文苑英華

Wényuàn yīnghuá 文苑英華

Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature by 李昉 (chief compiler, fèngchì biān)

About the work

The third and largest of the Four Great Sòng Imperial-Commission Compilations (四大書) — the others being the Tàipíng yùlǎn KR3j0019, the Tàipíng guǎngjì KR3l0007, and the Cèfǔ yuánguī KR2k0010. The Wényuàn yīnghuá is a 1000-juǎn topical anthology of literature from the Liáng down to the late Táng / Five-Dynasties, organising approximately 20,000 pieces by 2,200 authors into 39 main genres (fù, shī, gēxíng, záwén, zhōngshū zhìgào, hànlín zhìgào, zhìjí, cè wèn, piān, zhuàn, jì, xù, shū, suǒyán, huàzàn, bēi, zhì, xíngzhuàng, jìwén, yuèfǔ, etc.) and 1100+ sub-categories. Roughly nine-tenths of the contents are Táng — making the Wényuàn yīnghuá the single most important repository of Táng prose and poetry outside the dynastic-history jīngjízhì listings, and the principal Sòng-period documentary witness to Táng literary output.

Compilation history (from the prefatory Zuǎnxiū Wényuàn yīnghuá shìshǐ): commissioned by Sòng Tàizōng on Tàipíng xīngguó 7 month 9 (Oct./Nov. 982), the project was led by Lǐ Fǎng 李昉 (Hànlín xuéshì chéngzhǐ) with seventeen senior collaborators including Hù Méng 扈蒙, Xú Xuàn 徐鉉, Sòng Bái 宋白, Jiǎ Huángzhōng 賈黃中, Lǚ Méngzhèng 呂蒙正, Lǐ Zhì 李至, Lǐ Mù 李穆, Yáng Huīzhī 楊徽之, Lǐ Fàn 李範, Yáng Lì 楊礪, Wú Shū 吳淑, Lǚ Wénzhòng 呂文仲, Hú Tīng 胡汀, Zhàn Yíqìng 戰貽慶, Dù Hào 杜鎬, and Shū Yǎ 舒雅. When most of these senior staff were re-assigned, Sū Yìjiǎn 蘇易簡, Wáng Yòu 王祐, Fàn Gǎo 范杲, and Sòng Shì 宋湜 joined Sòng Bái to complete the project. The final 1000 juǎn were presented on the rényín of Yōngxī 3 month 12 (early 987). The book was subsequently revised under Zhēnzōng (Wú Shū re-collated, 1009 or thereabouts).

The textual problems were severe: in Jiātài 1–4 (1201–1204), Zhōu Bìdà 周必大 (1126–1204), then retired as Yìguó gōng, undertook a thorough collation with the assistance of Fàn Zhòngyì 范仲藝, Dīng Jiè 丁介, and “friends and disciples,” using the Jīngshǐzǐjí, the Zhuànzhù commentaries, the Tōngdiǎn and Tōngjiàn, the Yìwén lèijù, the Chūxué jì, yuèfǔ, Buddho-Daoist materials, and xiǎoshuō as collation tools, and emended thousands of errors. Zhōu’s 1204 Jiātài edition is the basis of all received printings, including the WYG copy.

Tiyao

The source file used here is not the Qīng-court SKQS tíyào but the prefatory Zuǎnxiū Wényuàn yīnghuá shìshǐ (the Origins of the Compilation of the Wényuàn yīnghuá) which is itself a Sòng-period documentary compilation of records of the project. It assembles in order:

• the Sānzhāo guóshǐ yìwénzhì zhù (with the founding zhào of Tàipíng xīngguó 7);
• the Guócháo huìyào (the formal court annal);
• the Chóngwén zǒngmù;
• Lǐ Tāo’s Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān;
• the Zhōngxìng guǎngé shūmù of Chén Kuí et al.;
• the long Zhōu Bìdà chízhèng note of Jiātài 4 month 7 day 7 (1204), summarising the textual problems, the use of variant editions, and the rationale for the new printed text.

Zhōu Bìdà’s note is the principal documentary statement of the collation problem in a major Sòng compilation; it is a foundational source for the history of Sòng textual scholarship.

Abstract

The Wényuàn yīnghuá is structurally complementary to the slightly earlier Tàipíng yùlǎn (the encyclopaedic compendium of factual quotations) — where the Yùlǎn gathers excerpts as evidential snippets, the Yīnghuá preserves complete works of literature. The two were planned together as parts of the Sòng Tàipíng programme of literary recovery and stand as a pair.

Three major historiographical claims about the work are now standard: (1) the Yīnghuá preserves Táng prose and poetry not extant elsewhere — approximately 1,800 pieces survive only here; (2) it preserves variant readings — sometimes much earlier than those of the corresponding individual collections — for Táng works that do survive elsewhere, making it indispensable for Táng textual scholarship; (3) the Jiātài 1204 Zhōu Bìdà collation is one of the foundational documents of Sòng-period evidential scholarship (kǎozhèng), establishing principles of variant-recording, taboo-character handling, and edition-comparison that the Qīng-period Sìkù compilers explicitly inherited.

The collateral compilation, the Wényuàn yīnghuá biànzhèng 文苑英華辨證 KR4h0023 by Péng Shūxià 彭叔夏 (1192) — completed during the Zhōu Bìdà revision — is the indispensable apparatus criticus to the Yīnghuá and is normally read alongside it.

The Táng anthology selectivity of the Wényuàn yīnghuá implicitly canonises a Sòng court reading of Táng literature in which Liǔ Zōngyuán, Bái Jūyì, Quán Déyú, Lǐ Shāngyǐn, Gù Yún, and Luō Yǐn are admitted at near-complete juǎn scale, while Hán Yù is more selectively represented and pre-Táng LiángChén materials are sparse. Yáo Xuǎn’s subsequent Táng wéncuì KR4h0024 — at 100 juǎn — is a Sòng-period editorial response, distilling the Yīnghuá’s Táng materials by a factor of ten under stricter critical criteria.

Translations and research

• William H. Nienhauser, “Wenyuan yinghua,” in The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (1986), 891–894.
• Glen Dudbridge, Lost Books of Medieval China (London: British Library, 2000) — chapters on the Yīnghuá as a transmitter of lost Táng texts.
• Lǐ Wěi-guó 李偉國, Wényuàn yīnghuá yánjiū 文苑英華研究 (Shanghai: Shanghai gǔjí, 2003) — the standard modern monograph.
• Fù Xuán-cóng 傅璇琮, Táng-dài shī-rén cóng-kǎo 唐代詩人叢考 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá, 1980) — extensive use of the Yīnghuá for Táng prosopography.
• Sòng Mǐn-qiú 宋敏求 et al., Chūn-míng tuì-cháo lù — Sòng-period notes on the compilation.

Other points of interest

The book is one of only two pre-Yuán Chinese works (with the Tàipíng yùlǎn) to survive in its complete 1000-juǎn form, and the Jiātài 1204 Zhōu Bìdà block-print edition is the most important single textual ancestor of all received copies. The Zhōngxìng guǎngé shūmù of Chén Kuí preserves valuable evidence about the distribution of the original Sòng edition — observing in the late 12th century that almost no scholar-official’s house held a copy, and that even at the Mìgé the text was corrupt.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.1, §41.2.
• ctext
• Wikipedia, “Wenyuan Yinghua”