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洛陽搢紳舊聞記

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Text ID
KR3l0025
Date
1005–1005
Dynasty
北宋

Luòyáng jìnshēn jiùwén jì 洛陽搢紳舊聞記

Records of Old Reports from the Gentry of Luoyang by 張齊賢 (撰)

About the work

A five-juàn anecdote compilation in 21 entries by 張齊賢 Zhāng Qíxián 張齊賢 (943–1014), the great Sòng chief minister, composed in Jǐngdé 2 / 1005 while serving as Governor of Qīngzhōu 青州. The work records “the old matters of LiángTáng [HòuLiáng / HòuTáng] and later as it concerned the city of Luòyáng” — Zhāng having relocated to Luòyáng from his native Cáozhōu in youth and grown up within the local jìnshēn (capped-and-girdled = gentry) circles. The work is a primary source for the HòuLiáng / HòuTáng administrative history of Luòyáng — particularly the long jiédùshǐ tenure of Zhāng Quányì 張全義 (852–926), whose effective reconstruction of Luòyáng after the chaos of the Huáng Cháo rebellion is documented here in unusual detail.

Tiyao

Source directory missing in /home/Shared/krp/KR3l/KR3l0025; the following tiyao is from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Shikō Teiyō (curl-fetched from http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db-machine/ShikoTeiyo/0289901.html), base text being the Zhèjiāng provincial governor’s contribution.

By the Sòng Zhāng Qíxián. Qíxián zì Shīliàng 師亮; native of Cáozhōu, moved to Luòyáng. Jìnshì of Tàipíng xīngguó 2 (977); rose through office to Tóng zhōngshū ménxià píngzhāngshì (chief minister); retired as Sīkōng; died with the posthumous title Wéndìng. His traces are in Sòng shǐ. The book heads with the date Yǐsì — Zhēnzōng Jǐngdé 2 (1005), when Qíxián was Bīngbù shàngshū and Governor of Qīngzhōu. The book treats Liáng-Táng-and-later old matter of Luòyáng city, 21 sections in 5 juàn. Shūlù jiětí records the mùcì in agreement with the present; only Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says 10 juàn — by the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn text we see no excess beyond the present 5, so Dúshū zhì is graph-error. The work is largely based on chuánshuō (transmitted account), abbreviating the shíshì (real events) for quànjiè (prompting / warning). Qíxián’s self-claim: “Whatever differs from the zhèngshǐ, I have preserved both — in the manner of the biézhuàn / wàizhuàn.” But entries like the Héngyáng Zhōu magistrate’s wife’s retribution, the Luòyáng dyer seeing the wronged-ghost, Jiāoshēng’s seeing his dead wife — all yǔguài (strange-talk). The entry on Lǐ Shǎoshī’s worthy wife: “the Khitan defeated prince Dōngdān, the [Tang] court secretly killed him, an unnatural death; the Khitan already knew; Lǐ Sù was sent to escort the coffin home, grieving but not knowing the secret” — but per Tōngjiàn and Wǔdài shǐ, Dōngdān = Liáo Tàizǔ’s eldest son, Tàizōng’s elder brother, who fled to the Táng and was made Zhāoxìn jiédùshǐ with the name Zànhuá; when Tàizōng aided Shí Jìn’s rising, Lùwáng [HòuTáng Mòdì] sent eunuch Qín Jìmín and Huángchéngshǐ Lǐ Yànshēn to kill him at his residence — i.e., Dōngdān’s death was Lùwáng venting his anger after defeat, with the Jìn Gāozǔ later giving him a ritual burial. There was no “secret killing by the [Tang] court” — the matter rests on transmission error and is unreliable. As for the entry recording Zhāng Quányì’s reconstruction of Luòyáng — extraordinarily detailed, and the jiù shǐ drew on it. Other surviving anecdotes are also valuable for broad reading; the work serves alongside [Wáng Yǔchēng’s] Wǔdài shǐ quēwén etc. for kǎozhèng in reading the Wǔdài shǐ.

Abstract

Zhāng Qíxián (943–1014; CBDB id 183) — chief minister twice under Zhēnzōng — composed the work in 1005 in his second provincial retirement, drawing on remembered Luòyáng gentry oral tradition from his youth. The Zhāng Quányì 張全義 material is the work’s centrepiece: Zhāng Quányì governed Luòyáng from c. 884 (after the Huáng Cháo destruction) into the early HòuLiáng, rebuilding the abandoned capital with a famously vigorous agricultural and population-restoration programme; the Luòyáng jìnshēn jiùwén jì is the principal extant primary source for these activities, and is the foundation of the Jiù Wǔdài shǐ and Xīn Wǔdài shǐ accounts of his career. The yǔguài (strange) entries — ghost-stories of Luòyáng officialdom — are a useful side-witness to popular religion of the Northern-Sòng jìnshēn class.

Standard modern edition: Luòyáng jìnshēn jiùwén jì, in Zhōnghuá’s TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān (1985, coll. Tián Tíngzhù 田廷柱), supplemented from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn.

Translations and research

  • Hartman, Charles. The Making of a Confucian Hero and related work on Northern-Sòng historiography draws on the work.
  • Tackett, Nicolas. The Origins of the Chinese Nation (2017) cites Luòyáng jìnshēn jiùwén jì for the politics of post-Huáng-Cháo reconstruction.
  • No European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The work captures a specific literary place-memory — Luòyáng as ex-capital — at the moment in 1005 when the city’s role had definitively passed to Biànjīng (Kāifēng), making the work a primary witness to the cultural identity of Luòyáng as the displaced “ancient capital.”

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