中國古代文學之比較硏究

Abstract

1. On Names and Scripts Names were a great concern among ancient peoples. In an Near Eastern epic and in the Lao Tzu, 老子 names and naming are mentioned; both of them consider the abscence of names to be the very beginning of the world. The recently discovered manuscripts at Ma Wang Tui 馬王堆 make it possible to offer a new interpretation of the first chapter of Lao Tzu. In the Ma Wang Tui Lao Tzu, instead of chiao 徼, the character chiao 噭 is used in the sentence 'kuan ch'i (so) chiao' 觀其 (所) 徼. This character chiao 噭 is defined as 'to call' in the Shuo Wen, 說文 and it is phonologically and semantically similar to the word hao 號. The sentence 'kuan ch'i so chiao' can be interpreted as 'to observe what things are being called'. The first chapter of Lao Tzu is a disscussion on the origin of names. The expression, 'kuan miao' 觀眇 probably refers to the observation of the meaning while 'kuan chiao' 觀徼 refers to the observation of names. In the Chou Li 周禮 the term ming 名 appears in many passages. Cheng Hsüan 鄭玄 glosses it as 'tzu' 字. In later classical works, the characters ming 名, wen 文 and tzu 字 are used indiscriminately. (Cheng Hsüan correctly glossed the sentence 'pi yeh cheng ming hu' 必也正名乎 as 'to rectify, to standardize the written characters'.) The Shuo Wen defines the character (word) ming 名 as 'to identify (lit. to name) oneself; it is composed of "mouth" 口 and "night" 夕. "Night" means darkness. People cannot see eachother in darkness, so they use their mouths to identify themselves, '. Such an explanation coincides with military practices mentioned in other classical works. 'To identify oneself verbally in darkness' ----the original meaning of ming 名 may be related to military practices. The allocation of ming 名 is generally attributed to ancient sages such as Huang Ti 黄帝 in classical works. The character ming 名, which appears to function as a verb, is encountered in the oracle bone inscriptions. In the bronzes, the character ming 名 occurs frequently and is used in the sense of 'to name, to record'. The socalled 'tsu hui' 族徽 (clan marks) appearinng on the bronzes can be divided into five categories: (1) personal names, (2) clan names, (3) place names, (4) official titles and (5) names of ancestors. In the Chou Li, there is an official in charge of 'ch'uan tao' 傳道 (transmitting things said, i. e., oral traditions). This word tao 道 is comparable to the first word tao 道 of Lao Tzu's saying 'tao k'e tao' 道可道 (the 'Way' that can be transmitted). Taoism originated from the 'office of historian' 史官, but the tao 道 of Taoism is more sublime than the tao (talkings, legends and oral traditions) of the 'office of historian'. According to Tung Chung-shu 董仲舒, there is a necessary and inherent relationship between names and reality. In making judgements between right and wrong, 'names' serve as a criterion. In addition to the well-known fact that Confucius mentioned the 'rectification of names' 正名, the expression 'cheng ming' 正名 also appears in the Wu Kuang Ts'an Chien 婺光殘簡 (Wu Kuang is a person of the Yin Dynasty). Apparently, there is a long tradition of cheng ming starting from the Yin Dynasty. In the bibliographic chapter of the Han Shu 漢書, we are told, 'the school of ming 名家 is derived from the office of li 禮官'. Such an opinion is probably based on the fact that drawing sharp distinctions between ming 名 (names, positions) and wu 物 (matters) was the major concern of the 'office of rituals' 禮官. On the other hand, the Taoists wanted to do away with all ritual. They aimed to restore the state of 'wu ming' 無名 ('namelessness'), a state in which they consider everything to be in changeless equilibrium. The emphasis on names and the wish to discard names is the point where Confucism and Taoism diverge. Without recognizing this fact, a proper understanding of Chinese literature cannot be obtained. 2. Oaths and Literature The styles of literature can generally be divided into two categories: sarcasm (speaking by contraries) and praise. In the case of Shih Ching 詩經, feng 風 is close to the former while hsiung 頌 is close to the latter. In the ancient world, hymns dedicated to gods, in particular the god of the sun, occupied an important position in literature. However, the god of the sun as eulogized in Chinese literature in such works as Ch'u Tz'u 楚辭, feng-shan shu 封禪書 and the brick inscriptions does not seem to enjoy an outstanding position among other dieties. The hymn to the sun recorded in the Ta Tai Li Chi 大戴禮記 and the ta chüan chapter of Shang Shu 尙書大傳 is merely an extract from a Shang Shu 尙書 passage praising the duke of Chou 周公. With the exception of the ode ho jen shih 何人斯, the ten odes beginning with chieh nan shan 節南山 are said to be sarcastic poems directed against king Yu 幽王. Ho jen shih is not an ironic poem but an oath which reads 'Here are the three creatures (for sacrifice), and I will take an oath to you'. In the age when gods have a high status, people often take an oath against their enemies. Such practices are recorded in written materials, e. g. the last section of the Hammurabi Code and the Tsu Ch'u Wen 詛楚文. In the Chou Li 周禮, there is an office in charge of oath-taking. In swearing an oath, one makes a contract with the gods to express one's sincerity. The procedures of oath-taking are recorded in many classical works; and the recently excavated Hou Ma Meng Shu 侯馬盟書 provides more information about the rituals involved. In addition to the sacrifice of victims, there are records that a square board fang ming 方明 used to represent the gods of the six directions. This information aids our understanding of the Li Sao 離騷 passage which reads (in David Hawkes's translation): 濟沅湘以南征, 就重華而陳辭. "I crossed the Yüan and Hsiang and journeyed south-ward. Till I came to where Ch'ung Hua was and made my plaint to him." 巫咸將夕降兮, 懷●糈而要之. "I heard that Wu Hsien was descending in the evening. So I lay in wait with offierings of peppered rice-balls." Based on the statement that the chapter chao hun 招魂 is the master piece of prayings (Wen Hsin Tiao Lung: chu meng 文心雕龍祝盟篇), some scholars have proposed that Ch'u Tz'u 楚辭 represents a kind of shamanistic verse. However, in the same chapter of the Wen Hsin, Liu Hsieh 劉勰 also mentions oaths, the discussion of which is applicable to the Li Sao. One of the main themes of the Li Sao is the author's loyalty and the search for gods and spirits to witness his innocence. For example, "And the righteousness within me was clearly manifest 耿吾既得此中正兮" and "I looked all around over the earth's four quarters 相覽觀于四極". The underlying idea is similar to that of a meng 盟 (covenant). The Shih Ming 釋名 defines the word meng 盟 as 'to declare, to tell one's matters to the gods'. Being slandered, Ch'ü Yüan 屈原 utters his complaint and wants to manifest his purity. The imaginative, decorative narration of his voyage throughout heaven and earth was probably inspired by the ideas of fang ming 方明 which represents all directions in swearing an oath. Cu'ü Yüan merely speaks through the mouth of a shaman while Ch'ü Yüan himself is not necessarily a shaman, nor are his writings shamanistic verses. Cheng Hsüan 鄭玄 defines tsu 詛 as 'an oath on a minor matter'. In latter traditions, as Liu Hsieh pointed out, tsu 詛 comes to assume an imprecatory connotation. 3. Epics and 'Narration and Singing' The origin of the Indic epics is said to be kīratana, a narrative form composed of stories and songs. The translation into Chinese of the Buddhist Jātaka, 本生經, also composed of stories and songs, was accompanied by the importing of 'narration and singing'. It is recorded in the Kao Sêng Chuan 高僧傳 of the Liang Dynasty that Ts'ao Chih 曹植 composed the hymns Tai Tzu Sung 太子頌 and Shan Sung. 睒頌. Although Ch'ên Yin-k'ê 陳寅恪 casts doubt of the reliability of this record, there is textual evidence showing that a monk Sêng I 僧意 composed a new melody for the hymn of Shan Sung during the Liu-Sung 劉宋 Dynasty. This Shan Sung is probably a composition modelled on Buddhist 'narration and singing' 講唱. There are no lengthly Chinese epics. The following reasons may account for this lack: (1) the structure of classical Chinese is too terse and (2) Chinese people do not emphasize narration. However, there is a literary style similar to the epic, namely, shui 說 (speech of persuasion). The passages of Chuang Tzu 莊子 and the style of the fu 賦 which are full of exaggerative and flowery description can also be taken as a kind of epic. Among the Chinese minorities, there are many oral epics, such as the Tibetan Ke Sha Erh 格薩爾 and the Mongolian Ke Erh Shih K'e Han 格爾斯可汗, The minority Shui Chia 水家 in Kweichow 貴州 has an epis of creation which incorporates terms such Yü Huang 玉皇 and Tao Kuang 道光, a fact showing that this spic continued to develop along the course of Chinese history. The legend of human creation is first seen in the west Asian epic Emūma Elis. In China, such a legend appears in the Feng Su T'ung 風俗通 (Han Dynasty) where Nü Kua 女媧 creats human beings with mud. There are also many legends about the births of emperors in the wei shu 緯書 of the Han Dynasty and similar legends can be discovered among other peoples and in other periods. Both in India and China, there are stories about the unevenness of the earth and heaven: and both Buddha and Nü Kua can assume many different shapes. It would be very interesting if the relationship between the legends concerning Nü Kua and the legends of India could be revealed. As one of the peoples who have legends about a great flood, the Chinese put the time of human creation after the flood. Starting in the T'ang Dynasty, the story about the harnessing of the flood-waters by Ta Yü 大禹 flourished. The chapter ch'êng hsiang of Hsün Tzu 荀子成相篇 can be taken as a kind of short epic which has the form of lines of 3, 5, 4, 3 words in sequence. This composition may be modelled on folk epic. and in turn, is probably the prototype of t'an t'zu 彈詞 (a recitation with string and drum accompaniment). In the Yüan and Ming Dynasties, imitations of the ch'êng hsiang 成相 chapter were produced. The literary style chiang Ch'ang 講唱 (narrative and singing) continued to develop during the T'ang and Sung Dynasties. While Chinese novels were being enriched by Buddhist stories about supernatural powers, the techniques of chiang ch'ang were being refined. There are fine distinctions between chanting fan pai 梵唄 (Buddhist hymns) and the chiang ch'ang of Buddhist stories. The popularity, skilfulness and various regional styles of chiang ch'ang are mentioned in contemporary sources. Two long-lasting results of the wide-spread popularity of chiang ch'ang should be mentioned. (1) Shen K'uo 沈括 and Chu Hsi 朱熹 adduce it to explain the word hsieh 些 in the Ch'u Tz'u 楚辭, though the relationship is far from certain. (2) The chu sheng 助聲 (inserted words outside a melodic form) lu 魯, liu 流, lu 盧 and lou 樓 (coming from the Sanskrit letters ṛ, ṛ, ḷ and ḷ) penetrated deep into Chinese literature. Starting as early as the Wei Ch'eng Chü 渭城曲 of the T'ang Dynasty, different characters representing sounds similar to those four chu sheng have been used in tzu-poetry 詞, in the Tung chieh yüan Hsi Shang Chi 董解元西廂記 and other song texts. 4. Poetry and Zen According to the Kao Sêng Chuan 高僧傳 written by Hui Chiao 慧皎, the Dhyāna-niṣṭhita-samādhi-dharmaparyāya-sūtra 坐禅三昧經 was translated into Chinese in the late Han period, a time earlier than Bodhidharma 達磨 who is supposed to have been the first preacher of Zen in China. The word Zen is first used in poetry by Hsieh Ling-yün 謝靈運. The coining of the term ch'u hsing 觸興 (strike of inspiration), which is similar to the notion hsing hsiang 興象 (inspiration and image) put forth in the T'ang Dynasty, is attributed to a friend of Tao I 道壹, in the Tung-Chin 東晉 Dynasty. Since the Six Dynasties, there have been many monks noted for their skill in writing poems, e. g., Hui Hsiu 惠休 of the Liu-Sung and Chen Kuan 眞觀 of the Sui Dynasty. In addition to poetry, there have also been theories of poetry put forth by monks. However, the major concern of these theories is with the form, skill and wording of poetry. The relationship between Zen and poetry is not touched upon. After Hui Nêng 惠能 established the school of Zen in China, Zenverse (偈 gêthâ) become very popular. As they are a means of preaching and enlightenment, most of the chi 偈, though they may be profound philosophically, do not deal with feelings and emotions. Along those who were capable of creating good poems, Chiao Jan 皎然, and Kuan Hsiu 貫休 synthesized the form of poetry and the substance of Zen into a harmonious unity. The relationship between poetry and Zen is metaphorically ellaborated by Ta Kuan 達觀 who states, "Zen is similar to spring and words are similar to flowers. The spring realizes itself in flowers and all the flowers are spring. Flowers exist in spring and all spring is flowers. How can we say that Zen and words are two matters?" On the other hand, there are poetry critics who benefited from Zen. Ssu-kung T'u 司空圖 was able to grasp the essence of Zen in poetic creation and yet not be bound by it. In poetry criticism, he also borrowed many ideas from Zen, for example, the notion of Yüan hsiang 圓相 (a circle representing perfection) and ch'iao i hsiang wai 超以象外 (transcendence of the form). In the same way Yen Yü 嚴羽 also uses many concepts from Zen in discussing poetry, for axample, wu ju 悟入 (to penetrate the truth through enlightenment). Yen Yü's theory has been criticized by many people. However, as his proponent, Wang Yü-yang 王漁洋 inherits and develops the ideas of 'spontaneity', 'enlightening inspiration' and 'unanalysable subtlety' put forth by Yen. Not only shih-poetry but also tz'u-poetry is, more or less, permeated with Zen. The preface of Pai Ming Chia Tz'u 百名家詞 is full of Zen quotations used to describe various styles and nuance of tz'u-poetry. From the Sung Dynasty onwards, many tz'u collection also named with Zen expressions. 5. Literary Criticism and the Buddhist Sutras Liu Hsieh 劉勰, though famous in recent times for his classic work Wen Hsin Tiao Lung 文心雕龍, was renown in his own time as a learned scholar of Buddhism rather than as a literary critic. And yet, terms frequently used in T'ang literary criticism such as hsing 興 (inspiration) and wei 味 (taste) are drawn from the Wen Hsin. Beginning with Chiao Jan 皎然, a monk of the T'ang Dynasty, and author of the unfinished Shih Shih 詩式, many works of literary criticism have been written by monks. During the Sung Dynasty, the custom of employing Buddhist terms in literaty criticism was cultivated. There are four points worth mentioning: (1) The tradition of using the term nan pei tsung 南北宗 to signify the bipartite schools in the study of classics, literature and Buddhism can be traced back to the Six Dynasties. This terminology became well established after Chinese Zen split into the nan tsung 南宗 (Hui Nêng 惠能)) and pei tsung 北宗 (Shen Hsiu 神秀). In his book Bunkyo Hihuron 文鏡秘府論, Kukai 空海 makes use of the term nan pei tsung to refer to the two different styles of prose represented by Chia I 賈誼 and Ssu-ma Ch'ien 司馬遷 respectively. In the field of poetry, Chia Tao 賈島 called the more abstract and metaphoric style nan 南, the more concrete and direct style pei 北. The monk Hsü Chung 虚中 also classified poetry into nan and pei schools; however his criteria of classification are rather obscure. (2) The monks of Yün Men school 雲門 had the tradition of using the following three expressions to signify three types of Zen sayings or states in religious training: A. han kai ch'ien k'un 涵蓋乾坤 (to embrace the universe) B. chieh tuan chung liu 截斷衆流 (to stop all the streams) C. sui po chu lang 隨波逐浪 (to follow the tide) Methods of explaining these three expressions vary from Zen-master to Zen-master----some of them extract lines from poems, some use metaphors or even gestures. The verbal exemplifications of these expressions are sometimes very poetic. Yeh Meng-te 葉夢得 makes use of these three expressions to describe Tu Fu's 杜甫 poems; and poems of other poets can also be categorized in this way. (3) Su Tung-po 蘇東坡 (and also Yen Yü 嚴羽) suggest that in writing poems, one should 'hsiang shang' 向上 (aim for the sublime) ----a term borrowed form the Zen school. That Su used a Zen expressions to discuss poetry is hardly surprising, since Zen is an integrate part of Su's poems and Su's creation is often inspired by Zen experience. In fact, some of his poems can be considered Zen verses (chi 偈). Huang Shan-ku 黄山谷, a poet who understood Zen profoundly, applied the Zen term yen 眼 (eye, insight, pivot) to the analysis of poetry. Following Huang, Yen Yü and Fan Wen 范溫 also adopted this term in their literary criticism. Although both Su and Huang's theories of poetry are rooted in Zen, it appears that Su can better abstract the essence of Zen while Huang seems too involved in the form and skill of verse-making. (4) The introduction of the notion ching chieh 境界 (literary dimensions) is generally attributed to Wang Kuo-wei 王國維. This term, however, though not used in exactly the same sense, was employed to describe literary compositions by Li Ch'i-ch'ing 李耆卿 in the Sung Dynasty. Moreover, the word ching 境, in combination with other words, appears in the poetry criticism of Chiao Jan 皎然, and Wang Ch'ang-ling 王昌齡. (The term ching chieh 境界 was first used in Zen saying and has the sense of boundary, realm, precinct.) Wang's theory 'yu wo chi ching' 有我之境 (a poem in which the self of the author is expressed) and 'wu wo chi ching' 無我之境 (a poem in which the self of the author is unexpressed) falls into the framework of Lin Chi's 臨濟 theory.