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墨客揮犀

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Text ID
KR3l0054
Date
1080–1140
Dynasty
北宋

Mòkè huīxī 墨客揮犀

The Ink-Guest Brandishes the Rhinoceros[-Horn] by 彭乘 (attributed)

About the work

A ten-juàn Northern-Sòng bǐjì 筆記 (miscellaneous-jottings) collection of court anecdotes, shīhuà 詩話 (poetry-talk), and literary-historical remarks, conventionally attributed to 彭乘 Péng Chéng 彭乘 but whose real authorship is unresolved. The title alludes to the huīzhǔ 麈尾 (rhinoceros-horn fly-whisk) wielded by a Wèi–Jìn qīngtán 清談 disputant: a “guest of ink” — i.e., a literatus — wielding the wit-staff to flick off topics one after another. The work circulated together with a companion Xù Mòkè huīxī 續墨客揮犀 (“Further Mòkè huīxī”, also 10 juàn), the two together making the Zhèngxù èrshí juàn “primary-and-continuation, twenty juàn” recorded by Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫 in the Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí 直齋書錄解題 — but Chén already gives the author as anonymous (bù zhī zhuànrén míngshì “compiler’s name and style not known”). The currently-transmitted ten-juàn version is Míng Shāng Jùn’s 商濬 Bàihǎi 稗海 cut, which prints “Péng Chéng” on the title-page, evidently extrapolating from the work’s own first-person passages.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Mòkè huīxī in 10 juàn, by the Sòng Péng Chéng. — On examination, in Northern-Sòng times there were two men named Péng Chéng. One was of Huáyáng 華陽 (Sìchuān); a Zhēnzōng-era jìnshì, he rose to Hànlín xuéshì (Hanlin Academician), and the Sòng shǐ has his biography. The man who composed this book, however, was a Gāoān 高安 native of Jūnzhōu 筠州; the histories do not record his career, so there is no way to make out the course of his life from start to finish. In the book he calls himself “Cháng wéi Zhōngshū jiǎnzhèng” (once a Zhōngshū jiǎnzhèng — Drafting-Office Examiner-Rectifier), and elsewhere says “in the Zhìhé 至和 era (1054–56) I went on appointment to Yōngzhōu 邕州,” without naming the office. He also says he once travelled to Dāněr 儋耳 (Hǎinán). His critical opinions throughout incline to esteem Sū [Shì] and Huáng [Tíngjiān] — we suspect he too was among the [Yuányòu / SūHuáng] dǎngjí (proscribed-faction) men.

Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí records this work in 10 juàn and a continuation in 10 juàn, noting that the compiler’s name and style are not known. The present text is the one Shāng Jùn 商濬 cut and printed in the Bàihǎi; the head of the juàn directly bears “Péng Chéng” — this is taken from the self-references in the book — but only 10 juàn survive, which does not match the Shūlù jiětí table of contents. Moreover, entries in the book — e.g. “Chén Yíngzhōng on the rear-park’s gelded boar,” “Pān Dàlín’s ‘After a city-full of wind and rain, near Chóngyáng’ verse,” “Péng Yuāncái’s visit to Xìngguósì” — are also found in Huìhóng’s 惠洪 Lěngzhāi yèhuà 冷齋夜話, identical in wording to the letter. Huìhóng was originally of the Gāoān Péng clan, of the same lineage and the same generation as Chéng; it is not credible that one would plagiarise the other so blatantly. Further, entries such as “Wèi Shū visits a country-inn,” “Zhāng Huá on broad-learning,” “Fù Róng has two sons” are wholesale transcriptions of the original wording of the Jìn shū and [Běi-]wèi shū, with no additional verification, and quite unlike the rest. We suspect that the Zhèngxù èrshí juàn version has long been lost piecemeal, and the present text has been corrupted and re-shuffled by later hands — no longer what [Chén] Zhènsūn saw. Yet on Sòng-era yíwén yìshì (lost reports and stray matters) and on shīhuà and wénpíng (poetry-talk and literary critique), it cites widely and well, with much to assist textual examination; we therefore preserve it as one aid to kǎozhèng 考證. Qiánlóng 43 (1778), 6th month, respectfully collated and submitted.

Chief compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Sìkù compilers state the authorship problem squarely: two Northern-Sòng men were called Péng Chéng, and the famous Huáyáng one — a Zhēnzōng jìnshì who rose to Hànlín xuéshì, has a Sòng shǐ biography (juǎn 298), and is the figure in CBDB (id 1397, 985–1049) — is not the author. The author was the otherwise-unrecorded Gāoān (Jūnzhōu, modern Jiāngxī) namesake. Internal evidence — once-Zhōngshū jiǎnzhèng; Zhìhé-era (1054–56) posting to Yōngzhōu; trip to Dāněr (Hǎinán); admiration for Sū Shì and Huáng Tíngjiān; same lineage (Gāoān Péng) and generation as the monk Huìhóng (1071–1128) — places the historical Péng Chéng-the-author in roughly the Zhìhé to early Zhènghé range (i.e., active c. 1054–1110), most likely a Yuányòu-faction sympathiser of the SūHuáng circle. The conflation with the Huáyáng Péng Chéng (985–1049) on the Bàihǎi title-page is editorial extrapolation from the work’s self-naming and not biographically defensible.

The work’s received state is corrupted: Chén Zhènsūn’s Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí (compiled c. 1244) already lists a 20-juàn “Zhèngxù” form and gives the author as anonymous; the present 10-juàn text is Shāng Jùn’s late-Míng Bàihǎi cut, and the Sìkù compilers note that (a) only 10 of 20 juàn are extant, and (b) a striking number of entries are textually identical with Huìhóng’s Lěngzhāi yèhuà (the Sū-Huáng-circle shīhuà, c. 1107–10), and (c) other entries are mere transcriptions of the Jìn shū and Wèi shū. The most natural reading — also the Sìkù compilers’ — is that the surviving Mòkè huīxī is a SòngYuánMíng accretion: a core of genuine Péng Chéng material (the Yōngzhōu and Dāněr first-person passages; the original Yuányòu-circle anecdotes) into which later compilers folded Lěngzhāi yèhuà and dynastic-history extracts. For dating purposes the received recension lies between c. 1080 (when SūHuáng material entered) and c. 1140 (when Chén Zhènsūn’s already-anonymous 20-juàn form was current). The Bàihǎi shortening is Míng.

For all that, the work remains one of the principal Sòng bǐjì repositories for Rénzōng- and *Shénzōng-*era court anecdotes (Bāo Zhěng, Kòu Zhǔn, Wáng Dàn, Sū Shì, Huáng Tíngjiān, etc.) and for shīhuà on the SūHuáng circle — Pān Dàlín’s celebrated “mǎnchéng fēngyǔ jìn Chóngyáng” couplet, for instance, is preserved here (whether ultimately from Huìhóng or from Péng Chéng directly). The work was a standard quarry for the Sòng shǐ compilers and for later bǐjì anthologies.

Translations and research

  • Zhōnghuá shūjú 中華書局 edition: Mòkè huīxī, Xù Mòkè huīxī (孔凡禮 Kǒng Fán-lǐ, ed., 2002; Táng-Sòng shǐ-liào bǐ-jì cóngkān), the standard collated text, including the Xù and with notes on the overlap with Lěng-zhāi yè-huà.
  • Zhāng Huì 張暉, Sòng-dài bǐ-jì yán-jiū 宋代筆記研究 (Huá-zhōng shī-fàn 1993), §III.4, surveys the authorship debate.
  • Egan, Ronald C. Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (HUP 1994) and The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (HUP 2006) cite the work for Sū-Huáng anecdotes.
  • No European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The textual overlap with the monk 惠洪 Huìhóng’s Lěngzhāi yèhuà — both authors of the same Gāoān Péng lineage and the same generation — has occasioned a small literature on the question of priority (who borrowed from whom). The Sìkù compilers’ position is that the two writers were too closely related for outright plagiarism, and that what looks like duplication is the work of later editorial intervention in the Mòkè huīxī — i.e., the duplication entered the text after the lifetimes of both Péng Chéng and Huìhóng. Most modern scholarship accepts this judgement.

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