滇略

Diān lüè 滇略

A Compendium of Yúnnán by 謝肇淛 (撰)

About the work

A ten-juan late-Míng provincial compendium of Yúnnán, composed by Xiè Zhàozhè 謝肇淛 (1567–1624) during his service in the province (1612–1620 as Yúnnán àncháshǐ 按察使 and bùzhèngshǐ 布政使). The book takes the form of ten thematic lüè 略 (“summaries”): (1) Bǎn lüè 版略 — the geographical extent; (2) Shèng lüè 勝略 — mountains and rivers; (3) Chǎn lüè 産略 — local products; (4) Sú lüè 俗略 — folk customs; (5) Xù lüè 續略 — eminent officials; (6) Xiàn lüè 獻略 — local worthies; (7) Shì lüè 事略 — historical events; (8) Wén lüè 文略 — literary remains; (9) Yí lüè 夷略 — non-Hàn peoples (the Miáo 苗 ethnographic catalogue); (10) Zá lüè 雜略 — miscellany. The work belongs to a distinguished line of Yúnnán historical-geographical literature reaching back to Cháng Qú’s 常璩 Huáyáng guózhì 華陽國志 in the Jìn, and forward to Xīn Xiǎn 辛顯, Yí Lǐjīng 怡李京, Yáng Shèn 楊愼, and Tián Rǔchéng 田汝成 in the late Míng; in his postface Xuē Chéngjǔ 薛承矩 places the Diān lüè as the synthesizing successor that fills the gaps of all of these.

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Diān lüè in ten juan is by Xiè Zhàozhè of the Míng. Zhàozhè already has the Shǐ huì 史觽 entered in the catalog. This book was made when he was an official in Yúnnán. It is divided into ten sections: (1) Bǎn lüè, treating territorial extent; (2) Shèng lüè, treating mountains and rivers; (3) Chǎn lüè, treating local products; (4) Sú lüè, treating folk customs; (5) Xù lüè, treating eminent officials; (6) Xiàn lüè, treating local worthies; (7) Shì lüè, treating historical events; (8) Wén lüè, treating literary works; (9) Yí lüè, treating ethnic-minority peoples; (10) Zá lüè, treating miscellany. Although by and large the work is grounded in earlier tújīng 圖經 sources, with new matter added only sparingly, Zhàozhè was at heart a man of letters and on the side of jìsòng 記誦 erudition was widely read; thus its citations are evidentially backed and its narrative methodically arranged, and compared with other geographical accounts its formal elegance and refinement are conspicuous. Xuē Chéngjǔ’s preface says that “above it traces back to Cháng Qú of the Huáyáng guózhì tradition for what they failed to reach, and below it supplements the lacunae in the records of Xīn Xiǎn, Yí Lǐjīng, Yáng Shèn, and Tián Rǔchéng.” Háng Shìjùn’s 杭世駿 Dào yuán táng jí 道援堂集 has a colophon to this book which says “it is detailed on what is far and brief on what is near, broad in its survey but spare in selection, around the wastes of Cāngshān and Ěrshuǐ called a fine history.” None of these is overstated. Reverently collated and submitted, sixth month, 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

Xiè Zhàozhè 謝肇淛 (1567–1624), zì Zàiháng 在杭, hào Wǔshān 武林 / Xiǎocǎozhāi 小草齋 / Wǔquán 武泉, native of Chánglè 長樂 (Fújiàn), was a Wànlì 30 (1602) jìnshì and one of the most cosmopolitan and well-travelled scholar-officials of the late Míng. After provincial service in Húzhōu and elsewhere, he was appointed ànchá fùshǐ of Yúnnán in 1612 and rose to bùzhèngshǐ there before his transfer in 1620. The CBDB record (c_personid 30336) gives no birth and death years (zeros), but his standard accepted dates are 1567–1624 — followed in the catalog meta and here.

The Diān lüè belongs to Xiè’s Yúnnán years (Wànlì 40–48, i.e. 1612–1620). The catalog meta gives no precise date; the book must have been substantially complete by the time of his transfer in 1620 (the latest events recorded internally do not exceed Wànlì 47 / 1619), and the bracket 1610–1620 used here is the tightest defensible window. Wilkinson’s Chinese History: A New Manual (§42.3, on opium) cites Dian Lüe juan 4 directly as a primary source on the late-Míng opium and jade markets at Yǒngchāng 永昌 and Téngyuè 騰越 on the China-Burma frontier — one of the earliest substantial Chinese-language witnesses to commercial opium in southwest China.

The work’s two substantive contributions to Míng Yúnnán historiography are (a) the Yí lüè — a major ethnographic compendium of the non-Hàn peoples of southwestern China and northern mainland Southeast Asia, drawing on his own observation as well as on Tián Rǔchéng’s earlier Yánjiào jìwén 炎徼紀聞 and the Báigǔ tōngjì 白古通記 tradition — and (b) the Wén lüè, which preserves a substantial corpus of late-Míng poetry and prose on Yúnnán places and persons, including material no longer extant elsewhere. The framing in ten thematic lüè (rather than the conventional gazetteer division by fǔzhōuxiàn) makes the work more usable as a thematic encyclopedia than as a positional reference, and the Sìkù editors prize it on precisely this point: the tiyao describes its tenor as yǎjié 雅潔 (“formally elegant and clean”).

The other major work by Xiè to which the tiyao refers — the Shǐ huì 史觽 (alt. Shǐcī 史觿) — is a methodological-critical work on historiography also entered in the Sìkù zǐbù. He is best known today for the encyclopedic bǐjì Wǔ zá zǔ 五雜俎 (sometimes Wǔ zá zǔ 五雜組), a sprawling miscellany on every aspect of late-Míng material, technical, social, and literary culture (translated in part by Goodrich and others, and one of the most-mined Míng bǐjì in modern Western sinology).

Translations and research

• Yang Bin 楊斌 et al. (and earlier Fāng Guóyú 方國瑜 in the Yúnnán shǐliào cóngkān 雲南史料叢刊 series, vol. 6) — the Diān lüè is included with annotations in Yúnnán shǐliào cóngkān, vol. 6 (Yúnnán Dàxué Chūbǎnshè, 1998) — the standard modern reference text.
• Goodrich, L. Carrington & Chao-ying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644, vol. 1, “Hsieh Chao-che [Xie Zhaozhe],” pp. 546–550 — entry on Xiè by Hok-lam Chan, with full bibliography of his works including the Diān lüè.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (6th ed., 2022) §42.3 (opium and stimulants) — primary-source citation of Diān lüè juan 4 on the Yǒngchāng-Téngyuè opium market.
• Modern monographs on late-Míng Yúnnán (e.g. Charles Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier, Harvard, 2006) cite the Diān lüè as a Míng-Qīng watershed source on the southwestern frontier.

Other points of interest

The Yí lüè (juan 9) of the Diān lüè is one of the principal late-Míng texts on the Bǎiyí 百夷, Cuàn 爨, and other ethnonyms of the Yúnnán-Burma-Tibet borderland; it is widely cited in the modern ethnohistorical literature on the Tǔsī 土司 system. Háng Shìjùn’s later (Qīng) endorsement quoted in the tiyao — that the work is “called a fine history around the wastes of Cāngshān and Ěrshuǐ” — fixed its reputation among Qīng-era frontier-historiography readers.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (6th ed., 2022).
• CBDB: 謝肇淛 c_personid 30336 (index year 1562).
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11062828 (謝肇淛)
• Dictionary of Ming Biography, vol. 1, pp. 546–550.