Wáng Zǐ’ān jí 王子安集
Collected Works of Wáng Zǐ-ān (Wáng Bó) by 王勃 (撰), 張燮 (輯編)
About the work
Wáng Zǐān jí 王子安集 in 16 juǎn is the late-Míng recompilation of the surviving writings of Wáng Bó 王勃 (650–676), eldest of the Sì jié 四傑 (“Four Outstanding Ones”) of the early-Táng court. It is an editorial reconstruction by Zhāng Xiè 張燮 (1574–1640) of Lóngxī 龍溪, Fújiàn, prepared in his Wànlì 萬曆 qīshí èr jiā jí 七十二家集 series (printed ca. 1622). The collection collects from earlier TángSòng anthologies (especially Wén yuàn yīng huá 文苑英華 and Tángshī jí 唐詩集), surviving Sòng MS witnesses, and the SōngYuán lèishū about 90 fù, shī, and prose pieces — most famously the Téngwánggé xù 滕王閣序 (“Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Téng”), reckoned by the Sòng critics to be the single greatest piece of piánwén 駢文 (parallel prose) in the Táng tradition. Wáng Bó’s substantial Lúnyǔ commentary (Lúnyǔ zhǐ jiě 論語指解), his sub-commentary on the Zhōuyì, and his Hànshū zhǐxiá 漢書指瑕 are recorded in Sòng catalogs but not transmitted to Zhāng Xiè.
Tiyao
No tíyào in source. The KR4c0003 file in this corpus is digitized from the SBCK base, which carries the TOC and the body text but not the Sìkù tíyào. The Sìkù WYG 16-juǎn tíyào (V1065.3) survives in the Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào and may be consulted there.
Abstract
The historical WángBó corpus — recorded in the Jiù Tángshū yìwén zhì at 30 juǎn and the Xīn Tángshū yìwén zhì at 16 juǎn — was already badly attenuated by the Sòng. The Sòng-period Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 records 30 juǎn of Wáng Bó wén 王勃文 plus 5 juǎn of Wáng Bó shī, but the Sòngshǐ yìwén zhì shrinks the figure. The transmitted YuánMíng version was a 12-juǎn recension of dubious provenance, conflated with much spurious matter; Zhāng Xiè’s editorial achievement was to crosscheck it against Wén yuàn yīng huá and the surviving lèishū and recover something closer to a Táng-period selection. The Sìkù compilers received Zhāng’s 16-juǎn recension and printed it without further reorganization. The Qīng scholar Jiǎng Qīngyì 蔣清翊 (fl. 1880) later produced a Wáng Zǐān jí zhù 王子安集注 in 20 juǎn, the standard annotated edition still in use.
Wáng Bó (650–676; the catalog meta gives 648–675, but CBDB and modern scholarly consensus follow 650–676 — accepted here) was a child prodigy: he passed the jiēxiào liánfāng 揭孝廉方 examination at fifteen, and was cháosànláng 朝散郎 by sixteen. Two episodes ended his official career: a satirical mock-edict against the cock-fighting prince Pèiwáng 沛王 lost him his court post in 668; and a pardoned but scandalous murder charge during his Sìchuān 四川 sojourn (involving a runaway slave he had concealed and then killed) cost his father his magistracy. Wáng was on his way to visit his exiled father in Jiāozhǐ 交趾 (modern north Vietnam) when he drowned in the South Sea in Shàngyuán 上元 3 (676), aged 26. The Téngwánggé xù — composed extempore at a banquet given by Yán Bóyú 閻伯嶼, prefect of Hóngzhōu 洪州, on the zhòngyáng 重陽 festival of Shàngyuán 2 (675) — became the centerpiece of his collection and one of the most-memorized prose pieces of the gǔwén canon, on the strength of its bipartite balance, its remarkable ride of allusions, and the legendary “Luòxiá yǔ gūwù qí fēi, qiūshuǐ gòng chángtiān yī sè 落霞與孤騖齊飛秋水共長天一色” couplet.
Translations and research
- He Lin 何林天, ed. 1992. Chóng dìng xīn jiào Wáng Zǐ-ān jí 重訂新校王子安集. Shānxī rénmín. The principal modern Chinese critical edition.
- Jiǎng Qīngyì 蔣清翊. 1885. Wáng Zǐ-ān jí zhù 王子安集注. The standard Qīng-period annotated edition; reprint Shànghǎi gǔjí 1995.
- Stephen Owen. 1977. The Poetry of the Early T’ang. Yale UP. Substantial chapter on Wáng Bó and the Four Outstanding Ones.
- Paul W. Kroll. 2002. “On a Quatrain by Wang Po.” In Recarving the Dragon: Understanding Chinese Poetics, Olomouc.
- David R. Knechtges. 1996. “How to View a Mountain in Medieval China.” Annotated translation of selected fù.
- Tian Xiaofei 田曉菲. 2007. Beacon Fire and Shooting Star. Harvard. Discussion of the late-Suí / early-Táng literary background.
Other points of interest
The poems and prose ascribed to Wáng Bó in the modern critical editions exceed the Sìkù WYG 16-juǎn count by a substantial margin: in 1900 a Japanese MS held at the Shōsō-in 正倉院 was identified as a 9th-century Táng manuscript fragment of Wáng Bó jí, and the 1980s discovery of a fuller MS at Tōchōji 東長寺 (Hakata, Japan) and at the Shōsō-in archive added several dozen previously unattested pieces. Both manuscripts were edited by Hé Líntiān 何林天 in the 1992 Chóngdìng xīnjiào edition, which is now the standard reference. The Sìkù recension printed in WYG therefore represents a pre-1900 state of the textual evidence.
Links
- Wang Bo (Wikipedia)
- Wang Bo (Wikidata Q713108)
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §54 (Tang literature).