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聞見錄

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Text ID
KR3l0066
Date
1132–1134
Dynasty
南宋

Wénjiàn lù 聞見錄

Record of Things Heard and Seen by 邵伯溫 (撰)

About the work

A twenty-juàn anecdote-collection (bǐjì 筆記) by 邵伯溫 Shào Bówēn 邵伯溫 (1057–1134; zì Zǐwén 子文), son of the Northern-Sòng Yì-numerologist 邵雍 Shào Yōng (1011–1077) and editor of his father’s corpus. Author’s self-preface dated Shàoxīng 紹興 2 = 1132/12/22 (the jiǎzǐ day of the 11th month of Shàoxīng 2); the work is therefore one of the earliest substantial Southern-Sòng bǐjì, completed in the author’s mid-seventies after he had lived through the Jìngkāng catastrophe and the southern crossing. The collection is traditionally referred to as Shào shì wénjiàn lù 邵氏聞見錄 (“Mr. Shào’s Record of Things Heard and Seen”), with the rubric qián lù 前錄 (“earlier record”) later attached to distinguish it from the hòu lù 後錄 (“later record”) that the author’s son Shào Bó 邵博 composed as continuation. The first sixteen juàn record gùshì 故事 (old reports) from Tàizǔ (r. 960–976) down through Shào Bówēn’s own Yuányòu generation, with the Xīníng New Policies of 王安石 Wáng Ānshí (1021–1086) and the ensuing factional struggles (Luò 洛 / Shǔ 蜀 / Shuò 朔 three-party split) treated in unusual detail; juàn 17 records záshì 雜事 (miscellanea), heavy with màixiù shǔlí 麥秀黍離 nostalgia for the lost capital at Luòyáng and for the Yǒnglè military debacle of 1082; juàn 18–20 are dedicated to Shào Yōng’s words and deeds and constitute (together with the Yìxué biànhuò) one of the principal contemporary sources for the Bǎiyuán 百源 (Shào) school of Northern-Sòng learning. The work is the single most important bǐjì for the Luò school and for the Cheng-Shao intellectual circle’s social and political world.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Wénjiàn lù in 20 juàn, by the Sòng Shào Bówēn. Bówēn, zì Zǐwén, son of Master Shào (Shào Yōng), still lived to see the Yuányòu elders; therefore on the court politics of that time he knew the heads and tails in full. The book was completed in Shàoxīng 2 (1132).

The first sixteen juàn record old reports from Tàizǔ onward; on the origins and outcome of Wáng Ānshí’s New Policies and the contemporary differing opinions, the record is especially full. His discussion of the Luò, Shǔ, and Shuò three parties’ mutual attacks — regretting that each set up its own gate-and-house and thereby gave the xiǎorén (mean men) an opening — and his citation of Master Chéng’s saying that the change of laws was brought on by provocation — these are both fair-minded judgments. His record of the Dēnglóng jǐn (Lantern Brocade) affair as proceeding from Wén Yànbó’s wife is closer to the realities of the case. His record that the rift between Hán (Qí) and Fù (Bì) arose from the withdrawal of the curtain (i.e., the end of the dowager-empress regency) and not from the succession-decision is also enough to correct the error of the Qiáng Zhì jiāzhuàn.

Zhōu Bìdà’s colophon to Lǚ Xiànkě’s tomb-record says that Bówēn’s book is much loose talk, and that of the persons and years he records, few are not in error — but this is the language of one whose likes and dislikes have gone too far, and is not entirely so.

The seventeenth juàn records mostly miscellaneous matters; its entries on Luòyáng and on Yǒnglè (the 1082 military debacle at Yǒnglèchéng on the Tangut frontier) much harbour the feeling of màixiù and shǔlí (lamenting the fallen state).

Juàn 18 through 20 all record Master Shào (Shào Yōng)‘s words and deeds. But the entries on the deceased daughter being reborn as a black ape, and on conception through gǎn (sympathetic stimulus) — wishing to make his father divinely wondrous, they instead turn toward the demonic and false. He also records Master Shào’s saying that Lǎozǐ obtained the substance of the Yì, Mèngzǐ obtained its function, and that Wénzhōngzǐ took the Buddha as the sage of the western quarter, and does not consider this wrong — this resembles forced harmonization (fùhuì). As for the matter of the throw-arrow game, that is still more trivial and not worth recording — these too are cases of choosing not finely. Take the general gist, and that will suffice.

Respectfully checked and submitted, Qiánlóng 43 (1778), 3rd month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Author’s preface (自序)

The Yì says: “The gentleman much identifies with the words and acts of former men, in order to nourish his virtue.” Mèngzǐ says: “Some by hearing know it; some by seeing know it.” Bówēn, because of his late father, was personally in contact with the elder generation, and what with attending in the household, dwelling in the village, and serving as travelling official, learned from the former words and acts in great quantity — to nourish his virtue, I dare not claim; but with old age creeping on, by chance bearing the responsibility owed by one who survived the others, I have classed them as a book, called Wénjiàn lù: such is roughly how it stands. Shàoxīng 2, eleventh month, fifteenth day jiǎzǐ (= 1132/12/22). Written by Shào Bówēn of Hénán.

Abstract

Shào Bówēn (CBDB id 20864; 1057–1134) was the son and principal editor of Shào Yōng. He spent his early life in the Bǎiyuán-school milieu in Luòyáng, was personally acquainted with the Yuányòu generation of senior ministers (Sīmǎ Guāng 司馬光, Lǚ Gōngzhù 呂公著, Fù Bì 富弼, the Chéng brothers, Zhāng Zài 張載, Zhōu Dūnyí 周敦頤), and held middling provincial appointments through the late Northern Sòng; he survived the Jìngkāng fall of Kāifēng (1126–27) and the southern crossing, ending his career as Lìlù zhuǎnyùn fùshǐ 利路轉運副使 in Sìchuān. The Wénjiàn lù’s self-preface dates the work precisely to Shàoxīng 2/11/15 jiǎzǐ = 22 December 1132; Shào died two years later. The composition window is therefore narrow: c. 1130–1132, with the Sìkù compilers giving 1132 as the date of completion.

The work is one of the four or five most-cited Northern-Sòng bǐjì in the surviving Sòngshǐ Lièzhuàn, the Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān, and the Sòng yuán xuéàn. Three features have made it a perennial source:

  1. The Wáng Ānshí narrative. Shào Bówēn is firmly aligned with the Yuányòu anti-reform faction, having grown up in the Luòyáng circle of senior anti-reform statesmen. His detailed reports on the genesis and reception of the New Policies — including the Dēnglóng jǐn (Lantern Brocade) affair (an anecdote attributing court intrigue against Wén Yànbó 文彥博 to Wén’s wife rather than to Wáng Ānshí); the cause of the Hán Qí — Fù Bì falling-out (the end of the dowager-empress regency, not the succession-decision dispute); and Chéng Yí’s diagnosis that the New Policies were jīchéng 激成 (precipitated by provocation from the conservatives) — have all entered the standard Sòng historiographic narrative through this work. The Sìkù tíyào defends Shào Bówēn’s judgment as píngxīn zhī lùn 平心之論 (“fair-minded judgment”) against Zhōu Bìdà 周必大’s earlier criticism that “of the persons and years Bówēn records, few are not in error.”
  2. The Cheng-Shao school witness. Juàn 18–20, on Shào Yōng, are the principal contemporary source for the Bǎiyuán school; the Sòng yuán xuéàn draws on them heavily. The same juàn contain the well-known anecdotes that situate Shào Yōng alongside Sīmǎ Guāng, Fù Bì, and Lǚ Gōngzhù in the Luòyáng retirement-circle, and that preserve the saying attributed to Shào Yōng that “Lǎozǐ obtained the substance of the Yì; Mèngzǐ obtained its function” and that Wáng Tōng’s Wénzhōngzǐ called the Buddha “the sage of the western quarter.” The Sìkù compilers found the latter set of remarks doctrinally embarrassing and flagged them as fùhuì (forced harmonization), but precisely this latitudinarian view of the Three Teachings is now treated by historians of dàoxué formation (Wing-tsit Chan, Peter Bol, Don Wyatt) as evidence for the more diffuse character of Northern-Sòng Yì-numerological learning before the Zhū Xī systematization.
  3. The Luòyáng nostalgia. Juàn 17 — entries on the gardens, temples, monuments, and old families of Luòyáng before its fall to the Jīn in 1127 — has been used since the Sòng as one of the principal sources for the topography and social history of the Northern-Sòng eastern capital; cross-reference KR2k0024 Luòyáng míngyuán jì 洛陽名園記 and KR2k0027 Luòyáng qiélán jì contexts. The Yǒnglè 永樂 entries refer not to the Míng reign-title but to the Yǒnglèchéng military debacle of 1082, when a Sòng army of 200,000 was destroyed by the Tanguts on the Xià frontier — Shào Bówēn’s father-in-law Xú Xī had been the campaign commander.

Catalog and edition history. The Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì records the work in 20 juàn, matching the WYG transmission. The work was widely cited throughout the Southern Sòng (Zhū Xī, Lǐ Tāo, Lǚ Zǔqiān) and the YuánMíng (Zhāng Zhìcí’s Sòng yuán xuéàn foundations; Mǎ Duānlín’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo). The author’s son Shào Bó 邵博 produced a parallel Wénjiàn hòu lù 聞見後錄 (in 30 juàn, c. 1157), extending the family record into the early Southern Sòng — the two are conventionally referred to together as the Shàoshì wénjiàn liǎng lù 邵氏聞見兩錄. (Note: the hòu lù is a separate work and is not the present text.)

Reliability and historiographic critique. Zhōu Bìdà 周必大 (1126–1204) criticized the work for chronological errors in his colophon to the Lǚ Xiànkě (Lǚ Huì 呂誨) tomb inscription; the Sìkù compilers defended Shào Bówēn as fundamentally fair-minded while granting the Bǎiyuán-school juàn their hagiographic excesses (the deceased daughter reborn as a black ape; supernatural conception). Modern scholarship treats the work as a heavily-partisan but indispensable source: when used together with Sīmǎ Guāng’s Sùshuǐ jìwén 涑水紀聞 (cross-reference KR3l0036) and Wáng Míngqīng 王明清’s Huīzhǔ lù 揮麈錄 (cross-reference KR3l0058), it constitutes the core anti-reform bǐjì corpus for Xīníng — Yuányòu political history.

Translations and research

  • Birdwhistell, Anne D. Transition to Neo-Confucianism: Shao Yung on Knowledge and Symbols of Reality (Stanford UP 1989). Major user of Wénjiàn lù juàn 18–20 for the Shào Yōng biography and intellectual milieu.
  • Wyatt, Don J. The Recluse of Loyang: Shao Yung and the Moral Evolution of Early Sung Thought (UHP 1996). The standard English monograph on Shào Yōng; uses Shào Bówēn extensively as the principal contemporary biographical source.
  • Bol, Peter K. This Culture of Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford UP 1992). Cites Wénjiàn lù on the Luòyáng anti-reform circle and the Cheng-Shao school’s institutional position.
  • Bol, Peter K. Neo-Confucianism in History (HUP 2008). Uses Wénjiàn lù on the Luòyáng intellectual circle.
  • Smith, Paul Jakov. Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse (HUP 1991). Uses Wénjiàn lù on the New Policies and frontier campaigns.
  • Levine, Ari Daniel. Divided by a Common Language: Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song China (UHP 2008). Uses Wénjiàn lù extensively on the Luò — Shǔ — Shuò three-party split and the Yuán-yòu factional analysis.
  • Hartman, Charles. The Making of a Confucian Hero: The Iconography of Yue Fei (CUP 2021). Cites for late-Northern-Sòng court politics.
  • Zhōnghuá shū-jú edition: Lǐ Jiàn-xióng 李劍雄 / Liú Dé-quán 劉德權, eds., Shào-shì wénjiàn lù 邵氏聞見錄 (Zhōnghuá, 1983, Táng-Sòng shǐ-liào bǐjì cóngkān series) — standard critical edition, with the hòu lù in a companion volume.
  • Fung Yu-lan / Féng Yǒu-lán 馮友蘭, Zhōng-guó zhé-xué shǐ xīn-biān, uses Wénjiàn lù for the Shào Yōng chapter.
  • Pi Xirui 皮錫瑞, Jīng-xué lì-shǐ and Jīng-xué tōng-lùn, cites Wénjiàn lù on Northern-Sòng Yì-learning lineages.
  • No full European-language translation has been located; selective translations of Shào Yōng anecdotes from juàn 18–20 appear in Wyatt 1996 and Birdwhistell 1989.

Other points of interest

The dating of the work is unusually precise: Shào Bówēn’s self-preface gives the jiǎzǐ day of the 11th month of Shàoxīng 2 (22 December 1132), placing composition firmly between the Jìngkāng catastrophe (1126–27) and the author’s death (1134). This makes it one of the earliest substantial bǐjì composed in the Southern Sòng, written by a man who had personally known Sīmǎ Guāng, the Chéng brothers, and Zhāng Zài, and who was constructing the family record of the Bǎiyuán school for transmission to the post-1127 generation — a self-conscious post-catastrophe archive of Northern-Sòng intellectual heritage. The Luòyáng-nostalgia register of juàn 17 reflects exactly this position: Shào Bówēn writes as the hòusǐzhě (survivor) explicitly invoked in his preface, classifying his elders’ words and deeds against the moment of imperial collapse.

The relationship to the Wénjiàn hòu lù 聞見後錄 by Shào Bó 邵博 (the author’s son) is sometimes treated in earlier catalog literature as a single Wénjiàn lù in 50 juàn; the two works are independent compositions and are correctly distinguished in the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì and in modern editions. The present KR3l0066 is only the qián lù (the present 20-juàn work); the hòu lù is not in the Sìkù’s WYG under this title.

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