叠山集

Diéshān jí 叠山集

Stacked-Mountain Collection by 謝枋得 (撰)

About the work

The collected works of Xiè Fāngdé 謝枋得 (1226–1289), Diéshān 疊山 (“Stacked-Mountain”), the second-most-iconic loyalist-martyr of the SòngYuán transition after Wén Tiānxiáng. Jìnshì of Bǎoyòu 寳祐 4 (1256) — that is, the same examination cohort as Wén Tiānxiáng — Xiè was a senior commander in the Sòng resistance under Liú Bǐng (劉炳, zì Zhōngzhāi 忠齋), repeatedly refused to serve the Yuán, and starved himself to death in Yān (Dàdū) in 1289 after being escorted there by force. The collection survived only in a Míng Jǐngtài (1454) recension by his fellow-countryman Huáng Pǔ 黃溥 (the Chéngjì 澄濟 of the preface), who recovered scattered poetry and prose, normalized its errors, and edited it into sixteen juàn. The Kanripo Diéshān jí is the standard SBCK edition.

Tiyao

The KR4d0367 base text in the Kanripo distribution is the Sìbù cóngkān edition rather than the WYG, and so does not carry a standard Sìkù 提要. In place of a Sìkù tíyào, the present base text opens with Liú Jùn’s 劉儁 preface of Jǐngtài 5 (1454, jiǎxū 甲戌), here translated.

Preface to the Collected Works of Mr. Diéshān [by Liú Jùn]: Prose is not mere ornament; in all cases its substance rests upon virtue (dé 德). When virtue produces prose, then it can sustain the Way-of-the-world and uphold the great-norms; the virtue of [other] men also rests on prose for its completion. But if there is only prose, then it is mere words. Are not such words the same as the gleam of kōngqīng 空青 and shuǐlǜ 水綠 stones — of what use to the world? In this regard, the prose of the only Sòng Diéshān Mr. Wénjié Master Xiè is in every part rooted in virtue: solid-and-firm as grain-and-grain, hemp-and-silk — the world cannot do without it.

When the Master first served the Sòng, it was at the dying season of the dynasty. He immediately raised the great cause and impeached the powerful traitors [Jiǎ Sìdào and his faction]. He led an isolated army to defend his frontier-county. When the cause did not succeed, his wife and children, brothers and nephews, all died in prison together; and he gave no thought to them. After the Sòng had been replaced by another mandate, he still clung tenderly to the ancestral altars, intent on preserving the lineage of the Zhào 趙 [Sòng] orphan, holding firm to the principle of Gūzhú 孤竹 [= Bó Yí and Shū Qí]; and so he delayed and lingered — for there was something he was awaiting. But the servants-of-the-fallen [former Sòng officials now serving the Yuán] did not understand his mind: wishing to use him as a cover for their own [defection], they tried by every device to entice him into Yuán service. He held out resolutely and would not rise. Eventually they seized him and set him on the road; he then refused food for over ten days, and on direct arrival at the capital Yān he expired.

Alas! The Master’s death may be called “stately progress to the yì” (cōngróng jiùyì 從容就義). The world only knows of the Master’s zhōng (loyalty), and does not know that he also had his xiào (filial piety). Formerly the Master’s late father served as Vice-Prefect of Xún; because he offended the commissioner Dǒng, he was impeached and put to death. When the Master passed his exam and Dǒng was in office, he swore that he would never meet him face-to-face, and ultimately never paid the official call. He returned home to serve his mother, finding her contentment as his sole concern. Even during the troubles, he would abandon his wife and children to carry her on his back and flee. Such was the Master’s virtue of zhōng and xiào: it was in his innate nature, and therefore everything that appeared in his writings — works on the Yìjīng, the Shījīng, the Shūjīng, and the Three Commentaries on the Chūnqiū — was transmitted in the world; men recite them, no need to discuss. Only his miscellaneous writings and verse — sixty-four juàn — were kept at home; after the repeated fires-of-war, what survives is very little.

My friend the Censor Mr. Huáng Pǔ 黃溥, zì Chéngjì 澄濟, from the Master’s own native county, lamenting that the Master’s writings were scattered-and-perishing, and fearing that they would die into utter obscurity, gathered them by every means; he assembled what poetry and what prose he could find, in all just over a thousand pieces, corrected their errors, organized them by type, and divided them into sixteen juàn. He showed me the work, saying: “Alas, that the Master’s writings should be so few! Could it be that, being few, they were kept private? I would have them cut for the printing-press and transmitted. You: write a preface for them.” I read them, and sighed: “Great is the cosmic zhōng that disseminates all things, without distinction between great and small. Even a single blade of grass-or-wood, in its smallness, is enough to manifest the principle of the cosmic transformation. The Master’s prose — every character, every phrase — issues entirely from zhōngxiào; this alone suffices to display the Master’s virtue, and the prose can move men down a thousand years. Reading his Letter to Chéng Xuělóu 程雪樓 [an Imperial Censor], who would not be moved to xiào — and seeing how the world’s heart-rending lovers of office and abandoners-of-kin then appear as in-humane? Reading his Letter to Chancellor Liú Zhōngzhāi 劉忠齋, who would not be drawn to zhōng — and seeing how the world’s deserters-of-prince and preservers-of-self then know themselves as un-righteous? All his other writings, in every case, are like this: what is meant by sustaining the Way-of-the-world, planting the great norms, completing men’s virtue — there is real reliance in them. They could surely not have been absent; nor need they be many.”

Yet the Master stood as a solitary minister among the north winds and snowfalls, between cut tumbleweed and worn leaves — how easily one might have come to grief! Yet he was content to be a rock-pillar in the mid-stream, to turn the wild flood back eastward; through a thousand setbacks and ten thousand grindings he grew the firmer-and-sharper. His zhōngchéng (loyal sincerity) thus may pierce Heaven and Earth, eclipse the sun and moon; his writings that remain in the cosmos rise above as xiánglín 祥麟 (“auspicious unicorn”) and wēifèng 威鳯 (“majestic phoenix”), descend as zhīcǎo 芝草 (“magic-mushroom”) and lánggān 琅玕 (“dragon-treasure jade”): they do not need [this preface] in order to be transmitted. That the Censor reached this end — owing to his moral principles being formed by the Master, and so by him providing the very source — Jùn, with my bushels-and-baskets-worth of talent, dare to overstep my measure and add his trivial contribution as a hair to the bristles of Mount Tài.

The Master’s given name was Fāngdé 枋得, zì Jūnzhí 君直, sobriquet Diéshān 疊山 (his own); his posthumous appellation Wénjié 文節 was bestowed by his disciples. He was from Yìyáng 弋陽 in Xìnzhōu 信州. The full particulars of his career, his great loyalty, and his moral actions are given in his biography and shéndàobēi (spirit-way stele).

Jǐngtài 5 (1454), jiǎxū 甲戌, summer 6th month — the latter-student of Lúlíng, Liú Jùn Kèyàn 廬陵劉儁克彥, prostrates and writes.

Abstract

The Diéshān jí preserves the principal literary record of Xiè Fāngdé (1226–1289), the loyalist-martyr who, as a Bǎoyòu 4 (1256) jìnshì of the same cohort as Wén Tiānxiáng, raised an independent resistance army in his native Yìyáng 弋陽 (Xìnzhōu, modern Shàngráo 上饒, Jiāngxī) in 1275 — at the head of a force of local irregulars — and held a small portion of the eastern Jiāngxī frontier briefly against the Yuán advance. His wife, children, and several brothers and nephews were killed in the resistance and its aftermath. Xiè himself escaped capture in 1276, retreated into Fújiàn under disguise, and lived as a fortune-teller for over a decade, refusing repeated Yuán summons to office. The post-1283 invitations from former Sòng officials now serving the Yuán were especially insistent: when in Zhìyuán 25 (1288) he was finally seized by force and transported to the Yuán capital at Yān 燕 (Dàdū), he refused food and drink, and died in early 1289 at age 64.

Catalog-vs-CBDB date. The catalog meta gives 1226–1289; CBDB (27801) gives 1225–1289. Per the instruction received and the Sòngshǐ (which records 1226), the 1226–1289 dating is followed here; the one-year discrepancy is the familiar lunar-calendar versus solar-year crossover.

Textual transmission. Liú Jùn’s 1454 preface specifies that Xiè’s original miscellaneous writings ran to sixty-four juàn but were nearly all destroyed in the wars; Huáng Pǔ recovered the surviving fragments — “just over a thousand pieces” — and edited them into the present sixteen-juàn Míng Jǐngtài recension. The Sìkù subsequent shortening to five juàn (extent in the catalog meta) reflects a further Qīng editorial winnowing. The two central letters — to Chéng Xuělóu 程雪樓 (Chéng Jùfū 程鉅夫, the Censor sent south by Khubilai to recruit Sòng yímín 遺民) and to Liú Zhōngzhāi 劉忠齋 (the former chancellor Liú Mèngyán 留夢炎, now in Yuán service) — are the de facto manifestos of Sòng loyalist refusal-of-office, and are widely cited in late-imperial moral commentary on SòngYuán yímín identity. The collection also includes the famous Sōngyáng letter on the Yí 易 method and the celebrated cí-poem “Hánshí Yùnzhōu dàozhōng” 寒食鄆州道中 (composed during his forcible transport northward to Yān, to the tune Qìnyuán chūn 沁園春).

For context, see Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §63 on SòngYuán yímín; and Jennifer Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University Press, 1991), with extensive discussion of Xiè Fāngdé alongside Wén Tiānxiáng.

Translations and research

• Jennifer W. Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University Press, 1991) — the standard English-language monograph on Sòng-Yuán yí-mín; one of the principal extended treatments of Xiè Fāngdé.
• Richard L. Davis, Wind Against the Mountain (1996) — treats Xiè Fāngdé alongside Wén Tiānxiáng.
• Xiè Fāngdé, Diéshān jí jiào-zhù 疊山集校注, ed. various (Shànghǎi gǔjí; modern critical editions of the SBCK recension).
• Liú Mèngrú 劉夢茹, “Xiè Fāngdé yǔ Sòng-Yuán zhī jì de yí-mín shī” 謝枋得與宋元之際的遺民詩, Wénxué yí-chǎn 文學遺產 (Běijīng), various issues — modern Chinese-language criticism on Xiè Fāngdé as patriotic poet.
• Sòng-shǐ 宋史 juàn 425 — biography of Xiè Fāngdé.

Other points of interest

Xiè Fāngdé is also famous as the traditional compiler of the Qiānjiā shī 千家詩 (“Poems by a Thousand Masters”), the late-imperial elementary anthology of Táng-and-Sòng poetry that became — alongside the Sānzì jīng and the Bǎijiā xìng — one of the most widely circulated traditional schoolbooks. The attribution is contested (Wáng Xiàngzhī 王相之 of the Míng is sometimes credited), but the editorial principles and the chronological ordering are consistent with Xiè’s known critical preferences.

His letter-of-refusal to Chéng Jùfū 程鉅夫 is considered one of the high points of late-Sòng yímín moral writing: Xiè invokes the qīngtiān 青天 of the displaced Sòng emperors against Chéng’s contention that one should rationally accept the new mandate, and ends with the celebrated formulation “If Heaven has fallen, then a man has somewhere to fall to” (天荒地老,夫有所止矣).

Links

• WYG SKQS V1184.4, p843; SBCK base used in Kanripo.
• CBDB person 27801
• Sòngshǐ 425 biographical entry.
• Wikidata, Xie Fangde