从剡县到嵊州From Shan to Sheng

“嵊州”这个名字，到今天只用了三十来年；“嵊县”用了将近九百年；而在那之前的一千多年里，这里叫“剡”。名字的每一次变化，都留下了记录：南宋的县志《剡录》，把这段故事写得清清楚楚。

The name Shengzhou is only about thirty years old. Sheng county lasted nearly nine hundred years before that, and for more than a thousand years before that the place was called Shan (剡). Each change of name left a record, and the Southern Song county gazetteer, the Shan Records, tells the story plainly.

“剡”作地名时读 shàn。这个字的本义是削尖，读 yǎn，《周易·系辞》有“弦木为弧，剡木为矢”。拆开来看，它是两个“火”加一个“刀”。

As a place name, 剡 is read shàn. Its original meaning, read yǎn, is “to sharpen”: the Book of Changes speaks of “stringing wood to make bows and sharpening wood to make arrows.” Split apart, the character is two “fire” signs and a “knife.”

这三个部件，最早被读成一个好兆头。《剡录》引唐代梁载言的《十道志》说：“谶曰：‘两火一刀可以逃。’自汉以来扰乱不少，故剡称福地。”意思是剡地多名山，可以避灾。东晋时北方战乱，王羲之、戴逵、谢灵运这些人都来到剡中，详见剡溪和王羲之与嵊州。

At first those parts were read as a good omen. The Shan Records quotes the Tang writer Liang Zaiyan’s Treatise on the Ten Circuits: “A prophecy says, ‘Two fires and a knife — there you can escape.’ There has been much turmoil since the Han, so Shan is called a blessed land.” The idea was that Shan, with its many mountains, was a place to shelter from disaster. When war tore through the north in the Eastern Jin, Wang Xizhi, Dai Kui and Xie Lingyun all came to Shan; see the Shan stream and Wang Xizhi in Shengzhou.

《剡录》还记了一个关于字形的传说：有个叫魏德祖的人在四明山遇见一位老人，看见涧中涌泉流出一把金刀，两个仙人举着神火追赶它。魏德祖得了这把金刀，说：“两火成‘炎’字，炎边得刀，是为‘剡’字。”于是这里就叫剡溪、剡山。

The Shan Records also tells a legend about the character itself. A man named Wei Dezu met an old man on Mount Siming and saw a golden knife washing out of a spring in a ravine, chased by two immortals holding divine fire. When Wei Dezu got the knife, he said: “Two fires make 炎; add a knife beside 炎 and you have 剡.” And so the place was called the Shan stream and Mount Shan.

“嵊”这个字，早在唐代就当过这里的名字。据《剡录》，唐武德四年（621），平定李子通之后，以剡县设嵊州，另设剡城县；武德八年（625），撤销嵊州和剡城县，剡县仍属越州。唐代诗人赵嘏在《发剡中》里写过“更览余封识嵊州”，用的就是这个名字。

The character 嵊 had already served as the place’s name in the Tang. According to the Shan Records, in 621, after the defeat of the rebel Li Zitong, Shan county became Sheng Prefecture, with a separate Shancheng county; in 625 both were abolished, and Shan county went back to Yue Prefecture. The Tang poet Zhao Gu, in “Leaving Shan,” wrote of “looking over the old fief to recognize Sheng Prefecture” — using that very name.

今天的邻县新昌，原本是剡县的一部分。1215 年县令史安之为《剡录》写的序说：“邑旧有乡四十，后分十有三别新昌县，今所存才二十七耳。”据维基百科，分县是在后梁开平二年（908），吴越王钱镠在位时。

Neighboring Xinchang was once part of Shan county. In his 1215 preface to the Shan Records, the magistrate Shi Anzhi wrote: “The county once had forty townships; later thirteen were split off as Xinchang county, and only twenty-seven remain.” According to Wikipedia, the split came in 908, under Qian Liu, king of Wuyue.

北宋宣和二年（1120）冬，方腊在睦州起事，剡县也有人响应，县城失守。第二年春天，越州的长官刘述古带兵平定了剡县。《剡录》记载：“宋宣和三年方腊平，改剡县为嵊县。知越州刘述古言剡有兵火象，欲以嵊名县，诏从之。”

In the winter of 1120 Fang La rose in revolt in Muzhou, rebels in Shan county joined him, and the county town fell. The next spring Liu Shugu, the commander for Yue Prefecture, cleared them out. The Shan Records says: “In the third year of Xuanhe of the Song, when Fang La had been put down, Shan county was renamed Sheng. The prefect of Yue, Liu Shugu, said Shan carried an image of war and fire and wished to name the county Sheng; an edict agreed.”

同样是两火一刀，唐代读出来的是“可以逃”，宋代读出来的却是“兵火”。史安之在序里说得更直白：

The same two fires and a knife that the Tang read as “there you can escape,” the Song read as war. Shi Anzhi put it even more plainly in his preface:

新名字并不是凭空造的。《剡录》开篇就说：“县有嵊山”，又有嵊亭；引字书说“四山为嵊，四水为霅”。南齐的仆射张稷在这里做过县令，给儿子取名“嵊”，字“四山”。改名，借用的是这片地方早就有的名字。

The new name was not invented from nothing. The Shan Records opens by noting that “the county has a Mount Sheng,” and a Sheng Pavilion too, and quotes an old dictionary: “four mountains make 嵊; four waters make 霅.” Zhang Ji, a Southern Qi official who once served as magistrate here, named his son Sheng, with the courtesy name Sishan, “Four Mountains.” The renaming borrowed a name the place already had.

一种流行的解释是，嵊州四周有东簟山、南黄山、西白山、北嶀山，所以取“四山相合”之意。“嵊”字今天几乎只用在地名里：嵊州，还有舟山的嵊泗。嵊泗县的名字来自两座岛，泗礁山和嵊山，那是另一座嵊山。

A popular explanation is that Shengzhou is ringed by four mountains — Dianshan to the east, Huangshan to the south, Xibaishan to the west and Tushan to the north — hence “four mountains joined.” Today the character 嵊 appears almost only in place names: Shengzhou, and Shengsi in the Zhoushan islands, whose name comes from two islands, Sijiaoshan and Shengshan — a different Mount Sheng.

“嵊县”这个名字，从 1121 年一直用到 1995 年。1992 年 12 月 10 日，嵊县政府申请撤县设市，同时请求把名字改成嵊州市，理由之一就是《剡录》里唐代设过嵊州，“嵊州之名易被县内外人士接受”。1995 年 8 月 30 日，经国务院批准撤销嵊县、设立嵊州市；12 月 6 日起，凡是带“嵊县”的机关和单位名称，一律改为“嵊州市”。

The name Sheng county lasted from 1121 to 1995. On December 10, 1992, the county government applied to become a city, asking at the same time to be named Shengzhou — partly because the Shan Records showed there had been a Tang Sheng Prefecture, and “the name Shengzhou would be easily accepted by people inside and outside the county.” On August 30, 1995, the State Council approved abolishing Sheng county and creating the city of Shengzhou, and from December 6 every office and institution with “Sheng county” in its name switched to “Shengzhou city.”

“剡”字并没有从这里消失：流过城里的那条溪仍叫剡溪，城区有个剡湖街道，诗文里的“剡中”一直有人用。英文里，这里以前叫 Shengxian 或 Sheng County；再往前，就是 Shan。

The old name has not disappeared. The stream through town is still the Shan stream, one of the city’s subdistricts is Shanhu (剡湖), and poets still write of “Shan.” In English the place used to be called Shengxian or Sheng County; go back further and it is Shan.