Zhī lín 巵林
A Forest of Cup-Filled Words
by 周嬰 (Zhōu Yīng, zì Fāngshū 方叔, fl. late Chóngzhēn; native of Pútián 莆田; magistrate of Shàngyóu 上猶 county)
About the work
A late-Míng evidential miscellany in 10 juan (the Sìkù tíyào gives 11 juan; the actual surviving SKQS recension is 10), organized in a quasi lèishū manner: each entry has a two-character heading followed by the name of the author of the work being criticized, and Zhōu Yīng’s correction. The titling-by-author method imitates Wáng Chōng’s 王充 Lùn héng 論衡 essays Jié Mò 詰墨 (“Cross-examining Mòzǐ”), Cì Mèng 刺孟 (“Skewering Mèngzǐ”), etc., with chapter-titles like Zhì Yú 質魚 (Cross-examining [Yú Sōng] Yú), Zī Dù 諮杜 (Querying [Dù Yù] Dù), and so on. The book is dated by the catalog meta internal “date: 1642” anchor — consistent with Zhōu’s late-Chóng-zhēn period of magistracy in Shàngyóu.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Zhī lín in eleven juan was compiled by Zhōu Yīng of the Míng. Yīng’s zì was Fāngshū. A native of Pútián. Served as magistrate of Shàngyóu county. The book is close to a lèishū in form, with examination and judgment of the classics and histories that is fairly substantial. Each entry has a two-character heading, with the name of the original author appended after — as in Zhì Yú (Cross-examining Yú), Zī Dù (Querying Dù), and so on — following the pattern of Wáng Chōng’s Jié Mò and Cì Mèng essay-titles.
Some places — his refutation of Wáng Sēngqián 王僧虔 on Jìcìzhòng 紀次仲, his discussion of Dù Fǔ’s “western Sìchuān cuckoo,” etc. — are over-rigid. But where he sets things straight is in many places more than the work of a cursory reader. Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎’s Chí běi ǒu tán 池北偶談 highly praises Zhōu’s entries on the shí yóu fēng 石尤風 (storm-wind), on the meaning of cì 賜 in old yuèfǔ, on Jūn Miáo 君苗’s having no clan name, on Gāo Sìsūn’s 高似孫 mis-citation of Jīn lóu zǐ 金樓子. But the entry “Quán Zhōng” 詮鍾 [evaluating Zhōngshì] — Zhōu Yīng does not realize that the Míng yuán shī guī 名媛詩歸 is a Wú-region author’s fabrication put under the names Zhōng Xīng and Tán Yuánchūn — so the entries on the Qīngtái què gē 青臺雀歌 of Wénmíng tàihòu and the Dù Lánxiāng 杜蘭香 descent-poem of Zhāng Shuò are all “not worth refuting.”
But Zhōng Xīng 鍾惺 and Tán Yuánchūn 譚元春’s books were widely circulated through the Tiānqǐ and Chóngzhēn reigns, with genuine and forged works mixed indistinguishably. Even now the local lòu rú of the countryside venerate their derivative discourses, and forged seeds spread through transmission; few know what is spurious. Once the spuriousness is clear, the appropriate response is explicit public correction so that later generations are not misled. Wáng Shìzhēn’s argument is: if it is by Zhōng, then refute it; if not by Zhōng, do not refute it — this confuses attack-on-the-man with attack-on-the-book. To fault Zhōu Yīng here is to fall into faction-loyalty.
Respectfully revised and submitted, fourth month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng [1779].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Zhōu Yīng 周嬰 (fl. late Chóngzhēn, lifedates unknown; CBDB id 373318, no dates) was a Pútián 莆田 (Fújiàn) man who held the magistracy of Shàngyóu 上猶 county in Jiāngxī. His other works do not survive substantially; the Zhī lín is his sole transmitted contribution to the evidential tradition. The book is dated by an internal note to Chóngzhēn rénwǔ (1642), two years before the Míng collapse.
The work is methodologically interesting: the Wáng Chōng-style title format, treating each entry as a forensic cross-examination of a named earlier author — Yú Sōng 虞松, Dù Yù 杜預, Wáng Sēngqián, Gāo Sìsūn, etc. — gives the book the polemical-evidential tone of Chén Yàowén’s Zhèng Yáng but spread across the entire classical and dynastic-historical tradition rather than concentrated on a single target. Methodologically the book stands at the late-Wàn-lì / Chóngzhēn moment of consolidation: more rigorous in source-citation than the broader Dānqiān miscellany style, more accepting of fully developed individual arguments than the simple gloss-and-correct bǐjì.
Both Wáng Shìzhēn (in Chí běi ǒu tán) and the Sìkù editors note that the book is marred by Zhōu Yīng’s willingness to take seriously the spurious Míng yuán shī guī 名媛詩歸 (the Wú-region forgery attributed to Zhōng Xīng and Tán Yuánchūn) — to which several entries are devoted as critiques of “Zhōngshì.” The Sìkù editors are eminently fair: they defend Zhōu Yīng’s refutations as legitimate even when the target was misidentified, because the spuriously-transmitted text still circulated under Zhōng Xīng’s name and was inflicting damage on readers.
The standard transmitted text is the SKQS recension; the modern punctuated edition is in Quán Míng wén 全明文.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. The work is intermittently cited in modern Chinese-language studies of late-Míng kǎo-zhèng and of late-Míng pseudepigraphy (the Míng yuán shī guī forgery problem is central in this connection). The book is also occasionally cited in Pú-tián local-history scholarship.
Other points of interest
The book’s Wáng Chōng-style chapter titling (Zhì Yú, Zī Dù, Quán Zhōng, etc.) is one of the more self-consciously archaizing decisions in late-Míng evidential literature. The Sìkù editors’ defense of Zhōu Yīng’s critique of the spurious Míng yuán shī guī (against Wáng Shìzhēn’s narrower position) is an interesting eighteenth-century editorial principle: false attribution does not exempt circulating text from substantive refutation.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi 2 · Zákǎo zhī shǔ, Zhī lín entry.
- CBDB id 373318 (Zhōu Yīng).