潛山集

Qiánshān jí 潛山集

Submerged-Mountain Collection by 釋文珦 (撰)

About the work

The recovered poetry collection of Shì Wénxiàng 釋文珦 (b. 1210; still alive in 1287 at age 77), the late-Sòng / early-Yuán monk-poet of Yúqián 于潛 (in modern Hángzhōu 杭州 region), whose work was almost entirely lost in the centuries after his death and was recovered by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典 in close to 900 poems — one of the largest single recovered monk-poet corpora in SòngYuán transmission. The collection is principally important as (a) a witness to late-Sòng monastic poetry circles in the Hángzhōu area, (b) an unusual documentary survival in light of how thoroughly the work had been lost to the Míng and early-Qīng anthologists (Lì È’s 厲鶚 Sòngshī jìshì 宋詩紀事 records 240 monk-poets but not Wénxiàng; Gù Sìlì’s 顧嗣立 Yuánshī xuǎn 元詩選 monk-volume records 15 monk collections but not Wénxiàng’s), and (c) a corpus relevant to the late-Sòng controversy over the chancellor Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道, on which Wénxiàng’s poetry takes a more polemical line than most of his monastic contemporaries.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Qiánshān jí, twelve juàn, was composed by Shì Wénxiàng of the Sòng. Wénxiàng was a man of Yúqián 于潛. His life’s travels are roughly visible in the verses of his Jiùyóu yībǎi shí yùn shī 舊逰一百十韻詩 (“Old Travels, 110-Rhyme Poem”): in the main, he took the tonsure at Hángzhōu, travelled to Húzhōu 湖州, then by way of Zhèdōng 浙東 to Fújiàn, by way of Jīnhuá 金華 and Yánlíng 嚴陵 returned to Yuèběi 越北, then went to Pílíng 毘陵, Yángxiàn 陽羡, Jīnlíng 金陵, and the Huái 淮 frontier — that was where he stopped. Afterward he returned to Hángzhōu. He encountered slander, was imprisoned for a long time, was eventually pardoned, and thereafter went into seclusion to the end. In the collection there is the line “Looking again at the new Jǐngdìng calendar — a century old, still startled to be more than fifty crossed” — from which we know he was born in Jiādìng 3 of the Sòng Níngzōng — xīnwèi 辛未 [i.e., 1211 by the xīnwèi count, though the catalog meta and CBDB give 1210; the discrepancy reflects the cyclical-name versus reign-year cross-counting]; at the fall of the Sòng [1279] he was sixty-six. Also: the Wood Engraving Inscription for the Jiànfú Temple of Hángzhōu 杭州薦福寺記 is dated zhìyuán yǐyǒu 至元乙酉, second month (1285); his Qiǎnxīng shī 遣興詩 calls him a “seventy-seven-year-old elder of Qiánshān” — therefore he was still living in Zhìyuán dīnghài 至元丁亥 (1287). His career-and-actions cannot be more particularly traced.

Only the Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì 咸淳臨安志 records that on the 24th day of the 9th month of Xiánchún 3 (1267), Jiǎ Sìdào arrived at Xiǎomàilǐng Jīngdé Xiǎnqìngsì 小麥嶺旌徳顯慶寺 and toured the mountain, having his name inscribed there; four monks were listed [in his entourage], and Wénxiàng was among them. We suspect he too was somewhere among those harboured-in-the-vermilion-gate [= Jiǎ Sìdào’s circle]. However, in the collection there is a poem Passing Jiǎ Sìdào’s Old Residence at Gélíng 過似道葛嶺舊居詩 — its language sharply castigates, as if there were residual indignation. And his Jìshì shī 紀事詩 (Chronicle Poem) was composed at the moment of Jiǎ Sìdào’s first demotion; its prose preface says “Jiǎ Sìdào’s position was at the pinnacle and his ambitions arrogant; he secretly plotted usurpation. The matter was disclosed to Xià Jīnwú 夏金吾, who proposed to execute him. Sìdào, fearing this, fled in the night.” Although this does not entirely agree with what the Sòngshǐ records — namely that Xià Guì 夏貴 had requested to “die defending Huáinán” and that Sìdào fled back to Yángzhōu — yet [Wénxiàng’s poem] denounces the hidden evil and goes so far as to charge him with the crime of CáoMán 曹瞞 [= Cáo Cāo replacing the Hàn]; one can therefore know that he was not of Jiǎ’s faction. Or perhaps Jiǎ Sìdào, valuing his fame as an eminent monk, while touring the mountains by chance took him along, and so had his name appended at the end of the retinue — this cannot be firmly determined.

His poetry is in the main of the mountain-forest leisure-and-ease type. Bǐ-xìng (figurative-evocative) depth is not extensive, but his occasional-affair pieces of admonition-and-encouragement carry persuasive instruction. The opinions he expresses are mostly central-and-just. Observing his Compilation of My Poetry Manuscript 裒集詩稿 piece — “My learning is rooted in canons and śāstras, by which I have come to know the non-acting (wú-wéi 無為); the literatus’s habits unforgotten, when the impulse comes I let words long-or-short go forth as they will. I forget skill and clumsiness alike; often I do not work the diction, but only feel the meaning rather true, and find too no perverse thought” — his fundamental tendency and rank may be fully seen here.

Lì È 厲鶚, in his Sòngshī jìshì 宋詩紀事, records altogether 240 Buddhist monks. Gù Sìlì 顧嗣立, in his Yuán bǎijiā shīxuǎn 元百家詩選, records 15 monk-collections. Neither records this monk’s Chánzǎo 禪藻集 [name of his poetry-anthology under the Chán genre], although both works gather widely. Not a single character of his is registered. The collection has therefore been lost long ago. Now from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn we have recovered nearly 900 poems. Among Buddhist monk-poets of the pre-Yuán period, none surpasses this in skill and quantity.

Respectfully collated, ninth 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 Qiánshān jí is one of the largest single late-Sòng / early-Yuán monk-poet collections to survive. Wénxiàng (b. 1210, last attested 1287 at age 77; CBDB 27799) was a Chán monk of the Hángzhōu region whose poetry circulated within a specific late-Sòng literary network: among his named correspondents the Sìkù editors mention Chǔ Shīxiù 褚師秀, Zhōu Mì 周密 (the eminent late-Sòng historian-poet, author of the Wǔlín jiùshì 武林舊事 and Qídōng yěyǔ 齊東野語), Zhōu Pú 周璞, and Chóu Yuǎn 仇遠. The Sìkù editors note that the proportion is heavily slanted toward solo poems (dúyín 獨吟) at 9-to-1 over exchange poems (chànghé 倡和) — confirming that Wénxiàng was not a literary-circle insider in the manner of, say, Liú Kèzhuāng, but a contemplative-style monk who occasionally exchanged with the highest literary figures of his city.

The Jiǎ Sìdào problem. Wénxiàng’s name appears on a Xiánchún 3 (1267) tímíng (signature-inscription) at the Xiǎomàilǐng monastery in connection with a visit by chancellor Jiǎ Sìdào, which the Xiánchún Lín’ān zhì records. The Sìkù editors weigh this against the explicitly anti-Jiǎ-Sìdào content of two of Wénxiàng’s surviving poems — the Guò Jiǎ Sìdào Gélíng jiùjū shī (denouncing Jiǎ in the strongest terms after the dynasty’s fall) and the Jìshì shī (which compares Jiǎ to Cáo Mán 曹瞞, i.e., Cáo Cāo as proto-usurper). They conclude that Wénxiàng was not of Jiǎ’s faction. The episode is a textbook case of how to read late-Sòng monastic-social documents against political-historical content.

Composition window. The collection contains poems datable from the 1240s (Wénxiàng’s early travels) through 1287 (his last attested date). The compositional window is therefore conventionally c. 1230–1287 — roughly six decades.

Bibliographic significance. The fact that neither Lì È nor Gù Sìlì had access to any of Wénxiàng’s poetry — yet the Sìkù editors recovered 900 poems from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn — makes the Qiánshān jí the textbook case of Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery in the Sìkù project. For the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery program, see Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §32 on the Sìkù project; and R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

Translations and research

• R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1987) — the standard study of the Sì-kù project and its recovery method; the Qiánshān jí is one of its principal recovery cases.
• Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shi (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994) — methodological model for reading Sòng monk-poetry.
• Wú Bùzhēng 吳補正, Sòng-Yuán Chán-sēng shī-shǐ 宋元禪僧詩史 (Běijīng, 2010) — survey of Sòng-Yuán monastic poetry that includes Wénxiàng.
• Lì È 厲鶚, Sòng-shī jì-shì 宋詩紀事 (despite not including Wénxiàng, the standard companion-reference for the period’s monk-poets).
• Wáng Wéiqín 王偉勤, “Shì Wénxiàng Qiánshān jí yán-jiū” 釋文珦《潛山集》研究 (MA thesis, Sìchuān-shī-dà, 2012).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào’s self-deprecating quotation of Wénxiàng’s own Compilation of My Poetry Manuscript — “I forget skill and clumsiness alike; often I do not work the diction” — provides the ars poetica of the late-Sòng Chán monk-poet aesthetic and is a useful counterweight to the heavily gōngfū 工夫 (“craft-labour”)-oriented mainstream of Sòng poetry. Wénxiàng’s connection to Zhōu Mì 周密, one of the most important historians-and-poets of the dynastic transition, is also a substantial pointer for late-Sòng cultural-network reconstruction; the two figures’ surviving documentation overlaps in ways that have not yet been fully studied.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1186.2, p293.
• CBDB person 27799 (b. 1210)