Yànpǔ 硯譜
Treatise on Ink-Stones by an anonymous Southern-Sòng compiler (闕名, 撰)
About the work
An anonymous one-juàn miscellany of ink-stone lore, presumably early Southern Sòng. Compiles records on the provenance and authentic-anecdotes (gùshí 故實) of ink-stones, drawing on Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修, Sū Shì 蘇軾, Táng Xún 唐詢, Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵, and other Northern-Sòng authorities — hence the Sìkù dating as “early Southern Sòng”. A short and unsystematic work, just 32 entries; the editors include it for completeness, valuing especially its preservation of one of the three surviving fragments of Táng Xún’s lost Běihǎi gōng yànlù 北海公硯錄.
Tiyao
The combined tíyào covering this work is preserved in KR3i0003. The relevant portion (translated): We submit that the Yànpǔ originally does not give the compiler’s name; the Cháo and Chén [bibliographic catalogs] also do not catalog it. Only Zuǒ Guī printed it into the Bǎichuān xuéhǎi*. The work miscellaneously records the production and authentic-anecdotes of ink-stones, with intervening citations of Ōuyáng Xiū, Sū Shì, Táng Xún, Zhèng Qiáo and others’ discussions — apparently a man of the early Southern Sòng. The book contains only thirty-two items, not rich-or-broad, and what it gathers is occasionally erroneous: e.g., it places the Duānxī* zǐshí (child-stones) as growing within larger stones — still following the old account, not having investigated-and-corrected it. Likewise the story of Xǔ Hànyáng with the biluo-jade ink-stone: this matter comes from the Gǔshénzǐ Bóyì jì and is in fact the Dragon-Maiden’s ink-stone, not Xǔ’s, so this is also a citation-error. As its transmission has long been established and there are still one or two items rich-enough for broader recognition, it is appended at the end of the various ink-stone treatises for collation-purposes.
Abstract
The work is the weakest of the cluster KR3i0003–0007. The Sìkù editors retained it for the sake of completeness and for its preservation of one (of three) surviving fragments of Táng Xún’s 唐詢 Běihǎi gōng yànlù 北海公硯錄 — the lost early-Northern-Sòng monograph (Táng Xún was active in the 1040s–1050s) that was a major source for the late-Sòng ink-stone tradition. The work cites Northern-Sòng material (down to Zhèng Qiáo, fl. 1130s–1160s) but no firmly Southern-Sòng post-1160 material; the dating is therefore early-to-mid Southern Sòng, with a terminus ante quem of c. 1200 (when Zuǒ Guī’s Bǎichuān xuéhǎi was being compiled).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The work is now mainly of interest for the fragment of Táng Xún’s Běihǎi gōng yànlù it preserves, which has been the basis for modern reconstructions of that work — e.g. in Wáng Yùxiá 王玉霞 (2008) and the Sòng pǔlù studies.