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Puns and Parables "perverse entrails, that make people mad," says the Shijing poem by Rui Liangfu. Where the heart of the prince is treacherous like mountain paths, the mouths ofthe people will be no more dammable than a mighty river. Sorrow and anger assume different forms, mockery and scorn find unlikely expressions. Hua Yuan cast away his armour in flight and the builders of the city-wall sang the ditty of the widely open eyes.1 Zang He was routed, and his countrymen invented the pygmies' song. In both cases the jest was motivated by grievance and made at the expense ofphysical appearance. These lyrics and such common sayings as "what is good for the silk-worm may not be good for the crab" and, indeed, such wailings as the one about the badger's head, so long as they were considered sufficiently didactic, could merit inclusion in the Liji. We may therefore conclude that ambiguous expressions of a comic or paradoxical nature should not be ignored and need not be suppressed. Puns are popular, jokes we all enjoy; simple in language they make the multitude merry. King Wei of Qi indulged himself in drinking, and Chunyu Kun discoursed with him on good wine. King Xiang of Chu banqueted and feasted, The builders jeered at Hua Yuan by caricaturing him in a ditty. See James Legge (trans.) (1960) vol. 5, p. 288. Puns and Parables I 53 and Song Yu wrote the fu on the philanderer. These were mild remonstrations, but admirable. When You Zhan considered the proposal to paint the city wall and You Meng commented on the ceremony for the burial ofthe horse, they both succeeded in restraining their tyrannical masters with the defamiliarized language ofrhetoric. Not surprisingly the lives of the two Yous were given by Sima Qian among the humorists in his history, on grounds that their intentions were respectable, even if their language was not. But what was questionable in the genre became worse with the passage of time. Thus Dongfang Shuo and Mei Gao came to be devourers of husks and imbibers ofthe lees, railers and defilers without a correctional programme. Indeed they said in penitence, "Fu-writing is a kind of play-acting and we are looked askance at as entertainers." Cao Pi the Emperor collected comic anecdotes and compiled the Joke Book, Xue Zong turned up at social gatherings and demonstrated his sardonic wit; such activities won their share of applause in the fashionable world, but did not contribute to the practical issues of the times. Still, practitioners of belles-lettres could not but continue in this misguided course. Hundreds of imitations were produced, but the most flagrant among them were Pan Yue's "Plain women", Shu Xi's "Cakes", and the like. Large numbers of humorists egged each other on in the Wei-Jin period so that, for instance, Ying Chang's nose was likened to a misshapen egg and Zhang Hua's head compared to a kitchen pestle. These were foul-mouthed indulgences, and detrimental to the humorists' self-respect. And do we not see in them the drowning person's gargling giggle, the convict's frenzied song? Parables do not parade; they conceal. They conceal meaning by means of obscurantist language; they refer by using indirect analogies. When Huan Wushe attempted to escape from the seige of Xiao, he spoke allegorically of malt and the dried up well;2 and when Shen Shuyi begged provisions from Lu, he sang the song of jade pendants3 and adopted geng and gui as a shibboleth.4 Wu Ju suggested King Zhuang of Chu was a fat fowl; a retainer sneered at the Duke of Xue for being a sea fish. Zhuang Ji had to speak of a dragon without a tail; Zang Wenzhong wrote "sheepskin" as a cryptogram.5 2 Malt and the dried up well are indirect references to two different means of escape. See James Legge (trans.) (1960) vol. 5, pp. 315-316. 3 When read between the lines, the lyrics of the song ofjade pendants suggest an acute shortage of supplies. See James Legge (trans.) (1960) vol. 5, p. 831. 4 In the traditional Chinese calendrical system of ten Heavenly Stems, "geng" stands for food and "gut' water. 5 "A dragon without a tail" was a figure of speech employed by Zhuang Ji in referring to the fact that King Qingxiang of Chu was without male issue. For details of the story, see [18.119.160.154] Project MUSE...

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