屠蘇飲習俗考

Abstract

The pharmacopia of du-su 屠蘇 and the method used in preparing it were first described in Chen Yan-zhi's 陳延之 Xiao pin fang 小品方, citing the Jou hou fang 肘後方 by Ge Hong 葛洪 of the Jin 晉 dynasty According to Zong Lin's 宗懍 Jing-chu sui-shi ji 荊楚嵗時記, in the Liang 梁 period it became a talismanic beverage drunk at New Year's in order to ward off bad luck. In Sui and Tang times, the custom spread from the upper classes to the population in general and theories concerning the origin of du-su began to appear, and thereafter nobody could ignore these legends when considering the problem of its origin. The present study makes clear that the term du-su which occurs in the Tong-su wen 通俗文 by Fu gian 服虔, before the beginning of the custom of drinking du-su, is a term from the Tibetan meaning "beam" or "roof" and that although there were shifts in its significance between Six Dynasties and Tang-Song times, this was unrelated to the du-su which was drunk. In the Jin-shu 晉書 biography of Dan Dao-kai 單道開, one notices that this monk from Dunhuang 敦煌 drank several measures of tu-su every day. Since du 茶 or su 蘇 can be taken as transliterations of the Sanskrit dra, da, and su, du-su 茶蘇 (屠蘇) is to be understood as draksha. i.e. the grape juice which was often drunk by Central Asian and Indian monks. Furthermore, Tusita (meaning "satisfied", "pleased"), the paradise where Maitreya resides, is frequently transcribed as du-su-chi 屠蘇吃, and in the Boddhisattva mantras in some collections of dharani, especially those of Tu-su-ta tian wang 兜率陀天王 aimed at curing diseases and at securing good harvests, the term du-su is frequently repeated. It is possible that these two usages were combined to refer to the du-su for drinking. The transformation of du-su into a kind of wine came in Northern Song times. In Wang Ju's 王洙 notes to the poems of Du Fu 杜甫, we learn that the people of Shu 蜀 put aromatics into their wine for drinking on New Year's day and called it du-su. Taking this together with the fact that aromatics imported from Central Asia were principal ingredients in the composition of du-su, and the further fact that the sacred wine (sura 窣羅) of Brahmanism was transliterated in Szechwan as du-jiu 屠酒 or su 酥, it may be inferred that for these reasons du-su was adopted as a drink for New Year's.