Gǔjīn tóngxìngmíng lù 古今同姓名錄
Catalogue of Persons Sharing Surname and Given Name, Ancient and Modern
by 蕭繹 (Xiāo Yì, Liáng Yuándì, 撰); continued by 陸善經 (Lù Shànjīng, Táng, 續); supplemented by 葉森 (Yè Sēn, Yuán, 補).
About the work
A short prosopographical lèishū — in fact the earliest surviving work of its specific genre — that gathers cases of historical figures who share both surname and given name, arranged so as to help a reader of histories disambiguate homonymous individuals. The original was composed by Xiāo Yì 蕭繹 (Liáng Yuándì 梁元帝, r. 552–555), expanded by the Táng exegete Lù Shànjīng 陸善經 (fl. 8th c., d. ca. 739) and further supplemented by the Yuán scholar Yè Sēn 葉森 (1265–1322). The received recension in 2 juan, recovered for the Sìkù quánshū from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典, preserves all three strata with notice of their respective authorship — a rare case where the editorial history of a Liùcháo work can still be read off the page. As the Sìkù editors observe, of all lèishū arranged by category of person or event, no extant work is older than this one.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that the Gǔjīn tóngxìngmíng lù in 2 juan was composed by Xiàoyuán huángdì 孝元皇帝 of the Liáng. Both the Liáng shū basic annals and the Suí shū · Jīngjí zhì record the work in 1 juan; under the Táng, Lù Shànjīng 陸善經 continued and enlarged it, so the Dúshū zhì 讀書志 and the Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 both record it in 3 juan. That recension is no longer transmitted; the present text was recovered from what is preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 and was further supplemented by the Yuán writer Yè Sēn 葉森. Though successively augmented and no longer in its original form, the editorial markup is fortunately clear, the strata not muddled together — every passage Lù Shànjīng or Yè Sēn inserted is individually flagged, so Yuándì’s underlying book can still be made out. Of works that classify by topic, no surviving example is older than this.
The praise to the Huáiyīn hóu lièzhuàn 淮陰侯列傳 in the Shǐjì notes two men named Hán Xìn 韓信: this is the beginning of distinguishing identical names. Yet Liú Zhījǐ 劉知幾, in his Shǐtōng 史通, still rebukes Sīmǎ Qiān 司馬遷 for failing to separate them at all, and Bān Gù 班固 for never reorganizing the matter. To the point that Qiān did not realize there were two Zǐ Wǒ 子我 — so he took Zǎi Yǔ 宰予 to have anticipated the rebellion of Tián Héng 田恆; and did not realize there were two Gōngsūn Lóng 公孫龍 — so he attached the jiānbái tóngyì 堅白同異 disputation to the Kǒngmén disciple. When the men are confused, the affairs are necessarily muddled; even matters of judgment go awry. The careful sorting of identicals, with attention to period, is no mere accumulation of trivia: it belongs to the essential business of reading the histories.
In the Wànlì period of the Míng, Yú Yín 余寅 wrote a separate Tóngxìngmíng lù in 12 juan; Zhōu Yīngbīn 周應賓 added a further 1 juan. Under the present dynasty, Wáng Tíngcàn 王廷燦 added 8 juan more. What they record is more detailed than this book, but in fāfán qǐlì 發凡起例 — in the framing of the very genre — this book is in the end the zhuīlún zhī shǐ 椎輪之始, the rudimentary cart-wheel from which the carriage descends.
Respectfully revised and submitted, third 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
The Gǔjīn tóngxìngmíng lù is the earliest zhuānlèi-style prosopographical lèishū in the Chinese tradition: a compendium that groups by category — here, by the accident of homonymous identification — rather than by topic of knowledge. It originated as a 1-juan work by Liáng Yuándì Xiāo Yì (508–555), whose authorship is attested in the Liáng shū basic annals (juan 5) and the Suí shū · Jīngjí zhì. Under the Táng, the Confucian commentator Lù Shànjīng 陸善經 (fl. mid-8th c., d. ca. 739 by Tackett’s reconstruction) doubled it in size by adding entries on figures from the Hàn through the Suí–Táng transition, bringing it to the 3-juan form attested in Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì 郡齋讀書志 and in Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題.
By the early Yuán the unified 3-juan recension had been lost; what survived was a refraction in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 (early 15th c.), which in turn had drawn on a recension carrying Yuán-era supplements by Yè Sēn 葉森 (1265–1322). The Sìkù compilers, working from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn under the editorial direction of Jǐ Yún and Lù Xīxióng in 1781, recovered the work and re-issued it in 2 juan, taking care — and this is the Sìkù’s notable editorial achievement here — to preserve the markup distinguishing Xiāo Yì’s original entries, Lù Shànjīng’s Táng continuations, and Yè Sēn’s Yuán additions. Composition date for this entry is set to Xiāo Yì’s reign (552–555), since the textual nucleus is his; later layers are recorded in the prose.
The genre Xiāo Yì founded enjoyed a long afterlife. The same tíyào notes that under the Míng Wànlì 萬曆 emperor (r. 1572–1620), Yú Yín 余寅 (1519–1595) produced a much larger Tóngxìngmíng lù in 12 juan, to which Zhōu Yīngbīn 周應賓 added a 13th; under the Qīng, Wáng Tíngcàn 王廷燦 (1652–1720) added 8 more, producing a cumulative Tóngxìngmíng lù in 21 juan. None of these later works displaced the Sìkù editors’ verdict that Xiāo Yì’s yuánběn 原本, however attenuated, remains the prototypical zhuīlún of the genre.
Translations and research
No European-language translation has been published. Modern scholarly engagement is largely in Chinese:
- Discussion of the work as the prototype of the homonymic lèishū genre features in surveys of Chinese encyclopaedic literature, notably Hú Dào-jìng 胡道靜, Zhōngguó gǔdài de lèishū 中國古代的類書 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1982), §1.
- For Xiāo Yì’s broader bibliographic and literary output the standard treatment remains Wáng Yùn 汪雲, Liáng Yuán-dì yánjiū 梁元帝研究 (PhD dissertation, Nánjīng dàxué, 2007), and the prosopographical entry in Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §73.4 (on Xiāo Yì as the figure responsible for the Jiānglíng fén-shū of 554).
- Tackett’s China Biographical Database file on Lù Shàn-jīng (CBDB id 191869) places his death ca. 739, drawing on Quán Táng wén 678 and Bái Jū-yì 集 41:909–911.
No substantial Western-language monograph on this text exists.
Other points of interest
The Sìkù recension’s most useful feature for the modern user is the visible layering: Lù Shànjīng’s Táng additions and Yè Sēn’s Yuán supplements are marked, allowing a literary-historical reader to trace which homonyms entered the discourse at which period. This is unusual — Sòng and Yuán editors of lèishū typically silently absorbed earlier strata into a continuous text.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Gǔjīn tóngxìngmíng lù entry.
- Wikidata: Q10883293 (Gǔjīn tóngxìngmíng lù).
- CBDB id 191869 (Lù Shànjīng) and 109719 (Yè Sēn).