白居易の制誥の新體と舊體について

Abstract

In his Collected Works Bai Ju-yi classifies the "Imperial Edicts" written by him into the "New Style" and the "Old Style". What does he mean by this distinction between the new and the old? In the Annotations on Poetry of Yuan and Bai 元白詩箋證稿, Prof. Chen Yin-ke 陳寅恪 thinks that the "New Style" is "a reformed revival of archaic official language", which is the same as the traditional style. As to the "Old Style", Prof. Chen has offered no explanation. The present article makes a thorough study of both the new-style and the old-style imperial edicts written by Bai Ju-yi. Having traced the development of this genre from the Han dynasty through the Six Dynasties to the Tang dynasty, the author of the present paper has noticed that the imperial edicts written during the Tang dynasty are mostly in rhythmical prose characterized in the middle of the dynasty. In the Preface to Imperial Edicts 制誥序 Yuan Zhen 元稹 advocates a revival of the traditional style, as opposed to the ornate rhythmical prose style 駢體, in the composition of imperial edicts. Bai Ju-yi's actual practice coincides with Yuan Zhen's theory of reform in this particular genre, that is to say, he composed imperial edicts in the old style, which is the same as the traditional style. On the other hand, Bai Ju-yi's new-style edicts are written in a style slightly different from the ornate rhythmical prose style current in the Tang dynasty, in that Bai's new style is a simplified rhythmical prose style, which is definitely not the same as the traditional style. Why does Bai Ju-yi adopt two different styles in the composition of imperial edicts: the new style (rhythmical prose 駢體) and the old style (traditional 古體)? My explanation is this: as the imperial edict is an important vehicle to communicate the emperor's decrees, it is often read aloud to his subjects. Rhythmical prose, which demands a set pattern of sentences and a regular arrangement of words according to pitch, makes reading aloud or recitation more effective. Hence Bai Ju-yi's choice of the rhythmical prose style when the edict is to be recited before the emperor's subjects and of the traditional style when it is merely to be communicated to certain individuals. This, I think, is the reason for the distinction between the new style and the old style of Bai Ju-yi's imperial edicts.