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Abstract
Although most of the surviving collections of medieval manuscripts and imprints are of Buddhist nature, they normally include a smaller number of other types of material, such as primers and didactic texts used for educational purposes. The Mengqiu 蒙求, a primer attributed to Li Han 李瀚 (d. u.) of the Tang dynasty, is one of these. Following the Song period the text fell into disuse, but early copies survived in Japan where it remained in continuous use all the way through modern times. In addition, during the twentieth century several copies of the text were discovered in regions which were at the margins of Chinese civilization: among the texts excavated from the sealed off library cave near Dunhuang; the ruins of the forgotten Tangut city of Khara-khoto; and the Liao period wooden pagoda in Ying county (Shanxi province). All of these sites belonged to border regimes that at the time were not part of China proper, and thus the finds attest to the popularity of this text among the inhabitants of these states. This paper examines the handwritten and printed versions of the Mengqiu discovered at these sites in order to draw attention to the spread of Confucian education beyond the borders of the Chinese states, and to assess the role of Buddhist monasteries in secular education.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions I received from colleagues and friends who heard me presenting my new research concerning the Mengqiu at Princeton University (September 2014) and Mount Emei (December 2014). I would also like to thank Prof. Chen Jinhua for his enthusiasm and untiring support for this research project.
Notes
1. Bits of an early version of this paper have been included in my new book Chinese Literature in Tangut: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-khoto (Galambos, Translating Chinese Tradition); the present paper represents an expanded and improved version.
2. For an overview of the role of Sanjie monastery in the building of the original manuscript collection and the function of the cave, see van Schaik and Galambos, Manuscripts and Travellers, 18–28.
3. Monastic libraries in medieval Europe also commonly included non-religious works such as the classics or medical and other technical texts. For an example of the mixing of religious and secular books, see Scrivner, “Carolingian monastic library catalogs”, describing the catalogues of Carolingian monastic libraries roughly contemporaneous with the bulk of the Dunhuang manuscripts.
4. For a comprehensive study of educational texts from Dunhuang, see Zheng, Dunhuang mengshu yanjiu.
5. An English-language general overview of educational texts in traditional China is found in Lee, Education in Traditional China, 431–541.
6. Yang, Riben fangshu zhi, vol. 3, 721. See also Zhang, “Tang guzhu Mengqiu kaolüe”.
7. Hayakawa, Mōgyū, 26.
8. For a summary of theories regarding the Mengqiu’s authorship, see Tang, “Mengqiu zuozhe xinkao”.
9. We should note that among the Dunhuang material there are cases when the same name was written in two or more different ways even by the very person or those in immediate contact with him. An example of this is a donor on a silk painting (Stein 1919, 0101,0.54) at the British Museum, whose name appears on the painting as Mi Yande 米延德 but as Mi Yuande 米員德 in manuscript S.4649. That the two names refer to the same person is corroborated, besides the fact that both come from the same cave library in Dunhuang, by the temporal proximity of the painting (dated 983) and the manuscript (dated 970); see Ji et al., Dunhuangxue dacidian, 465.
10. Yu, Siku tiyao bianzheng, 960–975.
11. E.g. Bi, “Shi suo jinjian de Liaoban shuji: Mengqiu”, 20.
12. The first four lines of this translation are done by Burton Watson (Li and Hsü, Meng-ch’iu: Famous Episodes, 19–21), the rest is my own.
13. Shishuo xinyu 8, 419.
14. Hou Hanshu 54, 1791.
15. The ‘four who know’ refers to the story when someone tried to bribe Yang Zhen in the middle of the night, suggesting that nobody would know about it, to which Yang Zhen replied that heaven and the spirits and the two of them would know. The ‘three delusions’ are the three things Yang Bing claimed not to have been troubled with: alcohol 酒, sex 色 and money 財.
16. Wen xuan 38,1742–1746.
17. Yanshi jiaxun 3 (8), 198.
18. Zhang Xianwu’s ‘Shi kexi’ is preserved in the Song-Yuan encyclopedia Shilin guangji 事林廣記. For a translation and study, see West, “Time management and self-control”.
19. Most of the mengqiu-type works listed here are based on Zheng, “Dunhuang ben Mengqiu”, 177.
20. Because of the proliferation of primers with the phrase mengqiu in their title, with time the original Mengqiu was sometimes referred to as The Mengqiu of Mr. Li 李氏蒙求 to distinguish it from the many other ones.
21. Yang, Riben fangshu zhi, vol. 3, 721–731.
22. Zheng, Dunhuang mengshu yanjiu, 229.
23. Ikeda Toshio, Mōgyū kochū shūsei.
24. Li and Hsü, Meng-ch’iu: Famous Episodes. For a book review, see Goodrich, “Review: Meng Ch’iu”.
25. As far as I can tell, the first person to identify these two copies was Wang Zhongmin 王重民 who wrote up a catalogue entry of the two Pelliot fragments in December 1936; see Wang, Dunhuang guji xulu, 207–208.
26. For photographs of this manuscript, see Gansu cang Dunhuang wenxian bianweihui et al., Gansu cang Dunhuang wenxian, 100–103. On the manuscript in the collection of the Dunhuang Academy and its comparison with the manuscript copies kept in Japan, see Zhang, “Dunhuang Yanjiuyuan cang”. For a general description of the three Dunhuang manuscripts of the Mengqiu, see Zheng, “Dunhuang ben Mengqiu” and Zheng, Dunhuang mengshu yanjiu, 227–253.
27. Such impossible dates are not rare in the Dunhuang manuscripts. Some researchers have suggested that because of Dunhuang’s physical remoteness from China proper and its isolation following the Tibetan conquest, the people of the region may not have immediately learned about the advent of a new reign period and at times continued to use the old one for several more years. For a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, see Rong, Guiyijun shi yanjiu, 51–52.
28. Theoretically the Xuantong reign ended a year earlier with the last emperor’s abdication but it was evidently continued to be used by scholars of the old regime.
29. Zheng, “Dunhuang ben Mengqiu”, 180.
30. Ibid.
31. An even smaller number of manuscripts were in Tibetan and a few additional fragments in other languages (e.g. Uighur, Persian, Syriac).
32. The original location of the manuscript is evident from the code Stein initially assigned to the manuscript: KK0149a, in which the letters ‘KK’, without additional Roman numerals following it, designate the walled city of Khara-khoto. The modern pressmark for this text at the British Library is Or.8212/1344.
33. Guo, Sitanyin di sanci Zhongya, 26–27, 160–161.
34. Zhang, “Dunhuang Yanjiuyuan cang”, 81.
35. On this manuscript, see Galambos, “A Chinese tract”.
36. I have found the same abbreviated form in a Han dynasty tomb illustration but otherwise it seems to be unattested.
37. Reports on the discovery and initial introductions of the material appeared in Wenwu 文物 1982, No. 6. For a discussion of the Mengqiu, see Bi, “Shi suo jinjian”; Du and Ma, “Yingxian muta mizang”.
38. Shanxi sheng wenwuju, Yingxian muta Liaodai mizang, 52.
39. Wang, Lidai bihuizi huidian, 329.
40. Wang Yankun 王彥坤 (Lidai bihuizi huidian, 34) mentions that 布 was one of the 167 inauspicious characters prohibited in 1266 by the Yuan from being used in memorials presented to the throne.
41. There is another occurrence of the character 布 earlier in the text but there it appears in its full form.
42. Bi Sujuan 畢素娟 (“Shi suo jinjian”, 25) lists this truncated form among the discrepancies between early versions of the Mengqiu but does not identify it as a taboo character.
43. E.g. Bi, “Shi suo jinjian”, 27.
44. Hou Hanshu 237, 946.
45. Bi, “Shi suo jinjian”, 27.
46. Torii, Sculptured Stone Tombs, 22–23, 103–106. The Mengqiu mentions digging a hole because according to the story in the Soushenji 搜神記, Guo Ju and his wife were taking care of his old mother when the wife gave birth to a son. Guo Ju feared that the son might hamper their caring for his mother and, in addition, the old lady might be willing to share her food with her grandson, thereby depriving herself of nourishment. On account of these two reasons, he dug a hole in the ground in a field and was about to bury his son when he came across a pot of gold hidden under a stone lid. The pot also had a note saying that the gold was intended for him to take care of his mother, since he had already demonstrated his filial piety. An English translation of the story appears in DeWoskin and Crump, In Search of the Supernatural, 132.
47. For the history of the Guiyijun regime, see Rong, Guiyijun shi yanjiu.
48. Mair, “Lay Students”, 5.
49. The word xueshilang alternatively appears in the manuscripts as 學仕郎. Another common characteristic of this group of colophons is that the character 學 is often written with the variant 斈.
50. Li, “Dunhuang xuelang tiji jizhu”, 26. The issue of xuelang students had been raised earlier by the Japanese scholar Ogawa Kan’ichi 小川貫弌 in two articles; see Ogawa, “Tonkō no gakushirō ni tsuite” and “Tonkō butsuji no gakushirō”.
51. Zürcher, “Buddhism and education”, 47.
52. In her book on education in Dunhuang, Itō Mieko 伊藤美重子 compiled lists of colophons written during the periods when Dunhuang was ruled by the Zhang and Cao families, respectively, see Itō, Tonkō monjo ni miru gakkō kyōiku, 44–68.
53. Zürcher (“Buddhism and education”, 46–47) emphasizes that the xuelang colophons are almost exclusively attached to copies of texts of secular nature and only in one case does one follow a copy of the Diamond sutra.
54. Cao Yuanshen’s name is prefixed by the title langjun 郎君, which has a variety of meanings but in this case probably means something like ‘prince’ and designate the son of the ruler. The colophon of manuscript P.2808 from two years earlier (923) includes several names, including a ‘Cao langjun’ whose personal name cannot be seen anymore. Considering the temporal proximity of the two manuscripts, it is possible that this langjun is also Cao Yuanshen, although in this case the students listed in the colophon belong to the Jingtu monastery. For the text of both colophons, see Li, “Dunhuang xuelang tiji jizhu”, 31.