Chénshì xiāngpǔ 陳氏香譜
Mr Chén’s Treatise on Incense by 陳敬 (Chén Jìng, 撰)
About the work
A four-juàn late-Sòng / early-Yuán compendium of incense lore, the most comprehensive surviving Chinese pre-Míng work on incense. Composed by Chén Jìng 陳敬 zì Zǐzhōng 子中 of Hénán, completed by his son Hàoqīng 浩卿 with a preface by Xióng Pénglái 熊朋來 dated Zhìzhì rénxū (1322). The work draws on at least eleven earlier xiāngpǔ — those of Hóng Chú (KR3i0015) and the lost works of Shěn Lì 沈立, Yán Bówēi 顏博文, Yè Tíngguī 葉廷珪, and others — and so preserves much material from now-lost Sòng incense literature.
Tiyao
We submit that the Xiāngpǔ [meaning the Chénshì xiāngpǔ] is in four juàn by Chén Jìng of the Sòng. Jìng, zì Zǐzhōng, was a man of Hénán; his career is not detailed. At the head there is a Zhìzhì rénxū (1322) preface by Xióng Pénglái that does not detail Jìng’s history. This book in all gathers the xiāngpǔ of eleven authors from Shěn Lì and Hóng Chú downward into a single compilation; its citations are abundant — one cannot avoid finding it overgrown, slightly beyond limit. As to incense names, varieties, the methods of successive ages for blending-and-manufacture — these are appropriately recorded. But where the words of the classics happen-to-touch but are not really comparable with lóngxián (ambergris) or mídié (rosemary): for example at the start the Zuǒzhuàn “millet-and-grain fragrant” passages — these few quotations as “tracing to the source of the classics” are quite unwarranted. This is imitation of the Qímín yàoshù’s example of opening with citation of the classics — and failure-to-execute that. As to what does come out of the classics and yet should be brought in: it is often missing-and-loose. For yùjīn xiāng 鬱金香 he cites the Shuōwén but for the Zhōulǐ “Yùrén” entry, where Zhèng Kāngchéng has a note — this he alone omits — preferring the distant to the near. However, of the eleven authors’ treatises today not all are transmitted, and Jìng has assembled the various words and made them an overall confluence; lost-text-and-traditions are largely preserved through him. The work is therefore useful as resource for verification, not without benefit. Submitted Qiánlóng 45 month 12 (1781).
Abstract
The work is the principal Yuán-period synthesis of the Sòng xiāngpǔ tradition and the most comprehensive single source for pre-Yuán Chinese incense literature. Its eleven-source-coverage means that for the lost treatises of Shěn Lì 沈立 (probably the most authoritative early-Sòng treatise — described by Zhōu Zǐzhī as the largest pre-Hóng collection), Yán Bówēi 顏博文 (Yánshì xiāngpǔ, mid-Sòng), Yè Tíngguī 葉廷珪 (the famous Sòng official-author of the Hǎilù suìshì, fl. mid-twelfth century), and the seven others — the only extant evidence of their contents lies in the citations preserved by Chén Jìng. This makes the work indispensable for the history of pre-Yuán Chinese incense culture.
Xióng Pénglái’s preface gives a vivid period-evocation of incense-as-status-marker in Yuán literati culture, with literary-historical references to Liú Jìhé 劉季和 of the Hàn (whose addiction to incense was famously criticized by his secretary Zhāng Tǎn 張坦), Xún Yù 荀彧 (the “Xúnlìngjūn” who left his fragrance on the host’s mat after three days), Méi Yáochén 梅堯臣 (the Northern Sòng “Xiāng” academician who hid an incense-burner in his sleeve), and Xiè Xuán 謝玄 (whose ostentatious incense-pouch was criticized by Xiè Ānshí). The preface also conveys Yuán literati’s complex attitudes to incense: at once a luxury, a daily refinement, a religious practice, and — in the moralist tradition of Wèi Wǔdì 魏武帝 who banned incense from his household — a potential vice.
The composition date is uncertain: the preface of 1322 (Zhìzhì 2) is the terminus ante quem; Chén Jìng’s working life was probably late Southern Sòng — early Yuán (c. 1250–1310). The Yuán-period Sìbù cóngkān recension is the standard textual witness, and the Sìkù uses essentially that text.
Translations and research
- Yáng Zhīshuǐ 揚之水. 2017. Liǎng-Sòng xiāng-pǔ jí xiāng-shì-shī kǎo 兩宋香譜及香事詩考. Běijīng: Wén-wù chū-bǎn-shè.
- Liú Yīnghuá 劉穎華. 2011. Sòng-dài xiāng-pǔ yán-jiū 宋代香譜研究. Shànghǎi shī-fàn dà-xué doctoral thesis.
- Bedini, Silvio. 1994. The Trail of Time: Time Measurement with Incense in East Asia. Cambridge UP. Cites Chén-shì xiāng-pǔ extensively.
Other points of interest
The work’s principal scholarly value today is as a historical-textual repository — it transmits citations of multiple lost Sòng works. The Shěn Lì 沈立 reference is especially valuable: Shěn Lì (1007–1078, a Northern-Sòng prefectural-official who served at Hángzhōu under Wáng Ānshí) had assembled what was at the time the world’s largest book-collection (per Zhōu Zǐzhī’s contemporary report); his now-lost xiāngpǔ is reconstructed almost entirely from Chén Jìng’s citations.