Scholar from Leping, son of the Song chief councillor Ma Tingluan, who spent some twenty years compiling the 348-chapter Comprehensive Survey of Institutions
Mural guide
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
Ma Duanlin, courtesy name Guiyu, came from Leping in Raozhou and was the son of Ma Tingluan, chief councillor under the Southern Song; born in 1254, he studied with Cao Jing of the Zhu Xi school and received a minor rank through his father. After the Song fell he lived in retirement with his father, and under the Yuan he held only teaching posts, as head of the Cihu and Keshan academies and as instructor at Taizhou. Over some twenty years he compiled the Comprehensive Survey of Institutions (Wenxian tongkao) in 348 chapters, arranged in twenty-four sections from land tax and coinage to population, which carried the institutional history begun in Du You's Tang Tongdian down to the Southern Song. A Daoist priest, Wang Shouyan, found the work and presented it to the court in the Yanyou reign, and Raozhou printed it in 1322. It is grouped with the Tongdian and Zheng Qiao's Tongzhi as the Three Comprehensive Works.
Fearing that earlier records might one day be lost, Ma Duanlin set aside the limits of his own learning and gathered, weighed and sorted them by topic. For narrative he drew on the classics and histories, together with the successive huiyao compilations and the writings of many schools, keeping what was reliable and attested; for judgments he took memorials by officials of the day first, then the comments of recent scholars. He named the work Wenxian tongkao, in twenty-four categories and 348 chapters.
Song
Yuan