唐音癸籤

Tángyīn guǐ qiān 唐音癸籤

The “Guǐ” Volume of the Compendium of Táng Poetic Sounds by 胡震亨 (撰)

About the work

The Tángyīn guǐ qiān 唐音癸籤, in thirty-three juǎn, is the tenth and final set of Hú Zhènhēng 胡震亨 (1569–1644)‘s massive late-Míng compilation Tángyīn tǒngqiān 唐音統籤 (“Comprehensive Compendium of Táng Poetic Sounds”). The set is named for the tenth of the ten Heavenly Stems, guǐ 癸 (the previous nine sets — jiǎ through rén — collect Táng poetry proper). This set is exclusively shīhuà (commentary, criticism, reference matter), and is therefore the most important late-Míng critical reference work on Táng poetry. It comprises seven divisions, neatly indicated by the Sìkù editors: (1) Tǐ 體 (poetic forms), 1 juǎn; (2) Fǎwēi 法微 (poetic technique), 3 juǎn, in 24 sub-rubrics covering tonal regulation, prosody, diction, and craft; (3) Pínghuì 評彚 (collected critical evaluations), 7 juǎn; (4) Yuètōng 樂通 (Music-Bureau studies), 4 juǎn, on yuèfǔ; (5) Gǔjiān 詁箋 (philological commentary), 9 juǎn, glossing names, things, and allusions; (6) Táncóng 談叢 (anecdote collection), 5 juǎn; (7) Jílù 集録 (catalog), 3 juǎn, listing Táng poet collections, anthologies, and jīnshí / mòjì (stone and manuscript) sources.

Tiyao

Tángyīn guǐ qiān, thirty-three juǎn. By Hú Zhènhēng of the Míng. Zhènhēng, zì Xiàoyuán, a man of Hǎiyán. Jǔrén of Wànlì dīngchǒu (1577); held office as Magistrate of Dìngzhōu, was promoted Vice Director in the Ministry of War. His Tángyīn tǒngqiān, which he compiled, has ten sets in all; the present is its tenth set. The nine sets are all collections of Táng poetry; this set collects Táng shīhuà.

The work had previously had no woodblock issue. In our dynasty in Kāngxī wùxū (1718), a Jiāngníng (Nanking) bookshop obtained a manuscript copy and printed it. Its divisions are seven: (1) Tǐ, 1 juǎn, discussing poetic forms; (2) Fǎwēi, 3 juǎn, divided into 24 sub-headings, from regulation and prosody to diction and tonal-mode — nothing not discussed; (3) Pínghuì, 7 juǎn, gathering the evaluative judgments of various critics; (4) Yuètōng, 4 juǎn, on yuèfǔ; (5) Gǔjiān, 9 juǎn, glossing names and allusions; (6) Táncóng, 5 juǎn, gathering anecdotes; (7) Jílù, 3 juǎn, listing first the Táng collections with their juǎn-counts, next the Táng anthologies and general collections, next the stone and ink-trace sources.

Zhènhēng’s labour on the comprehensive gathering of Táng poetry was the most strenuous of any. Of the nine collecting qiān, only the wù set had a woodblock issue, and what it gathered did not go beyond the imperially decreed Quán Táng shī — so it did not greatly circulate. Only the shīhuà set is fully compiled; matter not collected in the Quán Táng shī is found there. Although it records many Míng-period judgments which cannot all be taken as final verdicts, the source-and-flow of the three centuries’ “zhèngbiàn” (orthodox and deviating styles) can be discerned by the plough, and the work is in fact a help to the discussion of art. Hence we record and preserve it especially, lest his diligence in gathering be obliterated. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 43, 3rd month (1778). Director-General Compilers: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Director-General Collator: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Tángyīn guǐ qiān is the most encyclopedic late-Míng work on Táng poetry and one of the principal sources used by the compilers of the imperial Quán Táng shī 全唐詩 (KR4h0246) (1707). It is the last set of a project, the Tángyīn tǒngqiān, that occupied Hú Zhènhēng for some forty years from the late 1580s through to his death in 1644. The first nine sets attempted to be a complete corpus of Táng poetry — a project realized only partially in Hú’s lifetime (only the jiǎ and wù sets received printing), but whose surviving manuscripts directly fed the 1707 imperial Quán Táng shī. The guǐ set, this Sìkù entry, was the most fully completed and the most influential, both because it answered a real need (no general reference work on Táng shīhuà existed) and because it preserved scattered materials not retained in the imperial recension.

Composition window. The work cannot be precisely dated. Hú’s jǔrén dates to 1577 and his death to 1644; the project was begun in the late 1580s, with the first set (jiǎ) appearing in print by 1604. The guǐ set must postdate Hú’s major teaching/research output of the late Wànlì / early Tiānqǐ years and represents the cumulative critical apparatus distilled across his career; internal references to late-Wàn-lì critics including Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞, Hú Yìnglín 胡應麟 (in Shīsǒu 詩藪), and the early Hòuqīzǐ generation place it in his maturity. The bracket adopted here, 1620–1644, follows the modern scholarly consensus (Wāng Zhōnglíng 汪中令, Hú Zhènhēng yánjiū).

Sources and method. The Pínghuì division (7 juǎn) is built systematically from SòngYuánMíng shīhuà — Yán Yǔ’s Cānglàng shīhuà (KR4i0011) prominently, but also Liú Kèzhuāng 劉克莊’s Hòucūn shīhuà and the Yìyuàn zhī yán of Wáng Shìzhēn. The Gǔjiān division (9 juǎn) is a glossary of Táng allusions; together with the Yuètōng division (4 juǎn) on Táng yuèfǔ, it constitutes the most substantial work of Táng-poetry philology before the Qiánjiā movement. The Jílù division (3 juǎn) is the principal late-Míng bibliographical catalogue of Táng poetry collections and is heavily cited in modern Táng-poetry source studies.

Transmission. The manuscript was acquired by a Jiāngníng bookshop in Kāngxī 57 (1718) and first printed there. The Sìkù (V1482.11) recension follows this 1718 print. The 1957 Gǔdiǎn wénxué chūbǎnshè reprint, edited by Wāng Zhōnglíng, is the standard modern edition.

Translations and research

• Wāng Zhōng-líng 汪中令, Hú Zhèn-hēng yán-jiū 胡震亨研究. Shàng-hǎi: Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 1995. The principal modern monograph.
• Wú Wén-zhì 吳文治, ed., Míng shī-huà quán-biān 明詩話全編, 10 vols. Nán-jīng: Jiāng-sū gǔ-jí, 1997 — includes the Táng-yīn guǐ qiān.
• Pauline Yu, “Late Ming Theories of Tang Poetry” in The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition (Princeton, 1987), ch. 5 — treats Hú Zhèn-hēng’s critical positions.
• Kroll, Paul W., A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (Brill, 2015, rev. 2017) — cites the gǔ-jiān sections as a reference source.
• Stephen Owen, The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827–860) (Harvard, 2006) — uses Hú as a basic source.

Other points of interest

The Tángyīn tǒngqiān’s relation to the imperial Quán Táng shī is the most consequential single fact about the work. Hú’s project was massively cannibalized — without attribution — in the Kāngxī compilation of 1707. The Sìkù editors’ rather pointed remark that the wù qiān “did not go beyond the imperially decreed Quán Táng shī” politely conceals the reality that the Quán Táng shī did not go beyond Hú: the late-Míng manuscript was the source-bed. The standalone guǐ qiān survives because it could not be absorbed into the imperial anthology — it was the wrong genre.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §27 (literary criticism); §41.5 (Míng literary biography).
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q11108516 (唐音癸籤).