北齊文紀

BěiQí wénjì 北齊文紀

Records of Northern-Qí Prose by 梅鼎祚

About the work

A 3-juǎn late-Míng anthology of Northern-Qí prose by Méi Dǐngzuò (梅鼎祚) — covering the Northern Qí dynasty (550–577), one of the Northern Dynasties (北朝). The dynasty was brief (28 years); its principal literary figures are Xíng Shào 邢邵 and Wèi Shōu 魏收 — both also serving the preceding Eastern-Wèi state. The Sìkù tiyao is unusually brief for this volume — the surviving Northern-Qí corpus is small. The volume opens with imperial figures Gāo Huān 高歡 and Gāo Chéng 高澄 (treated as Eastern-Wèi-period imperial founders of the Qí dynasty by family-affiliation), then Xíng Shào and Wèi Shōu dominate the included contents. The volume includes Zhōu Biāo’s 周鑣 preface dated Chóngzhēn wùyín (1638).

Tiyao

Your servants respectfully submit: the BěiQí wénjì in 3 juǎn — the Míng Méi Dǐngzuò edited it.

In Northern Qí’s writings — Xíng and Wèi [Shōu] stand first. Beyond these — língpiān duǎnzhá (scattered pieces, short letters) — gathered to fill the juǎnzhì. What is gathered: from zhèngshǐ (standard histories), the Wényuàn yīnghuá, the Yìwén lèijù, the Tōngjiàn, and various such books — total. The reason: transmitted base materials běn shǎo (basically few); gathering is difficult — not that the gathering was incomplete.

Among the first listed are Gāo Huān and Gāo Chéng — like XīJìn compilation’s redundancy of “Three Founders”. Others include: Hóu Jǐng’s report to Gāo Chéng — the Shǐ explicitly says Wáng Wěi wrote it; the proclamation of WénXuān’s accession declaring-to-Heaven document — the Shǐ explicitly says Wèi Shōu wrote it; Tiānbǎo 1 great amnesty decree — the Yìwén lèijù explicitly says Xíng Shào wrote it — and these are all bù guī cāobǐ zhī rén (not credited to the actual writers); they are signed under those whose name they were composed in. By examining facts, not understanding qí ān (the rationale).

Further: the Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓 — a separately compiled book — the shǐzhì (historical bibliographic) records have always catalogued it separately. Were a quánwén zàirù (full-text inclusion) — already a violation of tǐlì (editorial form). But here only the xùzhì chapter is recorded; and within that chapter, only the first 4–5 lines — must be from piānyè wúduō (the chapter being short) — not checked carefully — shūlòu zhìcǐ (omissive to this extent)?

Examining: Chóngzhēn wùyín (1638) Zhōu Biāo’s preface to Dǐngzuò’s Wénjì — says from East-Jìn down, all engraved after Dǐngzuò’s death — therefore in the middle many cǎochuàng zhī gǎo (rough-draft manuscripts); his descendants did not fully shìzhèng (correct-and-fix), and consequently engraved — also not all Dǐngzuò’s faults.

Reverently submitted, sixth month of Qiánlóng 44 (1779). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Date. c. 1615–1618 compilation; posthumous publication including Chóngzhēn wùyín (1638) for this volume (Zhōu Biāo’s preface confirms). The Wénjì series’ completion thus extends across two decades after Méi’s death — through the late-Wàn-lì, Tiānqǐ, and Chóngzhēn reigns.

Significance. (1) The work is the canonical Míng anthology of Northern-Qí prose — a small but historically interesting corpus, representing the northern-court complement to the southern-dynasties’ Sòng / Qí / Liáng / Chén wénjì. (2) The dominant figures: Xíng Shào (492–c. 560), one of the great Northern letters-people, whose preserved fragments derive principally from this anthology and its sources; Wèi Shōu (505–572), compiler of the Wèishū and one of the major historians of the Northern dynasties. (3) The volume’s brevity (3 juǎn) reflects the systematic destruction of Northern documentary records during the Northern-Qí to Northern-Zhōu transition (577) and the subsequent Suí unification (589) — recovery was already incomplete by Sòng. (4) Méi’s failure to attribute various documents to their actual ghostwriters (Wáng Wěi for Hóu Jǐng’s report; Wèi Shōu for the WénXuān heaven-declaration; Xíng Shào for the Tiānbǎo amnesty decree) is a substantive editorial defect — but reflects the convention of crediting documents to their signatory issuer rather than to the actual compositor. (5) The Zhōu Biāo preface — dated 1638 — establishes the absolute terminus ad quem of the Wénjì series publication.

Translations and research

• Albert Dien, Pei Ch’i Shu — translation and study of Northern-Qí historical sources.
• Patricia Ebrey, The Aristocratic Families of Early Imperial China (Cambridge, 1978) — relevant for Bó-líng Cuī family context.
• No substantial Western-language monograph specifically on Northern-Qí literature located.

Other points of interest

The work — along with KR4h0129 HòuZhōu wénjì — completes Méi Dǐngzuò’s eight-dynasty Wénjì program. The total series, when added together with the KR4h0119 Gǔ yuèyuàn, constitutes the most comprehensive late-Míng pre-Suí literature project — paralleling Féng Wéinè’s KR4h0107 Gǔshī jì for poetry. The two compilers’ programs together exhausted pre-Suí literature in late-Míng terms. The Qīng successor — Yán Kějūn’s Quán Shànggǔ sāndài QínHàn Sānguó Liùcháo wén (1836) — superseded both, but used them as principal sources.

Links

• ctext
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §32, §38.