Jiǎng Jì 蔣濟
Zì Zǐtōng 子通. Native of Píngē 平阿 in Chǔguó 楚國 (modern Huáinán 淮南, Ānhuī). Lived c. 188–249.
Senior CáoWèi minister; one of the leading military strategists and administrators of the Cáo Cāo 曹操, Cáo Pī 曹丕 (曹丕), Cáo Ruì 曹叡, and Cáo Fāng 曹芳 reigns. Career: entered service under Cáo Cāo as Yángzhōu biéjià 揚州別駕, advancing under successive Wèi emperors to Lǐngjūn jiāngjūn 領軍將軍, Tàiwèi 太尉, and Sīmǎ 司馬-rank positions in the Wèi central government. Major roles include: principal counsel for Cáo Cāo at the Héféi 合肥 campaigns against Sūn Quán; senior adviser to Cáo Pī on the Wú campaign of 222–223; Hùjūn jiāngjūn 護軍將軍 under Cáo Ruì; and Lǐngjūn jiāngjūn during the Gāopínglíng 高平陵 coup of 249 in which Sīmǎ Yì 司馬懿 destroyed Cáo Shuǎng 曹爽. Standard biography in Sānguó zhì Wèishū 14 (combined with Liú Fàng 劉放 and Sūn Zī 孫資). Wèi-court memorialist of Jiǎng Jì jí 蔣濟集 in 2 juàn (lost; reconstructed in Quán Sānguó wén).
In the early-medieval zhìguài tradition Jiǎng Jì figures most prominently as the principal protagonist of the famous “Sūn Ā 孫阿 / Tàishān lìng 泰山令” ghost-narrative preserved in KR3l0099 Sōushén jì 搜神記 juàn 15, KR3l0137 Lièyì zhuàn 列異傳, and KR3l0139 Tàishān shēnglìng jì 泰山生令記 — the story in which his deceased son visits him in dreams from the Mount Tài underworld and petitions for a better afterlife posting. The story’s strong attachment to a historically verifiable Wèi minister of high standing made it one of the canonical Six-Dynasties zhìguài narratives, and is a principal piece of evidence for the early-medieval Chinese conception of Mount Tài as a bureaucratically-organised afterlife capital (cf. Teiser 1994, Scripture on the Ten Kings).
The CBDB lists three persons with the name 蔣濟; none with reliable lifedates. The dates 188–249 follow modern scholarship (Knechtges and Chang, Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature, vol. 1, and Sānguó zhì).
In the Kanripo corpus he is the attributed author of KR3a0144 Jiǎngzǐ wànjī lùn 蔣子萬機論 — his principal zǐ-house treatise, extant only as a Qing-era jíyì.