Cāngzhōu chénfǒu biān 滄洲塵缶編
The Cāngzhōu Dust-on-the-Clay-Jar Compilation by 程公許 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A re-assembled collection of the verse and prose of Chéng Gōngxǔ 程公許 (c. 1182–c. 1251), prefect-grade Southern-Sòng official from Sìchuān, zì Jìyǔ 季與, hào Cāngzhōu 滄洲. The title Chénfǒu 塵缶 (“dust on the clay jar”) quotes Lù Jī 陸機’s anxious self-image of a humble drum-pot fearing to drown out the bell-and-jade of greater music — an act of authorial humility characteristic of late-Sòng self-edited collections. Compiled by the author himself in 1241 (Chúnyòu 1) on a one-office-equals-one-juan principle while serving as Mìshū shǎojiān 秘書少監; the original arrangement was destroyed when the Sìkù editors had to extract the surviving material out of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 and re-classify it.
Tiyao
We respectfully observe that the Cāngzhōu chénfǒu biān in fourteen juan was composed by Chéng Gōngxǔ of the Sòng. Gōngxǔ’s zì was Jìyǔ, alternative zì Xīyǐng 希穎; a native of Xuānhuà in Xùzhōu. He took the jìnshì in the fourth year of Jiādìng (1211); held a succession of offices culminating in quán Xíngbù shàngshū and Bǎozhāng gé xuéshì, with a tenure as prefect of Lóngxīng. His career is in his Sòng shǐ biography. Gōngxǔ kept himself in unaffected simplicity but at court was upright and bold-spoken, refusing to flinch before the favourites; he was repeatedly attacked by the petty cliques and could not stay long at his post — but the age recognised his integrity, his reputation never resting on literary polish. Yet what he wrote has a magnificent sweep, surging up like a wind or springing forth like a fountain, and once he set brush to paper he could often not stop. His biography records that he composed a Chénfǒu wénjí 塵缶文集, Nèiwài zhì zòuyì 内外制奏議, Fèngcháng nǐshì 奉常擬諡, Yèyuán jiǎozòu 掖垣繳奏, and the Jīnhuá jiǎngyì 金華講義 Jìn gùshì 進故事, all current in his time; today these are all scattered and lost. Only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves verse and prose by Gōngxǔ under the title Cāngzhōu chénfǒu biān; there is also one self-preface by Gōngxǔ, signed at the end of Chúnyòu 1, the xīnchǒu year (1241), which is when, while serving as Mìshū shǎojiān, he edited his own collection. Examining the matters Gōngxǔ argued in his time — the Yìngzhào yánshì 應詔言事, the Qǐ liú Dù Fàn 乞留杜範, the Qǐ huán yánguān 乞還言官, the Yán Shǔshì sì tiáo 言蜀事四條, the Qǐng juān hédí 請蠲和糴, the Qǐ bà Gōng Jīxiān 乞罷龔基先, the Lùn Xú Yuánjié shì 論徐元杰事 and other memorials — the Sòng shǐ extracts the gist of each in his biography; the full texts must have been even more searching and detailed, but on examining the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn none of them appears. This is presumably because the Nèiwài zhì, zòuyì and other compilations all circulated separately at the time, and now that only the wénjí survives the rest is no longer to be seen. As for the gǔjīntǐ verse, according to his self-preface he had used the one-office-equals-one-juan principle, but the table of contents has been broken up by the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn compilers and the original sequence is no longer recoverable. Of his záwén there are only a handful of xù, jì, and cèwèn — far from a complete dìzhì. We have for now collated the surviving pieces, sorted them by genre and re-arranged them in fourteen juan. By and large his manner is to set down his thought directly, exhausting what he wished to say; though it is not the work of a careful artisan, the sense is luminous and the argument substantial — a discourse from a man of true principle, set above mere ornamental phrase-cutting. Reverently collated, ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-chief Jì Yún, with Lù Xīxióng and Sūn Shìyì; chief proofreader Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Cāngzhōu chénfǒu biān survives only because the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserved a substantial run of Chéng Gōngxǔ’s verse and prose; the original printed collection (along with his Nèiwài zhì, zòuyì, Fèngcháng nǐshì, Yèyuán jiǎozòu, Jīnhuá jiǎngyì and Jìn gùshì) was lost between his lifetime and the early Míng — a typical pattern for mid-thirteenth-century Sìchuān officials, whose collections were dispersed in the Mongol wars. The Sìkù recension of fourteen juan is therefore a re-assembly, not a transmission. The hardest evidence for dating is the author’s own zìxù of Chúnyòu 1 (the xīnchǒu year, 1241) signed at his post in the chīwén táng of the Hànyuàn 翰苑摛文堂. The zìxù is followed in the Sìkù edition by a postface from the redoubtable Wáng Mài 王邁 (Qúxuān 臞軒), comparing Chéng’s poetic voice to Táo Qián and Dù Fǔ. The tíyào notes — and modern editors have confirmed — that the absence of the zòuyì texts is structural rather than incidental: those memorials had circulated as separate books in Chéng’s lifetime, and only the wénjí was caught by the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn net. The standard date ‘1211’ in the catalog meta refers to his jìnshì year and is not the composition date of the collection; the notBefore / notAfter values here follow the self-preface (1241) for the received recension. Sòng shǐ biography 415; CBDB id 13807. Wilkinson’s Chinese History: A New Manual does not name this title individually but treats the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery process generally.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. Chéng Gōngxǔ figures in modern scholarship as a Sìchuān bureaucrat-poet of the Lǐzōng era and as one of the political associates of Dù Fàn 杜範; see e.g. James T. C. Liu’s general treatments of mid-Southern Sòng court politics. There is no critical edition or monograph dedicated to the Cāngzhōu chén-fǒu biān itself.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū tíyào (juan 162, jíbù biéjí lèi sān).
- Sòng shǐ 415 (biography of Chéng Gōngxǔ).
- CBDB id 13807.