能改齋漫錄

Nénggǎizhāi mànlù 能改齋漫錄

Random Records from the Studio of Self-Correction

by 吳曾 (Wú Zēng, fl. ca. 1131–1170; zì Hǔchén 虎臣)

About the work

A substantial Southern-Sòng bǐjì in eighteen juan (containing, per the postface by Wú’s son Wú Fù 吳復, more than two thousand entries originally), one of the principal antiquarian and literary notebooks of the twelfth century. The book is divided into thirteen thematic categories — Shìshǐ 事始 (origins of things), Biànwù 辯誤 (correcting errors), Shìshí 事實 (historical facts), Yánxí 沿襲 (descents and borrowings), Dìlǐ 地理 (geography), Yìlùn 議論 (judgements), Jìshī 記詩 (notes on poems), Jǐnzhèng 謹正 (careful corrections), Jìshì 記事 (records of events), Jìwén 記文 (records of writings), Fāngwù 方物 (regional products), Yuèfǔ 樂府 (lyrics), and Shénxiān guǐguài 神仙鬼怪 (immortals, ghosts, and the strange) — a scheme that places it alongside Hóng Mài’s KR3j0038 Róngzhāi suíbǐ 容齋隨筆 as one of the two great philological-cum-anecdotal bǐjì of the Southern Sòng. The independent printed transmission was broken from early Yuán onward; the present recension descends from a Míng-era manuscript copy taken from the Imperial Library, in which the original first and last juan (presumably containing the personal preface and the final Shénxiān guǐguài category) were lost. Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 family copy compensated for the gap by splitting juan 2 and juan 17 into two each, restoring the count of eighteen but not the original content. The book was, in its day, controversial because Wú Zēng had risen in office through Qín Huì 秦檜’s patronage; his political alignment occasioned both contemporary attacks and a temporary woodblock-destruction order until the post-Qín-Huì statesman Jīng Tāng 京鏜 had it reprinted.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Nénggǎizhāi mànlù in eighteen juan, by Wú Zēng of the Sòng. Zēng, zì Hǔchén, was a man of Chóngrén 崇仁. While Qín Huì held the chancellery, Zēng presented his writings to the throne and obtained office; in the guǐyǒu year of Shàoxīng [Shàoxīng 23 = 1153] he transferred from the Chìjú 敕局 to Yòu chéngfèng láng 右承奉郎, taking charge of the Tàichángbù 太常簿; he was promoted to Yùdié jiǎntǎo guān 玉牒檢討官, then to Gōngbù lángzhōng 工部郎中, and finally went out as prefect of Yánzhōu 嚴州, dying after retirement.

This book is his composition in the shuōbù genre. At the end is a postface by his son Fù 復, stating that the entries number more than two thousand, arranged in eighteen juan. From early Yuán the printed editions were long out of circulation; the present text is a Míng manuscript copied from the Imperial Library, originally lacking the first and last juan, and the recension transmitted by the Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 family accordingly split the second and seventeenth juan into two each to make up the count — it is, in fact, not a complete edition. The book divides its material into thirteen categories — Shìshǐ, Biànwù, Shìshí, Yánxí, Dìlǐ, Yìlùn, Jìshī, Jǐnzhèng, Jìshì, Jìwén, Fāngwù, Yuèfǔ, and Shénxiān guǐguài. Various editions differ from one another: the division of juan varies, the sequence is inverted, juan 11 is sometimes split in two while juan 9 is sometimes merged into juan 8; some editions lack the Jǐnzhèng category and merge it into Jìshì. As the manuscript transmission has been heavy, later hands have rearranged at will, with the result that the editions are mutually inconsistent and the original arrangement is not recoverable.

The book is detailed in its philological investigation, but in its own day it drew its share of disapproval. Liú Chāngshī’s 劉昌詩 Lúpǔ bǐjì 蘆浦筆記 picked out eleven errors and noted that the Bǐshì 比事 category was full of omissions, citing eight cases from the Shǐjì as exemplars. Zhào Yànwèi’s 趙彥衞 Yúnlù mànchāo 雲麓漫鈔 picked out the entry equating Buddhist fǎ with Heaven and Earth as one in origin, calling it false and shallow scholarship, and noted Wú’s frequent disparagement of earlier worthies — for instance treating any chance verbal coincidence between two poets as proof of plagiarism, and trusting his memory to make far-fetched claims. Zhōu Huī’s 周煇 Qīngbō zájì 清波雜志 reports that the book recorded a parodic memorial of Jīngwáng Yuányǎn 荆王元儼 and the eccentricities of imperial-clan habits — matters that ought not to have been spoken — and was therefore at one point ordered struck from the woodblocks. Shèng Rúzǐ’s 盛如梓 Shùzhāi cóngtán 恕齋叢談 also records that one Zhèng Xiǎnwén 鄭顯文, then magistrate of Mácháng 麻城, dispatched his son Zhīhàn 之翰 to the Censorate to denounce Wú Zēng for slanderous expressions, with the result that both Wú and Zhèng were demoted two ranks and Zhèng’s son was banished to Tīngzhōu 汀州. After Jīng Tāng 京鏜 came to admire the book, it was reprinted — at variance with Zhōu Huī’s report; we cannot now adjudicate.

Wáng Shìzhēn’s 王士禎 Chíběi ǒután 池北偶談 supposed that Wú’s book contained much disparagement of Wáng Ānshí 王安石, and that Zhèng Xiǎnwén had simply rehearsed the old factional reflex. Examining the book today: it ranks Xún Yù 荀彧 as a loyal subject of the Hàn and Féng Dào 馮道 as a “great man” — judgements grossly inverted; furthermore, the congratulatory poems Sūn Zhòng’áo 孫仲鼇 wrote for Qín Huì, and the ten juéjù presented to him by Zēng Dūn 曾惇, are all reproduced in full. Zhào Yànwèi also records that after Qín Huì’s death, Wú Zēng dared not leave his residence for some time, and in his nineteenth juan he himself confesses unhappiness in the metropolitan post and inability to bend with the times — a transparent attempt to deflect blame for losing office. His subordination to a corrupt minister is plainly visible — and that, more than anything else, is why the book attracted attack. Wáng Shìzhēn evidently did not investigate carefully.

But Wú’s range of memorized erudition is wide, his citations are unusually comprehensive, and his analyses are often precise. In his own day, men hated the man — but later authorities of kǎozhèng could not avoid quoting his findings, which approach those of Hóng Mài’s Róngzhāi suíbǐ. Setting aside his character and judging only his learning, casting away the dross and taking the kernel, the book counts as a fine specimen among Southern-Sòng shuōbù; it cannot be discarded. Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth 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

Wú Zēng 吳曾 (CBDB id 10087, fl. ca. 1131–1170, native of Chóngrén 崇仁 in Fǔzhōu 撫州, zì Hǔchén 虎臣) is one of the more equivocal figures of the early Shàoxīng court. He never sat the jìnshì but presented his writings (shàngsuǒyè) directly to the throne under the Qín Huì 秦檜 administration in 1153 (Shàoxīng 23) and was rewarded with office; his rapid rise to Gōngbù lángzhōng 工部郎中 and a prefecture (Yánzhōu) was widely understood as patronage from Qín. His association with the Qín faction made the present bǐjì a magnet for attack — Liú Chāngshī, Zhào Yànwèi, Zhōu Huī, and Shèng Rúzǐ all registered objections of differing kinds, ranging from philological corrections to charges of moral perversity (his praise of Féng Dào 馮道, his loyalty-to-the-Hàn assignment of Xún Yù 荀彧, his reproduction of fawning poems by Sūn Zhòng’áo 孫仲鼇 and Zēng Dūn 曾惇 to Qín Huì) to outright slander (the parodic Jīngwáng Yuányǎn 荆王元儼 piece, which according to Zhōu Huī occasioned a temporary woodblock destruction order). The eighteenth-century Sìkù editors, while not concealing the politics, conclude that Wú’s kǎozhèng is sufficiently comprehensive and accurate to put the book “very nearly on a par with Hóng Mài’s Róngzhāi suíbǐ” 幾與洪邁容齋隨筆相埒.

The text’s transmission was severely damaged. Wú Fù’s 吳復 postface gives the original tally as “more than two thousand entries in eighteen juan.” From the early Yuán the printed editions were lost, and the present recension descends from a Míng manuscript taken from the Imperial Library — already missing the first and last juan when copied. Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 (1540–1620) attempted to restore the count by splitting juan 2 and juan 17 each in two, but the contents are not the original. Manuscript variants disagree on category-arrangement: in some witnesses the Jǐnzhèng 謹正 (Careful Corrections) category is missing as a separate heading, having been merged into Jìshì. The Wényuàngé (Sìkù) recension reflects the Jiāo Hóng tradition.

The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 1140, notAfter 1170) reflects Wú Zēng’s mature compositional life, with most entries datable to the period after his entry into office in 1153 and the terminus ante quem set by his son’s postface (Wú Zēng appears to have died around 1170, though the exact date is not recorded). The work was an important source for QuánSòngshī and modern Sòng literary scholarship, especially for the Yuèfǔ and Jìshī sections — many otherwise lost lyric and cí fragments survive only here.

The work is recorded in the Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題 of Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫, the Sòng shǐ · Yìwén zhì, and the Wényuàngé shūmù 文淵閣書目.

Translations and research

No complete European-language translation exists. Important modern Chinese editions and studies:

• Nénggǎi-zhāi mànlù 能改齋漫錄, Shànghǎi Gǔjí Chūbǎnshè 1979 (punctuated edition based on the Sìkù recension cross-collated with the Mòhǎi jīnhú 墨海金壺 print).
• Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記 series (Zhū Yì’ān 朱易安 and Fù Xuáncōng 傅璇琮, eds., Dàxiàng chūbǎnshè, 2003–2013), with critical apparatus.
• Zhōu Bǎozhū 周寶珠, “Nénggǎi-zhāi mànlù zài Sòngdài shǐliào shàng de jiàzhí” 能改齋漫錄在宋代史料上的價值, in various Chinese journal anthologies.
• The work is a foundational citation source for Tāng Guīzhāng’s 唐圭璋 Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 and for Lì Yízhuō 李宜濯’s lost-poem reconstructions.

Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, treats the Nénggǎi-zhāi mànlù among the major Sòng bǐjì but without a separate dedicated entry; cf. §62.3.11 generally.

Other points of interest

The book preserves the only Sòng-period reference to the title Xuélín xīnbiān 學林新編 — Wú Zēng’s name for the work later transmitted simply as KR3j0037 Xuélín 學林 by Wáng Guānguó 王觀國. The “xīnbiān” 新編 element was dropped in later transmission, and the sole evidence that it once formed part of the title is the citation in the Nénggǎizhāi mànlù — itself flagged in the Xuélín tíyāo.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Nénggǎizhāi mànlù entry.
• Wú Fù 吳復, postface (preserved in the Sìkù recension).
• Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記 series.