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萍洲可談

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Text ID
KR3l0059
Date
1110–1118
Dynasty
北宋

Píngzhōu kětán 萍洲可談

Discussible Matters from Píng-zhōu by 朱彧 (撰)

About the work

A three-juàn Northern-Sòng bǐjì by 朱彧 Zhū Yù 朱彧 (zì Wúhuò 無惑), a native of Wūchéng 烏程 (modern Húzhōu, Zhèjiāng). The title takes its name from the author’s residence in Píngzhōu 萍洲 — the Yángzǐ riverside locality where he retired to write. The work is a record of court politics, institutional precedent, regional custom, and — most distinctively — the foreign-trade world of Guǎngzhōu, drawn substantially from what Zhū Yù had heard from his father 朱服 Zhū Fú 朱服 during the latter’s tenure as 通判 (Vice-Prefect) at Guǎngzhōu in the Yuánfú — Chóngníng years (c. 1099–1102). The work is universally recognized as one of the two or three most important Northern-Sòng primary sources for the Shìbósī 市舶司 (Maritime Trade Commission), the fānfāng 蕃坊 (foreign quarter) of Guǎngzhōu, and the trade with Dàshí 大食 (Arab merchants), India, Champa, and the Southeast-Asian polities. The text was lost in coherent form after the Northern Sòng; the Sìkù editors reconstituted the present 3-juàn version from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn excerpts.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Píngzhōu kětán in 3 juàn, by the Sòng Zhū Yù. Yù, zì Wúhuò, a man of Wūchéng. This book is recorded in 3 juàn in the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; but the Míng editions of Shāng Jùn cut into the Bàihǎi and of Chén Jìrú cut into the Mìjí alike contain only somewhat over fifty entries, not filling one juàn; what Táo Zōngyí’s Shuōfú records is even more meagre. The work having long been lost, Jùn and the others were able only to pick up scraps from the citations of other books to preserve its outline — none had seen the 3-juàn original. Only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn cites it copiously; by gathering and editing these we may yet recover the 3 juàn. We have respectfully arranged and compiled them to restore the old form: although a reconstitution from scattered remnants is unlikely to be free of every smallest loss, the result is nearly four times what the various Míng cutters published, and on rough calculation we have recovered some eight or nine parts in ten.

Yù’s father Fú, in the Yuánfēng period, served as Zhí Lóngtúgé 直龍圖閣 and held in succession the prefectures of Lái and Rùn; in the Shàoshèng period he was once commissioned as envoy to the Liáo; afterwards he became shuài (Pacification Commissioner / Prefect) of Guǎngzhōu. Therefore Yù’s book records much of what his father saw and heard, and on the Guǎngzhōu fānfāng and shìbó (foreign quarter and Maritime Trade Office) he is especially detailed.

Checking the Sòng shǐ, Fú, though dismissed from office on account of associating with Sū Shì, was in fact not of the Yuányòu faction: he had a quarrel with Sū Zhé and aligned himself with Shū Dǎn and Lǚ Huìqīng. Therefore Yù in writing this book speaks rather slightingly of the two Sū, while of Dǎn and Huìqīng he often furnishes circuitous explanations — even to the extent that of the Yuányòu regency he wrote that “government issued from behind the curtain”. Wishing to shield his father, he could not but shield his father’s faction; and so could not but honour the Shàoshèng governance and disparage the men of Yuányòu. With Cài Tāo’s Tiěwéishān cóngtán this work shares the same intent — much at variance with impartial shìfēi (right and wrong) judgment.

Yet leaving these few entries aside, what is recorded of local custom and popular ways, of court precedent and state institution, is all amply useful for kǎozhèng (textual research); and even the anecdotal suǒshì (trivia) often carries something profitable for quànjiè (admonition). Compared with other xiǎoshuō that indulge in the marvellous, that wantonly mock and jest, fit only as conversation-fillers, the work is the more worth taking up. Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 9th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Zhū Yù (CBDB id 16702; no firm dates in CBDB) was a Northern-Sòng shìdàfū of middling rank who never held a high office. His father Zhū Fú 朱服 (CBDB id 3256; 1048–c. 1102 per Sòng shǐ 347), a jìnshì of Xīníng 6 (1073) and onetime Lóngtúgé academician, served at Láizhōu, Rùnzhōu, and as envoy to Liáo during Shàoshèng, before being appointed 知廣州 (Prefect of Guǎngzhōu) in Yuánfú 2 (1099) — the office which the catalog meta accurately glosses as the senior pacification post above the 通判 vice-prefect rank. (The Sìkù tiyao gives 通判; modern reference works, including the Sòng shǐ lièzhuàn, give zhī Guǎngzhōu with concurrent 廣南東路 commissions. The catalog meta’s “通判” follows the tiyao; both readings circulate.) Zhū Fú’s Guǎngzhōu tenure ended c. 1102 when he was banished to Bīnzhōu 賓州 in the late-Chóngníng anti-Yuányòu purge, despite his nominal alignment with the Xīnfǎ faction.

The work’s composition window is securely placed in the Dàguān — Zhènghé period, c. 1110–1118, on the basis of (a) internal references to events of Dàguān (1107–10) as recent past, (b) the work’s evident composition after Zhū Fú’s death, and (c) the Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì listing under the same form known to the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo. The reconstructed text preserves entries on:

  • Guǎngzhōu shìbósī (Maritime Trade Commission) administration — vessel inspection, the chōujiě 抽解 (duty-extraction) system, the bómǎi 博買 (purchase-for-state) mechanism;
  • the fānfāng 蕃坊 foreign quarter — Muslim and other merchant communities, the fānzhǎng 蕃長 headman, mosque (lǐbàitáng 禮拜堂) practice, the Dàshí 大食 (Arab) and 三佛齊 (Śrīvijaya) merchant networks;
  • maritime navigation — the magnetic compass (zhǐnánzhēn 指南針) used on ships out of Guǎngzhōu, an early and frequently cited reference (this passage was singled out by Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China IV.1, as one of the four earliest unambiguous attestations of the mariner’s compass);
  • court politics — the Yuányòu — Shàoshèng factional struggle from a Xīnfǎ-sympathetic viewpoint (the tiyao flags this bias);
  • Sū Shì anecdotes (mostly hostile);
  • regional custom, zhǎnggù (precedent), and miscellaneous antiquarian material.

The work is securely dated to the Dàguān — Zhènghé window, contemporary with KR3l0049 Bózhái biān and KR3l0050 Zhēnxí fàngtán. Its maritime-trade material on the Yuánfú — Chóngníng Guǎngzhōu establishment is unique to the Northern-Sòng bǐjì corpus.

Standard modern edition: Lǐ Wěiguó 李偉國, coll. Píngzhōu kětán (Zhōnghuá, 2007, TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān series).

Translations and research

  • Hirth, Friedrich, and W. W. Rockhill. Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï. St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911. Extensively quotes and translates the Píngzhōu kětán maritime entries as the principal Northern-Sòng predecessor of KR2k0029 Zhū-fán zhì; their notes give running comparison of Zhū Yù’s Guǎng-zhōu shì-bó descriptions with Zhào Rǔ-shì’s later Quán-zhōu material.
  • Chaffee, John W. The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China: The History of a Maritime Asian Trade Diaspora, 750–1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. The most thorough modern monograph on the fān-fāng and Dà-shí merchant communities; Chapter 2–3 rests substantially on Píngzhōu kětán for the Yuán-fú — Chóng-níng Guǎng-zhōu moment.
  • Wheatley, Paul. “Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in Sung Maritime Trade.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 32.2 (1959): 5–140. Uses Píngzhōu kětán on tropical commodities (incense, gharu-wood, ivory, pearls).
  • So, Billy K. L. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946–1368. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. Uses Píngzhōu kětán on the shì-bó administrative structure as Northern-Sòng baseline against the later Quán-zhōu shift.
  • Schottenhammer, Angela, ed. The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000–1400. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Several chapters cite Píngzhōu kětán for the pre-Quán-zhōu Guǎng-zhōu moment.
  • Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China, vol. IV.1 (1962). Cites Píngzhōu kětán on the mariner’s compass as one of the four earliest sources.
  • Park, Hyunhee. Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Uses Píngzhōu kětán on Arab knowledge of Chinese geography and vice versa.
  • No complete European-language translation has been located; substantial extracts are however translated piecemeal across Hirth–Rockhill, Wheatley, Chaffee, and Park.

Other points of interest

The Píngzhōu kětán’s description of the Guǎngzhōu shìbósī and fānfāng — the fānzhǎng office, the lǐbàitáng (mosque), the Dàshí merchant graves outside the city wall, the jiǎoyìn 角印 (corner-stamp) vessel-papers, the on-board use of the magnetic needle — is one of those rare bǐjì passages that, because of its first-hand quality (filtered through one generation: father to son), has become a cornerstone of modern world-history scholarship on premodern Indian-Ocean trade. The cultural distance between the Sìkù compilers’ interest in the work (whom did Zhū Yù shield in the Yuányòu — Shàoshèng dispute?) and the modern Western-language scholarship’s interest (what was the structure of Sòng maritime trade?) is a small case study in how the same primary source supports radically different historiographic projects.

The Sòng original was lost; the present 3-juàn reconstruction from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn by the Sìkù compilers is — by their own estimate — eight or nine parts in ten of the original, nearly four times the Míng Bàihǎi / Mìjí extracts.

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