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漢武故事

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Text ID
KR3l0095
Date
100–500
Dynasty
六朝

Hàn Wǔ gùshì 漢武故事

Anecdotes of Emperor Wǔ of the Hàn by 班固 (attributed)

About the work

A one-juàn zhìguài 志怪-style fictionalised biography of Hàn Wǔdì 漢武帝 (Liú Chè 劉徹, r. 141–87 BCE), pseudepigraphically attributed to the Hànshū historian 班固 Bān Gù 班固 (32–92). The traditional attribution is rejected by virtually all modern scholarship: the Hànshū itself does not record any such work under Bān’s hand, and the Suíshū Jīngjí zhì lists the text without an author. The work belongs in fact to the late-Hàn through Six-Dynasties stratum of zhìguài literature on the Daoist immortality quest, and is in particular a foundational witness — together with its sister-text KR3l0094 Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn 漢武帝內傳 — for the medieval cult of the Queen Mother of the West 西王母 (Xī Wángmǔ) and her famous nocturnal visit to Hàn Wǔdì on the Night of Double-Seven, when she presents the emperor with the peaches of immortality. The text survives only fragmentarily: the present 1-juàn WYG recension represents the Míng Wú Guǎn 吳琯 Gǔjīn yìshǐ 古今逸史 print, itself a condensation of an originally 2-juàn work whose fuller form is known only from quotations preserved in lèishū (the Yìwén lèijù, Sānfǔ huángtú, Tàipíng yùlǎn, Wénxuǎn commentary, etc.).

Tiyao

The source file for this work is absent from the local Kanripo dump (/home/Shared/krp/KR3l/[[KR3l0095]]/ does not exist). The following is the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào entry for the work (juan 142, 子部·小說家類存目) as transmitted, recovered via the Sìkù tíyào electronic text:

Hàn Wǔ gùshì, 1 juàn. The old text is titled “by the Hàn Bān Gù, zhuàn”. Yet the histories do not record that Gù made any such work, and the Suí zhì (Suíshū Jīngjí zhì) likewise enters it in the zhuànjì (biographical) category without naming Gù as author. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì cites Zhāng Jiǎnzhī’s preface (bá) to the Dòngmíng jì (洞冥記) as saying the work came from Wáng Jiǎn 王儉 (an early-Qí scholar) — the early-Táng being not far from the QíLiáng period, this opinion should rest on some evidence.

What it relates is mostly at variance with the Shǐjì and Hànshū, mixed with yāowàng zhī yǔ (weird and unfounded words). Moreover, what other ancient books cite as from this work — the Yìwén lèijù, Sānfǔ huángtú, Tàipíng yùlǎn, and others — namely the Jiǎzhàng zhūlián (Jewelled-curtain canopy), the Wángmǔ qīngquè (Queen-Mother’s azure sparrows), the Màolíng yùwǎn (Mào tomb jade bowl) and the like, are all not present here. Lǐ Shàn’s commentary on the Wénxuǎn / Xīzhēng fù cites two passages from Hàn Wǔ gùshì: the first, on the Bǎigǔ tíng 柏谷亭 affair, is also missing from this text; the second, on the Empress Wèi Zǐfū 衛子夫 affair, is here, but the wording is briefer than Lǐ Shàn’s quotation.

Examination of the Suí zhì records this work in 2 juàn, and all subsequent catalogues do the same. Qián Zēng’s Dúshū mǐnqiú jì still gives it as 2 juàn; he says he held two copies, one the Xīshān Qín Rǔcāo Xiùshí shūtáng edition, the other the Chén Wénzhú Huìbó family edition — these two also differing from each other, and he therefore preserved both. Neither is available to us today. The present text is the Míng Wú Guǎn’s Gǔjīn yìshǐ print, with the original combined into 1 juàn, totaling a mere seven or eight leaves — it has clearly been pruned, and is not either of the two earlier editions. As it is a Liùcháo (Six-Dynasties) old volume, we provisionally preserve it as one specimen of an ancient book.

(The Sìkù compilers’ adjacent entry on the Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn makes the further note: that work’s old text is also titled “by Bān Gù”, but the Suí zhì records it in 2 juàn without authorship, and the Sòng zhì also marks “compiler unknown” — “this text’s heading ‘by Bān Gù’ rests on no authority; presumably because the Hàn Wǔ gùshì was falsely titled as Bān Gù’s, later persons accordingly attributed this work also to him.“)

Abstract

The work is universally treated by modern scholarship as a pseudepigraph (wěishū 偽書) of the late-Hàn to Six-Dynasties period. The Sìkù compilers themselves recognise this — accepting Cháo Gōngwǔ’s report of Zhāng Jiǎnzhī’s attribution to Wáng Jiǎn 王儉 (452–489) of the Southern Qí as plausible, and classifying the text only in the cúnmù (catalogue-only) section of the small-talk genre. The principal modern alternatives are: (1) composition by Wáng Jiǎn in the Southern Qí (Cháo Gōngwǔ via Zhāng Jiǎnzhī); (2) by Gě Hóng 葛洪 (283–343) of the Eastern Jìn; (3) by some unidentified WèiJìn literatus writing under Bān Gù’s name; (4) accreted, with a Hàn or post-Hàn nucleus and Six-Dynasties expansions. Pān Yuè’s 潘岳 (247–300) Xīzhēng fù 西征賦, however, appears to quote the work (per Lǐ Shàn’s commentary), which sets a terminus ante quem in the late-third century and rules out a purely Qí-period composition for the nucleus. The honest bracket for the received recension — a pseudepigraphic zhìguài on Hàn Wǔdì, in the form transmitted into the lèishū tradition — is therefore c. 100–500 CE, with the most defensible narrower window the late-Hàn through Eastern-Jìn (c. 200–400 CE).

The work’s content centres on Hàn Wǔdì as the archetypal Chinese imperial seeker after immortality. Surviving entries include: the famous Jīnwū cángjiāo 金屋藏嬌 episode (the child Liú Chè promising his cousin Chén Ē 陳阿嬌 that he will store her in a golden house — the locus classicus of the four-character idiom); the visit of the Queen Mother of the West with her azure-sparrow attendants and the gift of the immortality peaches; encounters with the fāngshì Dōngfāng Shuò 東方朔 and Lǐ Shàojūn 李少君; the empress Wèi Zǐfū episode; and zhìguài scenes of jade bowls, jewelled curtains, and divine apparitions. The text contradicts the Shǐjì and Hànshū in several known particulars (the chronology of Liú Chè’s marriage to Lady Chén, the death of Lady Gōuyì 鉤弋夫人, an apparently non-existent chancellor Gōngsūn Xióng 公孫雄, etc.), confirming its non-historical character.

The most complete modern reconstruction is Lǔ Xùn’s 魯迅 Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古今小說鈎沉 (1909–1911, published posthumously), which collates the surviving direct text with all known lèishū quotations into the fullest available recension; the resulting fifty-three story-units form the basis of all subsequent scholarship. The work is foundational to the medieval and later imagination of Hàn Wǔdì as a Daoist immortal-seeker, and the seed-bed from which the more elaborate KR3l0094 Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn 漢武帝內傳 grew. (Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §32, §63, registers the text among the foundational early-medieval zhìguài but does not treat it at length.)

Translations and research

  • Smith, Thomas E. 1994. “Where the Tao Meets the Field: Daoism and the Geographical Imagination in the Han Wudi Gushi.” Early Medieval China 1: 1–33. The single fullest English-language study; argues for a Six-Dynasties composition and reads the work as integrating Daoist immortal-seeking with imperial gùshì (precedent-collection) form.
  • Smith, Thomas E. 1992. Ritual and the Shaping of Narrative: The Legend of the Han Emperor Wu. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan. The foundational Western-language monograph-length treatment; analyses Hàn Wǔ gùshì alongside Hàn Wǔ-dì nèi-zhuàn.
  • Cahill, Suzanne E. 1993. Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China. Stanford UP. Uses Hàn Wǔ gùshì as a key witness for the formation of the medieval Xī-Wáng-mǔ cult.
  • Campany, Robert Ford. 1996. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China. SUNY. Locates Hàn Wǔ gùshì in the zhì-guài tradition; discusses genre and authorial pseudonymity.
  • Campany, Robert Ford. 2009. Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China. Hawai’i. Cites the work for the Hàn Wǔ-dì / Dōng-fāng Shuò / Lǐ Shào-jūn nexus.
  • Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 (ed.). Gǔ xiǎo-shuō gōu-chén 古小說鈎沉. Critical reconstruction of the fragmentary text from lèi-shū sources; remains the standard sinological reference.
  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng qián zhì-guài chuán-qí xiǎo-shuō shǐ 唐前志怪傳奇小說史 (Nán-kāi UP 1984). Standard Chinese-language history of pre-Táng zhì-guài; principal modern discussion of the text’s dating and transmission.
  • No full European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù compilers’ explicit recognition that the Bān Gù attribution is spurious — and their consequent demotion of the text from the imperial canon proper to the cúnmù “catalogue-only-existence” appendix — is a textbook case of Qīng-era kǎojù judgment overriding inherited bibliographic tradition. The work’s preservation despite the pseudepigraphy (“as it is a Six-Dynasties old volume, we provisionally preserve it”) illustrates the Sìkù principle of retaining even spurious works that have antiquity as a category of witness.

The work is also the locus classicus of the jīnwū cángjiāo 金屋藏嬌 (“storing the beauty in a golden house”) idiom, which entered the standard four-character lexicon and has remained current to the present day. The story-element is not in the Shǐjì or Hànshū; its first attested literary appearance is here.

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