The Collection And Research Of Cheng Tong Of Ming Dynasty And His Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscripts

As one of the retainers suffering the most for being involved in the campaign of Jingnan in the Ming Dynasty,Cheng Tong was loyal,filial,and upright throughout his life,including the term of being the adjutant in Liao Mansion.Various historical materials suggested that he passed away at the beginning of Yongl Le,but according to Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript,his date of death can be traced back to the time between the July of the 5th year of Yong Le(1407)and September of 9th year of Yongle(1409).His works mainly include Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript,Yinbintang Poetry,Changhe Anthology,Genealogy of Cheng,etc,but none of those were handed down except the Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript.Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript was compiled by Cheng Tong’s posterity by collecting his separated poems and essays during his lifetime.The book consists of ten Volumes:first six of table,strategy,commentary,preface,postscript,poetry,etc;and another four of appendices presented by the friends of Chengtong,including Liao Wang,Fang Xiaoru,Xie Jin and some others.The titles and names of Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript’s index books differ a lot because of the rather long writing process,which took over 100 years after his posterity’s three times of sorting and arranging.The arranging system of Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript can be sorted into four categories,among them,the Cheng Bangrui edition engraved in the 11th year of Jiaqing(1806)was most commonly acknowledged,which is still collected by Peking University Library.Beijing Normal University Library,Tsinghua University Library,National Library,Nanjing Library and Jingjiatang Library in Tokyo,Japan.What is noteworthy is that the contents of this edition collected by different libraries are different from each other.Only the four-book collection of the National Library of China,the edition of Beijing Normal University,and the edition of the Nanjing Library include the attachments after the Xianzhong Record,and Post Xianzhong Record in Vol.10 made by Chen Tong’s posterity.The replenished and reprinted edition in the 14th Year of Guangxu(1888)collected by Jilin University is so far the most complete and recent edition of Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscripts,unfortunately,I cannot visually inspect that without permission.The first to sixth volume of Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscripts collected 223 of Cheng Tong’s poems,which can be divided into different groups.Most of the poems are deeply influenced by the Taige style,mainly functioning as a propaganda of Benevolent government and a way of socializing in the official circles,and therefore contains rather less literary value.But some of them are still brisk and readable without the elegant and graceful features of Taige style.It also contains 33 essays in total,of which The Seal of the Northern Defense Soldiers does not have contents but only a title.The genres of the essays include preface and postscript,table,policy,succinct,biography,epitaph,image and praise,and sacrificial text.Compared to the poems’graceful,elegant and gentle characteristics,the essays mainly adopt the artistic technique of quoting classics,which therefore tend to be more plain and mellow.After sorting out and researching on Cheng Tong and Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscripts,it is not hard to find that Cheng Tong’s personality was greatly influenced by his family environment,Neo-Confucianism,the reward of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang as well as Emperor Zhu Li’s behaviors.The subsequent re-engraving of Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscripts by Cheng’s posterity and the shrine built by local people of Jixi in memory of Cheng Tong both show out the recognition of Cheng Tong’s image of loyalty and martyrdom.Meanwhile,Zhenbai’s Posthumous Manuscript provided the first-hand information for Cheng Tong’s research,whose documentation and literary value are also worthy of attention.