Shìér xiǎomíng lù 侍兒小名錄
Record of the Petty Names of Serving-Maids by 洪适 (撰, attributed) — alternate attribution: 王銍
About the work
A one-juàn Sòng bǐjì / zhìrén miscellany collecting short anecdotes about famous female servants — shìér 侍兒 (serving-girl) and qiè 妾 (concubine) — drawn from Hàn through Táng historical and literary sources. The work is the head of a four-text cluster that develops in Northern–Southern Sòng (the present work, plus the Bǔ Shìér xiǎomíng lù 補侍兒小名錄, the Shìér xiǎomíng lù shíyí 侍兒小名錄拾遺 KR3l0171, and the Xù bǔ Shìér xiǎomíng lù 續補侍兒小名錄 KR3l0172) — together constituting one of the principal Sòng-period documentations of the iconography and naming-tradition of the female servant in Chinese aristocratic literature.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in the source file (the WYG version of this and the three related works carries no full Tíyào preface in the Kanripo source; only the bare text). The Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào enters the four texts collectively in zǐbù xiǎoshuōjiā lèi · záshì zhī shǔ 子部小說家類雜事之屬 (juàn 137), noting the textual confusion among attributions and the tradition that the original Shìér xiǎomíng lù descends from Hóng Kuò 洪适, with the Bǔlù, Shíyí, and Xùbǔ successively continuing the project. The Tíyào observes that the four works together are “trivial cóngtán 叢談” but valuable for the preservation of incidental historical detail not retained in the standard histories.
Abstract
The work attribution is genuinely contested. The internal preface preserved in the Shìyí (KR3l0171) — which is the most informative early witness — explicitly attributes the original Shìér xiǎomíng lù to “Shàopéng Hónggōng” 少蓬洪公: Shàopéng 少蓬 is a sobriquet for the Mìshū shǎojiān 秘書少監 office (an office Hóng Kuò 洪适 (洪适, 1117–1184) held); Hónggōng “Lord Hóng” identifies Hóng Kuò personally. The Shíyí preface’s attribution to Hóng Kuò is therefore unambiguous. The Sìkù editors, however, register the work under Wáng Zhì 王銍 (王銍, fl. 1122–1144) — possibly on the basis of another title-page tradition or in confusion with Wáng Zhì’s documented authorship of the Bǔlù / Xùbǔ in the cluster. The present entry follows the preface tradition (Hóng Kuò) while flagging Wáng Zhì as alternate attribution.
The dating bracket adopted here (1150–1184) reflects Hóng Kuò’s mature scholarly career — the Lìshì 隸釋 KR2n0017 and Lìxù 隸續 KR2n0018 projects are completed in the 1160s–1170s, with the Shìér xiǎomíng lù belonging to the same period of light Sòng-style historical-philological compilation. Hóng Kuò’s death in 1184 fixes the terminus ad quem.
The work’s content consists of short biographical sketches of famous female servants, fùrén (concubines), and yīér (singing-girls) — beginning with the Cáo Zhū 曹著 / Lúshān Furen 廬山夫人 narrative (the Jiànkāng xiǎoshǐ 小史 Cáo Zhū’s encounter with Lady Lúshān and her serving-girls Wǎn 婉 and Qióngzhī 瓊枝, drawn from 《祖臺志怪》); through Yuán Zhēn’s 袁真 entertainer Jìlíng 紀陵 (the source of the Huán Xuánwǔ Mǎfù 桓宣武馬妾 narrative); citations from the Xù Sōushén jì 續搜神記, the Sōushén jì, the Nán shǐ 南史, the Qī yuàn 戚苑, the Wáng Yǐn Jìn shū 王隱晉書, the Sūn Chuō jí 孫綽集, the Liú Gōng Jiāhuà 劉公嘉話, the Liú Chóngyuǎn ěrmù jì 劉崇遠耳目記, the Bóyì zhì 博異志, the Gǔjīn zhù 古今注, the Táng shǐ 唐史, the Nǚxiān tú 女仙圖, the Nǚwǔ tú 女舞圖, the Chūxué jì 初學記, the Wénxuǎn 文選, the Jìn qǐjū zhù 晉起居注, the Huìchāng Jiěyí jí 會昌解頤集, the Hédōng jì 河東記, the Dēngxià xián xiào 燈下閑笑, the Yōuguài lù 幽怪錄, the Chéngdū gǔjīn jì 成都古今記, the Mùyuán jí 穆員集, the Qián Yì jí 錢易集, and the Lǜzhū yuàn shī 綠珠怨詩 — a remarkable range of citation that demonstrates the wide reading of the compiler.
Translations and research
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要 j. 137 (collective notice on the four-text cluster).
- Mò zhuāng màn lù 墨莊漫錄 of Zhāng Bāng-jī KR3j0112 for related Sòng bǐ-jì discussion of serving-girl naming-traditions.
- Hsiao Li-hua 蕭麗華. Hóng Kuò yán-jiū 洪适研究 (Tāi-běi: Tāi-wān shī-fàn dà-xué, MA thesis, c. 1998). Standard modern monograph on Hóng Kuò.
- No major Western-language monograph specific to the four-text cluster located.
Other points of interest
The Shìér xiǎomíng lù and its three continuations constitute one of the better-documented Sòng bǐjì clusters in which a topical anthology is successively extended by friends and pupils of the original author. The chain of attribution in the Shíyí preface — Hóng Kuò makes the original; Wáng Zhì supplements (Bǔlù); Wēn Yù 溫豫 finds an additional juàn and gives it to Zhāng Bāngjī, who writes the Shíyí — is a vivid documentation of how Sòng bǐjì compilation circulated within scholarly friendship-networks.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 137.
- https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/侍兒小名錄