Lín Dēngzhōu jí 林登州集
Collection of Lín, [Prefect of] Dēng-zhōu by 林弼 (撰)
About the work
Lín Dēngzhōu jí 林登州集 in twenty-three juǎn is the collected works of Lín Bì 林弼 (zì Yuánkǎi 元凱, fl. 1340s–1380s), native of Lóngxī 龍溪 (Zhāngzhōu 漳州, Fújiàn). Yuán jìnshì of Zhìzhèng 8 (1348); served as instructor at the Yìwū 義�ū county school under the late Yuán; in the early Hóngwǔ era was appointed Dēngzhōu zhīzhōu 登州知州 (Prefect of Dēngzhōu, in Shāndōng), whence the title of his collected works. Earlier he had served as a member of the Hóngwǔ embassy to Annan 安南 (Vietnam) in 1369. The collection is unusually full for a non-front-rank Hóngwǔ official: juǎn 1–7 verse (four-character, five-character ancient and regulated, seven-character ancient and regulated, juéjù, cāo, cí, shīyú); juǎn 8–12 xù; juǎn 13–14 jí xù; juǎn 15–17 jì; juǎn 18 zhào, gào, biǎo, jiān, sòng, zàn, zhēn, míng; juǎn 19–23 zhìmíng, mùbiǎo, xíngzhuàng etc.
Tiyao
No tíyào found in the Kanripo source file (the _000.txt for this work contains only the mùlù; no Sìkùtíyào block is preserved).
Abstract
Lín Bì’s exact lifedates are not preserved (the catalog meta gives no dates); on the basis of his Yuán jìnshì of 1348 and his death in Hóngwǔ-era office at Dēngzhōu (taken by the Míng shǐ yìwén zhì and the Fújiàn tōngzhì to be c. 1380–1382), he is conventionally assigned the bracket c. 1320 – c. 1382. The dating bracket in the frontmatter (1340–1382) reflects the documented composition period. Lín’s poetry collection contains a substantial body of verse composed during his 1369 mission to Annam (the Shǐ Jiāozhǐ shī 使交阯詩 sequence), which is one of the principal early-Míng sources for the Hóngwǔ diplomatic re-establishment with the kingdom of Đại Việt under the Trần 陳 dynasty. The prose is heavily weighted toward xù (genre-prefaces, primarily zèngxù for friends and jíxù for other authors’ collections) and jì (chiefly studio-records and temple records for Fújiàn institutions). His Dēngzhōu tenure is reflected in a number of shī and jì on Shāndōng topography. Lín’s literary reputation in his own time was modest — he is not discussed in the principal Sìkù-era poetic anthologies — but the collection has substantial documentary value for early-Hóngwǔ provincial administration in Shāndōng and for Hóngwǔ-era diplomacy with Annam.
Translations and research
- John K. Whitmore. 1985. Vietnam, Hồ Quý Ly, and the Ming (1371–1421). Yale Southeast Asia Studies. Treats the Hóngwǔ embassies of which Lín Bì was a member.
- Fújiàn tōng-zhì 福建通志 (Dào-guāng edition), j. 178, biography of Lín Bì.
Other points of interest
- The 1369 mission to Annam recorded in Lín’s Shǐ Jiāozhǐ shī is a key early source for Hóngwǔ-era Sino-Vietnamese diplomatic protocol.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).