Tóngwénguǎn chànghé shī 同文館唱和詩
Mutual-Rhyme Poems of the Tóng-wén Hall by 鄧忠臣 (etc.)
About the work
A ten-juǎn Northern-Sòng Yuányòu-period exchange-anthology produced by approximately a dozen junior officials sequestered together at the Tóngwénguǎn 同文館 — the building normally used to host Koryŏ (高麗) embassies, now temporarily serving as the examination quarters for the spring examinations of Yuányòu 2 (1087). The principal compiler-participant is Dèng Zhōngchén 鄧忠臣, and his fellow nominees include Zhāng Lěi 張耒, Cháo Bǔzhī 晁補之, Cài Zhào 蔥肇, Yú Gàn 余幹, Gěng Nánzhòng 耿南仲, Shāng Yǐ 商倚, Cáo Fǔ 曹輔, Liǔ Zǐwén 柳子文, Lǐ Gōnglín 李公麟 (the great painter), Kǒng Wǔzhōng 孔武仲, and two further men recorded only by surname (向, 益). The collection follows the precedent of Sū Yìjiǎn’s Jìnlín yànhuì jí 禁林宴會集 and Ōuyáng Xiū’s Lǐbù chànghé shī jí, but is much fuller. The book is principal for two reasons: (1) it preserves verse by Cài Zhào, Dèng Zhōngchén, and others whose individual collections are now wholly lost; (2) it documents the examination-time literary culture of the Yuányòu circle — the Sū-Shì-aligned group of Hànlín examiners working together under sequestration.
Tiyao
Your servants respectfully submit: the Tóngwénguǎn chànghé shī in ten juǎn — by Sòng’s Dèng Zhōngchén and others. The Tóngwénguǎn was the residence assigned for receiving Koryŏ embassies; when an examination session arrived, the same hall served as the test-supervisors’ quarters, and the seclude-companions’ mutual-rhyme poems were collected and compiled. The Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì records Sū Yìjiǎn’s Jìnlín yànhuì jí and Ōuyáng Xiū’s Lǐbù chànghé shī jí — this book follows their precedent, but the Sòngzhì alone fails to record it. The participants beyond Dèng Zhōngchén are: Zhāng Lěi, Cháo Bǔzhī, Cài Zhào, Yú Gàn, Gěng Nánzhòng, Shāng Yǐ, Cáo Fǔ, Liǔ Zǐwén, Lǐ Gōnglín, Kǒng Wǔzhōng — eleven in all. Plus two with no surname recorded, only “Xiàng 向” and “Yì 益” — Yì is probably Wēn Yì 溫益, but Xiàng is unidentifiable. Of these, Lěi, Bǔzhī, Zhào, Nánzhòng, Gōnglín, Wǔzhōng, and Yì have Sòngshǐ biographies. Dèng Zhōngchén and Shāng Yǐ are both entered in the Yuányòu dǎngjí. Only Yú Gàn and Liǔ Zǐwén are without recorded careers. Cáo Fǔ is not the same Cáo Fǔ who served as a Shūmì official in Jìngkāng; Lóu Yuè mistakenly combined them, and Wáng Yīnglín’s Kùnxué jìwén corrects the conflation.
The collection does not date the exchange-and-reply. From the Sòngshǐ biographies of Lěi and Bǔzhī — both jiàoshū láng in early Yuányòu, with Lěi’s poem on the zhīgé chóushū and Bǔzhī’s on the zhí chóushūshěng — we can place them at the Mìshūshěng. In Yuányòu 3 the Zhī gòngjǔ was Kǒng Píngzhòng 孔平仲, in the biographical record — this anthology has no Píngzhòng poem, so it is not 1088. Dèng Zhōngchén’s poem with the line “Dānè mèngxià cǎomù cháng” 單閼孟夏草木長 carries his own note “Dīngmǎo 4th month returned to court” — Dīngmǎo is Yuányòu 2 (1087), so probably this year. Again, Cáo Fǔ’s poem has “Jiǔ rén tóng rì suǒ chóng wéi” 九人同日鎻重闈, and Liǔ Zǐwén has “Máo Suì wèi zhì kōng lián fáng” 毛遂未至空連房 (self-note: “the tóngshě are nineteen; I alone entered late”). Probably the test-officials were admitted in two batches, as the Sòng system allows — nineteen in all, of whom only over half appear with poems here; the rest may have written verse not preserved, or, awed by Lěi and others, declined to add. Of the participants’ individual collections: only Zhāng Lěi’s Kēshān jí KR4c0145, Cháo Bǔzhī’s Jīlèi jí KR4c0154, and Kǒng Wǔzhōng’s Qīngjiāng sānKǒng jí KR4h0029 still survive. Others — Cài Zhào’s Dānyáng jí, Dèng Zhōngchén’s Yùchí jí — are lost; even some of the participants’ collection-names are unrecoverable. Their broken fragments and lost lines are seen here in glimpses. Where individual collections do survive, comparison with the Tóngwénguǎn readings shows substantial divergence — e.g. Cháo Bǔzhī’s five-character “Guānláo chíxiǎng fù” 官醪持餉婦 reads “gōnghú” 宫壺 in the Jīlèi jí; his seven-character “Sì liángfēng qī yǒu xìng” 似凉風凄有興 reads “lái yǒu sī” 來有思 in the Jīlèi jí; titles often differ too. Possibly the individual editors changed them when compiling the zìjí — material for poetry-collation scholars. Reverently submitted, sixth month of Qiánlóng 43 (1778). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Date: the Sìkù editors anchor the compilation in Yuányòu 2 (1087), spring examination session, on the strength of Dèng Zhōngchén’s “Dīngmǎo” note. This makes the Tóngwénguǎn chànghé shī a contemporary document of the Sū Shì–Sū Zhé–Huáng Tíngjiān generation’s central court-cohort years, and one of the principal documentary witnesses to the working life of the Yuányòu dǎngrén before the Shàoshèng (1094) purge.
The collation evidence noted by the SKQS editors is independently valuable: Cháo Bǔzhī’s Jīlèi jí KR4c0154 preserves his Tóngwén poems in a revised form, and the differences between the anthology readings and the collection readings document the editorial process by which Sòng poets revised their compositions for inclusion in their own zìjí. Similar comparison is possible for Zhāng Lěi (whose Kēshān jí KR4c0145 is the relevant collection — note: catalog meta lists Zhāng Lěi’s lifedates as 1054–1114; the SKQS editors are silent on Dèng Zhōngchén’s). For the lost-collection participants, the Tóngwénguǎn chànghé shī is irreplaceable.
The book is also the principal documentary source for the Yuányòu dǎng as a literary-political fellowship — Dèng Zhōngchén and Shāng Yǐ both appear on the proscribed-faction roster, and the entire compilation predates the persecution by a decade and a half.
Translations and research
- Ronald Egan, The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (Cambridge UP, 1984) — discussion of the Lǐ-bù chàng-hé tradition as antecedent.
- Michael Fuller, Drifting Among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty Poetry (Harvard Asia Center, 2013) — though focused on Southern Song, treats the Tóng-wén-guǎn anthology as antecedent.
- Zhāng Hóng-shēng 張宏生, Sòng-shī rónɡ-zhái jí 宋詩融匯集 — chapter on the Yuán-yòu exchange-poetry tradition.
- Qián Zhōng-shū 錢鍾書, Sòng-shī xuǎn-zhù — annotated selections from the Tóng-wén-guǎn anthology.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §31.4.
- ctext