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前定錄

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Text ID
KR3l0107
Date
827–835
Dynasty
唐

Qiándìng lù 前定錄

Records of Things Predetermined by 鍾輅 (撰)

About the work

A late-Táng zhìguài / anecdote-collection of 23 entries (per the Sìkù and Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí) compiled by Zhōng Lù 鍾輅 (fl. Tàihé 太和 / Dàhé 大和 reign-period, 827–835), Editor at the Chóngwén Studio (Chóngwén guǎn jiàoshūláng 崇文館校書郎); the Xīn Táng shū Yìwén zhì gives his name as Zhōng Lù 鍾簵, but the Sìkù compilers were unable to determine which form is correct. The work has a thematic unity unusual for the genre: every entry illustrates qiándìng 前定 — the doctrine that human destiny (rank, office, marriage, death-date, illness, fortune) is preordained and can be foreseen by adepts of physiognomy, fate-reading, dream-interpretation, or, occasionally, by an obscure visiting commoner who later turns out to have been an immortal. A Xùlù 續錄 (“continuation”) in 1 juàn circulates appended to the work; the Sìkù compilers note that the Xùlù is anonymous and demonstrably post-Táng (one of its entries on Liǔ Zōngyuán 柳宗元 is a verbatim lift from the Sòng forgery Lóngchéng lù 龍城錄). The work is one of the principal Táng witnesses to the popular-religious doctrine of fixed destiny — anticipating by some four centuries the more philosophically elaborated treatments of qiándìng / dìngmìng in Sòng Neo-Confucian and Daoist literature.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Qiándìng lù in 1 juàn, Xùlù (continuation) in 1 juàn. The Táng Zhōng Lù 鍾輅 zhuàn. Lù was a man of the Tàihé period (827–835), holding office as Editor of the Chóngwén Studio (Chóngwén guǎn jiàoshūláng 崇文館校書郎). The Táng shū Yìwén zhì writes the name as Zhōng Lù 鍾簵 [different graph]; which is correct is uncertain. The book records matters of qiándìng (preordained destiny), 23 entries in all — agreeing with what the Shūlù jiětí reports. There is a preface by the author at the head, which states: “It is my hope that men of penetrating understanding shall thereby know the doctrine is no falsehood; and that those who scramble for advancement shall thereby find sufficient warning.” Compared with other xiǎoshuō writings, it has a stronger moral admonitory purpose. Gāo Yànxiū’s 高彥休 Táng quē shǐ 唐闕史 says: “The world transmits the Qiándìng lù as containing many such matters; yet some are merely contingent twists pressed into service as proofs of preordination” — clearly referring to this book. But xiǎoshuō in general cannot avoid such over-interpretation; it is hardly the unique fault of this one.

The Xùlù in 1 juàn gives no compiler’s name. The Shūlù jiětí likewise records it. On examination, it presents Táng Míngwáng 唐明王 and Táng Xuánzōng 唐元宗 as two separate entries — knowing them to be the same emperor [Mínghuáng 明皇] one can see this is a miscellaneous compilation patched together from lèishū, with the duplication unedited. Moreover, the Liǔ Zōngyuán entry quotes the Lóngchéng lù 龍城錄 wholesale; the Lóngchéng lù is the Sòng-period forgery of Wáng Zhì 王銍 — so [the Xùlù] cannot be a pre-Táng book, clearly.

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 4th 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 (827–835) is fixed by the author’s own preface, which states that the book was assembled while “during the Tàihé period (太和中), being assigned to the Spring-Pavilion editing-bureau and finding the office light, I had much leisure” — i.e., during Zhōng Lù’s tenure as Editor of the Chóngwén Studio at the start of Wénzōng’s 文宗 Tàihé reign. The preface explicitly describes the collection as the result of conversations with widely-read older colleagues from whom Zhōng solicited “tales of strange affairs” (yìshuō 異說), particularly those touching on qiándìng, which he then noted down day by day and eventually arranged into the book.

The 23 entries are unified by their shared thesis: human fate is preordained, and the entries dramatize this through pairs of (1) a predictor — physiognomist, mountain-dwelling Daoist, dream-omen, or commoner-adept — and (2) the predicted, usually a known historical figure of the early-to-mid 8th c. (Xuánzōng 玄宗 court ministers, jiédùshǐ, and bureaucrats), whose subsequent career fulfils the prediction in exact detail. The opening Zhèng Qián 鄭虔 entry sets the pattern: in Kāiyuán 25 (737) the Court-of-the-Broad-Erudite Erudite Zhèng Qián is visited by a self-styled relative, “Zhèng Xiāngrú” 鄭相如 (a Mèng-zǐ-quoting man who claims to be of the standing of Confucius’s most able disciples Yán Huí 顏回 and Yán Yǎn / Zǐyóu 言偃 / Zǐxià 子夏 in his powers of foresight), who proceeds to predict (i) the jìnshì success of the following spring, (ii) Zhèng Qián’s appointment seven years later as a xiànwèi of Xìnān in Qúzhōu 衢州信安縣尉, (iii) the Tiānbǎo 天寶 era-name change in 742, (iv) the great brigandage from Yōujì 幽薊 (i.e., An Lùshān’s rebellion) fifteen years on, and (v) Zhèng Qián’s strategy of feigning madness to escape collaboration with the rebels — every prediction subsequently verified to the year. The entry concludes with Zhèng Qián’s actual demotion to Táizhōu 台州 sīhù 司戶 in 759 — confirming the prediction.

Other entries in the same key: Péi Xū 裴諝 the Lúzhōu prefect (the HúBáoYīng 寶應 entries on him are unusually detailed about fángzhèn 房鎮 politics); the Lǐ Bì 李泌 entries (Lǐ Bì being the great mid-Táng strategist-recluse who counselled four emperors); a jīngyán 京兆 dream-interpreter who predicts the exact dates of fellow-students’ jìnshì passings; a wandering yīshī 衣師 (clothes-cutter) who, by reading hand and foot dimensions, can foretell whether his customer will live to wear what he is being measured for. The collection’s vocabulary of prediction-types is unusually rich and is a principal source for the Táng popular-religious lexicon of foretelling: xiàng 相 (physiognomy), shùshù 術數 (numerological arts), yǔtǐng 預聽 (advance-hearing), zìdìng 自定 (self-determination), and so on.

Gāo Yànxiū 高彥休 KR3l0111, a near-contemporary, noted that the book sometimes over-extends contingencies into prophecies fulfilled. Modern source-criticism — Wáng Mèngōu 王夢鷗’s Tángrén xiǎoshuō yánjiū — confirms that several of the predicted historical events depart from the standard histories. But these are precisely the zhìguài signatures of an oral-anecdote stratum: Zhōng Lù presents himself in the preface as compiler, not author, of the predictions.

The Xùlù. As the Sìkù compilers note, the 1-juàn Qiándìng Xùlù is anonymous, internally inconsistent (the same person, Xuánzōng, appears under two different titles in two entries), and includes a Liǔ Zōngyuán entry copied verbatim from the Lóngchéng lù — the latter a Sòng-period (Wáng Zhì 王銍) forgery falsely attributed to Liǔ Zōngyuán. The Xùlù must therefore be a Sòng-period anonymous compilation, not a Táng-period continuation.

Standard modern edition: in Wáng Rǔtāo 王汝濤, ed., QuánTáng xiǎoshuō 全唐小說 (Jǐnán: Shāndōng wényì 1993), vol. 4; annotated entry in Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國, TángWǔdài zhìguài chuánqí xùlù (Nánkāi 1993), pp. 583–593.

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 Qián-dìng lù. The standard source-critical treatment.
  • 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), with a chapter on qián-dìng-type Táng anthologies.
  • Dudbridge, Glen. Religious Experience and Lay Society in T’ang China: A Reading of Tai Fu’s Kuang-i chi (CUP 1995). Methodology and intellectual context directly applicable to the Qián-dìng lù; Dudbridge cites Qián-dìng lù among the standard Táng popular-religion sources.
  • Reed, Carrie. A Tang Miscellany: An Introduction to Youyang zazu (Peter Lang 2003).
  • Lǐ Jīng-róng 李京榮. “Qián-dìng lù yán-jiū” 前定錄研究. MA thesis, Sì-chuān shī-fàn dà-xué 2011. The most thorough modern Chinese-language single-work study.
  • Selected entries translated in: Karl S. Y. Kao, ed. Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic (Indiana UP 1985).

Other points of interest

The Qiándìng lù’s focus on the bureaucratic predictability of jìnshì success, xuǎnshòu 選授 (post-allocation) results, and demotion-and-restoration sequences makes it a uniquely fine-grained witness to the mid-Táng jìnshì / xuǎn cycle as experienced by the participants. Modern Táng-government-procedure scholarship (Twitchett, McMullen, Wāng Bìcōng) cites it for technical details on the operation of the xuǎn (post-allocation) bureaucracy that are not preserved in the orthodox Táng huìyào / Tōngdiǎn sources. The thesis of qiándìng itself — that bureaucratic fate, examination result, and office-tenure are knowable in advance — is a striking inversion of the simultaneously circulating Confucian rhetoric of merit-based personal effort, and was already being parodied a few decades later by Gāo Yànxiū’s Táng quē shǐ on exactly the grounds the Sìkù compilers note.

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