Jìngkāng xiāngsù zázhì 靖康緗素雜誌
Miscellaneous Notes on Yellow-and-White Silk from the Jìngkāng Era
by 黃朝英 (Huáng Cháoyīng, late Northern Sòng; jǔrén after Shàoshèng 紹聖 era, ca. 1094)
About the work
A Northern-Sòng záokǎo 雜考 bǐjì in ten juan (the title is variously transmitted as 緗素雜記 or 緗素雜誌 — the Sìkù recension’s interior title-leaf reads 雜記 while the SKQS catalog meta uses 雜誌; both are current). The work is dated to the Jìngkāng 靖康 reign (1126–1127), the eve of the Jurchen invasion that ended Northern Sòng. The title’s xiāngsù 緗素 — literally “pale-yellow and plain-white silk” — refers metonymically to scrolls and books of philological notes. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì 郡齋讀書志 reports the original compass as 200 entries; the surviving recension carries only 90, the rest having been pruned (the Sìkù editors say) by Míng-period intermediate redactors. Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division (subdivision záokǎo 雜考).
The work is doctrinally interesting as a late witness to the persistence of Wáng Ānshí’s 王安石 New-Learning (xīnxué 新學) school of textual interpretation: Huáng Cháoyīng cites the Xīn jīngyì 新經義 and the Zì shuō 字說 throughout, and styles Wáng Ānshí by his Sòng noble title Shū wáng 舒王 — an honorific that betrays the author’s continuing partisan allegiance to the New-Learning camp at a time when the Yuányòu 元祐 faction had largely come to dominate northern intellectual life.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Jìngkāng xiāngsù zázhì in ten juan is the work of Huáng Cháoyīng of the Sòng. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says: “Cháoyīng, a man of Jiànzhōu 建州, [took the jǔrén] after Shàoshèng [1094–1098].” Again: “What he records amounts to two hundred items in all.” The present recension’s juan-count agrees with what Gōngwǔ records, but it has only ninety items. Chéng Dàchāng’s 程大昌 Yán fán lù 演繁露 reproaches it for an erroneous citation in the Mài qiū 麥秋 entry, but the present recension carries no such entry. Examining Wáng Mào’s 王楙 Yěkè cóngshū 野客叢書, it includes the discussion of Mài qiū, citing it as from the Xiāngsù zázhì — proving that Chéng Dàchāng did not misquote. Again the Yěkè cóngshū records the Xiāngsù zázhì’s discussion of Lǐ Hè’s 李賀 Jīn tóng xiānrén cí Hàn gē xù 金銅仙人辭漢歌序 (“the breaking of the dew-receiving plate happened in Qīnglóng 9”) and the Má hú jǐn dé èr shì 麻胡僅得二事 entry; this recension lacks both. Yuán Wén’s 袁文 Wèngyǒu xiánpíng 甕牖閒評 records the Xiāngsù zázhì’s discussions of Gǔ yáng 穀陽 and Lú fú 蘆菔; this recension lacks them likewise. Manifestly Míng men have arbitrarily abridged the work; it is no longer the complete book. Yuán Wén and Wáng Mào themselves quibble with this book on a number of points; but as goes the rule of kǎozhèng learning, later generations are commonly more meticulous than earlier ones — this is no fault.
Cháo Gōngwǔ taxes Cháoyīng with following the school of Wáng Ānshí 王安石; further taxes him for explaining the [Shī jīng] sháo yào 芍藥 [peony, in Zhēn Wěi 溱洧] and wò jiāo 握椒 [the parting handful of pepper, in the Chén fēng 陳風] in vulgar / lascivious sense. Liú Chǎng’s 劉敞 Qī jīng xiǎo zhuàn 七經小傳 also picks up this passage as a joke, and although he does not name the author, he must mean Cháoyīng. Examining the book, it does cite freely from the Xīn jīngyì and the Zì shuō and styles Wáng Ānshí Shū wáng 舒王; in the entry on the [Shī jīng] lǜ zhú 緑竹 it goes to particular trouble to defend Ānshí’s reading. He is indeed a man of Wáng’s school. But except for the sháo yào and wò jiāo entry, his work draws on detailed evidence and good sense, and is no mere unfounded yìduàn 臆斷 (arbitrary verdict). Liú Chǎng’s school was originally at odds with Ānshí’s; Cháo Gōngwǔ in turn was of an Yuányòu 元祐 family and his generation was at war with the New Learning — so he naturally singled out the worst single entry to ridicule. Respectfully revised and submitted, seventh month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Huáng Cháoyīng 黃朝英 (late Northern Sòng) was a jǔrén of the Shàoshèng 紹聖 era (1094–1098) from Jiànzhōu 建州 (modern Jiàn’ōu 建甌, Fújiàn). Nothing else of his career is recorded; CBDB id 30223 confirms the dynasty and place but supplies no dates. He was an adherent of Wáng Ānshí’s 王安石 xīnxué 新學 school of textual exegesis (the New Learning), as Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 already noted: throughout the Xiāngsù zázhì he cites the Xīn jīngyì 新經義 and the Zì shuō 字說 (Wáng Ānshí’s school commentary on the Shī, Shū, and Zhōu lǐ, and his etymological dictionary), and styles Wáng Ānshí by his Sòng noble title Shū wáng 舒王.
The work was completed in the Jìngkāng 靖康 reign (1126–1127), the brief two-year reign of Sòng Qīnzōng 宋欽宗 immediately preceding the Jurchen sack of Kāifēng and the fall of Northern Sòng. The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 1126, notAfter 1127) reflects this Jìngkāng-era completion. The work was originally in 200 entries (so Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì 郡齋讀書志); the surviving recension carries only 90, the rest having been pruned by Míng-era intermediate editors — the Sìkù editors document the loss by collating against citations preserved in Wáng Mào’s 王楙 Yěkè cóngshū 野客叢書, Yuán Wén’s 袁文 Wèngyǒu xiánpíng 甕牖閒評, and Chéng Dàchāng’s 程大昌 Yán fán lù 演繁露, all of which preserve entries no longer in the current text (e.g., the Mài qiū 麥秋 entry on the early-summer wheat harvest).
The book is an intellectually substantial záokǎo — well-grounded textual investigations across the classics, history, the Wén xuǎn, Shī jīng exegesis, and miscellaneous míngwù — whose Sìkù reception is unusually warm: the editors take pains to defend Cháoyīng against the dismissive verdict of Cháo Gōngwǔ, treating the latter’s hostility as Yuányòu-faction partisanship rather than considered judgement. The Sìkù tiyao is a fine specimen of Qing critical bibliography unraveling Sòng partisan distortion of a New-Learning author’s reputation.
The title’s variant 雜記 / 雜誌 reflects the routine confusion of these two characters in Sòng bǐjì titles; the Sìkù recension’s text uses 雜記, but the catalog meta and many later citations use 雜誌. The work is included in 《宋史·藝文志》, Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì, Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí, Sìkù, and Cóngshū jíchéng.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is treated in modern Chinese scholarship on late-Northern-Sòng bǐjì and on the New-Learning legacy (e.g., Cài Fāngxīn 蔡方鹿 and others on Wáng Ānshí’s xīnxué and its 12th-century followers); a punctuated edition is available in the Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記 series (Dàxiàng Chūbǎnshè). No Western-language translation exists.
Other points of interest
The text is one of the few late-Northern-Sòng bǐjì still openly working within the Wáng Ānshí xīnxué tradition at a moment (1126–1127) when the Yuányòu faction’s intellectual descendants had largely captured the institutional high ground. Its reception by Cháo Gōngwǔ in the Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì a century later is openly partisan, and the Sìkù’s defense of Huáng against Cháo is one of the more pointed Qianlong-era reassessments of a Sòng author whose factional position had distorted his subsequent transmission. The single famous citation singled out for ridicule (the Shī jīng sháo yào / wò jiāo entry, on the gift of peony and pepper as a token of erotic farewell) is a reminder that even the most sober Sòng kǎozhèng bǐjì could occasionally read the classical Shī with the sensibility of its actual time of composition.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Jìngkāng xiāngsù zázhì entry.
- CBDB id 30223 (Huáng Cháoyīng).