Bowuzhi

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Bowuzhi
Chinese name
Chinese博物志
Literal meaningextensive things record
Korean name
Hangul박물지
Hanja博物志
Japanese name
Kanji博物志
Hiraganaはくぶつし

Zhang Hua's (c. 290 CE) Bowuzhi 博物志 "Records of Diverse Matters" was a compendium of Chinese stories about natural wonders and marvelous phenomena. It quotes from many early Chinese classics, and diversely includes subject matter from Chinese mythology, history, geography, and folklore. The Bowuzhi, which is one of the first works in the literary genre of zhiguai "tales of anomalies; supernatural stories", records the earliest versions of several myths, such as the white yenü 野女 "wild women" living south of China in a society without men.

Author

The Bowuzhi author Zhang Hua 張華 (232-300) was a Western Jin dynasty (265-316) scholar, poet, and protoscientist. His biography in the (644) Book of Jin depicts Zhang Hua as a fangshi "master of esoterica" who was especially skilled at numerological arts, and a voracious collector of books, especially ones "strange, secret, and rarely seen" (Campany 1996: 51). Many anecdotes in Six Dynasties period books portray him as a "learned arbitrator of 'scientific' knowledge" (Greatrex 1987: 24). The (early 5th century) Yiyuan 異苑 "Garden of Marvels", by Liu Jingshu 劉敬叔, provides two examples. First, Zhang recognized dragon meat that was served by the author Lu Ji (261-303), who "once invited Zhang Hua to dinner and served minced fish. At the time the dining chamber was full of guests. When Hua lifted off the lid of the dish, he said, 'This is dragon's flesh!' None of the assembled guests believed him, so Hua said, 'Test it by steeping it in vinegar; something strange will happen.' When this was done a rainbow appeared above it." (tr. Greatrex 1987: 21). In a second anecdote, Zhang Hua demonstrated the cosmological principle of ganying "sympathetic resonance".

During the Jin, there was a man who owned a large copper basin. Every morning and evening it would ring out just as if someone was striking it. When Zhang Hua was asked about this, he replied "This basin has a sympathetic affinity with the bell in the Luoyang bell-tower. The bell is struck every dawn and every dusk, and thus this basin resounds in sympathy. You could file away [a part of the basin] and thus make it lighter; the sound would reverberate inaccurately and the basin would cease ringing out of its own accord." The man did as Hua had advised, and the basin never rang out again. (tr. Greatrex 1987: 20)

The Ganying leicongzhi 感應類從志 "Record of the Mutual Resonances of Things According to Their Categories" is attributed to Zhang Hua (Greatrex 1987: 26).

Title

The Bowuzhi title combines bó 博 or 愽 "broad; abundant; plentiful; learned", wù 物 "thing; matter", and zhì 志 or 誌 "(historical) records; annals; mark; sign; record; register". This title follows Yang Fu's (early 3rd century) Yiwuzhi 異物志 "Records of Foreign Matters". The word bowu 博物 originally meant "broadly knowledgeable; erudite" in the (c. 4th century BCE) Zuozhuan and later came to mean "studies of plants and animals; natural science" in the (80 CE) Lunheng. In general, bowu "refers to realms transgressing the boundaries of the defined canon of knowledge, covering a variety of matters from the strange and supernatural to quaint things of interest" (Doleželová-Velingerová and Wagner 2013: 64).

There is no regular English translation of Bówùzhì, and examples include:

  • Record of the Investigation of Things (Needham and Wang 1954: 258)
  • A Treatise on Manifold Topics (Greatrex 1987: 1)
  • Treatise on Curiosities (Campany 1996: 334)
  • Vast Records about Different Topics (Ulrich 2010)
  • Natural Science (Wong et al. 2012: 129)
  • Miscellaneous Records (Doleželová-Velingerová and Wagner 2013: 64)
  • Record of Things at Large (Shaughnessy 2014: 143)
  • Records of Myriad [Notable] Things (Zhang 2015: 113)

The Record of the Investigation of Things translation from Joseph Needham's influential Science and Civilisation in China series has been copied by many authors (e.g., Selin 1997: 811), despite confusion with the famous Neo-Confucian concept of géwù 格物 "the Investigation of Things".

Zhang Hua has been accused of plagiarizing the Bowuzhi from the similarly-titled (c. 190) Bowuji 博物記 "Notes on Diverse Matters" with jì 記 "remember; write down; records; notes" (instead of zhi 志 "records"), attributed to Tang Meng 唐蒙 (Needham and Wang 1959: 608). Tang Meng was a general and explorer who Emperor Wu of Han sent to Nanyue in 135 BCE. However, neither the Book of Han nor later histories record any works written by Tang Meng, and one Bowuji citation mentions the Cao Wei dynasty (220-265) by name. Based upon analysis of the 50 Bowuji quotes in the (5th century) Book of the Later Han commentary, Greatrex (1987: 64-66) concludes it was a different text with a parallel name.

Editions

There are two different editions of the Bowuzhi, respectively dating from Song dynasty (960-1279) and Ming dynasty (1368-1644) copies. Both divide the text into 10 chapters (卷) and comprise nearly the same material, but they differ in organizing the sequence of the 329 items and the presence of 38 topic headings in the Ming copy (Campany 1996: 50). Both editions include the two early Bowuzhi commentaries; 20 comments by Zhou Riyong 周日用 (fl. 12th century) and 7 by an unknown author surnamed Lu, Lushi 盧氏 (Greatrex 1987: 45).

The "Song edition" was compiled and published in 1804 by Huang Pilie 黃丕烈 (1763-1825), a renowned Qing dynasty (1644-1912) book collector and editor. Huang said the edition was based on a copy owned in his family, and considered it to date from the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). The Song edition was included in collections such as the (1936) Sibu beiyao 四部備要. The "Ming edition" was published in 1503 by He Zhitong 賀志同, and is presently housed in the National Library of China in Beijing. Wang Shihan汪士漢 published a reprint in 1668. The Ming edition, which is the earliest extant, was included in the (1782) Siku Quanshu and various other book collections (Greatrex 1987: 27-29).

The total content matter of these two versions is almost identical; the Song edition repeats three items in chapter 10 which have appeared earlier in the text, while the Ming edition has omitted them. Both editions are divided into 10 chapters, while the Ming edition is further sub-divided under 38 or 39 (dividing the final Zashuo 雜說 "Miscellaneous sayings" into two) headings that designate the content in each respective subsection. Campany (1996: 50-51) says the absence of topic headings and non-rational sequencing of items have led some to speculate that the "Ming edition" represents a tidying-up of an earlier "Song edition" descended from Zhang Hua's original, but Huang Pilie's text was neither necessarily of Song date nor any closer to Zhang's text. It is well established that some Ming scholars responded to a misguided scholastic urge to rearrange old texts that they considered disorganized, and the "stylistic device" of adding sub-headings to works of random jottings first became widespread during the Ming (Greatrex 1987: 30).

Three authors wrote supplements to the Bowuzhi (Greatrex 1987: 26). During the Southern Song dynasty, Li Shi 李石 compiled the (mid-12th century) Xu bowuzhi 續博物志 "Continuation to the Bowuzhi" in 10 chapters, which quotes early sources without any textual criticism. During the Ming dynasty, Dong Sizhang 董斯張 compiled the extensive (1607) Guang Bowuzhi 廣博物志 "Enlargement of the Bowuzhi" in 50 chapters. And during the Qing dynasty, You Qian 游潛 compiled the Bowuzhi bu 博物志補 "Supplement to the Bowuzhi" in 2 chapters, which added miscellaneous information.

Several modern annotated editions of the Bowuzhi have been published in recent years. Fan Ning 范寧 (1980) wrote an acclaimed text-critical edition of the Bowuzhi, which discusses textual history and includes 212 additional passages quoted in later texts.

Roger Greatrex, professor of Chinese studies at Lund University, wrote the first English translation (1987) of the Bowuzhi.

References

  • Campany, Robert Ford (1996), Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China, SUNY Press.
  • Fan Ning 范寧 (1980), Bowuzhi jiaozheng 博物志校證, Zhonghua shuju中華書局.
  • Greatrex, Roger, tr. (1987), The Bowu Zhi: An Annotated Translation, Föreningen för Orientaliska Studier.
  • Wong, Evy, Loh Li Cheng, Chuah Siew Boon, Wong Su Ee, and Julie Chong (2012), Celebrate Chinese Culture: Chinese Auspicious Culture, Beijing Foreign Language Press.
  • Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena and Rudolf G. Wagner (2013), Chinese Encyclopaedias of New Global Knowledge (1870-1930): Changing Ways of Thought, Springer.
  • Needham, Joseph and Wang Ling (1954), Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 1 Introductory Orientations, Cambridge University Press.
  • Needham, Joseph and Wang Ling (1959), Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and Earth, Cambridge University Press.
  • Selin, Helaine (1997), Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Springer.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. (2014), Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts, Columbia University Press.
  • Wylie, Alexander (1867), Notes on Chinese Literature, American Presbyterian mission Press.
  • Zhang, Qiong (2015), Making the New World Their Own: Chinese Encounters with Jesuit Science in the Age of Discovery, Brill.

External links

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