Hánsōnggé jí 寒松閣集
Collection of the Cold-Pine Pavilion by 詹初 (撰)
About the work
A three-juàn compilation in which philosophical essays (Yìxué 翼學, Xù jīng 序經, Xù lùnyǔ shàngxiàpiānyì 序論語上下篇義), a fifty-five-entry “daily record” (mùlù, divided upper/lower), and 49 gǔjīntǐ poems are gathered together with related correspondence. The text is attributed to the Southern Sòng Tàixué recorder Zhān Chū 詹初, who clashed with Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄 in the late Qìngyuán/Jiātài era; but the surviving recension is a Míng Jiājìng (Jiājìng 38, 1559) reprint by Zhān’s descendants Zhān Jǐngfèng 詹景鳯 and Zhān Bì 詹璧, retitled (the original was the Liútáng jí 流塘集). The Sìkù editors flag uncertainty about the work’s authenticity.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Hánsōnggé jí, three juàn, was composed by Zhān Chū of the Sòng. Chū, zì Yǐyuán 以元, was a man of Xiūníng 休寧. He began as a county constable, then on recommendation entered the Imperial University as Recorder. He once submitted the memorial Qǐ biàn xiézhèng shū 乞辨邪正疏, antagonized Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄, and was dismissed and returned home. The place of his residence was called Liútánglǐ 流塘里, so his prose and verse were named the Liútáng jí. Neither the Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì nor the various book-catalogues record it. The colophon by his son Yáng 陽 says: there had originally been twenty-one juàn, later destroyed by fire; Yáng begged a damaged copy from a clansman and brought it home for safekeeping. There are also colophons by his sixteenth-generation descendant Jǐngfèng and seventeenth-generation Bì, stating that in Jiājìng wùwǔ (1559) Jǐngfèng and the others first carved it on woodblocks, renaming it the Hánsōnggé jí after his place of study, and dividing it into three juàn: the first juàn contains the ten chapters of the Yìxué, treating in summary the great matters of learning, and two prefaces to the Classics — the Xù jīng and the Xù lùnyǔ shàngxiàpiānyì, the latter modelled on the Xùguà of the Yì; the second juàn is a fifty-five-entry catalog (mùlù) divided into upper and lower sections; the third juàn contains 49 ancient and modern verse compositions, with letters appended. At the end are colophons by Ráo Lǔ 饒魯 and Lǐ Shìyīng 李士英 of the Sòng and by Tián Yí 田怡 and others of the Jiājìng period of the Míng. According to Bì’s colophon, the carved blocks of the collection number forty-one; the present recension matches this in plate-count, so it is evidently transcribed from the printed text.
In substance: in the discussion of the Tǐrén 體仁 (“Embodying Humaneness”) with Zhān Tǐrén 詹體仁, [Zhān Chū] picks out from his Yǒngshuǐ poem the line “the rustic sees only purity, not water; yet he says: ‘no water means no purity’” 野人見清不見水,却道無水亦無清, and gravely doubts it — the line not free from a Chán cast. Yet in the chapter “the Great Way” of the Yìxué, treating the doctrine of vessel/principle and being/non-being, and in the first entry of the Rìlù on the two-stage cultivation of “the place where one stops” and “the work of putting it to use”, he repeatedly assails Buddhism and Daoism. His daily record contains the question on Honouring the Moral Nature versus Pursuit through Inquiry, with the answer “Master Zhū’s teaching itself is complete; Master Lù emphasized the side of Honouring the Moral Nature only because Master Zhū was already pursuing learning by inquiry”; the response: “this is not a matter for shallow students lightly to discuss”. Thus what he learned was actually placed between the schools of Zhū and Lù — much like the Míng-period harmonization position. The lateness of the book’s emergence makes its authenticity not clearly determinable. Furthermore, Jǐngfèng’s Zhānshì xiǎobiàn 詹氏小辨 is loose and reckless in its arguments, with no restraint, while the present collection is in its arguments tolerably sober and careful — quite unlike Jǐngfèng’s manner — so we entertain the doubt cautiously, recording the work for what it can offer in the way of statable points and leaving its provenance as it stands. Lì È’s 厲鶚 Sòng shī jìshì 宋詩紀事, in the Chū-poems it records, drew on this very text — and so neither Lì could exactly fix the matter. Lì alone writes the zì as Zǐyuán 子元 instead of Yǐyuán 以元, contradicting the original colophon — but the names and lineage as set out by Chū’s descendants must be the correct ones, and Lì’s zìyuán is no doubt a transmission error.
Respectfully collated, third month of Qiánlóng 43 (1778).
[Front-matter also includes a Qiánlóng-emperor’s Yùzhì shī on Zhān Chū’s reading of the biography of Lǐ Jìngyè 李敬業, sharply criticizing Zhān’s poem and preface for taking the moralizing “fortune-and-misfortune” view that the Lǐ family’s ruin was karmic punishment for Lǐ Jì’s having gone along with Wǔ Zétiān; the emperor calls Lǐ Jìngyè a true filial avenger of the dynasty and dismisses Zhān’s vision as vulgar.]
Abstract
The text is an instance of late-emerging “rediscovered” SòngDàoxué writing whose authenticity the Sìkù editors themselves declined to confirm. The composition bracket therefore must be left wide: a terminus ante quem of 1559 (the Jiājìng reprint) and a terminus post quem somewhere in the late twelfth century, since Zhān Chū is associated with the anti-Hán Tuōzhòu agitation of the late 1190s. The catalog meta gives no specific date. Internal indicators — the apparent harmonization of Zhū and Lù — are characteristically Míng rather than Sòng and reinforce the editors’ caution. CBDB has no precise dates for Zhān Chū. The texts associated with the family — Zhān Jǐngfèng’s contemporaneous Zhānshì xiǎobiàn — are stylistically incompatible with the present collection, which led the editors to entertain (rather than dismiss) the work; this is the standard scholarly position. The Qiánlóng-era 御製 prefatory poem on Zhān’s LǐJìngyè poem furnishes a distinctive emperor-vs-author critical posture, similar to the more famous case of the Cānglàng jí KR4d0337 in the same Sìkù biéjí sub-class.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located. The collection has been little discussed beyond the Sì-kù editors’ note and Lì È’s Sòng shī jì-shì.
Other points of interest
The Qiánlóng emperor’s hostile preface — paralleled, on the same Sìkù collection-cluster, by his attack on the Cānglàng jí — is one of the more striking moments of personal imperial intervention in the Sìkù tíyào paratext. Note also the Sìkù editors’ explicit acknowledgement that they could not vouch for the text’s authenticity yet retained it (a rare piece of editorial transparency).
Links
- WYG SKQS V1179.1, p1.
- CBDB person 27780
- Cf. Zhān Jǐngfèng’s Zhānshì xiǎobiàn (Míng) for context on the descendant-redactor.