聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

輟耕錄

11 min read

Text ID
KR3l0084
Date
1366–1368
Dynasty
元

Chuògēng lù 輟耕錄

Records Made While Resting from the Plough (also known as Náncūn chuògēng lù 南村輟耕錄, “Records of Náncūn Made When Setting Down the Plough”) by 陶宗儀 (撰)

About the work

A 30-juàn encyclopaedic bǐjì compiled by 陶宗儀 Táo Zōngyí 陶宗儀 (1329 – c. 1409; zì Jiǔchéng 九成, hào Náncūn 南村) during his refugee years in the Sōngjiāng 松江 area after fleeing the YuánMíng transition warfare in the lower Yāngzǐ. The work’s full title Náncūn chuògēng lù 南村輟耕錄 — “Records [made by the Náncūn recluse] when [the farmer] sets down the plough” — derives, per Sūn Zuò’s 孫作 Dàyǎ 大雅 preface (dated Zhìzhèng 26 bǐngwǔ 至正丙午 = 1366), from the author’s habit, during his work in the fields at his refuge in Sōngnán 松南, of taking up brush and ink in moments of rest, jotting items on tree leaves, and burying the filled potsherds at the roots of trees; after some ten years and many vessels, his disciples gathered the leaves and edited them into the present 30-juàn compilation. The work spans Yuán court ritual and institutions, the Mongolian–Persian–Tibetan vocabulary of the Dà Yuán administration, Bāsībā 八思巴 (ʼPhags-pa) script, the sèmùrén 色目人 categorisation, Yuán drama and yuánběn 院本 titles, calligraphy and painting (notably Huáng Gōngwàng 黃公望’s Xiě shānshuǐ jué 寫山水訣, the genesis of the Sòngshǐ compilation, the famous account of Huáng Dàopó 黃道婆 introducing cotton-weaving from Hǎinán, and a vast range of late-Yuán social, material, and intellectual reportage. It is the single most cited late-Yuán bǐjì and an indispensable primary source for Yuán institutional history, the YuánMíng transition, Mongol-era material culture, and the history of Chinese painting and drama.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Chuògēng lù in 30 juàn, by the Míng Táo Zōngyí. Zōngyí’s Guófēng zūnjīng 國風尊經 has already been catalogued. The present book is a miscellaneous record of things seen and heard, with a preface by Sūn Zuò dated Zhìzhèng bǐngwǔ. In the book the Míng troops are called the Jíqìng army 集慶軍, or the “Jiāngnán roving troops” 江南遊軍 — for bǐngwǔ is Zhìzhèng 27 (the Sìkù compilers’ arithmetic is loose; Zhìzhèng bǐngwǔ is in fact Zhìzhèng 26 = 1366), still before his entry into Míng service. Láng Yīng’s 郎瑛 Qīxiū lèigǎo 七修類稿 says that Zōngyí copied much from old books — works such as the Guǎngkè tán 廣客談 and Tōngběn lù 通本錄 — all appropriated as his own. Today no transmitted copies of those works are extant, and there is no way to verify Láng’s statement. Judging by the present book alone: on the laws, regulations and institutions of the whole Yuán dynasty, and on the south-eastern military disturbances of the Zhìzhèng end-period, the records are quite detailed; and what he investigates of calligraphy, painting, and literary art is mostly sufficient to provide cross-evidence. Only that much of it is mixed with low and ribald popular speech, and the dirty matters of lane and alley — this rather violates the dignity of authorship. Yè Shèng’s 葉盛 Shuǐdōng rìjì 水東日記 was severely troubled by what is here recorded as obscene — truly not an unjust criticism. Yet from beginning to end the work is coherent; on the whole he was able to apply his attention to institutional precedent. Therefore Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jìngzhìjū shīhuà 靜志居詩話 says: Zōngyí was practised in old regulations; the old reports of the Yuán dynasty’s court and country are in fact preserved through this book — and grants that it has its uses for historiography. Thus, though the flaws do not cover the merits, it is yet what one who discusses the past will not discard.

(Note: the Sìkù tíyào classes the work in 子部 五十一 小說家類二; assigns the author to the Míng — a periodisation often disputed, since the work was completed before Zhū Yuánzhāng’s 朱元璋 founding of the Míng in 1368 and reports on Yuán institutions from the Yuán point of view; modern scholarship more usually catalogues Táo Zōngyí as a YuánMíng transition figure, with the Chuògēng lù itself a Yuán-period work, finished c. 1366.)

Abstract

The composition window is firmly anchored by Sūn Zuò’s preface (Zhìzhèng bǐngwǔ = 1366) and the author’s own internal references to the closing years of Zhìzhèng (e.g., the entry Sōngjiāng zhī biàn 松江之變 on the 1365–66 turmoil at Sōngjiāng, the Píng Jiāngnán 平江南 entry on the Wúmén 吳門 occupation, and the Jì lóngpíng 紀隆平 entry on Zhū Yuánzhāng’s pacification campaigns). The work was thus completed during Táo Zōngyí’s exile in the Sōngjiāng region in 1366, before the Míng founding of 1368 — placing it firmly within the Yuán dynasty’s last two years, though circulating mostly in the early Míng (Hóngwǔ and later) when it was put to print by 邵亨貞 Shào Hēngzhēn (whose shū 疏 is appended) and others. The catalog meta’s fl. 1360 – 1368 for Táo Zōngyí is the cataloguer’s approximation; CBDB 29854 and the modern consensus give the firmer 1329–c. 1409 (see 陶宗儀).

The 30 juàn are organised as a loose miscellany — each juàn containing a dozen or more topical entries with title-headings (the zǒngmù 總目 in the SBCK base text lists every entry). The range is encyclopaedic: imperial genealogy (Dà Yuán shìxì 大元世系, Lièshèng zhèngtǒng 列聖正統); court ritual and institutional vocabulary (Cháoyí 朝儀, Kējǔ 科舉, Nèi bāfǔ zǎixiàng 內八府宰相, Yúndūchì 云都赤, Guìyóuchì 貴由赤, Xībǎochì 昔寶赤 — the last three being Mongolian kešikten guard-officer titles 云都赤 = üldüči/sword-bearer, 貴由赤 = güyügči/runner, 昔寶赤 = šibaγuči/falconer); ethnographic and linguistic notes (Dálàhǎn 答剌罕 = darxan; the famous Shìzú 氏族 entry listing the 72 Mongol clans and 31 Sèmù peoples; the Hànér zì shèngzhǐ 漢兒字聖旨 entry on imperial edicts written in Hànér yányǔ 漢兒言語); script and writing (the Guózì 國字 entry on Bāsībā script); legal and administrative practice (Wǔxíng 五刑, Qiánbì 錢幣, Zhìyuán chāoyàng 至元鈔樣 — the yuán paper money still attached as samples); religion (Sānjiào 三教, Sānjiào yīyuán 三教一源, Shòu fójiè 受佛戒, Quánzhēn jiào 全真教, the Dìshī 帝師 entry on Tibetan imperial preceptors); painting (Xiě shānshuǐ jué 寫山水訣 = Huáng Gōngwàng’s Secrets of Painting Mountains and Streams, the canonical late-Yuán landscape-painting manual; Zhào Wèigōng shūhuà 趙魏公書畫 on Zhào Mèngfǔ 趙孟頫; Xiě xiàng jué 寫像訣 on portrait-painting; Huàjiā shísān kē 畫家十三科 = the 13 painters’ specialities); calligraphy (the Chúnhuà gé tiē 淳化閣帖 sections, Lántíng jí kè 蘭亭集刻); drama (Yuànběn míngmù 院本名目 — the famous, frequently mined, list of Jīn yuànběn play-titles; Chànglùn 唱論; Zuò jīn yuèfǔ fǎ 作今樂府法); material culture (the Huáng Dàopó 黃道婆 entry on cotton-spinning technology transfer from Hǎinán to Sōngjiāng in the late Yuán — the locus classicus for the history of Chinese cotton manufacture; Yáoqì 窯器 on ceramics; Mò 墨 on inks; Qiāngjīn yín fǎ 鎗金銀法 on gold- and silver-inlaid lacquer); and a vast body of historical anecdotage, ghost stories, popular sayings, etymologies, and kǎozhèng notes.

The work is heavily cited by every subsequent treatment of Yuán institutions and culture, beginning with the Yuánshǐ 元史 itself (whose hurried Hóngwǔ compilation drew on the Chuògēng lù for material on Yuán court vocabulary) and continuing through every major modern reference work on the Yuán dynasty. The Cambridge History of China vol. 6 (Mongol period, ed. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett, 1994), Frederick W. Mote’s Imperial China 900–1800, and Paul J. Smith / Richard von Glahn’s The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (HUP 2003) all rely on Chuògēng lù extensively. The notorious entry Fā Sòng língqǐn 發宋陵寢 (juàn 4) — on the desecration of the Southern-Sòng imperial tombs at Shàoxīng under the Tibetan monk Yángliànzhēnjiā 楊璉真伽 in 1278 — is the principal source for one of the most-discussed atrocities of the Yuán conquest. The Mùnǎiyī 木乃伊 (juàn 3) entry is the earliest Chinese-language account of Egyptian mummification, transmitted via Mongol-era contact with the Islamic world.

Láng Yīng’s 郎瑛 charge (cited in the Sìkù tíyào) that Táo Zōngyí silently lifted material from the now-lost Guǎngkè tán 廣客談 and Tōngběn lù 通本錄 has been investigated by modern scholarship (notably Yú Dàchéng 余大成 in the 1980s collation work) and found to be partially correct — but since the source works are lost and survive only through Táo’s transmission, this complaint has limited bibliographic consequence today. The work’s preservation of otherwise-lost Yuán material is the point.

Standard modern editions: Wáng Yuánshēng 王元生 / Zhōng Huá shūjú edition (1959, YuánMíng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān 元明史料筆記叢刊 series, reprinted many times), which collates the SBCK base (印自孫氏所刻嘉趣堂本, an early-Míng impression) against the WYG, the Jīndài mìshū 津逮秘書 reprint, and the Bàihǎi 稗海 condensation. The Shànghǎi gǔjí 上海古籍 edition (1990s, in Yuándài shǐliào cóngkān 元代史料叢刊) is the more recent scholarly text.

Translations and research

  • No complete European-language translation has been located; the work’s length and miscellaneous structure have so far frustrated full translation efforts.
  • Franke, Herbert and Denis Twitchett, eds. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368. CUP 1994. Chuògēng lù cited in nearly every chapter on Yuán administration, society, and culture.
  • Endicott-West, Elizabeth. Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty. HUP 1989. Major user of the Chuògēng lù for darughachi and Mongol-clan organisation.
  • Allsen, Thomas T. Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. CUP 2001. Uses the Mù-nǎi-yī entry and the Iranian-vocabulary material.
  • Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. HUP 2010. Cites Chuògēng lù on Yuán-Míng transition material life.
  • So, Billy K. L. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China. HUP 2000. Uses Chuògēng lù on Mǐn–Yuè coastal economy.
  • Bush, Susan and Hsio-yen Shih. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. HUP 1985 (rpt. Hong Kong UP 2012). Translates and contextualises Huáng Gōng-wàng’s Xiě shān-shuǐ jué (juàn 8) — the principal partial-translation point of access for English-language painting scholarship.
  • Idema, Wilt L. and Stephen H. West. Chinese Theater 1100–1450: A Source Book. Steiner 1982. Translates and analyses the Yuàn-běn míng-mù (juàn 25) — the foundational list of Jīn-Yuán dramatic titles.
  • Liú Jǐn-zǎo 劉錦藻 et al., Yuán-dài shǐ-liào bǐ-jì cóngkān series. Zhōnghuá shū-jú edition with extensive editorial apparatus.
  • Wáng Yuán-liàng 王元亮 (mod.). Numerous Chinese-language studies of Táo Zōngyí, including the standard biographies in Chén Yuán 陳垣’s Yuán xī-yù-rén Huá-huà kǎo 元西域人華化考 and Yáo Cóng-wú 姚從吾’s collected Yuán-history essays.

Other points of interest

The Chuògēng lù’s entry Yuànběn míngmù (juàn 25) lists 689 JīnYuán yuánběn dramatic titles by category — the single most important source for Jīn-period and early-Yuán drama, predating the better-known Zhōng Sìchéng 鍾嗣成 Lùguǐbù 錄鬼簿 KR3l0080’s focus on Yuán zájù 元雜劇. Together with the Lùguǐbù, this entry is one of the two foundational documents of pre-modern Chinese theatre history.

The entry on Bāsībā script (Guózì 國字, juàn 10) provides one of the few Chinese-side contemporary descriptions of the ʼPhags-pa alphabet promulgated by Kublai Khan in 1269. Read alongside Tibetan and Mongol material, it has been central to the reconstruction of the script’s letter-values and Yuán-period Chinese phonology (used by scholars including Junast / 照那斯圖 and George A. Kennedy).

The Huáng Dàopó entry (juàn 24) — Huáng Dàopó returning to Wūníngzhèn 烏泥涇 in Sōngjiāng from Hǎinán with cotton-spinning and -weaving technology in the late 13th c. — is the locus classicus for the history of Chinese cotton manufacture and a standard text in Chinese economic-history textbooks. The fact that Táo Zōngyí, himself a Sōngjiāng resident, records this from local memory only some 70 years after the event gives the entry unusual evidential weight.

Graph View

Backlinks