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陶朱新錄

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Text ID
KR3l0120
Date
1142–1163
Dynasty
宋

Táozhū xīnlù 陶朱新錄

New Records from Táo-zhū by 馬純 (撰)

About the work

A one-juǎn bǐjì of approximately 90 entries by the mid-Southern-Sòng official Mǎ Chún 馬純 (zì Zǐyuē 子約; hào Pòsùwēng 樸遫翁; fl. 1159–1163; see 馬純). After the Jiànyán southern migration Mǎ retired from office and settled at Yuèzhōu (modern Shàoxīng)‘s Táozhū xiāng 陶朱鄉 — the village named for the Chūn-qiū-era proto-merchant Táozhū gōng (Fàn Lí 范蠡); hence “Táozhū xīnlù,” New Records from Táozhū. The author’s own preface, dated Shàoxīng rénxū (1142), describes the work as a leisured retirement-project assembled from his observations and his Bĕi-Sòng family memorabilia. The book is roughly seventy-thirty zhìguài and politico-cultural anecdote: anomalies, dreams, fāngshì encounters, miracle-tales, and Buddhist devotional anecdotes mixed with poetry-criticism, court anecdote, and one famous (and at-first-glance generically anomalous) full transcription of the Yuányòu jiāndǎng bēi 元祐姦黨碑 of Chóngníng 4 (1105), the great proscription-list of Yuán-yòu-faction figures.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Táozhū xīnlù in 1 juǎn. The Sòng Mǎ Chún zhuàn. Chún, zì Zǐyuē, called himself Pòsùwēng 樸遫翁, a man of Dānzhōu Chéngwǔ 單州城武. In Shàoxīng zhōng (mid-1140s–1150s) he was Jiāngxī cáoshǐ (transport commissioner of Jiāngxī); at the beginning of Lóngxīng (1163) he retired with the title Tàizhōng dàfū and lived at Yuè prefecture’s Táozhū xiāng, where he collected what he had seen and heard, called it Táozhū xīnlù. Chún’s career is otherwise unrecorded; only the Kuàiji zhì preserves his temple-wall poem mocking the monk Zōngáng — with the lines “Yellow-paper appointment-letters still came to you / Surely a pure age does not abandon a worthy” (黄紙除書猶到汝定知清世不遺賢) — circulated and recited at the time.

This book had since the Sòng received no entry in the yìwén zhì or any private bibliographer’s catalog. However Zhōu Huī’s Qīngbō zázhì quotes from it the Hán Nán entry, calling its author “Pòsùwēng of the Táozhū jí” and also “Pòsùwēng of Dānfù, who served in the Xuān-Zhèng (Xuānhé / Zhènghé) period” — so this is indeed a Sòng-period work, not a later forgery. The materials are all Sòng-period miscellaneous affairs, of which seven or eight out of ten incline toward the strange; it is in the line of Hóng Mài’s Yíjiān zhì. At the end is appended the Yuányòu dǎngjí stele — a piece whose form rather disagrees with the rest of the book. We find in the records the Mǎ Mò and Guō zhēnrén poem entries: Chún was Mò’s grand-nephew (zhū sūn 諸孫). Mò served Shénzōng’s court as Hùbù shìláng Bǎowéngé dàizhì, retired with the Fèngcí sinecure, was later proscribed in the dǎngjí; after the southern migration the new policies of Xuānhé were reversed in order to win popular adherence, and the descendants of party-list members were all granted preferential treatment. So Zhāng Gāng’s Huáyáng jí has a memorial complaining that promotions for them had grown “too lax.” Yet the shìdàfū still took it as an honour; Chún’s preservation of this stele, recall Lù Yóu’s habit of styling himself as “of an Yuányòu party-list household,” is for the sake of his ancestor — i.e., the same kind of pride.

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 Táozhū xīnlù is the bǐjì-cum-zhìguài of Mǎ Chún 馬純, a mid-Southern-Sòng official from Dānzhōu Chéngwǔ 單州城武 (modern Shāndōng) who served as Jiāngxī cáoshǐ (transport commissioner) in the Shàoxīng reign and retired at Lóngxīng yuánnián (1163) with the Tàizhōng dàfū honorary rank to live at Yuèzhōu’s Táozhū xiāng. The author’s preface is dated Shàoxīng rénxū (1142), and the latest internal events are Shàoxīng 27 / Lóngxīng 1 (1163). The work was thus compiled over about two decades — 1142 to the early 1160s — with the preface preceding much of the substantive composition. The date bracket adopted here (1142–1163) reflects this. Mǎ is the grandson-once-removed of the Northern-Sòng official Mǎ Mò 馬默 (proscribed in the Yuányòu party-list), whose memory drives the book’s most distinctive feature.

The c. 90 entries are stylistically varied. Most are short zhì-guài anecdotes — supernatural transformations, encounters with fāng-shì and immortals, dream-prophecies, ghost-encounters, retributive justice — with a heavy concentration of stories drawn from the Xuān-Zhèng (Xuān-hé / Zhèng-hé) period and the Jìng-kāng fall of Kāi-fēng (1126–1127), which Mǎ as a young man had lived through. The Hēi-hàn 黑漢 entries — a Lùo-yáng demon-figure that haunted Kāi-fēng — and the Jìng-kāng nán-cuàn refugee stories are vivid pieces of testimony for the years immediately following the fall of the Northern Sòng. Mixed in are anecdotes of poetic improvisation (Wáng Ān-zhōng cí Xuán-hé jiā-yú; Fù-zhèng ‘s quatrain Qǐ-yún), of Lǐ Mèng-yáng-style anomalous birth, and of xiǎo Buddhist devotional narratives — including a remarkable serial story about a child’s prior life as a bhikṣu’s mother, narrated by the two-year-old after meeting her former son.

The most generically anomalous entry — the full text of the Yuányòu jiāndǎng bēi of Chóngníng 4 (1105), with the introductory note “carved by edict of Tàizǔ” (or rather by Cài Jīng) and the complete name-list of the 309 proscribed — is, the Sìkù tiyao plausibly explains, motivated by Mǎ’s own family pride in his ancestor Mǎ Mò’s inclusion. The episode is comparable to Lù Yóu’s much-cited self-presentation as Yuányòu dǎngjiā (of an Yuán-yòu-party-list household): for the educated descendants of the proscribed, the jiāndǎng bēi had transformed in the Southern-Sòng cultural memory from a record of shame into a roll of honour. Táozhū xīnlù’s preservation of the stele-text is one of the earliest bǐjì-form transmissions of it.

Bibliographically the work survived as a Sòng manuscript through the SòngYuán transition, was extracted from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn by the Sìkù compilers, and is the unique witness to its own existence — neither the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì nor any private Sòng bibliographer registers the title, though Zhōu Huī’s Qīngbō zázhì (which Mǎ post-dates) quotes from it.

Translations and research

  • Inglis, Alister D. Hong Mai’s “Record of the Listener” and Its Song Dynasty Context (SUNY 2006). Treats Táo-zhū xīn-lù alongside the Yí-jiān zhì as a representative mid-Southern-Sòng bǐjì-zhì-guài.
  • Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Sòng-dài zhì-guài chuán-qí xù-lù 宋代志怪傳奇敘錄 (Nán-kāi 1997). Detailed source-critical entry.
  • De Pee, Christian. “Wedding Gifts and the Yuanyou Period,” in T’oung Pao 99 (2013). Cites Táo-zhū xīn-lù among the principal Southern-Sòng bǐjì sources for Yuán-yòu memory.
  • Chaffee, John W. The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China (Cambridge 1985; rev. SUNY 1995). Discusses the social memory of the Yuán-yòu dǎng-jí and the descendants’ self-presentation — context for the Táo-zhū xīn-lù stele-transcription.

Other points of interest

The Yuányòu jiāndǎng bēi preserved in the final entry of Táozhū xīnlù is one of the small set of early Southern-Sòng bǐjì witnesses to the Chóngníng stele-text. Mǎ’s own gloss — “I record this stele on my ancestor’s account, just as Lù Yóu styled himself an Yuányòu party-list householder” — is one of the most explicit early statements of the late-Southern-Sòng cultural conversion of the proscription-list into a marker of Sòngshì lineage prestige.

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