Abstract：“Pingjiang Map” is the earliest existing Song Dynasty city map in China, which has extremely high historical value and cultural relics value. However, the inscription does not contain the date and the person who painted it, which has led to disputes among scholars throughout the ages. Since the Qing Dynasty, scholars have done a lot of work to record and interpret the Pingjiang Map Inscription, especially represented by Wang Jian’s The Study of Pingjiang City of the Song Dynasty. Wang Jian inferred the age of inscription based on the age of the building drawn on the map, and according to the building drawings built before the spring and summer of the second year of Shaoding, there were no new building drawings after the autumn and winter of the second year of Shaoding. He believed that the Pingjiang Map Inscription was engraved in the second year of Shaoding, and was drawn by Li Shoupeng, the county guard. Wang Jian’s statement has a profound impact and has become a foregone conclusion. This paper first examines the logic and historical data of the argumentation, combined with the Chorography of the Suzhou of the past dynasties, and analyzes the argumentation process of the existing conclusions, and finds that there are obvious omissions in the basis of Wang Jian’s argument, thus overturning the conclusion. On this basis, the Pingjiang Map Inscription has both textual and material attributes, and the two are mutually reinforcing, complementing each other, and together constitute an important basis for inferring the age of the inscription. The specific research method is that according to the inscription process, the text must be made first, and then the stone must be engraved, so the upper limit can be inferred according to the text, and then the lower limit can be inferred by the stone carving process. According to the age of the drawn/undrawn buildings in the Pingjiang Map, supplemented by the chorography of the Song and Ming Dynasties, such as Zhengde’s Gusu Chronicles and Hongwu’s Suzhou Mansion Chronicles, it is judged that the content of the Pingjiang Map includes the buildings in the winter of the second year of Shaoding at the latest, so as to determine the upper limit of the age of the Pingjiang Map Inscription. Then, through the examination and revision of the writing date of the “Wuxue Futian Ji” (《吴学复田记》), which clearly recorded the Pingjiang Map Inscription, the inscription date was limited to the August of the third year of Shaoding. In addition, combined with the records of Wu County Chronicles, the complete historical process of the Pingjiang Map Inscription from drawing to stone carving has been clearly sorted out, presenting the complete process of Wu County Chronicles→the Pingjiang Map→the Pingjiang Map Inscription from compilation of local chronicles to the drawing of the map and then to the stone carving of the map. In the end, it was concluded that Li Shoupeng presided over the drawing of the Pingjiang Map when he left office in the November of the second year of Shaoding, and organized the recruitment of carvers to make stones, which went through a complicated stone carving process, and was actually completed before the August of the third year of Shaoding after his departure. This paper not only corrects widely influential statements, but also more accurately deduces the age of the Pingjiang Map Inscription, and completely reconstructs the production process of the Pingjiang Map Inscription, which provides an excellent case for studying the context of the compilation of local chronicles and local chronicles inscription in the Song Dynasty prefectures and counties. At the same time, using the textual and material arguments of the inscription, the inference of the inscription age undoubtedly provides a new research path for the work of inscription chronology.
夏军. 宋《平江图》碑年代新考[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2024, 54(12): 45-56.
Xia Jun. A New Study of the Age of Pingjiang Map Inscription. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2024, 54(12): 45-56.
2024, Vol. 54 
