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癸辛雜識

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Text ID
KR3l0076
Date
1280–1298
Dynasty
宋元之際

Guǐxīn zázhì 癸辛雜識

Miscellaneous Notes from Guǐ-xīn [Street] by 周密 (撰)

About the work

A six-juàn anecdote-collection (qiánjí 前集 1 juàn, hòují 後集 1 juàn, xùjí 續集 2 juàn, biéjí 別集 2 juàn) by 周密 Zhōu Mì 周密 (1232–1298; zì Gōngjǐn 公謹, hào Cǎochuāng 草窗, also Biànyáng lǎorén 弁陽老人), composed at his Hángzhōu residence on Guǐxīn jiē 癸辛街 — the street that gives the work its name — between the fall of Línān 臨安 in 1276 and the author’s death in 1298. Guǐxīn zázhì is the most extensive and politically charged of Zhōu Mì’s three great Sòng-loyalist (yímín 遺民) bǐjì (the others being Wǔlín jiùshì 武林舊事 KR2k0119 and Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語 KR3j0134), and the principal contemporary witness to the Sòng collapse and the early Yuán treatment of Sòng literati. The work was already in textual trouble in the Míng: Shāng Wéijùn 商維濬, compiling the Bàihǎi 稗海 collection, mistook the second half of Qídōng yěyǔ for the qiánjí of Guǐxīn zázhì and the biéjí for the hòují, dropping the genuine hòují and xùjí entirely along with Zhōu Mì’s own preface. The original integrity of the four-part text was restored only when Mǐn Yuánhéng 閔元衢 of Wūchéng purchased a manuscript copy in the Jīnchāng booksellers’ lane and Máo Jìn 毛晉 printed it in the Jīndài mìshū 津逮秘書 collectanea. The text printed in the Sìkù quánshū derives from Máo Jìn’s restoration.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Guǐxīn zázhì, qiánjí 1 juàn, hòují 1 juàn, xùjí 2 juàn, biéjí 2 juàn, by the Sòng Zhōu Mì. Mì’s Wǔlín jiùshì is already catalogued. This compilation, having been written at Guǐxīn jiē in Hángzhōu, took its name from there. It is similar in general manner to his Qídōng yěyǔ; however, Yěyǔ combines philological and textual examination of older writings, whereas this work has little textual collation; also, Yěyǔ records much court politics and major state affairs, whereas this work consists nine parts in ten of trivia and miscellaneous talk. The two being so different in form, this is accordingly demoted and listed among the xiǎoshuōjiā (novelist / minor-record school), following its true category.

The Míng Shāng Wéijùn’s Bàihǎi printed edition took half of Qídōng yěyǔ in error as the qiánjí, took the biéjí in error as the hòují, while the genuine hòují and xùjí were wholly missing, and the author’s own preface was also lost. Later Mǐn Yuánhéng of Wūchéng purchased a manuscript copy in a small bookshop at Jīnchāng, and Máo Jìn printed it into the Jīndài mìshū — thereby restoring the original integrity. In the work, the entry on Yáng Níngshì 楊凝式 and the monk Jìngduān 淨端 is duplicated in Yěyǔ — evidently incomplete deletion. The two entries on “Zhōu Mítuó Enters the Underworld” and “Liú Shuòzhāi Marries Again” carry appended notes saying “Héng remarks: …” — these were added by Mǐn. The entry on “Sea-Eel Portending Fire” has a footnote without a signature; from the tone, this also appears to be Mǐn’s.

What is recorded in the book is rather coarse and miscellaneous — entries like the “aunt’s husband” and “eye-socket” anecdotes are not really worth committing to writing. Yet what it preserves of lost reports and missed affairs, which can serve antiquarian research (kǎojù), is in fact abundant, far surpassing the Chuògēng lù 輟耕錄 [of Táo Zōngyí]. The entries on Luó Yǐ 羅椅, Dǒng Jìngān 董敬庵, Hán Qiūyán 韓秋巖, and others on the abuses of late-Sòng jiǎngxué (lecture-learning, i.e., late Dàoxué scholasticism) are particularly thorough. The single entry quoting Shěn Zhònggù 沈仲固 and the single entry quoting Zhōu Píngyuán 周平原 in particular are word for word stern warnings, bearing on public morality and the people’s hearts. It is decidedly not a work to be dismissed as mere xiǎoshuō.

Dū Mù’s 都穆 Nánháo shīhuà 南濠詩話 says: “The Wúxīng man Táng Guǎng copied out the Guǐxīn zázhì*. Seeing recorded therein the wicked conduct of Fāng Wànlǐ* 方萬里 [Fāng Huí 方回], he was much disturbed in mind. That night he dreamed Fāng came to him saying, ‘I had a quarrel with Master Zhōu in the old days, and so he slanders me. Be so good as to expose this for me’” — and so on. Now the public principle of right and wrong is present in all men’s hearts. If Mì had really slandered Fāng Huí, then in the entire Yuán dynasty no one should have stood up for Huí; yet only down to the Míng did “his ghost suddenly become potent”. The story is preposterous, hardly worth refuting. Moreover, Mì was a loyal subject, Huí was in fact a traitor-rebel (pànzéi — i.e., Fāng Huí surrendered Yánzhōu to the Yuán); were the two to confront each other face to face, men would still in the end believe Mì and not Huí. How much less, then, a confused dream-utterance? Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 10th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The work’s chronological horizon is the late Xiánchún 咸淳 reign (the closing years of the Southern Sòng, c. 1265–1274), the Déyòu 德祐 collapse (1275–76), and the Zhìyuán 至元 — Dàdé 大德 decades of early Yuán rule down to c. 1298. Internal dates (the Xiánchún jiǎxū 咸淳甲戌 = 1274 dream-entry of Chén Shèngguān 陳聖觀 foretelling the fall of the Sòng, near the opening of the qiánjí; multiple references to events of the 1280s and 1290s in the xùjí and biéjí) bracket the composition from c. 1280 (when Zhōu Mì began collecting his post-collapse observations and recollections at Guǐxīn jiē) to his death in 1298 — the date adopted by Wilkinson (§64.3.10) and now standard.

Guǐxīn zázhì is the principal contemporary source for several episodes central to the modern historiography of the SòngYuán transition. The xùjí preserves Zhōu Mì’s accounts of the desecration of the imperial Sòng tombs at Zǎngōng 攢宮 (the temporary Southern-Sòng mausoleum complex at Shàoxīng) by the Tangut Tibetan-Buddhist monk Yáng Liǎnzhēnjiā 楊璉真伽 (Yáng Liánzhēnjiā, also Yáng Liǎnzhēngā), then Jiāngnán shìjiāo dūzǒngtǒng 江南釋教都總統 (Comptroller of Buddhism in Jiāngnán), in 1278 (Zhìyuán 15) and 1285 (Zhìyuán 22) — the most notorious anti-Sòng act of the early Yuán cultural policy, in which the bones of Sòng emperors and empresses (especially those of Gāozōng, Xiàozōng, Guāngzōng, Níngzōng, Lǐzōng) were exhumed, the imperial regalia looted, Lǐzōng’s skull turned into a drinking cup, and the bones reportedly buried under a stūpa at the foundation of the Báitǎ 白塔. Zhōu Mì’s entries (notably yánjì 阉寺 → Zǎngōng in the xùjí and several entries scattered across xùjí xià and biéjí) are the contemporary source on which all later accounts (down through Náncūn chuògēng lù 南村輟耕錄 and the Sòng shǐ jìshì běnmò 宋史紀事本末) ultimately depend, and the only source giving the post-loyalist response: the secret retrieval of Sòng-imperial bones by Lín Jǐngxī 林景熙 and Zhèng Pǔ 鄭樸 (also Tāng Yǎo 唐珏) and their re-interment beneath the Dōngjiā wū 東嘄塢 cassia tree on Mount Lántíng 蘭亭.

The work is equally important for: (i) the late Sòng court’s psychology in 1274–76 (the Chén Shèngguān dream entry; entries on Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道 and his fall; the Línān surrender); (ii) the lives of Sòng-loyalist literati under Yuán rule (Wáng Yuánliàng 汪元量, Xiè Áo 謝翱, Wén Tiānxiáng 文天祥’s last years, Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟 KR2m0040’s withdrawal, Lín Jǐngxī, and Zhōu Mì’s own coterie); (iii) Sòng court ritual, technology, material culture, and urban life (gardens of Wúxīng, the Wúxīng yuánpǔ 吳興園圃 register opening the qiánjí is the standard source on SòngYuán Hángzhōu / Wúxīng garden history); (iv) the abuses of late-Sòng Dàoxué pedagogy (the entries on Luó Yǐ, Dǒng Jìngān, Hán Qiūyán, Shěn Zhònggù, Zhōu Píngyuán, which the Sìkù compilers single out as the work’s most pointed political-moral critique). The Sìkù compilers’ own evaluation — “far surpassing the Chuògēng lù” — is now generally accepted, though Chuògēng lù remains the indispensable Yuán-side complement.

The work is also famously bitter on Fāng Huí 方回 (hào Wànlǐ 萬里) — the Yánzhōu prefect who surrendered to Bayan in 1276 and then made a comfortable Yuán career as a shīhuà critic. The Sìkù tíyào’s vigorous defence of Zhōu Mì against Dū Mù’s Míng-period dream-story (in which Fāng Huí’s ghost protests his innocence) is itself a small monument of Qīng historiography: the compilers explicitly stake the work’s credibility on Zhōu Mì’s loyalist witness against Fāng Huí’s traitor career.

Textual transmission: Míng Bàihǎi (Shāng Wéijùn) — defective, missing hòují and xùjí, with portions of Qídōng yěyǔ substituted; Mǐn Yuánhéng 閔元衢 manuscript recovered from Jīnchāng (Sūzhōu) booksellers; Máo Jìn 毛晉 Jīndài mìshū edition (Chóngzhēn period) — first complete recovery; Sìkù quánshū (1781) — from Máo Jìn. Standard modern critical edition: Wú Qǐmíng 吳企明, punctuated and edited, Guǐxīn zázhì (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1988, TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān series — Wilkinson dates the volume 1983, but the actual imprint is 1988).

Translations and research

  • Jay, Jennifer W. 1991. A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China. Western Washington UP. The standard English-language monograph on Sòng-Yuán loyalism; Guǐxīn zázhì is among its principal sources, especially for the imperial-tomb desecration and the Lín Jǐng-xī / Tāng Yǎo bone-retrieval episode (her ch. 5).
  • Walton, Linda. 1999. Academies and Society in Southern Sung China. UHP. Uses Zhōu Mì’s entries on Luó Yǐ and the late-Sòng academies.
  • Walton, Linda. 1984. “Kinship, Marriage, and Status in Song China: A Study of the Lou Lineage of Ningbo, c. 1050–1250.” Journal of Asian History 18.1: 35–77. Cites Guǐxīn zázhì on Sòng shì-zú practice.
  • Hartman, Charles. 2021. The Making of a Confucian Hero: The Construction of Yue Fei’s Image. Cambridge UP. Uses Guǐxīn zázhì on early Yuán reception of the Sòng court.
  • Heirman, Ann, and Paolo De Troia, eds. 2018. Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia. Brill. Includes substantive use of Guǐxīn zázhì on Yáng Liǎn-zhēn-jiā and the Yuán Buddhist establishment in Jiāng-nán.
  • Franke, Herbert. 1981. “Tibetans in Yüan China.” In John D. Langlois Jr., ed., China under Mongol Rule, 296–328. Princeton UP. The classic study of Yáng Liǎn-zhēn-jiā, drawing heavily on Zhōu Mì.
  • Chen Gaohua 陳高華. 1981. “Lùn Yáng Liǎn-zhēn-jiā hé Yáng Ān-pǔ fùzǐ” 論楊璉真伽和楊暗普父子. Xībĕi mínzú yánjiū 西北民族研究 1981.1. The principal Chinese-language reconstruction of the Yáng Liǎn-zhēn-jiā affair, anchored in Guǐxīn zázhì.
  • Bai Shouyi 白壽彝, ed. Zhōngguó tōngshǐ 中國通史, Yuán dynasty volumes (Shàng-hǎi rén-mín, 1997). Uses Guǐxīn zázhì throughout for the Sòng-Yuán transition.
  • Wú Qǐ-míng 吳企明, ed. Guǐxīn zázhì (Zhōnghuá, 1988 Táng-Sòng shǐ-liào bǐ-jì cóng-kān). Standard punctuated edition with collation notes from Bài-hǎi, Jīn-dài mì-shū, and Sìkù.
  • No complete European-language translation has been located; portions translated in monographs above.

Other points of interest

The opening register of Wúxīng yuánpǔ 吳興園圃 (Gardens of Wúxīng) — a long sequence of entries listing roughly forty private gardens in and around Húzhōu, with details of owners, ponds, halls, named pavilions, signature rocks and trees — is one of the most precious primary sources for Southern-Sòng / early-Yuán garden history. The roster passes from the imperial Ānxī wángfǔ 安禧王府 (Prince Ānxī’s mansion) through the gardens of the Shěn, Zhāng, Móu, Zhào, Dīng, Yè, Wáng, and Lǐ lineages to Zhōu Mì’s own family garden (Hánshì yuán 韓氏園 → Nánguō yǐn 南郭隱, identified by Zhōu Mì as having passed from the Hántuōzhòu 韓侂胄 Píngyuánjùn 平原郡 estate to his own family). The register is the model and source for all subsequent Wúxīng garden compilations (Wúxīng yuánlín jì 吳興園林記 etc.).

A second remarkable feature is the work’s documentation of late-Sòng popular religion and ghost lore: entries on local cults, possession, exorcism, and the underworld are unusually numerous, and the Sìkù’s remark that the work has “coarse and miscellaneous” content is in part a reaction to this material — which is now valued precisely for its anthropological richness. Zhōu Mì’s combination of yímín political grief, antiquarian connoisseurship, and ethnographic curiosity makes Guǐxīn zázhì one of the most multi-dimensional bǐjì of the Chinese tradition.

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