海錄碎事

Hǎilù suìshì 海錄碎事

Marine Record of Minor Matters

by 葉庭珪 (Yè Tíngguī, Southern Sòng, 撰).

About the work

A Southern-Sòng phraseological lèishū in 22 juan covering 16 bù and (per the Sìkù count) 584 mén, designed to provide piánlì parallel-prose composers with stylistic raw material — short suìsuì (broken-fragments) phrases of two to four characters that could be embedded into one’s own composition. The compiler Yè Tíngguī 葉庭珪, zì Sìzhōng 嗣忠, of Chóngān 崇安 (mod. Fújiàn), was jìnshì of Zhènghé 政和 5 (1115); he served as Magistrate of Déxìng 德興 county, then under Shàoxīng as Tàicháng sì chéng 太常寺丞, falling foul of Qín Guì 秦檜 and being demoted to Zhī Quánzhōu jūnzhōu shì 知泉州軍州事. The work was compiled at Quánzhōu in his official idle hours; the preface is dated Shàoxīng 19 / 5 / 27 (1149).

The work belongs to a family of compilations Yè called collectively the Hǎilù 海錄 — including Hǎilù záshì 海錄雜事 (continuous-prose matters), Hǎilù suìshì (broken fragments, the present work), Hǎilù wèijiàn shì 海錄未見事 (matters of unknown origin), Hǎilù shìshǐ 海錄事始 (origins of things), Hǎilù jǐngjù 海錄警句 (famous lines), and Hǎilù běnshì shī 海錄本事詩 (poems with documented context). Only Hǎilù suìshì survives complete; the others are lost or fragmentary. The original was a private working-anthology Yè had been writing his entire life (he begins reading at boyhood and continues forty years into office), reduced to systematic order only in 1148–1149.

Tiyao (abridged)

We respectfully submit that the Hǎilù suìshì in 22 juan by Yè Tíngguī 葉廷珪 of the Sòng. Tíngguī, zì Sìzhōng 嗣忠, native of Chóngān, jìnshì of Zhènghé 5 [1115]. He first served as Magistrate of Déxìng, and under Shàoxīng was Tàicháng sì chéng; falling foul of Qín Guì he was demoted to Zhī Quánzhōu jūnzhōu shì. Wáng Zhīwàng’s 王之望 Hànbīn jí contains the official appointment-document he composed for Tíngguī, much praising his learning — Tíngguī was indeed known in his time for broad scholarship.

The book groups gùshí by category, with sub-headings for reference. It contains 16 bù and 584 mén in all, though Tíngguī’s own preface claims 175 mén — there is significant disagreement. The Sòng shǐ · Yìwén zhì records the work in 23 juan; the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo in 33 juan; the mùcì also varies — clearly later editors have split, merged, or added, no longer the original. The tǐlì is to extract from histories, philosophers, and poetry-collections short fresh-and-striking phrases for composition use — a xíjī (paste-and-patch) aid for parallel prose composers, rather different in purpose from other lèishū.

Some categories are awkward — separate mén for Shǒulìng (Governor) and Xiànlìng (County Magistrate), but tàishǒu (Grand Governor) material enters the Liúshǒu (Resident Vice-Regent) mén. Hán Wò’s 韓偓 sobriquet Yùshān qiáorén 玉山樵人, Hè Zhīzhāng’s 賀知章 Sìmíng kuángkè 四明狂客, Zhāng Zhìhé’s 張志和 Yuánzhēn zǐ 元真子 are all the men’s own zìhào, but they are entered into the Sīshì mén (Private Posthumous Names section) — many such category-misplacements.

Zhào Zhì 趙至’s letter — “the cocks crow at dawn-watch, I take to the road; the sun sets behind the western mountains and my horse has no place to rest” — is the writer’s own account of his journey, but is entered under the Jūnlǚ mén (Military Campaigns section). The Liáng shū’s shénlóng rén shòu 神龍仁獸 — the rén shòu is originally rén hǔ 仁虎, changed by Táng historians to avoid the taboo on 虎 (Li Yuan’s grandfather’s name) — Yè preserves the corrupted text without correction. Such lapses are not free of carelessness.

But the citations are abundant; obscure anecdotes and trivial matters often appear here — quite useful for evidential research. Among Southern-Sòng lèishū this is still a good copy.

Respectfully revised and submitted, sixth month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].

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 Hǎilù suìshì is the most extensively-organized Southern-Sòng phraseological lèishū surviving complete, and is one of the principal sources for Sòng-period composition handbooks. Yè Tíngguī’s preface gives the unusual richness of personal narrative for a Sòng lèishū compiler: a poor-village boyhood, the great-grandfather buying books in the capital from a courier post, schooling at the prefectural jùnxué, jìnshì in Zhènghé 5 (1115), forty years in office, the habit of borrowing rare books from fellow gentry and copying them out by hand, the original intention of a “single multi-tier compilation” to be called the Hǎilù — divided into the six sub-divisions named above. The systematic editing into 175 (preface) / 584 (Sìkù count) mén belongs to his Quánzhōu posting, between the autumn of 1148 (when he was assigned to the Quánzhōu prefecture) and the spring of 1149 (when the preface is dated).

The work’s importance for modern study is twofold. First, it preserves a unique snapshot of the working stylistic vocabulary of a Southern-Sòng prose composer — what counted as a xīnjuàn 新雋 (fresh-and-striking) phrase or epithet circa 1150, drawn from the breadth of canonical works available to a southern provincial scholar. Second, its citations include numerous anecdotes from now-lost bǐjì texts; Wāng Lì 汪力 and other modern lèishū historians have used it to reconstruct fragments of lost Sòng yúlù.

The text’s transmission is bibliographically tangled: the Sòng shǐ · Yìwén zhì gives 23 juan, the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 33 juan, the present recension 22 juan. The Wàn-lì-period (1573–1620) Liú Fèng 劉鳳 printing — based on the family copy of Liú’s nephew Liú Zhuō 劉倬 — is the principal Míng circulation; the second preface in the Sìkù recension is Liú Fèng’s, dated Wànlì wùxū (1598). The standard modern critical edition is Liào Yǒumíng 廖友明 (ed.), Hǎilù suìshì jiàozhù 海錄碎事校註 (Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1997).

Translations and research

• Liào Yǒu-míng 廖友明 (ed.), Hǎi-lù suì-shì jiào-zhù (Shàng-hǎi gǔjí, 1997). Standard modern critical edition.
• Hú Dào-jìng 胡道靜, Zhōngguó gǔdài de lèishū (Zhōng-huá, 1982), §Sòng, on Yè Tíng-guī and the Hǎi-lù.
• Charles Hartman, “Hai lu sui shi”, in Hervouet, A Sung Bibliography (HKCUP, 1978).

No European-language complete translation.

Other points of interest

Yè Tíngguī’s preface is among the longest and most personally-coloured of any Southern-Sòng lèishū compiler’s prefaces, and a valuable document for the social history of Southern-Sòng reading. He reports a forty-year reading habit of jiè wú bù dú, dú wú bù zhōngpiān “borrowed nothing not read; read nothing not to the end” — a Confucian topos but here unusually circumstantial.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Hǎilù suìshì entry.
• Wikidata: Q11075091.
• Modern critical edition: Liào Yǒumíng (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1997).