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搜神後記

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Text ID
KR3l0100
Date
400–500
Dynasty
晉-劉宋

Sōushén hòujì 搜神後記

Later Records of an Inquest into the Spirit-Realm by 陶潛 (attributed)

About the work

A ten-juàn collection of zhìguài 志怪 (“records of the strange”) tales, framed as a continuation of KR3l0099 Sōushén jì 搜神記 (the great Eastern-Jìn zhìguài anthology of 干寶 Gān Bǎo 干寶, fl. early 4th c.). The work is traditionally attributed to 陶潛 Táo Qián 陶潛 (365–427), but the attribution is universally regarded as pseudepigraphic by modern scholarship: the Sìkù compilers themselves already noted that the book contains incidents datable to Yuánjiā 14 and 16 (i.e., 437 and 439) — a full decade after Táo’s death in 427 — and that it dates events by LiúSòng niánhào (Yǒngchū yuánnián 永初元年, 420), whereas the historical Táo refused to use LiúSòng reign-titles and dated his works only by sexagenary cycles. The work nevertheless circulated under Táo’s name from at least the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì onward (i.e., by the late 6th / early 7th c.), is cited by Lù Yǔ’s Chá jīng and Fēng Yǎn’s Jiànwén jì, and includes — most famously — the Táohuā yuán 桃花源 cycle as well as the Dīng Lìngwēi huà hè 丁令威化鶴 (Dīng Lìngwēi transformed into a crane) and Ā Xiāng léi chē 阿香雷車 (Ā Xiāng’s thunder-cart) tales that became staples of Táng and Sòng cí allusion.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Sōushén hòujì in 10 juàn. The old text-line attributes it to the Jìn Táo Qián, zhuàn. Inside it is one entry on the Táohuā yuán matter, completely transcribing the poem and preface preserved in [Táo’s] Běnjí, adding only the seven-character interlinear note “The fisherman’s surname was Huáng, given-name Dàozhēn” (漁人姓黄名道真). It also carries the entry on Gān Bǎo’s father’s maidservant, again completely transcribed from the Jìn shū — the traces of plagiarism plainly visible. The Míng [scholar] Shěn Shìlóng’s colophon observes that [Táo] Qián died in Yuánjiā 4 (427), yet this book contains matter of Yuánjiā 14 and 16 (437, 439); the Táo jí mostly does not use niánhào but the sexagenary cycle in their place, yet this book is dated to Yǒngchū yuánnián (420) — that it is forged and falsely attributed is plain without need of further demonstration. Yet the book’s diction is archaic and refined, not what a post-Táng man could produce. The Suí shū Jīngjí zhì already records it under Táo Qián[‘s name], so the false attribution and substituted name go back a long way.

Further, Lù Yǔ’s Chá jīng quotes from it the entry on “In the Jìn Wǔdì’s time, a man of Xuānchéng, Qín Jīng, entered the Wǔchāng mountains to gather tea” — agreeing with the entry preserved in this text; Fēng Yǎn’s Jiànwén jì quotes from it the entry on “One man, on account of illness, was able to drink a hú and two dǒu of tea, and later vomited up a thing” — agreeing with the present text’s entry on Huán Xuānwǔ’s chief commandant, differing only in the level of detail, with the words niúfèi (cow lung) written as niúdù (cow stomach) and the word míngjiǎ (tea-tumour) written as húèrjiǎ (one-hú-two-dǒu tumour). The matters likewise agree with those preserved here, from which we know that what is now transmitted in printed form is still the old text. The entries within on Dīng Lìngwēi transformed into a crane, Ā Xiāng’s thunder-cart, and so on have been mutually cited and used by Táng and Sòng cí poets, continuing to the present. That it is attributed to Táo Qián is of course false; nonetheless it is not lost as a liùdài yíshū (a surviving book from the Six Dynasties).

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 10th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Sōushén hòujì presents itself as Táo Qián’s continuation of KR3l0099 Sōushén jì, but the attribution is rejected by all modern scholarship. The Sìkù’s internal evidence — Yuánjiā 14 and 16 incidents (437, 439), the use of Yǒngchū yuánnián (420) as a dating-anchor, the inconsistency with Táo’s documented refusal of LiúSòng niánhào — already established the pseudepigraphy in the 18th c. Modern zhìguài specialists (Robert F. Campany, Kenneth J. DeWoskin, Wáng Guóliáng 王國良) concur that the work as transmitted dates from the later 5th century, very likely from an anonymous near-contemporary or slightly later compiler in the LiúSòng — Qí — Liáng period. The bracket adopted here (c. 400–500) follows the standard scholarly window; the book was already listed under Táo Qián’s name by the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì, so the attribution itself must have been added by the late 6th c. at the latest.

The work shares the basic generic profile of its parent Sōushén jì: short, fact-pretending narratives of anomaly, transformation, ghosts, dreams, fox-spirits, divinely inspired cures, and supernatural retribution, organised loosely by topic across the ten juàn. Several of its tales became cultural touchstones: the Táohuā yuán 桃花源 entry parallels (and explicitly transcribes) Táo Yuānmíng’s celebrated prose-poem Táohuā yuán jì bìng shī 桃花源記并詩 from his own collection (cf. KR4b0008 Táo Yuānmíng jí), here glossed with the unique identification of the fisherman as Huáng Dàozhēn 黃道真 — a detail not in Táo’s original and quite possibly the Hòujì compiler’s elaboration; the Dīng Lìngwēi huà hè 丁令威化鶴 tale (a man of Liáodōng transformed into a crane returns to find his hometown long vanished) gave the TángSòng poetic tradition one of its standard topoi of cāngsāng (mulberry-fields-and-blue-seas) impermanence; and the Ā Xiāng léi chē 阿香雷車 tale (Ā Xiāng, a maiden ghost, pushes the thunder-cart for the dragon-king) became a stock allusion for thunder in late-medieval cí.

The Sìkù tiyao’s identification of two passages preserved in Lù Yǔ’s Chá jīng 茶經 (760s) and Fēng Yǎn’s Fēngshì wénjiàn jì 封氏聞見記 (late 8th c.) — both attributed to a Sōushén hòujì — is significant for textual transmission: it shows that the substantive content of the received text is at least pre-Táng, and that the present 10-juàn edition descends from an older recension that was already circulating in mid-Táng. The text also shares episodes with the parent Sōushén jì; the Sìkù compilers describe these as “plagiarism” (piāoduō), but they can equally be read as the standard zhìguài practice of repeating canonical anomaly-narratives across collections.

Standard modern edition: Wáng Shàoyīng 汪紹楹, coll., Sōushén hòujì (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1981) — the customary base-text; superseded for some passages by Lǐ Jiànguó’s 李劍國 Xīnjí Sōushén hòujì 新輯搜神後記 (Zhōnghuá, 2007), a recension-and-collation building on a survey of all known TángSòng léishū quotations.

Translations and research

  • Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY 1996). The foundational English-language monograph on the zhì-guài genre; treats the Sōushén hòujì as a key case in the formation of the corpus, with extensive discussion of the Táo Qián attribution problem.
  • DeWoskin, Kenneth J. “The Six Dynasties Chih-kuai and the Birth of Fiction,” in Andrew H. Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton 1977), pp. 21–52. Foundational survey treating Sōushén hòujì alongside its parent text.
  • DeWoskin, Kenneth J. and J. I. Crump, Jr., trans. In Search of the Supernatural: The Written Record (Stanford 1996). The complete English translation of the parent Sōushén jì, with prefatory discussion situating the Hòujì.
  • Hightower, James R. “The Fu of T’ao Ch’ien,” HJAS 17 (1954): 169–230. The classical English study of Táo Qián’s prose-poetry, with notice of the Hòujì’s relation to the Táo-huā yuán prose-poem.
  • Hightower, James R. The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford 1970). Standard English translation/study; treats the Hòujì’s Táo Qián attribution as spurious.
  • Wáng Guóliáng 王國良. Sōushén hòujì yánjiū 搜神後記研究 (Wén-shǐ-zhé chūbǎnshè, 1978; rev. 1996). The standard Chinese-language monograph; argues comprehensively against the Táo attribution and for a later-5th-c. anonymous compiler.
  • Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (Nán-kāi, 1984; rev. Tiānjīn jiàoyù 2005), §6. Detailed source-critical chapter on Sōushén hòujì and its relation to the parent text.
  • No full European-language translation of the Sōushén hòujì has been located; individual tales (especially Táo-huā yuán, Dīng Lìng-wēi) appear scattered in anthologies (e.g., Karl S. Y. Kao, ed., Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic, Indiana UP 1985).

Other points of interest

The Táohuā yuán 桃花源 entry in the Hòujì is the principal extra-collectanea early witness to Táo Yuānmíng’s Táohuā yuán jì bìng shī — and the Hòujì version’s gloss of the fisherman as Huáng Dàozhēn is the source of every later (Táng and after) attempt to “ground” the parable in pseudo-historical detail. Whether the Hòujì compiler had access to a fuller TáoQián tradition than what survives in KR4b0008 Táo Yuānmíng jí, or whether the Huáng Dàozhēn name is a LiúSòng — Qí elaboration, is undecidable. The Sìkù compilers explicitly preserve the work despite its pseudepigraphy because the prose is too archaic to be post-Táng and because TángSòng cí poets had so deeply absorbed its tales (Dīng Lìngwēi, Ā Xiāng) that the book had become a necessary reference for understanding the high literary tradition — an Qīng editorial principle parallel to their preservation of KR3l0051 Tiěwéishān cóngtán.

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