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北牕炙輠錄

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Text ID
KR3l0070
Date
1131–1145
Dynasty
南宋

Běichuāng zhìguǒ lù 北牕炙輠錄

Records of Roasting the Axle-Cap by the North Window by 施德操 (撰)

About the work

A two-juàn (the Sìkù tíyào first describes it as one juàn but the transmitted Wényuāngé text is in two: 卷上 / 卷下) Southern-Sòng bǐjì by 施德操 Shī Décāo (fl. early-mid 12th c.), an associate of the Dàoxué circle around Zhāng Jiǔchéng 張九成 (the Héngpǔ 横浦) and a sympathetic recorder of the Chéng-school (ÈrChéng 二程) tradition. The title alludes to Zhuāngzǐ and to the Shǐ jì Huájī lièzhuàn anecdote of Chúnyú Kūn 淳于髡, whose discourse was said to be “like the grease roasted out of an axle-cap, never exhausted” (zhìguǒ guòmǎn 炙輠過滿); but the Sìkù compilers note with mild puzzlement that Shī’s contents are not jest-and-banter at all — they are sober records of the moral conduct, conversation, and doctrinal pronouncements of recent worthies (qiánbèi shèngdé 前輩盛德), the sort of material shìdàfū (gentlemen-officials) should keep as exemplars. The work is therefore best understood as a yǔlù-inflected anecdote-collection, recording the words and deeds of the founding Dàoxué generation (the Chéng brothers, Fàn Zǔyǔ, Hán Qí, Fàn Zhòngyǎn, and contemporaries such as Wáng Ānshí, Sū Shì, and Lín Língsù) seen through the lens of a Luòxué sympathiser.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Běichuāng zhìguǒ lù in 1 juàn (the transmitted Wényuāngé text is in fact in 2 juàn), by the Sòng Shī Décāo. Décāo has a Mèngzǐ fātí 孟子發題 already on record. The name zhìguǒ in this book is drawn from the matter of Chúnyú Kūn; yet what it records is mostly the magnificent virtue of the seniors of the time, fit to serve shìdàfū as models for observation — not in fact huájī cháonòng (jest and banter) as its theme. We do not know why it was given this name.

Décāo was on friendly terms with 張九成 Zhāng Jiǔchéng, and so his Mèngzǐ fātí is appended in print to the end of the Héngpǔ jí 横浦集. As to his learning: Jiǔchéng was thoroughly steeped in Chán (chún dān chányuè 純耽禪悅), whereas Décāo frequently praises the Two Chéngs (ÈrChéng). Though he glances now and then at the Sūshì brothers, he does not treat them with great gravity. His very first entry says that Wáng Ānshí’s New Policies arose because the opposing party irritated him into them — thus illustrating the meaning of Master Chéng’s view: in other words, he sides with the Luò (Chéng) and not with the Shǔ (Sū). His subtle inclination can be seen at a glance.

Only with Lín Língsù 林靈素 — that monstrous bewitcher, in fact the sharpest cunning rogue among the fāngshì — does Décāo say that he “had a heart for keeping people alive”, which is a rather wilful taking-of-an-eccentric-line. And in his exposition of the Mèngzǐ “all things complete in me” passage he leans particularly close to Xún Qīng’s xìngè (innate evil) doctrine — perhaps because the Héngpǔ-school learning had rubbed off on him, so he sets up this odd reading. Flaws and merits do not eclipse each other; one can read it discriminatingly.

Décāo was an invalid all his life, with no recorded official career, so the local gazetteers do not even list his name. Since the Míng, transmitted copies of the book have been rare. Zhū Yízūn 朱彛尊 first obtained this copy at Hǎiyán 海鹽, and from there it gradually circulated in transcription. A tattered, worm-eaten volume that all but perished — yet survived; it may indeed be called a rare and valuable bìjí (secret tome). Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 41 (1776), 10th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Shī Décāo (CBDB id 43194; lifedates not in CBDB; fl. c. 1120–1150) was a Hǎiyán (Zhèjiāng) literatus who, owing to chronic illness (bìngfèi zhōngshēn 病廢終身), held no significant office and is absent from the local gazetteers — a circumstance the Sìkù tíyào explicitly remarks. His chief documented affiliations are with the Héngpǔ circle of 張九成 Zhāng Jiǔchéng (1092–1159), to whose Héngpǔ jí Shī’s Mèngzǐ fātí was appended, and through Zhāng with the wider Dàoxué network: the work shows close knowledge of Chéng-school doctrine and conversation, and the Sìkù tíyào correctly identifies him as a Luò-school sympathiser (zōng Luò ér bù zōng Shǔ).

The work cannot date from before Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s literary maturity in the 1130s, and several entries presuppose the Jiànyán — early Shàoxīng southward crossing. A composition window of c. 1131–1145 is defensible: the work is silent on Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s Shàoxīng 11 (1141) banishment to Nánān 南安 for opposing the peace party (one would expect a follower to allude to it had it already occurred), suggesting the bulk of the book antedates that event, though some entries may be later. The Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì does not catalog the work; the first solidly documented owner is the late-Míng — early-Qīng book-collector Zhū Yízūn (1629–1709), from whose Hǎiyán acquisition the transmitted text descends.

Doctrinal positioning. The first entry — that Wáng Ānshí’s New Policies were jīchéng “irritated into existence” by the obstructive conduct of his interlocutors at court (Chéng Hào (cf. 程顥) being represented as having almost converted Wáng peaceably, but the intervention of one Zhāng Tiānjì spoiling the moment) — is a signature Luòxué historiographic claim, since it shifts moral responsibility for the Xīníng reform partly back onto the Yuányòu opposition. The work also: praises Fàn Yáofū (Fàn Chúnrén 范純仁) for accepting Chéng Yí’s stinging rebukes without rebuttal; praises Hán Qí for defusing a Fàn Zhòngyǎn outburst by a wordless gesture; preserves anecdotes on Ōuyáng Xiū’s denial of Confucian authorship for the Yìzhuàn “Wényán” / “Xìcí” appendices; and supplies the much-cited story of Sūn Wēimǐn (Sūn Miǎn 孫沔) refusing both to read and to throw away the eulogy for the Wénchéng empress.

The two distinctively non-orthodox readings flagged by the Sìkù compilers — the partial rehabilitation of the Huīzōng-court Daoist mountebank 林靈素 Lín Língsù as “having a heart for keeping people alive” (an entry typical of southern-Zhè local memory of Lín, who was a Wēnzhōu man) and the xìngè-tinged reading of Mèngzǐ 7A.4 “wànwù jiē bèi yú wǒ 萬物皆備於我” — are the principal reasons the work has interested Sòng intellectual historians: they show that even a self-consciously Dàoxué-sympathetic bǐjì of the 1130s–1140s was not yet doctrinally homogenised in the manner of late-Sòng / Yuán neo-Confucian writing.

Translations and research

  • Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (UHP 1992). Cites the Běichuāng zhì-guǒ lù on the early heterodoxy within the Dào-xué movement and on Zhāng Jiǔchéng’s circle.
  • Borrell, Ari. “Ko-wu or kung-an? Practice, Realization, and Teaching in the Thought of Chang Chiu-ch’eng.” In Peter N. Gregory & Daniel A. Getz, eds., Buddhism in the Sung (UHP 1999). Uses Shī Décāo’s reports on 張九成 for the Chán-Confucian interface.
  • Liú Jīng-zhēn 劉靜貞. “Shī Décāo Běichuāng zhì-guǒ lù yǔ Nán-Sòng chū qí Lǐ-xué shǐ shū-xiě” 施德操《北窗炙輠錄》與南宋初期理學史書寫. Hàn-xué yán-jiū 漢學研究 (Tāi-běi), several issues in the 2000s, treating the work as a foundational pre-Yī-Luò yuān-yuán lù document of Dào-xué self-historicisation.
  • The Quán-Sòng bǐ-jì 全宋筆記 (Dà-xiàng chū-bǎn-shè, 2006–) prints the work with collation; this is the standard modern edition.
  • No European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The title’s allusion-chain — zhìguǒ via the Chúnyú Kūn anecdote, the Zhuāngzǐ metaphor of inexhaustible discourse, all set behind the běichuāng (north window) of a sick scholar’s invalid room — is one of the more elaborate self-effacing titles in the Sòng bǐjì corpus: a man who cannot walk, sitting by the north window, claims for his thin volume the fluency of Warring-States rhetors. The Sìkù compilers’ bemusement that the contents are not jest-and-banter at all but sober yǔlù-style records of Northern-Sòng worthies is correct, and the apparent mismatch between title and contents is itself a marker of how bǐjì titles were chosen for literary resonance rather than descriptive accuracy.

The work is also one of the principal early sources for the anecdote — much repeated in later Dàoxué historiography — that Chéng Hào nearly persuaded Wáng Ānshí to abandon the more aggressive features of the New Policies, and that the Xīníng reform’s hardening into faction-strife was contingent rather than necessary: a counter-factual that became foundational to the Luò-school account of the reform.

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