Xiang Cheng, Volume 11: Incense Wonders · Strange Fragrances and Extraordinary Tales
Strange Fragrances and Extraordinary Tales — Original text (compiled) with vernacular translation and annotations.
Volume 11 · Incense Wonders · Strange Fragrances and Extraordinary Tales
Original Text (Compiled)
The Incense Wonders section of Xiang Cheng: records of rare fragrances not commonly seen, such as incense beads (made by molding incense with medicinal ingredients), incense elephants (tribute from Champa, which give off extraordinary scent when burned), and incense boys (marvelous fragrances from Buddhist lands) — all tales from beyond the mundane world, for the curious to peruse.
Vernacular Translation
The Incense Wonders section collects marvelous fragrances — incense beads, incense elephants, incense boys, and the like — mostly extraordinary tales from overseas, allowing scholars to broaden their knowledge and see the boundlessness of incense matters.
Annotations
- Beyond the mundane world: otherworldly
- Molding: shaping by mold
- Champa: an ancient kingdom, in present-day central and southern Vietnam
Editorial Notes · On Editions and Compilation
Basis of editions:The transmitted text of Xiang Cheng (Incense Companion) traces its ancestry to the Ming Chongzhen-era printed edition; extant today are the Wenyuan Ge Siku Quanshu edition, the Siku Huiyao edition, and various Qing manuscript copies. This compilation takes the commonly circulated modern collated edition as its base text and cross-checks it against the Siku Quanshu edition.
Collation for this volume:Records of exotic and wondrous incense (such as the Huaimeng grass, the soul-returning incense, and similar tales of the strange) are often legendary in character; here they are marked as either "rumored" or "verifiable" and are not conflated.
Facsimile comparison:The "original text" on this page is a compiled and edited transcription (punctuated and paragraphed according to modern conventions), not a facsimile of the original book; for character-by-character collation, please consult authoritative public-domain editions:Full text of Xiang Cheng (twenty-eight volumes), Siku Quanshu edition, on Wikisource、Facsimile scans of Xiang Cheng (PDFs of the National Library holdings and others) on Wikimedia Commons. This site does not fabricate ancient book layouts, and therefore substitutes links to authoritative public-domain facsimiles.