聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

桂苑叢談

7 min read

Text ID
KR3l0108
Date
902–920
Dynasty
唐

Guìyuàn cóngtán 桂苑叢談

Collected Chats from the Cassia Garden by 馮翊子 (撰)

About the work

A one-juàn late-Táng / Wǔdài 五代 zhìguài and anecdote-collection of c. 28 entries, transmitted under the pseudonym Féngyìzǐ 馮翊子 (“Master of Féngyì” — Féngyì being modern Dàlǐ 大荔, Shǎnxī, used here as a jùnwàng-style designation), with the zì Zǐxiū 子休. According to a Sòng-period note transmitted via Lǐ Shū’s 李淑 Hándān shūmù 邯鄲書目 (cited by Cháo Gōngwǔ), the author’s surname was Yán 嚴; the Sìkù compilers tentatively endorse this and propose that “Féngyìzǐ” is the hào (alias) and “Zǐxiū” the zì. The book is divided into two halves: the first ten entries treat strange and supernatural matters of the Xiántōng 咸通 era (860–874) onward, mostly involving Daoist adepts, ghosts, and uncanny incidents; the second half — eighteen entries under the running heading Shǐ yí 史遺 (“historical leftovers”) — collects miscellaneous anecdotes from the Táng, with six entries reaching back into the Southern and Northern Dynasties (Qí, Suí). The Sìkù compilers note that several Shǐ yí entries duplicate material from the standard histories (Bĕi-Qí shū, Suí shū) and may be later interpolations from a “léishū-trawling” hand.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Guìyuàn cóngtán in 1 juàn. The Xīn Táng shū Yìwén zhì lists Guìyuàn cóngtán, annotated “by Féngyìzǐ Zǐxiū 馮翊子子休”, without giving a surname. Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 cites Lǐ Shū’s Hándān shūmù: “Surname Yán 嚴” — suspecting that Féngyìzǐ is the hào and Zǐxiū the zì. Chén Jìrú 陳繼儒 in his printed edition in the Mìjí mistitles the work as “Tang Zǐxiū Féngyì zhù” 唐子休馮翊著 — reversing the elements; a serious error. The first ten entries record post-Xiántōng ghostly and uncanny affairs together with petty matters; the latter half comprises 18 entries under the heading Shǐ yí 史遺 (“historical leftovers”), 12 of which likewise treat Táng miscellany, the remaining 6 reaching back into the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Yet entries such as Gāo Yáo 高浟 hunting bandits, Gāo Yánzōng 高延宗’s wantonness, and Cuī Hóngdù 崔宏度’s cruelty — these are already recorded in the Qí and Suí dynastic histories themselves; they look like excerpts from those works that the original compiler did not get round to deleting, and we suspect that the book has been adulterated by a later hand and is not in its original form.

The Gānlù tíng 甘露亭 entry says “the year the Prince of Wú recovered Zhèyòu 浙右”: this must refer to Tiānfù 天復 2 (902) [of Zhāozōng 昭宗] — the year Yáng Xíngmì 楊行密 was first enfeoffed as Prince of Wú; that is why Zǐxiū uses this title. The author of the book, then, was a man of the Jiāngnán region.

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 1st 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 (902–920) is fixed by the Sìkù compilers’ identification of the Gānlù tíng entry’s “Prince of Wú” with Yáng Xíngmì 楊行密 — enfeoffed as Wúwáng in Tiānfù 2 (902) and dying in 905. The book must therefore have been begun no earlier than 902. The upper bound is conventional: the book is unlisted in the Jiù Táng shū Jīngjí zhì but listed in the Xīn Táng shū Yìwén zhì (1060), and modern scholarship places it in the Wú 吳 (902–937) / WǔdàiWúYuè 吳越 transition — c. 902 to c. 920. The author’s location in Jiāngnán (the Sìkù compilers’ inference from the imperial title used and from the dense Yángzhōu / Huáinán / Zhèjiāng setting of many entries) is consistent with a Wú-court literary milieu.

The first ten entries — the “Cóngtán” 叢談 proper — are zhìguài in mode. The opening Zhāng Chuò 張綽 yǒu dàoshù 有道術 entry (Zhāng Chuò the failed jìnshì who roams JiāngHuái with Daoist skills: he can blow paper butterflies into life that flutter in formation for several quarters of an hour before being collected back to his hand; he leaves with paper cranes ridden in two — one for himself, one for his successor) is the longest and most carefully wrought, and ends with the xiānshēngyúJiāngnán convention by which the adept casts off his earthly form. The Tàiwèi Zhūyá biàn yù 太尉朱崖辯獄 entry (Lǐ Déyù 李德裕 of Zhūyá, having recovered Zhèyòu, settles a tangled embezzlement case at the Gānlù sì 甘露寺 by ingenious cross-examination of registry-records) is the locus classicus of Lǐ Déyù as judicial paragon, and was extensively recycled in Sòng gōngàn 公案 (court-case) fiction. Other entries treat a Daoist who plays go in his sleep; a ghost-jurist; a man who finds gold under a temple flagstone; and a notorious supernatural curse on a Yángzhōu courtesan-house.

The Shǐ yí section (eighteen entries) reads as a deliberate continuation, in the Sòng bǐjì manner, of the Cóngtán’s twin commitments: Táng court anecdotes (twelve entries) and a handful of pre-Táng (Qí, Suí) anomaly-tales. The Sìkù compilers’ suspicion — that some Shǐ yí entries are unedited excerpts from the Bĕi-Qí shū and Suí shū themselves — is supported by close parallels with those histories, but cannot be conclusively pinned on any one hand. Modern scholarship (Wáng Mèngōu 王夢鷗, Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國) treats the Shǐ yí as authentically late-Táng / Wǔdài but already gathered from secondary sources rather than oral tradition.

The pseudonym Féngyìzǐ — “Master of Féngyì” — uses the old Hàn place-name Féngyì 馮翊 (the Western-Hàn Sānfǔ 三輔 commandery of Zuǒféngyì 左馮翊, in modern east-central Shǎnxī) as a jùnwàng-style designation. The Sòng identification with a Yán 嚴-surnamed compiler remains the only specific proposal; modern Chinese scholarship has not refined it further. The work’s status as a transmitted late-Táng / Wǔdài xiǎoshuō is, however, secure: it is cited in the Tàipíng guǎngjì and is uniformly treated as a TángWǔdài source by Sòng bibliographers.

Standard modern edition: in Wáng Rǔtāo 王汝濤, ed., QuánTáng xiǎoshuō 全唐小說 (Jǐnán 1993); annotated entry in Lǐ Jiànguó, TángWǔdài zhìguài chuánqí xùlù (Nánkāi 1993), pp. 985–997.

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 Guì-yuàn cóng-tán. 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).
  • Lú Xùn 魯迅. Táng-Sòng chuán-qí jí 唐宋傳奇集 and Zhōng-guó xiǎo-shuō shǐ-lüè 中國小說史略 (1924). Treats Guì-yuàn cóng-tán among the late-Táng / early-Wǔ-dài xiǎo-shuō tradition.
  • Reed, Carrie. A Tang Miscellany (Peter Lang 2003). General methodology for Táng bǐ-jì / xiǎo-shuō.
  • Selected entries (notably the Lǐ Dé-yù judicial tale and Zhāng Chuò Daoist tale) translated in: Karl S. Y. Kao, ed. Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic (Indiana UP 1985).

Other points of interest

The Tàiwèi Zhūyá biàn yù (Lǐ Déyù at the Gānlù sì) entry is one of the principal Táng pre-history witnesses to the developing image of the ingenious judge — a figure whose Sòng successor will be Bāo Zhěng 包拯, and whose MíngQīng descendant will be the Bāogōng àn 包公案 protagonist. The judicial puzzle the entry sets out (a temple’s lost gold, with sequential receipt-records that all blame the most recent steward) and its resolution (cross-checking the actual weight of the gold against the receipt-records to find the inconsistency) is structurally a forerunner of the Sòng císòng 詞訟 (litigation-manual) and gōngàn genres. Lǐ Déyù’s historical association with Zhèyòu in Tiānfù is doubtful (he died in 850); the entry has telescoped his earlier Zhèxī guāncháshǐ 浙西觀察使 tenure (829–833) into the Yáng Xíngmì time-frame, suggesting the entry is a stylised re-attribution rather than a strict record. The work thus functions partly as a memorial idealisation of late-Táng administrative culture from the perspective of a Wú-court witness.

Graph View

Backlinks