Gānzǐ 干子
Master Gān by 干寶 (Gān Bǎo, fl. 317–336, 晉)
About the work
A lost Eastern Jìn 東晉 zǐbù treatise (also cited in the early bibliographic record as Zìrán lùn 自然論) by Gān Bǎo 干寶, the historian and anomaly-anthologist of the early Eastern Jìn. Reconstructed from quotations in 《埤雅·釋蟲》, 《埤雅·釋魚》, 《埤雅·釋鳥》, 《太平御覽》, 《荊楚歲時記》 and the Biànhuà·xù 變化序. Not in the Sìkù quánshū; sourced from CHANT (CH2a1480).
Abstract
The Gānzǐ is one of two Gān Bǎo zǐ-house works recorded in the early bibliography — the better-known being his Sōushén jì 搜神記 (cf. KR3l0099). The Gānzǐ is on natural philosophy and the cosmology of biànhuà 變化 (transformation), in keeping with Gān Bǎo’s wider interest in the empirical demonstration of the supernatural that informs his Sōushén jì. The surviving fragments are concentrated in Lù Diàn’s 陸佃 Sòng-period Pí yǎ 埤雅 (a natural-history commentary on the Ěr yǎ), which preserves Gān Bǎo’s observations on insects, fish, and birds — and on the Biànhuà preface, which preserves his programmatic account of transformations between species. This combination of natural-historical observation and cosmological speculation gives the Gānzǐ a distinctive register, closer in spirit to Zhāng Huá’s 張華 Bówù zhì 博物志 than to the political zǐ-house tradition. The composition window is bracketed by Gān Bǎo’s documented Eastern Jìn floruit (317–336); the received recension is a 19th-century jíyì. Background on Gān Bǎo is given on 干寶 and KR3l0099.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated secondary literature located on the Gānzǐ specifically; the wider Gān Bǎo bibliography concentrates on the Sōushén jì. See Kenneth DeWoskin and J. I. Crump, In Search of the Supernatural: The Written Record (Stanford, 1996, translation of Sōushén jì). Standard fragment-compilation: 嚴可均 Quán Jìn wén 全晉文 j. 127.
Links
- Jìn shū 晉書 j. 82 (干寶傳).
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志.