吾汶藁

Wúwèn gǎo 吾汶藁

The Wú-wèn Manuscripts by 王炎午 (撰)

About the work

The collected works of Wáng Yánwǔ 王炎午 (CBDB 35269, 1252–1324; originally Wáng Yìngméi 王應梅, zì Dǐngwēng 鼎翁, hào Méibiān 梅邊, native of Nánwènyuán 南汶源 in Ānchéng 安成 — modern Ānfú 安福, Jiāngxī — in Lúlíng 廬陵). Wáng was admitted to the Imperial University by the suílù hùnbǔ in Xiánchún jiǎxū (1274); on his father’s death he returned home, and the following year Línān fell. When Wén Tiānxiáng KR4d0381 raised troops, Wáng presented to him a memorandum proposing to exhaust the Wén family estate as army provisions and to recruit Huái cavalry as instructors for the JiāngGuǎng troops; Wén commended and accepted him, retaining him in the staff. Wáng soon returned home on his mother’s illness. When Wén was captured by the Yuán, Wáng composed the famous Living-Sacrifice Eulogy for Prime-Minister Wén (Shēng jì Wénchéngxiàng wén 生祭文丞相文) — over 1,500 words — exhorting Wén to die so as to fix the gāngcháng (cardinal moral order). When Wén was finally executed in Yānyù in 1283, Wáng composed a corresponding Distant-View Sacrifice Eulogy (Wàng jì Wénchéngxiàng 望祭文丞相). Thereafter he changed his name from Yìngméi to Yánwǔ and renamed his collection Wúwèn gǎo — both gestures expressing the resolve not to serve the new dynasty. He spent the next fifty years in private literary life at Ānfú, writing the substantial body of correspondence, jì, condolence-letters, prefaces, qǐngcí, sacrifice-eulogies, biographies, and ritual prose now collected in ten juàn. The collection’s foundational paratext was supplied by the two Jīnhuá sì xiānshēng members Jiē Xīsī 揭傒斯 (1274–1344, Yuán Yìtǒng 2 = 1334 preface) and Ōuyáng Xuán 歐陽玄 (1283–1357, Yìtǒng 2 preface) — Jiē Xīsī’s preface centers on the Shēngjì and the moral weight of the Sòng-loyalist gesture, Ōuyáng Xuán’s likewise on Wáng’s qíshì status. The collection was first cut in Míng Hóngzhì xīnhài (1491) by Wáng’s eighth-generation descendant Wáng Huá 王華; recut in Zhèngdé èrnián (1507) by Wáng’s ninth-generation grand-nephew Wáng Wěi 王偉, with collation by the kinsman Wáng Mào 王懋, and printed by Liú Tiānzé 劉天澤 of Liùānzhōu — the SBCK base reproduced here. The Sìkù editors entered it as a WYG-edition Sòng biéjí.

Tiyao

No tíyào in the Kanripo source (the source files reproduce the SBCK 1507 Zhèngdé recension, which carries instead Jiē Xīsī’s, Ōuyáng Xuán’s, Zhèng Yuán’s, Liú Xuān’s, Wáng Mào’s, and Dū Mù’s prefaces and postfaces, but not the Qiánlóng Sìkù tíyào). The Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào records the Wúwèn gǎo in ten juàn under “Sòng biéjí lèi 3,” characterizing the work as the principal monument of Wáng Yánwǔ’s yímín literary persona: stressing that the Shēngjì Wénchéngxiàng wén is the singular piece on which Wáng’s reputation rests, and that the rest of the collection — correspondence with Yáo Mùān 姚牧菴, condolence-letters, jì, and ritual prose — bears the marks of a long quiet yímín life in Ānfú, with no high office and no opportunity to put one’s learning into public effect.

Abstract

Wáng Yánwǔ (CBDB 35269, 1252–1324) is best known for the Shēngjì Wénchéngxiàng wén — the single most-anthologized piece of Sòng-loyalist exhortative prose, in which Wáng, then a young Imperial-University student, addressed his patron Wén Tiānxiáng during the latter’s captivity in Yānyù urging him to take his own life so as to fix the moral order. The piece is preserved in the Wúwèn gǎo and in Wén Wénshān jí 文文山集 KR4d0381’s appendix line; it has been continuously read since the Yuán as the definitive Sòng-loyalist yímín document. The corresponding Wàng jì wén of 1283, composed after Wén’s actual execution, completes the diptych. Beyond these two pieces the collection includes Wáng’s letter to Jiǎ Xuéshì (Jiǎ Liáng), three letters to Yáo Suì 姚燧 (Yáo Mùān 姚牧菴, 1238–1313, the great Yuán gǔwén master) — the shàng and nǐ zài shàng sequence forming a Sòng-loyalist’s open dialogue with the most powerful living Yuán prose authority — and an extensive corpus of condolence letters that document the social-religious life of Yuán-period Ānfú gentry. The corpus also contains the Jīnhuá dòngtiān xíngjì — Wáng’s account of a pilgrimage to the Jīnhuá grotto.

The Jiē Xīsī 1334 preface gives the most detailed external biographical record. Jiē notes that he had earlier read the Shēngjì in Liú Xǐngwú’s 劉省吾 manuscript of Wáng’s collection and was overwhelmed by Wáng’s “1500-word fastening of the moral order”; Ōuyáng Xuán’s preface compares the Shēngjì to the Chūshī biǎo — “though [Wáng] was [only] one student of the Imperial University, his words for the realm and ten thousand generations equal YīYǐn’s Yīxùn and Yuèmìng.” The Míng Zhèng-dé-era postfaces by Wáng Mào 王懋 (a ninth-generation descendant) and Dū Mù 都穆 record the painful recension history: the original Yuán-era prefaces and the prose were partially incinerated in the Yuán-end wars; the surviving fragments were recovered in a Xuān-dé-era “double-wall” demolition at the family residence; the resulting cluster of damaged manuscripts required generations of conjectural restoration. The Wǎnlì transmission line then established the standard ten-juàn recension reproduced in the SBCK and Sìkù. Composition window: 1276 (the Shēngjì) through Wáng’s death in 1324; the bulk of the collection is post-1283. CBDB 35269 gives 1252–1324, consistent with the catalog meta. Wilkinson treats Wáng among the foundational yímín prose authors (§28.1, §31).

Translations and research

• Hé Zōng-měi 何宗美, Sòng-mò Yuán-chū yí-mín wén-rén qún-tǐ yán-jiū 宋末元初遺民文人群體研究 (Běijīng: Rén-mín chū-bǎn-shè, 2009), ch. 5 — Wáng Yán-wǔ and the Wén Tiān-xiáng network.
• Jennifer W. Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China (Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1991), pp. 144–166 — sustained English-language treatment of the Shēng-jì and Wáng’s persona.
• Jennifer W. Jay, “Memoirs and Official Accounts: The Historiography of the Song Loyalists,” HJAS 50.2 (1990).
• Zhōng Fú-zhōng 鍾復中, “Wáng Yán-wǔ Shēng-jì Wén-chéng-xiàng wén zài-dú” 王炎午〈生祭文丞相文〉再讀, Wén-xué yí-chǎn 2014, no. 2.
• Quán Sòng wén vol. 366 collates Wáng’s prose; the SBCK Wú-wèn gǎo is the standard base.
• Sòng Lián 宋濂, Wáng Yán-wǔ zhuàn (in Sòng Wén-xiàn gōng quán-jí) — the standard Yuán-Míng-era biographical source.

Other points of interest

The Shēngjì Wénchéngxiàng wén — addressed to a still-living captive — is among the most generically anomalous pieces in the Chinese literary tradition: the jì (sacrifice eulogy) genre is by definition addressed to the dead. Jiē Xīsī’s preface emphasizes precisely this: that Wáng was using the form’s mortuary weight as moral pressure on the still-living Wén, “calculating not for one body but for the office of vassal-minister in ten thousand generations.” Wáng’s late posthumous induction into the Ānfú Xiāngxián cí 鄉賢祠 in 1491 — recorded by Wáng Mào’s postscript — followed two centuries of yímín–conscience activism by his descendants and the Jiāngxī provincial education-office.

Links

• SBCK base; WYG SKQS V1189.11, p561.
• CBDB person 35269 (Wáng Yánwǔ)
• Wikipedia, 王炎午