Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目
by 王堯臣 (Wáng Yáochén, 1003–1058), 王洙 (Wáng Zhū, 997–1057), and 歐陽修 (Ōuyáng Xiū, 1007–1072), with others, by imperial command
About the work
The principal Northern Sòng imperial-library catalogue, compiled by command of Rénzōng 仁宗 between Jǐngyòu 1 (1034) and Qìnglì 1 (1041), in 30,669 juan of holdings divided over 66 (or 60 / 64 / 67, depending on the source) juan of catalogue. Originally each entry was prefaced by a brief descriptive xùshì 序釋; in the early Southern Sòng these were stripped out at Zhèng Qiáo’s 鄭樵 instigation, and the abridged form became the standard text. The Sìkù editors reconstructed a 12-juan recension from quotations preserved in Ōuyáng Xiū’s collected works, in Mǎ Duānlín’s 馬端臨 Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考, in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典, and from the Tiānyīgé 天一閣 manuscript that Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 had transcribed. The two date-bounds in the frontmatter therefore bracket the original compilation (1041) and the Sìkù reconstruction (1781).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Chóngwén zǒngmù in twelve juan was compiled by Wáng Yáochén of the Sòng and others by imperial command — a unification of the holdings of the Four Halls. By Sòng institution the Zhāowén 昭文, Shǐguǎn 史館, and Jíxián 集賢 made up the Three Halls; in the third year of Tàipíng xīngguó [978] the Chóngwén Court was built northeast of the Zuǒshēnglóng Gate and called the New Hall Library; in the first year of Duāngǒng [988] an edict separated more than ten thousand juan from the Three Halls’ holdings to form a Library Pavilion called the Mìgé 秘閣, which together with the Three Halls made up the Four Halls. In the leap sixth month of the first year of Jǐngyòu [1034], because the Three Halls’ and the Mìgé’s holdings were partly muddled or incomplete, the Hanlin scholars Zhāng Guān 張觀, Lǐ Shū 李淑, Sòng Qí 宋祁, and others were ordered to revise it: deleting what was redundant or wrong, copying out what was missing or fragmentary. Then by edict the Hanlin scholar Wáng Yáochén, the Shǐguǎn jiǎntǎo 史館檢討 Wáng Zhū, and the Guǎngé jiàokān 館閣校勘 Ōuyáng Xiū and others corrected the entries, deliberated the sequence, and made the catalogue: 30,669 juan in all, classified and indexed in 66 juan, presented to the throne on the jǐchǒu day of the twelfth month of the first year of Qìnglì [1041]. It was titled Chóngwén zǒngmù by imperial bestowal. Later Shénzōng renamed the Chóngwén Court the Mìshūshěng 秘書省, and in Huīzōng’s reign the title was changed to Mìshū zǒngmù 秘書總目, but Southern Sòng citations preserve the original name.
Lǐ Tāo’s 李燾 Xù zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān 續資治通鑑長編 says 60 juan; the Línshī gùshì 麟臺故事 agrees; the Zhōngxīng shūmù 中興書目 says 66; Jiāng Shàoyú’s 江少虞 Shíshí lèiyuàn 事實類苑 says 67; the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo says 64; the Sòng Yìwénzhì 藝文志 follows the Zhōngxīng shūmù with 66 — the figures disagree because the original had a discursive xùshì 序釋 under each entry, and in the Southern Sòng Zhèng Qiáo argued that this was “verbose and useless,” so that during the Shàoxīng era the xùshì were removed. Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武’s Dúshū zhì 讀書志 and Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫’s Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 both record only “1 juan” because they used the abridged version; the full text was no longer in wide circulation; Southern Sòng writers therefore arrive at different figures.
The Hàn Yìwénzhì 漢藝文志 followed Liú Xīn’s 劉歆 Qīlüè 七略 and Bān Gù 班固 added authorial notes; the Suí Jīngjízhì 隋經籍志 used the Qīlù 七錄 and noted survivals and losses, also continuing the practice; the Táng bibliography also has notes here and there for authors not biographied in the standard histories. These have allowed posterity to glimpse the outlines of lost works — they cannot be called superfluous. Zhèng Qiáo, in his Tōngzhì 通志 in twenty lüè 略, sought to outdo earlier scholars; but the Yìwén lüè requires inspection of the books themselves, which a poor scholar of the seacoast could not match against the imperial holdings. Unable to surpass the Chóngwén, he therefore disparaged it — this was Sòng-scholar petty-mindedness, not impartial judgement. Later Tuōkètuō 托克托 (note: written 脫脫 in the original; corrected here) and others compiled the Sòng Yìwénzhì, which is full of slips and inversions, the most muddled of all the dynastic bibliographies — this is the further consequence of Gāozōng’s foolish acceptance of Zhèng Qiáo’s advice and the abridgement of the xùshì.
Of Sòng-era public and private bibliographies that survive today there are four: Cháo and Chén each have one; together with You Mào’s 尤袤 Suìchūtáng mù 遂初堂目 and the present work — the latter two now nearly lost — these survive intact or vestigial, with all the consequences that “with notes” or “without notes” ([for transmission and reception]) entails. The base text [for the Sìkù reconstruction] is the Tiānyīgé 天一閣 copy, transcribed by Zhū Yízūn and only thereby slightly published; it too lacks the xùshì. In Zhū’s Pùshūtíng jí 曝書亭集 there is a colophon dated the ninth month of the gēngchén year of Kāngxī [1700] in which he proposed to assemble a supplementary copy from the Liùyī jūshì jí 六一居士集 and the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; but he was already 72, and could not finish.
We have now consulted his words: the per-class prefaces preserved in Ōuyáng Xiū’s collected works cover only the Classics and Histories sections and half of the Masters; the discursive remarks preserved in Mǎ Duānlín’s Tōngkǎo are similar. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì and Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí both predate the Tōngkǎo; only Cháo’s preserves one entry not in the Tōngkǎo, while Chén only saw the 66-juan reformatted-Shàoxīng version. The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn citations are also drawn from Cháo and Chén, with no additions; the original is no longer recoverable in full, but with diligent gathering and ordering perhaps three or four parts in ten can be salvaged — better than nothing. We have respectfully reordered it according to the original sequence and supplemented it by category, into twelve juan; the original 66-juan order is noted under each class. Further, the Sòng huìyào 宋會要 records that in the fourth year of Dàguān [1110] the Mìshū jiān 秘書監 Hé Zhìtóng 何志同 said that since the Qìnglì-era assembling of the Four Halls’ books, “if I now check by name only six or seven of every ten survive; let the names listed [in the catalogue] be circulated nationwide so that, in addition to the Zǒngmù’s holdings, other rare books may be sought and copied.” In the twelfth month of the twelfth year of Shàoxīng [1142], Xiàng Zǐgù 向子固, acting prefect of Xūyí 旴眙 garrison, requested that the imperial library mark with “missing” beneath each entry of the Táng yìwénzhì and of the Chóngwén zǒngmù the books not surviving, and circulate this nationwide so that the local prefectures could search for them. Today’s transmitted text shows “missing” annotation under many entries: this is the source. We retain this convention.
Wáng Yīnglín’s 王應麟 Yùhǎi 玉海 reports that the National History [office] called the Zǒngmù’s ordering preface and entry-glosses “much in error.” Huáng Bósī’s 黃伯思 Dōngguān yúlùn 東觀餘論 has 17 emendations to the Chóngwén zǒngmù. Zhèng Qiáo’s Tōngzhì jiàochóu lüè 通志校讎略 was written wholly to attack this book. Lǐ Tāo’s Chángbiān also says the Zǒngmù has both duplications and books “regrettably discarded.” Now reading the book, the holdings are vast, and contradictions cannot be wholly avoided; but it is the master synthesis of several thousand years of bibliographical record. Posterity will use it to verify what survives and what is lost, to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, and to collate variant readings — it is no less than a book-treasury’s deep pool, a library garden’s jade plot.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Chóngwén zǒngmù is the most important Northern Sòng imperial library catalogue and the principal source for what was held — and known to be lost — in the imperial collections of the eleventh century. Its compilation under Wáng Yáochén (1003–1058), Wáng Zhū (997–1057), and Ōuyáng Xiū (1007–1072) was the culmination of a multi-stage editing project begun in 1034. (Catalog meta dates of 1001/1056 for Wáng Yáochén are corrected here from external sources to 1003/1058, the figures given by the Sòngshǐ j. 292 and confirmed in standard reference works.) Of the original 66-juan text with descriptive xùshì 序釋 under each entry, only the abridged “stripped” version circulated after Zhèng Qiáo’s 鄭樵 (1104–1162) attack and the resulting Shàoxīng-era editorial decision; this is what Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 and Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫 consulted, and why their figures cite only “1 juan.”
Two Qing reconstructions are to be distinguished. The Sìkù editors, working in 1781, reconstructed a 12-juan text from quotations in Ōuyáng’s collected works, in Mǎ Duānlín’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo, in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, and from the Zhū Yízūn-transcribed Tiānyīgé manuscript — the present text. Independently, in the Jiāqìng era, Qián Dōngyuán 錢東垣 (1778–1815, also written Qián Dōng 錢侗) and Qín Jiàn 秦鑑 produced the more philologically annotated Chóngwén zǒngmù jíshì 崇文總目輯釋 (5 juan + 1 juan supplement), reprinted in Yuèyǎtáng cóngshū 粵雅堂叢書, Cóngshū jíchéng chūbiān 叢書集成初編, and elsewhere — this is the standard scholarly reference text in modern Chinese scholarship.
The “missing” notations under many entries do not date from the original 1041 compilation but reflect a 1142 (Shàoxīng 12) directive that survival information be added to facilitate nationwide book-recovery efforts.
Translations and research
No English translation exists. The standard usable text is the Qián / Qín Jíshì; no Zhōnghuá Shūjú critical edition has been confirmed.
Substantive Sinophone scholarship includes:
- Lǐ Cǎixiá 李彩霞, “《崇文總目》版本源流考及小序辨”, Hénán túshūguǎn xuékān 河南圖書館學刊 (2004) — a study of the textual stemma and the surviving xiǎo xù.
- Hǎo Rùnhuá 郝潤華, on the relationship between Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì and Chóngwén zǒngmù, Shǐlín 史林 (2006).
- Yáng Héngpíng 楊恆平, “紹興改定本《崇文總目》現存版本考論”, Zhōngguó diǎnjí yǔ wénhuà 中國典籍與文化 (2012).
- Luó Líng 羅凌, “《崇文總目》繁本系統散佚探源”, Túshū yǔ qíngbào 圖書與情報 (2014).
Substantive Western scholarship situates the work within Sòng book and library history:
- John H. Winkelman, “The Imperial Library in Southern Sung China”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society n.s. 64.8 (1974).
- Susan Cherniack, “Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 54.1 (1994).
- Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China (Harvard Asia Center, 2016); also her chapters in Lucille Chia and Hilde De Weerdt (eds.), Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900–1400 (Brill, 2011).
- On Zhèng Qiáo’s critique specifically: Floriana Lippiello, “Zheng Qiao (1104–1162), the Jiaochou lüe and the Retrieval of Lost Books”.
Other points of interest
The book is the principal evidentiary check on Sòng-era claims about the survival of pre-Sòng works: when the Sìkù editors and earlier evidential scholars argue about the dating or attribution of a text, they routinely consult the Chóngwén zǒngmù (whether in the Tōngkǎo fragments or in the Tiānyīgé recension) for the eleventh-century witness. The discrepancy between Lù Démíng’s, Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s, and Wáng Yīnglín’s quotations of the Zǐxià Yìzhuàn 子夏易傳 (KR1a0002) and the present text of that work, for instance, is anchored partly in this catalogue’s record of “two Zǐxià Yì” (genuine and spurious) circulating in the Sòng.