Lù shì yào lǎn 陸氏要覽
Mister Lù’s Essentials
attributed to 陸機 (Lù Jī, 261–303, Western Jìn).
About the work
The Lùshì yàolǎn — also cited under the alternate title Zuǎn yào 纂要 (“Compendium of Essentials”) — is a lost Western-Jìn miscellany conventionally attributed to Lù Jī 陸機 (261–303), the elder of the Èr Lù 二陸 brothers and foremost fù-poet of his generation. Suíshū jīngjí zhì records it in three juǎn; the work was lost during or after the Sòng. Its fragments survive principally in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (chapters on seasons, weather, plants, customs), with further excerpts in Chūxué jì 初學記 and the Shuōfú 說郛 of Táo Zōngyí 陶宗儀 (1329–1410), which preserves a short recension in nine jié. The KRP source is a digital edition of the Qīng jíyì (reconstructed) text — closely matching the version preserved in Mǎ Guóhàn 馬國翰’s Yùhán shānfáng jíyì shū 玉函山房輯佚書 (zǐbù).
Tiyao
Abstract
The surviving fragments are organized as compact lexical-cum-ethnographic notes on natural and ritual themes — seasonal phenomena, winds, rains, plants, mythological beings, lore of recluses and immortals. Representative items: Lièzǐ rides the wind, returning at lìchūn to the Eight Wastes and roaming to the Wind-hole at lìqiū; the arriving wind makes plants put forth, the departing wind makes them fall; this is called the “wind of meeting and parting” (líhé fēng 離合風) (Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 9, 25). Other items concern the immortal of Mt. Yǔ wandering with Zuǒ Yuánfàng 左元放 and Jì Zǐxùn 薊子訓; mantic prescriptions about jade (“if one wishes to summon the jade, calling it makes its tail point to the person”); and seasonal lexica — summer trees are called liányīn 連陰, summer rain is called miányǔ 緜雨; autumn trees are called chéng 成, autumn rain is called chóu 愁. The latter group is also cited under the variant title Lù Jī Zuǎnyào 陸機纂要 in Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 22, supporting Mǎ Guóhàn’s identification of Yàolǎn with Zuǎn yào as variant names for the same work.
The dating bracket is set by Lù Jī’s documented career: notBefore 280, the year of the Jìn conquest of Wú and the start of Lù Jī’s adult writing life, and notAfter 303, the year of his execution at Hèqiáo 鶴橋 by Sīmǎ Yǐng 司馬穎. The work belongs alongside Lù Jī’s other compositional efforts in classical lore and miscellanea (his Yàolǎn and Zuǎnyào are listed in Suíshū jīngjí zhì; the Yàolǎn is sometimes hypothesized to be a draft lèishū prepared in support of his Wén fù and historical writings). Pre-modern catalogers occasionally hesitated between Lù Jī and his brother Lù Yún 陸雲, but the title-form 陸氏 with the Tàipíng yùlǎn citation explicitly assigning Zuǎnyào to Lù Jī tips the balance to the elder brother in modern scholarship.
Translations and research
- The standard text is the Qīng reconstruction: Mǎ Guóhàn 馬國翰, Yùhán shānfáng jí-yì shū 玉函山房輯佚書 (Jǐ-nán: Huáng-huá guǎn, 1883), zǐ-bù.
- Earlier short recension: Táo Zōng-yí 陶宗儀, Shuō-fú 說郛.
- No substantial English-language scholarship located. General treatment in surveys of the Èr Lù corpus and of early Chinese miscellanies.
Links
- Chinaknowledge.de: Yaolan 要覽.
- Tàipíng yùlǎn (chapters 9, 22, 25 cite the Yàolǎn / Zuǎnyào extensively).