孔氏志怪

Kǒngshì zhìguài 孔氏志怪

Master Kǒng’s Records of Anomalies by 孔約 (zhuàn)

About the work

A zhìguài 志怪 anomaly-account collection in 4 juàn (per Suí shū Jīngjí zhì) by an Eastern-Jìn Kǒngshì 孔氏 — conventionally identified as 孔約 Kǒng Yuē — lost as a unitary work and surviving only in léishū and commentary citations. The text transmitted under this id is the one-juàn reconstruction by Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 in Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈, drawn from quotations in Liú Xiàobiāo’s 劉孝標 commentary on the Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 (juàn Fāngzhèng, Zìxīn, Páitiáo), in Liú Hàn’s 李瀚 Méngqiú 蒙求 commentary, in Chūxué jì 初學記, in Shūchāo 書鈔, in Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽, in Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記 j. 218 and j. 276, in Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚 j. 89, and in Yǒuyáng zázǔ 酉陽雜俎 (one passage there cited as from Yúshì zhìguài 于氏志怪 — Lǔ Xùn’s collation note suggests “Yú” 于 is a graphic error for “Kǒng” 孔).

Tiyao

Lost; no original 提要; fragments only.

Abstract

The collection’s profile, judged from the surviving fragments, places it firmly in the second-tier post-Gān-Bǎo zhìguài corpus alongside Zǔ Táizhī 祖臺之 Zhìguài, 曹毗 Cáo Pí Zhìguài (KR3l0144), Zhíshì 殖氏 Zhìguài jì (KR3l0150), and Zǔ Chōngzhī 祖沖之 Shùyì jì. The bibliographic notice in the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì (子部·小說家) — “Zhìguài 志怪, 4 juǎn, Jìn Kǒngshì” — is repeated with minor variation in the Jiù Táng shū Jīngjí zhì and Xīn Táng shū Yìwén zhì; the work was apparently lost between the late Táng and the Sòng. The reconstructed contents fall into several thematic clusters:

(i) Foundational ghost-marriage tale: the Lú Chōng yǔ Cuī Shàofǔ nǚ 盧充與崔少府女 narrative (preserved at length in Méngqiú commentary and Shìshuō commentary). The Fànyáng 范陽 archer Lú Chōng pursues a wounded zhāng 麞 deer thirty lǐ west of home, finds a Shàofǔ office-gate, learns that the local Shàofǔ has previously written to his (Lú Chōng’s) late father proposing a marriage, marries the Shàofǔ’s daughter, lives there three days, and is sent home. Four years later, on the sānyuè sānrì, two ox-carts emerge from the water; the deceased bride hands him a three-year-old son and a gold bowl with a poem of farewell (“Huánghuáng língzhī zhì, guānglì hé yīyī!”). The bowl is identified by an aunt as the one buried with Cuī Shàofǔ’s daughter who had “died unmarried”; the boy’s name Wēnxiū 溫休 is the indicating-name for yōuhūn 幽婚 (“dim/dark marriage”). The boy grows up to be the Hàn shàngshū 漢尚書 Lú Zhí 盧植 (d. 192) — i.e., the historical Lú Zhí of Hòu Hàn shū is here given a yōuhūn origin-myth. This narrative is the principal early literary form of the yōuhūn topos that pervades medieval and pre-modern Chinese ghost-story literature.

(ii) Court anecdotes about WèiJìn historical figures: a Zhōng Huì 鍾會 / Xún Xù 荀勗 cousin-feud anecdote (Zhōng Huì forges Xún Xù’s hand-writing to steal a million-cash sword; Xún Xù retaliates by secretly painting Zhōng’s deceased father — i.e., Zhōng Yáo 鍾繇 the calligrapher — on the door-and-hall of the Zhōng brothers’ new mansion, the verisimilitude driving them out and the house being abandoned), preserved in Shìshuō commentary.

(iii) A Zhōu Chǔ 周處 sānhài 三害 fragment: the legendary “three pests of Yìxīng 義興” — the lame-footed tiger, the cyan dragon (cāngjiāo 蒼蛟) of the long bridge, and “Zhōu of the Western suburbs” (i.e., Zhōu Chǔ himself) — which is the early literary form of the Zhōu Chǔ chú sānhài 周處除三害 morality tale that becomes a Shìshuō canonical anecdote and a Sòng-and-after textbook qǐméng (educational) topos. Preserved in Shìshuō commentary Zìxīnpiān and Chūxué jì j. 8.

(iv) Hagiographic / supernatural-marvel fragments: the Chǔ Wénwáng dàpéng 楚文王大鵬 hawk-versus-young-roc tale (Chūxué jì j. 30); the Huàtuó dòngjiǔ 華佗銅鎗 anecdote (the man whose stomach contains a copper-spear-head that Huàtuó’s medicine converts into clear wine, Shūchāo j. 135, Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 743 / 757, Tàipíng guǎngjì j. 218); a GānBǎo fù qī 干寶父妻 tale (a maidservant buried alive with Gān Bǎo’s father resurrects after ten years, supplying — per the fragment — the autobiographical gǎnqǐ 感起 trigger for Gān Bǎo’s own Sōushén jì compilation; this fragment is the only surviving early external testimony to the personal origin of zhìguài compilation, preserved in Shìshuō Páitiáopiān commentary); an Jìn Míngdì 晉明帝 horse-and-river-god fragment (Tàipíng guǎngjì j. 276); a Kuàijī Shèng Yì 會稽盛逸 vermilion-clad two-chǐ tree-perched immortal dew-licking tale (Yìwén lèijù j. 89, Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 957); a Kuàijī Xiè Zōng / sānguī 會稽謝宗三龜 tortoise-spirit cohabitation tale (Tàipíng yùlǎn j. 931); and the nánfāng luòmín tóufēi 南方落民頭飛 (the southern Luò people whose heads can fly) ethnographic fragment cited in Yǒuyáng zázǔ j. 4 (mis-attributed to “Yúshì zhìguài”).

The dating bracket adopted here (340–400) follows the conventional Eastern-Jìn Kǒngshì identification and the latest internal references (Xiè Shàng’s contemporaries; Jìn Míngdì’s reign-period). Lǔ Xùn’s reconstruction is the standard one; Lǐ Jiànguó has issued a revised collation in his Xīnjí Sōushén jì ancillary volumes.

Translations and research

• Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈; Zhōng-guó xiǎo-shuō shǐ-lüè 中國小說史略 §5.
• 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 collation of the Lú Chōng fragment.
• Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ (rev. 2005), §6.
• Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing (SUNY 1996), passim.
• Cohen, Alvin P. “The Avenging Ghosts,” in Tales of Vengeful Souls (1982).
• Mather, Richard B., trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World (Minnesota 1976; rev. Hong Kong 2002) — the Kǒng-shì zhì-guài fragments preserved in Liú Xiào-biāo’s commentary are translated here in the relevant chapter footnotes.

Other points of interest

The Lú Chōng / Cuī Shàofǔ tale is one of the most consequential narratives in this collection. Its Wēnxiū 溫休 / yōuhūn 幽婚 pun is the etymon for the whole later Chinese ghost-marriage terminological field, and the story-line — chance hunting trip, supernatural-bureaucratic offer of marriage, three-day uxorilocal residence, a child handed across the yīnyáng boundary at a riverside festival — is the type-source for an extensive Táng chuánqí and Sòng bǐjì lineage. The fragment about Gān Bǎo’s father’s maidservant is significant for documenting an early zhìguài compiler’s personal motivation, and is the basis of KR3l0099 Sōushén jì’s zìxù (autograph preface) tradition. The Yǒuyáng zázǔ citation under “Yúshì zhìguài” is preserved here as Lǔ Xùn’s emendation suggests it is a misattribution; the question of whether a separate Yúshì collection ever existed is unsettled.

Links

• http://chinaknowledge.org/Literature/Terms/xiaoshuo.html
• https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/六朝志怪
• Lǔ Xùn 魯迅, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén — reconstruction.