Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2014

 

Map Guides (图经Tujing) in the Song Dynasty and the Illustrated Gazetteer of Nine Regions: from Source of Material to Systematic Knowledge          

(Abstract)

 

Pan Sheng

 

At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, map guides (图经tujing) covering the prefectural administrative divisions of zhou and jun were treated as official documents; they were submitted to court and filed in the archives. The court then organized personnel to compile, on the basis of the prefectural guides, Tianxia Tujing（天下图经A Map Guide to the Country）, as required for government needs. Until the compilation of the Xiangfu Map Guide (祥符图经), most of the map guides submitted by the prefectures were compiled by subofficial functionaries, but thereafter they were compiled by the literati. This change played an important role in the evolution of Song map guides. On the one hand, it advanced the process by which the prefectural map guides moved from being archival materials to systematic works, so that archival knowledge became systematic in nature and circulated as geographical texts in a relatively wide sphere. The knowledge they contained ceased to be secret archival material for the powerful and became authoritative knowledge that could be openly disseminated. On the other hand, as dynastic politics changed, the map guide gradually yielded ground to other forms. The setting up of Illustrated Gazetteer of the Nine Regions Bureau in Chongning (1102-1106) further changed the way in which imperial geographical works were compiled on the basis of regular reports sent up by local governments. Instead, the court set up a compilation bureau to compile imperial geographies on the basis of the provisional materials reported by local governments and other works of all kinds. At this point, the system by which the prefectures sent up geographic materials was basically abolished, as imperial geographic knowledge moved from the production of official document-type texts to systematic knowledge production by a specific agency and specific personnel.