元和姓纂

Yuánhé xìngzuǎn 元和姓纂

Surname Compendium of the Yuán-hé Era

by 林寶 (Lín Bǎo, Táng, 撰); preface by 王涯 (Wáng Yá).

About the work

The single most important Táng-period work on Chinese surname-and-lineage history, and the prototype of every subsequent dynastic surname compendium (the Tōngzhì · Shìzú lüè 通志·氏族略 of Zhèng Qiáo 鄭樵, the Gǔjīn xìngshì shū biànzhèng 古今姓氏書辯證 of Dèng Míngshì 鄧名世 (KR3k0018), and so on, all draw substantially on it). The work was commissioned by Lǐ Jífǔ 李吉甫 (relevant high-court official, then Zǎixiàng) and assigned to the Tàicháng bóshì 太常博士 Lín Bǎo 林寶 of Jǐnán 濟南; Lín wrote the original preface dated Yuánhé rénchén 元和壬辰 = Yuánhé 7 (812), and the 20-day-per-juan total composition time of 200 days places the work in mid-to-late 812. Wáng Yá 王涯’s preface dated the tenth month of Yuánhé 7 (812) provides the imperial-court rationale: the throne, embarrassed by a misplaced fief-grant whose recipient’s surname had been wrongly identified with the wrong commandery of origin, ordered a comprehensive imperial register of surnames and their cantonal origins (jùnwàng 郡望) to be kept in the Shěnggé 省閣 and consulted on every fief-grant.

The work organizes Chinese surnames by sìshēng 四聲 (four tones) and rhyme-classes (the èrbǎiliù bù 二百六部 system of the Táng Qièyùn 切韻 / Sòng Yùnshū 韻書 tradition). Within each rhyme-class, surnames are listed in order of “great houses first” (dàxìng wéi shǒu 大姓為首), with a tribal-origin myth and the principal genealogical branches given for each. As Hóng Mài 洪邁 already noted in Róngzhāi suíbǐ, the work mixes accurate genealogical scholarship with much zìfù pānyuán 附會攀援 — the social-climbing falsification of pedigree that was characteristic of the era. It is nonetheless the indispensable Táng prosopographical source.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that the Yuánhé xìngzuǎn in 10 juan was composed by Lín Bǎo 林寶 of the Táng. Bǎo was a native of Jǐnán 濟南, holding office as Cháoyì láng tàicháng bóshì 朝議郎太常博士. His preface states “Yuánhé rénchén 元和壬辰” — namely Xiànzōng’s 7th year [812]. Bǎo has no biography in the Táng shū, his name appearing only in the Yìwén zhì and in the bibliographical catalogues — all consistent on this point — except that the Táng huìyào attributes the book to Wáng Yá 王涯 (because Wáng Yá wrote a preface, and the erroneous transmission collapsed the two), and Zhèng Qiáo’s Tōngzhì further attributes it to “Lǐ Línbǎo” 李林寳 — this because Lǐ Jífǔ commissioned Lín Bǎo, and the two names written together were copied as one when the jífǔ characters dropped out, merging into a single ghost-author. We see, however, that Zhèng Qiáo in his Shìzú lüè mocks “Bǎo” for writing a xìngzuǎn yet not knowing the origin of the Lín surname — so in his Yìwén lüè he must have written 林寳 [not 李林寳]. Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Guóshǐ jīngjí zhì also follows the Lǐlínbǎo attribution; that is a very gross error.

Bǎo’s discussions of the origin of surnames mostly derive from the Shì běn 世本 and Fēngsú tōng 風俗通; others — Shìběn zúxìng jì 世本族姓記, Sānfǔ juélù 三輔决錄, the Bǎijiā pǔ 百家譜, Yīngxián zhuàn 英賢傳, Xìngyuán yùnpǔ 姓源韻譜, Xìngyuàn 姓苑 etc., works no longer transmitted — survive partially thanks to his citations. Zhèng Qiáo’s Shìzú lüè takes its prose entire from Lín Bǎo, doubtless out of respect for his comprehensiveness. But the book was compiled in twenty xún 旬 [200 days], and the references contain some misattributions; in an age that valued méndì (lineage-rank) highly, each compiler relied on the genealogies of the various lineages, fùhuì pānyuán (climbing-onto-and-falsifying) being unavoidable. Look at Bái Jūyì’s jí — he traces his own pedigree to Bái Yǐbǐng 白乙丙 as ancestor, but says he descends from Bái Gōngshèng 白公勝 — chronologically these are reversed, the absurdity manifest; the rest can be imagined. Hóng Mài’s Róngzhāi suíbǐ says “the Yuánhé xìngzuǎn has more falsehoods than anything else” — and so it does — but the Táng genealogical material is recorded with care and rigour.

The book had begun to fragment by the Sòng. Huáng Bósī’s 黃伯思 Dōngguān yúlùn 東觀餘論 says he got Fù Bì’s 富弼 house-copy already missing several juan. Chén Zhènsūn’s Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí also says “there is absolutely no good copy; only seven or eight tenths survive”. The present recension is what is preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn — but there the text is broken up and scattered as commentary under Míng Tàizǔ’s “Hundred Surnames” Qiānjiā xìng 千家姓 imperial-composition, and so the original sequence is no longer that of Lín Bǎo. Fortunately the original preface is preserved, so the original tǐlì can be reconstructed. We here re-order the entries following the Táng yùn in four tones and 206 rhyme-classes, supplementing lacunae from the citations of the Gǔjīn xìngshì biànzhèng of Dèng Míngshì of the Sòng, redivided into 10 juan. Where graphs and phrases are corrupted, we collate against other works and emend with care, attaching our notes below.

The original preface says the imperial-clan apart, each surname is collected by rhyme — meaning the Lǐ 李 surname must have occupied juan 1. But today no Lǐ-surname entry survives a single character; perhaps already when the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn was compiled, the first cè had been lost. Yet the broken bamboos and torn slips still serve as evidence for the corpus.

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth 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 Yuánhé xìngzuǎn is the most important single Táng-period work of xìngpǔxué 姓譜學 (surname-pedigree studies), produced in 200 days during the 7th year of the Yuánhé period (812) at the order of the Zǎixiàng Lǐ Jífǔ 李吉甫 and under the senior literary patronage of Wáng Yá 王涯. The compiler, Lín Bǎo 林寶 of Jǐnán, was at the time Tàicháng bóshì 太常博士; he is otherwise unknown — no biography survives in either of the two Táng Histories, no other work bears his name, and his name is preserved only by his self-styling in the original preface, by Wáng Yá’s accompanying preface, and by the citations in the Xīn Táng shū · Yìwén zhì and Sòng catalogues. CBDB id 36099 (Sòng) is a different person; no CBDB record clearly matches Lín Bǎo of Yuánhé 7.

The work’s commissioning context is recorded in Wáng Yá’s preface: Lǐ Jífǔ, then Zǎixiàng, had been embarrassed by a fief-grant in which a biéshuài 別帥 from the Tiānshuǐ 天水 Yán 閻 lineage was granted lands at the wrong commandery — the surname-commandery mapping of the Sìmén jīngjí having lapsed. The throne ordered “a Tōngrú shuòshì 通儒碩士 with mastery of the surnames of the qīng dàifū be commissioned to revise the xìngzuǎn and place it in the Shěnggé — to be consulted each time a fief was to be granted, that there be no more errors of this kind.” This makes the Yuánhé xìngzuǎn the official fief-bestowal manual of the late mid-Táng court — explaining both its 200-day rush production schedule (court business was waiting on it) and its tolerance of pānyuán fabricated pedigrees (the compendium had to record what the various lineages claimed about themselves, not what could be verified).

The book had begun to disperse by the Northern Sòng: Huáng Bósī (1079–1118) records that he had obtained the personal copy of Fù Bì 富弼 (1004–1083) but found it already missing several juan; Chén Zhènsūn around 1240 noted that no complete copy was extant (“only seven or eight tenths”). The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves the bulk of the text but in a re-cut form, scattered as marginal commentary on Míng Tàizǔ’s Qiānjiā xìng — the Sìkù editors restored the rhyme-class sequence and supplied lacunae from Dèng Míngshì’s Gǔjīn xìngshì biànzhèng (KR3k0018) and other Sòng works. The Lǐ 李 surname entry of juan 1 is entirely lost. The standard modern critical edition is Cén Zhòngmiǎn 岑仲勉, Yuánhé xìngzuǎn fù sìjiào jì 元和姓纂附四校記 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1948 first ed.; repr. 1994) — the four-collation enterprise (Lín Bǎo → Yǒnglè dàdiǎn → Sìkù → Cén) preserved in parallel columns.

Translations and research

• Cén Zhòng-miǎn 岑仲勉, Yuán-hé xìng-zuǎn fù sì-jiào jì 元和姓纂附四校記 (Shānghǎi: Shānghǎi shū-diàn, 1948; repr. Běijīng: Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 1994). The indispensable critical edition: four-stratum collation, with Cén’s notes on every doubtful entry. Cén’s kǎo-yì are themselves a major contribution to Táng prosopography.
• Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Aristocratic Families of Early Imperial China: A Case Study of the Po-ling Ts’ui Family (Cambridge UP, 1978), draws extensively on the Yuán-hé xìng-zuǎn for late-Táng lineage-genealogical claims.
• David Johnson, The Medieval Chinese Oligarchy (Westview, 1977), uses the Yuán-hé xìng-zuǎn as one of three principal sources for the Táng aristocratic order.
• Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (Harvard UP, 2014), Appendix C, treats the Yuán-hé xìng-zuǎn as the principal genealogical source for Táng aristocratic lineages.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §29 (on xìng-pǔ literature) and §72.1.2.1.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s observation that the entire Lǐ-surname section of juan 1 is missing — likely because the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn lost its first cè — is one of the more pointed losses in the corpus, since it deprives modern scholars of Lín Bǎo’s official Táng-court genealogy of the imperial Lǐ house at the moment of its greatest political significance.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Yuánhé xìngzuǎn entry.
• Wikipedia (en): Yuanhe Xingzuan; Wikidata: Q10883326.
• Cén Zhòngmiǎn, Yuánhé xìngzuǎn fù sìjiào jì (Zhōnghuá, 1994).