The Fifteenth-Century Shuo-Ch’ang Tz’u-Hua硕昌祖华as Examples Of Written Formulaic Composition

~~ \"it '" '..a,. ~XI ""~ "1~ 1:~ THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SHUO-CH'ANG TZ'U-HUA AS EXAMPLES OF WRITTEN FORMULAIC COMPOSITION David T. Roy University of Chicago In this paper I shall describe the formal characteristics ~~ c~ -i~-it of the thirteen wood-block printed shuo-ch'ang tz'u-hua, or prosimetric chantefables, that were discovered in a tomb near Shanghai in 1967, and republished in a facsimile edition by the Shanghai Museum in 1973. 1 Having dealt with these factual matters, I will then address myself to the more speculative questions of what relationship, if any, these works may have had with the oral literature of the early Ming period. One of these thirteen works gives Peking as its place of publication, s~en of them indicate the name of the publisher as ,]( lIliJl ~ 't the Yung-shun Shu-t'ang, and five of them also provide dates of publication which range between 1471 and 1478. 2 The similarities in content and format are such that there is no reason to doubt that all of them were published by the same publisher in Peking at approximately the same time, i.e., during the 1470's. Of course this is not a reliable indication of when the texts were written, since this may not have been the first edition of any of them, and some of them could have been composed as much as a century, or a century and a half, earlier. Any more precise dating than this must await the results of further research. it ~i i~ -tt. THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SHUO-CH'ANG TZ'U-HUA AS EXAMPLESOF WRITTEN FORMULAICCOMPOSITION David T. Roy University of Chicago In this paper I shall describe the formal characteristics {~ ci ""t~"'iii of the thirteen wood-block printed shuo-ch'ang tz'u-hua, or prosimetric chantefables, that were discovered in a tomb near Shanghai in 1967, and republished in a facsimile edition by the Shanghai Museum in 1973. 1 Having dealt with these factual matters, I will then address myself to the more speculative questions of what relationship, if any, these works may have had with the oral literature of the early Ming period. One of these thirteen works gives Peking as its place of publication, s~en of them indicate the name of the publisher as ;ijH place in Ch'ao-chou. She promises never to forget her debt of gratitude to him. 34 Twenty-seven: A moral summation which praises Pao Cheng for his disposition of this case in such a way as to satisfy the 35 demands for justice of Heaven, Earth, and Man. Twenty-eight: A final quatrain which reads: Pure and blue, Heaven cannot be deceived; Before your thoughts are formulated they are known. Be advised to avoid unconscionable acts. 36 Who has ever been allowed to escape? I turn now to a consideration of some of the noteworthy characteristics of this work's outer form. It is very legibly printed in large characters, with thirteen columns of text per page. Each column accomodates three lines of verse or up to twenty-two charactersof prose. There are many abbreviated characters and phonetic substitutes, but none of a kind to cause any difficulty in establishing the text. The work as a whole is 86 cO \0 ,n LI'\ . . .Eh,_':'_iiJ.P.«Ap&P_ c;p;.f:i ;; §&!..' OE(LQC..qt....P!f. • tt.t 63 j:. :t- 64 tz u-wen (doggerel text), wen (text), and wen-snu (document). Although a few of these terms can be used to refer to either oral or written material, all of them can, and most of them must, be used to refer to the latter category. The terms used to designate subdivisions of the texts or works ~~at consist of more ~an one part are also illuminating. --1t"0 ( 0) 6 5 ( ) 6 6 They are ch1 collect10n, c an scroll, or chapter , \!J 67;f- 68 hui (episode or chapter), . and pen (volume). Once again, r~ only the word hui can be used to refer to either oral or written material, while the other three are confined to the latter. The verb used to describe the composition of these...