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明皇雜錄

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Text ID
KR3l0009
Date
855–855
Dynasty
唐

Mínghuáng záilù 明皇雜錄

Miscellaneous Records of the Brilliant Emperor [Xuanzong] by 鄭處誨 (撰)

About the work

A two-juàn (plus one juàn biélù 別錄) collection of Xuánzōng-reign anecdotes compiled by 鄭處誨 Zhèng Chǔhuì 鄭處誨 (zì Yánměi 延美; jìnshì 834), completed in Dàzhōng 9 (855). The author was grandson of the chief minister Zhèng Yúqìng 鄭餘慶 and rose to Jiǎnxiào Xíngbù Shàngshū and Xuānwǔ Jūn Jiédùshǐ. The work focuses on court life, music, exotic objects and anecdotal politics of the high Kāiyuán / Tiānbǎo era, and is a major source for romantic-historical reception of Xuánzōng’s reign — including the famous Zhāng Jiǔlíng 張九齡 / Lǐ Línfǔ 李林甫 court rivalry, the Yáng Guìfēi material, and the Lǐ Bái 李白 anecdotes that fed later legend.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Mínghuáng záilù 2 juàn + Biélù 1 juàn, by the Táng Zhèng Chǔhuì. Chǔhuì’s zì was Yánměi; native of Xíngyáng; grandson of the chief minister Yúqìng; jìnshì of Tàihé 8 (834); rose to Jiǎnxiào Xíngbù Shàngshū and Xuānwǔ Jūn Jiédùshǐ. His traces are appended to the Jiù Táng shū biography of Zhèng Yúqìng. The book was completed in Dàzhōng 9. The Xīn Táng shū records that as Xiàoshū láng he had compiled Mínghuáng záilù in 3 piān which circulated in the age; Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì records Mínghuáng záilù in 2 juàn and adds: “Biélù 1 juàn, called bǔquè recording 12 events.” The Xīn Táng shū’s combined count includes the Biélù, while Cháo separates it. Yè Mèngdé’s Bìshǔ lùhuà says: Chǔhuì’s Mínghuáng záilù records Zhāng Jiǔlíng’s dispute with Lǐ Línfǔ over the enfeoffment of Niú Xiānkè, that at the time the season was autumn, the emperor ordered Gāo Lìshì to bestow on Jiǔlíng a white-feather fan, and Jiǔlíng in alarm composed a fù in response, the implication being that the emperor was annoyed at Jiǔlíng’s contrariness and about to dismiss him, hence the autumnal fan; the Xīn Táng shū takes this into the biography. But on the Qūjiāng jí preface to the fan-fù, “in the height of summer of Kāiyuán 24, by imperial command General Gāo Lìshì bestowed on the chief ministers white-feather fans, Jiǔlíng among them” — that is, the season is summer not autumn, and the fans went to all the ministers including Lǐ Línfǔ. So Yè Mèngdé concludes: xiǎoshuō anecdote, unless the writer’s own eyes and ears have witnessed the event, cannot be casually relied on; even Chǔhuì’s work is not entirely truthful. Nevertheless, the truth-and-error mixture in xiǎoshuō has been so since antiquity, and is not Chǔhuì’s failing alone; with broad consultation and careful selection, we cannot reject the whole work on the basis of one or two errors. Bìshǔ lùhuà further says: Lú Huáishèn was given to frugality, his house had no jade-or-brocade ornament — fine; but the Histories say his wife and children were freezing and starving, that Sòng Jǐng and others called on him and found no curtains at the door, with reed-mats raised against the wind and rain — there can be no such thing; this story plainly comes from Zhèng Chǔhuì’s Mínghuáng záilù and the historian rashly accepted it. The present text contains no such entry; the work as we have it must therefore already have suffered losses, and is not in its complete original form. Respectfully presented in the 12th month of Qiánlóng 46.

Abstract

The work is one of the densest sources for the popular-cultural memory of the Kāiyuán / Tiānbǎo court. It preserves much of the material that later supplied Bái Jūyì’s Chánghèn gē commentary tradition, the Lǐ Bái legend (the drunken composition under Xuánzōng, the boot-removal of Gāo Lìshì), and the music-and-dance lore (Nícháng yǔyī qǔ, the imperial orchestra). Modern scholarship has flagged many specific factual errors (Yè Mèngdé’s example with Zhāng Jiǔlíng’s fan-fù is paradigmatic), but the work remains a primary witness — second only to the official jiùshǐ — for Xuánzōng-era anecdotal material. The Biélù of 12 entries is in Cháo Gōngwǔ’s record by an anonymous bǔquè hand; modern editors generally treat it as Zhèng Chǔhuì’s own appendix.

Standard modern edition: Yú Císhēng 于慈生 collation in the TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān (Zhōnghuá, 1994), with the Tàipíng guǎngjì-derived fragments reconstructed.

Translations and research

  • Tián Tíng-zhù 田廷柱, coll. 1994. Mínghuáng záilù; Dōng-guān zòu-jì 東觀奏記. Zhōnghuá (Táng-Sòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān). Standard modern edition with reconstructed lost passages from Tài-píng guǎng-jì.
  • Bischoff, Friedrich. Tang Anecdotes: A New Anthology (Wiesbaden, 1971) — partial translations.
  • Owen, Stephen, in The Late Tang (HUP 2006), uses the Mínghuáng záilù repeatedly as background source.
  • No complete European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The work and its Biélù are the locus classicus for several Lǐ Bái legends — the drunken composition while jiǔtú (drinking with Xuánzōng), Gāo Lìshì removing his boots, and the dispatch with water to revive him from intoxication. These passages were the seed for later opera, fiction, and popular hagiography of the poet.

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