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默記

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Text ID
KR3l0061
Date
1135–1144
Dynasty
南宋

Mòjì 默記

Silent Records by 王銍 (撰)

About the work

A three-juàn anecdote-collection (bǐjì) by 王銍 Wáng Zhì 王銍 (fl. 1122–1144; zì Xìngzhī 性之, hào Xuěxī 雪溪; self-styled Rǔyīn lǎomín 汝陰老民, “old commoner of Rǔyīn”). The work assembles Wáng Zhì’s notes on Biàndū 汴都 (the Northern-Sòng capital, modern Kāifēng) court and country old reports, with chronological span running from the founding Tàizǔ reign through the Shénzōng — Huīzōng era. Composed during the early Southern-Sòng Shàoxīng period (c. 1135–1144) when Wáng Zhì served briefly as Shūmìyuàn biānxiūguān (Editor of the Bureau of Military Affairs) after his examination-route recommendation. The Sìkù compilers — despite their wariness toward Wáng Zhì on account of the spurious works (Yúnxiān zájì, Shùxuān lù) for which his name had been used — single out the Mòjì as “the purest” (zuì chún) of Wáng’s compositions, and note that Lǐ Tāo’s 李燾 Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān takes substantial material from it.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Mòjì in 3 juàn, by the Sòng Wáng Zhì. Zhì zì Xìngzhī, of Rǔyīn, self-styled Rǔyīn lǎomín. At the beginning of Shàoxīng he was recommended by court ministers’ memorial, and was imperially commanded to inspect (shì zhì) at the office of the historiographers, given paper to memorialise the throne, and was made Shūmìyuàn biānxiūguān (Editor of the Bureau of Military Affairs). What he composed includes the Xuěxī jí, separately recorded in the Jíbù (Collected Works section). This compilation mostly records Biàndū court and country miscellaneous matter; the last entry corrects the affair of Chénsīwáng (Prince Sī of Chén = Cáo Zhí 曹植) and his Gǎn Zhēn fù (“Rhapsody on Moved by [Lady] Zhēn”). What is recorded has considerable evidential basis; many entries are credible. Only the two episodes — Wáng Pǔ leading Zhōu Shìzōng to see the “fire-wheel boy” (huǒlún xiǎoér), and Sòng Tàizǔ bestowing Zhōu Shìzōng’s son on Pān Měi — look like fùhuì (specious accretions). Also the narrative of the Jiāngnán yěshǐ concerning LǐHòuzhǔ (Lǐ Yù 李煜) and the “Little Zhōu Empress” — collated with Lóng Gǔn’s 龍衮 book, the text is not there. Yet of Wáng Zhì’s compositions, this book is the purest; therefore Lǐ Tāo’s Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān also abridges and adopts its accounts. It is not to be wholesale dismissed as fraudulent merely because the Yúnxiān zájì and Shùxuān lù were proven forgeries put out under Zhì’s name. Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 5th month, respectfully checked and submitted. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Wáng Zhì (CBDB id 7372; no firm lifedates, fl. 1122–1144) was a Rǔyīn 汝陰 (modern Ānhuī Fùyáng) literatus active in the last years of the Northern Sòng and the early Southern Sòng. His family inheritance from his father Wáng Píngzhī 王萍之 (a Northern-Sòng yīn descendant with extensive court connections) gave Wáng Zhì access to court anecdote going back a century or more. The Shàoxīng recommendation that gained him the Shūmìyuàn biānxiūguān post coincides with the work’s composition window; the latest datable internal references and the work’s reflective stance on the lost Northern-Sòng capital place composition c. 1135–1144.

The Mòjì’s subject-matter is Northern-Sòng court and capital society from the Tàizǔ foundation through the Huīzōng fall: dynastic-founding episodes (Tàizǔ and Tàizōng anecdotes, including the controversial Pān Měi — Zhōu Shìzōng-son entry), senior-minister biographies (Lǚ Mèngzhèng, Kòu Zhǔn, Lǐ Hāng, Fù Bì, Sīmǎ Guāng, Wáng Ānshí, Sū Shì), the LǐHòuzhǔ captivity (the famous and probably embellished account of Lǐ Yù’s poisoning by Tàizōng and the “Little Zhōu Empress” episode), and Biànjīng literary and material-culture lore. Despite the Sìkù’s flagged doubts about two specific episodes, the work has historically been the principal source for several pieces of Northern-Sòng dynastic narrative that have entered the standard historiographic record through Lǐ Tāo’s Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān and the Sòng shǐ.

The work occupies an unusual position in Sòng bǐjì historiography. Wáng Zhì’s reputation in his own day and after was mixed: his colophon to Fàn Zhòngyǎn’s tomb-inscription accuses Wèi Tài 魏泰 of serial literary forgery (see KR3l0048 Dōngxuān bǐlù), positioning Wáng as a defender of historiographic standards; yet two works — the Yúnxiān zájì 雲仙雜記 and the Shùxuān lù 樹萱錄 — were circulated under Wáng’s name and proven to be forgeries, casting suspicion on his other compositions. The Sìkù compilers’ careful judgment that the Mòjì is Wáng’s most reliable work (and should not be tarred with the brush of the fake Yúnxiān zájì) is the standard modern position. Lǐ Tāo’s heavy use of the Mòjì in compiling the Chángbiān is the strongest evidence for its source-value: a Southern-Sòng historian with the Sòng shílù available beside him still found Mòjì anecdote indispensable for Northern-Sòng court history.

Standard modern edition: Zhū Jiérén 朱杰人, coll., Mòjì, in the Zhōnghuá 1981 TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān series (paired with the Yànyì yímóu lù 燕翼貽謀錄).

Translations and research

  • Liu, James T. C. “How Did a Neo-Confucian School Become the State Orthodoxy?” Philosophy East and West 23 (1973). Cites Mòjì on the Yuán-yòu generation.
  • Worthy, Edmund Henry. The Founding of Sung China, 950–1000. (PhD diss., Princeton 1976). Major user of Mòjì for Tài-zǔ — Tài-zōng succession material.
  • Lau, Nap-yin and Huang K’uan-chung, “Founding and Consolidation of the Sung Dynasty,” in Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, part 1 (CUP 2009). Cites Mòjì on the Tài-zǔ — Tài-zōng succession question.
  • Egan, Ronald C. The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China. (HUP 2006). Cites Mòjì on Northern-Sòng connoisseurship.
  • Kurz, Johannes L. China’s Southern Tang Dynasty, 937–976 (Routledge 2011). Uses Mòjì with critical caveats on the Lǐ Yù captivity material.
  • No full European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The Mòjì’s final entry — Wáng Zhì’s textual correction of the Cáo Zhí Gǎn Zhēn fù tradition — is one of the earliest sustained Sòng kǎozhèng engagements with the CáoWèi literary corpus. The thesis (that the rhapsody’s identification with Cáo Zhí’s sister-in-law Lady Zhēn is a Táng-era romance, not a Wèi-era fact) has been substantially confirmed by twentieth-century scholarship.

The LǐHòuzhǔ episode — Tàizōng visiting the captive Lǐ Yù 李煜 at the Sòng capital and the implied poisoning — though demonstrably elaborated beyond what Lóng Gǔn’s Jiāngnán yěshǐ records, became the canonical late-imperial account and is the textual ancestor of the LǐHòuzhǔ poisoning narrative in popular tradition.

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