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Abstract
This article compares two editions of an obscure late Qing baojuan 寶卷 (precious scroll), which seemingly hoped to capitalize on the late nineteenth-century popularity of Liu Xiang baojuan 劉香寶卷 (The precious scroll of Liu Xiang) by appropriating its heroine as a mouthpiece for the kinds of conservative social values espoused most vocally by moralist Yu Zhi 余治 (1809–1874). In Liu Xiang zhong juan 劉香中卷 (The middle scroll of Liu Xiang), the familiar protagonist animates a number of tales taken from popularly circulating Confucian morality literature of the time, particularly an illustrated primer written by Yu. Reading two different editions of this work against each other uncovers signs of a disagreement between its anonymous writer and Yu Zhi about how best to adopt a precious scroll to the purposes of disseminating the morals represented in Yu's extensive corpus. Were these texts supposed to convince their readers of the supremacy of his approach above all other methods of merit cultivation, even the recitation of precious scrolls? Or was the point to allow lay Buddhist devotees to continue their appreciation of precious scrolls while using them to inculcate Confucian values as well?
Acknowledgements
I would like to particularly thank Margaret Wan, editor of this journal, for her extensive help with ushering this essay into print, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who gave me feedback on my draft. Their comments and criticisms were both encouraging and challenging, enabling me to improve this piece in many ways. I would also like to thank CHINOPERL Editorial Board members Vibeke Børdahl and David Rolston for their extensive comments on the penultimate draft of this article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Katherine Alexander http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6673-7097
Notes
1 Yu Zhi 余治, “Shang dang shi shu 上當事書,” in Zun xiaoxue zhai ji 尊小學齋集 (Respecting the lesser learning studio collection; Guwu [Suzhou]: Dejian zhai, 1883), p. 3/5a–15b of the “prose” (wen 文) section. For summaries of Yu's life and major accomplishments in English and Chinese, see Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 21–46; and You Zian 游子安, Shan yu ren tong: Ming Qing yilai de cishan yu jiaohua 善於人同：明清以來的慈善與教化 (Goodness abides with humanity: Philanthropy and morality since the Ming and Qing; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005), pp. 93–95. Jiangnan in particular was devastated during the Taiping War (1850–1864). It is estimated that twenty to thirty million people died as a result of this war between Qing imperial forces and the Taiping army, who justified their violence with sinicized Christian-inflected rhetoric. Most commonly known in English as the Taiping Rebellion, here I follow arguments made by Stephen Platt and Tobie Meyer-Fong, among others, and simply call the conflict the Taiping War. Meyer-Fong notes that this term remains ideologically neutral, while “rebellion” places both writer and reader on the side of the Qing against whom the Taipings were battling. See Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains, 24–25 and Stephen Platt, “War and Reconstruction in 1860s Jiangnan,” Late Imperial China 30.2 (December 2009): 7–8, doi:10.1353/late.0.0024.
2 Yu specifically said that Daoism and Buddhism have not been serious threats to the primacy of Confucianism, that so far Chinese Muslims had kept to themselves, and that the real threat came from Catholicism (tianzhu jiao 天主教) because of its aggressive proselytizing and its incompatibility with the principles of Confucian governance. See Yu Zhi, “Shang dang shi shu,” pp. 5a–b. In translating jiao as “religion” rather than “philosophy,” I follow Vincent Goossaert as explained in his article “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” The Journal of Asian Studies 65.2 (2006): 310, n. 5.
3 For more on Confucian fundamentalism, see Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” p. 308. For more specifically on the aims and achievements of the Tongzhi Restoration, see Mary Clabaugh Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism the T’ung-chih restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957).
4 Yu Zhi, “Shang dang shi shu,” p. 14b.
5 Ibid., pp. 14a–15b.
6 Yu Zhi continued to work on this collection of morality plays with the intention of publishing a full set of his work, but the project remained incomplete at the time of his death in 1874. On the work done to put together the 1880 posthumous edition of Yu's plays, see the last two items in the first juan of Shuji tang jinyue 庶幾堂今樂 (Suzhou: Dejian zhai, 1880), which consists completely of front matter. The forty play figure comes from the first of these two colophons written by supporters responsible for helping bring the dramas to print. A more precise translation of this title that addresses the classical allusion made by “Shuji Hall” would be “Music of the day of the near to a [moral state] hall,” as Michelle Tien King translates it. She also provides a detailed explanation of the allusions behind Yu's name for the collection: Between Birth and Death: Female Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 58–59. Three of Yu's plays are available in a German translation in Alfred Forke, Elf chinesische Singspieltexte aus neuerer Zeit (Eleven songplay texts from more recent times; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993), pp. 325–390.
7 For those interested in reading more about this collection, three places to start include, but are by no means limited to: Lai Jinxing 賴進興, “Wan Qing Jiangnan shishen de cishan shiye ji qi jiaohua linian—yi Yu Zhi (1809–1874) wei zhongxin” 晚清江南士紳的慈善事業及其教化理念—以余治 (1809–1874)為中心 (Charitable enterprises of late Qing Jiangnan gentry and their theories of educating the people—A case study of Yu Zhi [1809–1874]), master's thesis, National Cheng Kung University, 2008, pp. 105–22; Chen Caixun 陳才訓, “Yu Zhi de ‘shanxi’ chuangzuo yu qingdai quanshan yundong” 余治的 “善戲” 創作与清代勸善運動” (The creation of Yu Zhi's ‘morality plays’ and Qing morality movements), Beijing shehui kexue 北京社會科學 (Beijing Social Sciences) 2014.10: 57–66; and Liu Ruizhu 劉睿竹, Yu Zhi xiju guan yanjiu 余治戲劇觀研究 (Research on Yu Zhi's perspective on drama); master's thesis, Shanxi Normal University, 2012. In terms of work in English, in addition to the brief analysis of Yu's anti-infanticide play Yu guai tu 育怪圖 (Portrait of bearing a monster) in King's Between Birth and Death, pp. 58–59, Rania Huntington has also worked on Yu's plays that address the Taiping War. Her work on this subject has not yet been published, however.
8 Yu Zhi, “Shang dang shi shu,” pp. 13a–14a.
9 For Yu's critique of tanci, see Yu Zhi, Deyi lu 得一錄 (Record of achieving [goodness]; China: Baoshan tang, 1885), p. 11/3a. In “Shang dang shi shu” (p. 13b) he praises performance venues: “This is a very good place to exhort people to do good” 此極好勸善地位也. Much scholarship exists on tanci, their female authors and audiences, examples of which include Li Guo, Women's Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century China (Purdue: Purdue University Press, 2015); Ellen Widmer, “The Trouble with Talent: Hou Zhi (1764–1829) and her Tanci Zai Zaotian,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 21 (December 1999): 131–50; Hu Siao-chen, “Literary tanci: A Woman's Tradition of Narrative in Verse” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1984; and Mark Bender, “Tan-ci, Wen-ci, Chang-ci,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 6.1–2 (1984): 121–24. These studies show that some tanci were highly literary works not intended for performance, while others were closer to performance practices.
10 It is unclear the context in which “Shang dang shi shu” circulated when Yu composed it, or the date when it was written. The version I refer to here, as noted above, is included in Yu's collected writings, while an abbreviated one that concentrates on his proposal on theater appeared in the front matter of Shuji tang jinyue.
11 Neither edition is listed in the card catalogue of the library. Neither edition appears in Che Xilun 車錫倫, Zhongguo baojuan zongmu 中國寶卷總目 (General Catalogue of Precious Scrolls in China; Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo choubeichu, 1998), the most comprehensive catalogue of baojuan in China published to date. However, both editions of Zhong juan were listed in an earlier, slightly more obscure catalogue by Fu Xihua 傅惜華, “Catalogue Des Pao-Kiuan 寶卷總錄,” in Mélanges Sinologiques (Beijing: Université de Paris, Centre d’études sinologiques de Pékin, 1951), pp. 73–74.
12 The publication history of Liu Xiang, particularly its proliferation during the late Qing, provides us with concrete proof of the text's popularity. In Zhongguo baojuan zongmu, pp. 80–82, Che Xilun records forty-two printed and manuscript editions of Liu Xiang, twenty-four of them published in the final four decades of the Qing. My archival research uncovered at least ten more late Qing editions not in Che's catalog. The late Qing editions and manuscripts of this baojuan, via publication data and donor lists, clearly demonstrate significant and widespread interest in them by so many people from so many places, all in a short period of time.
13 Yu Zhi, Xuetang riji 學堂日記 (Gusu [Suzhou]: Dejian zhai, 1875).
14 For more on the textual development and history of Liu Xiang baojuan, see Che Xilun, Zhongguo baojuan yanjiu 中國寶卷研究 (Research on Chinese baojuan; Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue, 2009), pp. 126–28, and Katherine Alexander, “Virtues of the Vernacular: Moral Reconstruction in Late Qing Jiangnan and the Revitalization of baojuan,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2016, pp. 34–53.
15 This last aspect seems especially counterproductive, given that audiences were meant to be inspired by this new baojuan but were at the same time led to question the value of any other instructive text in the performance canon. As for the unbalanced meter of the chanted lines, here I am referring to couplets that in the Yihua tang edition scan awkwardly because instead of conforming to the 7-7 metrical structure (which still admits the use of padding words (chenzi 襯字) before either or both halves of the couplet), the writer occasionally produced 8-7 or 7-8 couplets. In the Huikong jingfang edition, these awkward lines have been revised back to pure 7-7. The extrametrical padding characters remain largely untouched in the Huikong jingfang edition, so it is only the awkwardly 8-7 or 7-8 lines that attracted Yu's corrective attentions.
16 This edition actually names Yu as the editor in both the preface and in a note on the final page of the text. Though Yu did not personally write a preface confirming his involvement with this text, given his participation in every aspect of morality literature and philanthropic promotion in 1860s and 1870s Jiangnan, along with the certainty of his authorship of one of the other base texts, Xuetang riji, I accept this attribution as genuine. Furthermore, though he was widely connected in postwar Jiangnan, it is unlikely he was personally prominent enough for a faked attribution to add significant value to a text. Given that he borrowed the name and status of Pan Zengyi, a philanthropist from a powerful Jiangnan family, to speak for him in Pan Gong baojuan 潘公寶卷 (The precious scroll of Lord Pan), and that his collected writings all bear introductions by far more prominent people endorsing him in order to add cachet and value, it is more likely that Yu got involved in the editing of this baojuan than that a Buddhist print house would want to falsely attribute their emendations to Yu.
17 It remains unclear when the earlier edition was first printed. The sole copy I found contains no bibliographic data. At the library in Beijing, it is kept in a case of many different baojuan, placed between the first and second volumes of the 1870 edition of Liu Xiang published by Yihua tang 翼化堂, a prolific Shanghai morality book publisher founded in 1857. Though not definitive evidence, Yihua tang's publishing catalog from 1939 does support this attribution by listing Liu Xiang zhong juan for sale separate from its listing of Liu Xiang. It may indeed have been printed in 1870 along with the parent text, as I found it at the library, but it just as likely may have been placed between them later. Lacking evidence to the contrary at present, I call this version the “Yihua tang edition” when it is necessary to differentiate them. Meanwhile, the Huikong jingfang edition is clearly dated and labeled. It names its publisher as Huikong Sutra House at Zhaoqing [Temple] in Hangzhou 杭州昭慶慧空經房 on the illustration page and after the preface, dated 1873. Though the publication date for the early edition is quite tentative, the order in which the versions appeared seems certain—the Yihua tang edition came before Huikong jingfang edition. In addition to the preface mentioning the need to revise the earlier version, the 1873 edition corrects the meter in many lines of poetry that are unbalanced in the longer edition. It seems illogical to assume that the longer edition, with its less sophisticated understanding of rhythm, emerged out of the shorter edition.
18 Daniel Overmyer, Precious Volumes: An Introduction to Chinese Sectarian Scriptures from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), pp. 3–5.
19 See Sawada Mizuho 澤田瑞穗, Zōho hōkan no kenkyū 增補宝卷の研究 (Research on precious scrolls, expanded edition; Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1975), p. 79. It is therefore even more interesting that the two editions of Zhong juan considered in this article are printed matter, rather than manuscripts, further implying small print runs and, lacking manuscript copies, perhaps no adoption into the performance repertoire as well. It is also worth noting that though Sawada terms the unaffiliated performers of baojuan as “xuanjuanren 宣卷人 (scroll reciter),” I have adopted the more commonly used title above, as noted by Che Xilun in Xinyang, jiaohua, yule : Zhongguo baojuan yanjiu ji qita 信仰.敎化.娱樂: 中國寶卷硏究及其他 (Belief, morality, amusement: Research on Chinese precious scrolls and other things; Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 2002), p. 2, though Che mentions that alternate terms like jiangjing xiansheng 講經先生 (sutra recting master) and fotou 佛頭 (Buddha head) were also in use.
20 See Sawada, Zōho hōkan no kenkyū, pp. 81–95, for a summary of pre-modern sources on baojuan performance and performance contexts. For an exhaustive summary of scholarship in English on baojuan up to 2012, see Wilt L. Idema, “English-Language Studies of Precious Scrolls: A Bibliographical Survey,” CHINOPERL Papers 31 (2012): 163–76. Studies of baojuan are a lively field, and many new works on baojuan, including a number by Idema himself, have been published since this survey.
21 Traditionally, children were thought to be one sui when born and two sui after living into the next year.
22 Many Qing editions of this baojuan exist in library collections around the world. Good facsimile reprints also are readily available. Out of personal preference, I have used the following reprint as my base text for research: Liu Xiang baojuan, (Hangzhou: Huikong jingfang, Tongzhi reign period (1862–1874) reprinted in Zhongyang yanjiuyuan Lishi yuyan yanjiusuo cang Su wenxue congkan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所藏俗文學叢刊 (Folk literature: Materials in the collection of the Institute of History and Philology), edited by Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo suwenxue congkan bianji xiaozu 中央研究院語言研究所俗文學叢刊編輯小組, photographic reprint, 500 vols. (Taipei: Xin wenfeng, 2005), 355:51–322. Some English language sources that take Liu Xiang baojuan into consideration include Daniel Overmyer, “Values in Chinese Sectarian Literature: Ming and Ch’ing Pao-chüan,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, eds. David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 219–54; Daniel Overmyer, “Women in Chinese Religions: Submission, Struggle, Transcendence,” in From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honour of Prof. Jan Yün-hua, eds. Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1991), pp. 91–120; and Beata Grant, “Patterns of Female Religious Experience in Qing Dynasty Popular Literature,” Journal of Chinese Religions 23 (1995): 29–58. Please note that Overmyer's summary of the baojuan does not completely accurately reflect the sequence of events as they are related in the story. Selections from the beginning of an edition of this baojuan are translated in Glen Dudbridge, The Legend of Miaoshan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 [revised edition]), pp. 102–18.
23 On female audiences see Sawada, Zōho hōkan no kenkyū, pp. 81–83. Che Xilun explicitly highlights the suffering of female protagonists as the main reason for the tales’ popularity among women in “feudal” (fengjian 封建) society in Xinyang, jiaohua, yule: Zhongguo baojuan yanjiu ji qita, pp. 20–2. For an overview in English of the historical references to female performers and audiences at baojuan performances, covering many of the same sources as Sawada and additional related works, see David Johnson, “Mu-lien in Pao-chüan: The Performative Context and Religious Meaning of the You-ming Pao-chüan,” in Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religion: Five Studies, ed. David Johnson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 59–74. Wilt Idema notes that certain women were excluded from attending baojuan performances “in some places,” but he is not specific about the location of these places. He says this in his introduction to a collection of translations of baojuan from Western Gansu, an area quite removed in terms of distance and practice from Jiangnan. See Idema, The Immortal Maiden Equal to Heaven and Other Precious Scrolls from Western Gansu (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2015), p. 8.
24 For example, Rostislav Berezkin translates a preface to a baojuan, lithographically printed in Shanghai 1919 that specifically references female readers, performers, and audiences, and notes that “the publishers who printed this baojuan produced it having a partly female audience in mind.” See his “Printing and Circulating ‘Precious Scrolls’ in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai and Its Vicinity: Towards an Assessment of Multifunctionality of the Genre,” in Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China 1800–2012, eds. Philip Clart and Gregory A. Scott (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), pp. 139–85, especially p. 164. The example I note above from the preface to Zhong juan, dated 1873, demonstrates that this intention was certainly present in the nineteenth century as well for some baojuan publishers.
25 For more on the use of yu 愚 (ignorant) in introductions to describe prospective/imagined readers, see Anne McLaren, “Constructing New Reading Publics in Late Ming China,” in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, eds. Cynthia Brokaw and Kai-Wing Chow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 160–63.
26 Liu Xiang zhong juan (Hangzhou: Huikong jingfang, 1873), p. 1b.
27 On another late nineteenth century example of this type of baojuan, see Rostislav Berezkin and Vincent Goossaert, “The Three Mao Lords in Modern Jiangnan: Cult and Pilgrimage between Taoism and Baojuan Recitation,” Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 99 (2014): 295–326. The 1877 edition of a baojuan about the Three Mao Lords that Berezkin and Goossaert summarize and analyze on pp. 305–307 includes material that significantly overlaps with material in Yu Zhi's corpus, including Pan Gong baojuan 潘公寶卷 (Precious scroll on Lord Pan; on this baojuan and its likely authorhood by Yu Zhi, see Meyer-Fong, What Remains, pp. 31–46). This overlap between these two baojuan was noted by Sawada (Zōho hōkan no kenkyū, p. 143), who suspected that both were written by the same person as Pan Gong. Given that Yu is now considered to have authored Pan Gong, (see Meyer-Fong, What Remains, 31–46 for more on this attribution and the contents of this baojuan), it is worth pointing out how Yu seems to appear nearly everywhere we look in relation to late nineteenth century morality literature in Jiangnan, as the example in the present article attests.
28 gives summaries of the episodes of Zhong juan. The Yihua tang edition has sixteen, of which the Huikong jingfang edition deletes five; seven of the total of sixteen episodes are not directly based on Xuetang riji material. Though the earliest extant edition of Xuetang riji is dated 1875, its two prefaces are both dated 1868. A colophon at the end of the text written by another supporter of Yu's discusses the recarving of blocks for a new edition of schoolroom stories by Yu in the context of the 1850s. It appears that versions of what would become the 1875 edition of Xuetang riji already were known to Yu's supporters for decades by the time Zhong juan was probably written.
29 Liu Xiang zhong juan, pp. 8b–9a. Page numbers for both editions are identical until p. 41b. Unless specifically noted as either Yihua tang or Huikong jingfang edition, the cited text is the same in both editions.
30 Ibid., pp. 11b–12a.
31 Ibid., p. 12a.
32 Ibid., pp. 17b–18a.
33 See , episodes 8, 9, 13, 15, and 16.
34 Zhong juan, Yihua tang edition, pp. 42a–44b.
35 Ibid., pp. 62a–68a. For an English translation of Xiangshan baojuan see Wilt L. Idema, Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and her Acolytes (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008).
36 See Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” p. 324.
37 Yu Zhi, Xuetang riji, p. 38a.
38 Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885–1967) takes a similar tone regarding Liu Xiang, and two readers of the text who he says were driven to suicide by reading it, in his 1936 essay “Liu Xiangnü” in his Guadou ji 瓜豆集 (Record of melon seeds; Shanghai: Yuzhoufeng she, 1937), pp. 42–51.
39 See Rania Huntington, “Ghosts Seeking Substitutes: Female Suicide and Repetition,” Late Imperial China 26.1 (2005): 1–40.
40 Zhong juan, Yihua tang edition, p. 63b.
41 For more on vengeful ghosts, see Anthony C. Yu, “‘Rest, Rest, Perturbed Spirit!’ Ghosts in Traditional Chinese Prose Fiction,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987): 415–22, doi:10.2307/2719188, and Huntington, “Ghosts Seeking Substitutes,” pp. 20–21.
42 Zhong juan, Yihua tang edition, p. 64b.
43 Janet M. Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 21.
44 See Dudbridge, The Legend of Miaoshan, for a thorough description and analysis of the early instances of this tale and its possible antecedents.
45 Zhong juan, Yihua tang edition, pp. 66a–67a.
46 Ibid., p. 67b.
47 Theiss, Disgraceful Matters, p. 21.
48 Ibid., p. 31.
49 Ibid., p. 174.
50 Ibid., p. 12.
51 Huntington, “Ghosts Seeking Substitutes,” p. 17.
52 See Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” pp. 317–20, for more on late nineteenth-century elite attitudes towards popular religion, reflecting similar disdain for popular practices as the author of Zhong juan implies here.
53 In addition to writing extensively against female infanticide (see Chapter 2, “Reforming Customs: Scholars and Morality,” in King, Between Birth and Death for more on Yu's central role in this movement in mid-nineteenth century Jiangnan), Yu also strongly advocated against the killing and eating of certain meats, especially beef, dog, and frog, as these animals were helpful to farmers and to kill them would be ungracious. For a discussion of Yu's views on the eating of beef, see Vincent Goossaert, L’Interdit de boeuf en Chine (Paris: Collège de France, institut des hautes études chinoises, 2005), pp. 201–203. See Yu, Deyi lu, pp. 10/52a–56b, for a poem Yu wrote for use in philanthropic schools (the same context in which Xuetang riji was meant for) that includes details on why these three animals should be saved. Xuetang riji also includes other examples in which killing animals is punishable by disease or death, including crabs (p. 42a), fish (p. 40b), and birds (p. 44b), and on p. 26a, a simplified Confucian justification for the Buddhist practice of fangsheng 放生 (freeing animals).
54 For a full photoreprint of this edition, see Yoshioka Yoshitoyo 吉岡義豊, “Kenryūban Kōzan hōkan kaisetsu” 乾隆版香山寶卷解說 (Qianlong edition of The Precious Scroll of Fragrant Mountain with notes) Dōkyō kenkyū 道教研究 (Daoist Studies) 4 (1971): 115–95. A fascinating article by Rostislav Berezkin and Boris L. Riftin introduces an earlier but undated Chinese edition of Xiangshan, published in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1772. See their “The Earliest Known Edition of The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain and the Connections Between Precious Scrolls and Buddhist Preaching,” T’oung Pao 99.4–5 (2013): 445–99.
55 Zhong juan, Huikong jingfang edition, Daoxiu preface, p. 1a. Liancun 蓮村 was one of Yu's style-names (hao 號). For all of his various names, see Wu Shicheng 吳師澄 “Yu Xiaohui xiansheng nianpu” 余孝惠先生年譜 (Chronological biography of Mr. Yu Xiaohui) in Yu, Zun xiaoxue zhai ji, nianpu section, p. 1a.
56 For more on Xiantian dao 先天道, see Marjorie Topley, “The Great Way of Former Heaven: A Group of Chinese Secret Religious Sects,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 26.2 (1963): 362–92; and Lin Wanchuan 林萬傳, Xiantian dao yanjiu 先天道研究 (Research on Xiantian dao; Tainan: Tianju shuju, 1986).
57 Though the 1773 edition of Xiangshan, also published at Zhaoqing Temple by Large Character Sutra House (see n. 52), does not end with this invocation or instructions, the 1844 edition of Liu Xiang published by the same printer does, and all Liu Xiang editions I have seen published after this do as well. An 1871 edition of the shorter version of Xiangshan ends with the same pair of couplets and instructions to the reader. Since it is unclear whether the 1844 Liu Xiang copied an earlier edition of Xiangshan or the other way around, the causality is not provable but the association between the two is clear.
58 The final character is half the size of the others in many editions of the text, although some omit it entirely. See Liu Xiang, p. 2/60b, (facsimile 310).
59 Because baojuan were not intentionally preserved by most of the Confucian scholars whose private collections served as the basis for defining the Chinese literary canon, only in the twentieth century, when vernacular literature attracted attention as a legitimate field of study (for example, Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸, Zhongguo wenxue lunji 中國文學論集 [Collection of Essays on Chinese Literature; Shanghai: Kaiming shuju. 1934]), did baojuan find their place in archival collections. Therefore, the nineteenth century (and earlier) baojuan which are extant today in library collections originally survived through the efforts of non-academic collectors. A lack of surviving editions does not mean there were none in the first place, but by contrasting the number of surviving editions of Liu Xiang, of which there remain hundreds (if not thousands) of copies of over forty different editions, with Zhong juan, of which there remain two editions with one copy each, it is clear enough that Zhong juan had a significantly lesser impact. There is possibly a second copy of the Huikong jingfang edition at the library of Hebei University, which I have tentatively confirmed over the phone but not yet in person. Also, while Yihua tang continued to list a Zhong juan in print ads into the 1930s, I have found no evidence of the existence of copies other than the one that might be theirs that I found inserted between the volumes of one of their editions of Liu Xiang baojuan in Beijing.
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Katherine Alexander
Katherine Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her main area of research, and current book project, centers on popular religious literature and culture in Jiangnan during and after the Taiping War, a fertile environment in which vernacular morality literature like baojuan proliferated. In addition, she is also currently working on a project addressing how Qing imperial narratives of female chastity were interpreted and adopted in the frontier city Taiwanfu (present day Tainan, Taiwan), building on the themes developed in her dissertation about the role of religion in supporting or destabilizing the state and prescriptive moralities aimed at female audiences.