Sānjiā gōngcí 三家宮詞
Palace Verse of Three Houses by 毛晉
About the work
A 3-juǎn anthology assembling the gōngcí 宮詞 — quatrains on the inner-palace world — of three canonical authors of the genre: Táng Wáng Jiàn (王建, ~767–~830, zhī the Gōngcí 100-quatrain set that founded the genre); the HòuShǔ palace lady Huāruǐ fūrén (花蘂夫人, the Fèi-surname concubine of Mèng Chǎng 孟昶 of HòuShǔ, mid-10th c.); and the Northern Sòng grand councillor Wáng Guī (王珪, 1019–1085). Each contributes one hundred seven-character quatrains (qīyán juéjù), making 300 in total. The compiler is the great Chángshú book-publisher Máo Jìn (毛晉, 1599–1659, Jígǔgé zhǔrén 汲古閣主人). The work’s scholarly value lies in Máo Jìn’s textual restoration: the Sìkù tíyào documents that the inherited Wáng Jiàn series had absorbed wrongly-attributed pieces (Wáng Chānglíng’s Chángxìn qiūcí, Liú Yǔxī’s Wèigōng cí, Bái Jūyì’s Hòugōng cí, Zhāng Jí’s Gōngcí, Dù Mù’s Qiūxī zuò); and the Huāruǐ fūrén / Wáng Guī series had been catastrophically corrupted (41 of Wáng Guī’s pieces wrongly entered the Huāruǐ collection, 39 of Huāruǐ’s pieces wrongly attributed to Wáng Guī, and two Táng pieces inserted to round out the total). Máo’s edition restores the proper attributions by collation against earlier copies. The Sìkù tíyào observes that — beyond the literary craft — the compilation has historical-anecdotal value for the study of imperial inner-court life: Wáng Jiàn drew on the eunuch network (his line “I am not even of the inner household / how could outsiders know” hints at the eunuch source); Huāruǐ fūrén was a palace lady writing from direct experience; and Wáng Guī served at court through four reigns and held the chief councillor’s post.
Tiyao
Your servants respectfully submit: the Sānjiā gōngcí in 3 juǎn — compiled by the Míng Máo Jìn. Máo Jìn has the Máoshī cǎomù niǎoshòu chóngyú shū guǎngyào — already catalogued. The “three houses” are: (1) Táng Wáng Jiàn; (2) Shǔ [HòuShǔ] Huāruǐ fūrén; (3) Sòng Wáng Guī — each with 100 seven-syllable quatrains.
Wáng Jiàn’s jí is separately catalogued. His Gōngcí one hundred — old prints had mixed in: Wáng Chānglíng’s Chángxìn qiūcí one piece; Liú Yǔxī’s Wèigōng cí two pieces; Bái Jūyì’s Hòugōng cí one piece; Zhāng Jí’s Gōngcí two pieces; Dù Mù’s Qiūxī zuò one piece and Chūgōngrén one piece — Máo Jìn collated old recensions and corrected.
Huāruǐ fūrén is the concubine Fèi-surname of Mèng Chǎng of Shǔ. In Sòng Xīníng 5 (1072), Wáng Ānguó 王安國 — while jiǎnxiào guānshū — for the first time discovered her manuscript handscroll in a worn book-basket and reported it to Wáng Ānshí; Wáng Ānshí spoke of it to Wáng Guī and Féng Jīng — and only thus did her Gōngcí become transmitted in the world.
The Huáyáng jí 華陽集 that Wáng Guī composed was already lost in the Míng. The present compilation at last gathers and edits from the materials preserved in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典. Only this Gōngcí survived in a separate-transmission edition — yet the popular copyists had erred: 41 pieces [actually Wáng Guī’s] cuàn (inserted) into Huāruǐ fūrén’s poetry, and 39 pieces [of Huāruǐ fūrén] moved over to Wáng Guī, with two further Táng pieces picked up to fill out the count — the diānchuǎn (jumbling) is shūshèn (especially severe). This recension corrects each one by collation.
Wáng Jiàn’s gift-piece to Wáng Shǒuchéng 王守澄 contains the lines: “Bú shì dāngjiā qīn xiàng shuō / jiǔzhòng zhēngdé wàirén zhī” — “I am not of the inner family, with personal knowledge / how could the Nine-fold Forbidden be known to outsiders?” — although this is jiézhì (extracted-under-constraint) diction at the moment, indeed the inner-palace observance is deep and severe, but transmissions of suǒshì (trivial events) also do not necessarily fail to come from ruòbèi (people of that sort, i.e. eunuchs) — his words are likely not entirely fictitious.
Fèishì (Huāruǐ fūrén) — body provided to the yètíng (palace-lady chambers) — states what she heard and saw.
Wáng Guī — chūrù jīntà (entering and leaving the forbidden tower-gates), serving four reigns — bù chū guómén (never leaving the capital), yet reaching the position of Chief Councillor (zǎixiàng) — what his ears soaked in and eyes dyed is yì hū (different from) wild-rural rumour.
Máo Jìn gathers and edits these — all suffice for investigating the yìshì (lost-event records) of those days — not merely for taking the cí’s craftsmanship. Reverently submitted, twelfth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Date. Máo Jìn’s editorial career ran principally through the Chóngzhēn reign (1628–1644) and into the early Qīng (1644–1659). The Sānjiā gōngcí belongs to this mature window; the bracket adopted (1620–1659) covers his active compilation life.
Significance. (1) The Sānjiā gōngcí is the standard pre-modern collection of the three canonical authors of the gōngcí genre in qīyán juéjù form: Táng (Wáng Jiàn), Five-Dynasties Shǔ (Huāruǐ fūrén), Northern Sòng (Wáng Guī). (2) Máo’s editorial achievement is the textual restoration of the three series against centuries of copy-house corruption — the Sìkù tíyào records his collational reasoning in detail. (3) The compilation preserves the principal source for Huāruǐ fūrén’s verse: her work first emerged in 1072 from a single manuscript discovered by Wáng Ānguó (younger brother of Wáng Ānshí) and was thereafter transmitted in scattered fashion; Wáng Guī’s Huáyáng jí was lost in the Míng and his Gōngcí survives only in a biéxíng (separately-circulated) recension recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. (4) The Wáng Jiàn Gōngcí set is the genre-defining model of Chinese palace-verse — Bái Jūyì, Wáng Chānglíng, Liú Yǔxī, Zhāng Jí, and Dù Mù all wrote within its conventions, and their pieces were so similar that they crept into the Wáng Jiàn corpus by the Sòng.
Genre. The gōngcí is a highly specific Chinese poetic genre: 7-syllable quatrains depicting the daily life of palace women — their rooms, their amusements, their occasional festivals, their boredom, their seasonal sorrow. The genre conventions are tight (one zhuǎnyùn per quatrain; one or two evocative palace-object images per piece; sometimes a sotto-voce political allegory). Wáng Jiàn’s 100-quatrain set is the foundational example; later collections form a tradition deliberately tracing back to him.
Companion volume. Máo Jìn separately compiled the Èrjiā gōngcí 二家宮詞 KR4h0137 in 2 juǎn, gathering the gōngcí of two further authors (Sòng’s Sòng Bái 宋白 and Zhāng Gōngpǔ 張公甫). The two compilations are a pair, the standard pre-modern repository of the gōngcí genre.
Translations and research
- Wilt L. Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Cambridge MA, 2004) — includes treatment of Huā-ruǐ fū-rén and the gōng-cí tradition.
- 莫礪鋒 Mò Lì-fēng, Wáng Jiàn shī xuǎn 王建詩選 — focused Chinese study with the Gōng-cí.
- 葉嘉瑩 Yè Jiā-yíng (Florence Chia-ying Yeh), Jiā-líng tán cí 迦陵談詞 — on the lyrical-political tradition of gōng-cí.
Other points of interest
The case of Huāruǐ fūrén’s manuscript discovery (1072) is one of the most famous textual-transmission anecdotes in Chinese literary history: a poet — politically a “loser” (consort of a defeated regional ruler) whose state had fallen in 965 — had her qiānshǒu shū (autograph) survive a century in a bìlù (worn book-basket) until Wáng Ānguó rescued it in the 1070s. The recovery was made famous by being reported through Wáng Ānshí’s political circle (Ānshí, Wáng Guī, Féng Jīng). The line attributed to Huāruǐ fūrén — “shísì wàn rén qí jiějiǎ / nìng wú yī gè shì nánér” (140,000 men all peeled off their armour / not one was a man) — addressed to the Sòng emperor after her capture, became the most famous single quatrain in Chinese palace-verse, though its authenticity has been debated.