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丹鉛餘錄

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Text ID
KR3j0059
Date
1525–1547
Dynasty
明

Dān qiān yú lù 丹鉛餘錄

Surplus Notes from the Cinnabar-and-Lead [Manuscript-Marker]

by 楊愼 (Yáng Shèn, zì Yòngxiū 用修, hào Shēngān 升庵, 1488–1559; Hànlín xiūzhuàn 修撰 banished to Yúnnán after the 1524 Dàlǐ yì 大禮議 affair)

About the work

A 17-juan miscellany of textual-philological notes — the first of an enormous Yáng Shèn series of Dānqiān 丹鉛 (“cinnabar-and-lead”) works. The cinnabar-and-lead pair are the proofreader’s two pigments (red ink and lead-white correction paste); the title’s overall sense is “notes from the work of marking up texts.” The author’s preface explains the title further: in antiquity criminals’ records were written in cinnabar; under the Wèi the inheriting-relatives of yuánzuò 緣坐 (collective punishment) cases who were dispatched to be “gōngyuè záhù” (music-and-craft conscripts) had their registers compiled in red paper rolled on lead spindles. Yáng Shèn — banished to Yúnnán under just such a záhù status — chose the title as a deliberately self-deprecating allusion to his own legal condition. The work was completed and printed in the late 1520s to early 1540s during Yáng Shèn’s Yúnnán exile and rapidly became one of his best-known compilations; it was followed by the Dānqiān xù lù 丹鉛續錄 (12 juan), Dānqiān zhāi lù 丹鉛摘錄 (the author’s own abridgment, 13 juan, printed in 1547), the Dānqiān rùn lù 丹鉛閏錄 (9 juan), and finally Liáng Zuǒ’s 梁佐 consolidating Dānqiān zǒng lù 丹鉛總錄 (27 juan, 28 categories). The four works were transmitted together. The SKQS recension (cataloged as Dānqiān yú lù but in fact carrying Yúlù + Xùlù + Zhāilù) is the standard transmitted text.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Dānqiān yúlù in seventeen juan, Xùlù in twelve juan, Zhāilù in thirteen juan, Zǒnglù in twenty-seven juan, were compiled by Yáng Shèn of the Míng. Shèn’s Tángōng cóngxùn 檀弓叢訓 [KR1d0163] is separately catalogued. Shèn read voluminously and was fond of producing miscellaneous compilations; Zhōu Liànggōng 周亮工 once printed his bibliography, which numbered over two hundred titles. His textual-investigative works on disagreements among books all carry the name Dānqiān. Examine his Lǎn chǎi wéi yán 攬茝微言, which says: “In antiquity criminals’ affidavits were written in cinnabar; in the Wèi zhì, those of dependents collectively-punished and assigned to be music-and-craft conscripts had their registers made of red paper with lead-axle scrolls. Shēngān [Yáng Shèn] is on the chǐjí 尺籍 (military register) — and so puts his meaning in this.” All in all, the Yúlù is seventeen juan, the Xùlù twelve juan, the Rùnlù nine juan; Shèn himself further abridged these to make the Zhāilù, printed in Jiājìng dīngwèi (1547). After this, his disciple Liáng Zuǒ gathered up the various lù and consolidated them into one, deleting duplications and fixing the result at twenty-eight categories — naming it the Zǒnglù — and printed it at Shàngháng 上杭. Once that came out the various individual lù declined.

Zhōu Liànggōng’s Shū yǐng 書影 notes the misprints — characters dropping out like falling leaves — and that locally-stationed officials would print many copies for use as gifts, paying for the paper, ink, and binding entirely out of the people; the people found it burdensome, and the official then issued a decree to destroy the blocks. The copies now in circulation are all from before the destruction. Again, in the Wànlì period, the Sìchuān grand-coordinator Zhāng Shìpèi 張士佩 reprinted Shèn’s collected works, and reduced the various lù and the Tányuàn tíhú and so on to forty-one juan as an appendix to the collection. This too circulates alongside the Zǒnglù.

This recension carries only the Yúlù, the Xùlù, and the Zhāilù, and lacks the Rùnlù; but since Liáng Zuǒ’s Zǒnglù is here, the Rùnlù is contained within it. The four texts mutually support each other: the Zǒnglù fills in what the three lù lack, the three lù correct the errors of the Zǒnglù — taken together they are still Shèn’s complete work.

Shèn was foremost in his time for broad coverage. Had he focused his attention, gathered a hundred ages, and exhausted a life’s labour to make a single book, he might not have followed in the footsteps of Mǎ [Róng] and Zhèng [Xuán] but he would certainly not have stood far below Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟 and Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨. He grasped at fame too quickly, however: as soon as a fascicle was ready he sent it to the engraver, and his hodge-podges of citations became merely záxué 雜學. Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞 said of him: “deft at proving the classics but careless in expounding them; detailed on supplementing history but careless on the standard histories; detailed on the matters described in poems but loose on the poems’ zhǐ 旨 (meaning); searches beyond the universe but loses what is in front of his eyes and ears” — a fair judgment. He was also given to forging old books to settle his own arguments, and looked down on his age, supposing none could uncover him — not knowing that Chén Yàowén’s 陳耀文 Zhèng Yáng 正楊 had already been written in reply. Although Chén’s pursuit of flaws and his denigration overshoots, did Shèn not bring it on himself? Wood-rot brings the worm. Even so, the breadth of his hunting and gathering was such that the foundations are ultimately deep. So although the looseness and slips are many, the fine writing is also abundant. Among ancient counterparts he is to be placed between Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵 and Luó Bì 羅泌. In the three hundred years of the Míng, he is one of the iron-of-iron.

Respectfully revised and submitted, eleventh 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

Yáng Shèn 楊慎 (1488–1559) was the most prolific Míng bǐjì/philological author and one of the most controversial. Sòn of the grand secretary Yáng Tínghé 楊廷和 (1459–1529), zhuàngyuán 1511, and Hànlín xiūzhuàn until the Dàlǐ yì 大禮議 ritual-controversy explosion of 1524 — when his protest against Jiājìng’s elevation of his birth-father drew the tíngzhàng 廷杖 and biǎn shù 貶戍 (banishment-with-conscription) penalty. Yáng spent the remaining 35 years of his life as a military exile in Yǒngchāng 永昌 (Yúnnán); his daily life there was effectively that of a záhù 雜戶 (mixed-status conscript), which gives the Dānqiān series its bitter title-pun. Despite the legal status of exile he was given near-complete freedom of movement within the south-western frontier and produced an enormous output: the Sìkù editors estimate over two hundred titles. He died in Yúnnán in 1559 without ever being recalled.

The Dānqiān yúlù (the first and largest of the series) gathers Yáng Shèn’s reading notes across the classics, histories, zhūzǐ, poetry, and a wide range of lexical, etymological, antiquarian, and natural-historical topics. Methodologically he is a broad-tradition mid-Míng evidential author who casts a wide net across the entire received corpus, including non-canonical sources such as the Mòzǐ 墨子 (cited to disprove the popular story that Fàn Lǐ 范蠡 carried Xī Shī off with him), the Lǐ Sī yùcí 李斯獄辭 (cited to disprove the claim that Zǎi Wǒ 宰我 joined Tián Cháng’s rebellion), and various Sòng poets and commentators. The work is best-known for individual evidential findings — the recovery of the original meaning of obscure classical phrases (sì shí gǎi huǒ 四時改火, dà zhēn xiǎo zhēn 大貞小貞, xuán niǎo 玄鳥, etc.) — but is famously also riddled with errors of overreach and (the Sìkù editors note) outright fabrications of supporting evidence. Chén Yàowén’s 陳耀文 Zhèng Yáng 正楊 (KR3j0062) is the most famous mid-Míng evidential rebuttal.

Dating. The author’s autograph preface and the preface by Zhāng Sù 張素 dated Jiājìng gēngyín (1530) anchor the original Yúlù to before 1530; the Zhāilù was printed in Jiājìng dīngwèi (1547), which is the working terminus ante quem for the complete Yúlù+Xùlù+Zhāilù arrangement. The notBefore of 1525 is conservatively set just after the start of Yáng’s Yúnnán exile; the notAfter of 1547 reflects the Zhāilù publication. The transmitted recension is largely fixed at this period; later editors (Liáng Zuǒ, Zhāng Shìpèi) reorganized but did not substantially expand Yáng’s content.

The Yúlù and its companions are one of the central reference works of Míng kǎozhèng and one of the most studied bodies of Míng evidential writing. They are also among the most-attacked: the early Qīng evidential consensus (Gù Yánwǔ, Yán Ruòqú) followed Chén Yàowén in skepticism, and the Sìkù editors’ even-handed verdict — “fine writing is abundant, despite many slips” — is a careful rehabilitation that leaves the work canonical but with reservations.

Translations and research

The Dān-qiān series has no Western-language complete translation. Substantial English-language scholarly engagement begins with:

  • Adam Schorr, “The Trap of Words: Political Power, Cultural Authority, and Language Debates in Ming Dynasty China,” PhD diss., UCLA, 1994 (chs. on Yáng Shèn’s lexicography).
  • Adam Schorr, “Connoisseurship and the Defense Against Vulgarity: Yang Shen (1488–1559) and His Work,” Monumenta Serica 41 (1993): 89–128.
  • Bruce Rusk, Critics and Commentators: The Book of Poems as Classic and Literature (Harvard, 2012), passim on Yáng Shèn’s Shī-jīng work.
  • Hok-lam Chan in Dictionary of Ming Biography (Goodrich and Fang, eds., 1976), s.v. “Yang Shen.”

Standard modern Chinese editions include the Yáng Shēng-ān cóng-shū 楊升庵叢書 (Sìchuān rénmín chūbǎnshè, 1986) and the Yáng Shēng-ān cí-pǔ 楊升庵辭譜 (Wáng Wéngǎi 王文才 ed., Bā-Shǔ shūshè, 1990). Substantial Chinese-language monographic treatment includes Wáng Wéngǎi 王文才, Yáng Shēng-ān xué pǔ 楊升庵學譜 (1985, with revisions).

Other points of interest

Yáng Shèn’s habit (flagged by Chén Yàowén in Zhèng Yáng and accepted by the Sìkù editors) of fabricating evidentiary citations to support his arguments is one of the more interesting case-studies in late-imperial intellectual ethics. The Qīng Hàn xué polemicists who built their identity on evidential rigor against the Míng xìnglǐ tradition routinely returned to Yáng Shèn as the cautionary mid-Míng counter-model — at once breathtakingly erudite and stunningly unreliable.

The Dānqiān title’s pun on the lead-spindle prison register is one of Yáng Shèn’s more bitter and characteristic literary signatures: the entire corpus is signed under the imagery of his own legal humiliation, even while it works as the most ambitious mid-Míng claim to canonical evidential authority.

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