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杜陽雜編

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Text ID
KR3l0106
Date
874–886
Dynasty
唐

Dùyáng zábiān 杜陽雜編

Miscellaneous Compilation from Du-yang by 蘇鶚 (撰)

About the work

A three-juàn late-Táng anecdotal-anomaly compilation by Sū È 蘇鶚 (zì Déxiáng 德祥, fl. late 9th c.; jìnshì of the Guāngqǐ 光啟 reign-period, 885–888), spanning the reigns of ten emperors — Dàizōng 代宗 (763) through Yìzōng 懿宗 (873–4) — and titled after his native village Dùyáng 杜陽 in Wǔgōng 武功 (modern Shǎnxī). Each entry takes a three-character heading and centres on (i) an extraordinary tribute-object (gòngwù 貢物) supposedly presented to the Táng court by some named outer-realm kingdom, (ii) a court anecdote about the emperor’s reception of it, and (iii) the moral or aesthetic point Sū draws. The book is the principal repository for the fabulous tribute-culture of the late Táng — fragrant silks, fire-resistant jades, glowing pearls, automata, dwarf horses, and so on — and was already by the Sòng a major mine for lèishū compilers and cí-poets. The Sìkù compilers candidly note that many of the supposed tributary states are unattested in the Táng shū and that the geographical and chronological claims are frequently impossible (e.g., the Fūyú 夫餘 kingdom, long absorbed into Bóhǎi by the 9th c., is described as paying tribute in 841), but they retain it for its rich vocabulary and stylistic value — “the xiǎoshuō writer who wins by literary colour” (xiǎoshuōjiā zhī yǐ wéncǎi shèng zhě 小說家之以文采勝者).

Tiyao

Your servants report: Dùyáng zábiān in 3 juàn. The Táng Sū È 蘇鶚 zhuàn. È is the author of the Yǎnyì 演義, already separately catalogued. This compilation covers from Dàizōng Guǎngdé 1 (763) at the top down to Yìzōng Xiántōng 14 (873) — the affairs of ten reigns. All entries take three-character headings. Within, the descriptions of strange crafts and precious objects are of the kind that strays beyond the standard. In general, it descends from Wáng Jiā’s 王嘉 Shíyí jì 拾遺記 and Guō Zǐhéng’s 郭子橫 Dòngmíng jì 洞冥記 — though it always cites the source-person to substantiate, this is yet only the way colloquial talk turns into bright pigment. The names it gives — Rìlín 日林, Dàlín 大林, Wéndān 文單, Wūmíng 烏明, Jūmí 拘弭, Dàzhěn 大軫, Nánchāng 南昌, Zhèdōng 淛東, Tiáozhī 條支, Guǐgǔ 鬼谷, Hēlíng 訶陵, Dōulí 兜離 (claiming each as the donor of a certain object in a certain year) — the Táng shū Wàiguó zhuàn gives none of these names, nor do the various imperial annals carry the supposed events. To take one example: the Fūyú 夫餘 kingdom was long since absorbed by Bóhǎi 渤海’s Dà 大 clan, yet it claims that in Wǔzōng Huìchāng 1 (841) Fūyú came to pay tribute. As for Jìbīn 罽賓 — which borders on the Cōnglǐng [Pamirs], as both the Hàn shū and the Táng shū state plainly — it is here said to lie in the Western Sea. These are clearly egregious. Yet its elaborate, ornate display is constantly mined for material by poets and fù-writers: it is the xiǎoshuō writer who wins by literary colour. The reader sucks in its sweet petals and so forgets its exaggerations; even today the citations continue. The name Dùyáng zábiān: Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Dúshū zhì says that È lived at Dùyáng of Wǔgōng — he therefore named his book after the place.

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 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 composition window adopted here is 874–886. The lower bound is fixed by the latest event the book covers — Yìzōng Xiántōng 14 (873), the year of Yìzōng’s death — which must have been written at the earliest in 874; the upper bound is fixed by Sū È’s other surviving work, the Sūshì yǎnyì 蘇氏演義 KR3j0028, whose author’s preface is securely dated Guāngqǐ 2 (886), and which presents a quite different (serious záokǎo) prose persona. The Dùyáng zábiān is therefore commonly dated to the Qiánfú 乾符 / Guǎngmíng 廣明 / early Zhōnghé 中和 period (i.e., the years just preceding Sū’s Guāngqǐ jìnshì) — c. 874–886. (The catalog date “886” thus represents the upper bound only.)

The work proceeds reign by reign, juàn 1 covering Dàizōng (763–779) and Dézōng (779–805); juàn 2 Shùnzōng (805), Xiànzōng (805–820), Mùzōng (820–824), Jìngzōng (824–826), and Wénzōng (826–840); juàn 3 Wǔzōng (840–846), Xuānzōng (846–859), and Yìzōng (859–873). Each emperor receives between two and six entries, each three characters long: a tributary kingdom + an object. The opening entries on Dàizōng include the famous Jiǔhuā qiú 九花虬 — the “nine-flower coiling-dragon” horse, nine cùn at the forehead, with horse-coat curling like fish-scales, presented by the Fànyáng jiédùshǐ Lǐ Déshān 李德山 — which Emperor Dài bestowed on Guō Zǐyí 郭子儀 along with a purple-jade riding-crop after Guō’s recovery of the capital. Other tribute-objects include perfumed silks from Wūmíngguó, fire-resistant huǒwán 火浣 cloth, miniature mechanical theatres, glow-in-the-dark precious-stone bowls, dwarf horses of Jūmíguó, and a “tóngzǐ ya 桐子鴉” — a mechanical raven of tóng-wood that flew on command. The collection is the canonical source for the late-Táng image of imperial luxury, and its inventory of impossible tributary objects became a stock-in-trade of Sòng cí and fù — Sū Shì, Huáng Tíngjiān, Zhōu Mì, and many others mine it for ornament.

The historical reliability of the work is, as the Sìkù compilers state, low. The supposed tributary kingdoms — Wéndān (= the Khmer Wéndān? possibly), Hēlíng (Java?), Dōulí (possibly Druli, Cambodia?), Tiáozhī (the Hàn-period Antiochene Seleucid name, transparently anachronistic for the Táng), Jìbīn (correctly = Kashmir, but here placed in the Western Sea) — are a mixture of dimly recalled real names and pure literary invention. The dating of the events is similarly slippery: the Fūyú tribute of 841 is impossible (the kingdom no longer existed). Sū È seems to have been less interested in historiographic precision than in producing a luxurious literary-decorative inventory of late-Táng court aesthetics. Modern scholarship (Wāng Bìcōng, Wáng Mèngōu, Lǐ Jiànguó) treats the work as essentially fictional in its tributary frame but as preserving genuine echoes of late-Táng court culture (palace-women, eunuch politics, alchemical interests of the late emperors, and so on).

The most famous single entry is the Yāozǐ Chángcì 妖子常賜 tale on Xuānzōng, treating the imperial gift of a poison-vial to a courtier — an anecdote echoed in many later collections. The Bīngcán 冰蠶 (Ice-Silkworm) entry on Wǔzōng is the source of the bīngcánsī 冰蠶絲 motif that recurs in SòngYuán cí. The Zhīzú gōngcǎo 識足公草 (Foot-Knowing Court-Grass) entry on Wénzōng — a grass that bows toward whoever walks past it as if recognising rank — was extensively quoted in MíngQīng botanical and curiosity literature.

Standard modern edition: Dùyáng zábiān, in TángSòng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān 唐宋史料筆記叢刊 (Zhōnghuá shūjú); also in Sìbù cóngkān; for an annotated text, Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國, TángWǔdài zhìguài chuánqí xùlù 唐五代志怪傳奇敘錄 (Nánkāi 1993), pp. 757–769.

Translations and research

  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-Wǔ-dài zhì-guài chuán-qí xù-lù 唐五代志怪傳奇敘錄 (Nán-kāi 1993), entry on Dù-yáng zá-biān. The standard source-critical treatment.
  • Reed, Carrie E. A Tang Miscellany: An Introduction to Youyang zazu (Peter Lang 2003). General methodological treatment of Táng bǐ-jì / anomaly anthologies; compares the Dù-yáng zá-biān directly with the Yǒu-yáng zá-zǔ.
  • Wāng Bì-cōng 汪辟疆. Táng-rén xiǎo-shuō 唐人小說 (Shàng-hǎi 1934).
  • Wáng Mèng-ōu 王夢鷗. Táng-rén xiǎo-shuō yán-jiū 唐人小說研究 (Tái-běi: Yì-wén, 4 vols., 1971–78).
  • Zhōu Lèng-qié 周稜伽. “Dù-yáng zá-biān zhī yán-jiū” 杜陽雜編之研究. Wén-shǐ zhé 文史哲, 1956. The classic mid-20th-c. study.
  • Yáng Bó 楊波. Dù-yáng zá-biān jiào-zhù 杜陽雜編校注 (Bā-Shǔ shū-shè 2008). The principal modern annotated edition.
  • Selected entries translated in Schafer, Edward H. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics (UC Press 1963) — which uses the Dù-yáng zá-biān heavily as a source for late-Táng material culture, while noting its frequent unreliability. Schafer also draws on it in The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Images of the South (UC Press 1967).

Other points of interest

The Dùyáng zábiān is the principal lexical and material-cultural source — alongside the Yǒuyáng zázǔ 酉陽雜俎 — that Schafer’s Golden Peaches of Samarkand (1963) used to reconstruct the cosmopolitan, tribute-rich court culture of the Táng. Schafer’s standard methodological move is to triangulate the Dùyáng zábiān’s exotic claims against the Táng shū Wàiguó zhuàn, the Tàipíng yùlǎn, archaeological evidence (Héjiā village, Famen-si, etc.), and contemporary Persian and Arab geographical literature — frequently confirming that, while the Dùyáng zábiān’s specific tributary attributions are unreliable, the underlying material classes (camphor, frankincense, asbestos cloth, mechanical automata, exotic horses, etc.) are well-attested in other sources. The book is thus a paradoxical text: factually unreliable in detail, but cumulatively a major repository of authentic late-Táng exoticism.

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