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吳興備志

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Text ID
KR2k0034
Date
1614–1624
Dynasty
明

Wúxīng bèizhì 吳興備志

Supplementary Records of Wúxīng by 董斯張 (撰)

About the work

A 32-juan late-Míng prefectural compilation on Wúxīng 吳興 (Húzhōu 湖州 prefecture, in northern Zhèjiāng), composed by Dǒng Sīzhāng 董斯張 (1586–1628), zì Xiázhōu 遐周, native of Wūchéng 烏程 (Húzhōu). The work is organized as 26 zhēng 徵 (“attestations”): Dìzhòu 帝胄 (imperial scions), Gōngwéi 宫闈 (palace women), Fēngjué 封爵 (enfeoffments), Guānshī 官師 (officials and teachers, in 6 juan), Rénwù 人物 (notables, in 5 juan), Jīhuī 笄褘 (women), Yúgōng 寓公 (sojourning gentlemen), Yìshù 藝術 (arts), Xiàngwěi 象緯 (astronomy), Jiànzhì 建置 (administrative establishment), Yánzé 巖澤 (mountains and waters), Tiánfù 田賦 (land tax), Shuǐlì 水利 (water control), Xuǎnjǔ 選舉 (examinations), Zhànshǒu 戰守 (military defense), Zhènxù 賑恤 (famine relief), Xiángniè 祥孽 (omens and disasters), Jīngjí 經籍 (bibliography), Yíshū 遺書 (lost books), Jīnshí 金石 (epigraphy), Shūhuà 書畵 (calligraphy and painting), Qīngbì 清閟 (rare collectables), Fāngwù 方物 (regional products), Suǒ 璅 (in 3 juan, miscellany of the small), Guǐ 詭 (in 2 juan, miscellany of the strange), and Kuāngjí è 匡籍譌 (correction of bibliographic errors). The method is to quote source texts in full and annotate them with the compiler’s evidential remarks below — explicitly modelled on Zhāng Míngfèng’s 張鳴鳳 Guì shèng 桂勝 (a Guǎngxī compilation organized on the same principle).

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Wúxīng bèizhì in 32 juan is by Dǒng Sīzhāng of the Míng. Sīzhāng, zì Xiázhōu 遐周, was a native of Wūchéng. This compilation extracts and records the historical materials of Húzhōu, divided into 26 zhēng: Dìzhòu, Gōngwéi, Fēngjué, Guānshī, Rénwù, Jīhuī, Yúgōng, Xiàngwěi, Jiànzhì, Yánzé, Tiánfù, Shuǐlì, Xuǎnjǔ, Zhànshǒu, Zhènxù, Xiángniè, Jīngjí, Yíshū, Jīnshí, Shūhuà, Qīngbì, Fāngwù, Suǒ, Guǐ, Kuāngjí. Its gathering and culling are extremely full; for the lost lore and minor matter of the Wúxīng region the citation-and-attestation is roughly comprehensive. In every section it transcribes ancient books in their entirety and records their original texts; where there is some evidential rectification to be made, this is appended below. This is the form of Zhāng Míngfèng’s Guì shèng — Sīzhāng follows it. Although the compiler’s intent is to be broad and obscure, and the work is not without the criticism of being over-spreading, it must be said that against the prevailing custom of his contemporaries — who fastened on rumor and on plagiarism, “echo and re-echo, snatch and clutch” (影響附㑹之談剽竊撏撦之習) — he made a single sweep of all this clean. Hence what he selects and records is in every case formally elegant and evidentially precise, sufficient to support textual investigation. Among Late-Míng works this is one of the relatively useful in practice; in the field of “yellow grass and white reed” (黃茅白葦, i.e., the dreary middling), it can be called a peerless plant. Reverently collated and submitted, eighth month, Qiánlóng 42 (1777). 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 work’s date is anchored to its self-preface (zìxù 自序), which is dated jiǎzǐ of Tiānqǐ (i.e. Tiānqǐ 4 = 1624). Dǒng’s preface is unusually rich on its own genesis: he had begun gathering material in 1614 (jiǎyín 甲寅), reaching six juan and then setting the project aside for ten years; he resumed in early 1624, working concentratedly for “more than a hundred days” to add seven juan, then with the loan of Mǐn Yuánjīng 閔康侯 / 閔元衢’s roughly five-hundred-volume library and a long-snowstorm-night routine of friends sending books at midnight (xuě xī kòu guān, jiǎ qǐ gōu huǒ xiě zhī), reached sixteen volumes; with the further help of Zhāng 張 and Yīn 殷 brothers and finally with the cónglù 叢錄 of Mǐn 閔 himself, the work was rounded to its received 32 juan. The final compilation involved a circle: the compiler’s own household kin (Dǒng Sīzhāng’s brothers Zǐjīng 子京 and Rénshēng 人生 / Shēngfǔ 生甫 and his nephew 自寅), the Mǐn brothers (Mǐn Yuánhéng 元衢 / 康侯 and Mǐn Yuánjīng 元京 / 子京), and others — making it as much a Wūchéng literati cooperation as a single-author work.

The work is a textbook example of the late-Míng bèizhì 備志 (“supplementary gazetteer”) genre — an enrichment of standard prefectural gazetteers (fǔzhì) by extensive verbatim quotation from miscellaneous sources (poetry, bǐjì, dynastic histories, epigraphy) on a fixed grid of topical zhēng. The Sìkù editors are explicit about the method’s parentage in Zhāng Míngfèng’s Guì shèng and explicit about its unusual virtue against the late-Míng background of slack erudition: full-text quotation rather than summary; explicit source attribution; and active critical apparatus in the form of the closing Kuāngjí è juan correcting prior bibliographic and biographical errors specific to Wúxīng materials.

The work is structured around the long history of Wúxīng / Húzhōu as a major literary, religious, and economic center: the compilers of all earlier Wúxīng gazetteers — Wéi Zhāo 韋昭 (3rd c.), Tánshì 談氏 (Sòng), Láoshì 勞氏 (Sòng/Yuán?), Lóupǔ 婁浦 (the Yuán Tángshì 唐氏 Wúxīng zhì), Xú Chánggǔ 徐長谷 (the Yúgōng zhì tradition) — are explicitly named in Dǒng’s preface as the cumulative tradition Sīzhāng is supplementing. The work is one of the principal sources for late-Míng Húzhōu literary history, including poetry, painting (the 書畵 zhēng of juan 25 is one of the more substantial Míng-era extracts of Húzhōu painting biographies), and the Wāng Lún 汪倫 / Sū Dōngpō / Liùyuánzhī 六遠之 anecdote tradition.

Translations and research

No European-language translation. The Wúxīng bèizhì is reprinted in:

  • Sìkù quánshū 文淵閣本 (the present source).
  • Xù xiū Sìkù quánshū 續修四庫全書, vol. 738 (Shànghǎi Gǔjí, 1995/2002).
  • Zhōngguó dìfāng zhì jí-chéng — fǔ-xiàn zhì jí 中國地方志集成 — Zhèjiāng fǔ-xiàn zhì jí (Hú-zhōu fascicle).

Zhāng Bóméi 張伯偉 and other scholars of Míng bǐjì and fāng-zhì historiography cite the work as the principal Míng-era thematic fǔ-zhì of Hú-zhōu; Wáng Yù 王禹 (Hú-zhōu Normal University) has published a series of mainland articles since the 2000s using the Wúxīng bèizhì as a principal source on Hú-zhōu Buddhist sites and on Wū-chéng painting circles.

No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.

Other points of interest

The closing Kuāngjí è juan (juan 32, “the rectification of bibliographic errors”) is unusual in a late-Míng prefectural compilation: a full juan dedicated to kǎozhèng 考證-style emendation of mistakes in earlier Wúxīng gazetteers and in standard reference works as they bear on Wúxīng. The book’s recent textual scholarship (Wáng Yù and others) has used this juan as evidence that the kǎozhèng methodological turn often associated with Qīng evidential learning has substantial late-Míng anticipations, especially in the fǔzhì literature of literarily-developed Jiāngnán prefectures.

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