Xièshì Guǐshén lièzhuàn 謝氏鬼神列傳
Biographies of Ghosts and Spirits (by a Mr. Xiè) by 闕名 (謝氏)
About the work
A zhìguài 志怪 work known only from a single citation in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (juàn 359). The author is identified only as “Xièshì” 謝氏 (“Mr. Xiè”), a member of the Xiè 謝 clan — likely the prominent southern aristocratic family of the Eastern Jìn and Liú Sòng — but cannot be more precisely identified. The work is included in the Kanripo edition under the heading 《謝氏鬼神列傳》 as a single attestation of an otherwise lost early-medieval ghost-biography collection.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 does not register a Guǐshén lièzhuàn under the Xiè 謝 family name, and neither Táng catalog preserves the entry under this exact title. The single attested fragment is preserved in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 (juàn 359, bǐngbù 兵部 mǎ 馬), a chapter on horse-related anecdotes — the fragment narrates a man named Chén Chāo 陳超 of Xiàpī 下邳 who, pursued by a ghost named Jūn Bì 鬼君弼, changes his name to Hé Guī 何規 and flees back through Yúháng 餘杭, hiding for five years; finally, at a wine-party he boasts that he no longer fears the ghost; turning his head down he sees the ghost’s reflection in the water; horrified, he borrows a horse and gallops away — but the ghost stays the same distance whether he goes fast or slow, and from far away he hears the ghost call, “Hé Guī, are you? Hurry up and die!” The story is a clean example of the early-medieval pursuing-ghost narrative type and is also attested in cognate form in other Liù Cháo zhìguài collections.
Lǔ Xùn’s Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 records the single attestation. The dating bracket adopted here (300–500) is the broadest defensible window for an anonymous Six-Dynasties zhìguài under a clan-only attribution: the work post-dates Gān Bǎo’s generation of zhìguài canon-formation (early-to-mid 4th c.) and pre-dates the Tàipíng yùlǎn’s 980s preservation horizon, and the prominent role of the Xiè clan in southern aristocratic literature is essentially exhausted between the Eastern Jìn and the early Liáng.
Translations and research
- Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 (1909–11; publ. 1938). Sole modern reconstruction.
- Wáng Guó-liáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō yán-jiū 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究. Brief notice.
- No substantial monograph or article specific to this work located.
Other points of interest
The narrative pattern of the fragment — the false name as escape, the boastful self-betrayal at a wine-party, the ghost’s quiet “Hé Guī, are you? Hurry up and die” — is one of the more striking pieces of early-medieval Chinese supernatural prose, displaying the inexorable closing-in of the supernatural that becomes a hallmark of late-Liù-Cháo and Táng zhìguài. The fragment’s only-attestation status makes it a small but notable piece of evidence for the depth of the lost zhìguài corpus.
Links
- Lǔ Xùn, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén.
- Tàipíng yùlǎn 359.