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睽車志

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Text ID
KR3l0121
Date
1185–1190
Dynasty
宋

Kuíchē zhì 睽車志

Records of the Chariot Bearing Ghosts (from Hexagram Kuí) by 郭彖 (撰)

About the work

A six-juǎn zhìguài by the mid-to-late Southern-Sòng official Guō Tuàn 郭彖 (zì Cìxiàng 次象; fl. 1180s; see 郭彖), of Hézhōu 和州 (modern Anhui), jìnshì and prefect of Xīngguójūn 興國軍 (modern Húběi). The title alludes to the Yìjīng Kuí 睽 hexagram’s top yáo: “Kuí gū, jiàn shǐ fù tú, zài guǐ yī chē” 睽孤見豕負塗載鬼一車 — “isolated by hexagram Kuí, he sees a pig covered in mud, a chariot bearing ghosts” — the locus classicus in the Yì of supernatural vision. The book is one of the principal direct contemporaries-and-rivals of Hóng Mài’s Yíjiān zhì, with which it shares the per-entry source-attribution method (each anecdote concludes “so-and-so said” 某人所説) — a Southern-Sòng methodological innovation in zhìguài compilation that fixes individual stories as field-collected oral testimony rather than as anonymous literary tradition. Substantive content: ghosts and demons, retributive karma, dream-prophecy, fāngshì and Daoist anecdotes, mostly set in Jiànyán, Shàoxīng, Qiándào, and Chúnxī periods (i.e., the first sixty years of the Southern Sòng), with some Biànjīng memories from the Northern-Sòng before 1127 (whose recollection the Sìkù tiyao calls Biànjīng jiùwén 汴京舊聞 “old hearsay from Biànjīng”).

Tiyao

Your servants report: Kuíchē zhì in 6 juǎn. The Sòng Guō Tuàn zhuàn. Tuàn, zì Cìxiàng, a man of Hézhōu. Passed the jìnshì, rose through office to Zhī Xīngguó jūn. This book records ghosts, gods, and the strange — all of his own ěrmù suǒ wénjiàn (what his ears and eyes heard and saw). The title Kuíchē zhì takes its expression from the Kuí hexagram top-yáo phrase “chariot bearing ghosts.” The Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì lists this work in 1 juǎn; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí and Mǎ Duānlín’s Jīngjí kǎo both have 5 juǎn; the Míng Shāng Jùn’s Bàihǎi prints it in 6 juǎn — neither matching. Later hands must have repeatedly divided and re-divided, causing the juǎn-count to differ. The book chiefly records events of the Jiànyán, Shàoxīng, Qiándào, Chúnxī periods, with occasional Biànjīng recollections embedded; at the end of each entry it notes the informant — adopting Hóng Mài’s Yíjiān zhì manner. Its general purpose is karmic retribution as moral admonition. But its picking and gathering is wide, and recorded as heard — so the transmission-attached embellishment is sometimes absurd: e.g., Mǐ Fú 米芾 is a Northern-Sòng famous shì and yet here is suspected of being a mǎng (python) spirit; Chéng Jiǒng 程迥 is a Southern-Sòng learned elder of many writings and yet here is said to have grown rich by worshiping at home a “Yùzhēn niángzǐ” 玉真娘子 (Lady Yùzhēn); Zhāng Què 張觷 was able to denounce treason and pacify rebellion, his upright character known posthumously by his shrine at Shàowǔ — yet here is said to have, holding a grudge, murdered a man and to have died seeing a ghost in broad daylight: all such items are plainly false in any sober reckoning. The other entries are also full of trivia. Still, Qí Xié zhìguài (the Qí Xié tradition of strange-recording) is what antiquity does not put away; though it does no help to philological-historical evidence, it does help to material for table-talk. This book is also a tributary of the Sōushén jì and Jīshén lù family, so we preserve and record it as one xiǎoshuō among many.

Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 43 (1778), 6th 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 Kuíchē zhì is by Guō Tuàn 郭彖 (zì Cìxiàng 次象; jìnshì and Zhī Xīngguó jūn), an official whose biographical record is otherwise scant. The book’s internal events range from the early Southern Sòng (1130s) through Chúnxī (1174–1189), and the compilation belongs in or just after the latter; the bracket adopted here (1185–1190) is the conventional dating, slightly post-Chúnxī. Guō was a near contemporary of Hóng Mài 洪邁 (1123–1202), whose Yíjiān zhì began appearing in 1161 (jiǎzhì) and continued through Hóng’s lifetime. The two compilers worked in parallel: both relied on the per-entry informant attribution; both ranged over the same Southern-Sòng cultural geography; both rejected the zhìguài anonymity of the Six-Dynasties / Tang tradition in favour of an explicitly oral-history method that grounded each anecdote in a named source. Kuíchē zhì is therefore the principal independent witness, alongside Yíjiān zhì, to the Southern-Sòng oral-anecdote-collection method.

The book’s six juǎn (in the modern Shāng Jùn-prints recension; earlier catalogs give 1 or 5 juǎn — the Sìkù tiyao treats these as transmission variants reflecting repeated re-division) contain c. 180–200 short narratives. Topically: roughly 60% ghost and demon anecdotes; 20% retributive justice and dream-omens; 20% miscellaneous (poetry, court anecdote, the Mǐ Fú “python-spirit” rumour, the Chéng Jiǒng “Yùzhēn niángzǐ” rumour, the Zhāng Què “killing by grudge” rumour — three pieces that the Sìkù tiyao explicitly singles out as defamatory legend). The Mǐ Fú anecdote is particularly significant in the historiography of Northern-Sòng connoisseurship, since it preserves a wholly negative, gossip-form contemporary report on a figure better known through the more elevated reception of Sturman 1997 and the like.

Bibliographically the Sòngshǐ Yìwén zhì registers 1 juǎn, the Shūlù jiětí 5, the Míng Bàihǎi 6 — and the present WYG 6 — reflecting repeated re-division of a book that was probably originally a continuously paginated bǐjì. The Míng Bàihǎi version of Shāng Jùn 商濬 is the proximate source of the WYG recension. The standard modern critical edition is in Sòng Yuán bǐjì xiǎoshuō dàguān (Shànghǎi gǔjí 2001).

Translations and research

  • Inglis, Alister D. Hong Mai’s “Record of the Listener” and Its Song Dynasty Context (SUNY 2006). Treats Kuí-chē zhì and Yí-jiān zhì as parallel cases of the Southern-Sòng oral-source-attribution method.
  • 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). Definitive Chinese-language source-critical study.
  • Inglis, Alister D. “A Textual History of Hong Mai’s Yijian zhi,” T’oung Pao 93 (2007), pp. 283–368. Comparative material on parallel Southern-Sòng zhì-guài including Kuí-chē zhì.
  • Hé Zhuó 何卓, ed. Kuí-chē zhì in Sòng Yuán bǐ-jì xiǎo-shuō dà-guān (Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí 2001). Standard modern critical edition.
  • Sturman, Peter Charles. Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China (Yale 1997). Discusses the Kuí-chē zhì “python-spirit” anecdote about Mǐ Fú as a contemporary anti-Mǐ rumour.

Other points of interest

The Kuíchē zhì’s per-entry attribution-format — “The above was told by Mr X” (xx suǒ shuō 某人所説) — is one of the most striking methodological developments in Sòng zhìguài. By tying each anecdote to a named informant, Guō (like Hóng Mài) treats the genre as field-recorded oral history rather than as the anonymous fēngwén (hearsay) of the Six-Dynasties tradition. This represents a shift in the zhìguài’s epistemological self-positioning — from a literary genre of cultivated curiosity to a quasi-ethnographic record — that has been the centre of much modern scholarship on Sòng xiǎoshuō.

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