FIVE ART CATALOGUES
107
I was able to have a look at this scroll while I was in the capital in the year ping-shu. Now this scroll and the scroll of correspondence written by monk Fa-ch'ang are both in the collection of Ch'in-shan, minister of the Board of Agriculture 琴山農部. Wu Yung-kuang wrote this on the 9th day of the 12th month in the year chia-shu of the Tao Kuang era.
It should be noted that ping-shu was the 6th year of the Tao Kuang era (1826). After this year, there was no chia-shu in the Tao Kuang era. The years that have some connections with chia-shu are chia-wu (1834), mu-shu (1838) and chia-ch'en (1844). However Wu Yung-kuang died in the year before chia-ch'en. Therefore, the year chia-ch'en should undoubtedly be left out of consideration. What is more, even the combination of stems and branches of the years chia-wu and mu-shu are different from that given in Wu's own colophon. In all probability, it seems that the date "chia-shu of the Tao Kuang era" recorded in the colophon inscribed in Ch'ien Hsüan's Li-hua-chüan should be a slip of the pen for either the year chia-wu (14th year of the Tao Kuang era) or mu-shu (18th year of the Tao Kuang era), in the former of which, Wu was 62 years old, while in the latter, he would already be 66. In a word, the 14th year of the Tao Kuang era was the beginning of the last decade of Wu Yung-kuang's life. No matter whether the date when he put down by mistake the year chia-shu is chia-wu or mu-shu, by that time, he must have begun to show signs of old age. Otherwise in his Hsin-ch'ou hsiao-hsia-chi, he would hardly commit a mistake as to remember incorrectly the date of happenings that he himself had experienced. If, however, this catalogue had been carefully checked through before it was published, then such kind of chronological mistake could very likely be entirely avoided. Yet the fact that neither chia-wu nor mu-shu, but instead chia-shu of the Tao Kuang era had been printed in the Hsin-ch'ou hsiao-hsia-chi shows clearly that in the process of proof-reading, Wu Yung-kuang was indeed most careless.
NOTES
1 At the beginning of Yeh Mêng-lung's *** Fêng-man-lou shu-hua-lu, **** it is stated that Yeh Ying-ch'i ***, son of Yeh Mêng-lung, was one of the collators of that catalogue. On checking Wu Yung-kuang's autobiography (Tzü-ting nien-p'u), the following information is