Zhilin 卮林

Zhilin 卮林 "The forest of a jar [full of natural words]" is a "brush-notes"-style book (biji 筆記) written during the late Ming period 明 (1368-1644) by Zhou Ying 周嬰 (c. 1650), courtesy name Fangshu 方叔, from Putian 莆田, Fujian. He was a tribute student (gongsheng 貢生) and later district magistrate of Shangyou 上猶.

The Zhilin has a length of 10 juan, with a supplement of one fascicle. It is a comprehensive and well-researched work that corrects errors found in various books and their commentaries, covering a total of forty different authors. Each entry is labelled with a two-character heading, the second character indicating family name of the author whose work is being corrected. For example, Ge Bao 格鮑 refers to the correction of Bao Biao's 鮑彪 (b. 1091) annotations on the "Intrigues of the Warring States", Guoce zhu 國策注. This method imitates the chapter title Jie Mo 潔墨 of the Kongcongzi 孔叢子 or Ci Meng 刺孟 of Wang Chong's 王充 (27-97 CE) Lunheng.

The book's title is derived from a phrase in the Daoist book Zhuangzi 莊子 saying, "My words are like the water that daily fills the jar [tempered and harmonised by the Heavenly element in our nature] (zhi yan ri chu 卮言日出). Many of Zhou Ying's corrections are well-founded and based on solid evidence, demonstrating his rigorous scholarship in pointing out textual corruption and misinterpretations in historical works, particularly errors arising from character confusion or misreading of sources.

The text can be found in the series Huhailou congshu 湖海樓叢書, Siku quanshu 四庫全書 and Congshu jicheng 叢書集成初編.