Records of Extraordinary Persons of the Jiang-Huai Region江淮异人录

Author / transmission

Wu Shu (947–1002)

Period

Northern Song · Written by Wu Shu of the Northern Song, probably completed in the early Song; two fascicles, recording over twenty accounts of Daoist priests, monks, and extraordinary knights-errant of the Jiang-Huai region in the late Tang and Five Dynasties.

Canon division

Dongzhen Section, Records and Biographies Category

Collected in

Zhengtong Daozang, Dongzhen Section, Jizhuan category.

Category

Immortal Biographies

Fascicles

2 juan

Synopsis

Records of Extraordinary Persons of the Jiang-Huai Region, in two fascicles, was written by Wu Shu, a prominent official-scholar of the early Northern Song who took part in compiling the Taiping yulan and the Taiping guangji. The work records over twenty accounts of occultists, Daoist priests, swordsmen, and monks active in the Jiang-Huai region during the late Tang and Five Dynasties, such as Mister Geng, Nie Shidao, a scholar of Hongzhou, and the wife of Zhang Xun. Most of the accounts concern alchemy, invisibility, swordsmanship, and prophecy; the entries are short and the language spare, placing the work in the genre of zhiguai (accounts of the strange) notebook literature even though it was incorporated into the Daoist Canon. Its value lies in its bystander's perspective as a literatus, recording the actual state of popular Daoism and occult practice in the Jiang-Huai region from the Southern Tang through the early Song — figures of this kind typically moved between local government offices and the marketplace, outside the temple-based Daoist establishment, and so the work fills gaps left by official histories and materials internal to the religious tradition. The account of Nie Shidao also appears in the Supplementary Biographies of Immortals, allowing for cross-comparison.

Key Ideas

• Over twenty accounts of extraordinary persons of the Jiang-Huai region in the late Tang and Five Dynasties
• Alchemy, invisibility, swordsmanship, and prophecy
• A record from the bystander's perspective of a literatus-official
• The actual state of popular occult practice
• Fills gaps left by temple-based Daoist literature

Structure

Two fascicles, short narrative entries.

Editions

• Zhengtong Daozang edition
• Shuofu edition
• Zhonghua Book Company critical edition (published together with the Jishen lu, 2006)

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikisource: Records of Extraordinary Persons of the Jiang-Huai Region
• CTEXT: search

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