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異苑

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Text ID
KR3l0101
Date
417–465
Dynasty
劉宋

Yìyuàn 異苑

A Garden of Wonders by 劉敬叔 (撰)

About the work

A ten-juàn collection of zhìguài 志怪 (“records of the strange”) tales compiled in the LiúSòng 劉宋 period by Liú Jìngshū 劉敬叔 (fl. early-to-mid 5th c.), a minor official of Péngchéng 彭城. The work survives in the same ten-juàn division attested by the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì and is a principal Six-Dynasties anomaly-collection alongside KR3l0099 Sōushén jì 搜神記 of 干寶 Gān Bǎo, KR3l0100 Sōushén hòujì 搜神後記 (attrib. 陶潛 Táo Qián), and the Yōumíng lù 幽明錄 of 劉義慶 Liú Yìqìng. Its contents range across cosmic portents (rainbows that drink wine and vomit gold, sounding bells, ringing stones), buddhological and Daoist miracles, dragon and serpent lore, mountain spirits, ghosts and revenants, transformations of plants and animals, and historical anecdotes from Hàn through early LiúSòng. The Sìkù compilers prize it because its archaic, restrained diction “could not have been produced by anyone post-Táng” (斷非六朝以後所能作), and because Táng poets — Dù Fǔ 杜甫 explicitly cited — drew historical detail from it that survives nowhere else.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Yìyuàn in 10 juàn. The Sòng [i.e. LiúSòng] Liú Jìngshū zhuàn. On examination, Jìngshū has no biography in either the Sòng shū or the Nán shǐ. It was the Míng [scholar] Hú Zhènhēng 胡震亨 (1569–1645) who first collated supplementary biographical material from various sources, asserting that Jìngshū was a man of Péngchéng 彭城, that he began his career as Adjutant of the Lesser Troops (xiǎobīng cānjūn 小兵參軍), that in Yuánjiā 3 (426) he became Imperial Yellow-Gate Gentleman (gěishì huángmén láng 給事黃門郎), and that he died in the middle of the Tàishǐ period (465–471). Hú also reports that he had served as lángzhōng under 劉毅 Liú Yì, displeased Liú Yì on some matter, was impeached on Liú Yì’s accusation, and dismissed. Now the book contains the entry that “Liú Yì on garrison at Jiāngzhōu, his impetuosity grew worse” and the entry that “Liú Yì’s wife, having been taken by Huán Xuán 桓玄 and exclusively favoured, became pregnant and harboured many resentments and slanders” — so Hú’s reconstruction would seem to be reliable. Moreover the book itself states: “In Yìxī 13 (417) I served as Cavalry Adjutant to the Prince of Chángshā, Jǐngwáng 長沙景王.” Checking the biography of Liú Dàolián 劉道憐, the Prince of Chángshā, in the Sòng shū, at that time he was indeed General of the Flying Cavalry concurrently Inspector of Jīngzhōu, which matches Jìngshū’s record exactly, though Hú’s reconstructed biography failed to mention it — an oversight.

The book entirely concerns matters of gods and the uncanny. Its juàn-count matches the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì. Liú Zhījī 劉知幾 in the Shǐ tōng 史通 observes that the Jìn shū records of the Wǔkù 武庫 fire, of Hàn Gāozǔ’s white-snake sword piercing the roof and flying off — these were taken over from this book, and the entries indeed match. Only the one entry on Fù Chéng 傅承 dying of hunger, quoted in the Tàipíng yùlǎn, is missing in the present edition; and the book calls Sòng Gāozǔ 宋高祖 (Liú Yù) directly by his posthumous dynastic title Sòng Wǔdì 宋武帝 — straight calling out the state-name and tabooed personal name in a way unlike a contemporary subject’s diction. This suggests there have been some lacunae and corruptions. Nevertheless, examined in the round, it remains essentially complete and is unlike the KR3l0096 Bówù zhì and the Shùyì jì — which were entirely patched together by later hands. Its diction is moreover simple and plain, without the trivial-gossip habits of [later] xiǎoshuō writers, and decidedly cannot have been produced after the Six Dynasties. For this reason Táng men frequently quoted it: in Dù Fǔ’s poem the affair of Táo Kǎn’s 陶侃 Húnú 胡奴 — according to the Shìshuō xīnyǔ one only knows it as the childhood-name of Táo Kǎn’s son, but checking this book one learns there is a separate matter behind it. Dù Fǔ’s allusions are thus precise and exacting, and the book is of no small assistance to textual research.

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 3rd 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 Yìyuàn is one of the four foundational zhìguài anthologies of the Six Dynasties (alongside KR3l0099 Sōushén jì, KR3l0100 Sōushén hòujì, and Liú Yìqìng’s Yōumíng lù 幽明錄). The author’s own datum-line — “In Yìxī 13 (417) I served as Cavalry Adjutant to the Prince of Chángshā Jǐngwáng” — anchors his active career firmly to the late Eastern Jìn / early LiúSòng transition; combined with Hú Zhènhēng’s reconstruction of his offices, the Sìkù compilers place his death in the Tàishǐ reign-period (465–471). The composition window for the Yìyuàn must therefore lie between his earliest documented service (Yìxī 13 = 417) and his death (Tàishǐ = 465–471). The bracket adopted here (417–465) follows that evidence; the lower bound is the year of his attested Cavalry Adjutancy at Jīngzhōu, the upper is the conventional terminus before Tàishǐ’s end.

The book’s juàn-count is corroborated by the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì (which lists Yìyuàn 10 juàn under “miscellaneous accounts”), and the work was already being quarried as a historical source by the early-Táng Jìn shū compilers (as Liú Zhījī noted in his Shǐ tōng) and by the Tàipíng yùlǎn and Tàipíng guǎngjì compilers in the early Sòng. The received text is, however, not pristine: a Fù Chéng entry quoted in the Yùlǎn is missing here, and the diction sometimes betrays later interpolation (the direct use of Liú Yù’s posthumous title Sòng Wǔdì is impossible as a contemporary’s idiom). Modern scholarship — Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國 in Tángqián zhìguài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 — treats it as substantially LiúSòng but with measurable accretion.

Contents are arranged loosely by topic across the ten juàn: juàn 1 opens with rainbow-omens (the famous měirénhóng 美人虹 etymology, and the Yìxī (405–418) episode at Jìnlíng of the rainbow drinking wine from a pot and vomiting gold); covers Shùn-temple miracles, the Héngshān 衡山 peaks, the Qū Yuán 屈原 shrine at Luóxiàn 羅縣 in Chángshā; juàn 2 is dominated by the Zhāng Huá 張華 cycle (the unprompted sounding of the great palace-bell echoing the collapse of the Shǔjùn copper-mountain; the stone drum and the kuǒshí 燃石; the Wǔkù fire of Yuánkāng 5 (295) in which Hàn Gāozǔ’s white-snake sword burst from the roof and flew off; etc.). Later juàn take up themes of dragons, foxes, ghosts, revenants, dream-revelations, prodigious births, and the transformations of plants and animals — the standard zhìguài repertoire.

The LiúYì 劉毅 episodes (Liú Yì at Jiāngzhōu; his wife seized by Huán Xuán) are not idle gossip but bear directly on Jìngshū’s political grievance: he had served Liú Yì as lángzhōng, displeased him, and been impeached and dismissed (according to Hú Zhènhēng’s reconstruction). The book preserves his settled judgment on his former superior, anchored in the form of supernatural anecdote — a use of the zhìguài form for what is in part political memoir. Standard modern edition: Yìyuàn in the HànWèi cóngshū 漢魏叢書 line; collated text in Wáng Gēnlín 王根林 et al., eds., HànWèi liùcháo bǐjì xiǎoshuō dàguān 漢魏六朝筆記小說大觀 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1999), pp. 599–714.

Translations and research

  • Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY 1996). Treats the Yìyuàn as one of the principal Liú-Sòng anomaly compilations; tabulates its motifs alongside Sōushén jì and Yōumíng lù.
  • 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.
  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (Nán-kāi 1984; rev. Tiān-jīn jiào-yù 2005), chapter on Yìyuàn. The most systematic source-critical treatment.
  • Hú Huái-chēn 胡懷琛. Liù-cháo xiǎo-shuō 六朝小說 (Shāng-wù 1934; repr. various). Older but still cited.
  • Wáng Guó-liáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō yán-jiū 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究 (Wén-shǐ-zhé chū-bǎn-shè 1984). Surveys the Yìyuàn in context.
  • No full European-language translation has been located; individual tales 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 Sìkù compilers single out the Yìyuàn as the historical source for Dù Fǔ’s allusion to Táo Kǎn’s slave Húnú 胡奴 — an allusion that Shìshuō xīnyǔ alone fails to explain, since Shìshuō gives Húnú merely as the childhood-name of Táo’s son. The Yìyuàn preserves the separate, fuller anomaly-tale, and so functions in the TángSòng tradition as the necessary supplement to Shìshuō for understanding the high allusive poetry of Dù Fǔ and his successors. The early-Táng Jìn shū compilers’ silent quarrying of the book for its more uncanny entries (Wǔkù fire, white-snake sword) — flagged by Liú Zhījī as objectionable historiography — is one of the principal documented instances of zhìguài material being absorbed into the dynastic-history tradition.

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