南方草木狀

Nánfāng cǎomù zhuàng 南方草木狀

A Description of the Plants and Trees of the South by 嵇含 (Jī Hán, 263–306) — zhuàn 撰

About the work

A 3-juan natural-historical and ethnobotanical monograph on the flora of “the south” — comprising approximately modern-day Guǎngdōng, Guǎngxī, and northern Vietnam — divided into four categories (cǎo 草 herbs, mù 木 trees, guǒ 果 fruits, zhú 竹 bamboos) and treating eighty species. Conventionally attributed to Jī Hán (263–306), grand-nephew of Jī Kāng 嵇康 of the Zhúlín qī xián 竹林七賢, with the date 304 (Yǒngxīng 1, eleventh month) given in some Sòng prints. The work is the earliest extant Chinese-language regional flora and the principal documentary source for late-Hàn / Six-Dynasties knowledge of the tropical and subtropical plants of Lǐngnán and Indochina, including imported Southeast Asian and Mediterranean species (e.g. jasminum sambac / yēxīmíng 耶悉茗, henna / zhǐjiǎ huā 指甲花, banana / gānjiāo 甘蕉, coconut / yē 椰).

Tiyao

We respectfully note: the Nánfāng cǎomù zhuàng in three juan was composed by Jī Hán of Jìn. Hán’s affairs and traces are appended to the Jì Shào biography of the Jìnshū. Examining the Suízhì and the Jiù Tángzhì, both have a Jī Hán jí in ten juan (the Suízhì says: his collection has already been lost, but is appended to Guō Xiàng jí; the Jiù Tángzhì still records it under his name); but neither records this present book. It begins to be recorded in the Sòngzhì. Looking at this work’s record of the henna-flower (zhǐjiǎ huā) — which it says was transplanted to the South Sea from Greater Qín 大秦 — this means the flower already existed in the Jìn period; but the Táng Duàn Gōnglù’s Běihù lù says: “the henna-flower originally came from foreign lands; it first reached China in Liáng Dàtóng 2 (536)” — from this we know that Gōnglù had not seen this present book; presumably during the Táng it was not yet very famous, hence the dynastic monographs do not record it.

In all editions [the work] is signed simply “Qiáoguó Jī Hán”; only the old Sòng Máshā block-print bears the heading “Composed in the eleventh month, bǐngzǐ, of Yǒngxīng 1 (304), by the Bold-Defending General and Grand Warden of Xiāngyáng, Jī Hán” — recording his year and month and his offices in considerable detail. Probably the old text was thus, and Míng-period editors began to cut it out. Yet the Jìnshū Huìdì běnjì says: in Yǒngníng 2, first month, the era was changed to Yǒngān; in the seventh month it was changed to Jiànwǔ; in the eleventh month it was changed back to Yǒngān; in the twelfth month, dīnghài, the Yùzhāng prince Chì 熾 was established as Heir-Younger-Brother — and only then was it changed to Yǒngxīng. Therefore Yǒngxīng 1 cannot have an eleventh month. Further, Yǒngxīng 2 first month, jiǎwǔ, was the new moon; pushing the gānzhī back, bǐngzǐ must fall in the middle of the twelfth month of the previous year, twelve days before the change of era — at that time also not yet called Yǒngxīng. Or perhaps after the era was changed [the new compilers] retroactively called all of the twelfth month Yǒngxīng, and in successive transmission and printing the twelfth month came to be erroneously transcribed as the eleventh. Only the Suízhì calls Hán “Grand Warden of Guǎngzhōu,” whereas this work has “Grand Warden of Xiāngyáng”; examining the work’s contents — which all concern things from beyond the Lǐng — we suspect “Xiāngyáng” may be wrongly written.

The work is divided into the four categories of herbs, trees, fruits, and bamboos, in eighty species in all; the description is dignified and refined, not what people from after the Táng could fabricate; one cannot use the fact that it begins to be seen in the Sòngzhì to suspect it. The text is also the most complete; presumably, after the Sòng, the flower-manuals and gazetteers cited it abundantly, and so its phrases can be cross-collated, hence corruptions and lacunae are uniquely few. Respectfully proof-read in the ninth month of Qiánlóng 43 (1778).

Director-General compilers (chén /) Jǐ Yún, (chén /) Lù Xīxióng, (chén /) Sūn Shìyì; Director-General proof-reader (chén /) Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Nánfāng cǎomù zhuàng is the earliest surviving Chinese-language treatment of the flora of Lǐngnán and continental Southeast Asia, conventionally dated to Yǒngxīng 1 (304) and ascribed to Jī Hán 嵇含 (263–306) — grand-nephew of the Zhúlín qī xián poet Jī Kāng 嵇康 — who was appointed Grand Warden of Guǎngzhōu shortly before his violent death (the Suízhì gives “Guǎngzhōu,” some Sòng prints “Xiāngyáng,” with the Sìkù tíyào and Wilkinson favouring Guǎngzhōu on internal evidence). The work treats eighty species under four categories (herbs, trees, fruits, bamboos) and includes the earliest Chinese references to henna (zhǐjiǎ huā 指甲花 = Lawsonia inermis), Arabian jasmine (yēxīmíng 耶悉茗 = Jasminum sambac), banana (gānjiāo 甘蕉), coconut (yē 椰), bitter citron, piper betle, and the all-purpose medicinal paste chílìjiā 乞力伽 (a transcription of Latin theriaca, possibly containing opium derivatives — see Wilkinson §60.3).

The work’s authenticity has been disputed in modern scholarship. Mǎ Tàilái 馬泰來 (Ma Tai-loi) argued in 1978 that the received text is a Sòng-period (or earlier) compilation under Jī Hán’s name (T’oung Pao 64, 1978: 218–52); Lǐ Huìlín 李惠林 in his 1979 critical edition and English translation rejected this conclusion. The Sìkù compilers’ tíyào already noted the textual problems — the absence of the work from the Suí and JiùTáng monographs, its first recorded appearance in the Sòngzhì, and the impossible date “Yǒngxīng 1, eleventh month” attached to some prints (Yǒngxīng 1 having no eleventh month per the Jìnshū chronology) — but defended the early date on stylistic grounds. The dating bracket here (304 to ca. 1100) reflects the conservative position: the received recension is at the latest a Northern-Sòng work whose materials may go back to the early-fourth-century original.

The work is preserved in Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vol. 589.1) and is regularly cited in Chinese natural-historical literature from the Sòng onwards (Duàn Gōnglù’s Běihù lù KR2k0106 may not have seen it; the Sòngzhì knows it). It is the principal pre-Táng documentary witness for the diffusion of Southeast-Asian and West-Asian cultivars into China through Lǐngnán.

Translations and research

• Lǐ Huì-lín 李惠林 (Hui-lin Li), Nan-fang ts’ao-mu chuang: A fourth-century flora of Southeast Asia (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1979). The principal critical edition with full English translation and botanical commentary; defends the early date.
• Mǎ Tàilái 馬泰來 (Ma Tai-loi), “The authenticity of the Nan-fang ts’ao-mu chuang,” T’oung Pao 64 (1978): 218–52. Argues for a substantially later date.
• H. L. Reynolds and L. R. Yang, “On the Nanfang caomu zhuang,” in Journal of the West China Border Research Society 12 (1940).
• Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face (Honolulu, 2008), passim, on early-medieval Chinese knowledge of imported flora.
• Bertschinger, R. and others, in studies of early-medieval Chinese pharmacopoeia.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §60.3 (under Jī Hán, 32–35), summarises the work’s importance in the history of materia medica and ethnobotany.

Other points of interest

The work’s mention of chílìjiā 乞力伽 — a phonetic transcription of Greek/Latin theriaca, the all-purpose Mediterranean medicinal paste later supplied to the Táng court as tribute by the Roman East (Fúlín 拂林, 667) and Tokhara (729) — is one of the earliest documented vectors of Greek pharmacology into China and a key piece of evidence in the history of Eurasian materia medica.

Links

• Wikidata
• Lǐ Huìlín, Nan-fang ts’ao-mu chuang (CUHKP 1979)
• Mǎ Tàilái, T’oung Pao 64 (1978): 218–52