Suí wén jì 隋文紀
Chronicle of Suí Prose by 梅鼎祚
About the work
An 8-juǎn anthology of Suí-dynasty prose compiled by Méi Dǐngzuò (梅鼎祚, 1549–1618, zì Yǔjīn 禹金, of Xuānchéng 宣城). It forms one volume in Méi’s monumental dynastic-prose series, the Wénjì 文紀 — a sequence of period-by-period prose anthologies running from antiquity through the Six Dynasties (cf. the earlier Huángbà wénjì 皇霸文紀 KR4h0120 for pre-Qín / Qín / Wáng Mǎng / Western Hàn, his Dōng Hàn wénjì 東漢文紀 etc., and the Shì wénjì 釋文紀 KR4h0131 for Buddhist prose through the Suí). The work collects the prose output of the entire forty-year Suí state — including pieces by senior Suí writers who had begun their careers under Northern Qí, Northern Zhōu, Liáng, and Chén — and is the principal pre-modern repository of Suí prose, superseded only by Yán Kějūn’s 嚴可均 Quán shànggǔ Sāndài Qín Hàn Sānguó Liùcháo wén 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文 of the early 19th century, which drew directly on Méi’s compilation.
Tiyao
Your servants respectfully submit: the Suí wén jì in 8 juǎn — compiled by the Míng Méi Dǐngzuò. When the Suí unified north and south, the senior survivors of Qí and Zhōu and the veteran officials of Liáng and Chén were all assembled at one court; the work thus forms the prose-collection of a single dynasty. But because each writer continued his old habits and the regional styles remained distinct, the literary output of forty-odd years never managed to form a unitary style of its own. Moreover, the xiǎoshuō tradition transmits material principally from the Táng, and the Rénshòu 仁壽 and Dàyè 大業 reign-periods stand closest to the Táng — so the fragmentary anecdotes and lost pieces of the Suí are inextricably mixed with later forgeries and accretions.
The pieces Méi Dǐngzuò has gathered are accordingly the most heterogeneous of the series. Items such as the Suí yílù 隋遺錄, the Kāihé jì 開河記, the Mílóu jì 迷樓記, the Hǎishān jì 海山記, and the Dàyè shíyí jì 大業拾遺記 are all spurious attributions; and Wáng Dù’s 王度 Gǔjìng jì 古鏡記 is particularly bizarre and unreliable — descended from Sōushén yìyuàn 搜神異苑 lineage and a forerunner of the Kuíchē / Yíjiān genres — by no means fit for inclusion in a serious zǒngjí; admitting it is to defile the book. Likewise the Yángdì’s colophon to Cáo Zhí’s calligraphy in the Jiǎxiùtáng tiē 甲秀堂帖 is unknown to Táng-and-later connoisseurship and its diction is conspicuously late-imperial — including it is a failure of editorial judgement.
As for pieces by Táng Gāozǔ, Tàizōng, Chǔ Liàng, Lǐ Jìng, Chén Shūdá, Wēn Dàyǎ, Wèi Zhēng and so on — these men do not belong to the Suí and there can be no question of inclusion; yet because some of their pieces were written during the Suí, they have all been swept in. Conversely, Lǐ Délín’s edict in the name of Suí Jìngdì was composed under the Zhōu, and Yán Zhītuī’s memorial on revising the music was submitted under the Liáng. Sometimes the editor follows the text-by-author rule, sometimes the author-by-text rule — measured against the terminal-date principle, his procedure is inconsistent.
Further: the edict on Wéndì’s restoration of the surname is taken straight from the historical record’s narrative; Lǐ Délín’s edict on revising the Wǔlǐ 五禮 is mis-attributed to Wéndì; Zǔ Jūnyàn’s circular-letter to commanderies and counties and his letter to Yuán Zǐgàn are both wrongly attributed to Lǐ Mì; Wèi Zhēng’s letter to Xúnwáng Qìng is attributed to Lǐ Mì; Kǒng Dézhāo’s letter to Qínwáng is attributed to Dòu Jiàndé; and so on. Likewise Cuī Yú’s indictment of Shǔwáng Xiù appears twice (juǎn 1 and juǎn 2); Dài Kuí’s Huángtàizǐ zhēn appears twice (juǎn 5 and juǎn 7) — though these are common flaws in all such compilations and need not be pursued in detail. The last juǎn lists Liáng Shénjiàn 梁神洊 and eleven others whose dates are uncertain; since Méi treats the present collection as the terminus of the Wénjì series, the undateable hands are simply appended here.
Yet, on balance, although inconsistencies and lacunae appear in every juǎn, the work as a whole — running back to high antiquity, forward to the close of the eight successive dynasties, broadly searching and widely collecting — has reduced the prose of pre-Táng China to a single continuous record, cǎnrán kě kǎo (brilliantly available for study). It is truly one of the great achievements of literary scholarship, and its merit cannot be effaced. Méi Dǐngzuò has also compiled the Shì wénjì 釋文紀 (Buddhist Wénjì) — gathering the chán-and-guān writings of the pre-Táng period more comprehensively than the Hóngmíng jí 弘明集 and the Guǎng Hóngmíng jí 廣弘明集; that work is separately catalogued in the zǐbù shìjiālèi. Reverently submitted, fourth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Date. Méi Dǐngzuò’s Wénjì series was the labour of his middle and later life; he was active as an anthologist from the 1570s onward. The Suí wénjì is best assigned to c. 1577–1618 (the bracket of his sustained anthological activity); a more precise date is not establishable from the surviving paratexts.
Significance. (1) The Suí wénjì is the only pre-19th-century comprehensive collection of Suí prose; before Yán Kějūn’s Quán shànggǔ Sāndài Qín Hàn Sānguó Liùcháo wén (completed 1836), it was the sole comprehensive repository. Yán explicitly drew on Méi’s Wénjì series as a principal source — making Méi’s compilation a foundational link in the textual history of pre-Táng prose. (2) The 8-juǎn arrangement preserves the regional diversity of late-sixth-century Chinese prose: Qí-survivors, Zhōu-survivors, Liáng-survivors, Chén-survivors, and Suí-natives are all represented, illustrating the Sìkù editors’ point that the Suí never developed a unitary style. (3) The compilation’s notorious mixing of authentic and spurious pieces (especially the late-Táng / Sòng xiǎoshuō attributions to the Suí court) makes it a useful index of what Míng readers thought of as “Suí” — and a cautionary specimen of pre-Qīng anthological practice.
Méi’s editorial method. Méi attempted to organise the Wénjì both by author (within each volume, pieces are grouped under their authors with brief biographical notes) and by chronological terminus (each volume covers a single dynasty). The Sìkù tíyào documents the inconsistencies this dual rule produces — pieces composed under the previous dynasty by men who served the Suí are included, while pieces composed under the Suí by men later prominent in the Táng are also included.
Translations and research
- Yán Kě-jūn 嚴可均, Quán shàng-gǔ Sān-dài Qín Hàn Sān-guó Liù-cháo wén 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文 (Guǎng-yǎ shū-jú 1887–93; Zhōng-huá 1958 reduced-size facsimile) — the comprehensive replacement for Méi’s series, drawing on it directly.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §44.4 (on the Quán shàng-gǔ Sān-dài and its dependence on Méi Wén-jì).
- 周明初 Zhōu Míng-chū, Méi Dǐng-zuò yán-jiū 梅鼎祚研究 — modern Chinese monograph on Méi’s anthology series.
Other points of interest
The Suí wénjì is the volume of Méi’s series most subject to Sìkù critique — both for its mixing of spurious xiǎoshuō (the various Dàyè romances) into a serious zǒngjí, and for its chronological inconsistencies at the dynastic boundary (ZhōuSuí, SuíTáng). The criticism is the Sìkù editors’ clearest statement on the rules of dynastic-prose anthology compilation: that terminal dates must follow the work, not the author, and that pseudepigraphic xiǎoshuō pieces must be excluded from a serious zǒngjí.
Links
- ctext
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §44.4.