金石例

Jīnshí lì 金石例

Conventions for Inscriptions on Metal and Stone by 潘昴霄 (撰)

About the work

The Jīnshí lì 金石例, in ten juǎn, is the most systematic Yuán-period treatise on the rules and conventions of jīnshí (stone-and-metal) inscription — i.e. the genres of funerary writing: epitaph (mùzhì míng 墓誌銘), stele (bēi 碑), spirit-way inscription (shéndào bēi 神道碑), shrine inscription (cí jì 祠記), and so on — together with related forms of public commemorative prose. By Pān Mǎoxiāo 潘昴霄 (also written 潘昂霄; zì Jǐngliáng 景梁) of Jǐnán, an early Yuán literary official. The book is, despite its title, somewhat heterogeneous in scope: juǎn 1–5 set out the institutional background (rank-based regulations governing tomb-mounds, “sheep-and-tiger” stone figures, dézhèng 德政 inscriptions, spirit-way stelae, family-shrine inscriptions, imperially-bestowed stelae); juǎn 6–8 treat the surviving epitaphs of Hán Yù 韓愈 as a body of models, codifying his usage on the sub-topics of family origin, lineage descent, post-record, wife-and-children, date of death, date and place of burial; juǎn 9 widens to general questions of prose-genre; and juǎn 10 sets out the rules of the imperial historiographical office (shǐyuàn fán lì 史院凡例). The work was the foundation of the MíngQīng jīnshí genre tradition; Wáng Xíng’s 王行 Mùmíng jǔ lì 墓銘舉例 (KR4i0050) was explicitly written to “fill in what Pān omitted” and develops the rules entirely on this base.

This work is the foundational Yuán contribution to the genre 金石學 (jīnshí xué, the study of stone-and-metal inscriptions) — at this stage focused on the rules of composition rather than the antiquarian-epigraphic side of the discipline, which came of age in the Sòng and would reach its modern form in the late Qīng.

Tiyao

Jīnshí lì, ten juǎn. By Pān Ángxiāo of the Yuán. Ángxiāo wrote a Hé yuán jì 河源記, already catalogued. The first to fifth juǎn of this book set out the origins of míngzhì (epitaphs), examining in detail the rank-graded regulations governing tomb-mounds, yánghǔ 羊虎 (the stone sheep and tigers), dézhèng (virtuous-government) inscriptions, shéndào (spirit-way) stelae, family shrines, and imperially-bestowed stelae. The sixth to eighth juǎn treat the epitaphs by Hán Yù as a corpus of canonical examples and codify them as a system: under categories such as family origin, lineage descent, post-record, wife-and-children, date of death and date of burial, the relevant passages are arrayed in tabular fashion and labelled as chéngshì 程式 (the formal pattern). The ninth juǎn is a miscellaneous discussion of prose-genre; the tenth juǎn is the procedural manual for the historiographical office (shǐyuàn fán lì).

Yet Ángxiāo’s book is titled Jīnshí lì; what he discusses should accordingly end at bēizhì. To range further into miscellaneous prose-forms, and into the conventions of the imperial diary (qǐjū zhù), seems incongruous. Further, in the miscellaneous-prose section the titles “Hé Bǎicháng xiānshēng Biānlèi jīnshí bā lì” 郝伯常先生編類金石八例 and “Cāngyá xiānshēng shíwǔ lì” 蒼崖先生十五例 appear in the table of contents but no text follows — they are listed but absent. At the end of juǎn 9 a colophon reads: “The above is the master’s Jīnshí lì. He took all of Hán’s prose and arranged it as a system. Broadly speaking it does not differ much from Xú Qiūshān 徐秋山’s Kuò lì; to record the whole again would be redundant. So I have noted only the headings here.” So the last two juǎn must originally have been a separate compilation, appended at the end of the Jīnshí lì; a later printer combined them into one book. Likewise — knowing from this that juǎn 6–8 (the “Hán prose kuòlì”) are taken whole-cloth from Xú Qiūshān’s book — they were not in fact written by Ángxiāo himself.

The book’s exposition of ancient regulations is sound, though by treating only Hán’s prose as the source of kuòlì it commits the error of “raising one and abandoning a hundred”. But the jīnshí prose of the Míng often does not investigate ancient methods and is shapeless; if this book is taken as a guide, at least some sense of canonical form is preserved — better than wholesale random invention. Three printings of the book were cut in the Yuán; the present copy is the one cut by Pān’s son Pān Xǔ 潘詡 at Póyáng in Zhìzhèng 5 (1345).

Abstract

The Jīnshí lì is the principal Yuán contribution to Chinese epitaph theory and to the broader genre 金石學 of “jīnshí studies” (here in the compositional rather than antiquarian sense). Pān Mǎoxiāo’s project — codifying the rules of bēizhì and related funerary prose-forms — is precisely the kind of work that the Sòng jīnshí tradition, dominated by epigraphic-antiquarian giants like Ōuyáng Xiū’s Jí gǔ lù and Zhào Míngchéng’s Jīnshí lù (both KR1 works), had not attempted: a manual for composers, not for antiquaries. The book thereby established a new sub-tradition of jīnshí writing that the Míng and Qīng would substantially develop, beginning with Wáng Xíng’s Mùmíng jǔ lì of 1395 (KR4i0050).

The composite character of the received text — recognised explicitly by the Sìkù editors — is its principal textual oddity. Juǎn 6–8 are essentially a transcription of Xú Qiūshān’s Kuò lì; juǎn 9–10 were originally a separate appendix later printed together with the main book by Pān’s son Pān Xǔ. The book is therefore best read as a composite anthology of Yuán funerary-prose method, of which Pān’s own contribution is juǎn 1–5 plus the final colophon.

The 昴 / 昂 variation in Pān’s name is a recurrent copy-error in the catalog tradition. CBDB has 潘昂霄 (id 10036); the catalog file gives 潘昴霄; the Sìkù editors write 潘昂霄. We retain the form 潘昴霄 used by the catalog (and the project filename convention) and note the variation.

The composition window adopted here — 1300 to 1345 — is bounded above by the 1345 Póyáng printing (Pān’s own son was the printer, so Pān may have been deceased by then) and below by CBDB’s flourit range of 1289–1302. Pān’s Hé yuán jì draws on the 1280 Dū Shí 都實 expedition, so the bulk of his career runs through the first half of the fourteenth century. The early-fourteenth-century bracket is the most defensible window for the Jīnshí lì.

Translations and research

• Wáng Shuǐ-zhào 王水照, ed., Lì-dài wén-huà huì biān 歷代文話彙編 (Fù-dàn dà-xué, 2007) — reprints the Jīn-shí lì.
• Tā Cí-rán 它次然 (Lì Yáo 厲堯), Jīn-shí xué shǐ 金石學史 (Zhōnghuá, 2003), opening chapters on Yuán jīn-shí method.
• Patricia Ebrey, “The Liturgies for Sacrifices to Ancestors in Successive Versions of the Family Rituals (Jiali)”, in Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion (Berkeley, 1990) — on the conventions of Sòng-Yuán memorial inscription tied to family ritual.
• Brian Moloughney, “Derivation, Intertextuality, and Authority: Narrative and the Problem of Historical Coherence”, East Asian History 23 (2002): 129–148, briefly treats Pān’s reading of Hán Yù’s funerary prose as canonical.
• A standard modern punctuated edition has not been issued; the Sìkù quán shū / Sìkù huì-yào and reprints of the 1345 Pó-yáng edition remain the working texts.

Other points of interest

The book is the principal Yuán bridge between the Sòng jīnshí xué tradition (antiquarian) and the Míng jīnshí compositional tradition (rule-codifying), and as such is one of the central works of the late-medieval genre. Wáng Xíng’s 王行 Mùmíng jǔ lì (KR4i0050), written in 1395, is the direct continuator. The two works are normally read together as the late-medieval theory of Chinese epitaph.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5; also §27 (jīnshí xué).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q11135824 (金石例).