Xúshì bǐ jīng 徐氏筆精
The Xú Family’s Brush-Refinement
by 徐𤊹 (Xú Bó, zì Wéiqǐ 維起 / Xìnggōng 興公, 1570–1642; of Mǐnxiàn 閩縣 in Fúzhōu)
About the work
An 8-juan late-Míng bǐjì in five sections: Yì tōng 易通 (general comments on the Yìjīng), Jīng yì 經臆 (idiosyncratic readings of the classics), Shī tán 詩談 (talks on poetry), Wén zì 文字 (lexical and graphical notes), and Zá jì 雜記 (miscellaneous). The title is from Jiāng Yān’s 江淹 Bié fù 別賦. Xú Bó (一作 Xú Xuē) was a major Fújiàn bibliophile of the late Wànlì / early Chóngzhēn era; his colophon-and-marginal-note practice on books from his collection was already famous in his lifetime. The Sìkù editors place the work in the same broad late-Míng bǐjì lineage as Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Bǐ chéng 筆乘 — wide-ranging, intellectually curious, but uneven in evidential discipline.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Xúshì bǐ jīng in eight juan was compiled by Xú Bó of the Míng. Bó’s zì was Wéiqǐ, later changed to Xìnggōng; he was a Mǐnxiàn man. The book divides into five sections: Yì tōng, Jīng yì, Shī tán, Wén zì, Zá jì. The naming “bǐ jīng” takes from Jiāng Yān’s Bié fù. Bó was famed in his day for breadth; Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 in Jìngzhìjū shī huà 靜志居詩話 said that he had seen Bó’s surviving books, most of them carrying Bó’s vermilion punctuation and colophons.
Yet this book also has not a few stumbles. To take the qián xiàng yáng zài xià 乾象陽在下 (the Yáng at the bottom of qián) as Lǎozǐ’s “yóu lóng” (dragon-like) figure; to take the huáng zhōng 黃中 of kūn and the xíng qí tíng 行其庭 of gěn as all referring to the Daoist huáng tíng 黃庭 (Yellow Court); to take the “wandering soul makes the change” of the Xìcí as Buddhism’s sì shēng liù dào 四生六道 — all are attempts at unusual readings, dragging Confucian materials into Mòzǐ. Following Wáng Bǎi 王柏 in calling the Yě yǒu sǐ jūn 野有死麕 [poem] a yín shī 淫詩; following Jiāo Hóng in saying the Luò shū 洛書 [magic square] derives from a Buddhist sūtra; following Chén Yuánlíng 陳元齡 in saying that the Zhōu calendar’s first month was jiàn yín 建寅 — all want more thorough investigation. As for treating tiě liǎngdāng 鐵裲襠 as a horse-saddle ornament, not knowing that liǎngdāng is a pàfù 袙腹 (belly-cover), with the Guǎng yǎ attestation explicit; as for thinking the níng 寧 of the Hàn Jiāo sì gē belongs in the GēngQīng rhyme group, not knowing that before QíLiáng there were no four tones; as for taking Dù Fǔ’s Pí tǒng 郫筒 (Pí-tube wine vessel) image as originally Lǐ Shāngyǐn — not knowing that Lǐ Shāngyǐn comes after Dù Fǔ; as for saying the Dōng qīng 冬青 poem appears in the collections of both Táng Jué 唐珏 and Lín Jǐngxī 林景熙 — not knowing that Jǐngxī has a collection but Jué does not; as for saying róngróng 溶溶 (“flowing watery”) in Yàn Shū’s 晏殊 poem should be emended to “rain,” not knowing that the Hàn Jiāo sì gē’s “yuè mùmù yǐ jīnbō” already compares the moon to flowing water; as for saying that Dōng I and Dōng II [Sòng rhyme tables] were divided by Shěn Yuē — not knowing that Yuē in his poems and fù in fact treats them as identical, and the splitting (per Lǐ Fú 李涪 Kān wù 刊誤) was Lù Fǎyán’s 陸法言; as for taking Méngzhāi bǐ tán 蒙齋筆談 as Zhèng Jǐngwàng’s 鄭景望 work, perpetuating Shāng Jùn’s 商濬 error — not knowing it is Yè Mèngdé’s 葉夢得 book; as for taking Lǐ Qīngzhào as Zhào Biàn’s 趙抃 daughter-in-law — not knowing that Zhào Míngchéng is the son of Tǐngzhī 挺之 [Zhào Tǐngzhī]; as for saying pípá stories all feature women with no famous men — not knowing that Hè Huáizhì 賀懷智, Kāng Kūnlún 康崑崙, Luó Hēihēi 羅黑黑, Jì Háihái 紀孩孩 are all famous Táng-era pípá players — all also lapse into careless errors.
Even more so, his rating of Dù Mù 杜牧 as “much obscure and crude” and Luó Yǐn 羅隱 as “extremely shallow and vulgar” while praising Gāo Qǐ 高啟’s méi shī 梅詩 — “the poem along the ten-lǐ path follows spring; the sorrow under the third-watch moon hangs over the village” — as superior to Lín Bū’s 林逋 “shū yǐng àn xiāng” couplet [KR4d0107] is even cruder.
He even says that Mèngzǐ was not deep in the Yì principles, and that Zhōugōng’s writing of Jīn téng 金縢 was because he “could not rest in his own destiny” — particularly the indulgent habit of Míng-era authors. Still, his collecting is extensive, so the materials worth investigating-by-cross-checking are many, and there are pieces that should not be hastily dismissed. Weighing the entirety, this is the successor strain of Jiāo Hóng’s Bǐ chéng.
Respectfully revised and submitted, eighth month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Xú Bó 徐𤊹 (1570–1642), zì Wéiqǐ 維起 (later Xìnggōng 興公), of Mǐnxiàn 閩縣 (modern Fúzhōu), was one of the most active Fújiàn bibliophiles of the late Wànlì and Chóngzhēn era. His private library Hóng yǔ lóu 紅雨樓 was the prestige Fúzhōu collection of the period and his Hóng yǔ lóu jiā cáng shū mù 紅雨樓家藏書目 is an important early-modern private-library catalogue. He was a close associate of the Cáo Xuéquán 曹學佺 / Xiè Zhàozhé 謝肇淛 circle and a frequent host of literati passing through Mǐn.
The Bǐ jīng gathers Xú’s reading notes across the Yìjīng, the other classics, poetry, lexicography, and miscellany. The five-section organization is a self-conscious classification reminiscent of Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Bǐ chéng. The Sìkù editors’ verdict is double-edged: they enumerate over a dozen specific errors of evidential overreach (philological, prosodic, biographical, art-historical) and call out Xú’s habit of “dragging Confucian material into Mòzǐ” (i.e. forcing Confucian classics to yield Daoist or Buddhist meanings) as “the indulgent habit of Míng-era authors.” Yet they recognize the breadth of citation and concede that “much is worth taking” — placing the work in the same category as Jiāo Hóng’s Bǐ chéng.
Dating. The book has no formal preface dating; composition spans most of Xú Bó’s mature scholarly career. The notBefore of 1600 reflects Xú’s earliest dated colophon activity, and the notAfter of 1642 is his death-year. The book first circulated in manuscript form in his lifetime and was printed in successive Fújiàn editions in the late Míng and early Qīng. The SKQS recension is the standard reference.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. Xú Bó’s bibliographic activity has received recent attention in Chinese-language Fú-jiàn-history scholarship; Lín Lìshì 林立屎 and others have written on the Hóng yǔ lóu. The Bǐ jīng itself is occasionally cited as a primary source for Wàn-lì Fú-zhōu literary milieu. Modern reprints in Sì-kù quán-shū zhēn-běn and Cóng-shū jí-chéng xù-biān.
Other points of interest
The book’s Shī tán section is one of the more substantial late-Wàn-lì Fújiàn poetic-criticism contributions, and its rating of Lín Bū’s plum-blossom couplet against Gāo Qǐ’s is one of the more frequently-quoted comparative-aesthetic judgments in late-Míng bǐjì — even if the Sìkù editors take the side of Lín Bū. Xú Bó’s wide knowledge of SòngYuán Fújiàn manuscripts (he had collected SòngYuán anthologies extensively) is reflected throughout.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Xúshì bǐ jīng entry.