Shèyàn shuō 歙硯說
Discourse on the Shè Ink-Stone by an anonymous Southern-Sòng connoisseur (闕名, 撰)
About the work
A one-juàn anonymous Southern-Sòng treatise on the Shè-stone (Shè yàn 歙硯), companion piece (in the Bǎichuān xuéhǎi) to the anonymous Biàn shèshí shuō 辨歙石說. The works survey the localities of stone-extraction, the methods of cutting, and the quality-criteria of finished Shè ink-stones. Hóng Mài’s 洪邁 postface (1160) records that his elder brother Hóng Shì 洪适, zhī Shèzhōu and patron of Sìbǎo táng 四寶堂, had separately reprinted three Shè-stone treatises — namely Táng Jī’s Shèzhōu yànpǔ (KR3i0004) and these two — and that the present Shèyàn shuō and Biàn shèshí shuō (although traditionally appearing under Hóng Shì’s name) are in fact independent compilations attached by him to his reprint of Táng Jī, not his own work.
Tiyao
The combined tíyào covering this work, KR3i0003, KR3i0004, KR3i0006 and KR3i0007 is preserved in the front of KR3i0003. The relevant portion (translated): We submit that the Shèyàn shuō and Biàn shèshí shuō originally did not give the compiler’s name; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí also records them anonymously. Zuǒ Guī’s Bǎichuān xuéhǎi prints them after Táng Jī’s treatise. The colophon at the end is dated Shàoxīng 30 month 12 (1160), by [Hóng] Mài’s younger brother, Cheng-yì láng and yuánwàiláng of the Lǐbù and concurrently compiler in the National-History Office. Within the colophon, “Jǐngbó my elder brother, governing Shèzhōu, had not only displayed the Wénfáng pǔ of Mister Sū at the Sìbǎo Hall but had also separately printed three kinds of ink-stone discussions” — Jǐngbó is Hóng Mài’s elder brother Hóng Shì’s zì*, so these two works appear to come from Shì. Yet this does not agree with Mài’s colophon-statement of “three kinds”. Investigating Hóng Shì’s* Pánzhōu jí we find his postface to Sū Yìjiǎn’s Wénfáng sìpǔ which states: “Those who discuss the Shè ink-stone are three families; in grading the various Lǐ-makers there is the Mòyuàn (Ink-Garden) — appended to this compilation”. From this it follows that these two works, together with Táng Jī’s treatise, were the “three kinds” that Shì reprinted as an appendix to the Wénfáng pǔ — and were therefore not actually Shì’s own compositions. The Shèyàn shuō records the localities of stone-extraction, the cutting methods, and the gradations of stone-quality; the Biàn shèshí shuō specifically discusses the patterns, “stars” and “halo” markings — twenty-seven in all — and is quite detailed in discrimination, comparable to Táng Xún’s 唐詢 Běihǎi gōng yànlù, now lost except for two passages quoted in this work and one in the anonymous Yànpǔ, the only surviving fragments of that work.
Abstract
The dating is approximate. The colophon of 1160 (Shàoxīng 30) gives the terminus ante quem; the references to Mǐ Fú’s Yànshǐ (KR3i0003) and to Táng Xún’s lost Běihǎi gōng yànlù set a terminus post quem in the late Northern Sòng. The composition is therefore early-to-mid Southern Sòng, c. 1130–1160. Authorship is uncertain: Hóng Mài’s colophon firmly disclaims Hóng Shì 洪适 as the author (despite a long subsequent tradition of attribution), and the Sìkù editors accept this.
The work’s principal contemporary value is its preservation of two passages of Táng Xún’s 唐詢 Běihǎi gōng yànlù 北海公硯錄, the Sòng Tángsòng-period ink-stone connoisseur monograph that has otherwise been lost in full; these two quotations, plus a third in the anonymous Yànpǔ (KR3i0007), are all that survives of Táng Xún’s work. The work also fills in details of the late-Tang opening of the Lóngwěishān quarries — including the 938 Southern-Tang patronage of Lǐ Jǐng 李璟 / Lǐ Yù 李煜 — supplementing Táng Jī’s KR3i0004 account.
Translations and research
- 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.
- Wáng Jūn 王軍. 2015. Shè-yàn shǐ-huà 歙硯史話. Hé-féi: Huáng-shān shū-shè.
Other points of interest
The combined Shèyàn shuō + Biàn shèshí shuō was traditionally counted as a single work by SòngYuánMíng bibliographers, then split into two for the Sìkù; the WYG recension follows the two-work convention. The Biàn shèshí shuō (“Discrimination of the Stone-Patterns”) portion gives the standard Sòng enumeration of the twenty-seven Shè-stone surface-pattern types: luówén (silk-pattern), méizǐ (eyebrow-pattern), jīnxīng (gold-star), jīnyùn (gold-halo), etc.