Jishenlu 稽神錄

Jishenlu 稽神錄 "Search for the spirits" is a collection of fictional stories compiled during the Northern Song period 北宋 (960-1126) by Xu Xuan 徐鉉 (916-991), who was famous for his work on the ancient dictionary Shuowen jiezi 說文解字.

The book of 6 juan reflects the author's literary endeavours over twenty years. It documents 150 accounts of supernatural and unusual occurrences, originally compiled into ten fascicles. The contents mainly involve spirits and anomalies, with only a few natural disasters. Examples include a person eating horse dung, ghostly tigers harming people, bats blocking the road, ancient corpses ascending to the heavens, earth dragons emerging and causing death, earthquakes leading to the fall of states, peaks and rocks overturning, unexpected gold finds, lotuses growing on flat ground, and so on. Although tales of ghosts and spirits may seem fantastical, the interactions between humans and spirits, and between humans and gods, often mirror those of ordinary society.

If one sets aside superstition, the work becomes valuable for examining social life and studying the beliefs of people in the Tang period. Stories of this kind are both fantastical and absurd in content, while the writing itself is plain and concise. Nevertheless, they offer a glimpse of the characteristics of early Song-dynasty zhiguai 志怪 genre.

This book exists in several editions, including versions in the series Jindai mishu 津逮秘書, Siku quanshu 四庫全書, Hanfenlou miji 涵芬樓秘笈, Xuejin taoyuan 學津討原, and Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書集成初編. All of these include an additional supplementary volume (Shiyi 拾遺), but none are complete editions. The appendix in the Songren xiaoshuo 宋人小說 edition is called Buyi 補遺. Abbreviated editions are in the series Heke sanzhi 合刻三志, Wuchao xiaoshuo daguan 五朝小說大觀, Shuofu 說郛, Tangren shuohui 唐人說薈 and Tangdai congshu 唐代叢書. An annotated version by Lu Xinyuan 陸心源 (1838-1894), Jishenyi jiaobu 稽神錄校補, is included in the anthology Qianyuan zongji 潛園總集.

The stories are also entirely included in the encyclopaedic collection Taiping guangji 太平廣記.