Shāntáng sìkǎo 山堂肆考
Wide-Ranging Inquiries from the Mountain Hall
by 彭大翼 (Péng Dàyì, Míng, 撰) and 張幼學 (Zhāng Yòuxué, Míng, 增定; grandson-in-law); prefaces by 焦竑, 凌儒, 廖自伸 and Péng Dàáo 彭大翺 (the author’s younger brother, not separately catalogued).
About the work
A massive late-Míng general lèishū in 228 juǎn (plus a 12-juǎn bǔyí supplement), compiled by Péng Dàyì 彭大翼 (zì Yúnjǔ 雲舉, alt. Yīhè 一鶴; Yángzhōu 揚州 native) over more than thirty years and augmented after his death by his grandson-in-law Zhāng Yòuxué 張幼學 (hào Yíbó 儀伯). The work is organized in five jí labelled by the five musical notes (gōngshāngjiǎozhǐyǔ 宮商角徵羽) — a typographic device borrowed from Zhào Lín’s Yīnhuà lù 因話錄 — and subdivided into 45 mén with further zǐmù. The categorical scheme covers astronomy, calendar, geography, sovereign and consort, official ranks, examination success, scholarship, government, kinship, persons, physiognomy, character, literature, ritual, music, religion, residences, vessels, treasures, garments, food, plants, animals, and so on.
Tiyao
We submit the following: the Shāntáng sìkǎo in 228 juǎn with a Bǔyí in 12 juǎn is by Péng Dàyì of the Míng. Dàyì’s zì was Yúnjǔ, alternate name Yīhè; he was a man of Yángzhōu. Liào Zìshēn’s Wànlì yǐwèi (1595) preface notes that Péng had been first among the local students for more than twenty years yet never managed to enter the xiánshū (the register of those who passed the provincial examination). His younger brother Péng Dàáo’s preface states that he served as a Provincial official in the Bǎiyuè region [GuǎngdōngGuǎngxī]; Líng Rú’s preface likewise says he resigned office and retired to the coast, so he had at some point held office, though his exact post is no longer ascertainable. According to the work’s fánlì, the book was completed in Wànlì yǐwèi (1595); over twenty-odd years it suffered from copyist losses, until in Wànlì jǐwèi (1619) his grandson-in-law Zhāng Yòuxué pursued surviving leads and added supplements, producing the complete recension. Thus Yòuxué added material of his own and the text is not entirely Péng Dàyì’s original. (Note: Jiāo Hóng’s preface, dated yǐwèi, already references Yòuxué’s supplementation — this conflicts with the fánlì and we suspect the printer mis-cut 已 for 乙.)
The work divides into the five jí gōngshāngjiǎozhǐyǔ, modelled on Zhào Lín’s Yīnhuà lù. But while Zhào assigned distinct sense to each of the five notes, Péng’s distribution is arbitrary: the Chénzhí category is split between the gōng and shāng jí, the Qīnshǔ (kinship) category between the shāng and jiǎo jí, with no principled rationale — the five-note labels function merely as part-numbering (like the jiǎgǎo, yǐgǎo of other works). Within the five jí there are forty-five mén, each subdivided further. The categorial structure is broadly comparable to other lèishū. Only the Huì (plants) section is curious: the orthodox term is cǎo 草 yet the heading is cǎohuì 草卉, an apparent doublet. But Shěn Yuē’s poem has the line wù yán cǎohuì jiàn 勿言草卉賤, so the doublet has a source. The Dàojiào and Shénxiān are split into two bù — also a divergence from common practice — but the Hàn shū yìwén zhì already distinguishes the Dàojiā from the Shénxiānjiā categories, so this division too has classical warrant. The work’s collection, though it includes much that is excerpted rather than drawn directly from the original sources, is broad and full and is worth preserving for reference.
Respectfully revised and submitted, tenth 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 Shāntáng sìkǎo is one of the largest late-Míng general lèishū by a private compiler, comparable in scale to Zhāng Huáng’s Túshū biān (KR3k0050) and to Chén Yàowén’s Tiānzhōng jì. The original 228-juǎn body was completed by Péng Dàyì in 1595; the 12-juǎn Bǔyí and overall consolidation were added by his grandson-in-law Zhāng Yòuxué in 1619 — making the date bracket 1595–1619 for the received recension, with the bulk of the work attributable to Péng’s three decades of compilation. The catalog meta gives Péng Dàyì’s floruit as 1593; CBDB (id 562424) records his floruit as 1595, the year of his preface. He held some unspecified provincial appointment in the LiǎngGuǎng region but is principally remembered as a zhūshēng (district student) who never attained the jǔrén — a circumstance Liào Zìshēn’s preface explicitly connects to the Wáng Tōng trope that yùjié bù tōng (frustration channelled into compilation produces the great encyclopaedist).
The work’s fánlì notes that mid-Wàn-lì commercial publishers had pirated and butchered the text, splicing in extraneous material and discarding portions — a complaint that gives a sharp glimpse into the late-Míng shūlín (book trade) practices, and confirms that the received Zhāng-recension was in part a recovery operation. Among the supplementary aids the fánlì mentions a cānjiào xìngshì (collation contributors) list naming Jiāo Hóng 焦竑 of Mòlíng (秣陵, Nánjīng), Líng Rú 凌儒 of Hǎilíng, Liào Zìshēn 廖自伸 of Huánggāng, and other Yúnjiān and Sìmíng scholars — placing the work in the same Nánjīng / Lower-Yangzi philological-publishing milieu as the Yú yáng shānrén jīngshǐ tóng and the Wényuàn yīnghuá. The Sìkù editors note that the work’s organizational labels are typographic rather than principled, and that much of the content is excerpted at second hand rather than collated from the originals — but praise the breadth of wǎngluó.
For modern users the Shāntáng sìkǎo is most valuable as one of the densest single-volume sources for late-Míng circulating gùshí (allusion-stock) and as a window on the late-Míng zhūshēng-compiler tradition that produced the great private lèishū outside court patronage.
Translations and research
- Hú Dào-jìng 胡道靜, Zhōngguó gǔdài de lèishū (Zhōng-huá, 1982), §Míng.
- Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2018), ch. 72, discusses the Shān-táng sì-kǎo as a representative late-Míng commercial lèishū.
No European-language complete translation.
Other points of interest
The work is among the most heavily pirated of late-Míng lèishū — the fánlì itself testifies that commercial publishers were profitably reissuing partial and corrupted versions within a generation of the first edition. The Wàn-lì-period Nánjīng compilation-and-publishing community surrounding Jiāo Hóng — one of the principal voices of late-Míng philological synthesis — is well represented in the supplementary apparatus.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Lèishū lèi, Shāntáng sìkǎo entry.