Tányuàn tíhú 譚苑醍醐
The Cream-of-Cream of the Discussion-Garden
by 楊愼 (Yáng Shèn, zì Yòngxiū 用修, hào Shēngān 升庵, 1488–1559)
About the work
A 9-juan philological-historical bǐjì by Yáng Shèn, prefaced and dated Jiājìng rényín mid-winter solstice (1542). Methodologically a companion piece to the Dānqiān series (KR3j0059) — many entries are on similar topics and overlap or revise Dānqiān notes — but with a distinct framing: the title borrows the Buddhist five-stage refinement of dairy (rǔ → lào → shēng sū → shú sū → tíhú; milk → curd → fresh butter → cooked butter → cream-of-cream) as a metaphor for graduated study, citing the Nièpán jīng 涅槃經 / Púsà yīngluò jīng 菩薩瓔珞經 simile. The author’s self-preface — “the Confucian discipline has both broad and condensed [forms], the Buddhist teaching has sudden and gradual; my book is the tíhú (highest refined essence) drawn from the broad reading-garden” — frames the work as a refinement-volume to a previously broad foundation. The Sìkù editors recognize it as one of Yáng Shèn’s better-organized productions, with several genuinely substantial original findings.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Tányuàn tíhú in nine juan was compiled by Yáng Shèn of the Míng. The book is throughout in evidential discourse, broadly similar in approach to the Dānqiān lù but with significant differences in detail. At the head is the author’s preface dated Jiājìng rényín (1542). The naming as “tíhú” reflects the saying that from milk comes curd, from curd butter, from raw butter cooked butter, from cooked butter tíhú — to enter the essence and spirit is not a one-stride effort.
He says that the eight gentlemen of Zhōu were of the Nángōng 南宮 lineage, citing the Yì Zhōushū 逸周書 passage “Nángōng Hū removed the wealth of Lùtái; Nángōng Bǎidá removed the Nine Tripods” — and argues that Nángōng Hū is Zhònghū 仲忽, Nángōng Bǎidá is Bódá 伯達, and the Nángōng Kuò 南宮适 of the Shàngshū is Bókuò 伯适; an extremely well-anchored argument. He also says the Xiāntiān tú 先天圖 (the prior-heaven diagram of the Yìjīng) begins with [Chén] Xīyí, the Hòutiān tú 後天圖 (latter-heaven diagram) was continued by [Shào] Kāngjié; Xīyí transmitted it to Mù Bócháng 穆伯長, Mù transmitted to Lǐ Tǐngzhī 李挺之, Lǐ’s learning was passed to Kāngjié [Shào Yōng]. His [Shào Yōng’s] Hòutiān tú appears in Shào Bówēn’s 邵伯溫 preface; Zhūzǐ [Zhū Xī]‘s reason for not stating this explicitly was not on account of Kāngjié, but because of Xīyí — he feared later generations would charge Xīyí with descending into Daoist immortality-cult. His analysis here is also the most detailed and lucid.
He follows the Máo commentary in glossing è bù wěiwěi 鄂不韡韡 [Shī · Tángdì]: è means flower-calyx, bù means flower-foot — the gloss in modern texts has è → è 蕚, bù → fū 跗 — and says that the calyx is beneath the petals, the foot is beneath the calyx; calyx and petals overlapping with brightness, like brothers harmonious and flourishing. This corrects the Jízhuàn 集傳 [Zhū Xī’s commentary] reading of “the calyx prominent, is it not in full radiance?” He also cites the Hàn-period Liú Zhàn 劉湛 Lǚliáng bēi 呂梁碑 — which describes the lineage of Shùn from Mù 幕, who begat Qióngchán 窮蟬, who begat Jìngkāng 敬康, who begat Qiáoniú 喬牛, who begat Gǔsǒu 瞽瞍 — and compares this with the Shǐ jì: agreement, with no mention of descent from the Yellow Emperor. This dissolves the suspicion that Shùn’s two consorts, being his cousins of the same surname, married in a senior-junior-incest pattern. He also cites another inscription on Hòujì’s 后稷 line: Hòujì → Táixǐ → Shūjūn → (many generations) → Bùkū 不窟 → (descendants) → Jìlì 季歷 — at least 17 generations. Sīmǎ Qiān, constrained by the Shíwǔ wáng 十五王 (fifteen kings) doctrine, conflated two persons into one and condensed several others to match the figure. He failed to recognize that the Guó yǔ’s “fifteen kings” refers only to the worthy and well-known kings — not that Hòujì to King Wǔ (over a thousand years) had only fifteen generations.
He cites the Shuǐ jīng zhù 水經注’s citation of Zhūgě Liàng’s memorial: “Your servant dispatched the Tiger-Step Supervisor Mèng Yǎn 孟琰 to seize the area east of the Wǔgōng River; Sīmǎ Yì took advantage of the rising Wèi to attack Yǎn’s camp; your servant made a bridge to cross the water and shot at him; the bridge being made, [Sīmǎ Yì] ran off.” This Zhūgě affair is not in the standard zhuàn (biography).
He also argues that Lǐ Bái was of Zhāngmíng 彰明 in Shǔ — citing the Letter Submitted to Magistrate Péi 上裴長史書, the Bēi qīngqiū fù 悲清秋賦, and various poems — to refute the Táng shū claim that Lǐ Bái was of Lǒngxī 隴西 and a member of the imperial Táng clan. Cases like these — his other textual investigations and arguments — yield many new readings. Although what he carries in his belly’s storehouse occasionally has misremembered items that later readers can pick out, on the whole this is not the kind of work a thin-bellied man could carry out.
Respectfully revised and submitted, eleventh month, twelfth day 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 Tányuàn tíhú is dated by Yáng Shèn’s own preface to Jiājìng rényín mid-winter solstice = 11 December 1542 (the winter-solstice of the rényín cyclical year falls in the eleventh lunar month). Composed in Yúnnán exile, eighteen years after Yáng’s banishment, the work captures Yáng’s middle-period intellectual style: still deeply concerned with classical philology and historical reconstruction, but now framed under explicit Buddhist metaphors (the tíhú of cream-distillation) and increasingly willing to overrule Sòng Lǐxué readings.
Methodologically the work is broadly comparable to Dānqiān yúlù (KR3j0059) — Yáng’s standard practice of casting wide citation-nets across the entire received corpus, including non-canonical sources — but the Sìkù editors note with approval that it is somewhat more disciplined: fewer hodgepodge entries, fewer suspected fabrications, more sustained arguments. They itemize several of the more substantial findings: the Nángōng lineage identification (linking the Yì Zhōushū “Nángōng Hū” / “Nángōng Bǎidá” to the Shàngshū / Lúnyǔ Zhōu Eight Gentlemen); the transmission-lineage of the Yì-jīng Xiāntiān / Hòutiān diagrams through Chén Tuán 陳摶 → Mù Xiū 穆修 → Lǐ Zhīcái 李之才 → Shào Yōng 邵雍 (with a sharp explanation of why Zhū Xī suppressed the Chén Tuán origin); the Shī · Chángdì reading of è bù wěiwěi; the Lǚliáng bēi genealogy of Shùn (clearing the Lǔ shū of the suspicion of cousin-marriage); the Hòujì lineage problem (correcting Sīmǎ Qiān’s compression to “fifteen kings”); the Shuǐ jīng zhù Zhūgě Liàng memorial (a piece of Three-Kingdoms history not in the Sānguó zhì); and the Lǐ Bái biographical question (Yáng’s argument for Zhāngmíng / Miánzhōu origins against the Xīn Táng shū Lǒngxī claim).
This Lǐ Bái argument is one of Yáng Shèn’s most-cited contributions to literary biography. The Zhāngmíng / Miánzhōu (modern Jiāngyóu, Sìchuān) origin theory had been an old Sòng local tradition; Yáng systematizes the case from internal evidence in Lǐ Bái’s own writings. The argument is regularly cited in modern Lǐ Bái scholarship (and is the basis on which Yú Xiányào 郁賢皓 and others built the more recent and complicated Suíyè 碎葉-Miánzhōu transit theory).
The Tányuàn tíhú circulated independently in Yáng Shèn’s lifetime; the SKQS recension is from the WYG and remains the standard text. The work was later absorbed into Zhāng Shìpèi 張士佩’s Wàn-lì-period consolidation of Yáng’s miscellanies.
Translations and research
No complete Western-language translation. Some of the more notable individual findings (especially the Yìjīng diagram-transmission lineage and the Lǐ Bái biographical argument) are routinely cited in modern Chinese-language and some Western scholarship. The work is incorporated into:
- Yáng Shēng-ān cóng-shū 楊升庵叢書, Sìchuān rénmín chūbǎnshè, 1986.
- Modern punctuated editions (Lǎo-fú zǐ wén-tán-yuàn … none with critical apparatus comparable to that of the Dān-qiān).
For Yáng Shèn’s broader profile see Adam Schorr, “Connoisseurship and the Defense Against Vulgarity,” Monumenta Serica 41 (1993), and his UCLA dissertation; Hok-lam Chan in Dictionary of Ming Biography, s.v. “Yang Shen.”
Other points of interest
The work’s framing under the tíhú / dairy-refinement metaphor is a clear case of Yáng Shèn’s middle-period turn to Buddhist-flavoured presentational idiom — characteristic also of the Shēngān cí huà 升庵詞話 and other Yúnnán-period works. The Lǐ Bái biographical argument (one of the work’s two best-known passages) remains an active locus of Lǐ Bái biographical reconstruction. The Yìjīng diagram-transmission argument is one of the foundations of modern reconstructions of the Xiāntiān / Hòutiān diagram lineage from Chén Tuán to Shào Yōng.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Tányuàn tíhú entry.
- Wikipedia