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蔡中郎集

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Text ID
KR4b0002
Date
1723–1735
Dynasty
漢 (recompiled 清)

Cài Zhōngláng jí 蔡中郎集

Collected Works of Cài [Yōng], Palace Attendant of the Inner Gate by 蔡邕 (撰)

About the work

Cài Zhōngláng jí 蔡中郎集 in six juǎn preserves the surviving prose, fù, and verse of the Eastern-Hàn polymath Cài Yōng 蔡邕 (133–192), known to tradition as the Zuǒ Zhōnglángjiāng 左中郎將 — hence the conventional title. The collection is a Yōngzhèng-era 雍正 (1723–1735) re-edition cut at Chénliú 陳留 (Cài’s natal county) and adopted by the Sìkù compilers, with ninety-four pieces of prose and verse. It is a much-reduced descendant of the lost twenty-juǎn and twelve-juǎn recensions known to the Liáng and Suí libraries; substantial layers were added — and possibly subtracted — at successive editorial moments. Cài was the foremost late-Hàn classicist (he supervised the Xīpíng Stone Classics 熹平石經), an authority on bronze inscriptions, music, and ritual, and his death at the hands of Wáng Yǔn 王允 in 192 marks one of the symbolic ends of the Hàn intellectual order.

Tiyao

Cài Zhōngláng jí in six juǎn, composed by Cài Yōng 蔡邕 of the Hàn. The Suí zhì records the jí of Cài Yōng, Hòu Hàn Zuǒ Zhōnglángjiāng, in twelve juǎn, with a note: “Liáng had twenty juǎn and a one-juǎn table of contents.” Already by the Suí the collection was no longer complete. The old Táng zhì still gives twenty juǎn, presumably because, although the official copy had suffered losses, the popular transmission had not yet vanished, so the longer recension reappeared. The Sòng zhì records only ten juǎn, scattered and reduced — no longer the original.

The present edition was cut in the Yōngzhèng era at Chénliú; it preserves ninety-four pieces of prose and verse, and compared with Zhāng Pǔ’s 張溥 Bǎi sān jiā jí 百三家集 print, more or less and gain or loss vary. The opening xù by Ōu Jìng 歐静 argues that the Jiāng Bóhuái 姜伯淮 stele and the Liú Zhènnán 劉鎮南 stele are decidedly not Cài’s compositions, and the chronological evidence checks out — Zhāng Pǔ’s deletion of the Liú stele is well-grounded. But Zhāng’s identification of Bóhuái as Cài’s senior, on whose tomb Cài must have written, leads him to emend the date “second year of Jiàn’ān” (=197) to “second year of Xīpíng” (=173), which approaches arbitrary editing.

Zhāng’s text further carries a Memorial Recommending Dǒng Zhuō 薦董卓表 which the Chénliú edition does not. The Hòu Hàn shū of Fàn Yè does not record this incident, and some have suspected the memorial to be a forgery. But Liú Kèzhuāng’s 劉克莊 Hòucūn shī huà 後村詩話 already groups it with Yáng Xióng’s Jù Qín měi xīn as a target for criticism — so the Sòng recension actually carried the text, and it does not begin with Zhāng. Aside from Yuán Yè 袁曄 and Fàn Yè, there were the Hòu Hàn histories of Xiè Chéng 謝承, Xuē Yíng 薛瑩, Zhāng Fán 張璠, Huà Jiào 華嶠, Xiè Shěn 謝沈, Yuán Sōng 袁崧, and Sīmǎ Biāo 司馬彪 — all now lost — so it is hard to declare an event impossible merely because the surviving histories do not record it. Or perhaps the new edition cut at Chénliú, out of fellow-county feeling, wished to suppress the memorial’s traces and so deleted it. Reverently collated, eleventh month of Qiánlóng 45 (= 1780). Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The historical Cài Yōng collection is attested in successive bibliographies: Suíshū jīngjí zhì records 12 juǎn (with a Liáng-era ancestor of 20), Jiù Tángshū yìwén zhì gives 20 juǎn, Sòng zhì only 10 juǎn. The Sìkù base text is a Yōngzhèng-era (1723–1735) Chénliú-county re-cutting whose yuán xù by the Tiānshèng-era (北宋, 天聖癸亥 = 1023) editor Ōu Jìng 歐静 of Píngyáng 平陽, dated “after the eighth day of yúyuè in the guǐhài year of Tiānshèng,” is incorporated into the front matter. Ōu argues that the present 10-juǎn / 64-piece text already embeds non-Cài material (the Wǔ Huáng hymn celebrating Cáo Wèi, the Cí Qiáo Tàiwèi invoking Cào Cāo as Wèi Wáng, the Jiāng Bóhuái and Liú Zhènnán steles whose dates fall after Cài’s execution in 192) and that wider source-collation is needed.

The Sìkù compilers (Jì Yún 紀昀 et al., date of submission Qiánlóng 45 / 1780) accept Ōu’s chronological filter against the JiāngLiú steles but reject Zhāng Pǔ’s 張溥 (1602–1641) emendations in his HànWèi liùcháo bǎisān jiā jí 漢魏六朝百三家集 — including Zhāng’s regrooming of “Jiàn’ān 2” (= 197) to “Xīpíng 2” (= 173) on the Jiāng Bóhuái stele — as overreaching. They also defend the inclusion of the Memorial Recommending Dǒng Zhuō 薦董卓表 against accusations of forgery, by appeal to Liú Kèzhuāng’s 劉克莊 (1187–1269) Hòucūn shī huà mention.

The dating bracket on this work-note (1723–1735) reflects the Yōngzhèng-era Chénliú edition that the WYG took as base text. Readers needing the Hàn original should treat the present six-juǎn recension as a Sìkù-vetted version of a much-troubled transmission: at every layer (Liáng → Suí → Táng → Sòng → Míng → Yōngzhèng → Qiánlóng), pieces have been added, lost, or relabeled, and Cài’s authentic corpus must be reconstructed piece by piece. The signature pieces still secure to him are the Shì huì 釋誨, the Jīnshāngmén Memorial on Calamities and Anomalies 金商門答灾異疏, the Dú duàn 獨斷, the Nǚ xùn 女訓, and the major stelae (Chén Tàiqiū 陳太丘 et al.) preserved in the Wén xuǎn.

Translations and research

  • Wáng Yùndù 王雲度. 1992. Liú Xiàng píng zhuàn — fù Cài Yōng píng zhuàn 劉向評傳 — 附蔡邕評傳. Nánjīng Dàxué chūbǎn shè (Zhōngguó sīxiǎngjiā píngzhuàn cóngshū). Standard PRC critical biography.
  • Donald Harper. 2014. “Daybooks in the Context of Late Warring States, Qin, and Han Manuscript Culture,” in M. Kalinowski, ed., Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China, Brill — uses Cài’s Dú duàn extensively.
  • Enno Giele. 2006. Imperial Decision-Making and Communication in Early China: A Study of Cai Yong’s “Duduan.” Harrassowitz. The standard English-language monograph on the Dú duàn attributed to Cài.
  • Pèi Pǔxián 裴普賢. 1986. Cài Yōng yán jiū 蔡邕研究. Wénjīn — older but still cited.
  • Roger Greatrex. 1994. “An Early Western Han Synonymicon: The Fuyang Copy of the Cang jie pian” (relevant to Cài’s role in Eastern-Hàn classics-and-script tradition), in Outstretched Leaves on his Bamboo Staff: Studies in Honour of Göran Malmqvist.
  • Wáng Yùn-bǎo 王雲寶, ed. 2002. Cài Yōng jí biān nián jiào zhù 蔡邕集編年校注. 2 vols. Hébĕi jiàoyù — the principal modern critical edition.

Other points of interest

The Yōngzhèng Chénliú-cut edition is famously partisan toward its native son. Whether the deletion of the Memorial Recommending Dǒng Zhuō 薦董卓表 reflects philological judgment or local-pride censorship is exactly the question the tíyào compilers raise — and they decline to settle it, leaving both possibilities on the page. As an editorial witness, the tíyào is a small case study of Sìkù-style “balanced” hedging.

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