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續齊諧記

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Text ID
KR3l0102
Date
502–520
Dynasty
梁

Xù Qíxié jì 續齊諧記

Continuation of the Records of Master Qixie by 吳均 (撰)

About the work

A one-juàn Liáng-dynasty 梁 collection of zhìguài 志怪 tales by Wú Jūn 吳均 (469–520), framed — as the title declares — as a continuation of the older Qíxié jì 齊諧記 (seven juàn) of the LiúSòng scribal-attendant Dōngyáng Wúyí 東陽無疑 (a LiúSòng official, fl. 5th c.). The title alludes to the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 (《逍遙遊》Qíxié zhě zhìguài zhě yě 齊諧者志怪者也, “Qíxié is a record of strange things”) and so designates the work generically as zhìguài. Despite being only a single juàn — sixteen or seventeen entries in the received text — the Xù Qíxié jì is one of the most consequential of the small Six-Dynasties anomaly anthologies, because three of its tales became standard cí-poetry allusions from the Táng onward: Tián Zhēn 田真 and the zǐjīng 紫荊 tree (a locus classicus for fraternal harmony), Yáng Bǎo 楊寶 and the yellow sparrow who returns to him as a yellow-robed boy with four jade rings (the huángquè bàoēn 黃雀報恩 topos), and the Jiāngzhōu (or rather Húběi) man who pickles wine in chrysanthemum on the Double-Ninth festival (the canonical origin-story of the Chóngyáng 重陽 ascent-and-chrysanthemum custom).

Tiyao

Your servants report: Xù Qíxié jì in 1 juàn. The Liáng Wú Jūn 吳均 zhuàn. Jūn’s affairs are fully recorded in his standard biography in the Liáng shū. The Táng shū Yìwén zhì writes the name as 吳筠. On examination, there was a Táng Daoist priest Wú Yún 吳筠, but he was a man of the Dàlì 大曆 period (766–779); whereas this book is recorded in the Suí zhì, and Dù Gōngzhān 杜公瞻’s notes to the JīngChǔ suìshí jì and Ōuyáng Xún’s Yìwén lèijù had already quoted from it earlier — so it is plainly not the Daoist Wú Yún. The Táng zhì must be a copyist’s error. Wú Guǎn’s 吳琯 printed edition carries a Yuán-period colophon by Lù Yǒu 陸友 saying: “Qíxié records the strange — this is Master Zhuāng’s parable. Now what Jūn continues is only a borrowing of the name. There was no earlier book.” Examined, however, the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì under “miscellaneous biographies” records, before Jūn’s book, the seven-juàn Qíxié jì 齊諧記 of the Sòng Cavalry-Attendant Gentleman Dōngyáng Wúyí 東陽無疑; the Táng zhì under xiǎoshuō likewise records both. So Jūn’s book really is a continuation, without doubt; Yǒu’s claim that “there was no earlier book” is itself a failure of research.

What is recorded is entirely matters of spirits and the uncanny. Yet Lǐ Shàn 李善 in his commentary to the Wénxuǎn quotes its Tián-family three-jīng tree entry on Lù Jī’s Yùzhāng xíng, and on Xiè Huìlián’s Seventh-of-the-Seventh-Month Cowherd-and-Weaver poem quotes its Chéng Wǔdīng 成武丁 entry; Wéi Xún’s 韋絢 Liú Yǔxī jiāhuà 嘉話 quotes its Huò Guāng 霍光 gold-phoenix-hub entry and its Jiǎng Qián 蔣潛 tōngtiānxī 通天犀 director entry; Zhāng Yànyuǎn’s Lìdài mínghuà jì quotes its Xú Miǎo 徐邈 painting-mullet entry — by the Táng it had already been adduced as canonical authority. It is one of the more eminent of the xiǎoshuō. Only on the matter of LiúRuǎn 劉阮 [meeting the immortal women] at Tiāntái 天台, Xú Zǐguāng’s notes to Lǐ Hàn’s Méngqiú 蒙求 quote a Xù Qíxié jì passage giving its beginning and end in full, yet the present text lacks this entry — perhaps the original book was long lost, and later hands compiled an edition by collation from the Tàipíng guǎngjì and similar sources, hence the occasional omission?

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 9th 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 Xù Qíxié jì is the surviving sequel to Dōngyáng Wúyí’s lost Qíxié jì (the original is recorded in the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì in seven juàn but is not transmitted whole, surviving only in quotations). Wú Jūn 吳均 (469–520, zì Shūxiáng 叔庠) was a leading Liáng prose stylist — his Yǔ Sòng Yuánsī shū 與宋元思書 (“Letter to Sòng Yuánsī”) is still the canonical anthology-piece for the so-called Wú Jūn tǐ 吳均體 of compact, scenic piánwén — and the Liáng shū devotes a full biographical chapter to him (Liáng shū 49). The composition window for the Xù Qíxié jì must lie within his career under the Liáng (502–557, but Wú died in 520): the bracket adopted here is 502–520, the years from the Liáng founding to Wú’s death. No internal dating-anchor in the work itself permits a tighter bracket.

The received text — c. 16–17 entries — is, by the Sìkù compilers’ own admission, almost certainly a Sòng-period reconstruction from léishū quotations (the Tàipíng guǎngjì, Yìwén lèijù, Chūxué jì, and Wénxuǎn commentaries). The famously absent Liú Chén / Ruǎn Zhào 劉晨阮肇 entry — about two herb-gatherers who wander into a Tiāntái 天台 mountain grotto and spend half a year with two immortal women, only to return and find seven generations have passed — is securely attested as Xù Qíxié material by Xú Zǐguāng’s Méngqiú notes; its absence is itself evidence that the received text is incomplete. (The same LiúRuǎn cycle is also found in the Yōumíng lù of 劉義慶, leading some modern scholars to debate which was the original locus.)

Three entries became permanent fixtures of the medieval literary repertoire:

  1. Tián Zhēn 田真 and the zǐjīng 紫荊 tree. Three brothers of Jīngzhào agree to divide the family wealth equally, but cannot decide what to do with the lone red-bud tree before the hall; they resolve to chop it into three. The next day the tree has died of its own accord. The eldest weeps: “Even a tree shares the heart of its kin”; the brothers cancel the division and the tree springs back to life. The Sìkù note cites Lù Jī’s Yùzhāng xíng line “sān jīng huān tóng zhū 三荊歡同株” as the locus classicus of the allusion.
  2. Yáng Bǎo 楊寶 and the yellow sparrow. A nine-year-old at Huáyīn 華陰 rescues a yellow sparrow attacked by a kite; he raises it; when grown, it leaves but in a vision returns as a yellow-robed boy claiming to be a messenger of the Queen Mother of the West, bringing four white-jade rings as a recompense, predicting four generations of his line will reach the rank of duke. Yáng Bǎo’s son Yáng Zhèn 楊震, grandson Yáng Bǐng 楊秉, and great-grandson Yáng Bìao 楊彪 all attained ducal rank; on Yáng Zhèn’s burial a great bird descended at the tomb. This is the foundational text of the huángquè xiánhuán 黃雀銜環 motif.
  3. The Double-Ninth festival origin. The opening of juàn (in some editions) tells of the Rǔnán 汝南 man Huán Jǐng 桓景 instructed by the Daoist Fèi Chángfáng 費長房 to climb a mountain with cháyú 茱萸 sachets and chrysanthemum wine on the ninth day of the ninth month to escape a calamity; he returns and finds his livestock dead in his absence. This is the canonical aetiology of the Chóngyáng 重陽 climbing-and-chrysanthemum festival.

Other entries gloss historical episodes (Zhāng Huá 張華’s 燕昭王墓 bānlí 斑狸 — the spotted fox-spirit transformed into a learned guest who debates with Zhāng on the classics; the Wèi Míngdì and the white otters), and supply zhìguài “footnotes” to canonical poetic allusions (the gold-phoenix-hub story for Jī Kāng’s “piānpiān fèng xiá 翩翩鳳轄” line, etc.). The Sìkù tiyao explicitly catalogues these intertextualities — testimony to how thoroughly the Xù Qíxié jì had been absorbed into the TángSòng literary lexicon.

Standard modern collated edition: in Wáng Gēnlín 王根林 et al., eds., HànWèi liùcháo bǐjì xiǎoshuō dàguān (Shànghǎi gǔjí 1999), pp. 1003–1019.

Translations and research

  • Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY 1996). The standard English monograph on the genre; Xù Qíxié jì treated as a Liáng exemplar.
  • Birrell, Anne. The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Penguin 1999). Background; cf. her broader work on Chinese mythology.
  • Foster, Lawrence. “The Hsü Ch’i-hsieh chi: An Annotated Translation.” MA thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1974). Listed in Campany’s bibliography; the only Western-language full translation located, never published.
  • 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 Xù Qíxié jì and its source-criticism.
  • Wáng Guó-liáng 王國良. Xù Qíxié jì yán-jiū 續齊諧記研究 (Wén-shǐ-zhé 1987). Monographic source-critical study.
  • Wú Jūn’s prose generally: Tian, Xiaofei. Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502–557) (Harvard Asia Center 2007), with discussion of Wú Jūn’s position in the Liáng court-literary world.

Other points of interest

The Xù Qíxié jì’s entry on the Double-Ninth Festival origin is the locus classicus cited by every Chinese ritual-calendar work from the JīngChǔ suìshí jì 荊楚歲時記 (cf. KR3a0083) onward; if it were not for the Xù Qíxié jì — preserved only by Sòng-period excerpting — the aetiology of Chóngyáng would be effectively lost. Similarly, the zǐjīng and yellow-sparrow tales (Tián Zhēn, Yáng Bǎo) are early entries in what becomes the standard repertoire of Confucian-moralizing anomaly-tales, where supernatural events confirm and reward filial / fraternal piety — anticipating by some centuries the strongly moralised zhìguài of Yán Zhītuī’s KR3l0103 Huányuān jì 還冤記 and the later Buddhist miracle-tales.

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