Shūxù zhǐnán 書敘指南
Guide to Drafting Correspondence
by 任廣 (Rèn Guǎng, Northern Sòng, 撰).
About the work
A 20-juan Northern-Sòng phraseological lèishū designed as a stylistic handbook for the composition of chǐdú 尺牘 (formal letters) and other official correspondence. Compiled by Rèn Guǎng 任廣, zì Déjiǎn 德儉, native of Jùnyí 浚儀 (mod. Kāifēng), during the Chóngníng 崇寧 period (1102–1106) of Huīzōng’s reign. The Wénxiàn tōngkǎo incorrectly writes the surname as Rèn Jùn 任浚 — an error. The book gathers chéngyǔ 成語 and standard phrases from canonical works, organized under nearly 200 sub-headings — each mén corresponding to one category of conventional discourse (imperial command; succession; consort; palaces; bureaucratic appointment; oaths; parental piety; marriage; ritual; books; correspondence; visiting; dwelling; gift; greeting; banqueting; pleasure-outing; geography; weather; travel; illness; death) — with every phrase annotated for its source-work. The arrangement has the strong didactic merit, noted by the Sìkù editors, of being a jiàoběn (workbook) for letter-writing that systematically tags its citations — unusually thorough for the genre.
The transmission history is unusually well-documented in the tíyào. The work first appeared in print at Jìngkāng 靖康 (1126–1127); the printing-blocks were promptly destroyed (likely in the Jīn sack of Kāifēng). A Yúshì 俞氏 brought a copy to Wú 吳 (Sūzhōu), where it was preserved through the Southern Sòng. The Yóu Mào 尤袤 Suìchū táng shūmù records it. Complete copies were rare. Under the early Kāngxī, Jīn Quàn 金券 obtained a manuscript copy from the Hán family but died before re-copying was complete, with juan 10 lost. In Yōngzhèng 3 (1725), Jīn Huì 金匯 obtained an incomplete Sòng-printed copy and completed the recovery. The Míng Pǔ Nánjīn 浦南金 combined it with the Ěryǎ, Zuǒyú 左腴 and Hànjùn 漢雋 under the new title Xiūcí zhǐnán 脩辭指南 — but that is not the original.
Tiyao (abridged)
We respectfully submit that the Shūxù zhǐnán in 20 juan by Rèn Guǎng 任廣 of the Sòng. Guǎng, zì Déjiǎn 德儉, native of Jùnyí 浚儀 — today’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo writes Rèn Jùn 任浚, in error. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí calls him “Chóngníng zhōng rén” — i.e. someone who did not cross over into the Southern Sòng — and Yóu Mào’s Suìchū táng mù already records this book. By tradition, the work was first printed at Jìngkāng [1126–7] but the blocks were burnt; a Yúshì 俞氏 brought a copy to Wú 吳, where his lineage preserved it. Complete copies in circulation were few.
In the early Kāngxī, Jīn Quàn 金券 obtained a manuscript from the Hán 韓 family; before he could finish recopying, he died, with the original juan 10 lost. In Yōngzhèng 3 (1725), Jīn Huì 金匯 obtained an incomplete Sòng-printed copy and supplied the lacuna, and the work was complete again. The intention throughout is to gather chéngyǔ (canonical phrases) for use in chǐdú (correspondence) — hence the title. The Míng Pǔ Nánjīn 浦南金 combined it with the Ěryǎ, Zuǒyú and Hànjùn under the new title Xiūcí zhǐnán — but that is not the original.
Material is laid out by category, with citations numerous; there are some inversions, repetitions, and shallow or unnecessary entries — not all is polished and exact. But each phrase is marked with its source-work, so readers can know provenance — better arrangement than other works in the genre. From the Southern Sòng onwards, lèijiā books were prepared mostly as ready-to-hand letter-material, and their compilations often degenerated into uncritical pillaging. This one alone, being from a Northern-Sòng hand, makes choices that remain elegant. Compared to the ear-thieving and eye-thieving tradition, it can still serve as a diǎnyào.
Respectfully revised and submitted, fifth month of the forty-first year of Qiánlóng [1776].
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 Shūxù zhǐnán is the principal Northern-Sòng handbook for the composition of chǐdú — formal-private letters — and one of the earliest works in the xiūcí (rhetoric / phraseology) sub-genre of the lèishū tradition. Rèn Guǎng was a Kāifēng man of the Chóngníng period (1102–1106); the Sòng shǐ records no further biographical material. Composition is bracketed here to that reign-period. The work’s transmission was unusually fragile — printed in Jìngkāng (1126–7), blocks burnt almost immediately in the Jīn invasion, a single private copy carried south to Wú and preserved by the Yú lineage; from there into the Southern-Sòng catalog tradition (Yóu Mào, Chén Zhènsūn). Through the Yuán and Míng it survived only in scattered manuscripts; the complete restoration belongs to Jīn Huì’s Yōngzhèng 3 (1725) collation against an incomplete Sòng-printed copy. The Sìkù editors used Jīn Huì’s reconstructed copy as base text.
The work’s enduring usefulness, foregrounded in the tíyào, is that every phrase is tagged with its source-work — a discipline that distinguishes it from the typical phrase-collation handbooks of the genre, which were notoriously sloppy about provenance. This makes the Shūxù zhǐnán not just a model-letter handbook but a useful index of chéngyǔ attestations in Northern-Sòng reading. For the social history of Sòng correspondence — etiquette of greeting; condolences; congratulations; gift-acknowledgment; refusal — the work is the most fully articulated single source.
Translations and research
- Hú Dào-jìng 胡道靜, Zhōngguó gǔdài de lèishū (Zhōng-huá, 1982), §Sòng, on the Shū-xù zhǐ-nán.
- Christian Schwermann, “Letter Writing in Imperial China,” in Études chinoises, treats Sòng chǐ-dú conventions.
- Antje Richter, Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), draws on the Shū-xù zhǐ-nán for Sòng-period letter-form analysis.
No European-language translation.
Other points of interest
The Míng repurposing of the work as part of Pǔ Nánjīn’s Xiūcí zhǐnán compilation (bundled with the Ěryǎ, Zuǒyú and Hànjùn) is a useful example of how Míng pedagogical editing absorbed Sòng lèishū into composite rhetoric primers — a process the Sìkù editors uniformly disapproved of and reversed.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Shūxù zhǐnán entry.
- Wikidata: Q11075035.