Xièlüè 蟹畧
Concise Treatise on Crabs by 高似孫 (Gāo Sìsūn, 撰)
About the work
A four-juàn late-Southern-Sòng monograph on crabs by the late-Sòng bibliographer Gāo Sìsūn 高似孫 (Chúnxī jìnshì 1184), the same scholar who composed the Yànjiān KR3i0008 on ink-stones. Built on the earlier Xièpǔ of Fù Gōng (KR3i0046) but expanded fourfold, with comprehensive classical-citation coverage and literary anthology. Dated by internal evidence to Chúnxī 11 (1184) — the year of Gāo’s jìnshì — possibly with later revisions.
The four juàn are structured around twelve subject categories arranged as four-character section-names: Xièyuán (Crab Origins), Xièxiàng (Crab Forms), Xièxiāng (Crab Localities), Xièjù (Crab Implements), Xièpǐn (Crab Varieties), Xièzhàn (Crab Prognostication), Xiègòng (Crab Tribute), Xièzhuàn (Crab Cookery), Xièdié (Crab Genealogy), Xièyǎ (Crab Lexicon), Xièzhì (Crab Annals), Fùyǒng (Rhapsodies-and-Odes).
Tiyao
The combined tíyào covering this work is in KR3i0046. The portion concerning Xièlüè (translated): We submit that the Xièlüè is in four juàn by Gāo Sìsūn of the Sòng. Sìsūn has the Shànlù already catalogued. This compilation uses Fù Gōng’s Xièpǔ as outline and separately adds gathered materials. Juàn 1: Crab-Origins, Crab-Forms. Juàn 2: Crab-Localities, Crab-Implements, Crab-Varieties, Crab-Prognostication. Juàn 3: Crab-Tribute, Crab-Cookery, Crab-Genealogy. Juàn 4: Crab-Lexicon, Crab-Annals, Rhapsody-Odes. Beneath each section, by-item records, mostly taking the xiè character for the subject-heading, with attached previous-writers’ poetic-lines.
Yú Wénbào’s Chuījiàn lù once criticized him for taking Lín Bū’s couplet “the grass-and-mud crawls with guōsuǒ (crab); the cloud-and-tree calls with diàozhōu (boatman)” as a Dù Fǔ poem. Now examining the head of the volume: in the “Guōsuǒ zhuàn” the citation indeed says this — really an error of detail. Also, the Běncǎo tújīng says “crabs are born in the YīLuò pools,” and in both the Zéxiè (Marsh-Crab) and Luòxiè (Luò-River Crab) entries, this is cited twice — a duplication. And Bái Jūyì’s poem “on the Pig-day, there are abundant shrimp-and-crabs” was originally cited by Fù Gōng’s treatise; yet under this book’s Xiāxiè (Shrimp-and-Crab) entry, this is conversely missing. Small omissions in arrangement. Yet his gathering is abundant; thoroughly broadly-erudite. Lost-pieces-and-omitted-lines that he records are particularly many — compared to Fù’s treatise, this finally surpasses. Submitted Qiánlóng 46 (1781).
Abstract
The work is the larger and more comprehensive of the two Sòng crab-monographs (alongside KR3i0046) — a fourfold expansion of the original Fù Gōng compendium with substantial new material. It is also Gāo Sìsūn’s pair-work with his ink-stone treatise KR3i0008: together they show the same encyclopedist-bibliographer working systematically through two distinct pǔlù subjects, demonstrating the late-Sòng bówù (universal-knowledge) ideal at its mature stage.
The work’s twelve-category structure is exhaustive: it covers natural-history (yuán, xiàng), geography (xiāng), technology (jù), taxonomy (pǐn), divination (zhàn), economy (gòng), cookery (zhuàn), genealogy-of-named-individuals (dié), lexicography (yǎ), historical annals (zhì), and literary anthology (fùyǒng). The lexicographic section is particularly notable for collecting all the Ěryǎ and Guǎngyǎ glosses on crab-vocabulary; the prognostication section preserves the late-Tang and early-Sòng practice of using crab-behavior (especially the yángshū “raised-claw” attitude) as omens.
The dating is mostly Chúnxī 11 (1184) but with internal evidence suggesting later revision into the early thirteenth century — consistent with Gāo Sìsūn’s known active career.
Translations and research
- Métailié, Georges. 2015. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. VI part 4. Cambridge UP.
- Wáng Lìzhī 王立志. 2012. Zhōng-guó gǔ-dài xiè-pǔ wén-xiàn yán-jiū 中國古代蟹譜文獻研究. Sū-zhōu master’s thesis.
Other points of interest
The work’s pair-with-its-author Gāo Sìsūn’s other surviving pǔlù (the KR3i0008 Yànjiān on ink-stones) makes the Xièlüè a key document of the late-Southern-Sòng bówù / pǔlù genre. Gāo Sìsūn is the only Sòng scholar to have produced two major pǔlù monographs on entirely distinct subjects — the ink-stone is a literati object of cultivation, the crab a culinary object of consumption — showing the genre’s reach across material-culture domains.