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璇璣圖詩讀法

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Text ID
KR4b0010
Date
1573–1620
Dynasty
明

Xuánjī tú shī dú fǎ 璇璣圖詩讀法

Method for Reading the Poems of the Armillary Diagram by 康萬民 (撰), 蘇蕙 (attributed)

About the work

Xuánjī tú shī dú fǎ 璇璣圖詩讀法 (also written 璿璣圖詩讀法) in two juǎn is a Míng-dynasty exegetical study of the famous Xuánjī tú 璇璣圖 (“Armillary Diagram”) palindrome, traditionally ascribed to the Former Qín 前秦 woman writer Sū Huì 蘇蕙 (style Ruòlán 若蘭, late 4th c.). The diagram is an 840-character square brocade-poem that yields readable verses in three-, four-, five-, six-, and seven-character meters when read in any direction (right-to-left, top-to-bottom, diagonally, in spirals etc.) — the canonical exemplar of huíwén 回文 (reverse-reading) verse in Chinese tradition. Kāng Wànmín 康萬民 of Wǔgōng 武功 (Shǎnxī), grandson of the Míng scholar Kāng Hǎi 康海, building on the earlier exegetical work of the SòngYuán monk Qǐzōng 起宗, identified 4,206 readings (Qǐzōng’s 3,752 + Kāng’s additional 454) and an extra sub-diagram inside the third diagram, totaling 7,958 readable poems. The work is conventionally classified under biéjí on the strength of Sū Huì’s putative authorship, though its real interest is the editorial-cum-mathematical dú fǎ (reading method).

Tiyao

Xuánjī tú shī dú fǎ in one juǎn, by Kāng Wànmín 康萬民 of the Míng. Wànmín, zì Wúlì 無沴, of Wǔgōng 武功, grandson of [Kāng] Hǎi 海. Sū Huì’s brocade-woven huíwén 蘇蕙織錦回文 has been a celebrated tale from antiquity to the present. Liú Xié’s Wén xīn diāo lóng 文心雕龍 says huíwén arose with Dào Yuán 道原 — so in QíLiáng times the diagram itself was not yet seen. The diagram and the preface attributed to Empress WǔZhào 武曌 (Wǔ Zétiān) cannot have a documented origin.

The Jìn shū lièn nǚ zhuàn records that Fú Jiān’s 苻堅 Qínzhōu cìshǐ Dòu Tāo 竇滔, exiled to the liúshā 流沙 for an offense, had his wife Sū Huì weave a brocade huíwén spiral diagram-poem; the Jìn shū says nothing of Tāo garrisoning Xiāngyáng 襄陽 or of the slander-affair with Zhào Yángtái 趙陽臺. Furthermore, the Jìn shū Xiào Wǔdì jì says that in Tàiyuán 4 (379) Fú Pī 苻丕 fell on Xiāngyáng; the Fú Jiān zǎi jì 苻堅載記 records that Fú appointed his Zhōnglěi (Middle Rampart) Liáng Chéng 梁成 Nán Zhōnglánjiāng dūdū JīngYángzhōu zhū jūn shì Jīngzhōu cìshǐ lǐng hù Nánmán xiàowèi, with ten thousand troops to garrison Xiāngyáng — also nothing about Dòu Tāo. So the preface attributed to Wǔ Zétiān is at variance with the Jìn shū in every detail. The preface is dated Rúyì 1, fifth month, first day (= 692 CE) — by which time the Jìn shū (compiled 644–646) had long been complete, so such a contradiction cannot be authentic; and the prose style is enervated, not at all in the manner of early-Táng. The preface is suspected to be a later forgery.

But the Jìn shū does say the diagram was 840 characters, readable in spirals — much of the verse is not transcribed there — so in early Táng times the diagram itself did exist. Lǐ Shàn’s Wén xuǎn annotation on Jiāng Yān’s Bié fù 別賦 quotes the Zhī jǐn huí wén shī xù 織錦回文詩序: “Dòu Tāo of Qínzhōu was exiled to the desert; his wife Sūshì in Qínzhōu, parting from him, swore he would not remarry; yet at the desert he took a new wife. Sūshì wove this brocade huíwén poem to send him; he was a man of the Fú regime.” This account agrees with the Jìn shū. Therefore the poem is genuine but the preface is forged. Huáng Tíngjiān’s poetry already uses the liánbō huǐ guò Yángtái mù yǔ 連波悔過陽臺暮雨 incident, so the forgery is at the latest pre-Sòng.

The preface says the brocade was eight cùn on each side, with over two hundred poem-titles totaling over eight hundred characters, and that whichever way one reads it produces sentences. Huáng Bósī’s 黃伯思 Dōngguān yú lùn 東觀餘論 says the diagram was originally five-color-coded to distinguish three-, five-, and seven-character meters; later transmissions stopped using color, so the line-readings became unclear. Huáng once obtained the Táng Shēn Xián 申諴 explanation at the home of Wáng Jìnyù 王晉玉 and only then understood it; the Shēn text is now lost. The monk Qǐzōng 起宗 worked out from his own mind a schema yielding 3,752 poems in three-, four-, five-, six-, and seven-character meters, divided into seven diagrams. Wànmín further explored, added one diagram inside the third, and additional readings to 4,206 poems; combined with Qǐzōng’s, the total is 7,958. The two compilations are now combined into the present edition.

If one only seeks rhyming concord and grammatical sentencing without asking what the yì (sense) is, one can keep on twisting and turning, expanding endlessly. To insist that this is what Sū Ruòlán originally meant is unbelievable. Keep it as an antique amusement of the literary garden.

Qǐzōng’s identity is uncertain. Wáng Shìzhēn’s 王士禎 Jū yì lù 居易錄 records the Xuánjī tú manuscript by Zhào Mèngfǔ’s 趙孟頫 wife Guǎn Dàoshēng 管道昇, which already calls Qǐzōng Dàorén 道人 — placing him between the late Sòng and Yuán. Reverently collated, fourth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Xuánjī tú itself — an 840-character (28 × 28-square-with-central-character or 29 × 29) brocade-woven palindrome — is one of the most elaborated artifacts of the Chinese huíwén tradition. The historical core: in the late Former Qín (Fú Jiān regime, ca. 360s–370s), Sū Huì 蘇蕙 of Wǔgōng (style Ruòlán 若蘭) wove the brocade poem to recall her exiled husband Dòu Tāo 竇滔. The original is recorded in Jìn shū lièn nǚ zhuàn and Lǐ Shàn’s Wén xuǎn commentary. The preface attributed to Empress Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 (Rúyì 1 / 692) is a known forgery (mismatched against Jìn shū content, anachronistic detail, and weak prose style — the Sìkù compilers’ clear verdict).

The exegetical tradition runs through (a) the lost Táng Shēn Xián 申諴 explanation; (b) Sòng-period color-coded re-presentations recorded by Huáng Bósī 黃伯思 (1079–1118) in Dōngguān yú lùn; (c) the SòngYuán monk Qǐzōng 起宗 Dàorén’s exegesis, which yielded 3,752 readings in seven sub-diagrams; (d) Kāng Wànmín 康萬民 of Wǔgōng (fl. Wànlì 萬曆 era), who found 4,206 readings, added a sub-diagram inside the third diagram, and combined his work with Qǐzōng’s into this two-juǎn compendium of 7,958 total readings.

The dating window for the recension is the late Wànlì period (1573–1620); Kāng Wànmín belongs to the same WǔgōngKāng family as the Míng scholar Kāng Hǎi 康海 (1475–1540) — he is identified as Hǎi’s grandson. The work falls in biéjí division because of Sū Huì’s putative authorship of the underlying poem. The Sìkù compilers’ final verdict is gentle skepticism: keep the volume as an yì lín zhī wán 藝林之玩 — an amusement of the literary garden — without believing that 7,958 readings represent the original intent.

Translations and research

  • David Schaberg. 2017. “Pre-Imperial Sources for the Concept of Wen 文,” in Reading Early Chinese Texts as Cultural Artifacts, Brill — touches on huí-wén as an extreme case of the wén / pattern aesthetic.
  • Hans H. Frankel. 1986. “Cai Yan and the Poems Attributed to Her.” CLEAR 5: 133–56 — useful comparison piece on attributed female authorship.
  • David R. Knechtges. 2014. Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide. Brill, s.v. Sū Huì — short reference article.
  • Lǐ Wēi 李偉. 2009. Sū Huì hé tā de xuán-jī tú 蘇蕙和她的璇璣圖. Sān-Qín — modern Chinese popular biography.
  • Lín Méicūn 林梅村. 2008. “Sū Huì xuán-jī tú zhī yán jiū” 蘇蕙璇璣圖之研究, in Tāng Lì-shēng xué shù lùn cóng — substantial scholarly article.

Other points of interest

This is the only work in KR4b cataloged primarily for its diagram and reading-method rather than for an author’s individual jí in the conventional sense — a striking case study of the elasticity of the biéjí category in the MíngQīng bùmù. The diagram’s mathematical-combinatorial complexity has invited modern interest from computational-literary studies, where the Xuánjī tú sits alongside Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes and the Oulipo experiments as a foundational artifact of constraint-based composition.

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