碧梧玩芳集

Bìwú wánfāng jí 碧梧玩芳集

Collection of [the Master of] Bì-wú [Studio], Playing Among the Fragrances by 馬廷鸞 (撰)

About the work

The reconstructed biéjí 別集 in 24 juàn of 馬廷鸞 Mǎ Tíngluán (1222–1289), zì Xiángzhòng 翔仲, of Lèpíng 樂平 in Ráozhōu 饒州 (Jiāngxī) — Right Grand Councilor (yòu chéngxiàng 右丞相), concurrent Commissioner of Military Affairs (jiān shūmì shǐ 兼樞密使), and one of the last serious civil officials of the dying Southern Sòng. Jìnshì of Chúnyòu 7 (1247); retired from the Grand Council in Xiánchún 8 (壬申 1272) after refusing to remain under Jiǎ Sìdào’s regime; thereafter lived in retirement for seventeen years, ending in 1289 (early Yuán). The collection was edited by his son 馬端臨 Mǎ Duānlín (the author of the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考 KR2m0014) and named after his Bìwú 碧梧 (“Blue-Green Phoenix-Tree”) studio, with the late sobriquet Wánfāngbìngsǒu 玩芳病叟 (“Old-sick man playing among the fragrances”). The work was effectively lost after the Míng — no Míng or Sòng bibliography records its juan count — and is preserved only in the Sìkù reconstruction from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The bulk of the surviving material is piántǐ 駢體 (parallel prose) court documents — dàzhì 大制 imperial decrees, zhì 制 commissions, and the formal proclamations of the last decade of Lǐzōng 理宗’s reign and early Dùzōng 度宗’s reign, which Mǎ drafted as a senior court drafter. Among the rare datable pieces is the ZéJiǎ Sìdào guīlǐ zhì 責賈似道歸里制 (the demotion-and-deportation decree for Jiǎ Sìdào) of Déyòu 1 (1275). The Sìkù editors also recover from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn fragments of Mǎ’s now-lost Dúshǐ xúnbiān 讀史旬編, gathered as the final juàn.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Bìwú wánfāng jí, in 24 juàn, was composed by Mǎ Tíngluán of the Sòng. Tíngluán, zì Xiángzhòng 翔仲, a man of Lèpíng 樂平, jìnshì of Chúnyòu 7 (1247), held office to Right Grand Councilor concurrent Commissioner of the Bureau of Military Affairs (右丞相兼樞宻使). The facts of his life are recorded in his Sòngshǐ biography. The Sòngshǐ records that after his retirement from the chancellorship he lived another 17 years before he died. We examine: Tíngluán’s retirement was in the rényù of Xiánchún 8 (壬申 1272), under Dùzōng; his death therefore would be in the jǐchǒu of Zhìyuán 26 of Shìzǔ of the Yuán (己丑 1289). The present collection’s Lǎoxué dàoyuàn jì 老學道院記 says “in the zhuōyōng kùndūn year, I was sixty-seven” — placing the composition not far from his death.

This collection was edited by his son [Mǎ] Duānlín 端臨. Its name Bìwú wánfāng derives from Tíngluán’s possession of the Bìwú 碧梧 (“Blue-Green Phoenix-Tree”) elegant studio, and from his late-life self-sobriquet Wánfāngbìngsǒu 玩芳病叟 (“Old-sick man playing among the fragrances”). From the Míng onward there is no circulating copy in the world; only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves the general outline. The bulk of his work — the piántǐ 駢體 (parallel-prose) is most exquisite. In the late years of Lǐzōng, he was again at the two boards of policy-and-rescript, and the great documents of the court came largely from his hand. The rest of his prose and verse, too, is of the diǎnzhān xiùrùn 典瞻秀潤 — classical-and-luxuriant, fine-and-moist — manner; reading it one feels the savour of juànzhóu 巻軸 [book-and-scroll learning]. Duānlín inherited the family enterprise and composed the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考, to this day a treasured work in the literary forest — and from this the learning of Tíngluán himself can be inferred.

The Sòngshǐ does not record the collection, and its original juan-number is no longer recoverable. We have respectfully gathered and arranged what is now extant, dividing it into 23 juàn. Tíngluán also once composed, on the model of Lǚ Zǔqiān’s 呂祖謙 Dàshì jì 大事記, his own Dúshǐ xúnbiān 讀史旬編 — in ten-year units (xún 旬), beginning from the jiǎchén first year of Yáo 帝堯元載 down to gēngshēn of the seventh year of Zhōu’s Xiǎndé 顯德七年 [960], in 38 zhì 帙. The complete book is now lost, but residual passages are still scattered in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn; we have collected them as one juàn and appended at the end of the prose section, making the total 24 juàn.

The Sòngshǐ states that Tíngluán’s other writings included: Liùjīng jízhuàn 六經集傳, YǔMèng huìbiān 語孟㑹編, Chǔcí bǔjì 楚辭補記, ZhūSì yìbiān 洙泗裔編, Dú Zhuāng bǐjì 讀莊筆記 — all now lost.

Further, when Tíngluán was tested for office at the Hall of Erudites, his examination response — on “strengthening the imperial virtue, weighting the chancellor’s office, collecting upright officials, and keeping vigilant about the imperial intimates” — and his statements as Office Junior of the Office of Construction (將作少監) on the Three Matters of gòngjǔ 貢舉 (Tribute-and-Recommendation); on the necessity of remitting tax-and-tribute from disaster-stricken prefectures; as Diarist-Censor on the imperial historian’s responsibility to record carefully zāiyì 災異 [calamities-and-portents], and on the xīshòu fūshī 翕受敷施 (gathering-and-disseminating) of imperial favour to strengthen the spirit of men of talent; and as Vice-Commissioner of the Bureau of Military Affairs on cultivating the mìngmài 命脉 (life-veins) and roots, on broadening kuāndà 寬大 and zhōnghòu 忠厚 (large-leniency and loyal-generosity); his words on the kuòdàdù 恢大度 (expanding the great measure), the xūshèngxīn 虛聖心 (emptying the sage-mind), the yǐjièjīngshén (drawing forth the spirit), the dálǐwúbùjìn (the way needing no exhaustion of investigation) — none of these are seen in the collection. Perhaps his zòushū 奏疏 (memorials) were separately compiled into a single volume, and the present collection has not absorbed them.

Respectfully collated, ninth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). 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 Bìwú wánfāng jí is the principal surviving body of writing by 馬廷鸞 Mǎ Tíngluán — Right Grand Councilor in 1264–72, one of the two or three civil-official figures who tried to keep the Southern Sòng court functional in the years just before the Yuán conquest, and the father of 馬端臨 Mǎ Duānlín, the author of the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考. The dating bracket (1248–1289) follows from Mǎ’s career: from the year after his 1247 jìnshì (the conventional start of his composition career as a junior official) to his death in 1289. Most of the surviving material is piántǐ 駢體 (parallel prose) state documents drafted by Mǎ during his service as a senior Hànlín court drafter under Lǐzōng 理宗 and the early Dùzōng 度宗, plus the prose and verse of his seventeen-year post-retirement seclusion.

The textual history is one of catastrophic loss followed by Sìkù reconstruction. The Sòngshǐ lists multiple works by Mǎ — the Liùjīng jízhuàn, YǔMèng huìbiān, Chǔcí bǔjì, ZhūSì yìbiān, Dú Zhuāng bǐjì, and the Dúshǐ xúnbiān — all lost, with only fragments of the Dúshǐ xúnbiān (which the Sìkù editors appended as the final juàn) recoverable. The corpus as transmitted is therefore severely partial: the documentary prose dominates, the personal verse is comparatively thin, and the memorials (which the Sìkù tíyào explicitly notes are missing) appear to have been a separate compilation now lost. The work’s primary scholarly value is twofold: as the principal first-hand documentary record of the late-Sòng court drafting bureau in 1260–72, and as a witness to the elder Mǎ’s intellectual formation feeding into the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo.

The Sìkù tíyào is unusually candid about the Sòngshǐ’s record of Mǎ’s quoted memorials — none of which the editors could locate in the collection — implying a separate now-lost compilation. Modern scholarship (notably Cài Wěn 蔡崴 and Zhū Hànmín 朱漢民) has used the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo’s prefatory and methodological framings to reconstruct Mǎ Tíngluán’s likely Neo-Confucian formation through the Zhū Xī tradition, which is corroborated by the Bìwú wánfāng jí’s prose.

Wilkinson treats Mǎ Tíngluán and his son together as exemplars of late-Sòng jiāxué 家學 — three generations of historiographic-and-encyclopaedic learning carried through the Mǎ family of Lèpíng. The Mǎ zéJiǎSìdào guīlǐ zhì 責賈似道歸里制 of 1275 (preserved in juan unspecified — the Sìkù tíyào identifies it as supplementing the Sòngshǐ Dùzōng běnjì) is regularly cited in scholarship on Jiǎ Sìdào’s fall.

The catalog meta gives lifedates 1223–1289; CBDB (15501) and the standard biographies give 1222–1289, with the latter (1222) followed here.

Translations and research

• Cài Wěn 蔡崴, Mǎ Tíngluán yánjiū 馬廷鸞研究 (Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 2015) — full-length monograph.
• Zhū Hànmín 朱漢民 and Yáo Lěi 姚磊, “Mǎ Tíngluán yǔ Mǎ Duānlín fù-zǐ de Lǐxué jiā-xué” 馬廷鸞與馬端臨父子的理學家學, Yuè-lù shū-yuàn yánjiū 嶽麓書院研究 11 (2017).
• Quán Sòng wén 全宋文 vol. 333 (Shànghǎi císhū, 2006) — Mǎ’s prose corpus.
• Wáng Déyì 王德毅 et al., Sòng-rén zhuàn-jì zī-liào suǒ-yǐn 宋人傳記資料索引 (Taipei, 1974–86), s.v. 馬廷鸞.
• For the Sòng-shǐ biography: Sòng-shǐ 414 (Mǎ Tíngluán zhuàn).
• Hilde de Weerdt, “Court Gazettes and Short Reports: Officials and the State of the Realm under the Southern Song”, T’oung Pao 99 (2013) — uses Mǎ’s piántǐ documents as primary source.

Other points of interest

The Sì-kù-era reconstruction of the Bìwú wánfāng jí through the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn is one of the more methodologically successful late-Sòng biéjí recoveries, both because the Dàdiǎn preserved a high proportion of court documents (the format of which the Míng compilers respected) and because the Sòngshǐ listed Mǎ’s title-list of lost separate works, allowing the Sìkù editors to recognise and isolate the Dúshǐ xúnbiān fragments.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1187.1, p1.
• CBDB person 15501 (Mǎ Tíngluán)
• Sòngshǐ 414, Mǎ Tíngluán zhuàn.
• Quán Sòng wén vol. 333.