Language and Literature in Light of Dunhuang Studies The

LECTURE 14 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN LIGHT OF DUNHUANG STUDIES The Dunhuang manuscripts include a considerable amount of material related to language and literature. With regard to language, there are not only lexicographic works on the pronunciation, meaning and orthography of Chinese characters but also a large corpus of medieval and pre-modern writings which can be used for linguistic analysis. In addition, there is also material in several non-Chinese languages, including Tibetan, Uighur, Khotanese, Sogdian and Sanskrit. As for literature, the most valuable works are those of popular literature that had been traditionally cast aside by the literary elite, such as sūtra lectures ( jiangjingwen 講經文), transformation texts (bianwen 變文), yuanqi 緣起 narratives, ciwen 詞文, story- telling scripts (huaben 話本), popular rhapsodies (sufu 俗賦), quzici 曲子詞 and folk poems (tongsu shi 通俗詩). These genres not only let us see what folk literature was like during the Tang and Five Dynasties but also reveal the literary sources of later dramas and novels. 1. Chinese Language a) Phonology The Dunhuang manuscripts have two important contributions to phonology. The first is the discovery of the Qieyun 切韻 and other rhyme books of the Qieyun system, including the long-lost original Qieyun of Lu Fayan 陸法言 from 601; the Jianzhu ben Qieyun 箋注本切韻 by Changsun Nayan’s 長孫訥言 from 677; the augmented Qieyun with glosses; the Kanmiu buque Qieyun 刊謬補缺切韻 by Wang Renxu 王仁昫; the Qieyun of Sun Mian 孫愐 from 732; and a Five Dynasties printed edition of the Qieyun. These rhyme books not only show us the original form of the Qieyun, but also help to reconstruct the phonological system of the medieval period, and to understand the transition from the Qieyun to the Guangyun 廣韻. Zhou Zumo 周祖謨 gathered the fragments of these phonological works together, analyzing them as a system and pointing out their differences.1 1 Zhou Zumo 周祖謨, Tang Wudai yunshu jicun 唐五代韻書集存, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983; enlarged edition: Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 1994. 394 lecture 14 The other contribution of Dunhuang manuscripts to phonology is in providing material on the pronunciation of the northwestern dialect in the Tang and Five Dynasties. This includes transcriptions of Chinese characters in Tibetan, Khotanese, Sogdian and Uighur scripts, as well as a large amount of phonetic loan characters used in literary texts and administra- tive documents copied locally in Dunhuang. Based on this material, schol- ars have already been able to reconstruct reasonably well the northwestern dialect from the Tang to the early years of the Northern Song, especially for the Hexi region where Dunhuang is located. A series of peculiarities that sets it apart from other dialects was also recapitulated.2 b) Semantic Exegesis and Orthography According to the classification of Zhu Fengyu 朱鳳玉, beside the above bilingual transcriptions of Chinese characters in foreign scripts, manu- script copies of dictionaries from Dunhuang can be divided into the fol- lowing five categories: 1) Children’s teaching texts, such as the Qianziwen 千字文 by Zhou Xingsi 周興嗣, the Kaimeng yaoxun 開蒙要訓 by Ma Renshou 馬仁壽, or the anonymous Xinhe liuzi qianwen 新合六字千文 and Baijiaxing 百家姓. 2) Dictionaries providing phonetic and semantic glosses on words, such as the Yupian 玉篇 by Gu Yewang 顧野王. 3) Lists of miscellaneous characters, such as the Suwu yaoming lin 俗務要名林 and Za jishi yongyao zi 雜集時用要字. 4) Orthographic character models (ziyang 字樣), such as the Zhengming yaolu 正名要錄 by Lang Zhinian 郎知年, the Qunshu xinding ziyang 群書新定字樣 by Du Yanye 杜延業, or the anonymous Shiyao ziyang 時要字樣. 5) Dictionaries explicating ver- nacular words, such as the Suijin 碎金 (also known as Zibao 字寶; Fig. 14.1) or the Baijia suijin 白家碎金.3 In addition to the functionality of ordinary character dictionaries, these lexicographic works are significant for two reasons. First, some of them deal with the vocabulary of spoken language; 2 Luo Changpei 羅常培, Tang Wudai xibei fangyin 唐五代西北方音, Shanghai, 1933; Takata Tokio 高田時雄, Tonkō shiryō ni yoru Chūgokugo shi no kenkyū: Kyū-jusseiki no Kasei hōgen 敦煌資料所見漢語史研究——九、十世紀的河西方言, Tōkyō: Sōbunsha, 1988; Shao Rongfen 邵榮芬, “Dunhuang suwenxue zuopin zhong de biezi yiwen he Tang Wudai xibei fangyin” 敦煌俗文學作品中的別字異文和唐五代西北方音, Zhongguo yuwen 中國語文 (1963) 3, pp. 193–217; Deng Wenkuan 鄧文寬, “Yingcang Dunhuang ben Liuzu tan- jing de Hexi tese: Yi fangyin tongjia wei yiju de tansuo” 英藏敦煌本〈六祖壇經〉的河西特色——以方音通假為依据的探索, in Deng Wenkuan, ed., Dunhuang Tulufanxue gengyun lu 敦煌吐魯番學耕耘錄, Taibei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1996. 3 Zhu Fengyu 朱鳳玉, Dunhuang xieben Suijin yanjiu 敦煌寫本碎金研究, Taibei: Wen- jin chubanshe, 1997, pp. 12–14..

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