Shízhōu jì 十洲記
Record of the Ten Continents by 東方朔 (attributed)
About the work
A single-juǎn pseudepigraphic Daoist geographical-mythological text — also widely transmitted in secular collectanea under the title Hǎinèi shízhōu jì 海內十洲記 — purporting to be the report of the Han courtier 東方朔 (Dōngfāng Shuò, 154–93 BCE) to Emperor Wǔ 漢武帝 on the ten fabulous continents in the seas around the inhabited world. The work is one of the foundational texts of medieval Chinese imaginative geography of the immortal realms, paralleling the Shíyí jì 拾遺記 and the Mù tiānzǐ zhuàn 穆天子傳.
Abstract
The opening frame is set at the Han court: “Hàn Wǔdì jì wén Wángmǔ shuō: Bāfāng jùhǎi zhī zhōng yǒu Zǔzhōu, Yíngzhōu, Xuánzhōu, Yánzhōu, Chángzhōu, Yuánzhōu, Liúzhōu, Shēngzhōu, Fènglínzhōu, Jùkūzhōu, yǒu cǐ shízhōu” 漢武帝旣聞王母説：八方巨海之中有祖洲、瀛洲、玄洲、炎洲、長洲、元洲、流洲、生洲、鳳麟洲、聚窟洲，有此十洲 (“Emperor Wǔ of Hàn, having heard from the Queen Mother of the West that in the great seas of the eight directions there are Zǔzhōu, Yíngzhōu, Xuánzhōu, Yánzhōu, Chángzhōu, Yuánzhōu, Liúzhōu, Shēngzhōu, Fènglínzhōu and Jùkūzhōu — these ten continents…”). Dōngfāng Shuò is summoned to the inner qūshì 曲室 (cabinet-chamber) and recounts each continent in turn.
The continents are systematically described by location (relative to the four seas), size, distance from the nearest continental shore, and characteristic flora, fauna, and immortal residents. Zǔzhōu 祖洲, for instance, lies in the eastern sea 70,000 lǐ from the western shore and bears the bùsǐ zhī cǎo 不死之草 (the herb of immortality), whose discovery prompted Qín Shǐhuáng to dispatch Xú Fú 徐福 with five hundred boy-and-girl attendants — never to return. Yíngzhōu 瀛洲 (4,000 lǐ square) bears the yùlǐ quán 玉醴泉 of jade-sweet wine; Yánzhōu 炎洲 of the southern sea bears the fēngshēng shòu 風生獸 (wind-born beast), proof against fire, and the huǒguāng shòu 火光獸 whose pelt yields huǒhuàn bù 火浣布 (asbestos fire-cleaned cloth); Chángzhōu 長洲 of the south-east is densely forested with trees of 2,000-armspan girth; and so on through the ten.
The attribution to Dōngfāng Shuò is universally regarded as spurious. The latest internal evidence (its place-name geography, its citation patterns, and the absence of any reference to it in pre-Six-Dynasties sources) places the work in the Eastern Jìn to early Liáng period; Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 113, Stephen R. Bokenkamp) date it tentatively to the fifth–sixth century. The text is first quoted under its present title in Wénxuǎn 文選 commentaries of the Liáng period (early sixth century), giving a firm terminus ante quem. Within the Daoist canon it has been classified under the Dòngxuán 洞玄 division’s jìzhuàn 記傳 section, but it has also been transmitted in secular cóngshū such as the HànWèi cóngshū 漢魏叢書 and the Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊, where it is one of the principal early Chinese sources for the imaginative geography of the xiānjìng 仙境.
The text’s catalogue of fabulous islands has had wide cultural resonance — Yíngzhōu in particular survives in Japanese place-names (Akitsu-shima as the “isles of paradise”) and in East-Asian visual culture, where the Ten Continents form a regular iconographic subject of later painting.
Translations and research
- Smith, Thomas E. Han Emperor Wu and the Mythology of the Han Wu-ti Nei-chuan. PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1992 — treats the Shí-zhōu jì as part of the cluster of texts pseudepigraphically ascribed to Dōng-fāng Shuò and the Han court.
- Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996 — places the Shí-zhōu jì within the early-medieval zhì-guài / yì-yù (异域) imaginative-geography corpus.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 1: 113 (DZ 598, Stephen R. Bokenkamp).
- Li Fengmao 李豐楙. Liù-cháo Suí-Táng xiān-dào lèi xiǎo-shuō yán-jiū 六朝隋唐仙道類小説研究. Taipei: Xuéshēng shūjú, 1986 — for the literary-historical context of the Shí-zhōu jì.
Other points of interest
The text contains one of the earliest extended Chinese descriptions of huǒhuàn bù 火浣布 (asbestos cloth) and the huǒguāng shòu legend, which would become a topos of medieval Chinese cosmographical literature. The work has been transmitted in both Daoist and secular textual lineages with minor variants, and its placement in the Daozang’s jìzhuàn (records and biographies) subdivision rather than its scripture-proper sections reflects the canon’s recognition of its essentially literary character.