introduction to feng menglong’s mountain songs 1

Intro duction to Feng Menglong’s Mountain Songs (Shan’ge)

Ōki Yasushi 大木 康

1. The Significance of Feng Menglong’s Mountain Songs (Shan’ge)

Mountain Songs 山歌 is a ten chapter collection of folk songs edited by Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574-1646), a man of letters from Suzhou 蘇州 who lived during the late Ming. In Chinese literature, collec- tions of folk songs have a long history. The “Guofeng” 國風 (Folk songs) section of the Shijing 詩經 (The Classic of Poetry) includes the oldest songs in Chinese literary history—dating from the beginning of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1000 bc). The “Guofeng” includes folk songs from fifteen geographical areas. According to legend, there were Cai shi guan, 採詩官, officials entrusted with collecting songs from each area of the Zhou kingdom. They gathered songs to observe the man- ners and morals of the area. The Yuefu 樂府 (Music bureau) was an government organization for collecting popular songs established at the behest of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty 漢武帝. Emperor Wu loved these kinds of songs very much. During the Six Dynasties and the Tang dynasty, yuefu ballads were collected from the common people or composed by lite- rati. Yuefu shiji 樂府詩集 (Collection of Yuefu ballads), edited by Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩 during the Song dynasty, was a corpus of yuefu songs. The section of the anthology devoted to songs from the Wu吳 area in Yuefu Shiji contained songs from the Jiangnan 江南 area, including Suzhou. They were ancestors of Feng Menglong’sMountain Songs. These songs were very important materials in terms of observing the feeling and thoughts of the common people. However, since most of the songs from Yuefu shiji were revised by literati, they were not necessarily the original songs sung by commoners. In contrast, it is significant that the songs from Feng Menglong’s Mountain Songs were transcribed in Wu dialect (Suzhou dialect). Feng Menglong wrote the following comment about the song “Smile”—the first song in the anthology. 2 ōki yasushi

A Smile (Chapter one, No. 1) The south-easterly wind blows across strongly And a new flower blooms among the leaves. But do not smile happily, young girl! How many secret love affairs spring from a smile! Comment In [Suzhou] dialect, the characters sheng, sheng and zheng all rhyme with jiang and yang. There are many other such examples, too numer- ous to quote here. The population of the Suzhou area sing in their local dialect. This is also the case in the “tile game” and “money game”. These games are played in one area only, and not throughout the empire, whereas imperial decrees apply to the whole empire. In the Zhongyuan yinyun 中原音韻 (Central Plain Songs and Rhymes)—an orthodox rhyme book used for composing qu 曲 lyr- ics—the characters “sheng 生,” “sheng 聲,” and “zheng 爭” belong to the rhyme group Geng-qing 庚青. However, in the Suzhou dialect, there are instances in which they may be classified in the Jiang-yang 江陽 rhyme group. Feng Menglong claims that he does not obey the orthodox rule of pronunciation prescribed in the rhyme book, but rather follows the rules of Suzhou dialect pronunciation. Next, Feng Menglong says that singing mountain songs in Suzhou dialect is similar to local children’s games, and different from the order of the emperor, which must be understood all over the realm. This claim asserts the value of dialect, and may be interpreted as Feng’s inten- tion of establishing a literature of dialect. In terms of phonemes, vocabulary, and grammar, the language of Feng Menglong’s Mountain Songs is different from the Mandarin (standard) Chinese of the time. The value of Feng Menglong’s Mountain Songs exists in Feng’s use of the Suzhou dialect. It is known that the Chinese language of Feng’s time included sev- eral different registers. These included wenyan 文言 (classical Chinese), guanhua 官話 (Mandarin or standard Chinese) and fang- yan 方言 (regional dialects). Classical Chinese is a written language. Mandarin is a standard spoken language understood nation-wide, and dialects are the vernacular languages of particular areas. What is referred to as baihua 白話 (colloquial Chinese) is essentially written Mandarin. Sanguo zhi yanyi 三國志演義 (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 (The Water Mergin) and Hong­ loumeng 紅樓夢 (The Dream of the Red Chamber) are examples of