Jiànyán Yǐlái Cháoyě Zájì 建炎以來朝野雜記
Miscellaneous Records of Court and Country since the Jiànyán Era by 李心傳 (撰)
About the work
A topical institutional and political history of the four Southern-Sòng reigns Gāozōng 高宗, Xiàozōng 孝宗, Guāngzōng 光宗, and Níngzōng 寧宗, by Lǐ Xīnchuán 李心傳 (1166–1243), the indispensable companion to the same author’s annalistic Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yàolù 建炎以來繫年要錄. Although titled a zájì (“miscellany”), the work is in fact a thirteen-section huìyào in two collections (jiǎ jí 甲集 and yǐ jí 乙集), each of 20 juǎn. Topics include imperial virtue, suburban and ancestral sacrifices, ritual systems, court protocol, current events, precedents, miscellaneous matters, official posts, examinations, finance, the army, frontier defense (added explicitly in yǐ jí). It is the single richest topical source for institutional life of the Sòng court between 1127 and 1216, and Mǎ Duānlín praised it as “the fullest of all the unofficial histories since the southern crossing.”
Tiyao
By Lǐ Xīnchuán of the Sòng. Xīnchuán’s Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yàolù has been catalogued separately. Xīnchuán was strong in historiography, well-versed in court statutes and dynastic regulations. This work takes affairs after the southern crossing and arranges them by topic. Jiǎ jí, 20 juǎn, has thirteen gates: imperial virtue, suburban and ancestral sacrifices, ritual systems, zhìzuò (institutional creations), court affairs, current events, precedents, miscellaneous matters, official posts, examinations, finance, the army, frontier defense. Yǐ jí, 20 juǎn, lacks the suburban and ancestral sacrifices gate but adds frontier affairs as a separate category in its final juǎn; also thirteen gates in total. Each gate has sub-headings. Although called “miscellaneous record,” the format is essentially that of a huìyào, woven together with the Xìnián yàolù as warp and weft. Jiǎ jí was completed in Jiātài 2 (1202), yǐ jí in Jiādìng 9 (1216); each has its own preface.
Zhōu Mì in his Qídōng yěyǔ observed that some items, such as the “Zhào Shīwāng dog-bark” anecdote (a fabrication of Zhèng Dǒu meant to vent his resentment at being beaten by a Military-Academy student); the “Xǔ Jízhī kneeling” (Fèi Shìyào “dog-hole”) incidents; and various charges of usurpation against Hán Tuōzhòu, are unreliable—popular calumnies smuggled into the record. The work, gathering hearsay, indeed contains unreliable matter. Yet on the great affairs of the four reigns Gāo, Xiào, Guāng, and Níng—ritual, music, punishments, government, official posts, examinations, military, agriculture, finance—it leaves nothing untreated, and the whole is complete from beginning to end. Much of what it preserves is missing from Mǎ Duānlín’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo, Zhāng Jùnqīng’s Shāntáng kǎosuǒ, and the Sòngshǐ treatises. Hence the Tōngkǎo calls it “the most detailed of the unofficial histories since the southern crossing”; Wáng Shìzhēn’s Jūyì lù likewise calls it “comprehensive in plan and detail, a giant of historiography—any treatment of Sòng affairs must here find its evidence.”
In Sòng times there was a Chéngdū Xīn-clan printed edition, prefaced with the Sòngshǐ biography of Xīnchuán and several imperial directives requesting submission of the Yàolù. Today only manuscript copies remain. Zhāng Duānyì’s Guì’ěr sānjí preface mentions that Xīnchuán told him “Cháoyě zájì bǐng and dīng collections are about to be completed”—so this work was not limited to jiǎ and yǐ. But Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí and the Sòngshǐ biography do not mention these later collections; they were probably compiled in old age but not circulated, and so unknown to the world.
Abstract
Jiǎ jí (the first collection) was completed in 1202 and yǐ jí (the second) in 1216, as the prefaces to each plainly state. Lǐ Xīnchuán evidently planned further bǐng 丙 and dīng 丁 collections—Zhāng Duānyì records him as saying so—but these did not survive into the public manuscript tradition; the Sìkù editors note that they may have been completed but never circulated.
The work serves as the topical complement to Lǐ Xīnchuán’s annalistic masterpiece Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yàolù. Where the Yàolù moves chronologically through year-by-year events, the Cháoyě zájì arranges the same era by institutional category, in the form of a private huìyào. The two were planned and executed in tandem, as Lǐ acknowledges in his prefaces. Mǎ Duānlín’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo draws extensively on it for its Southern-Sòng material, often verbatim; Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 in the early Qīng called it “the giant of historiography” (shǐjiā zhī jùbò 史家之巨擘) for Southern-Sòng administrative matters.
The dating bracket runs from completion of jiǎ jí in 1202 to completion of yǐ jí in 1216, the active span of compilation; the Sòngshǐ gives Lǐ Xīnchuán’s life-dates as 1166–1243 (followed here, consistent with CBDB).
Translations and research
The standard punctuated edition is Jiànyán yǐlái cháoyě zájì 建炎以來朝野雜記, ed. Xú Guī 徐規, 2 vols. (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2000)—the principal modern recension, collated against Sòng-edition fragments preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. No full Western translation. Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge, 2021), pp. 295–330, devotes substantial discussion to Lǐ Xīnchuán’s working method and the relationship between the Yàolù and the Cháoyě zájì. See also Wāng Shèngduó 汪聖鐸, “Cháoyě zájì sōkùběn yǔ Xú Guī jiàozhèng běn duìbǐ yánjiū” (Hébéi xuékān 河北學刊, 2009.5).
Other points of interest
The lost bǐng and dīng collections, mentioned only in Zhāng Duānyì’s Guì’ěr jí preface, are tantalizing: had they survived they would have extended Lǐ Xīnchuán’s institutional record into the late Níngzōng and Lǐzōng reigns. Their disappearance is itself part of the larger thirteenth-century textual loss documented by Hartman.