聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

朝邑縣志

6 min read

Text ID
KR2k0031
Date
1519–1519
Dynasty
明

Cháoyì xiànzhì 朝邑縣志

Gazetteer of Cháoyì County by 韓邦靖 (撰)

About the work

A two-juan MíngZhèngdé local gazetteer of Cháoyì 朝邑 county (in present-day Wèinán 渭南, Shǎnxī, on the lower Wèi 渭 river just before its confluence with the Yellow River), composed in the second month of Zhèngdé 14 (1519) by Hán Bāngjìng 韓邦靖 (1488–1523), at the request of the magistrate Wáng Dào 王道 (zì Tǒngfǔ 統甫), a native of Língchuān 陵川. Famously brief — the upper juan covering 總志, 風俗, 物産, 田賦 and the lower juan covering 名宦, 人物, 雜記 — the work became a landmark of the late-Míng xiànzhì genre and is paired in the Sìkù tradition with Kāng Hǎi’s 康海 Wǔgōng xiànzhì 武功縣志 as one of the two most admired Míng-era Guānzhōng 關中 county gazetteers, the Wǔgōng being modelled on the Hànshū and the Cháoyì on the Shǐjì.

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Cháoyì xiànzhì in two juan is by Hán Bāngjìng of the Míng. Bāngjìng, zì Rǔqìng 汝慶, hào Wǔquán 五泉, was a native of Cháoyì. He was a jìnshì of the wùchén year of the Zhèngdé reign (1508) and rose to the office of vice-director (yuánwàiláng 員外郎) in the Ministry of Works. The book was completed in the jǐmǎo year of Zhèngdé (1519). The upper juan has four sections: Zǒngzhì 總志, Fēngsú 風俗, Wùchǎn 物産, Tiánfù 田賦; the lower juan has three: Míng huàn 名宦, Rénwù 人物, Záj 雜記. The upper juan runs to a few pages only, the lower to little more than ten. Of all gazetteers ancient and modern, none is more concise than this — yet its great threads and its small detail are all comprehensively in place. Other gazetteers tend to inflate their treatment of local topography; this one is able to grasp essentials, so its words are sparing and yet no fact escapes. Even so, its narrative ordering and its decorative touches bear the marks of leisure, of an ample, unhurried hand free of any cramping or constraint. From the Míng down to the present it has been admired as a marvel; this is no empty reputation. Of all Míng-era yújì 輿記 of the Guānzhōng, only Kāng Hǎi’s Wǔgōng xiànzhì and the present work are most renowned. Critics say the Wǔgōng is rigorous in form, stemming from the Hànshū; the present work is loose-and-broad in its brushstroke, stemming from the Shǐjì. But while later gazetteers mostly took Master Kāng as their archetype, this one stands in a category of its own with no successor — what the saying calls “indispensable but admitting of no second.”

The book has, prefixed, a self-preface by Bāngjìng and another preface by Kāng Hǎi 康海; at the end are a postface by Lǚ Nán 呂柟 and a colophon by Wáng Dào 王道, magistrate of Cháoyì, native of Língchuān — all of high literary cultivation and well matched to the gazetteer itself.

Reverently collated and submitted, tenth 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

Hán Bāngjìng 韓邦靖 (1488–1523), zì Rǔqìng 汝慶, hào Wǔquán 五泉, was the younger of the famous Hán brothers of Cháoyì (the elder being Hán Bāngqí 韓邦奇, 1479–1556, the well-known Yìjīng commentator and statecraft writer). A jìnshì of 1508, Bāngjìng served briefly in the Ministry of Works before being dismissed for memorial criticism of court extravagance under the Zhèngdé emperor; he died young, at age 36, in 1523. The Cháoyì xiànzhì is the work of his retirement.

The dating is anchored to 1519 (Zhèngdé 14, jǐmǎo) by the author’s self-preface (dated the sixth day of the second month, 正徳己卯二月六日五泉韓邦靖書) and Kāng Hǎi’s preface (eighteenth day of the ninth month of the same year). Hán’s preface explains the genesis of the work: Cháoyì had had an earlier gazetteer that omitted the censor Gāo and the martyred maiden Liú, glossed over remarkable men such as Chéng Jǐ 程濟, Zhōu Yù 周彧, and Yáng Gōng 楊恭, and failed to record the relatively recent and dramatic shift of the Jǔ 沮 river (which had for thousands of years debouched into the Wèi but was now flowing directly into the Yellow River). It was at the magistrate Wáng Dào’s invitation that Hán undertook the redaction.

The book’s celebrated brevity (two juan, the upper of only a few leaves, the lower of slightly more than ten) made it a model. Kāng Hǎi’s preface — in itself a strong piece of literary endorsement from one of the Seven Masters of the early Míng restoration of antique style — explicitly contrasts the rigorous, Hànshū-derived form of his own Wǔgōng xiànzhì with the freer, Shǐjì-derived form of Hán’s work, an opposition the Sìkù tiyao picks up and repeats. The two are routinely listed together as the twin Guānzhōng masterpieces of Míng county gazetteer literature. Lǚ Nán’s 呂柟 postface and Wáng Dào’s colophon both survive in the WYG copy.

The Sìkù editors retained the work despite its diminutive size precisely because of its formal achievement — for them, it stood with the Wǔgōng xiànzhì as proof that the Míng xiànzhì could be a literary, not merely an administrative, genre. The catalog meta records it as 1 juan; both the tiyao itself and standard later editions give 2 juan, which is correct.

Translations and research

No English translation. The work is treated in:

  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (6th ed., 2022) §16.4.1 (gazetteers as a genre); the Hán family is mentioned passim in connection with Guānzhōng intellectual life.
  • Liú Jiǎn 劉建, Hán Bāngjìng yánjiū 韓邦靖研究 (master’s thesis, Shǎnxī Normal University, c. 2010s) — collects biographical sources.
  • Standard reprint in Tiānyī gé cáng Míng dài fāng zhì xuǎn kān xù biān 天一閣藏明代方志選刊續編, Shànghǎi Shūdiàn, 1990, alongside other early-Míng xiànzhì.

Other points of interest

The Cháoyì xiànzhì is regularly cited in Chinese local-gazetteer historiography as the paradigmatic example of jiǎn 簡 (“brevity”) as a positive editorial ideal: the Sìkù tiyao makes the comparison with the parallel paradigmatic yán 嚴 (“strictness”) of the Wǔgōng xiànzhì explicit. The work is also a small but important document of the Jǔ-river hydrological shift in late Míng northern Shǎnxī.

Graph View

Backlinks