A Tangut Family's Community Compact and Rituals

a tangut family, ca. 1350 to present tomoyasu iiyama A Tangut Family’s Community Compact and Rituals: Aspects of the Society of North China, ca. 1350 to the Present n 1983, members of the Yang 楊 surname in Yang Shenbalang vil- I lage 楊什八郎村, Puyang 濮陽 county, Henan, presented a seemingly very old manuscript entitled 述善集 along with a somewhat newer one — their genealogy (Yangshi zongpu 楊氏宗譜) — to the local county gov- ernment. One item in Shushanji says that the Yangs’ apical ancestor had gone to north China from the former territory of the Tangut Xixia 西夏 kingdom with the Mongols in the mid-thirteenth century (a typical mode of Tangut immigration at that time). INTRODUCTION CONCERNING THE MATERIALS First, it is best to become acquainted at least superficially with the contents of these works. We start with Shushanji. According to the table of contents recorded in the extant manuscript (which is discussed, below), the Yuan version of Shushanji comprised three volumes (or juan): “Benevolent Customs (shansu 善俗),” “Nurturing Talents (yucai 育才),” and “Achievements (xingshi 行實),” in that order. The first volume in- cluded the regulation of the community compact, a preface, and poems. The second contained essays, poems, two invitation letters, and official documents authorizing an academy. The last one recorded the epigraphical inscription and essays on family history. The edited, typeset version of Shushanji (referred to as the “2001 printed edition, or version” and discussed in detail, below) is thought to reflect closely the contents of the Yuan version. Figure 1 shows the Table of Contents (mulu 目录) of all three juan, which combined oc- cupy pp. 16–237 of the 2001 edition. The following selected items of Shushanji demonstrate the types of text it contains: 1. a preface of 1527 (see figure 1, item listed as beginning p. 1) 2. a preface dated 1358 (see figure 1, item listed as beginning p. 4) 3. a transcription of an inscribed epigraph (figure 1, item p. 137) 4. community compact, consisting of fifteen regulations (figure 1, item p. 23) 99 tomoyasu iiyama Figure 1. Table of Contents (mulu) of SSJ From the 2001 printed edn.; shown here are mulu pp. 1–2. 100 a tangut family, ca. 1350 to present Figure 1. cont’d. From the 2001 edn.; shown here are mulu pp. 3–5. 101 tomoyasu iiyama 5. preface to the compact (figure 1, item pp. 16–22) 6. petition letter for contributing provisions to the Yuan expeditionary army against Red Turban Rebellion (1351–1366) (figure 1, item p. 118) 7. two official documents granting official status to an academy (figure 1, item pp. 119–24) 8. two invitation letters for appointing a dean to the academy (figure 1, item pp. 104–8) 9. thirty-four poems (see figure 1, throughout) 10. forty-one essays (see figure 1, throughout) Except for the 1527 preface, the rest of the above items date to the mid- fourteenth century and were written, submitted, or composed by the members of a Tangut (dangxiang 黨項) family and their acquaintances. Whether the manuscripts presented in 1983 were papers bearing six- or seven-hundred-year-old inscriptions, or somewhat later transcrip- tions of the latter, or even inventions pure and simple, is a point that is touched upon, below. We turn now to Yangshi zongpu; besides its genealogical text, it contains the following selected items (see all items in figure 1, listed as “Appendix Two”, pp. 270–303): 1. two prefaces dated 1825 2. two poems on the prefaces 3. an essay commemorating the rebuilding of an ancestral hall in 1825 4. three poems on the same rebuilding 5. three prefaces dated 1920 6. a preface dated 1939 7. eight miscellaneous essays and poems from the Republican period. There is an interesting contrast between the two kinds of material. The epigraphical inscription in Shushanji titled “Da Yuan zengdunwu xi- aowei junmin wanhufu baifuzhang tangwugong beiming bing xu” 大元贈敦武校尉軍民萬戶府百夫長唐兀公碑銘並序, extensively records the history of this Tangut family during the Yuan period; and the text’s other Yuan-era materials record and praise a community compact (“Longci xiangshe yiyue” 龍祠郷社義約) (see figure 2) that the family, belonging to a Mongol garrison troop, organized in 1341. On the other hand, the late-Qing and Republican prefaces, essays, and poems contained in Yangshi zongpu claim that Shushanji was a congealing of the scholarly tal- ent and good works of their ancestors, and was discovered in 1840. In short, the contents of Shushanji emphasize a long line of family affairs going back to Yuan, and those of Yangshi zongpu emphasize a relatively later emergence of the family and its literary collection. 102 a tangut family, ca. 1350 to present Currently, the manuscripts Shu- shanji and Yangshi zongpu are owned by two different branches of the Yang surname in the village. One family owns a whole set (both ti- tles) and the other has only Shushanji. The Figure 2. Inside Pages from Juan 1 of Yang texts are tran- Pingsheng’s 1840 ms Copy of Shushanji scriptions, Author’s photograph of the opening page of Pan Di’s preface to perhaps made “Longci xiangshe yiyue,” contained in juan 1 of the manuscript of at the same Shushanji purportedly found by Yang in 1840. (Yang is described time, of an just below; Pan is described at beginning of sect. titled “A Com- earlier manu- munity Compact at a Non-Han Garrison Fort”.) The 2001 typeset script, which edn. of Shushanji (abbreviated SSJ in the notes) calls the 1840 ms “Version Two”, or yiben 乙本 (see SSJ, frontmatter, tu 图 3). itself seems SSJ carries Pan’s preface on pp. 16–17. The 1840 ms papers have to have been ruled lines and are quite seasoned. a transcription made by a Yang-family member who purportedly discovered Shushanji in 1840 and copied it out. (Yang and his discovery are described more fully, below.) The contents of Shushanji are written in Classical Chinese on fla- vescent papers, each with eighteen ruled vertical lines; the pages are bound into one volume with thread. (See figure 3, below) Except for minor dissimilarities among individual characters in several essays, the contents of the two manuscripts are identical. In 2001, Shushanji, together with an appendix that contains Yangshi zongpu and its associ- ated materials (appearing as appendix two), was typeset in simplified Chinese and published in one volume by the scholars Jiao Jinwen 焦進文 and Yang Fuxue 楊富學.1 When I visited Yang Shenbalang village 1 Jiao Jinwen and Yang Fuxue, eds., Yuandai xixia yimin wenxian Shushanji jiaozhu 元代西夏遺民文獻述善集校注 (Ningxia: Gansu renmin chubanshe 甘肅人民出版社, 2001; hereaf- ter cited as SS J ). Based on the printed text, Chen Gaohua 陳高華 and Funada Yoshiyuki 舩田善之 both have performed extensive research on the history of this Tangut family and their inter-ethnic contacts during the Yuan period; Chen, “Shushanji liangpian beichuan suojian 103 tomoyasu iiyama in August of 2012,2 a comparison of the manuscripts of Shushanji and Yangshi zongpu proved that the 2001 published version has transcribed their contents thoroughly and without omission. Questions Raised by the Materials The introductory remarks written for the 2001 typeset version out- line the contents and historical background. They fascinated me and urged me to explore further such unusual material. However, as I read, I felt certain suspicions. The story of Shushanji’s “discovery” narrated in the late-Qing and Republican prefaces to Yangshi zongpu seemed highly dubious. The 1920 prefaces claim that in 1840, having rebuilt an ancestral hall of his family, the aforementioned Yang member, named Yang Pingsheng 楊平昇 (dates unknown), a doctor residing in Shibalang village 十八郎村 (an earlier name of Yang Shenbalang village) tried to strengthen internal bonds among the members of the Yang surname. It was exactly at this time that Yang Ping- sheng discovered the tattered pages of Shushanji in his family’s storehouse. He transcribed the crumbling volume onto new papers and bound them into a book- let to make it a new focal point of the family members. But how can we know whether Yang Pingsheng really discovered an ancestral relic, or just fabricated a manuscript? Today, the condition of Figure 3. Cover Page of 1840 ms Copy of Shushanji Yuan dai tanmachi junhu 述善集兩篇碑傳所見元代 This image of the cover of the 1840 探馬赤軍戸,” in Qingzhu heciquan xian sheng jiush- ms Shushanji is based on a pho isui lunwenji bianweihui 慶祝何茲全先生九十歲論文 tograph published in SSJ (2001 集編委會, ed., Qingzhu heciquan xiansheng jiushisui tu 1 lunwenji 慶祝何茲全先生九十歳論文集 (Beijing: Bei- typeset edn.; see frontmatter, ). jing shifandaxue chubanshe, 2001); Funada, “Mon- We see the string bindings used to goru jidai ni okeru minzoku to aidentyityi no shos±” make the book. モンゴル時代における民族とアイデンティティの諸相 , in Imanishi Yˆichir± 今西裕一郎, ed., Kyˆshˆ daigaku 21 seiki COE puroguramu Higashi Ajia to Nihon: k±ryˆ to heny± 九州大学 21 世紀COEプログラム “東アジアと日本 ”, 交流と変容 (Fukuoka: Kyˆshˆ daigaku, 2007), pp. 19–29. 2 Thanks to the generous assistance of Professor Yang Fuxue, I had the opportunity to visit Shibalang village on August 18, 2012, to investigate the manuscript and the steles in the fam- 104 a tangut family, ca. 1350 to present the manuscripts in Yang Shenbalang village clearly indicates that they are not the Yuan original, but copies that were handwritten in more recent years. Nevertheless, after reading Shushanji from beginning to end and examining the manuscripts that are held in the village, I came to believe that the text is a remarkable resource, one that can shed light on the evolution over centuries of an originally non-Han community in north China.

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