Book Reviews
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_full_journalsubtitle: International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie _full_abbrevjournaltitle: TPAO _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) _full_issue: 3-4 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_articletitle_toc: 0 _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en _full_article_subject: 0 T’OUNG PAO T’oungT’oung PaoBook 104-1-2 Reviews (2018) 195-216195-201 www.brill.com/tpao 195 Book Reviews Western Han: A Yangzhou Storyteller’s Script. Edited and translated by Vibeke Børdahl and Liangyan Ge; editorial assistance by Wang Yalong. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 139. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2017. x + 742 pp. This massive tome is unprecedented in the scholarly literature on traditional story- telling and fiction. It includes the complete text (as far as it is preserved) of a script (jiaoben 腳本) for the saga of the foundation of the Han dynasty as told by profes- sional storytellers from Yangzhou working in the prose genre of pinghua 評話. Each left-hand page provides a photographic reprint of one page of the original manu- script, which most likely dates from ca. 1900, but also includes many much later notes and corrections, probably from the 1950s. Each right-hand page provides a computer type-set edition of that page, distinguishing between the text of the orig- inal manuscript (printed in black) and the text of the later added notes and correc- tions (printed in blue). Illegible characters are carefully marked. A complete translation of the relevant Chinese page is printed at the bottom of both facing pages, while the notes to the translation follow at the end (pp. 713-28). This is com- pleted by a list of “Main Characters in the Western Han Saga” (pp. 729-33), which is very convenient in view of the large number of minor characters who pop in and out of the narrative. The Chinese text and its accompanying translations are pre- ceded by a “Preface” (pp. vii-viii), a “Note to the Reader” (pp. ix-xx), and an exten- sive “Introduction: A Storyteller’s Script in the Yangzhou Tradition of the Western Han” (pp. 1-39), which contains on pp. 9-13 an extensive summary of the contents of the script and on pp. 34-38 an explanation of the conventions used in its edition. Despite its title, the script actually only covers one, albeit very important, stage in the wars and conflicts from the collapse of the Qin dynasty until the annihila- tion of the relatives of Empress Lü 呂 following her death. The script starts with the story of when the combined forces of Liu Bang 劉邦 and Xiang Yu 項羽 have brought down the Qin dynasty and Liu Bang has been made the prince of Han- zhong, and ends with the final defeat of Xiang Yu. Against the background of the continuous wars between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, we follow the career of Han Xin 韓信. Feeling that his talents are not recognized, he leaves the camp of Xiang Yu and joins the side of Liu Bang, who is also slow to recognize his potential, but even- tually is persuaded by his advisors to make Han Xin his commander in chief. The more Han Xin proves successful in battle, the more Liu Bang grows suspicious of his power. At one moment Liu Bang replaces him as commander with Wei Bao 魏豹, which results in disaster, leaving Liu Bang no option but to humbly reappoint ©T’oung Koninklijke Pao 104-1-2 Brill NV, (2018) Leiden, 195-201 2018 DOI: 10.1163/15685322-10412P06 196 Book Reviews Han Xin, whose advisors now urge him to assert his own independence as a third party between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. But Han Xin does not heed this advice and orchestrates the huge campaign that will be the final undoing of Xiang Yu. The final pages of the manuscript that will have told the death of Xiang Yu unfortunately are missing. The story does not end there of course: once the suspicious Liu Bang has become emperor, he entrusts the killing of Han Xin and some other meritorious supporters to his wife Empress Lü, who following Liu Bang’s death also kills Liu Bang’s concubine and her son and places her own relatives in positions of power. The paramount position of the house of Liu is only restored when following her death Liu Bang’s old comrades do away with the Lüs. The fierce wars between the noble-born impetuous warrior Xiang Yu, the Hege- mon-King of Western Chu, and Liu Bang, who started out as a lowly village head, with all their tales of bravery and cowardice, loyalty, and treachery and a large cast of fighters and advisors, brave mothers, loyal concubines and jealous wives, that were first chronicled by Sima Qian 司馬遷 in his Shiji 史記, has remained a popular topic in all genres of performative literature for over two thousand years. Included in the cache of Dunhuang manuscripts was a prosimetric text on the heroics of both Wang Ling 王陵, one of Liu Bang’s generals, and Wang’s mother, who when captured by Xiang Yu commits suicide rather than endanger her son’s loyalty to Liu Bang; several texts dealing with Xiang Yu’s final defeat after Zhang Liang 張良 teaches the Han troops to sing the songs of Chu, filling Xiang Yu’s remaining sol- diers with a longing for home and inspiring them to defect en masse; and a ciwen 詞文 on the fate of Xiang Yu’s general Ji Bu 季布 following Xiang Yu’s final defeat— even though Ji Bu once had shamed Liu Bang into leaving the battlefield, he even- tually succeeds in saving his own life by reversing Liu Bang’s opinion of him. While none of the few vernacular prose tales from Dunhuang deal with subjects from this saga, there could well have been some, but we do know of at least one dramatic performance. It therefore comes as no surprise that wars between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu are also listed as one of the popular topics of storytellers in the Song dy- nasty capitals, and the remaining records on early Chinese drama, as well as some surviving texts, make clear that the saga was also very popular with China’s early playwrights, probably even more popular than the Three Kingdoms saga. But whereas we have one copy each of two separate printings of the Pinghua Sanguo- zhi 平話三國志, only the Quanxiang pinghua Qian Hanshu xuji 全相平話前漢書 續集 has been preserved. This text starts with the death of Xiang Yu and concludes with the annihilation of the Lü clan. As it presents itself as a sequel, scholars gener- ally assume that it originally must have been preceded by a volume that narrated the collapse of the Qin and the wars between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. The Three Kingdoms saga may have established its preeminence with the printing in the ear- ly sixteenth century of the Sanguozhi tongsu yanyi 三國志通俗演義, but the wars of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu lost little of their popularity. This saga too remained popular on stage and with storytellers and was repeatedly written up in a variety of genres, providing anyone who wanted to compile his own version with a bewildering vari- ety of sources. T’oung Pao 104-1-2 (2018) 195-201.