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述異記

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Text ID
KR3l0124
Date
750–1000
Dynasty
梁

Shù yì jì 述異記

Records Transmitted of Strange Things by 任昉 (attributed)

About the work

A two-juàn miscellany of mythological, ethnographic, geographic, and zhìguài notices, attributed in the received text to the Liáng-period stylist 任昉 Rèn Fǎng 任昉 (460–508). The attribution is, however, almost universally rejected by modern scholarship: internal evidence places the work in the late Táng to Northern Sòng range, with some material datable no earlier than the Héqīng era (562–565) of the Northern Qí — well after Rèn Fǎng’s death in 508. The work is generically a bówùzhì-style production (the Sìkù tíyào explicitly calls it “yì bówù zhì zhī yì”), gathering paleo-mythological notices on Pángǔ, Jīngwèi, Fángfēngshì, Chīyóu, the Yèlángwáng, and the like, alongside geographic-marvel entries and short narratives drawn from earlier zhìguài and xiānzhuàn collections. Juàn 1 leans heavily on cosmological-mythological material; juàn 2 on geographic and ethnographic curiosities.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Shù yì jì in 2 juàn. The old text-line attributes it to the Liáng Rèn Fǎng, zhuàn. Fǎng’s zì was Yànshēng, a man of Lèān; he served the Liáng court reaching Xīnān Tàishǒu; his deeds are recorded in the Liáng shū biography. This book is first listed in the Sòng zhì; the juàn-count agrees with the present text. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says: “Fǎng’s household kept thirty-thousand juàn; in the Tiānjiān era he gathered and edited the matters of former generations, compiling new Shù yì, all things never heard, intending to provide a resource for the literary composition of later men — also in the spirit of the Bówù zhì.” The Táng zhì attributes it to Zǔ Chōngzhī — this is erroneous: the Suí zhì already records a separate Zǔ Chōngzhī Shù yì jì in 10 juàn, and the Táng zhì followed its old wording in distinguishing two books — to call it Zǔ Chōngzhī’s is then permissible as a confusion of names, since the History is not in error, but Gōngwǔ on the contrary is. Yet the book’s diction is quite redundant and tangled, mostly pilfered from various xiǎoshuō: the opening entry on Pángǔshì is taken from Xú Zhěng’s Sānwǔ lìjì; the entries on Jīngwèi and similar are taken from the Shānhǎi jīng; the Yuánkè and similar are taken from the Lièxiān zhuàn; the Guīlì and similar are taken from the Shíyí jì; the Lǎosāng and similar are taken from the Yì yuàn; the matter of Fángfēngshì, Chīyóu, the Yèlángwáng and the like — none of these is obscure, none can be said to be “what the world had not heard.” The Wǔlíngyuán entry is appropriated from Táo Qián’s record, with the addition of plums beside the peach blossoms and the displacement of the locale to Wúzhōng (the southern lake region). The Zhōu lǐ Gūzhú zhī guǎn and Kōngsāng zhī qínsè entries are obtuse glosses on “bamboo grows on the eastern sea, the kōngsāng grows on the Dàyě shān” — particularly clumsy in both diction and erudition.

Examining Fǎng’s biography, it lists his Zázhuàn in 247 juàn, Dìzhì in 252 juàn, Wénzhāng in 33 juàn — but not this work. Further, Fǎng died in Liáng Wǔdì’s reign; yet the lower juàn “dì shēng máo” (earth bringing forth fur) entry says “in the Héqīng era of the Northern Qí Wǔchéng [emperor]” — the Héqīng yuánnián (562 rénwǔ) corresponds to Chén Tiānjiā 3, Zhōu Bǎodìng 2, and Hòu Liáng Xiāo Guī Tiānbǎo yuánnián, far after Fǎng’s death — how could Fǎng have known to record it? That this is a later-man’s fabrication is doubtless. Yáo Kuān’s Xīxī cóngyǔ says that Pān Yuè’s Xiánjū fù has the line “the Fánglíng Zhū Zhòng plum”; that Lǐ Shàn’s commentary remarks “Zhū Zhòng is unidentified,” but this present text has the matter, and so [Yáo Kuān] gathered it to supplement Lǐ Shàn’s commentary’s lacuna. On checking, however, Lǐ Shàn’s Xiánjū fù commentary in fact cites the Jīngzhōu jì: “in Fánglíng county there is one Zhū Zhòng whose household has piǎolǐ-plums, rare in his generation,” with no “unidentified” remark — Yáo Kuān encountered an erroneous edition and did not realise that this book had pilfered from the Wénxuǎn commentary, instead saying the commentary had not seen this book — a serious mistake indeed. Examining the citations of the Shù yì jì in the Tàipíng guǎngjì, they agree with the present text — so the forgery is pre-Sòng. The Táodōu Tiānjī entry within is used in Wēn Tíngyún’s Jīmíng dài gē; the Yānwáng Guōwěi zhútái matter is cited in Bái Jūyì’s Liùtiē — so the book seems to be pre-mid-Táng. The Shézhū Lóngzhū proverb is pilfered from the Guànqí xiáyǔ — so the book seems to be post-mid-Táng. Or perhaps a later man, gathering miscellaneous citations of the Shù yì jì from various encyclopedic compilations, supplemented them with miscellaneous notes from other books to fill out the volumes, just as the world transmits the case of Zhāng Huá’s Bówù zhì?

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 received Shù yì jì in 2 juàn is pseudepigraphic; the attribution to 任昉 Rèn Fǎng (460–508) is internally falsifiable. The Sìkù tíyào’s textual argument — accepted by all modern scholarship — rests on three pillars: (1) the Liáng shū biography of Rèn Fǎng lists his three large compositions in detail (Zázhuàn 247 juàn, Dìzhì 252 juàn, Wénzhāng 33 juàn) and never mentions a Shù yì jì; (2) the work’s Bibliographical Treatise witness is first the Suí shū jīngjí zhì, which records only a Zǔ Chōngzhī Shù yì jì in 10 juàn (no 2-juàn Rèn Fǎng version); (3) most damningly, the lower-juàn entry on “earth bringing forth fur” dates an incident to the Héqīng era of the Northern Qí (562–565), more than half a century after Rèn Fǎng’s death. The work’s diction shows further indications of late-Táng to Sòng provenance: its Wǔlíngyuán entry rewrites Táo Qián’s Táohuā yuán jì, transporting the setting south and adding plum trees alongside the peach blossom; its Shézhū Lóngzhū proverb is borrowed from the late-Táng Guànqí xiáyǔ; while its absorption of Jīngzhōu jì material (via Lǐ Shàn’s Wénxuǎn commentary) places a chunk of the text post-660.

Modern scholarship has tightened the bracket considerably. The work as transmitted is reliably attested by mid-Táng (Bái Jūyì’s Liùtiē, late 8th c., cites it; Wēn Tíngyún’s mid-9th-c. poetry alludes to it), but its layered nature suggests substantial Northern Sòng léishū-based reconstruction. Lǐ Jiànguó’s Tángqián zhìguài xiǎoshuō shǐ and Tāng Yǐjiè’s Liùcháo SuíTáng xiǎoshuō shǐ both treat the received text as Northern Sòng compilation work pieced together from earlier zhìguài citations and library quotations attributed to Rèn Fǎng — a parallel case to the post-Táng reconstruction of the Bówù zhì. The bracket of 750–1000 adopted here reflects this consensus: the textus receptus took shape between mid-Táng (when extant works first cite a 2-juàn Shù yì jì under Rèn Fǎng’s name) and the late Northern Sòng (when the Tàipíng guǎngjì citations are demonstrably from the same recension we have).

The work’s substantive content — Pángǔ paleo-mythology, Jīngwèi and other Shān-hǎi-jīng-derived figures, the Fángfēngshì and Chīyóu cycles, the Wǔlíngyuán rewrite — has been disproportionately influential on later mythography; the Pángǔ creation account here is among the earliest extended Chinese expositions of that figure, frequently anthologised by Sòng and post-Sòng compilers (the Tàipíng yùlǎn opening chapters draw from it heavily). For this reason, even though the attribution is firmly false, the work remains an essential source for Chinese mythography and for understanding the textual layering of medieval-Chinese paleo-myth.

Translations and research

  • Birrell, Anne. Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (Johns Hopkins, 1993) — heavy use of Shù yì jì Pán-gǔ and related material; the standard English starting point.
  • Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (Nán-kāi, 1984; rev. Tiānjīn jiàoyù 2005), §§ on Shù yì jì: rejects the Rèn Fǎng attribution on textual grounds; argues for a late-Táng compilation.
  • Wáng Guóliáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn Nán-Běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō yánjiū 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究 (Wén-shǐ-zhé, 1984). The standard survey, discussing the Shù yì jì’s status among forged or pseudo-attributions.
  • Yuán Kē 袁珂. Zhōngguó shén-huà chuán-shuō cí-diǎn 中國神話傳說詞典 (Shanghai cí-shū, 1985). Mythological dictionary that systematically draws on the Shù yì jì alongside its likely sources.
  • Campany, Robert F. Strange Writing (SUNY 1996) — treats the Shù yì jì among the post-attribution zhì-guài corpus.
  • Han-Wei liuchao biji xiaoshuo daguan 汉魏六朝笔记小说大观 (Shanghai guji, 1999) includes a punctuated text.
  • No full European-language translation of the Shù yì jì has been located.

Other points of interest

The Shù yì jì’s rewriting of Táo Qián’s Táohuā yuán jì is fascinating evidence of the late-Táng / Sòng-era mythographic appetite: rather than preserve the original prose-poem, the Shù yì jì compiler relocated the locale to Wúzhōng (the Tàihú region) and added plum trees, producing what is effectively a competing micro-version of the Táo Qián parable that competed in Sòng léishū citation with the original. This testifies to the Shù yì jì tradition’s status not as a faithful textual witness but as a productive re-narrative gathering of the Chinese mythographic patrimony.

The work’s Pángǔ creation account — “Pángǔ in death: his breath became wind and clouds, his voice the thunder, his left eye the sun, his right eye the moon” — became the canonical formulation cited in Tàipíng yùlǎn juàn 2 and in every subsequent treatment of Chinese cosmogony, even though this formulation is almost certainly post-Han / pre-Sòng rather than Liáng-era as the attribution claims.

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