徽州文書新探 - 『新安忠烈廟神紀實』より -

Abstract

Old documents in Huizhou being analyzed under the leadership of scholars of the Ming and the Qing dynasty have the merit of being the actual things in just the state they were. However, most of them are contracts concerning lands or cadasters or census resisters, and are exceedingly regional. Only a few were issued by the Imperial court. Although they provide us both concrete and minute cases and numbers, mutual relationships of individual documents are vague. Moreover, the fatal defect is the fact that there are extremely so few documents of the Sung and the Dai ön 大元 dynasty that commanding a bird's-eye view of documents throughout history is impossible. On the other hand, many documents recorded in books on Huizhou are compiled with some intention, by the theme, being united, so that it is easy to understand the circumstances behind them. Not a few documents from Tang to the Dai ön dynasty exists, so that by comparing them with other materials of the same period, it is possible to ascertain when and by whom the documents which contain records were compiled, what significances they have in the whole Chinese history, and whether the facts written in them are especial or not. The source of records inscribed on wood block and stone are distinct. Besides, before inscribed, those records were selected as especially important documents for a person or a group with the object of bequeathing to posterity. Therefore, in historical significance, they are incomparably better than fragmentary documents which were excavated or found accidentally and became literally only "tissue paper" in after ages. It need scarcely be said that it is nonsense to narrate institutions and cultures of whole dynasty at the time with only a fragment of a document in a region. Now that several books and inscriptions ---- data on block and stone ---- are given, first of all, we should research them mainly, regard fragments as fragment, and utilize them as reference materials at most. In this paper, grounded on such awareness of the issues, in order to indicate a new method of researching documents on Huizhou, I investigate several documents in the Dai ön dynasty contained in the Xin an zhong lie miao shen ji shi which collect materials on a local God called Wang hua 汪華 believed in Huizhou.