This is a study of the music culture of the Six Dynasties era (220–589 CE), as represented in certain texts of the period, to uncover clues to the music culture that can be found in textual references to music. This study diverges from most scholarship on Six Dynasties music culture in four major ways. The first concerns the type of text examined: since the standard histories have been extensively researched, I work with other types of literature. The second is the casual and indirect nature of the references to music that I analyze: particularly when the focus of research is on ideas, most scholarship is directed at formal essays that explicitly address questions about the nature of music. My approach, in contrast, is to look at stories about behavior or casual remarks made in passing that are more indirect indications of ideas about music. The third difference is the nature of the theory applied: while much of the scholarship focuses on how to put our knowledge of Six Dynasties music practices and ideas into historical and cultural perspective, I apply theory from a number of disciplines to try to add some perspective from other regions and eras. The final point of methodological divergence builds on this theory to suggest perspectives that expand beyond an existing emphasis by scholars on the development of aesthetics; this study shows that the texts indicate a richer view of music than is implied by a narrow focus on aesthetics. Most of the material underlying the analysis in this study comes from Shishuo xinyu, Yanshi jiaxun, and Jinlouzi. These texts were produced roughly within the two-hundred-year period from the late fourth century to the late sixth century CE, subsequent to the fall of the Western Jin dynasty, and within the latter half of the Six Dynasties period.

Music motifs in Six Dynasties texts

Preface Conventions List of abbreviations Part I. The Bureaucratic Apparatus: 1. Introduction 2. The bureaucratic apparatus Part II. The Compilation of the Historical Record: 3. Introduction 4. The court diaries (Ch'i-chii chu) 5. The inner palace diaries (Nei Ch'i-chii chu) 6. The record of administrative affairs (Shih-cheng chi) 7. The daily calandar (Jih-li) 8. Biographies 9. Histories of institutions, historical encyclopedias, and collections of documents 10. The veritable records (Shih-lu) 11. The national history (Kuo shih) Part III. The Chiu T'ang shu: 12. The compilation of the Chiu T'ang shu 13. The Chiu T'ang shu and its sources: the basic annals 14. The Chiu T'ang shu and its sources: the monographs Appendix Bibliography Index.

The Writing of Official History under the T'ang.

Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism Kevin Buckelew This dissertation explores how Chan Buddhists made the unprecedented claim to a level of religious authority on par with the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and, in the process, invented what it means to be a buddha in China. This claim helped propel the Chan tradition to dominance of elite monastic Buddhism during the Song dynasty (960–1279), licensed an outpouring of Chan literature treated as equivalent to scripture, and changed the way Chinese Buddhists understood their own capacity for religious authority in relation to the historical Buddha and the Indian homeland of Buddhism. But the claim itself was fraught with complication. After all, according to canonical Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha was easily recognizable by the “marks of the great man” that adorned his body, while the same could not be said for Chan masters in the Song. What, then, distinguished Chan masters from everyone else? What authorized their elite status and granted them the authority of buddhas? According to what normative ideals did Chan aspirants pursue liberation, and by what standards did Chan masters evaluate their students to determine who was worthy of admission into an elite Chan lineage? How, in short, could one recognize a buddha in Song-dynasty China? The Chan tradition never answered this question once and for all; instead, the question broadly animated Chan rituals, institutional norms, literary practices, and visual cultures. My dissertation takes a performative approach to the analysis of Chan hagiographies, discourse records, commentarial collections, and visual materials, mobilizing the tradition’s rich archive to measure how Chan interventions in Buddhist tradition changed the landscape of elite Chinese Buddhism and participated in the epochal changes attending China’s Tang-toSong transition.

Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism

This dissertation explores Buddhist chanting practices in mainly the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), showing that they were more than just one part of ritual practice: chanting could also be a type of music, an educational tool, a means for manipulating the supernatural, and a cure and cause of illness. Previous studies of chanting practices in Chinese Buddhism have addressed histories of transmission, doctrinal approaches, and made efforts to preserve melodies through notation. However, they do not necessarily capture how individuals who engaged in chanting experienced this practice. Therefore this dissertation aims to investigate this experience through accounts found in hagiography, miracle tales, and other Buddhist materials. In studying chanting from this perspective, we can see how local and individual experiences, goals, and needs interacted with practices, and how these practices operated within Chinese Buddhist communities. Furthermore, we can understand how and when these understandings and practices were informed by scripture, and when they were not, through how individuals performed, listened to, and promoted them.

/pdf/the-buddha-s-voice-ritual-sound-and-sensory-experience-in-3oaygo9t6n.pdf

The Buddha’s Voice: Ritual Sound And Sensory Experience In Medieval Chinese Religious Practice

Beyond the Lyric: Expanding the Landscape of Early and High Tang Literature

Emperor Taizong (r. 626-49) of the Tang is remembered as an exemplary ruler. This study addresses that aura of virtuous sovereignty and Taizong's construction of a reputation for moral rulership through his own literary writings - with particular attention to his poetry. The author highlights the relationship between historiography and the literary and rhetorical strategies of sovereignty, contending that, for Taizong, and for the concept of sovereignty in general, politics is inextricable from cultural production. The work focuses on Taizong's literary writings that speak directly to the relationship between cultural form and sovereign power, as well as on the question of how the Tang negotiated dynastic identity through literary stylistics. The author maintains that Taizong's writings may have been self-serving at times, representing strategic attempts to control his self-image in the eyes of his court and empire, but that they also become the ideal image to which his self was normatively bound. This is the paradox at the heart of imperial authorship: Taizong was simultaneously the author of his representation and was authored by his representation; he was both subject and object of his writings.

The Poetics of Sovereignty: On Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty

Historiography has long been concerned with the problem of determining standards for evidence. For traditional Chinese historians, it was Confucius who provided the model for historical writing. As the attributed author of the Springs and Autumns, Confucius demonstrated qualities of narratival restraint, historical factuality, moral profundity, and a refusal to engage in idle speculation. Of course, his model was not an easy one to emulate, and later historical writings have drawn on both the factual records of the imperial court (which were not always factual or free of ideological interests) and nonofficial sources, such as private accounts, anecdotal literature, and hearsay. The present essay focuses on this intersection between anecdotal sources and historiography. This is precisely the point when historiography must reflect on its narrative condition, as narrative has interests other than factuality or moral truth. The author shows how the historiographic anxiety over unreliable sources has often coexisted with a fascination with anecdotal stories and gossip.

Blank Spaces and Secret Histories: Questions of Historiographic Epistemology in Medieval China

On the Act and Representation of Reading in Medieval China

Gossip and anecdote may be “idle talk,” but they also serve to knit together individuals in society and to provide the materials through which literary culture and historical memory are constructed. This groundbreaking book provides a cultural history of gossip and anecdote in traditional China, beginning with the Han dynasty and ending with the Qing. The ten essays, along with the introduction and postface, address the verification, transmission, and interpretation of gossip and anecdote across literary and historical genres.Contributors: Sarah M. Allen, Beverly J. Bossler, Jack W. Chen, Ronald Egan, Dore J. Levy, Stephen Owen, Graham Sanders, David Schaberg, Anna M. Shields, Richard E. Strassberg, Xiaofei Tian

/pdf/idle-talk-gossip-and-anecdote-in-traditional-china-w13ldq3jfk.pdf

Jack W. Chen

Papers

The Poetics of Sovereignty: On Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty

Blank Spaces and Secret Histories: Questions of Historiographic Epistemology in Medieval China

On the Act and Representation of Reading in Medieval China

Idle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China

Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction. By Daniel Hsieh. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2008. 331 pp. $39.00 (cloth).