chapter 1 Rethinking “Traces” from the Past: Ouyang Xiu on Stone Inscriptions

Among the most important collections of antiquities made during the Song period was a vast corpus of rubbings of stone in- scriptions assembled by Ouyang Xiu. Ouyang’s collection inspired new interest in ancient inscriptions and their calligraphy, bringing together as it did texts engraved on stone over a period of some fifteen hundred years, and spurred other collectors to turn their attention to other types of art and antiquities, especially ancient bronze ritual vessels. Ouyang’s effort, however, was not simply that of the collector, content to gather together a vast array of stone rubbings. He also wrote extensively about the inscriptions he col- lected, commenting on their contents and aesthetic appeal. Ou- yang’s reflections on the calligraphy specimens he assembled, often intensely personal, explore their significance as art, relics of cultural history, and embodiments of sometimes troubling viewpoints. His writings about the inscriptions constitute a sustained effort to rethink the meaning of aesthetic beauty as preserved in the “traces” ( ji 迹) of brushes wielded by men of centuries earlier.1 ————— 1. General studies have yet to be written in English on the large subject of Song dynasty epigraphy, although Ouyang Xiu’s collection project is discussed in some detail in Amy McNair’s excellent study of the influence of Yan Zhenqing 顏真卿 upon Song calligraphic ideals, The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing’s Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics, especially chaps. 1 and 7. On Ouyang Xiu generally, see James T. C. Liu, Ou-yang Hsiu: An Eleventh Century Neo-Confucianist, and my Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–72). On Ouyang’s place in Song cultural and intel-

8 Z rethinking “traces” from the past

The essential facts about the project may be briefly summarized. Upon the failure of the reform movement led by Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 in 1044, Ouyang Xiu found himself removed from the capital and demoted to the northern provinces, first to the “north- ern capital” of Daming 大名 and then, in 1045, much further north to the border commandery of Zhending 真定. Ouyang had long been interested in ancient inscriptions, certainly at least from the time of his association early in his career with fellow scholars in Luoyang who were promoting a revival of “ancient prose,” the likes of which are preserved in stone inscriptions. Since the 1030s, he had been an occasional collector of rubbings of steles he came across.2 Now in the far north, where he found few diversions, Ouyang re- solved to occupy himself by systematically making a collection of whatever ancient rubbings he could get his hands on.3 Once he be- gan, it was a project that followed him wherever he went. He kept at it for nearly twenty years until he had gathered some one thousand rubbings in all. He enlisted the help of friends who, as they moved all over the empire in their official assignments, often traveled to remote places that Ouyang himself never visited, where they could procure rubbings of local steles to send him. Some of these friends were collectors themselves (e.g., Liu Chang 劉敞, who provided Ouyang with several rubbings from ancient vessels that had been unearthed in the Luoyang area). But Ouyang’s collection, which he

————— lectual history, see Peter K. Bol, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China, pp. 176–201; on Ouyang’s study of the Classic of Poetry, as well as his thinking about tradition and literary expression, see Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China, chap. 6. 2. See Ouyang’s colophons, “Jin Nanxiang taishou song” 晉南鄉太守頌, Jigu lu bawei 4.2159, and “Tang Lü Tan biao” 唐呂譚表, Jigu lu bawei 7.2236. Cf. Yan Jie, Ouyang Xiu nianpu, p. 135. 3. Ouyang’s own account of how he started his collection is contained in a letter to Cai Xiang 蔡襄, translated later in this chapter: Ouyang Xiu, “Yu Cai Junmo qiu shu ‘Jigu lu mu xu’ shu” 與蔡君謨求書集古錄目序書, Jushi waiji 20.1022–23; and “Wei Liu Xi xuesheng zhong bei” 魏劉熹學生冢碑, Jigu lu bawei 4.2155. For chronological accounts of this period of Ouyang’s life, see Hu Ke, “Ouyang Xiu nianpu,” in Ouyang xiu quanji, “fulu 1,” pp. 2602–4; and Yan Jie, Ouyang Xiu nianpu, pp. 124–35.