Yuándū jí 緣督集
The Hugging-the-Center Collection by 曾丰 (撰)
About the work
Yuándū jí 緣督集 in 20 juǎn is the Sìkù-reconstructed recension of the biéjí of Zēng Fēng 曾丰 (b. 1142, zì Yòudù 幼度, of Lèān 樂安 in Fǔzhōu 撫州, modern Jiāngxī), jìnshì of Qiándào 5 (1169), who reached Déqìng tàishǒu (prefect of Déqìng) and the honorific cháosàn dàfū. (The catalog meta gives the author as 曾耒; this is a typographical slip — the work’s Sìkù tíyào and Yú Jí’s 虞集 Yuánxù both name him 曾丰, zì Yòudù, the same person attested in the Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì and CBDB id 15571.) The title Yuándū derives from Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 (“緣督以為經” — “to follow the central artery as a constant”); the work is also known as Zūnzhāi jí 樽齋集 from the studio-name Zēng adopted in old age.
Tiyao
The Yuándū jí in 20 juǎn was composed by Zēng Fēng of the Sòng. Fēng’s zì was Yòudù, a man of Lèān. Jìnshì of Qiándào 5; held office to Déqìng tàishǒu. Zhēn Déxiù, when young, once received instruction from Fēng; once Zhēn entered the executive, [he] memorialized to take the collection into the Chóngwén sìbù, and at the time it was once block-printed and circulated. Years passed and it ceased to transmit. In the Yuán Yuántǒng era (1333–1335), Fēng’s fifth-generation descendant Déān purchased the surviving collection and obtained 40 juǎn; the Hànlín Academician Yú Jí prefaced it, saying: “His qì is firm and his yì strict, his diction direct and his principle prevailing — drawn from the wonder of the Yì and the splendor of the Shī”; that prose now appears in the Dàoyuán xuégǔlù. However, at the time the carving-to-blocks was attempted but not completed. By the Míng Jiājìng era, Zhānshì Jiǎng — Jiǎng — for the first time selected and recorded 12 juǎn and cut them at Xuānchéng. The end-juǎn has Wàn Qí’s 萬錡 postface saying he picked the most outstanding ones to preserve. Now examining the divisions: in the five-syllable páilǜ category there is only one or two páilǜ — the rest are all five-syllable shī; in the seven-syllable páilǜ category they are all seven-syllable ancient-style shī — not one is lǜ. Even the distinction between ancient and modern style was not made. Therefore the perversity of his selection-and-rejection is broadly knowable. — In sum, JiǎngJiǎng followed Luó Hóngxiān in his roving days, occupying himself with discussion of xīnxué (mind-learning); the way of wénzhāng was not what he deeply researched. As a result, Fēng’s flower-and-essence was scattered-and-lost through this very selection — most lamentable. Only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn, compiled at the start of the Míng, still saw Fēng’s original collection: what it gathered is several times more than the cut-edition. Now, relying upon it for supplementation, [the work] is restored almost to its old appearance — once lost, again preserved: this too may be called fortunate. Fēng’s official career was not distinguished; he prided himself rather on his writings. In the collection such pieces as Liùjīng lùn — root-foundation deep-and-far — uncover what Mǎ [Róng] and Zhèng [Xuán] and the various rú did not bring forth. The other shī and wén occasionally have a fondness for the strange; in sum they are all words of substance — not what shallow ones can attain to. He too is one Southern-Sòng writer. In old age Fēng built a chamber and self-named [his studio] Zūnzhāi; therefore this compilation is also called Zūnzhāi jí — seen in the Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì. Now we follow Yú Jí’s expanded-version, taking Yuándū as the name. The collection’s preface declares 40 juǎn in all, while the Sòngzhì records 14 juǎn — perhaps the cutting-and-transcription erred and inverted the figure. Now the original division-of-content is no longer to be seen: respectfully according to the surviving genres we divide and arrange them, in all setting them out as 20 juǎn. Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 9th month, respectfully collated.
Abstract
Zēng Fēng’s Yuándū jí is a textbook case of multi-stage biéjí survival in the late-imperial period. The original 40-juǎn collection (per Yú Jí’s Yuántǒng-era preface) was nearly lost between Yuán and Míng. The Míng Jiājìng (1522–1566) JiǎngJiǎng 詹講 cut at Xuānchéng preserved only 12 juǎn — and (per the Sìkù editors’ withering critique) chose the worst pieces, mishandling even basic genre distinctions between gǔtǐ and jìntǐ shī. The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn (1408) had still seen the original 40-juǎn recension and preserved several times more material than the Jiājìng cut. The Sìkù editors recovered this dàdiǎn material, supplemented the cut, and rearranged everything by genre into the present 20 juǎn.
The dating bracket is anchored by Zēng’s jìnshì year (1169) through 1224, the death year of his pupil Zhēn Déxiù 真德秀 真德秀 (whose service as 參知政事 — Cānzhī zhèngshì — is the latest verifiable contact-point in the tíyào; Zēng’s own death year is unrecorded but he was alive late enough to teach the young Zhēn Déxiù who was jìnshì 1199). Zēng’s Liùjīng lùn — embedded in this collection — is praised by the Sìkù editors as superior even to Mǎ Róng 馬融 and Zhèng Xuán 鄭玄 on selected points, marking him as a serious classicist as well as a biéjí author.
Translations and research
- de Weerdt, Hilde. 2007. Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127–1279). Harvard. Discusses Zhēn Dé-xiù’s intellectual genealogy, including teachers like Zēng Fēng.
- No further substantial Western-language secondary literature located on Zēng Fēng directly.
Other points of interest
The catalog-meta error 曾耒 for 曾丰 — a misreading of two visually similar characters — is a useful reminder that even structured catalog metadata for the Sìkù corpus contains transmission errors that must be checked against the source 提要 itself. The Sìkù editors’ rare ad-hominem aside on JiǎngJiǎng’s incompetence (preserving a xīnxué-vs-wénzhāng polemic) makes this tíyào one of the more entertaining in the jíbù.