectural-gazetteer tradition.

Wilkinson treats this work in the context of Sòng fāngzhì methodology and the Hángzhōu capital corpus (§§16.4.1, 62.3.3.2, 62.3.4); it is the most important prose-prefatory companion to the well-known nostalgic capital memoirs (Mèngliáng lù 夢粱錄, Dūchéng jìshèng 都城紀勝, Wǔlín jiùshì 武林舊事, etc.).

A note on dating: the catalog meta gives only “宋”; the work was begun in 1268 (the prefectural compilation order is documented in the fánlì) and the autograph preface is dated under the offices Qián held in Xiánchún 6 (1270). Final compilation must have been completed by Xiánchún 10 / Déyòu 1 (1274–75), since Qián was reassigned to Píngjiāng in 1274. notBefore is set to 1268 (the compilation order); notAfter to 1274 (Qián’s last year as prefect of Lín’ān).

Translations and research

  • Yang, Dazhi, et al. 2022. “The Making of a Sacred Landscape: Visualizing Hangzhou Buddhist Culture via Geoparsing a Local Gazetteer the Xianchun Lin’an zhi 咸淳臨安志.” Religions 13.8: 711. The single most substantial recent English-language study; uses the work as the corpus for digital geoparsing of Hángzhōu’s Buddhist topography.
  • Moll-Murata, Christine. 2001. Die chinesische Regionalbeschreibung: Entwicklung und Funktion einer Quellengattung, dargestellt am Beispiel der Präfekturbeschreibungen von Hangzhou. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. The principal Western-language monograph on the Hángzhōu prefectural-gazetteer tradition (Southern Sòng to the Republic), with substantial treatment of the Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì as the foundational layer.
  • Hargett, James M. 1996. “Song dynasty local gazetteers and their place in the history of difangzhi writing.” HJAS 56.2: 405–42.
  • Lín Zhèngqiū 林正秋. 1990. “Nán-Sòng Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì shùlüè” 南宋《咸淳臨安志》述略. Wénxiàn 文獻 1990. The standard Chinese textual study, treating Sòng print history, juan-loss, and the Sìkù recension.
  • Modern punctuated edition: Sòng Yuán fāngzhì cóngkān 宋元方志叢刊 (Zhōnghuá, 1990), vol. 4.

Other points of interest

The work’s preface concludes with an explicit comparison to the Yǔgòng 禹貢 (“the Yǔgòng says of Jìzhōu, ‘It is recorded’ — meaning that the tribute, taxes, and corvée were recorded in the Shū: how grave and weighty are the affairs of the regional state which the Son of Heaven himself rules”), placing the prefectural gazetteer of the Sòng capital deliberately in the canon of imperially-significant geographical writing. The Sìkù tíyào’s biographical excursus on Qián Yuèyǒu — his factional alignment with Jiǎ Sìdào, his abandonment of Píngjiāng to the Yuán, his eventual surrender and disembowelment — is unusually moralizing for a Sìkù prefatory note; the editors take pains to insulate the documentary value of the work from their evaluation of the man.

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