Jiānghuái yìrén lù 江淮異人錄
Record of Extraordinary Persons of the Jiāng-huái Region by 吳淑 (撰)
About the work
A single-juǎn early-Northern-Sòng collection of biographical tales about yìrén 異人 (extraordinary persons — magicians, hermits, Daoist adepts, swordsmen, and other figures with paranormal abilities) of the Jiānghuái 江淮 region (south of the Huái River and the Lower Yángzǐ basin), compiled by the early-Sòng scholar-official 吳淑 (Wú Shū, 947–1002), son-in-law of the encyclopedist Xú Xuàn 徐鉉.
Abstract
The work opens with the tale of Sīmǎ Jiāo 司馬郊: “Sīmǎ Jiāo, yī míng Níngzhèng, yī míng Shǒuzhōng, yóu yú Jiāngbiǎo. Cháng pī guānhè, nièjī ér xíng, rì kě qiānbǎi lǐ; yīhè bùgǎizuò ér cháng xīn. Suǒwéi cūbào, rén wú gǎn jìn zhī zhě. Néng zhàsǐ yǐ zhì qīngzhǒng chòufǔ, éér fùhuó. Cháng zhǐ yú Xuānzhōu Kāiyuánguàn, zìshēng yún…” 司馬郊一名凝正一名守中，遊於江表。常被冠褐躡屐而行，日可千百里；衣褐不改作而常新。所爲麤暴，人無敢近之者。能詐死以至青腫臭腐，俄而復活。嘗止於宣州開元觀，自稱云… (“Sīmǎ Jiāo, also named Níngzhèng, also Shǒuzhōng, travelled in the Jiāngbiǎo region. He customarily wore a coarse-brown garment and clattering wooden clogs, walking a thousand or more lǐ in a day; his coarse-brown garment was never washed nor renewed yet was always fresh. His behaviour was coarse and violent; no one dared approach him. He was able to feign death to the point of green-bruising and putrefying stench, then suddenly to revive. He once stopped at the Xuānzhōu Kāiyuánguàn and proclaimed himself…”).
The collection continues with some twenty-five further tales, mostly concerning Daoist or Daoist-adjacent figures of the late-Táng to Five-Dynasties Jiānghuái region, including swordsmen, alchemists, hermits, and magicians. The work is one of the principal sources for the early-Sòng xiāyìn 俠隱 (chivalric-hermit) literary tradition that would feed into the later zhìguài 志怪 / chuánqí 傳奇 corpus.
Wú Shū worked with his father-in-law Xú Xuàn on Sòng Tàizōng’s three great encyclopedic projects (Tàipíng yùlǎn, Tàipíng guǎngjì, Wényuàn yīnghuá), and the Jiānghuái yìrén lù is plausibly a by-product of his encyclopedic research, perhaps drawing on the Tàipíng guǎngjì (the great anomaly-compendium completed in 978). Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 887, Franciscus Verellen) date the work to before Wú’s death in 1002.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 2: 887 (DZ 595, Franciscus Verellen).
- Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987 — treats Wú Shū’s anomaly-compilation in the context of the Sòng zhì-guài tradition.
Other points of interest
The text is one of the relatively few Daozang-preserved anomaly-anthologies authored by a secular scholar-official (rather than a Daoist priest), and its inclusion in the Daoist canon reflects the substantial Daoist content of its tales rather than its compiler’s religious affiliation.