Sìchuān tōngzhì 四川通志
Comprehensive Gazetteer of Sìchuān supervised by 黃廷桂 (Huáng Tíngguì, 1691–1759) — jiānxiū 監修 compiled by 張晉生 (Zhāng Jìnshēng, fl. early 18th c.) — biānzuǎn 編纂
About the work
The Yōngzhèng-era Sìchuān tōngzhì in 47 juan and 49 (the Sìkù tíyào reads “forty-nine”) categories, the fifth provincial gazetteer of Sìchuān after four Míng-period redactions and the Kāngxī 12 (1673) compilation by Cài Yùróng 蔡毓榮 and Zhāng Détì 張德地. Compiled under imperial mandate of Yōngzhèng 7 (1729) by Huáng Tíngguì 黃廷桂 (Sìchuān Governor-General, Vice-Minister of War, Right Vice Censor-in-Chief) and others. The 47-juan rubric covers astronomy, building-history, frontier-defense, native-chieftaincy administration (tǔsī 土司 上下), western regions (Xīyù 西域), salt and tea monopolies, túntián military-agricultural colonies, and the standard biographical and topographical categories. The work survived as the canonical Qīng-era documentary baseline for the province until the Jiāqìng-era revision of 1816.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: the Sìchuān tōngzhì in 47 juan is supervised by Huáng Tíngguì 黃廷桂, Governor-General of Sìchuān, Vice-Minister of War, and Right Vice Censor-in-Chief, and others. The Sìchuān tōngzhì was redacted four times in the Míng period; only its Yìwén (literature section), produced by Yáng Shèn 楊慎 [楊慎], was elegant and abundant, while the remainder failed to grasp the essentials in full. In Kāngxī 12 (1673) of our dynasty, Governor-General Cài Yùróng 蔡毓榮 and Provincial Governor Zhāng Détì 張德地 carried on the work and continued the compilation, but in the aftermath of military upheaval the documentary record was wanting and many lacunae remained.
The present compilation was, in Yōngzhèng 7 (1729), redacted afresh on imperial mandate by Huáng Tíngguì and others. It is divided into 49 categories; what was missing from the older gazetteer is supplied, and what was abbreviated is enlarged — the result is comparatively detailed and complete. Among the inherited errors of the older gazetteer not yet wholly purged are such items as: the Táng Wéi Zhāodù 韋昭度’s expedition against Chén Jìngxuán 陳敬瑄 (he returned without merit, yet is included); the Sòng Yuè Yún 岳雲 as Defense-Commissioner of Zhōngzhōu 忠州 (a merely “remote-conferred” appointment, yet entered as a míngyuán); Yú Yǔnwén 虞允文 as Sìchuān Pacification Commissioner (with overall command of all Shǔ — properly belonging to the tǒngbù 統部 frontmatter, not merely to the Bǎoníng 保寧 prefecture); the Táng Xiānyú Zhòngtōng 鮮于仲通, who attached himself to Yáng Guózhōng and lost his army to Nánzhào — both Tángshū and Xīn Tángshū are clear on this, yet he is here represented as having been demoted for opposing Guózhōng, and entered into the biographies. Such items still bear traces of the gazetteer’s habit of forced association and varnishing. Nevertheless, in collation and arrangement it is far more authoritative than the older gazetteer.
Abstract
The 1733 Sìchuān tōngzhì is one of the eight Yōngzhèng-decreed provincial gazetteers (Sìchuān, Shǎnxī, Shānxī, Hénán, Húguǎng, Jiāngxī, Fújiàn, Guǎngxī, Yúnnán, Guìzhōu, Gānsù, Guǎngdōng), all reaching woodblock between 1733 and 1736. Compiled under Huáng Tíngguì (j. 1716, Governor-General of Sìchuān 1730–1735), the work was completed in Yōngzhèng 11 (1733) and submitted with a jìnbiǎo. The Sìkù tíyào lists Yáng Shèn 楊慎’s Yìwén compilation as the only valuable section of the four Míng provincial gazetteers and explicitly criticizes the present compilation’s retention of certain tenacious local-historiographic distortions (Yuè Yún’s remote-conferred title, Xiānyú Zhòngtōng’s Nánzhào defeat). Despite these residual flaws, the Yōngzhèng Sìchuān tōngzhì is the documentary baseline for Sìchuān provincial history into the early-modern period; it was thoroughly superseded only by the Jiāqìng 21 (1816) redaction in 204 juan. Wilkinson §66.4.3.4 places it among the eight Yōngzhèng provincial gazetteers as a class.
The Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū version (vols. 559.1–561.1) is the most accessible witness; the original 1733 woodblock impression survives in major rare-book collections (e.g. the National Library of China). Note that catalog meta gives 47 juan, the Zinbun tíyào gives 47 juan, but the work as transmitted internally divides as 47 textual juan plus the catalog volume, with internal paginations sometimes treating the Yìwén sub-divisions as separate units.
Translations and research
No comprehensive English translation. Heavily mined in Western and Japanese scholarship on the Qīng administration of the southwestern frontier and the Sino-Tibetan / Sino-Yí border zone. Standard works: C. Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Harvard, 2006); Yingcong Dai, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing (Washington, 2009) — the principal monograph using this gazetteer for early-Qīng Sìchuān frontier policy; David A. Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain (Cambridge, 2016); William T. Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford, 2001), which uses the work for Sìchuān provincial governance under the Qiánlóng emperor’s father. For tǔsī and Sino-Tibetan border study see Yudru Tsomu, The Rise of Gönpo Namgyel in Kham (Lexington, 2015). Pierre-Étienne Will, Chinese Local Gazetteers (1992) is the standard methodological framework.
Other points of interest
The work is the only Yōngzhèng-era provincial gazetteer to retain a separate Xīyù 西域 (Western Regions) juan, reflecting Sìchuān’s administrative oversight of the Sino-Tibetan trade routes and the tǔsī of the Sino-Tibetan border. The Yìwén section preserves substantial documentary materials drawn from the older Yáng Shèn-redacted Míng yìwén — itself a major monument of Míng-era Shǔ historiography — and is in this regard the most valuable inheritance from the older gazetteer.
Links
- Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11148089 (四川通志)
- Wilkinson §66.4.3.4 (Provincial gazetteers).