潁川語小

Yǐngchuān yǔ xiǎo 潁川語小

Lesser Talks of Yǐng-chuān

by 陳叔方 (Chén Shūfāng / Chén Fǎng 陳昉, fl. c. 1200–1265; zì Shūfāng 叔方, hào Jiézhāi 節齋; of Píngyáng 平陽 in Wēnzhōu 溫州; Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書 and Duānmíngdiàn dàxuéshì 端明殿大學士)

About the work

A Southern Sòng bǐjì 筆記 of textual and literary criticism in 2 juan, in the Sìkù recompilation from passages preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn — the original juan-count is unknown; the title (Yǐngchuān, the ancestral seat of the Chén lineage 潁川陳氏) is a clan-stylized self-reference. The work belongs to the late-Sòng kǎozhèng tradition: its evidential entries on classical and historical texts are explicitly compared by the Sìkù editors to Hóng Mài’s 洪邁 Róngzhāi suíbǐ 容齋隨筆, and its literary-critical entries on the syntax and rhetoric of the classics and histories to Chén Kuí’s 陳騤 Wén zé 文則. The Sìkù editors place it in the second tier of Southern Sòng kǎozhèng — below Wáng Guānguó’s 王觀國 Xuélín 學林 and Wáng Yīnglín’s 王應麟 Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞 — but unambiguously above the “zhì páixié shù shénguài 誌俳諧述神怪” (chronicles of foolery and reports of marvels) genre of casual bǐjì. The author’s identification — as Chén Fǎng 陳昉, zì Shūfāng, hào Jiézhāi — is a Sìkù editorial reconstruction. Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division (subdivision zákǎo 雜考).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Yǐngchuān yǔ xiǎo in two juan is not entered in the Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì or in any of the various book-catalogues. The passages scattered in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn attribute it only to “Chén Shūfāng” (陳叔方) without specifying his era. The book refers to Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 as Lǚ Chénggōng 呂成公; consulting the Sòng shǐ biography of Lǚ Zǔqiān, his death received no canonization-title at the time, and only under Lǐzōng 理宗 was he posthumously enfeoffed Earl of Kāifēng (Kāifēng bó 開封伯) and given the canonical title Chéng 成. The book must therefore date from after Lǐzōng’s reign.

Zhōu Mì’s 周密 Guǐxīn zázhì 癸辛雜識 records two anecdotes about a Shūfāng, calling him Jiézhāi 節齋. The Sòng Wúmíngshì 無名氏 Shī jiā dǐngluán 詩家鼎臠 carries a gōngcí 宮詞 by Jiézhāi Chén Fǎng Shūfāng, placed (anthology-internal date) after Zhào Kuí 趙葵 and before Wáng Mài 王邁. The Sòng shī jìshì 宋詩紀事 likewise calls him “Chén Fǎng, zì Shūfāng, hào Jiézhāi, native of Píngyáng in Wēnzhōu, who entered office through the yīn 蔭 privilege, rose successively to Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書 and Duānmíngdiàn dàxuéshì 端明殿大學士, and at his death received the canonical title Qīnghuì 清惠.” This is one Chén Shūfāng.

There is, additionally, in Ní Zàn’s 倪瓚 Qīngbì gé jí 清閟閣集 two letters to a Chén Shūfāng; and in Zhèng Yuányòu’s 鄭元祐 Qiáo Wú jí 僑吳集 a single Yuán gù Shèndú chǔshì Chénjūn mùzhì míng 元故慎獨處士陳君墓誌銘 which says, “There was in Wú a recluse-gentleman called Chénjūn Shūfāng, his given name Zhí 植, a Sòng yímín (loyalist remnant), the son of the Níngjí xiānshēng 寧極先生 Chén Shēn 陳深.” This is a second Chén Shūfāng. Since the present book contains no reference to any Yuán matter, it is presumably the work of the Sòng Chén Fǎng.

His investigation of textual variants in the canonical books and his treatment of court-institutional precedents closely resembles Hóng Mài’s 洪邁 Róngzhāi suíbǐ; his discussions of cífǎ 辭法 (sentence structure), much of which examines the classical and historical sources, look like Chén Kuí’s 陳騤 Wén zé 文則. As to his slips: he says lǚ duān 履端 (year-beginning) is the name of the intercalary month — failing to consult the Zuǒ zhuàn sub-commentary or the Shǐ jì notes; he says the pōluó 叵羅 (drinking vessel) is “of unknown sort” — failing to consult the Běi shǐ Zǔ Tǐng zhuàn 北史祖珽傳 or the poems of Lǐ Bái 李白 and Cén Cān 岑參; he says the character zhī 只 has no source outside the Máo Shī — failing to consult the Chǔ cí Dà zhāo 楚詞大招; he says the corruption of juéwěi 䤩尾 to tǎwěi 獺尾 begins with Huáng Fánchuò 黃幡綽 — failing to consult Wáng Jiàn 王建’s poems or Wáng Déchén’s 王得臣 Zhǔ shǐ 麈史; he says Lín Bū 林逋’s poetic phrase guōsuǒ gōuzhōu 郭索鉤輈 (crab-and-bird) uses Běn cǎo 本草 vocabulary — failing to consult Yáng Xióng’s 揚雄 Fǎ yán 法言 or Lǐ Qúnyù 李群玉’s poems. Compared with Wáng Guānguó’s 王觀國 Xué lín 學林 and Wáng Yīnglín’s 王應麟 Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞 he comes off slightly weaker.

In general, however, his evidential procedure is detailed and accurate: in arguing that the Nǚwā 女媧 patching of heaven did not involve actual mineral-smelting, he follows Zhāng Zhàn’s 張湛 reading; in arguing that “same surname” 同姓 does not entail “same lineage-name” 同氏, he follows Xǔ Shèn 許慎. As to nomenclature, character-meanings, and habituated misuses, he sets each one straight in turn — material genuinely sufficient to remedy vulgar errors. Compared with works that record buffoonery and chronicle marvels, this book is far more useful, and gathered up and recorded it is also material on which the textual-critic can draw. Shūfāng’s old book has lost all record of its juan-count; we now present, organized roughly by category, the surviving passages from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn in two juan.

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth 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

Chén Shūfāng 陳叔方 (born Chén Fǎng 陳昉, fl. c. 1200–1265), hào Jiézhāi 節齋, posthumous title Qīnghuì 清惠, of Píngyáng 平陽 in Wēnzhōu 溫州, was a senior Southern Sòng official — Lìbù shàngshū 吏部尚書 (Minister of Personnel) and Duānmíngdiàn dàxuéshì 端明殿大學士 — who entered office not through the examination system but through the hereditary yīn 蔭 privilege owing to his father’s rank. The Sòng shǐ gives no biography under his name; his identification as the author of the Yǐngchuān yǔ xiǎo is a Sìkù editorial reconstruction triangulated from Zhōu Mì’s 周密 Guǐxīn zázhì, the anonymous Shī jiā dǐngluán 詩家鼎臠, and the Sòng shī jìshì 宋詩紀事 — all three of which converge on a Jiézhāi Chén Fǎng zì Shūfāng of Wēnzhōu Píngyáng. The Sìkù editors are careful to distinguish him from a homonymous Yuán Chén Shūfāng (originally named Chén Zhí 植, the recluse son of Chén Shēn 陳深), and observe that the present Yǐngchuān yǔ xiǎo contains no Yuán-era references and so must be the Sòng man’s work.

The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 1234, notAfter 1265) is anchored to two internal markers. The lower bound is the Sìkù observation that the book speaks of Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙 as “Lǚ Chénggōng” — the canonical title 成 was conferred only under Lǐzōng (whose reign began 1224); the conferment of canonical titles on great Lǐ-school figures of the QiánChún tradition is a Duānpíng (1234–1236) event under Lǐzōng. The upper bound is conventional: the Shī jiā dǐngluán anthology positions Chén Shūfāng’s gōngcí between Zhào Kuí (1186–1266) and Wáng Mài (1184–1248), placing his active period in the middle decades of the thirteenth century.

The text is a Southern Sòng kǎozhèng bǐjì of mixed quality. Its author was sufficiently widely-read to handle entries on the Zuǒ zhuàn and Shǐ jì, on Six-Dynasties material vocabulary, on Táng poetics, and on the syntax of the canonical prose tradition; but the Sìkù editors enumerate a respectable list of citation-failures (entries on lǚ duān, pōluó, zhī, juéwěi, guōsuǒ gōuzhōu) where Chén Shūfāng has missed the obvious source. They place the work below Wáng Guānguó 王觀國 and Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟 but above the zhìguài / yútán genre.

The original juan-count and table-of-contents are lost; the Sìkù 2-juan recompilation from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn is the only text we have.

Translations and research

No substantial secondary literature located in any European language. The text is briefly noted in:

• Liú Yèqiū 劉葉秋, Lìdài bǐjì gàishù 歷代筆記概述 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1980; rev. ed. 2003).
• Zhū Yìxuán 朱易安 et al. (eds.), Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記, ser. 8 (Dàxiàng chūbǎnshè, 2017), with collation notes and modern punctuation.
• Brief discussion in studies of the Wēn-zhōu Yǒng-jiā 永嘉 intellectual milieu of the late Sòng — the milieu of Yè Shì 葉適 and Chén Liàng 陳亮 — though Chén Shūfāng himself is not centrally located in that current.

No Western-language monographic treatment exists.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù editors’ carefully argued disambiguation between the Sòng Chén Fǎng (= our author) and the Yuán Chén Zhí (the shèndú chǔshì of Wú who appears in Ní Zàn’s correspondence) is a small model of editorial method by triangulation of converging external testimonies. The Sìkù judgment in such cases is rarely overturned by later scholarship, and the present identification has held.

The title Yǐngchuān refers to the ancestral seat of the Chén lineage (Yǐngchuān 潁川 prefecture, in modern Hénán) — a stylized self-reference common in Chén-clan works that does not indicate the author’s actual native place (which was Wēnzhōu Píngyáng).

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Yǐngchuān yǔ xiǎo entry.
• Wikidata: no entry located.