王浮神異記

Wáng Fú shényì jì 王浮神異記

Records of Divine Marvels by Wáng Fú by 王浮 (zhuàn)

About the work

A zhìguài 志怪 anomaly-account collection in the early-medieval Daoist register, compiled by the Western-Jìn Tiānshīdào 天師道 jìjiǔ 祭酒 (libationer-priest) 王浮 Wáng Fú (fl. during the reign of Jìn Huìdì 晉惠帝, 290–306), the same author whom Buddhist polemic blames as the forger of the Lǎozǐ huàhú jīng 老子化胡經. The original compass of the work is unknown — no juàn-count is preserved by the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì or the LiǎngTáng monographs, which list it only as “Shényì jì, by Wáng Fú of Jìn” — and the work was lost before the Sòng. The text transmitted under this id is the one-juàn reconstruction made by Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 (1881–1936) and included in his Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈, assembled from the citations preserved in Chá jīng 茶經, Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽, Tàipíng huányǔ jì 太平寰宇記, Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚, Tàipíng guǎngjì, and the Yuánhé xìngzuǎn 元和姓纂.

Tiyao

Lost; no original 提要; fragments only.

Abstract

The transmitted fragments fall into three thematic groups, each consistent with Wáng Fú’s documented identity as a Daoist propagandist. (i) Hagiographic/Daoist immortality fragments, of which the most famous is the Yú Hóng yù Dānqiūzǐ 虞洪遇丹丘子 anecdote: Yú Hóng 虞洪 of Yúyáo 餘姚 enters the mountains to pick wild tea (míng 茗), encounters a Daoist leading three blue oxen who identifies himself as Dānqiūzǐ 丹丘子 and shows him a source of “great tea” (dàmíng 大茗); the family afterwards harvests the mountain. This passage is preserved in Lù Yǔ’s Chá jīng 茶經 (760s), in Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 867, in Tàipíng huányǔ jì j. 98, and in Tàipíng guǎngjì j. 412, and is one of the earliest extended tea-anecdotes in Chinese literature. A related fragment, “Dānqiū chū dàmíng, fúzhī shēng yǔyì” 丹丘出大茗，服之生羽翼 (“Dānqiū produces great tea: drinking it, one grows feather-wings”), is in Shìlèi fù zhù j. 16. (ii) Divine-retribution fragments, of which the Chén Mǐn yínzhàng 陳敏銀杖 tale (preserved in Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 710) is the chief example: Chén Mǐn, prefect of Jiāngxià 江夏 under the late Wú emperor Sūn Hào 孫皓, vows a silver staff to the deity of Gōngtíng miào 宮亭廟; on his promotion to Sǎnqí chángshì 散騎常侍 he attempts to substitute a tin-cored staff plated with silver; the deity’s wū 巫 announces the fraud, casts the staff into the lake whence it flies back to capsize Chén Mǐn’s boat. (iii) Local-marvel / geographical fragments: Chìchéngshān 赤城山 with its 300-zhàng fire-cinnabar peak (cf. Tàipíng huányǔ jì j. 98); a fragment about Lángyé 琅邪 Dōngwǔshān 東武山 being magically transferred to Kuàijī 會稽 (cited as from a Shényì zhì 神異志, almost certainly a variant title); and an Yuánhé xìngzuǎn citation of one Bái Dí Xiānshēng 白狄先生 of Féngyì.

The transmission situation is complicated by the existence of a second early-medieval Shényì jīng 神異經 traditionally attributed (spuriously) to Dōngfāng Shuò 東方朔, and of a Shényì zhì 神異志: the WángFú Shényì jì is distinct from both, but later catalog compilers sometimes confused them. Lǔ Xùn’s edition, by tracing each fragment to its citing source and rejecting confounded material, is the standard reconstruction; it is reproduced in modern zhìguài compendia such as Lǐ Jiànguó’s Xīnjí Sōushén jì-series ancillary volumes.

The dating bracket adopted here (280–320) follows Wáng Fú’s documented fl. under Jìn Huìdì, accepting the traditional Buddhist–Daoist controversy chronology that places his Huàhú jīng activity in the Yuánkāng 元康 — Tàiān 太安 reigns (290s–early 300s). Liú Yì 劉屹’s argument that the WángFú = Huàhú jīng attribution is a later Liáng-Buddhist construction does not vitiate the historicity of Wáng Fú as a Tiānshī jìjiǔ author of the Shényì jì: the latter is independently attested in the Chá jīng citation, well before any 6th-c. controversy literature.

Translations and research

• Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈 (first private printing 1912; standard ed. Lǔ Xùn quán-jí vol. 8). The base reconstruction.
• Wáng Guóliáng 王國良. Liù-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō kǎo-lùn 六朝志怪小說考論 (Wén-shǐ-zhé chū-bǎn-shè, 1988); also his Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎo-shuō yán-jiū (1984), with discussion of Wáng Fú.
• Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (Tiānjīn jiào-yù, rev. 2005), §5.
• Liú Yì 劉屹. Jìng-tiān yǔ chóng-Dào 敬天與崇道 (Zhōng-huá, 2005); idem, “Lǎozǐ huà-hú jīng yǔ Wáng Fú: shì-zài-fēi-yì de wèn-tí*” 老子化胡經與王浮：實在非一的問題, several articles 2007–2014. Argues that the Wáng-Fú / Huà-hú jīng connection is a later Buddhist construction.
• Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden 1959; rev. 2007), pp. 288–320, on the Huà-hú jīng controversy.
• Bo, Songnian (柏松年) and others. Discussions of the Yú Hóng / Dān-qiū-zǐ fragment as the earliest extended Chinese tea narrative are routine in tea-history monographs (Zhāng Zhōng-fēng 張忠丰 etc.).

Other points of interest

The Yú Hóng / Dānqiūzǐ fragment in this work is one of the very few pre-Táng narrative passages on tea-drinking, and is the principal source (via Lù Yǔ’s Chá jīng) for the medieval association of tea with Daoist immortality cultivation. The fragment thus has a textual life out of all proportion to the modest scale of Wáng Fú’s collection: every Sòng-and-later cháshū compendium that opens with a “chá zhī yuán” 茶之源 mythography traces back to this paragraph.

Links

• https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/王浮
• https://zh.daoinfo.org/wiki/王浮
• Lǔ Xùn 魯迅, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈 — reconstruction.