龜巢稿

Guīcháo gǎo 龜巢稿

Drafts of the Tortoise-Nest by 謝應芳 (撰)

About the work

A seventeen-juǎn prose-and-verse collection by Xiè Yìngfāng 謝應芳 (1296–1392), style-name Zǐlán 子蘭, sobriquet Guīcháo lǎorén 龜巢老人 (“Old Man of the Tortoise-Nest”), of Wǔjìn 武進 (Pílíng 毗陵, Chángzhōu region, Jiāngsū). Xiè lived to 96, refused all office in both the Yuán and the Míng, and is one of the principal northern Jiāngsū literati of the YuánMíng transition; his other major work is the anti-heterodoxy polemic Biànhuò biān 辨惑編 (KR3a0073). The source text in our corpus is the SBCK photoreproduction (not the WYG recension); it opens with two prefaces — one by Yú Quán 余詮 of Fēngchéng, zhèjiāng rúxué fù tíjǔ, dated Hóngwǔ shí’èr (1379), and one by Lú Xióng 盧熊 of Fànyáng. The collection was assembled by Xiè’s disciple Wáng Zhù 王著 and cut in print in the late 1370s during Xiè’s old age. An appended bǔyí (“supplement”) preserves several pieces not in the main recension, including a notable manifesto Jiùbì 捄弊 (Hóngwǔ 20 = 1387) defending the use of Buddhist funeral rites among ordinary households on the pragmatic ground that the Wéngōng jiālǐ (Zhū Xī’s domestic ritual code) was beyond their reach.

Tiyao

Guīcháo gǎo. By Xiè Yìngfāng of the Yuán. Yìngfāng, style-name Zǐlán, self-styled Guīcháo lǎorén, was a man of Pílíng (Wǔjìn). He never served office; in the late Yuán he fled the disorder of war to Sūngjiāng region; in old age he returned to retire at Héngshān, Wǔjìn. He lived to over eighty. His disciple Wáng Zhù compiled his poems and cut them in print. The original prefaces are by Yú Quán of Fēngchéng (Hóngwǔ 12 = 1379) and Lú Xióng of Fànyáng. He wrote a Biànhuò biān in four juǎn, which circulated separately. He was upright and held fast to jiéyì (honor and right), little fitting in with the world. His poetry concerns itself only with what bears on fēnghuà (general moral influence) and proceeds only when grounded in xìngqíng zhī zhèng (the rectitude of one’s nature and feeling). His friends in retirement included Yáng Wéizhēn (Liánfū), Ní Zàn (Yuánzhèn), and Gù Yīng (Zhòngyīng); his work circulated widely. The Mǐn middle-secretariat Zhāng Zhìdào appraised his poetry as “yǎzhèng chúnjié, fǎdù zhěngyán”, and said it could stand alongside Fù Ruòjīn and Lì Yīng. (Catalog form of the tíyào is as cited in the SKQS WYG recension.)

Abstract

Guīcháo gǎo is the principal monument of Xiè Yìngfāng’s literary output. The collection’s documentary footprint is broad: Xiè lived 96 years, never served office, and accumulated friendship with virtually all the major Wúzhōng late-Yuán figures — the prefaces and individual poems repeatedly name Yáng Wéizhēn (Liánfū, KR4d0585 KR4d0586 KR4d0587 KR4d0589), Ní Zàn (Yuánzhèn, KR4d0575 KR4d0576), Gù Yīng (Zhòngyīng, KR4d0574), and the editorial xù-writer Lú Xióng. The Jiùbì essay (1387) is a documentary anchor for the late-Yuán / early-Míng debate about Buddhist funeral practice and the diffusion of the Wéngōng jiālǐ: Xiè argues that since ordinary households cannot in fact enact the jiālǐ, refusing both the jiālǐ AND the Buddhist rites results in no funerary practice at all, which is the worse evil — a moderate position that contrasts with his earlier Biànhuò biān anti-heterodoxy stance. The composition window runs from his early maturity (c. 1330) through the late Hóngwǔ era (1387 Jiùbì); the collection itself was assembled and printed in 1379. The catalog meta gives extent as 17 juǎn; the WYG recension is 17 juǎn + bǔyí. The SBCK photo-reproduction in our source preserves the bǔyí and the prefatorial material.

Translations and research

• The Biàn-huò biān (KR3a0073) has been extensively treated in the secondary literature on Yuán-Míng anti-Buddhist polemic; see e.g. Timothy Brook, Praying for Power (1993) and various Chinese-language studies.
• The Guī-cháo gǎo itself is treated principally as a documentary source for Yuán-Míng northern-Jiāngsū literati society, esp. for the Yáng Wéi-zhēn → Ní Zàn circle.

Other points of interest

• The 1387 Jiùbì essay shows a clear position shift from the 1340s–60s Biànhuò biān: Xiè in old age was willing to defend a pragmatic accommodation with popular Buddhist funerary practice, on consequentialist grounds. This is a useful documentary anchor in the modulation of late-Yuán Confucian polemic.
• The source for this entry is the SBCK photoreproduction, not the WYG print; the WYG also exists as the catalog’s primary source citation (V1218.1).

Links

• WYG SKQS V1218.1, p1.
• SBCK SB12n781.