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道山清話

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Text ID
KR3l0053
Date
1106–1130
Dynasty
北宋

Dàoshān qīnghuà 道山清話

Pure Talk of Mount Dào by 王暐 (撰)

About the work

A single-juàn Northern-Sòng bǐjì 筆記 anecdote-collection conventionally attributed by the Shuōfú 說郛 to 王暐 Wáng Wěi 王暐, but in fact, on the Sìkù compilers’ own demonstration, the work of Wáng Wěi’s paternal grandfather — an unnamed Northern-Sòng Guóshǐ guǎn 國史館 compiler — recovered and re-transmitted by Wáng Wěi in Jiànyán 4 (1130). The work covers the Yuányòu — Chóngníng 元祐 — 崇寧 period (c. 1086 – 1106), recording political anecdotes, literary gossip, and zhǎnggù 掌故 of the senior Northern-Sòng court, with a markedly Shǔdǎng 蜀黨 (Sū Shì–faction) slant: hostile to Wáng Ānshí, cool to the Luòxué 洛學 (Yīchuān Chéngzǐ 伊川程子) and to Liú Zhì 劉摰, and detailed and warm on the social and intellectual circle of Sū Shì 蘇軾, Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅, Cháo Bǔzhī 晁補之, and Zhāng Lěi 張耒. The title alludes to Dàoshān 道山 “Mount Dào”, a literary trope for the Imperial Library / Guǎngé 館閣 (where the grandfather had served).

Tiyao

Your servants report: Dàoshān qīnghuà in 1 juàn, the author’s name not recorded. The Shuōfú extracted several entries and printed them under the title “Sòng, by Wáng Wěi”. On examination, the book has at its end a colophon by Wáng Wěi reading: “My late grandfather served longest at the Guóshǐ guǎn (State History Office) and knew many of the senior generation. He once wrote down what he had heard and seen as the Guǎn mìlù, Pùshū jì, and this book — three works in all. In the successive years of military fires they were scattered and did not survive. Recently I obtained this book from the family of Zēng Zhòngcún of Nánfēng, and accordingly copied it by hand and stored it to show to sons and grandsons.” The colophon is dated Jiànyán 4, gēngxū (1130), and signed: “your grandson, the cháofèng dàifū, manager of the Míngdào Palace at Bózhōu, granted the purple-and-gold fish-pouch, Wěi, writes.” Thus the compiler of this book is Wěi’s grandfather, not Wěi.

Zhōu Huī 周煇’s Qīngbō zázhì 清波雜志 says the Chéngdū fùchūn fāng huǒ 成都富春坊火 poem was made by a man of the Luò (洛) eminent-virtue lineage, styled Dàoshān gōngzǐ 道山公子, also without giving his surname. The book records that in Yuányòu 5 (1090) the author’s father served as ambassador for the New Year’s Day mission to Liáo (賀遼國正旦使), and on returning memorialised Zhézōng concerning the affairs of Fàn Chúnrén 范純仁 and Lǚ Gōngzhù 呂公著; Zhézōng ordered that the despatch be forwarded to Chúnrén. Later, when Chúnrén was again chief councillor, Zhézōng asked: “Have you seen So-and-so Lǐ’s despatch?” — so the author would be surnamed Lǐ 李, not Wáng 王. But on consulting Lǐ Tāo 李燾, Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān 續資治通鑑長編, in the eighth month gēngxū of that year (1090), the Lìbù lángzhōng Sū Zhù 蘇注 and Hùbù lángzhōng Liú Yù 劉昱 were appointed New-Year ambassadors, with Gōngbèikù shǐ Guō Zōngyán 郭宗顔 and the Xījīng zuǒcángkù fùshǐ Bì Kějì 畢可濟 as deputies; later Guō Zōngyán fell ill and was replaced by the Xītóu gōngfèngguān gémén Lù Xiàolì 陸孝立 — no Lǐ appears in the list. Yet the work’s statement that “last year Fàn Chúnrén went out as governor of Yǐngchāng and Lǚ Gōngzhù died in office” matches the standard biographies, both events being indeed in Yuányòu 4 (1089) — so the year Yuányòu 5 (1090) is not wrong; we cannot account for the discrepancy. Perhaps the character Sū 蘇 or Liú 劉 has been miscopied as Lǐ 李.

The records terminate in Chóngníng 5 (1106), so the book must have been completed in the time of Huīzōng. It is decidedly hostile to Wáng Ānshí’s malfeasance, and not very satisfied with the Yīchuān Master Chéng or with Liú Zhì; it is particularly detailed on the intercourse and debates of Sū [Shì], Huáng [Tíngjiān], Cháo [Bǔzhī], and Zhāng [Lěi] — that the author was one of the Shǔdǎng (Sū-faction) is clearly to be seen. The book records throughout the miscellaneous affairs of its own age. Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎, Jūyì lù 居易錄, mocked the work for confusing the two Zhāng Xiān 張先 as one; but the author was a contemporary of Zhāng Xiān, and a transmitted report of several centuries later can scarcely overrule what was seen with his own eyes — so we may leave both readings standing as “to doubt what is doubtful”. Only the entry that Chén Péngnián 陳彭年 replied to Zhēnzōng on the mòzhì mòyǔn 墨智墨允 passage out of the Chūnqiū Shàoyáng 春秋少陽, saying that “the emperor ordered the Mìgé to fetch the book; when it arrived, Péngnián directed them to a certain board, and there indeed it was found”, and so on — this account is rather false. The Chūnqiū Shàoyáng chapter is already not recorded in the Suíshū jīngjí zhì — how could Péngnián have seen it, and how could the Sòng Mìgé have had it? On checking Huáng Kǎn 皇侃’s Lúnyǔ shū 論語疏, this passage appears there; Lù Démíng 陸德明’s Jīngdiǎn shìwén 經典釋文 and Xíng Bǐng 邢昺’s Lúnyǔ shū both cite the Chūnqiū Shàoyáng — but Xíng’s shū did not yet exist in Péngnián’s time. What Péngnián cited was either Lù’s book or Huáng’s. So the transmitter has erred from reality, and this book has accordingly mis-recorded it.

Respectfully collated and presented, Qiánlóng 46, tenth month (1781). General-Editors: Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief-Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Dàoshān qīnghuà presents one of the more interesting authorship puzzles among the surviving Northern-Sòng bǐjì. The work is conventionally listed under the name of 王暐 Wáng Wěi 王暐 — both in the Shuōfú (which appears to be the source of the attribution) and in the Sìkù itself, whose catalog rubric retains “Sòng Wáng Wěi” for convenience. The Sìkù compilers’ own tíyào shows, however, that Wáng Wěi is in fact only the transmitter: his colophon, dated Jiànyán 4 / 1130, states that he had recovered the work from the family of Zēng Zhòngcún of Nánfēng after the Jìngkāng dispersals (1126–27), and that the actual author was his paternal grandfather (先大父), an unnamed long-serving compiler of the Northern-Sòng Guóshǐ guǎn 國史館 who had written this together with two other bǐjì (the lost Guǎn mìlù and Pùshū jì). The grandfather’s surname is unrecoverable: an entry within the work itself appears to suggest the surname Lǐ 李 (the author’s father was a Héběi ambassador to the Liáo in Yuányòu 5 / 1090, and Zhézōng later asked Fàn Chúnrén “have you seen Lǐ’s despatch?”), but the Sìkù compilers showed by cross-collation with Lǐ Tāo’s Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān that no Lǐ served on the 1090 mission — the actual ambassadors were Sū Zhù 蘇注 and Liú Yù 劉昱, and the compilers conjecture a copyist’s slip of Sū 蘇 or Liú 劉 → Lǐ 李. The contemporary Zhōu Huī’s Qīngbō zázhì records the same author under the literary sobriquet Dàoshān gōngzǐ 道山公子 — “Young Master of Mount Dào” (i.e., of the Guǎngé) — described as “of the Luò eminent-virtue lineage” (洛名德之後), but again without a surname. Modern scholarship (notably the QuánSòng bǐjì editors) is unable to resolve the question and continues to file the work under “Wáng Wěi” as a placeholder.

The work’s content terminates in Chóngníng 5 (1106). Composition therefore falls in the late Huīzōng reign, between 1106 (the latest recorded event) and 1126/27 at the outside (when the manuscripts were scattered); a date close to 1106 – 1110 is most defensible. We set the notBefore to 1106 (last recorded event) and the notAfter to 1130 (Wáng Wěi’s colophon, the terminus ante quem for the work’s recovery and final form). The strongly Shǔdǎng (Sū Shì–faction) slant — hostility to Wáng Ānshí and the Xīnfǎ, coolness to the Luòxué 洛學 of 程頤 and to 劉摯, detailed and admiring coverage of the literary circle of 蘇軾, 黃庭堅, 晁補之, and 張耒 — places the grandfather socially and politically among the Yuányòu literati and confirms a composition immediately after the Yuányòu faction’s exile under Huīzōng’s Dǎngjí bēi 黨籍碑 proscription (1102 ff.). The work thus belongs to the same documentary stratum as the Tiěwéishān cóngtán 鐵圍山叢談 and the Hòushān táncóng 後山談叢: testimony of an Yuányòu loyalist writing under the politically inverted Chóngníng — Dàguān — Xuānhé era.

A note on Wilkinson. Chinese History: A New Manual §9 (apotropaic names) erroneously cites the work as by “Wang Wei 王暐, 1645–1717” — the dates of a homonymous Qīng scholar (CBDB id 638521); this is a slip, the Dàoshān qīnghuà author being unambiguously Northern-Sòng. The lifedates in the present catalog follow the internal evidence and the Sìkù tíyào.

Textual evaluation. Two errors of the work are flagged by traditional critics. (1) Wáng Shìzhēn 王士禎 (Jūyì lù 居易錄) charged it with conflating two distinct Zhāng Xiān 張先; the Sìkù compilers retort that the author was contemporaneous with both Zhāng Xiān and is therefore in a stronger evidentiary position than a Qīng-era reader. (2) The famous “Chén Péngnián and the Chūnqiū Shàoyáng” anecdote (in which the late-Sòng minister tells Emperor Zhēnzōng to fetch a chapter from the Mìgé and demonstrates that he can recall the very page) is shown by the Sìkù compilers to be impossible: the Chūnqiū Shàoyáng was already absent from the Suíshū jīngjí zhì, and Péngnián must in fact have cited the passage as quoted in Huáng Kǎn or Lù Démíng. The anecdote is therefore an instance of the work’s principal weakness: dramatic court-gossip preserved on authority of hearsay.

Translations and research

  • Zhū Jié-rén 朱傑人 and Yán Zuǒ-zhī 嚴佐之, eds. Quán Sòng bǐ-jì 全宋筆記, dì-èr-biān 第二編. Zhèng-zhōu: Dà-xiàng chū-bǎn-shè 大象出版社, 2006. Includes the punctuated, collated edition of Dàoshān qīng-huà under the conventional “Wáng Wěi” attribution, with editor’s note on the authorship problem.
  • Liú Yè-qiū 劉葉秋. Lì-dài bǐ-jì gài-shù 歷代筆記概述. Běi-jīng: Zhōnghuá, 1980, repr. 2004. Brief survey-entry, follows the Sìkù analysis on the unknown grandfather.
  • Wáng Yǒu-yīng 王友勝, “Dàoshān qīng-huà zhī Sū Shì shī-huà jí qí jià-zhí” 道山清話之蘇軾詩話及其價值, Hú-nán shī-fàn dà-xué shè-huì kē-xué xué-bào 湖南師範大學社會科學學報, 2003, on the work’s shī-huà notices of Sū Shì.
  • No European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The work is one of the most-cited Yuányòu-side bǐjì in the modern Sūxué 蘇學 literature — Egan, Hartman, and Hatch all draw on it for the social texture of the Sū Shì circle. Its anecdote on Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修 explaining a child’s nickname “Brother Monk” (僧哥) as a jiànmíng 賤名 (“low name” given to protect a child from spiritual danger) is one of the locus-classici for the Sòng custom of apotropaic naming (cited e.g. in Wilkinson §9).

The Dàoshān gōngzǐ / “Mount Dào” sobriquet preserved in Zhōu Huī’s Qīngbō zázhì is the strongest non-Wáng-Wěi external attribution. Dàoshān 道山 (“Mount Dào”) is a Sòng literary euphemism for the Mìgé / Guǎngé 館閣 (imperial library and editorial bureaus) — consistent with the grandfather’s career there. The title thus reads “Pure Talk from [the gentlemen of] Mount Dào”, a conscious echo of the Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 qīngtán 清談 tradition transposed into the Northern-Sòng literary-bureaucratic milieu.

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