古今注

Gǔjīn zhù 古今注

Notes on Things Old and New

by 崔豹 (Cuī Bào, zì Zhèng Xióng 正熊 — Tàifù chéng 太傅丞 of Western Jìn under Huìdì 惠帝, fl. c. 290–306)

About the work

A 3-juan compendium of brief antiquarian notes on names, things, customs, and origins, conventionally ascribed to Cuī Bào 崔豹 of the Western Jìn. Arranged in eight sections (piān) — Yúfú 輿服 (carriages and dress); Dūyì 都邑 (capitals); Yīnyuè 音樂 (music); Niǎoshòu 鳥獸 (birds and beasts); Yúchóng 魚蟲 (fish and insects); Cǎomù 草木 (plants); Zázhù 雜註 (miscellaneous notes); Wèndá shìyì 問答釋義 (question-and-answer expositions) — the book is one of the principal Six-Dynasties sources for the etymology and ritual significance of imperial regalia (the zhǐnán chē 指南車 [south-pointing chariot], the jīnfú 金鈇 [golden axe], the bàowěi chē 豹尾車, the huágài 華蓋), the origins of the great Hàn yuèfǔ 樂府 melodies (Yàngē 薤露, Hāolǐ 蒿里, Biéhè cāo 別鶴操, Mòshàngsāng 陌上桑, Kōnghóu yǐn 箜篌引, Dǒngtáo gē 董逃歌, etc.), and a wide range of natural-historical and antiquarian curiosities. It is the source for many of the “named-thing” entries that became standard in Chinese encyclopaedic literature thereafter, and is heavily cited in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 and Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚. Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division.

The Kanripo recension is the SBCK printing, with the Sòng postface of Lǐ Tāo 李燾 (1115–1184, the Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān author) and Dīng Fǔ 丁黼 (Jiādìng gēngchén 嘉定庚辰 = 1220).

The work has long been entangled with the Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù 中華古今注 of Mǎ Gǎo 馬縞 (c. 854 – c. 935, HòuTáng / Five Dynasties), which is essentially a re-arrangement and slight expansion of Cuī’s text. The two are routinely paired (and routinely confused) in the bibliographical tradition; the Sìkù tiyao below addresses the relationship at length.

Tiyao

(The Kanripo source-file frontmatter is the SBCK with Sòng postfaces, not the SKQS tíyào. The latter is supplied here from the Kyoto University Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào, where the entry covers both Gǔjīn zhù 三卷 and the附 Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù 三卷.)

We respectfully submit that Gǔjīn zhù in three juan is by old attribution composed by Cuī Bào of the Jìn; Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù in three juan is by old attribution composed by Mǎ Gǎo 馬縞, Tàixué bóshì 太學博士 of the HòuTáng. Cuī’s book has no preface or colophon; Gǎo’s book has a self-preface in front, which says: “Cuī Bào of the Jìn’s Gǔjīn zhù is broadly informed but has many lacunae; from Huángchū 黃初 [the Wèi era] onward there is much that is unheard and unseen. Now I have added notes to fill out its meaning.” However, on cross-comparison of the two books, beyond the twenty-nine entries on Sòng-Qí-and-after events [in Mǎ’s book], the affairs of WèiJìn and earlier are essentially identical: in Cuī’s book, the Cǎomù category as a whole, plus seven characters in the Niǎoshòu category (“the Tǔshòuniǎo 吐綬鳥 is also called Gōngcáo 功曹”) are not in Mǎ’s book; in Mǎ’s book, the Fúshì 服飾 category as a whole, the opening Gōngshì 宮室 entry, the two Fēngbù bīngzhèn 封部兵陳 entries, and the two Mǎ- and Quǎn- entries, are not in Cuī’s book. The remainder of what each contains is identical, with only minor differences in sequence and one or two characters of addition or deletion. What Mǎ called “added notes filling out the meaning” — there is no such thing at all. Furthermore in the middle juan of Mǎ’s book it says: “the Bàng [club / staff], according to Cuī Zhèngxióng’s [= Bào’s] note, is a chēfú 車輻 [wheel-spoke]” — if Mǎ had wholesale taken over Cuī’s text, he ought not to have named Cuī specifically in this one entry. Examination of the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 cited book-titles shows Cuī’s book but not Mǎ’s; the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考 Záxué category, on the other hand, has only Mǎ’s book and not Cuī’s. So Cuī’s book was long lost, Mǎ’s book emerged late, and later persons culled the pre-Wèi entries from it and forged a “Cuī text.” On further checking the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 collation against Sū È’s 蘇鶚 [Sūshì] yǎnyì 演義: items identical to the two books are five-or-six in ten — so not only is “Cuī’s book” a derivative confection, even Mǎ’s book is not free of plagiarism. Only because the transmission has been so long-established, we preserve [Cuī’s] for the record of one school’s tradition.

Examining Liú Xiàobiāo’s 劉孝標 Shìshuō [xīnyǔ] commentary, it says Cuī Bào’s zì is Zhèngnéng 正能, served Jìn Huìdì 惠帝, rose to Tàifù 太傅. Mǎ Gǎo says Zhèngxióng 正熊. The two characters are similar — one of them must be in error. Both the Jiù wǔdài shǐ 舊五代史 and Xīn wǔdài shǐ 新五代史 have biographies of [Mǎ] Gǎo, recording his míngjīng 明經 graduation, his bácuì kē 拔萃科 qualification, his service in Liáng as Tàicháng xiūzhuàn 太常修撰, ascending to Shàngshū láng 尚書郎 cānzhī lǐyuàn shì 參知理院事, then Tàicháng shàoqīng 太常少卿. Under HòuTáng Zhuāngzōng 莊宗 he was Zhōngshū shèrén 中書舍人 and Xíngbù shìláng 刑部侍郎 with acting appointment as Tàicháng qīng 太常卿. Under [HòuTáng] Míngzōng 明宗 he was demoted to Suízhōu sīmǎ 綏州司馬, restored as Tàizǐ bīnkè 太子賓客, advanced to Hùbù bīngbù shìláng 戶部兵部侍郎, and ended as Guózǐ jìjiǔ 國子祭酒. The present text titles him Táng Tàixué bóshì 唐太學博士 — this follows Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí; but the title Tàixué bóshì is in fact an error of Zhènsūn’s. As for the dynasty, even Zhènsūn called him “HòuTáng,” not just “Táng” simpliciter — calling him just “Táng” is a Míng-edition emendation made on guess.

Abstract

Cuī Bào 崔豹 (zì Zhèng Xióng 正熊 by his own ascription, Zhèngnéng 正能 according to the Shìshuō xīnyǔ commentary of Liú Xiàobiāo) was a Western-Jìn official who served as Tàifù chéng 太傅丞 (Assistant to the Grand Tutor) under Jìn Huìdì 晉惠帝 (r. 290–306). His native place is unknown; the postface preserved in the present SBCK recension by Lǐ Tāo 李燾 conjectures, on the basis of family-line investigation, that he was descended from Cuī Yuàn 崔瑗 (78–143) and Cuī Shí 崔寔 (c. 103–170) of the Eastern-Hàn Cuī clan of Ānpíng 安平. The Jìn shū contains no biography. The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 290, notAfter 306) reflects his Tàifù chéng tenure under Huìdì, the only datable anchor for his career and the conventional terminus for the composition of Gǔjīn zhù.

The Sìkù editors’ tiyao raises in detail what has remained the central textual-critical problem of Gǔjīn zhù: its relationship to the Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù 中華古今注 of Mǎ Gǎo 馬縞 of the HòuTáng. Mǎ’s preface claims that he is adding notes to Cuī’s text; the Sìkù editors show that, on the contrary, the textual overlap is so dense that — together with the citation in Mǎ’s book of “Cuī Zhèngxióng’s note” by name in one entry — the relationship is in fact the reverse of what Mǎ claims: Cuī’s text was substantially lost; Mǎ’s book is the active recension; and the received “Cuī Bào Gǔjīn zhù” is itself a back-formation, culled from Mǎ’s book by removing the post-Wèi material. Sū È’s 蘇鶚 Sūshì yǎnyì 蘇氏演義 (KR3j0028) is, on similar evidence, also part of the same web of textual circulation. The Sìkù editors retain Cuī’s text on the principle that the long-established attribution is itself part of the historical record, but the modern reader should treat the received Gǔjīn zhù as an Eastern-Hàn-to-Western-Jìn core embedded in a HòuTáng / Sòng editorial frame.

This bibliographical tangle aside, the substantive material is rich. The Yúfú and Dūyì sections preserve some of the most extended Six-Dynasties accounts of imperial regalia and capital architecture; the Yīnyuè section is one of the principal extant sources for the explanatory backstories of the Hàn yuèfǔ 樂府 repertory (the Yàngē 薤露 and Hāolǐ 蒿里 funeral songs, the Biéhè cāo 別鶴操, the Mòshàngsāng 陌上桑, the Kōnghóu yǐn 箜篌引, etc.); the Cǎomù and Yúchóng sections preserve numerous early names for plants and small fauna that became canonical in the later míngwù 名物 tradition. The Wèndá shìyì 問答釋義 section is built around imagined dialogues with Hàn-era figures (Dǒng Zhòngshū 董仲舒, Niú Hēng 牛亨, etc.) on questions of philological / antiquarian etymology — a literary device that became influential in later biji 筆記 writing.

The work has been transmitted continuously since the Sòng. The standard pre-modern critical edition is in the SBCK and SKQS; for modern scholarship the Wú Qǐlóng 吳企龍 and Wáng Yúnwǔ 王雲五-edited Cōngshū jíchéng 叢書集成 reprint and several modern punctuated editions are standard.

Translations and research

No complete European-language translation exists. The text is heavily cited in Western and Chinese scholarship on Hàn music, court ritual, regalia, and natural history.

• Hans H. Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry (Yale UP, 1976) — uses Gǔjīn zhù extensively for the social-historical background of Hàn-Wèi yuè-fǔ.
• Anne Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China (Allen & Unwin, 1988; rev. Hawai’i UP, 1993). Translates many of the yuè-fǔ whose backstories Gǔjīn zhù preserves; cites it as a primary source.
• Joseph R. Allen, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Center for Chinese Studies, Michigan, 1992). Treats Gǔjīn zhù as one of the principal late-classical sources for yuè-fǔ lore.
• Niàn Cháng-fēng 念常豐, Gǔjīn zhù jiào-jiān 古今注校箋 (collations and notes; modern Chinese punctuated editions in the Cōng-shū jí-chéng and Zhōnghuá Hàn Wèi cóngshū series).
• Cuī Bào, Gǔjīn zhù; Mǎ Gǎo, Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù; Sū È, Sū-shì yǎn-yì — modern Zhōnghuá or Shànghǎi gǔjí combined punctuated editions are standard.
• Modern Japanese: the work figures in Asakawa Kanae’s and other studies of pre-Táng biji 筆記 literature; no monograph specifically devoted to it.

Other points of interest

The textual relationship between Gǔjīn zhù, Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù, and Sūshì yǎnyì is one of the standard textbook examples of a circulating recension — three books that share large blocks of material in different orderings, each periodically losing currency and being re-constituted from the others. The Sìkù tiyao’s analysis is itself a model of QiánJiā era kǎozhèng practice; modern bibliographers (notably Yú Jiāxī 余嘉錫 in Sìkù tíyào biànzhèng 四庫提要辨證) have built on but not fundamentally overturned its conclusions.

The note in the catalog meta giving Cuī Bào’s dynasty as Jìn without lifedates is correct: no securely-anchored lifedates exist; the Tàifù chéng tenure under Huìdì is the only firm anchor. He is not in CBDB.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Gǔjīn zhù + Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù combined entry (text via Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0247001.html).
• Wikipedia: Gujin zhu; Cui Bao. Wikidata: Q5615466.
• Related work: Zhōnghuá gǔjīn zhù 中華古今注 of Mǎ Gǎo 馬縞 (HòuTáng); Sūshì yǎnyì 蘇氏演義 of Sū È 蘇鶚 (KR3j0028).