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桯史

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Text ID
KR3l0072
Date
1200–1214
Dynasty
南宋

Tīngshǐ 桯史

History from the Bench-Top by 岳珂 (撰)

About the work

A fifteen-juàn anecdote-collection (some 140+ entries) by 岳珂 Yuè Kē 岳珂 (1183–c. 1242; zì Sùzhī 肅之, hào Juànwēng 倦翁), grandson of the great Southern-Sòng general 岳飛 Yuè Fēi 岳飛 (1103–1142) through Yuè Fēi’s third son Yuè Lín 岳霖. The work’s title is anomalous: tīng 桯 means a low wooden bench or the cross-bar of a carriage canopy (cf. Kǎogōng jì’s lún rén 輪人 chapter and the Shuōwén gloss chuáng qián jǐ 牀前儿, “the small table before the bed”). Yuè Kē’s own preface (dated Jiādìng 7, jiǎxū 嘉定甲戌 = 1214) explains: at the family villa Yìzhāi 亦齋 stood a lacquered bench (tīng) on which he would jot down what he had heard from the gentry-officials during his daily rounds, his clerks later transcribing the jottings into a manuscript — hence the title. The work spans Northern through Southern Sòng matter from the dynastic founding down to Yuè Kē’s own day, with particular concentration on factional politics, the Yuè Fēi rehabilitation cycle, Kāixǐ 開禧 northern campaign (1206), Qín Guì 秦檜’s death, the Qìngyuán proscription against Dàoxué (1196–1202), and Southern-Sòng court culture.

Tiyao

(The Sìkù tíyào is not present in the SBCK source file we have on hand, which carries only Yuè Kē’s own 1214 preface and the table of contents; translated here from the Kyoto-Zinbun digital Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào edition.)

Zǐbù 51, Xiǎoshuōjiā lèi 2. Tīngshǐ, 15 juàn (Zhèjiāng Bào Shìgōng 鮑士恭 family-held copy).

By the Sòng Yuè Kē. Kē is the author of the Jiǔjīng sānzhuàn yángé lì 九經三傳沿革例, already entered [in the Sìkù]. This compilation records miscellaneous matters of the Northern and Southern Sòng, in over 140 entries. Although many of them are couched in the language of jesters and witticisms (páiyōu huīxuè 俳優詼謔), it is only the entries on the Jīnhuá shìrén 金華士人 and the Kànmìng sī 看命司 that fail to escape the xiǎoshuō mannerism and so dirty the book. The rest, on the whole, are committed to lodging praise-and-blame, illuminating right-and-wrong, borrowing discussions of objects to clarify the affairs of the times — not like other works that merely furnish material for derision. As for the surviving accounts: only the two investiture-documents (cèwén 册文) of Zhāng Bāngchāng 張邦昌 and Liú Yù 劉豫 might as well be omitted. Again, the entry on Kāng Yǔzhī 康與之 inscribing Huīzōng 徽宗’s painting has been refuted in Zhāng Duānyì 張端義’s Guì’ěr jí 貴耳集; the entry on Áo Táosūn 敖陶孫 lampooning Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂冑 in poetry differs from Yè Shàowēng 葉紹翁’s Sìcháo wénjiàn lù 四朝聞見錄 — both occasional failures of accuracy. But the entries on Shíchéng bǎozhài 石城堡寨, the old city of Biànjīng 汴京 and the like all bear on the strategy of attack and defence; others such as Tāng Sītuì’s 湯思退 dismissal from the Council, Shī Yíshēng 施宜生, Zhào Xīxiān’s 趙希先 integrity, Yè Shàoyùn’s 葉少蘊 inner-court drafting, the Qiándào 乾道 protocol for receiving documents, Fàn Shíhú’s 范石湖 one-word awakening of the sovereign, the Zǐchén corridor-feast, the Yānshān xiānjiàn 燕山先見, Dàsàn 大散 reward documents, Qín Guì’s death-tidings, Zhèng Shǎoróng’s 鄭少融 promotion, Rén Yuánshòu’s 任元受 letter, Chén Liǎowēng’s 陳了翁 beginning-and-end, the Kāixǐ běizhēng 開禧北征, Èrjiàng shīlǜ 二將失律, the Ài mò zhù zhī tú 愛莫助之圖, Qìngyuán gōngyì 慶元公議, Huáng Qiánshàn 黃潛善 — all are more detailed than the standard histories. The poems and prose recorded also frequently supply collateral evidence. Among Sòng-era shuōbù this work stands second only to that of Wáng Míngqīng 王明清.

Only its naming as Tīngshǐ is not very intelligible. Examining the Shuōfú 說郛, we find a Chángshì yánzhǐ 常侍言旨 by Liǔ Chéng 柳珵 whose first entry concerns Mínghuáng’s removal to the Western Inner Palace; the closing line says “this matter was originally in the 16th entry of the Continued Tīngshǐ by the Zhūyá tàiwèi 朱崖太尉” — that is, Lǐ Déyù 李德裕 had a work of this title before. (Note: this book is not entered in the Táng shū jīngjí zhì; possibly it is an alternative name of Déyù’s Cì Liǔshì jiùwén 次柳氏舊聞.) Kē presumably borrowed and applied the name. Yet the Kǎogōng jì says: “the wheelwright makes the canopy: the spoke (dácháng) is three cùn round, the tīng twice that”; the note reads “tīng: the carriage cross-bar”; the Shuōwén jiězì says: “tīng: the small table before the bed” — neither of which suits the meaning of book-composition. As for Guǎngyùn’s gloss “the upright of a pestle-mortar” and Jíyùn’s identification of tīng with yíng 楹 (column), the meaning is yet more remote. We pass on what we have doubts about, leaving what we do not know unanswered — that is enough.

In the Máo Jìn 毛晉 cut edition there is appended a single juàn of supplements: first the biography of Yuè Fēi and his surviving writings, together with one poem and one piece of prose by Yuè Kē — already unrelated to the present book. Further appended are the Míng Liú Ruì’s 劉瑞 Xiàoéjǐng míng 孝娥井銘 and a Wánggōng cí jì 王公祠記 — clearly demonstrating that these too are no part of the original book. We have now collectively deleted them, that they might not muddy the bamboo-and-board (jiǎndú 簡牘, i.e., the text proper).

Abstract

The Tīngshǐ is one of the most important Southern-Sòng bǐjì. The author’s preface dates the (or a) closing redaction to Jiādìng 7 (jiǎxū) = 1214; the work’s earliest entries are evidently noted down during the Qìngyuán — Jiātài — Kāixǐ sequence (1195–1208), so the composition window c. 1200–1214 brackets the noting and the final compilation. Yuè Kē was at this stage in his late twenties and early thirties, holding mid-rank prefectural posts and acting as a shūpúshè 書僕射 in Hángzhōu — well-positioned to gather court anecdote from senior officials passing through the capital.

The work’s three principal historical contributions are these:

  1. The Yuè Fēi rehabilitation cycle. Yuè Kē was the Southern Sòng’s principal spokesman for the rehabilitation of his grandfather (formally rehabilitated under Xiàozōng in 1162, but with continuing posthumous-title and shrine debates running through the Qìngyuán and Jiādìng eras). Multiple Tīngshǐ entries — among them the Mùniú tíng 牧牛亭 (the site where Yuè Fēi’s corpse was secretly buried by the warden Wěi Shùn 隗順), Qín Guì sǐ bào 秦檜死報 (the reported manner of Qín Guì’s death as karmic retribution for Yuè Fēi), and Hóngqìng míng mù 鴻慶銘墓 (the tomb-inscription) — form a coherent set whose narrative shape directly informs the Yuè Fēi lìèzhuàn in the Sòng shǐ (juan 365), since the Sòng shǐ compilers in the Yuán explicitly drew on Yuè Kē’s family-side hagiographical materials. Charles Hartman’s The Making of a Confucian Hero (2021) reconstructs this rehabilitation cycle with the Tīngshǐ as a principal primary source.

  2. The Qìngyuán proscription and the late Hán Tuōzhòu regime. Entries such as Qìngyuán gōngyì 慶元公議, Ài mò zhù zhī tú 愛莫助之圖, Kāixǐ běizhēng 開禧北征, and Èrjiàng shīlǜ 二將失律 supply some of the most concrete narrative material on the proscription against Dàoxué (1196–1202), the failed Kāixǐ northern campaign of 1206 against the Jīn, and the assassination of Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂冑 in 1207. Yuè Kē was hostile to Hán Tuōzhòu’s regime (which had presided over the proscription) and the Tīngshǐ therefore contains material favourable to the post-Kāixǐ Dàoxué recovery and to the chief councillor Shǐ Míyuǎn 史彌遠 (under whom Yuè Kē would later rise).

  3. Textual and material-culture detail. The work preserves substantial paratextual evidence on the genesis of Xuānhé imperial commissions, on Dàoxué poetic exchange (the Huìān gǎnxìng shī 晦庵感興詩 entry on Zhū Xī 朱熹), on the Sū-Shì-circle (the Dōngpō shǔ duì 東坡屬對 entry), on Xīn Qìjí 辛棄疾’s literary theory (the Jiàxuān lùn cí 稼軒論詞 entry — one of the principal contemporary witnesses to Xīn’s literary stance), and on Sòng popular religion (the Zǐtóng shén yìng 梓潼神應 entry on the cult of Wénchāng).

The Sìkù compilers’ second-place ranking of the work behind Wáng Míngqīng 王明清’s Huīzhǔ lù 揮麈錄 (cf. KR3l0066) reflects the canonical Qīng evaluation of the late-Sòng bǐjì genre.

The most-cited modern critical edition is Wú Qímíng 吳企明 (coll.), Tīngshǐ (Zhōnghuá shūjú, TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān 唐宋史料筆記叢刊, 1981; multiple reprints), which collates the Sìkù WYG text against the Máo Jìn Jígǔgé 汲古閣 print and the Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊 photo-reprint of a Yuán-period blockprint.

Translations and research

  • Hartman, Charles. The Making of a Confucian Hero: The Life and Afterlife of Yue Fei (1103–1142). Cambridge University Press, 2021. Sustained use of the Tīngshǐ throughout, especially for the rehabilitation cycle and for the Sòng shǐ’s reliance on Yuè-family hagiography. The work is the principal English-language reconstruction of the Yuè Fēi cult and treats the Tīngshǐ as its single most important narrative source for Yuè Kē’s role in transmitting Yuè Fēi’s reputation.
  • Wilhelm, Hellmut. “From Myth to Myth: The Case of Yüeh Fei’s Biography.” In Confucian Personalities, ed. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett. Stanford University Press, 1962, 146–161. Classic essay on the Yuè-family hagiography; uses the Tīngshǐ as primary source.
  • Davis, Richard L. Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China. Harvard University Asia Center, 1996. Cites Tīngshǐ on the Jiā-dìng — Duān-píng political milieu in which Yuè Kē operated.
  • Levine, Ari Daniel. Divided by a Common Language: Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song China. University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. Cites Tīngshǐ on retrospective Southern-Sòng readings of Xī-níng — Yuán-yòu factionalism.
  • Wáng Zēng-yú 王曾瑜. Yuè Fēi xīn zhuàn 岳飛新傳 (Shànghǎi rén-mín, 1983, repr. Hé-běi rén-mín 2007). The principal modern PRC biography of Yuè Fēi; relies heavily on Yuè Kē’s transmission of family materials including the Tīngshǐ.
  • No full European-language translation of the Tīngshǐ has been located. Selected entries appear in translation across the secondary literature above.

Other points of interest

The title’s mystery — pointedly underscored by the Sìkù compilers, who concede defeat (“we pass on what we have doubts about”) — turns out to bear on the work’s intended literary genealogy. Yuè Kē’s borrowing of an earlier Tīngshǐ attributed to Lǐ Déyù 李德裕 (the Zhūyá tàiwèi — Lǐ Déyù having died in exile in Yázhōu) signals a deliberate genealogical claim: like Lǐ Déyù, Yuè Kē identified himself with the political losers of his era (the Yuè Fēi faction; the Dàoxué faction during the Qìngyuán proscription) writing from a position of partial vindication. The Sìkù gloss that the word tīng literally names a “small table before the bed” or “the bench” may also point at Yuè Kē’s preface conceit (the tīng at his villa Yìzhāi as the physical site of jotting).

The work’s authorial self-presentation — the preface’s “I have neither the talent of an official historian nor the ease of a recluse” (jìn bù dé cè míng Lántái yǐ chuí xìn, tuì bù dé yǐn jǐ quán qí jìyán zhī zhēn 進不得策名蘭臺以垂信，退不得隱几全其忌言之真) — frames the bǐjì genre with unusual self-awareness: Yuè Kē positions his book as supplementary truth-telling outside the imperial historiographical apparatus, anticipating the late-Mǐng yěshǐ 野史 self-justification by some four centuries.

A note on transmission: the Máo Jìn 毛晉 Jígǔgé print appended a Yuè Fēi biography and supplementary documents — the Sìkù compilers deliberately stripped these, restoring the work to its original 15-juàn shape. Modern editions (Wú Qímíng, 1981) follow the Sìkù recension on this point.

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