文房四譜

Wénfáng sìpǔ 文房四譜

Treatise on the Four Treasures of the Study by 蘇易簡 (Sū Yìjiǎn, 撰)

About the work

The first systematic Chinese monograph on the wénfáng sìbǎo 文房四寶 (Four Treasures of the Study: brush, ink-stone, paper, ink) — the inks-and-brushes of the literatus’s working life. Composed in 986 (Yōngxī 3) when Sū Yìjiǎn was a junior Hànlín official at Tàizōng’s court; the foundational text of the pǔlù 譜錄 (treatise-on-an-object) sub-genre that this KR3i division collects. In five juàn: two on the brush (bǐpǔ 筆譜), one each on the ink-stone (yànpǔ 硯譜), paper (zhǐpǔ 紙譜), and ink (mòpǔ 墨譜), with appendices on the brush-rest (bǐgé 筆格) and water-dropper (shuǐdī 水滴). With prefaces by Xú Xuàn 徐鉉 (徐鉉) and a self-preface by Sū dated Yōngxī 3 (986).

Tiyao

We submit that the Wénfáng sìpǔ is in five juàn by Sū Yìjiǎn of the Sòng. Sū’s zì was Tàijiǎn 太簡, a man of Tóngshān 銅山 in Zǐzhōu 梓州, jìnshì of Tàipíngxīngguó 5 (980); he rose by repeated promotion to the position of cānzhī zhèngshì 參知政事 (vice-grand-councillor), exited as Lǐbù shìláng and prefect of Dèngzhōu, was transferred to Chénzhōu, and died in office. His career is fully recorded in his Sòngshǐ biography. Sū’s Xù Hànlín zhì 續翰林志 was incorporated by Hóng Zūn 洪遵 into the Hànyuàn qúnshū and is separately catalogued. The present compilation collects the origins, beginnings-and-ends, and authentic anecdotes of ancient-and-modern brush, ink-stone, paper and ink, and follows these with rhapsodies (cífù 辭賦) and poetry-prose pieces, combining them into one work. It is prefaced by Xú Xuàn at the head and has a self-preface from the ninth month of Yōngxī 3 (986), in which Sū states that while reading at the imperial library he assembled this treatise. Its form is essentially that of a lèishū category-book. Its researches are quite detailed and broad: works such as the Liáng Yuándì’s Loyal-Servants’ Biographies (Zhōngchén zhuàn 忠臣傳) and Gù Yěwáng’s 顧野王 Treatise on Lands and Territories (Yúdì zhì 輿地志) have long been lost, and we obtain a glimpse of them only by means of this work. Its other citations also draw extensively on pre-Sòng older texts, sufficient to widen the basis of classical-citation and broaden the resources of learned reference. In all, the brush-treatise occupies two juàn, and the ink-stone, paper, and ink-treatises one juàn each, with the brush-rest and water-dropper appended. The work was highly regarded in its time and was kept in the secret cabinet of the imperial library. Yóu Mào’s 尤袤 Suíchūtáng shūmù gives the title as Wénfáng sìbǎo pǔ 文房四寶譜, and also notes a Xù wénfáng sìbǎo pǔ. The present text omits the character 寶 and matches the Sòngshǐ biography — apparently later persons disliked the cruder character and deleted it. Submitted Qiánlóng 46 month 10 (1781). Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The composition date is securely fixed: Sū’s own preface is dated Yōngxī 3 month 9 (October 986). The work is the foundational pǔlù monograph on the literary-cultural materials — brushes, ink-stones, paper, and ink — that defined the Sòng-and-later literatus’s working life. The pǔlù genre had a small Táng prehistory (Lù Yǔ’s Chá jīng of c. 760 — see KR3i0019 — is its main Táng exemplar), but Sū’s Sìpǔ is the first work that systematically structured a pǔ of four parallel objects, gave each a treatment combining origin-stories, manufacturing details, authentic anecdotes (gùshí 故實), and literary illustrations in verse-and-rhapsody. The structure became a model: a century later Mǐ Fú’s 米芾 Yànshǐ (KR3i0003) was a focused single-object monograph in the same lineage, and Hóng Chú 洪芻 Xiāngpǔ (KR3i0015), Cài Xiāng 蔡襄 Lìzhī pǔ (KR3i0038), and Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 Luòyáng mǔdān jì (KR3i0029) — all of which became canonical for their respective objects — are descendants of Sū’s example.

The work is also a significant lèishū (category-book) source: as the tíyào notes, it preserves fragments of pre-Sòng works that have since been lost in full — most notably Liáng Yuándì 梁元帝’s Loyal-Servants’ Biographies (Zhōngchén zhuàn) and Gù Yěwáng’s 顧野王 Yúdì zhì 輿地志, both Liáng-period works lost in the mid-Táng-or-after. The original Sòng catalog title was Wénfáng sìbǎo pǔ 文房四寶譜 (with bǎo 寶 = “treasure”); by the YuánMíng the title had been shortened to the present Wénfáng sìpǔ — the Sìkù editors’ explanation that later persons “disliked the cruder character” is plausible but speculative. The Sòng title Sìbǎo pǔ is the source of the standard wénfáng sìbǎo 文房四寶 idiom for the four objects.

The work was extracted from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 by the Sìkù editors and the missing fifth-juàn material (on ink) was supplied from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and other sources; the WYG recension is therefore not strictly a Sòng witness but a Sìkù-period reconstruction. The Sòng original of the text was already incomplete by the Míng — Yóu Mào’s Suíchūtáng shūmù records the Sìbǎo pǔ and a separate Xù sìbǎo pǔ but the Xù is lost.

Translations and research

• Bol, Peter. 1992. “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Stanford UP. Background on the Sòng literatus’s identity and its material culture.
• Egan, Ronald. 2006. The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP. Chapter on the pǔ-lù genre and its connection to literatus connoisseurship.
• Léng Jiànlì 冷建立. 2010. Sòng-dài pǔ-lù wén-xiàn yán-jiū 宋代譜錄文獻研究. Běijīng: Rénmín wénxué chū-bǎn-shè. Standard Chinese-language monograph on the Sòng pǔ-lù tradition.
• Tsien Tsuen-hsuin 錢存訓. 1985. Paper and Printing. Vol. V part 1 of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge UP. Standard treatment of the paper and ink history; uses Sì-pǔ extensively.

Other points of interest

The work’s bǐpǔ 筆譜 section contains the earliest substantial discussion of brush-making technique in any Chinese source, with attention to bristle-source (rabbit, weasel, deer), bristle-tapering, glue-and-cinnabar treatment, and the rituals of brush-handling. The yànpǔ 硯譜 section is the proximate ancestor of the more famous Sòng ink-stone monographs (Mǐ Fú KR3i0003; Táng Jī 唐積 KR3i0004). Sū’s accounts of paper-types include some of the earliest references to Yánshì zhǐ 鹽氏紙 (the Yán-family paper), zhúzhǐ 竹紙 (bamboo paper) — which had only just emerged as a Sòng innovation — and Gāolì zhǐ 高麗紙 (Korean paper). The mòpǔ on ink anticipates Lǐ Xiàoměi’s 李孝美 Mòpǔ fǎshì (KR3i0010) and Cháo Guànyī’s 晁貫一 Mòjīng (KR3i0011).

Links

• Chinese Text Project
• Wikipedia (Su Yijian)
• Wikidata Q15901817