古文苑

Gǔwén yuàn 古文苑

Garden of Ancient Prose by 章樵 (annotator; original Táng compilation anonymous)

About the work

A Northern- and Southern-Sòng annotated anthology of pre-Táng prose and verse “not preserved in the Wénxuǎn and not recorded in the standard histories” (shǐzhuàn suǒ bù zài, Wénxuǎn suǒ bù lù). The compilation has a complex layered history:

(1) The original Táng-period nucleus was reportedly discovered by Sūn Jùyuán 孫巨源 (Sòng) in a Buddhist sūtra-shrine — a single bundled-codex gǔwén in unknown editorial hand; (2) Hán Yuánjí 韓元吉 (1118–1187), Yǐngchuān native, edited and re-arranged the find into nine juǎn, with a colophon dated Chúnxī 6 (1179); (3) Zhāng Qiáo 章樵, the Sōng Zhī Píngjiāngfǔ Wúxiànshì, then re-edited the work into the present 21 juǎn with a substantial annotation apparatus (collation of variant readings, gloss of obscure characters, identification of allusions, supplementary pieces from contemporary literary-history records), with a preface dated Shàodìng rénchén (1232).

The collection runs from the Zhōu Xuānwáng shígǔ wén 周宣王石鼓文 (the famous stone-drum inscriptions) to the Qí Yǒngmíng (late 5th c.) exchange poetry — about 1300 years of pre-Táng material in 264 pieces (plus 7 supplements). The genre coverage is unusually broad: gēshī, fù, sòng, shū, zhuàng, zhēn, míng, bēi, jì, záwén — 21 distinct genres.

Tiyao

Zhāng Qiáo’s preface (translated, summary): “The Gǔwén yuàn contains writings the standard histories do not record and the Wénxuǎn does not collect — songs, fù, hymns, letters, memorials, admonitions, inscriptions, stelae, records, miscellaneous prose, twenty-one genres in all, 264 pieces, with seven appendices. It begins with the Zhōu Xuānwáng shígǔ wén and ends with the Qí Yǒngmíng exchange. Across that span — thirteen centuries — the rise and decline of the world, the fineness and coarseness of customs, the success and failure of governance, the loftiness and lowliness of talent, can all be discerned. To take it in particular: the Qíyáng sōushòu — actually heralding the Restoration’s prosperity, its stone-inscriptions and merit-records, of dense and substantial diction, can supplement losses to the Shī jīng’s Yǎ; the Sìshuǐ stelae celebrate the founding king’s flourishing, his merit and virtue noted in name and reality, continuing the rich tradition of Hóngsǎn. Yáng Zǐyún imitated Yú to write Zhēn — Guānzhēn wángquē — to rectify mind and method and warn of small dangers, rivaling the inscriptions on the pányú jǐzhàng of the sages. Possessor of state should preserve these as a mirror.” Zhāng then explains: “Generations passing, the documents decaying — even what Hán Yuánjí wished to bring to the Tàixué for instruction, the originals are lost; the inscriptions on the Fúqìng stone, Wèi Sòngzhī’s notes, and the literary collections recorded in the Suí/Táng yìwénzhì, are mostly fallen away — only the gǔwén anthology in one bundle (recovered from the Buddhist shrine) has come back to the world. Its phrasing is strange-archaic, its characters odd-old; without phonetic gloss, with corrupt copying, readers find it difficult. While serving as magistrate at Wú, I devoted lamp-oil hours to it, collated and emended, drew on broken fragments to fill, on other collections to test, and arranged it for circulation. Now in Shàodìng rénchén (1232), in 21 juǎn.”

Hán Yuánjí’s colophon (1179) explains the gǔwén find as follows: “It was said that Sūn Jùyuán in a Buddhist shrine found a Táng-deposited gǔwén bundle — no one knew its compiler. All pieces unrecorded in the standard histories and unselected by the Wénxuǎn, found here and there in other collections and in yuèfǔ — collectors named it Gǔwén yuàn. Now I have arranged it in 9 juǎn.”

Abstract

The Gǔwén yuàn is the principal Sòng-period anthology of pre-Táng prose and verse outside the Wénxuǎn tradition, and a foundational source for: (1) the Shígǔ wén stone-drum inscriptions, whose Sòng-period rubbing-readings were preserved in this collection well before the Yuán and Míng scholars worked on them; (2) the early fù corpus — including the dubia and yìwén (suspect / lost works) by Sòng Yù, Jiǎ Yì, Méi Chéng, Sīmǎ Xiāngrú, Yáng Xióng, and Zhāng Héng; (3) the HànWèi yuèfǔ sub-canon not in the Wénxuǎn; and (4) the Qí Liáng exchange-verse tradition. Modern textual scholarship (Lù Kànrú, Yán Kějūn) treats the Gǔwén yuàn alongside the Yìwén lèijù and Tàipíng yùlǎn as a principal source for yìwén of the pre-Táng period; many of its readings differ significantly from those of the Yán Kějūn Quán shànggǔ Sāndài QínHàn liùcháo wén corpus.

The textual status of several major pieces is famously controversial: Hán Yuánjí’s preface itself raises the question — Sòng Yù’s six fù (Dí fù, Dà yán fù, Xiǎo yán fù, Fèng fù, Diào fù, Wǔ fù) are now widely judged Hàn or post-Hàn forgeries, and most of the early-Hàn qīyán pieces likewise; Hán is candid about the problem and refuses to “correct and supplement” what may be pseudepigraphic. Zhāng Qiáo’s later notes treat several texts more critically. This makes the Gǔwén yuàn a key witness — but not necessarily a reliable one — for early-imperial literary history.

The 21-juǎn Zhāng-annotated form is the basis of all later printings (Máo Jìn, Wǔyīngdiàn, etc.) and is the form transmitted in the Sìkù quánshū.

Translations and research

• Yán Kě-jūn 嚴可均, Quán shàng-gǔ Sān-dài Qín-Hàn Sān-guó liù-cháo wén (1808–1836) — relies heavily on the Gǔwén yuàn for yì-wén; Yán’s collations are still the principal modern reading.
• Wáng Lì-qì 王利器, Wén-xīn diāo-lóng xīn shū — multiple references to Gǔwén yuàn readings.
• Robert Joe Cutter, “Cao Zhi’s Symposium Poems,” CLEAR 6 (1984): 1–32 — uses Gǔwén yuàn readings.
• Lú Kàn-rú 陸侃如, Zhōnggǔ wénxué xìniánkǎo 中古文學系年考 — chronology of pre-Táng prose anchored in Gǔwén yuàn.

Other points of interest

The collection’s stone-drum readings (Shígǔ wén) are among the most-discussed Sòng-period palaeographic transcriptions. Hán Yùn’s (Hán Yù’s) opinion that the inscriptions are pre-Confucian is rejected by Hán Yuánjí in this preface — establishing a Sòng critical position that pre-dates by centuries the Qīng-period palaeographers’ more accurate attribution to the late Western Zhōu.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.1.
• ctext
• Wikipedia, “Guwen yuan”: (no English entry — see Chinese Wikipedia entry “古文苑”)