身振りと文學 : 史記成立についての一試論

Abstract

Ssu-ma Ch'ien 司馬遷 drew upon many kinds of sources in compiling the Shih-chi. One was oral tradition, as narrated by the old men of the city. Their narrations were acted out in the market place where the people crowded to listen and to pass the time. During the transmission from mouth to mouth, the narrations improved until they became refined literary masterpieces. Ssu-ma Ch'ien travelled through out China collecting these traditional tales, and inserted them into his history. The most dramatic scenes described in the Shih-chi are these narrations copied by him just as they were spoken. In comparison those parts of the Shih-chi, which derive from the Confucian classics or official documents, seem tedius. The daily life of the people fascinated Ssu-ma Ch'ien. The Shih-chi portrays the ways of gamblers, assassins, the rich and the poor of all classes. In the later Han 後漢, the aristocracy began to increase in strength, and consequently influenced the author of the Han-shu 漢書, Pan Ku 班固 who wrote only about Confucianism as the ideology of the ruling class. After him, the oral tradition never reappeared in formal history. It survived only in vernacular novels such as the Shui-hu-chuan 水滸傳.