Wùzhāi jí 勿齋集
The Collection of [the Studio of] Restraint by 楊至質 (撰)
About the work
A short late-Southern-Sòng collection in two juàn by Yáng Zhìzhí 楊至質, a Daoist priest of the Géhuángshān 閤皁山 monastery (one of the four great Zhèngyī 正一 / Línglíng 靈寳 Daoist mountains of the Sòng). The work consists almost entirely of sìliù 四六 parallel-prose letters and qǐ 啟 documents in the late-Sòng style. It is unusual as a survival of professional parallel-prose writing by a Daoist scholar-courtier rather than a biéjí of a literatus proper; the Sìkù editors note that its parallel-prose craft surpasses much of the prevailing late-Sòng qǐzhá 啟劄 style and merits comparison with Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s 李商隱 Fánnán jiǎyǐ jí 樊南甲乙集.
Tiyao
We respectfully submit: Wùzhāi jí, in two juàn, was composed by Yáng Zhìzhí of the Sòng. Zhìzhí, zì Xiūwén 休文, hào Wùzhāi 勿齋, was a Daoist priest of Géhuángshān 閤皁山. In the Chúnyòu 淳祐 era he was granted by imperial edict the rank of Gāoshì 髙士 (“Lofty Gentleman”), and held the office of Yòujiē jiānyí, zhǔguǎn jiàomén gōngshì 右街監儀主管敎門公事 (Right-Avenue Ritual-Inspector, Director of Sectarian Affairs in the Daoist Establishment).
The collection consists entirely of his parallel-prose (sìliù) letters and ceremonial documents, mostly composed in exchange with then-current officials. His qǐ on holding concurrent appointment as Dūjiān 都監 of the Jīngdé Abbey (旌德觀) — addressed to the magistrate of the capital Zhào Jiézhāi 趙節齋 — reads: “The Abbey takes its name from the Way; the place is dignified through the men in it. Zhī Zhāng 知章 in his studies began to specialize in the Qūjiàn mists-and-glow [allusion: ‘Qūjiàn yānxiá’ 曲鑑煙霞]; Qīnglǎo 清老 was able at verse, and thus served the Jīnlíng 金陵 incense-and-fires. If the wine-jar-and-rice-bag breed [= empty-handed lay parasites] merely consume the bell-and-drum [monastery] meals of grain and gruel, in vain…”, and so on. He plainly took literary pride in himself and would not be reduced to the rank of mere “Yellow-Capped” [= Daoist robe-wearer] men. The second juàn is largely composed on commission for others — by virtue of his skill at written craft, the scholar-officials of the day often borrowed his hand.
The late-Sòng qǐzhá style at large mostly delights in piecing together canonical and historical phrases — congested, rigid, and given to participial phrasings, often verbose, slack, and limp. The old Táng standard is utterly gone. Although Zhìzhí’s compositions are somewhat narrow in compass, their parallelism is delicately worked, their diction elegant and clean, and they still preserve something of the legacy of the Fánnán jiǎyǐ jí of Lǐ Shāngyǐn. It is by no means right to scorn him as a member of the outer-realm [Daoist] lineage.
Respectfully collated, fourth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief-Compiler Officers (ministers) Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer (minister) Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
The Wùzhāi jí is one of the rare examples of a late-Southern-Sòng biéjí by a working Daoist priest who was simultaneously embedded in the bureaucratic-ceremonial life of the capital region. Yáng Zhìzhí’s titles — Gāoshì and Yòujiē jiānyí, zhǔguǎn jiàomén gōngshì — locate him in the imperially-sanctioned Daoist clerical bureaucracy of the Chúnyòu period (Lǐzōng’s reign, 1241–1252), with the present collection presumably composed across those years. The Géhuángshān 閤皁山 was one of the “Three Mountains” (三山, with Lónghǔshān 龍虎山 and Máoshān 茅山) of the established Zhèngyī 正一 Daoist hierarchy, and the office of Yòujiē jiānyí placed Yáng in direct contact with the court ritual establishment.
The Sìkù editors’ praise of Yáng’s parallel prose as “still possessing the residual legacy of Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s Fánnán jiǎyǐ jí” is a substantive judgment in the context of late-imperial criticism: the Fánnán corpus is the late-Táng gold-standard for ornate parallel epistolary craft, and the comparison is unusually generous for a Sìkù tíyào notice. The fact that Yáng wrote substantial proportions of his second juàn on commission for scholar-officials confirms that he served as a de facto professional secretariat for the late-Sòng Jiāngnán literary establishment — an unusual social role for a Daoist priest, and a reminder that the boundary between the religious and lay scribal classes was permeable in this period.
For the period and Daoist context, see Schipper & Verellen (eds.), The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (2004), 2:1083–84 on Géhuángshān; and Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §35 on late-Sòng sìliù parallel prose.
Translations and research
- The catalog meta for KR5e0050 Wùzhāi xiānshēng wénjí 勿齋先生文集 contains another transmission of Yáng’s writings, although the present WYG Wùzhāi jí is the more limited two-juàn survival.
- For the Daoist-bureaucratic context, see Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), esp. the entries on Géhuáng-shān and the Chúnyòu-era Daoist establishment.
- No substantial Western-language monograph or article devoted to Yáng Zhìzhí has been located.
Other points of interest
The Wùzhāi jí is rare among Sòng biéjí in being almost entirely sìliù 四六 — the late-Táng parallel-prose epistolary style that, while pervasive in court documents, was usually only a portion of a literatus’s collected works. As an entire collection in sìliù, it is therefore a useful corpus for the linguistic study of late-Sòng parallel-prose conventions, including the technical vocabulary of Daoist clerical promotion, abbey administration, and ritual office.
Links
- WYG SKQS V1183.6, p473.
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:1083–84 (Géhuángshān).