Printing and the Song Lyric: The Social Dimension

Printed books containing song lyrics often tell us something about the motivations of their publishers, but do not necessarily tell us any more about how the printed song lyrics were used by the owners of the books than do the forms of publication discussed so far. Sample data from Chiang-nan West Circuit, where eighteen localities are known to have published books during the Sung,^[21] will acquaint us with the types of projects that resulted in song lyrics' being stored in print as well as the changing social context of their composition and preservation.

Twenty-five song lyricists from Chiang-nan West Circuit are represented in the Ch'üan Sung tz'u by twenty or more song lyrics. Of these twenty-five lyricists, twelve were published in one or more series put out by commercial publishers outside the circuit around the beginning of the thirteenth century. These are Yen Shu (991–1055), Ou-yang Hsiu, Yen Chi-tao, Huang T'ing-chien, Hsieh I, Wang T'ing-kuei (1080–1172), Yang Wu-chiu (1097–1171), Yüan Ch'ü-hua (1145 chin-shih ), Ching T'ang (1138–1200), Shih Hsiao-yu (1166 chin-shih ), Chao Shih-

[19] Lin-ch'uan hsien-sheng ch'üan-chi (Hong Kong: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1971), 37.400.

[20] As Ch'en Pang-yen pointed out in his paper for this conference, however, the nature of a given song lyric depends as much on its theme and the style of the poet as on the tiao selected. It should be noted that "Yü-chia ao" is the tiao most frequently used (14 times) in the song lyrics of Yen Shu (991–1055), who is known for his soft and romantic style. See Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , 2d ed. (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan she, 1978), p. 134.

[21] See Chang Hsiu-min, "Nan Sung (1127–1279) k'o-shu ti-yü k'ao," T'u-shu kuan 1961, no. 3: 53, for a chart of all 173 localities with known publication activity in the Southern Sung.

hsia (1175 chin-shih ), and Yang Yen-cheng (1145–?). I shall discuss these commercial editions in more detail later.

Within the circuit, perhaps the earliest printing of a native son's works that included song lyrics was the 1196 publication of Ou-yang Hsiu's collected works in Lu-ling, the administrative seat of Chi prefecture. Chi was not only home to the major kilns of Sung and Yüan times, but also one of the richest rice-growing areas in the country. Already fifth in production of chin-shih in the first century of the Northern Sung, the prefecture supported a large literati population.^[22] In fact, the entire Kan River basin from Chi prefecture north to Nan-ch'ang was as prosperous in terms of its agricultural yield as it was in terms of its examination graduates.

Ou-yang Hsiu was not born in the prefecture, but his family was registered in Lu-ling, and it is natural that a major compilation of the works of such an illustrious "native" should be undertaken and printed there. As early as 1122, a version of his works had been published by the Envoy Storehouse (kung-shih k'u ) in Lu-ling. Established to serve the needs of visiting capital envoys, such units had opportunities to siphon off funds for publication projects as well as for private favors.^[23] The 1196 edition of Ou-yang's works, more complete, was reprinted at least twice soon afterwards in other parts of the circuit.^[24] There is no evidence that this 1196 project was either a commercial or government-sponsored endeavor; it was probably a private effort by the local elite. One Lo Mi was responsible for editing the portion devoted to Ou-yang's song lyrics.^[25]

Chou Pi-ta (1126–1204), who was directing the Ou-yang Hsiu project, at about the same time also had a hand in printing the works of Wang T'ing-kuei from An-fu, about fifty-five kilometers to the north-

[22] John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 111, 149.

[23] See Li Chih-chung, "Sung-tai k'o-shu shu-lüeh," Wen-shih 14 (July 1982): 157. The title of the 1122 edition of Ou-yang's works is given there as Liu-i chü-shih chi , in fifty chüan with another fifty-chüan continuation. There is no mention of lyrics. Li also notes that an Envoy Storehouse at O-chou in Ching-hu North Circuit (near modern Wu-han) published the Hua-chien chi in 1187. On the establishment of the Envoy Storehouses at the beginning of the dynasty and the danger of storehouse funds' being misused, see Liu Ts'en (1087–1167), as quoted in Wang Ming-ch'ing, Hui-chu hou-lu (1194) (TSCC ed.), 1.208–9.

[24] Abe Ryuichi^[*] , "Tenri toshokan zo^[*] So^[*] Kin Gan hambon ko^[*] ," Biblia 75 (October 1980): 407. One of these later editions must be the 1198 version mentioned by Li Chih-chung, "Sung-tai k'o-shu," p. 159.

[25] Ronald C. Egan, The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–72) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 2, 10.

west of Lu-ling but still in Chi prefecture. This edition apparently did not include Wang's song lyrics. (Most of his forty-two surviving lyrics are minor works celebrating plum blossoms, social outings, and the like.) The work was edited by a protégé and carried prefaces by such prominent locals as Hu Ch'üan (1102–80) and Yang Wan-li (1127–1206), both of whom, with Chou Pi-ta, were outspoken critics of the weak, despotic, and corrupt central government.

Wang T'ing-kuei was respected locally as a literary figure just as Ou-yang Hsiu was throughout the empire, and yet the publication of their literary works could be seen as a political act. If we look more closely at the prefaces to Wang T'ing-kuei's works and the identities of their authors, we find that Hu Ch'üan was one of a number of hostile opponents of Ch'in Kuei's policy of negotiation with the Chin state in 1138. It was because of a farewell poem Wang presented to Hu when the latter was on his way to exile—the result of petitioning for Ch'in Kuei's execution^[26] —that Wang T'ing-kuei himself was exiled to a remote post in Ching-hu North Circuit in 1148 (some sources say 1143 or 1149). In Ou-yang Hsiu's case, Lo Mi's decision to exclude song lyrics he felt unworthy of his image underscores the fact that the scholarly urge to preserve was at least matched by the urge to uphold certain moral ideals.^[27]

Lu-ling song lyricists Yang Yen-cheng (a cousin of Yang Wan-li) and Liu Kuo (1154–1206) were both associated with Hsin Ch'i-chi (1140–1207), and their styles show evidence of his influence. The works of Liu Kuo as edited by his younger brother included his song lyrics; they were printed in the mid-1230s, but the nature and the place of publication are obscure.

We do know that the song lyrics of Liu Hsien-lun (fl. late 12th cent.) were published in Lu-ling: a Chi prefecture edition is mentioned by Huang Sheng in the mid-thirteenth century.^[28] Among the thirty-one song lyrics ascribed to Liu in the Ch'üan Sung tz'u are song lyrics composed for birthdays and banquets, but there are also a few compositions voicing vaguely heroic frustrations, leading the modern scholar Hsüeh Li-jo to place Liu Hsien-lun, with Yang Yen-cheng, in a line of "indignant" song lyricists who shared the ethos of Hsin Ch'i-chi.^[29]

The publications by Chou Pi-ta that came out of Chi prefecture were presumably printed at private facilities. The expense need not have

[26] See Jao Tsung-i, Tz'u-chi k'ao , 4.130; and Teraji Jun's superb Nan So^[*] shoki seijishi kenkyu^[*] (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 1988), pp. 172 and 471.

[27] See Egan, Ou-yang Hsiu , p. 194, for a summary of Lo Mi's decisions.

[28] Huang faults it for being incomplete; see Jao Tsung-i, Tz'u-chi k'ao , 4.170.

[29] Hsüeh Li-jo, Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 235.

been great; xylography in China required far less capital investment and technological expertise than printing with movable type.^[30] Song lyrics were also printed at facilities one would normally suppose to have been publicly funded. We have already noted an 1122 Envoy Storehouse edition of Ou-yang Hsiu's works. Likewise, schools affiliated with various local administrative units could be mobilized to publish the works of an individual. It was in the school of his native Nan-ch'ang, the administrative seat of Hung prefecture in Chiang-nan West Circuit, that the works of Ching T'ang were printed in 1199, one year before his death.^[31]

Because xylography was relatively inexpensive, local government academies found publishing a lucrative way of raising funds.^[32] But the man who undertook the Ching T'ang project in Nan-ch'ang, Huang Ju-chia, may have had other motives: Huang considered himself a protégé of Ching, who at that time held high office in the Han T'o-chou administration. Huang's private publication in the same year of Lü Pen-chung's (1084–1145) works, possibly including song lyrics, is therefore somewhat puzzling at first glance.^[33] Lü (who was not a native of Chiang-nan West Circuit but had moved south to Hang-chou from Huai-nan West) took his intellectual direction from the major neo-Confucian thinker Yang Shih (1053–1135), which would seem to place him in the tradition of the "false learning" whose proponents were persecuted by the Han T'o-chou administration from 1195 through 1200. But Lü was also one of a number of scholars allied with Chao Ting (1085–1147), who, while he had influence at court from 1134 to 1138, had advocated a strong but cautious strategy against the Chin state.^[34] Ching T'ang held similar

[30] See Evelyn S. Rawski, "Economic and Social Foundations of Late Imperial Culture," in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China , ed. David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 17–22.

[31] Jao Tsung-i, Tz'u-chi k'ao , 4.165. The lyrics included were largely composed as responses to other people's lyrics or in connection with seasonal outings Ching took while serving in Szechuan. See CST , 3:1841.

[32] Ming-sun Poon, "Books and Printing in Sung China (960–1279)" (Ph. D. diss., University of Chicago, 1979), pp. 95–97.

[33] Li Chih-chung, "Sung-tai k'o-shu," p. 159, is my source for the date and publisher of this edition. The wai-chi in three chüan , which is mentioned by Li but not by Jao (Tz'u-chi k'ao , 3.95), would have been the place to look for lyrics, if they were included.

[34] Chao advocated concentration of military power, which was decentralized and somewhat uncontrollable at the time, under the emperor; he urged Kao-tsung to personally lead a punitive expedition against the puppet state of Ch'i, as long as it could be done without directly engaging Ch'i's Chin backers. See Teraji Jun, Nan So^[*] seijishi , pp. 111–36.

views in his generation, and Huang must have been confident in 1199 that his mentor and Lü Pen-chung shared like minds and, perhaps, moral fiber as members of administrations committed to aggressive but responsible foreign policies. At the time Huang undertook publication of their works, Han T'o-chou's reckless northern campaign was still several years in the future.

The son or protégé of a man had an understandable interest in preserving that man's works, but print technology preserves in surplus , ensuring that the works will be part of the acknowledged body of literature not only for the contemporary generation but for posterity as well. The power imparted by this multiplication could enhance ideological solidarity or regional pride, justifying investment of the resources of the local elite or their educational institutions in the publication of a native son's collected works, even if no blood relation or master-disciple relationship was involved. These motivations can be inferred in the publication of Wang T'ing-kuei, Ou-yang Hsiu, and possibly Liu Hsien-lun in Lu-ling, and of Ching T'ang in Nan-ch'ang.

A growing regionalism is suggested by changes in the career patterns and geographical distribution of song lyricists in Chiang-nan West Circuit. Table 1 is based on one by John Chaffee,^[35] with the addition of known song lyricists for the circuit who meet the criterion of a corpus of twenty or more extant song lyrics. It shows that the number of song lyricists rises dramatically along with the number of chin-shih in four of the five more populous core prefectures, but falls just as strikingly in Fu prefecture. One way to explain this anomaly would be to say that the disappearance of song lyricists from Lin-ch'uan was compensated for by the appearance of three Southern Sung song lyricists in Nan-feng, a mere hundred kilometers upriver in Chien-ch'ang military prefecture. The fact that the prose master Tseng Kung (1019–83), a native of Nan-feng, had founded a charitable estate in Lin-ch'uan suggests that the two towns could be considered part of the same subregion though they belonged to different prefectures. In this connection, the printing in Lin-ch'uan of the collected works of Ch'en Shih-tao (1053–1101), including his song lyrics, may be significant.^[36] Ch'en was not a native son; and I would speculate that this project may have been supported by

[35] Chaffee, Thorny Gates of Learning , Appendix 3, p. 197.

[36] Knowledge of this edition comes by way of the thirteenth-century book collector Ch'en Chen-sun, who says it was published by a Liu Hsia-wei. See Chan Chih, ed., Huang T'ing-chien ho Chiang-hsi shih-p'ai chüan (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1978), 2:507–8. Liu entered the bureaucracy under the yin privilege but advanced to prominent national offices.

Tseng Kung's charitable estate because Ch'en had considered himself a student of the prose master in the 1070s.^[37]

But we are dealing with more than a geographical shift. The four Lin-ch'uan song lyricists, like Huang T'ing-chien of Hung prefecture and Hui-hung of Yün, left Chiang-nan West and became widely known figures with few ties to their home regions. Their interests were probably more closely linked to their status as members of the bureaucracy than to the local economy. The three Nan-feng song lyricists, on the other hand, were not prominent outside their home region. Chao Ch'ang-ch'ing, an imperial agnate who left behind a considerable number of song lyrics, does not seem to have had a significant political career. Like several other lyricists from the circuit, he had some connection with Chang Hsiao-hsiang (1132–70), a native of Li-yang in Huainan East Circuit who played a distinguished role in the early part of the third Sung-Chin war (1161), which toppled the vestiges of the Ch'in Kuei regime. Chang was a serious song lyricist who measured himself against Su Shih.^[38]

Chao Ch'ung-po, another imperial descendant in Nan-feng, similarly did not figure importantly in politics, though it must be noted that he often spoke out against various abuses during his career.^[39] Liu Hsün was a Sung loyalist who composed poems on the martyrs and patriots of the fallen dynasty and served as instructor in a Confucian School in Fuchien^[40] during the Yüan dynasty. His thirty surviving song lyrics sing of eremitism and nostalgia.^[41]

[37] The estate was still supporting Tseng agnates in 1333, when a shrine hall was erected in Lin-ch'uan to further focus their sense of history and unity. See the commemorative essay by Yü Chi (1272–1348) in his Tao-yüan hsüeh-ku lu (SPTK ed.), 35.304a–b. See also Robert Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi , in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 106–9.

[38] Jao Tsung-i, Tz'u-chi k'ao , 3.119–20. Jao wonders if the editor of Chao Ch'ang-ch'ing's lyrics, Liu Tse, has any connection with the Liu bookshop and publishing business in Changsha; I wonder whether he has any connection with the Liu Hsiao-wei who published Ch'en Shih-tao's works in nearby Lin-ch'uan. Jao dates the lyric connected with Chang Hsiao-hsiang (CST , 3:1785) to 1264. On Chang, see Teraji Jun, Nan So^[*] seijishi , pp. 426–32, 470–72; and Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u , pp. 247–48.

[39] See, for example, Chou Mi's Ch'i-tung yeh-yü , 2.83–84 (TSCC ed.), relating Chao's support for an attack on corruption when he was an assistant minister in the Chief Office of Imperial Clan Affairs. Only twenty of his lyrics survive.

[40] Yves Hervouet, ed., A Sung Bibliography (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1978), p. 445 (where his name is romanized as Hsüan); Ch'ang Pi-te, Sung-jen chuan-chi tzu-liao so-yin , 5:3907. Hymes, Statesmen , p. 127, lists him as one of several Southern Sung "local advocates" in Fu prefecture who made appeals to the court for specific local relief—a pattern not seen in Northern Sung.

[41] CST , 5:3331.

Other studies have suggested that the national government was losing importance through the Southern Sung and into the Yüan both as a promising arena in which to compete for power and position, and as an effective arbiter of local affairs.^[42] During the effective reign of Ch'in Kuei, that is, 1142–55, most levels of government were monopolized by people who had personal ties to Ch'in or to the emperor; others were shifted from post to post so rapidly that their offices ceased to have any effective function. At the county level, fully one-third of the magistrate positions in the empire were vacant when Ch'in Kuei died, revealing both a remarkable failure to organize the 2,741 examination graduates of his regime^[43] into a working bureaucracy and a strong local sentiment against participation in or cooperation with the government. Even in the 122 counties of the Liang-che circuits and Chiang-nan East, where the urgent need to establish Southern Sung sovereignty insured that most county-level posts were filled, almost no appointees can be demonstrated to have belonged to Ch'in Kuei's faction, and many of those who would become influential in the dismantling of his administration after 1155 rose from those ranks.^[44]

This is not to say that the elite of Chiang-nan West Circuit cut themselves off from national politics; they did not. But the fact that the song lyricists cluster increasingly along the primary commercial routes through Nan-ch'ang, Feng-ch'eng, Lin-chiang military prefecture, Hsinkan, and Lu-ling suggests that their fortunes were tied more to the local economies than to imperial largesse. This change is apparent when one looks at the distribution of song lyricists within each prefecture, summarized in table 1.

In Hung prefecture, Huang T'ing-chien was from the northwest hinterland, but as soon as we enter the Southern Sung, we are confined to the Kan River. Yüan Ch'ü-hua's native Feng-hsin is upstream from Nan-ch'ang. Like Chao Ch'ang-ch'ing of Nan-feng, Yüan Ch'ü-hua is the author of a song lyric that can be connected with Chang Hsiao-hsiang: Chang, a noted calligrapher as well as a strategist, had so liked Yüan's song lyric on a terrace in Ch'ang-sha that he wrote it out in his own hand.^[45] This and similar song lyrics by Yüan are said to display

[42] See Robert P. Hymes, "Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strategy in Sung and Yüan Fu-chou," in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China , 1000–1940 , ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey and James L. Watson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 95–136; and Hymes, Statesmen , passim .

[43] Teraji Jun, Nan So^[*]seijishi , p. 506 n. 132.

[44] Ibid., pp. 323–91.

[45] Jao Tsung-i, Tz'u-chi k'ao , 4.137. Jao ascribes this to sometime between 1165 and 1174, when Chang was administrator in Changsha.

the heroic qualities of Hsin Ch'i-chi's tz'u .^[46] For Nan-ch'ang itself, we have Ching T'ang, exceptional as a prominent figure abroad as well as locally. Chao Shan-kua was an imperial agnate registered in Nan-ch'ang.^[47] Among his song lyrics are one following the rhymes of a lyric Hsin Ch'i-chi wrote in 1179 at O prefecture in Ching-hu North Circuit—Chao was administrator there in that year—and two following the rhymes of a lyric Hsin wrote in 1181 at a new home in Hsin-chou, 150 kilometers east of Nan-ch'ang in Chiang-nan East Circuit.^[48] Shih Hsiao-yu of Nan-ch'ang is known more for his song lyrics than anything else.^[49] His admiration for Chang Hsiao-hsiang was expressed in a song lyric written sometime between the time Chang was made a drafter in the Secretariat and his death in 1170.

Moving south up the river, we find that the two song lyricists from Lin-chiang military prefecture are both men of the Southern Sung and both from locales on the Kan River itself. Yang Wu-chiu, who refused to serve under the first Southern Sung emperor, exchanged many song lyrics with Hsiang Tzu-yin, a member of a prominent old K'ai-feng family who fled to Lin-chiang and invested large sums in a school and a charitable estate for Hsiang's family. (In 1138, Hsiang played an important role in the Chao Ting government as an advocate of using rewards and punishments to bring order to the Sung armies, but he also contributed to a split in his faction by siding with Ch'in Kuei and against his own friends in advocating a peace treaty with the Chin.)^[50] Chao Shih-hsia, an imperial agnate, lived upriver in Hsin-kan, eight kilometers south of Lin-chiang, although he was born before the fall of the Northern Sung and identifies himself in a postface (1187) to the Tung-ching meng-hua lu as a native of K'ai-feng.^[51] Much of his career was spent in Chiang-nan West Circuit (1172–74, 1179–86) and Ching-hu South (1167, 1188–89, 1197). His literary and political affiliations are unclear; his song lyrics are occasional in theme.

In Chi prefecture, all song lyricists after Wang T'ing-kuei are from Lu-ling on the Kan River. We have already mentioned Yang Yen-cheng and Liu Kuo, both affiliated with Hsin Ch'i-chi, and Liu Hsien-lun, who was also vaguely in the same camp. After a brief hiatus, another

[46] Hsüeh Li-jo, Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 232–33.

[47] CST , 3:1980.

[48] See CST , 3:1983 and 1981; and Hsin Ch'i-chi, Chia-hsüan tz'u pien-nien chien-chu (Taipei: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1970), 1.55 and 1.76.

[49] CST , 3:2031.

[50] Teraji Jun, Nan So^[*]seijishi , pp. 121, 143, 156–57.

[51] Jao Tsung-i, Tz'u-chi k'ao , 4.162.

generation of Lu-ling song lyricists appears in the middle of the thirteenth century, taking us beyond the Sung. Liu Ch'en-weng (1232–97), P'eng Yüan-sun, Chao Wen (1239–1315), and Liu Chiang-sun (1257–?) are all Lu-ling song lyricists who survived into the Yüan. I have no information on the publication of their song lyrics as independent collections, but Liu Ch'en-weng, fearless critic of Chia Ssu-tao, and Chao Wen, protégé of Wen T'ien-hsiang, both possess the Lu-ling spirit of moral integrity. Liu Ch'en-weng and Liu Chiang-sun were both heads of academies (shu-yüan ).

Unlike the Northern Sung song lyricists from the peripheral areas of the circuit, the Kan basin lyricists are generally not themselves pivotal figures, either in literature or in administration. They appear generally to have avoided association with the more venal regimes of the age; instead, we often find them using song lyrics to establish or commemorate relationships with such figures as Hsin Ch'i-chi and Chang Hsiao-hsiang.