Húshān sìliù 壺山四六
Parallel-Prose from Hú-shān attributed to 方大琮; 闕名 (撰)
About the work
Húshān sìliù is a 1-juǎn anonymous collection of more than eighty sìliù (parallel-prose) congratulatory and presentation pieces (謝表, 啟劄). The Sìkù editors, identifying four Southern Sòng literati who used the hào Húshān 壺山, concluded that internal evidence — especially the opening “Chú Fújiàn cáo xiè Qiáo píngzhāng qǐ” 除福建漕謝喬平章啟 and a phrase referring to “the punishment due for inappropriate speech” matching the zhāzǐ on the case of King Jǐ — points to Fāng Dàcóng 方大琮 (1183–1247) as the likely author. They append it as fùlù to Fāng’s own Tiěān jí KR4d0327, with the caveat that of the more than eighty pieces here, most are not in the Tiěān jí itself, while the latter contains 64 sìliù pieces almost wholly different — the Sìkù editors find the discrepancy puzzling and treat the attribution as probable but unproven.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: the Húshān sìliù in 1 juǎn does not record the compiler’s name. Examining the matter, we find four Southern Sòng literati styled Húshān: (1) Sòng Zìxùn 宋自遜, zì Qiānfù — Fāng Huí’s Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ says he is the man “who called on Jiǎ Sìdào and got 200,000 in paper-money to build a fine residence”; (2) Xú Shīrén 徐師仁, zì Cúnshèng, whose Húshān jí in 70 juǎn is recorded in the Xù wénxiàn tōngkǎo; (3) Huáng Shìyì 黃士毅, zì Zǐhóng, who emigrated from Pǔ to Wú but, unwilling to forget his birthplace, took the hào Húshān, and was a disciple of Zhū Xī, having compiled and printed his yǔlù recordings; and (4) Fāng Dàcóng 方大琮 himself. Of these, Xú Shīrén’s life is no longer recoverable; Sòng Zìxùn was a Jiānghú wandering visitor, never holding office; Huáng Shìyì was on the Dàoxué roll by virtue of his master’s protection but held no high office; only Dàcóng once held the office of Fújiàn Transport Commissioner — and the very first piece here is a xiè upon being made Fújiàn cáo. The phrase “the punishment due for inappropriate speech” found within likewise matches Dàcóng’s shū on the dethronement of King Jǐ (King Wèi). It seems likely the work is by Dàcóng. However, the present Tiěān jí, edited by his clansman Liángyǒng 良永 et al., includes 64 sìliù qǐzhā mostly different from these; the present 80-some pieces actually exceed the count there — were Liángyǒng et al. to have known of these, they would surely have included them. Perhaps they did not see this volume? Granted, the parallel matching is fitting and the cutting-and-trimming skilled — among Southern Sòng piántǐ it can rank as a competent hand. We pass on the doubt as a doubt, and provisionally append it after the Tiěān jí for reference. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 45 (1780), 3rd month. Chief Editors (subject) Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief Collator (subject) Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The 80-odd parallel-prose congratulatory letters and presentation pieces here are addressed to a wide spectrum of Sòng grandees of the 1230s–1240s — Qiáo Xíngjiǎn 喬行簡, Lǐ Zōngmiǎn 李宗勉, Shǐ Sōngzhī 史嵩之 (the “Shǐ chéngxiàng”), Zhèng Qīngzhī 鄤清之, Wèi Liǎowēng’s circle, Lǐ Xìngchuán 李性傳, Xú Róngsǒu 徐榮叟, plus a long sequence of provincial colleagues in Fújiàn — and so the collection, if Fāng Dàcóng’s, gives an unusually fine-grained record of the social and bureaucratic networks of the late-Jiāxī and Chúnyòu periods. The Sìkù attribution to Fāng Dàcóng remains conjectural; the discrepancy between this volume and the Tiěān jí’s parallel-prose section is the principal puzzle (one possibility, not raised by the Sìkù: this collection circulated independently among Fāng’s friends and never reached his nephew Liángyǒng’s compiling desk). The dating bracket spans Fāng Dàcóng’s death (1247) to the Sìkù collation (1780). For the conventional Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, “Sìliù” 四六 (“four-and-six”) names the parallel-prose form built on alternating four- and six-character lines that dominated official congratulatory writing in the Sòng.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work is principally consulted in connection with Fāng Dà-cóng and with the late-Sòng sì-liù tradition.
Other points of interest
The pairing of this anonymous Húshān sìliù with Fāng Dàcóng’s Tiěān jí KR4d0327 makes the two texts a useful comparative case for the difficult question of Sòng biéjí compilation: how author-compiled, family-compiled, and unattached parallel-prose volumes circulated alongside one another, and how the Sìkù editors handled overlapping but non-identical witnesses.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.1; §28.7 (sìliù as a Sòng genre).