Àirìzhāi cóngchāo 愛日齋叢抄
Miscellaneous Extracts from the Sun-Cherishing Studio
by an anonymous late-Sòng author surnamed Yè 葉 (personal name lost)
About the work
A late Southern Sòng kǎozhèng miscellany of 153 entries, reconstructed by the Sìkù editors in 5 juan from two transmission witnesses: 143 entries scattered in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 (none of them carrying author-name) and 22 entries in Táo Zōngyí’s 陶宗儀 Shuō fú 說郛 j. 17 (labeled “compiled by Sòng Yè ___” with the given name elided). Twelve entries overlap between the two witnesses; ten entries are in Shuō fú but absent from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The author’s surname (Yè) is therefore known but his given name and dates are lost. The book is dated to the late Sòng by an internal anchor: an entry on Xiānrú cóngsì 先儂從祀 (former Confucians enshrined in the temple) cites the Xiánchún 咸淳 reign-period (1265–1274), placing composition in or after the Xiánchún reign and (presumptively) before the fall of Hángzhōu in 1276. The work is in Zákǎo zhī shǔ of the Zájiā division.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Àirìzhāi cóngchāo in five juan: 143 entries are scattered in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, all of them unattributed to a named author. Examining the various book-catalogues, the title is mostly not registered. Only in Táo Zōngyí’s Shuō fú j. 17 are 22 entries of this book preserved, labeled “compiled by Sòng Yè mǒu” (some Yè) but without giving his name. Collating the Shuō fú against the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, twelve entries agree, and ten entries are in Shuō fú but missing from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; taking these supplements together, we recover 153 entries in all. Though the original juan-divisions are lost, the gathered and rearranged text still gives a reliable outline. Observing his entry on the Xiānrú cóngsì (former Confucians enshrined in the temple), which carries the Xiánchún reign-title, we know him to be a man of the late Sòng.
The book’s main purpose is the analysis of names and things and the investigation of administrative precedent. In his use of earlier shuōbù 說部 [discourse-genre] writers — Zhào Démǐn 趙德麟 [Zhào Lìngzhì 令畤], Wáng Zhífāng 王直方, Cài Tāo 蔡絛, Zhū Yì 朱翌, Hóng Mài 洪邁, Yè Mèngdé 葉夢得, Lù Yóu 陸游, Zhōu Bìdà 周必大, Gōng Yízhèng 龔頤正, Hé Wèi 何薳, Zhào Yànwèi 趙彥衛 — there is no work he does not cite extensively and cross-check. His arrangement is in spirit similar to Zhāng Hào’s 張淏 Yúngǔ zájì 雲谷雜記 and Yè Dàqìng’s 葉大慶 Kǎo gǔ zhì yí 考古質疑. Only his prose has a certain meandering looseness and tends to verbosity; his citations are many but his decisive judgments few, so the discussion often hangs in mid-air without conclusion and is not always cleanly refined. Yet given the abundance of his materials, the corrections and rectifications scattered in the book are numerous. Such entries as on the origin of printing in the late Táng (not the Sòng as supposed), on the substitution of 准 for 準 not beginning with the Sòng, on the four castings of the bronze men, on the two senses of fúsī 罘罳, on the changes in women’s bowing and kneeling rituals, on the original system of palanquin-use by officials, on the liǎng huángcháng 兩黃裳 and sān báishí 三白石 — are decidedly useful for the textual-investigation of classics and histories. His entries on poetry in particular probe the depths and are at times able to capture the ancients’ intent; together with the views of Hú Zǐ 胡仔 and Wèi Qìngzhī 魏慶之 they are mutually illuminating, and certainly are not to be entirely discarded. We have respectfully gathered and sequenced the materials into five juan. In some cases an entry preserves only the recital of facts without the original judgment — because the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn original is incomplete, and there is now nothing to cross-check; we have for the present preserved the entries as found.
Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The author is known only as “Yè mǒu” 葉某 from the Shuō fú attribution; the given name and lifedates are lost. The dating evidence is the Xiánchún (1265–1274) reign-title citation in the xiānrú cóngsì entry. The notBefore of 1265 reflects this; the notAfter of 1279 (the final fall of Sòng) is conventional, as the work shows no Yuán-era references. Scholars have occasionally proposed identifications — most often with Yè Dàqìng 葉大慶 (the author of Kǎo gǔ zhì yí 考古質疑) or Yè Tíngguī 葉廷珪 (a different Sòng bǐjì author) — but no proposal has won general acceptance and the Sìkù editors carefully decline to identify the author.
The work itself is in the broad late-Sòng kǎozhèng tradition: gather extensive citations from earlier shuōbù writers (Hóng Mài, Yè Mèngdé, Lù Yóu, Zhōu Bìdà and others are cited heavily), cross-collate against the classics and histories, identify factual errors or recover lost precedents. The Sìkù editors are restrained in their praise — citing “verbosity” and a tendency to leave matters undecided — but recover the work specifically for the substance of its philological and institutional findings, with particular note of the literary-critical chapters on poetry (which they compare to Hú Zǐ’s Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà 苕溪漁隱叢話 and Wèi Qìngzhī’s Shīrén yùxiè 詩人玉屑).
The original juan-count of the work is lost; the SKQS 5-juan recension reconstructed from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn and Shuō fú is the only received version.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. The work is intermittently noticed in Chinese-language scholarship on late-Sòng shuō-bù and on the printed-book history (for the entry on the late-Táng origin of printing). The standard modern punctuated edition is in Zhū Yìxuán 朱易安 et al. (eds.), Quán Sòng bǐjì 全宋筆記, ser. 7 (Dàxiàng chūbǎnshè, 2017).
Other points of interest
The book’s recovery method — the SKQS editors reconstructing 153 entries from two distinct transmission witnesses, with twelve overlapping entries that allow cross-collation — is a model of jí yì 輯佚 (recovery from extracts) at small scale, and is occasionally cited in modern Chinese discussions of SKQS editorial method.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Àirìzhāi cóngchāo entry.