元代江南士人にとっての「中國」 --「混一南北」の意味から考える--

Abstract

Many books and articles that address the question, what is “China” have been published recently from various standpoints in the disciplines of geography, the history of thought, and history. And one sees there the opinion that “China” or “Great China” came into existence during the Mongol, or Yuan, period. But previous research has not dealt much with what the concept of “China” meant in the Mongol-Yuan period. This paper analyzes the way two terms were used to answer the question, how people, especially the Jiangnan literati, recognized “China” in the Yuan period. As regards the first term “China” 中國, the word “China” did not simply contain traditional, cultural and geographical meanings, but also meant the territory under the control of the central court during the Liao, Song and Jin dynasties. The Five Dynasties, Liao and Jin governments perceived that control of the central plain 中原region was integral to “China, ” but, in contrast, the Southern Song dynasty, which was unable to control the central plain, emphasized its traditions and culture as “China, ” in order to bolster its claim to legitimacy to be recognized as “China.” In the first section, I compare examples of passages from the Yuanshi 元史 to those in earlier and later authorized histories. There are relatively few examples of the use of “China” in the Yuanshi. The Yuanshi seems to avoid using “China” as the opposite of yidi 夷狄. In addition, I examine examples in historical records, mainly in the anthologies of Jiangnan literati, and indicate that usage of “China” during the Yuan period differed very little from that of the Southern Song. In the second section, I analyze the term “hunyi” 混一. “Hunyi” came into fashion during this period, and was used symbolically as a word to emphasize great territorial expanse. I mainly examine the meaning of the phrase “huiyi nanbei” 混一南北 that meant to unify south and north. The south and north that were joined meant for the most part the south and north of traditional “China, ” or China proper. Next, I examine the differences among six maps which are titled either Huayi yitong tu 華夷一統圖or Dayuan hunyi tu 大元混一圖 in the six editions of the Shilinguangji 事林廣記. The maps use place-names that do not reflect correct Yuan usage ; they are, as it were, ideal maps that symbolized “unification” or the “joining” of south and north. These ideal maps are good representations of the consciousness of “China” held by the Jiangnan literati during the Yuan dynasty.