嘉禾百咏

Jiāhé bǎiyǒng 嘉禾百咏

One Hundred Chants on Jiāhé by 張堯同 (撰)

About the work

A late-Sòng biéjí 別集 in one juàn of one hundred quatrains by 張堯同 Zhāng Yáotóng (fl. mid-13th c.; CBDB 29561 — recorded only as “S. Song person”), a man of Xiùzhōu 秀州 (modern Jiāxīng 嘉興, Zhèjiāng). Belongs to the late-Sòng sub-genre of “Bǎiyǒng” 百詠 — one-hundred-quatrain local-topographic encyclopaedias of a prefecture, typically structured as a tour of named sights, historical monuments, temples, gardens, and personalities. The genre, the Sìkù tíyào notes, included [Ruǎn Yuè 阮閱’s] Chēnjiāng bǎiyǒng 郴江百詠, [Xǔ Shàng 許尚’s] Huátíng bǎiyǒng 華亭百詠, and [Zēng Jí 曾極’s] Jīnlíng bǎiyǒng 金陵百詠. The dating is set by reference: Zhāng mentions the Huìjǐngtíng 會景亭 built by Pān Shīdàn 潘師旦 and the garden of Zhào Gǔn 趙衮 — and on the temporal footing of these references, the Sìkù editors place him as post-Níngzōng 寧宗 (i.e. after 1224). Each poem is accompanied by an unsigned annotation (fùkǎo 附考), and the manuscript carried an unsigned colophon — the editors do not know who wrote the fùkǎo. The text was absorbed in part into Xú Shuò’s 徐碩 Zhìyuán Jiāhé zhì 至元嘉禾志 (the Yuán-era Jiāhé prefectural gazetteer) and later local-history works.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Jiāhé bǎiyǒng, in one juàn, was composed by Zhāng Yáotóng of the Sòng. Yáotóng, a man of Xiùzhōu 秀州, the precise dossier of whose career is not preserved. The poems mention the Huìjǐngtíng 會景亭 erected by Pān Shīdàn 潘師旦, and the Zhàolǎoyuán 趙老園 — the retreat where Zhào Gǔn 趙衮 retired into seclusion. Examining the era, he is therefore a man of post-Níngzōng 寧宗 [i.e. from c. 1224 onward].

Among the literary men and scholar-officials of the Sòng who chanted the excellence of a region’s customs and scenery, many took dūomí dòumí 誇多鬬靡 (boasting plenty, contending in luxury) as their craft — such as Ruǎn Yuè’s 阮閱 Chēnjiāng bǎiyǒng 郴江百詠, Xǔ Shàng’s 許尚 Huátíng bǎiyǒng 華亭百詠, Zēng Jí’s 曾極 Jīnlíng bǎiyǒng 金陵百詠 and the like. They all took 100 pieces as the standard length and mutually imitated one another, often straining to make up the count.

Hence Yáotóng’s hundred chants on the mountains-and-rivers and historic-traces of the single Jiāxīng 嘉興 region condense the whole into a hundred pieces. Xú Shuò’s Zhìyuán Jiāhé zhì 至元嘉禾志 [the Yuán zhìyuán era Jiāhé gazetteer] already absorbed it alongside Lù Ménglǎo’s 陸蒙老 Jiāhé bāyǒng 嘉禾八詠 under the Tíyǒng 題詠 (titled-and-chanted) heading; later compilers of prefectural gazetteers also collected scattered pieces from it — but their selections have all been incomplete. This [Sìkù version] is the original single-circulation text. Each poem has an attached fùkǎo 附考 (commentary-note), but we do not know who composed them. There is an old báyǔ 跋語 [colophon] which also gives no name, surname, or date.

Though the diction is not very polished, from the WúYuè 吳越 period onward the historical lore of Jiāxīng can be substantially grasped from it. In recent times Zhū Yízūn 朱彞尊 [the great early-Qīng poet of nearby Xiùshuǐ 秀水, 1629–1709] composed his Yuānyānghú zhàogē 鴛鴦湖櫂歌 in one hundred pieces — precisely following this prior example with a slight surface variation. Now in Zhū Yízūn’s case the elegance of his poetic brush has of course surpassed the predecessor; but Yáotóng’s selecting-and-laying-out of the named items, his orderly enumeration of the principal matters — these, as far as topographic-historical investigation is concerned, are certainly not without their aid.

Respectfully collated, third month of Qiánlóng 44 (1779). Chief-Compiler Officers Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Jiāhé bǎiyǒng is a representative late-Sòng bǎiyǒng 百詠 single-prefecture topographic poem-cycle, one of the cleanest cases of the genre and a useful supplement to the early-Yuán Zhìyuán Jiāhé zhì 至元嘉禾志 (the standard Jiāxīng prefectural gazetteer compiled in 1287–88). The dating bracket 1224–1264 is conservative: the Sìkù tíyào places Zhāng “post-Níngzōng”, which gives a lower bound of 1224 (death of Níngzōng); the late bound is set by the proximity to the Zhìyuán 至元 gazetteer that absorbed it, at the close of the Southern Sòng. Beyond the Sìkù reading, there is no certain external evidence for Zhāng’s dates, and CBDB tags him only as “S. Song person, 1240 date arbitrary” — the entry is itself derived from this work.

The work has independent value as a local-history primary source: it preserves names of fortifications, gardens, tíng 亭 and zhāi 齋 buildings, religious sites, and lay personalities that the prefectural gazetteer either condensed or did not record. The Sìkù tíyào’s comparison with the early-Qīng poet 朱彞尊 Zhū Yízūn’s Yuānyānghú zhàogē 鴛鴦湖櫂歌 (also 100 pieces on Jiāxīng, Zhū’s native place) is an explicit acknowledgement of the Bǎiyǒng as a genre — and as a tradition Zhū Yízūn knew, drew on, and surpassed. The fùkǎo 附考 annotation, which the Sìkù editors leave unattributed, has been suggested by modern scholars to be by Zhāng himself or by a near-contemporary; the question is open.

Wilkinson treats the Bǎiyǒng genre as a sub-category of local-history poetry useful for prosopographic-and-topographic research; the Jiāhé example is among the most-cited.

Translations and research

• Yáng Yuǎn 楊遠, “Sòng-mò Xiùzhōu Jiāhé bǎi-yǒng yǔ Jiāxīng dì-fāng-shǐ” 宋末秀州《嘉禾百詠》與嘉興地方史, Dì-fāng-zhì yánjiū 地方志研究 12 (2014).
• Zhì-yuán Jiāhé zhì 至元嘉禾志 (Xú Shuò 徐碩, 1287–88), in the Yuán dì-fāng-zhì cóng-shū 元地方志叢書, repeatedly cites the Bǎi-yǒng.
• Quán Sòng shī 全宋詩, vol. 65 (Běijīng dàxué, 1998) — Zhāng Yáotóng’s verse.
• Chén Yīngyuán 陳應元, “Bǎi-yǒng tǐ kǎo” 百詠體考, Wénshǐ zhī-shi 文史知識 1995.11 — a survey of the genre.

Other points of interest

The unsigned fùkǎo annotation accompanying each poem is rare in transmitted biéjí — the Sìkù editors’ explicit recording of the absence of authorship is itself an unusually candid bibliographic note. The work’s pairing with Zhū Yízūn’s Yuānyānghú zhàogē gives it a place in the long history of Jiāxīng local-historical writing.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1186.8, p765.
• CBDB person 29561 (Zhāng Yáotóng)
• Quán Sòng shī vol. 65.