Twice ToldShen Kuo, Bitan juan 24: the epitaph of Lady Zheng
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
Two sentences from the main Bitan, in the section on miscellany. The item sits between a remark on compass needles and a story about a woman’s poem on the wall of a post-house. The print has no punctuation; the punctuation below is ours.
歲首畫鍾馗于門，不知起自何時。皇祐中，金陵發一塚，有石誌，乃宋宗慤母鄭夫人，宗慤有妹名鍾馗，則知鍾馗之說亦遠矣。
Translation
At the New Year a picture of Zhong Kui is painted on the door, and nobody knows since when. In the Huangyou years a tomb was opened at Jinling. It held a stone epitaph for Lady Zheng, mother of Zong Que of the Song, and it says Zong Que had a younger sister named Zhong Kui. So the story of Zhong Kui goes far back.
Notes
- The Bitan gives only the epitaph, the mother, the brother and the sister’s name. The Bu bitan (documents/bu-bitan-zhong-kui.md) adds that Lady Zheng was a Han minister’s daughter and lists other bearers of the name.
- Wikisource’s transcription of this sentence from another edition reads 不右起自 and 鍾道; the Siku page image reads as above.
- 鍾馗之說: 說 is “the account” or “the matter”; we render “the story of Zhong Kui” and take it to mean the figure, since the sentence has just said the name was in use.