陝西通志

Shǎnxī tōngzhì 陝西通志

Comprehensive Gazetteer of Shǎnxī supervised by 劉於義 (Liú Yúyì, 1675–1748) — jiānxiū 監修 compiled by 沈青崖 (Shěn Qīngyá, fl. 1730s) — biānzuǎn 編纂

About the work

The Yōngzhèng-era provincial gazetteer of Shǎnxī, in 100 juan and 32 categories. The work was launched in 1731 in response to the Yōngzhèng 7 (1729) edict; the Shǎnxī Governor-General and Governor entrusted the editorial work to the liángchǔdào 糧儲道 (Grain-Storage Circuit) Shěn Qīngyá 沈青崖, who took as his base the well-regarded Kāngxī 6 (1667) provincial gazetteer of Jiǎ Hànfù 賈漢復, supplementing it with the Míng-era gazetteers of Mǎ Lǐ 馬理 (1542) and Féng Cóngwú 馮從吾 (preceding) — Mǎ and Féng both being the principal Míng historical-geographers of the region. The 100-juan compilation was completed in Yōngzhèng 12 (1734); the jìnbiǎo (presentation memorial) of the acting Shǎnxī Governor-General Liú Yúyì 劉於義 is dated Yōngzhèng 13/2/1 (1735/2/22). The work is unusual for the dense ànyǔ 案語 (editorial annotations) Shěn embedded throughout the text, comparing variant readings — a feature singled out for praise by the Sìkù editors.

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Shǎnxī tōngzhì in 100 juan is supervised by Liú Yúyì 劉於義, acting Governor-General of Shǎnxī and Minister of Personnel, and others. The earlier Shǎnxī provincial gazetteer was compiled in the Kāngxī era by the Governor Jiǎ Hànfù 賈漢復, and was at the time considered well-pruned and apt; however, with the passage of time, alterations and additions had so accumulated that the old gazetteer no longer accorded with current arrangements. In the seventh year of Yōngzhèng (1729), with the imperial decree to compile provincial gazetteers in every province, the Governor-General and Governor of Shǎnxī assigned the project to the Grain-Storage Circuit officer Shěn Qīngyá 沈青崖. Qīngyá thereupon took Hànfù’s earlier work as his base, augmented it with the writings of the Míng-era pair Mǎ 馬 and Féng 馮 (i.e. Mǎ Lǐ 馬理 and Féng Cóngwú 馮從吾), and, by judicious supplement and excision, brought the work into 100 juan divided into 32 categories. In the twelfth year of Yōngzhèng (1734), Yúyì and the others first presented it to the throne.

The seat of Shǎnxī was anciently the capital of Hàn and Táng, and the documentary record is therefore unusually copious. Such works as the Sānfǔ Huángtú 三輔黃圖 and the Chángān zhì 長安志 have all been called good editions by earlier scholars, but their volumes are extensive and their textual variations many. As to the lesser sub-prefectures within the province’s jurisdiction — Suí 綏, Jiā 葭, Fèng 鳳, Xīng 興 and the like — these lie in border-corner regions, where local gazetteers are often barren and slipshod, and inherited misreadings persist. The present work, in revising antiquity by the present and supplying full or summary treatment as fits, exceeds in usefulness those other gazetteers that drag in pieces and force connections. Within the book, occasional editorial ànyǔ (annotations) are inserted to compare variant readings, and these too are dependable and exact — worth taking up.

Reverently collated and submitted, third month, Qiánlóng 46 (1781).

Abstract

The Shǎnxī tōngzhì of Yōngzhèng 9 – Yōngzhèng 12 (1731–1734, with presentation memorial dated 1735) succeeds two principal MíngQīng predecessors:

1. The Míng Shǎnxī tōngzhì tradition, principally Mǎ Lǐ’s 馬理 Jiājìng Shǎnxī tōngzhì of 1542 (40 juan; preserved separately in the Sìkù — see KR2k0026), supplemented by Féng Cóngwú’s 馮從吾 (1557–1627) Shǎnxī xiànjiā zhì 陝西獻徵志 and related works.
2. The Kāngxī 6 (1667) Shǎnxī tōngzhì under Jiǎ Hànfù 賈漢復 (then Shǎnxī governor) — the immediate predecessor and substantive base of the Yōngzhèng version.

The Yōngzhèng project was effectively the work of one principal hand: Shěn Qīngyá 沈青崖, the Shǎnxī Grain-Storage Circuit officer, who took on the compilation when the project was passed down to him by the Governor-General and Governor. The catalog meta names Liú Yúyì 劉於義 as the supervising official; it was Liú who, as acting Shǎnxī Governor-General with the secondary title Minister of Personnel, presented the finished work to the throne in the jìnbiǎo dated Yōngzhèng 13/2/1 (1735/2/22). Liú had earlier served briefly as Zhílì governor-general (concurrent with the Jīfǔ tōngzhì project — KR2k0041) before transferring to Shǎnxī in 1733 to oversee the supply for the Yōngzhèng-era northwest military operations against the Dzungars. The two preface signatories at the head of the present juàn 0 are Liú Yúyì (Yōngzhèng 13/2/1) and the Shǎnxī Governor concurrently presenting; the prior Governor-General Chá Lángā 查郎阿 had also held nominal supervision but was redeployed before completion.

The 32-category structure is conventionally Yōngzhèng-standard. The work’s distinctive editorial feature, singled out by the Sìkù editors, is the use of ànyǔ (editorial annotations within the running text) to compare variant readings and weigh evidence — anticipating the philological habit of late-Qiánlóng kǎozhèng practice and reflecting the substantial weight of HànTáng documentary materials Shěn had to navigate (the Sānfǔ Huángtú, the Chángān zhì, etc.). The Yìwén and Shíyí 拾遺 (juan 98–100) sections are particularly elaborate, with Shíyí itself sub-divided into twelve sub-categories (Bógǔ 博古, Fēngyǎ 風雅, Xiánshì 閒適, Yǔlín 語林, Yìshì 軼事, Wēiyìng 微應, Dìngé 訂訛, Suǒsuì 瑣碎, Quánqí 權奇, Huájī 滑稽, Shényì 神異, Jiànjiè 鑒戒).

The work was substantially superseded by the Guāngxù Shǎnxī tōngzhì (1880) under Lǐ Wényī 厲文煐, but the Yōngzhèng version preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vols. 551–556) remains the canonical Qīng-era documentary baseline for Shǎnxī’s eighteenth-century geography.

Translations and research

No English translation. Heavily exploited in Western scholarship on the Hàn-Táng historical geography of the Wèi River basin, on Shǎnxī’s eighteenth-century frontier administration, and on the Yōngzhèng-era northwest military supply: Pierre-Étienne Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers: An Historical and Practical Introduction (1992); Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard, 2005), centrally on the Yōngzhèng-Qiánlóng northwest frontier and the supply role of Liú Yúyì in Shǎnxī; James Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864 (Stanford, 1998); Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §66.4.3.4. For Shěn Qīngyá’s editorial method and the àn-yǔ apparatus, see Wáng Cài-róng 王彩蓉, “Shěn Qīngyá yǔ Yōngzhèng Shǎnxī tōngzhì” 沈青崖與雍正《陝西通志》, Shǎn-xī shīfàn dàxué xuébào 陝西師範大學學報 (2010.4).

Other points of interest

The work’s ànyǔ (editorial annotation) apparatus is one of the earliest sustained instances in Qīng provincial-gazetteer practice of running philological commentary on the documentary record — a stylistic device that anticipates the late-Qiánlóng kǎozhèng turn and that finds its more developed counterpart only in Shěn Yìjī’s Zhèjiāng tōngzhì (KR2k0044) bibliographic section. The HànTáng Sānfǔ Huángtú and Chángān zhì texts that Shěn collated for the Yúdì and Gǔjì sections give the work a uniquely deep historiographical layering for an eighteenth-century tōngzhì.

Links

• Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11062954 (陝西通志)
• Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers (1992).