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English Pages 428 [434] Year 2021
Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication
Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication Interdisciplinary Approaches from East and West Edited by Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang, Anthony Grafton, and Glenn W. Most
ISBN 978-3-11-069846-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-069875-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-069885-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020949151 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Kanmu/iStock/Getty Images Plus (left) tunart/iStock/Getty Images Plus (right) Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com
Contents List of Figures
VII
List of Tables
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List of Contributors Introduction
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1
I Slips, Scrolls, and Leaves: Before the Codex Glenn W. Most Chapter 1 Text and Paratext in the Greek Classical Tradition
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Theodor Dunkelgrün Chapter 2 Tabernacles of Text: A Brief Visual History of the Hebrew Bible
47
Michael Puett Chapter 3 Impagination, Reading, and Interpretation in Early Chinese Texts
93
Shenyu Lin Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa 111 Tyler Williams Chapter 5 Between the Lines and in the Margins: Linguistic Change and Impagination Practices in South Asia 151
II The Printed World Anthony Grafton Chapter 6 The Margin as Canvas: A Forgotten Function of the Early Printed Page
185
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Contents
Keysook Choe Chapter 7 Page Layout and the Complex Semiotic System of Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury Chosŏn’s Samganghaengsildo 209 Goran Proot Chapter 8 The Transformation of the Typical Page in the Handpress Era in the Southern Netherlands, 1473–c. 1800 237 Bruce Rusk Chapter 9 Writer’s Block or Printer’s Block: The Book and Its Openings in Early Modern China 273 Ren-Yuan Li Chapter 10 Placing Texts on Chinese Pages: From Bamboo Slips to Printed Paper
301
Loretta E. Kim Chapter 11 Recovering Translation Lost: Symbiosis and Ambilingual Design in Chinese/ Manchu Language Reference Manuals of the Qing Dynasty 323 Kimiko Kono Chapter 12 Japanophone Glosses (kunten) in Printed and Digitized Manuscripts
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III Beyond the Book Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang Chapter 13 Beyond the Physical Page: Latest Practice of Scientific Publication Index
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List of Figures Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2
Figure 1.3 Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Figure 2.3
Figure 2.4
Figure 2.5
Figure 2.6
Figure 2.7
Figure 2.8 Figure 3.1
Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 4.1
Chinese Book Bindings. Images courtesy of Fu Sinian Library, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan 7 An example of palm-leaf manuscript, Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd), LA County Museum of Arts, from Wikimedia Commons (http://collections.lacma. org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31967135-O3.jpg) 8 A page of Venetus A, Homer’s Iliad, Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, from G. Zuntz, Die Aristophanes-Scholien der Papyri. Berlin: Seitz, 1975, Tafel VI 29 Construction of a sheet of papyrus, from E. G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, 1987, Plate 1 32 Pindar, Paeans, P. Oxy 5.841 (2nd c. AD), from G. Zuntz, Die AristophanesScholien der Papyri. Berlin: Seitz, 1975, Tafel II 38 Torah Scroll in the Sephardic tradition, from Aden, Yemen (14th century?). Trinity College Library, Cambridge. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge 64 Late 15th-century Hispano-Portuguese Bible. Trinity College Library, Cambridge, Ms. F.12.106. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge 72 Illuminated Sephardic Hebrew Bible codex known as the Cervera Bible (1300). Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon, MS. Iluminado 72. Reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Portugal 73 Illuminated Hebrew Masoretic Bible (Lisbon, 1496), known as the Philadelphia Bible. Free Library of Philadelphia, Ms Lewis O 140. Reproduced by courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Rare Book Department 75 Hebrew Bible (Bologna, 1482), printed on vellum, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, shelf mark VI.15.26. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge 78 Complutensian Polyglot Bible (Alcalá de Henares, 1514–1517), volume 1. Trinity College Library, Cambridge, shelf mark. A.15.1. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge 81 Pentateuch and Megillot (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1517). Trinity College Library, Cambridge, shelf mark F.7.73. Reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge 83 J. Piza, Ezrat ha-Sofer (Amsterdam: Janson and Mondovy, 1767–9). Allard Pierson, Universiteit van Amsterdam, OTM: RON A-5292 87 Primary text and commentary for the Record of the Rites (Liji zhushu 禮記注 疏, commentaries by Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 and Kong Yingda 孔穎達, in Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏, edited by Ruan Yuan 阮元, 1815; reprint, Taipei: Yiwen, 1973) 95 Bamboo slips from the Laozi A text from the Guodian tomb (Guodian chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡, Beijing: Wenwu, 1998, page 1) 100 Two pages from the Correct Meaning of the Mao Songs (Maoshi zhengyi 毛詩正義, Sibu beiyao 四部備要 edition; reprint, Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1965) 103 The “binding” of a Tibetan pecha. Photograph by Dr. Teming Tseng and Dr. Bsod nams dbang rgyal, New Taipei City, Taiwan 117
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List of Figures
Figure 4.2
Shey Palace Kanjur manuscript (Z, top two folios, shortly after 1729, vol. mdo/ dza, ff. 415v and 416r, courtesy of BDRC, www.tbrc.org, W1PD127393) and Basgo Manuscript (X, bottom two folios, shortly after 1630, vol. mdo/’a, ff. 151v and 152r, courtesy of Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher) 118 Longtsang Jing Kanjur manuscript (K), 1669. Vol. 76 (mdo/mu), ff. 268r and 268v. Courtesy of National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photograph by Ven. Miaoshu of Foguangshan from the Long-Kuang digital reproduction of 2011 120 Ratio of the length to the width of the text area and of the page 131 ’Jan sa tham/Lithang (J, top, 1609–1614, vol. mdo/ma, ff. 184r and 184v, courtesy of BDRC, www.tbrc.org, W4CZ7445, photo taken from the websites of Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies, accessed February 28, 2018, https://www.istb.univie.ac.at/kanjur/ rktsneu/digit/affichej.php?vol =mdo% 20ma&beg=367) and Co ne block prints (C, bottom, 1721–1731, vol. mdo/ma, ff. 215r and 215v, courtesy of BDRC, www.tbrc.org, W1PD96685) 134 Snar thang (N, top two blocks, 1730–1732, vol. mdo/pha, ff. 371r and 371v, courtesy of BDRC, www.tbrc.org, W22703) and Sde dge block prints (D, bottom two blocks, 1733, vol. mdo/ma, ff. 176r and 176v, courtesy of BDRC, www.tbrc. org, W22084) 135 A tentative genealogical tree for the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa (textual criticism) 137 Relationship of the twenty-three editions (page layout) 139 The Vivekadīpikā of Indrajit of Orccha. Copied 1707–1708. Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, with permission 156 Navatattvaprakaraṇa and commentaries, 1750. University of Pennsylvania, Ms Indic 13, folio 2 verso, with permission 159 Candāyan, late 16th century. Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaja Vastu Sangrahalaya, Accn. No. 57.1.16 verso, with permission 160 A vāṇī manuscript of the Niranjani Sampraday. Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jaipur, Ms. 2165, f. 3r, with permission 165 A guṭkā-type notebook copied circa 1687 to 1696. Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jodhpur, Ms. 26334, folios unnumbered, with permission 168 Ādi Granth manuscript, copied circa 1660–1675. British Library Or. Ms. 2748, f. 31v, with permission 171 Hans Holbein the Younger, Folly speaks, from Encomium Moriae. Kunstmuseum, Basel (Wikimedia Commons) 192 Ambrosius Blarer, Description of Erasmus’s hypothetical forger (Folger Shakespeare Library) 197 Ambrosius Blarer, Image of Erasmus’s hypothetical forger (Folger Shakespeare Library) 198 Example of a single text composition: “Chŏngnan (Chinese: Ding Lan) carves parents’ figures in wood” (丁蘭刻木, Section 1, No. 10). From Samganghaengsildo (1481), The British Library, with permission 212 An example of Sino-Korean annotations in a hangŭl text. From the story of “Sŏjŏk’s (Chinese: Xiu Ji) sincere behavior” (徐積篤行, Section 1, no. 28). From Samganghaengsildo (1481), The British Library, with permission 220 The story of “Yanghyang (Chinese: Yang Xiang) catches a tiger” (楊香搤虎, section 1, no. 3). Reproduced from SÕL Sun et al., Yŏkju Samganghaengsildo (2010), with permission 225
Figure 4.3
Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5
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Figure 4.7 Figure 4.8 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2 Figure 5.3 Figure 5.4 Figure 5.5 Figure 5.6 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
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List of Figures
The story of “Pulhae (Buhai) holds his mother’s corpse” (不害捧屍, section 1, no. 24). Reproduced from SÕL Sun et al., Yŏkju Samganghaengsildo (2010), with permission 229 Figure 7.5 The story of “Tomi’s wife eats grass” (彌妻啖草, section 3, no. 30). Reproduced from SÕL Sun et al., Yŏkju Samganghaengsildo (2010), with permission 232 Figure 8.1 Relative share of editions published in the Southern Netherlands according to bibliographic format 243 Figure 8.2 Thickness in 1/100 mm for 10 leaves combined 245 Figure 8.3 Height of the tallest copy, difference from the smallest copy, for 140 editions measures in 2 or more copies. The average height is indicated for octavos, quartos, and Chancery and Royal folios 247 Figure 8.4 Relative surface of the typical main netto type area as a percentage of the surface of the book block 248 Figure 8.5 The proportion of text area/book block in a folio from the 1470s (left) and from the 1530s (right). 250 Figure 8.6 The x-height of type for text in editions published in the Southern Netherlands 252 Figure 8.7 Incipit (fol. A3 recto) of: Thomas a Kempis, Dit is een schoe[n] boexke[n] en[de] is ghehete[n] (Qui seq[ui]tur me), Tantwerpen: Henrick Eckert van Homberch, 3 December 1511, octavo (STCV 12911104). Royal Library, The Hague, 231 J 43 255 Figure 8.8 Opening page (fol. A2 recto) of: Thomas a Kempis, Nauolghinghe Christi, Antwerp: Jan van Waesberghe, [1565], octavo (STCV 12914571). Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, A 2461 258 Figure 8.9 Opening page (fol. A1 recto) of: Thomas a Kempis, De nae-volginge van Christus, Brussel: Eugenius Henricus Fricx, 1703, octavo (STCV 12911214). Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience, Antwerp, F 113002 259 Figure 8.10 Title page (fol. *1 recto) of: Henricus Canisius, Svmma ivris canonici, Antverpiæ: apud Hieronymvm Verdvssivm, 1643, octavo (STCV 12857006). Tabularium KU Leuven, Louvain, BRES-R5A23107 262 Figure 8.11 Colophon (fol. OO8 verso) in: Godschalc Rosemondt, Confessionale. Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, also on the expenses of Henrick Eckert van Homberch; also sold at Louvain: Thielmannusn, May 1518, octavo (NK 1819). Cultura Fonds Library, Dilbeek, NC 1036 263 Figure 8.12 Title page (fol. [A]1 recto) in: Godschalc Rosemondt, Confessionale. Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, also on the expenses of Henrick Eckert van Homberch; also sold at Louvain: Thielmannus, May 1518, octavo (NK 1819). Cultura Fonds Library, Dilbeek, NC 1036 264 Figure 9.1 From Shan Ben 單本, Xinke Wunao jiaopa ji 新刻五鬧蕉帕記, Xiuxiang chuanqi shizhong 繡像傳奇十種 (Nanjing: Wenlin ge, Wanli period), 1.38b–39a. With permission of the Library of the Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University 283 Figure 9.2 First page of table of contents, Tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu. Harvard-Yenching Library: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3: FHCL:2093485. Used in accordance with the Harvard Library Policy on Access to Digital Reproductions of Works in the Public Domain 288 Figure 9.3 From Liu Ziming, Tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu, photoreproduced in Mingdai tongsu riyongleishu jikan 明代通俗日用類書集刊 (Chongqing: Xinan shifan daxue chubanshe, 2011), Vol. 10, 22.2a. Public Domain 289 Figure 7.4
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List of Figures
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Figure 9.5 Figure 9.6
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Figure 10.2 Figure 11.1
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Figure 11.5 Figure 11.6 Figure 12.1 Figure 12.2
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Figure 12.4
Top: Miaojin Wanbao quanshu, 21.6a–11b (right-to-left). Bottom: Wanyong zhengzong buqiuren, 25.5b–11a (right-to-left). Longyangzi 龍陽子, comp., Dingqin Chongwenge huizuan shimin wanyong zhengzong buqiuren quanbian 鼎鋟崇文閣彙纂士民萬用正宗不求人全編, 1607. Photoreproduction in Yuwai Hanji zhenben wenku di-er ji zibu 域外漢籍珍本文庫第二輯子部 (Chongqing: Xinan shifan daxue chubanshe, 2011), Vol. 11. Public Domain 291 Final pages of juan in Quanbu wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu. Harvard-Yenching Library 295 Placement of list of capital gates in two riyong leishu. Left: Dingqie longtou yilan xuehai buqiuren 鼎鍥龍頭一覽學海不求人 (undated), photoreproduced in Mingdai tongsu riyongleishu jikan 明代通俗日用類書集刊, vol. 14. Right: Miaojin Wanbao quanshu, Harvard Yenching Library. Public domain 296 A Genuine, Improved, and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, published in the nineteenth century. Photograph taken by the author in Pingnan, Fujian in 2008 305 A page of a woodblock-printed edition of An Expanded Garden of Allusions for Young Students. Photograph taken by the author in Pingnan, Fujian in 2008 308 Dictionnaire tartare-mantchou françois, vol. 2, 45. Adapted from the Google Books edition created by Columbia University, https://books.google.com.hk/ books?id=c50CAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_ r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false 332 Han-i araha Manju Monggo Nikan hergen ilan hacin-i mudan acaha buleku bithe, 1:3a–b. Source: Zhejiang University Library manuscript, digitized by China-America Digital Academic Library (CADAL), https://archive.org/details/ 06052918.cn 334 Qingdai Man Meng Hanwen ciyu yinyi duizhao shouce, 1 337 Ninggun jurgan-i toktoho gisun, juan 1, 1a. Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library), https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht? PPN=PPN3371389006&PHYSID=PHYS_0002&DMDID= 339 Gongwen chengyu, 1b–2a, Special Collections, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, with permission 342 Dergi hesei toktoho gisun-i bithe, 1:1b–2a. Manchu Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University, with permission 343 1364 colophon from vol. 10 of The Analects: Collected Commentaries 論語集解. Shōhei-ban Rongo 正平版論語, Tōkyō (Shibunkai) 1922 355 904 colophon to Kōfukuji Temple manuscript of Miraculous Stories of the Reward of Good and Evil from the Country of Japan. Nihonkoku Genpō Zen’aku Ryōiki Jōkan 日本国現報善悪霊異記上巻, ed. Saeki Ryōken 佐伯良謙, Tōkyō (Benridō) 1934 356 A “pointing chart” (tenzu 点図) found in vol. 3 (“New Music-Bureau Poetry,” part 1) of the Kōzanji Temple manuscript of the Bai Juyi Collection. Kobayashi Yoshinori 小林芳規, Zusetsu: Nihon No Kanji 図説:日本の漢字, Tōkyō (Taishūkan) 1998.11 (reprint 1999.9). Image courtesy of Kōzanji Temple and the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties 358 Page from Waten Hokekyō 倭点法華経, an edition of the Lotus Sutra printed with kunten (here waten 倭点, lit. “Japanese glossing”). Nakada Norio 中田祝夫, Shinkū-ban Kakei Gannen-kan Waten Hokekyō 心空版嘉慶元年刊倭点法華経, Tōkyō (Benseisha) 1977 361
List of Figures
Figure 12.5 Early print representation of a kunten-glossed text. Above: photograph of text. Below: Japanophone rendering of pictured text according to kunten. Kasuga Masaji 春日政治, Saidaiji-bon Konkōmyō Saishōō Kyō Koten No Kokugogakuteki Kenkyū, Shidō Bunko Kiyō 1, Tōkyō (Iwanami Shoten) 1942 366 Figure 12.6 Modern editions. Upper right: kanbun text with kunten. Bottom right: Japanophone rendering. Center: Japanese translation. Left: commentary. Mōgyū 蒙求, vol. 1, ed. Hayakawa Kōzaburō 早川光三郎, Shinshaku Kanbun Taikei 新釈漢文大系 58, Tōkyō (Meiji Shoin) 1973.8 370 Figure 13.1 An explication of Advance Online Publication, adapted on April 8, 2020 from the website of Genome Research, https://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/ recent 381 Figure 13.2 An “article-level” metrics page on the website of Science, adapted on April 8, 2020 from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6328/925/tab-articleinfo 382 Figure 13.3 The kinds and numbers of supplementary materials for an article in Science, adapted on April 9, 2020 from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/ 2020/04/01/368.6486.60.DC1 383 Figure 13.4 A graph from C. Levis et al., “Persistent Effects of Pre-Columbian Plant Domestication on Amazonian Forest Composition,” Science 355, no. 6328, pp. 925–931 (March 3, 2017), Figure 2, licensed 385 Figure 13.5 Ramus's analytical chart of dialectic, in Petrus Ramus, Professio regia … (Basil: S. Henricpetri, 1576), p. 95, from Gallica, Biliothèque Nationale de France, ark:/12148/bpt6k109353f 389
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List of Tables Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 7.1 Table 8.1 Table 8.2
Comparison of editions, evolution over time 125 Comparison of editions, differences among groups 128 Length and width of the folios and the text areas/boxes 131 Analysis of the hanmun Texts of Samganghaengsildo 222 Number of editions per decade, language, bibliographical format 242 Average thickness of 10 leaves, in mm, per decade, format, language (n copies = 564) 245 Table 8.3 Height (H) and width (W) of the main type area of a typical page in millimeter, rounded up to 1 mm 249 Table 8.4 Average surface of main type area of a typical page as a percentage of the surface of the book block (n copies = 609); in the case of multiple copies per edition, numbers are based on averages for height and width (n = 140) 250 Table 8.5 Average 20-line measure for text set solid, in millimetre 251 Table 8.6 Average no. of lines in the netto type area of a typical page 252 Table 8.7 Printed articulation 256 Table 8.8 Share of editions with printed foliation, pagination, running titles and marginalia, 1473–1540 260 Table 9.1 Mean fullness (ratio of lines with text to blank lines) of last page of juan in selected late-Ming riyong leishu (ordered by descending fullness) 293 Table 13.1 Numbers of journals included in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and AHCI (Arts and Humanities Citation Index), Web of Science Group, https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/ web-of-science/, accessed May 11, 2020 379
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-204
List of Contributors Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Shenyu Lin Fo Kuang University, Taiwan
Keysook Choe Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
Glenn W. Most Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy and University of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
Theodor Dunkelgrün University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Anthony Grafton Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA Loretta E. Kim University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Kimiko Kono Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan Ren-Yuan Li Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-205
Goran Proot University of Milan, Milan, Italy Michael Puett Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA Bruce Rusk University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Tyler Williams University of Chicago, Chicago IL, USA
Introduction The act of writing, in any form whatsoever, whether for private purposes or for publication, involves essentially the placing of text and other kinds of information (including graphics) onto a medium that acts as its carrier. Until recent times this medium was always physical – clay, papyrus, bronze, lead, bamboo, silk, parchment, paper; nowadays it can also be virtual. Only when this medium is composed of physically discrete sheets – for example, in modern printed books – is it entirely appropriate to call it a “page.” Nonetheless, we use the general term “page” to refer to the unit of writing and reading on all material carriers (known as “writing supports” in paleography and book history) that is comparable to the page in the codex, and the term “im-pagi-nation” (or impagination for the sake of brevity) to denote the act of placing and arranging spatially textual and other information onto the “page.” Intrinsic to the work of writers (including scholars) and publishers, impagination is thus of central concern to the studies of writing, publication, and scholarship. Impagination is not (yet) a common term in the English language. The notion closest to it is the French phrase mise en page (literally placing on the page), referring to the physical arrangement of the text or graphics, such as indentation, space between paragraphs, column structure, page layout and methods of textual articulation and presentation. It also extends to other elements of layout and design, such as illustrations, pagination, running heads, margins, side or foot-notes, etc.1 A monumental work on mise en page is Henri-Jean Martin’s La naissance du livre moderne (XIVe-XVIIe siècles): mise en page et mise en texte du livre français (2000). It studies the development of layouts and designs from European medieval manuscripts to the early modern printed book, exemplified in the grand publications of the Imprimerie Royale. Based on the examination of a great variety of manuscripts and prints, including religious, literary, cartographic and theatrical works, it analyzes the features and changes of elements that are constituents of page layouts, such as colors, scripts, paleography, typography, illustrations, and even mathematical notations. It also includes the subjects that are relegated to another French
1 Margaret M. Smith, “Mise-en-page,” in The Oxford Companion to the Book, ed. Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 936; Peter Beal “Mise-en-page,” in A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 255. Acknowledgments: Anthony Grafton first proposed the concept of impagination for a conference and a volume of collected essays. Most of the contributors met at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan in March 2017 for three days of presentations and intensive discussions. This volume is a product of the conference and ensuing research and revisions. We thank Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and especially the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology for their generous support of the Taipei conference. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-001
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Introduction
phrase, mise en texte (literally placing into text), which concerns the organization of the text into chapters, scenes, paragraphs, headings, and other subdivisions.2 Another monumental work on mise en page is La fabrique du lisible: La mise en texte des manuscrits de la Chine ancienne et médiévale by Jean-Pierre Drège (2014), an eminent philologist specializing in the historical documents first rediscovered in Dunhuang in northwest China in the early twentieth century. Together with a team of leading French Sinologists, Drège studies a wide variety of forms and formats of texts, many of which have not been available in the Latin West. They include scrolls of wood and bamboo slips and silk from the Warring States period (ca. 450–221 BCE) in Chinese history, and tablets, paper scrolls, loose sheets (or pothī), “whirlwindbound” manuscripts, inscriptions (or ink rubbings thereof), codices or objects of odd shapes and forms from the 4th to the 10th centuries CE. Thus, though specifying mise en texte in the title, it in effect investigates many themes of mise en page. Indeed it is built on Drège’s scholarship that treats the texts as a material object.3 Many chapters in La fabrique du lisible show the physical layouts of the manuscripts under analysis, even paying attention to line lengths, ruling, punctuation, color, corrections, headings and commentaries. The present volume further expands the investigations begun by scholars like Martin and Drège,4 by elaborating the notion of impagination, by exploring themes
2 Henri-Jean Martin, La naissance du livre moderne (XIVe-XVIIe siècles): mise en page et mise en texte du livre français (Paris: Editions du Cercle de la librairie, 2000). 3 Jean-Pierre Drège, “Papiers de Dunhuang. Essai d’analyse morphologique des manuscrits chinois datés,” T’oung Pao 67, no. 3/5 (1981): 305–60; Jean-Pierre Drège, “Notes codicologiques sur les manuscrits de Dunhuang et de Turfan,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 74 (1985): 485–504; Jean-Pierre Drège, “De l’image à l’action: texte et image dans le livre illustré chinois,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 89 (2002): 239–40; Jean-Pierre Drège, “La matérialité du texte: préliminaires à une étude de la mise en page du livre chinois,” in Paroles à dire, paroles à écrire: Inde, Chine, Japon, ed. Viviane Alleton (Paris: EHESS, 1997), 241–52. 4 Apart from the volumes by Martin and Drège, works on mise en page include, but are not limited to, Léon Gilissen and François Masai, Prolégomènes à la codicologie: recherches sur la construction des cahiers et la mise en page des manuscrits médiévaux (Gand: Story-Scientia, 1977); Henri-Jean Martin, Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit (Paris: Editions du Cercle de la librairiePromodis, 1990); Maureen Bell, “Mise-en-page, Illustration, Expressive Form,” in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. 4, 1557–1695, ed. John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 632–62; Pierre Jauneau Duplan, Roger Jauneau, and Jean-Pierre Jauneau, Maquette et mise en page: typographie, conception graphique, couleurs et communication et le web (Paris: Éditions du Cercle de la librairie, 2004); Matti Peikola, “Guidelines for Consumption: Scribal Ruling Patterns and Designing the mise-en-page in Later Medieval England,” in Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe 1350–1550: Packaging, Presentation and Consumption, ed. Emma Cayley and Susan Powell (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 14–31; Paul Saenger, “The Twelfth-Century Reception of Oriental Languages and the Graphic Mise En Page of Latin Vulgate Bibles Copied in England,” in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013), 31–66; Catherine Croizy-Naquet and Michelle Szkilnik (eds.), Rencontres du vers et de la prose: pensée théorique
Introduction
3
that are overlooked or underdeveloped therein, and especially by enlarging the horizon of the cultures studied so as to lay the groundwork for comparative research into these phenomena. It collectively analyzes three intertwining levels of impagination. The first level is what may be generically known as the “page.” It includes all writing supports on different media in multiple traditions, such as papyrus, parchment, palm-tree leaf, wood- or bamboo-slip, silk, paper, the electronic screen, and so on. The authors consider a number of fundamental questions: What is a page? Is the page the only and inevitable way of organizing texts? What other kinds of writing supports have there been besides the paper page? What material and cultural factors make a page or other support? All these questions are considered in historical perspective, one that is illustrated in Anthony Grafton’s La page de l’antiquité à l’ère numérique: histoire, usages, esthétique (2012).5 The second level is what is written (in-scrip-tion) or printed (im-print) on the page, which in this introduction is called “imprint” for the sake of brevity. It is the content or information entered into the page. Our volume especially examines the forms of the content – text, graphics, marginal notes – and their relationships to one another, such as text and paratext, source text and commentaries, text and illustration, text and marginal notes, etc. The relationship between the form and content of imprint is so close that a number of classical philologists, such as Friedrich Blass (1843–1907) and Theodor Birt (1852–1933), contributed early studies on not just the textual content of their primary sources, but also the material condition of hand-writing, papyrology and book forms.6 Medievalists and Hebrew and Arabic philologists, among others, continue to work on the content of manuscripts and their material forms.7 The third level is the placement of the imprint on the page. This placement materializes as layout. It is the product of dynamic negotiation, as J. P. Gumbert demonstrates in his “Layout of the Bible Gloss in Manuscript and Early Print” (1999). The layout of the glossed Bible, for example, resulted from the necessity to negotiate three factors on the page: fitting a certain amount of text, including commentary,
et mise en page (Brepols, 2015). The German concept of Textgestalt is closely related to the French concept of mise en page. See, for example: Barbara Frank, Die Textgestalt als Zeichen: Lateinische Handschriftentradition und die Verschriftlichung der romanischen Sprachen (Tübingen: Narr, 1994). 5 Anthony Grafton, La page de l’antiquité à l’ère numérique: histoire, usages, esthétiques, trans. Jean-François Allain (Paris: Musée du Louvre/Hazan, 2012). 6 Friedrich Blass, Palaeographie, Buchwesen und Handschriftenkunde (Nördlingen: Beck, 1886); Theodor Birt, Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Litteratur (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1882). 7 Examples are A. Gruys and J. P Gumbert, Codicologica, Towards a Science of Handwritten Books, 5 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976); Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology: Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1981); Francois Déroche, Islamic Codicology: An Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script, ed. Muhammad lsa Waley, trans. Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz (London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2006).
4
Introduction
onto the page of a certain size and shape; making clear which part of the commentary refers to which part of the text; and distinguishing visibly the text from the commentary. Gumbert then describes the ordinaria layout that was commonly accepted since antiquity, the layout that emerged in the Middle Ages when new commentary culture (such as the continuous long commentary of Peter Lombard) presented problems, and the layout (known as the Law Model) that was accepted by early printers. Gumbert also shows that the layouts of the manuscript and the printed book differed in response to the material and economic nature of handwriting and industrial printing.8 This line of analysis of the layout of the Bible is deepened in Liv Ingeborg Lied and Marilena Maniaci eds., The Bible as Notepad (2018).9 The chapters in that volume expand the examination of layout to other important issues: the impact of different writing media on the distribution of text and graphics; the choices that scribes, editors, publishers and readers make to place content on the page; and the aesthetic, social, and philological dimensions of the placement of text on a page. But impagination is more than just layout on the page. Layout is at most impagination in the narrow sense. The broad sense integrates the interactions between any two or all three levels – page, imprint, and layout. Taking the codex (manuscript or book) as a material object, excellent codicological scholarship has to a great extent examined these multilevel interactions at work. Patrick Andrist, Paul Canart, Marilena Maniaci, and Barbara Frank, among others, have documented the development in this area.10 Our volume supplements this line of scholarship first by including non-codex writings, second by taking a closer look at the page than at the codex (or book), and third by its aspiration to adopt a comparative approach. The inclusion in this volume of a chapter on the digital age helps highlight the difference between mise en page and impagination. A laid-out page is a work already completed, in spite of the dynamic negotiations that it underwent in the course of its conception and production. As is seen in Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang’s Chapter, digital technology makes real time (or instant) updates in the editor’s office possible. These updates can be placed on the “page” (the screen of the computer or tablet) before the publication of the printed edition (hence “advance publication”), or after the publication (such as online bibliometrics). Technology also permits the display of video (“moving pictures”) in online scientific publication. More than mise en page, impagination accommodates actions and even continuing movements.
8 J. P. Grumbert, “The Layout of the Bible Gloss in Manuscript and Early Print,” in The Bible as Book: The First Printed Editions, ed. Paul Saenger and Kimberly van Kampen (London: The British Library, 1999), 7–13. 9 Liv Ingeborg Lied and Marilena Maniaci (eds.), Bible as Notepad: Tracing Annotations and Annotation Practices in Late Antique and Medieval Biblical Manuscripts (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018). 10 Patrick Andrist, Paul Canart, and Marilena Maniaci, La syntaxe du codex: Essai de codicologie structurale (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), especially Chapter 1; Barbara Frank, Die Textgestalt als Zeichen.
Introduction
5
This volume brings together for comparison the geographical realms of learning that Martin and Drège treat respectively.11 It also expands the comparison to include early modern India, Tibet, Korea, Japan and the Near Eastern and European communities in which the Hebrew Bible was transmitted. This comparison is significant, for Europe, China, and India all developed great traditions of learning which came into intensive contact, as the cases of Dunhuang and northern India show. A comparative and cross-cultural study is therefore not just warranted, but badly needed. The digital age complicates and disrupts the genres and media of writing that we have taken for granted for centuries, thus promoting a serious reflection on the materiality of the book. Lisa Gitelman, for instance, examines the typewriter, xerography, and pdf, and Bonnie Mak evaluates the roles of the page – on papyrus, parchment, paper, or the screen – in the transmission of thought and in the mediation between intention and reception and between the designer and reader.12 Anthony Grafton, in his history of the page cited above, also discusses the physical features, cultural use, and aesthetics of the page in the digital era.13 Martin closed his La naissance du livre moderne by predicting the place of the mise en page of the traditional book in the digital age. Our volume goes one step further to investigate the impagination of new scientific publication in play in this age. We now turn to some of the most salient themes that this volume discusses.
Materiality and Materials of the Page As Glenn Most articulates it in Chapter 1, materiality is not identical with the material of papyrus, parchment, paper, or any other writing support, nor with the raw material from which they are made. The writing support is transformed into a cultural artifact in order to serve a social need. Materiality is best taken “as a more general concept located ambivalently at the border between the social and the natural.” It is a concept that designates the ways in which “man-made materials of various sorts . . . interact dialectically with social needs and processes through cultural practices.” This interaction will be elaborated in the sections below this one, which first discusses the material condition for impagination.
11 In fact one may argue that the materials of Drège’s volume came from two very different historical and geographical regions. Dunhuang was at, and sometimes beyond, the border of Chinese dynasties in the 7th to 10th centuries and is far apart physically, culturally and linguistically from the regions where the Warring States bamboo and silk manuscripts were found. 12 Lisa Gitelman, Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 13 Grafton, La page de l’antiquité à l’ère numérique.
6
Introduction
The contributions to this volume survey a great number of materials that have been used as the supports for the unit of writing and reading that is generically described here as the “page.” Chapter 1 considers papyrus, parchment, and paper. Chapters 3, 9, and 10, by Michael Puett, Bruce Rusk, and Ren-Yuan Li, discuss the wood- and bamboo-slips that the Chinese used for classical texts. Theodore Dunkelgrün examines in Chapter 2 the Hebrew daf, the page or block of text on a parchment scroll, and its linguistic connection with the Mesopotamian clay tablet. Shenyu Lin and Tyler Williams survey in Chapters 4 and 5 the palm-tree leaf in India (where it was known as pothī) and Tibet (where it was called pecha) and its interactions with parchment and paper.14 Almost all the chapters examine writing or publication on paper, though in varying degrees. Chapters 9 and 10 study the Chinese woodcut page. Goran Proot provides in Chapter 8 a thorough investigation of the different physical features of the European printed page on paper. Chapter 13 studies the materiality (and to some extent immateriality) of the computer screen, which is a page as well as a canvas. These chapters demonstrate the ways in which the material of the page conditions impagination, if it does not always dictate it. Chapter 1 explores the material conditions for the dominant scroll form of papyrus documents and the corresponding codex form of parchment texts. It is easy to glue one sheet of papyrus to another in sequence, forming scrolls. As the papyrus scroll was capable of being extended indefinitely, the ancient Greeks had no concept of the page. They had instead scriptorial units like line, stanza, and column, or papyrus units like the sheet. The physical difficulty of gluing parchment sheets into rolls favored the rise of the codex form (though papyrus too was sometimes used for codices, especially in late antiquity), and with it a page that “was separated by a physical cut from the following page and . . . itself had to be lifted and turned if one were to see how the text continued on the next page” (Chapter 1). Likewise determined by the plant fiber, the Chinese wood and especially bamboo slip (Chapters 3, 9, 10) constituted a natural column that in practice often accommodated only one line of text (though sometimes two, and rarely more). Thus there was no concept of the page in Chinese antiquity. The closest Chinese concept of a page is pian 篇, literally a wooden board. But even this was not precisely a page. Pian later came to be known as a unit of a chapter or essay, apparently because writers or scribes used to put a unit of writing, an essay or a chapter, onto a single board. The other units were hang 行 (column) and juan 卷, the roll of slips strung together that made up a single text or section of a text.15
14 When the Tibetans gave up palm leaves for paper as the writing support, they kept the term pecha, although it was made of several sheets of paper pasted together and tailored into the shape of the traditional palm leaf. See Chapter 4. 15 Jean-Pierre Drège, “La matérialité du texte;” Thies Staack, “Single- and Multi-Piece Manuscripts in Early Imperial China: On the Background and Significance of a Terminological Distinction,” Early China 41 (2018): 245–95, https://doi.org/10.1017/eac.2018.3.
Introduction
7
The physical nature of the page also determines the material organization of codices as this has manifested itself in different traditions. The Chinese scroll (either on silk, bamboo-slips or paper), like its Egyptian and Greek counterparts, was written on only one side.16 The Chinese continued to write or print on one side of the paper even when they gradually gave up the scroll for the codex.17 It is most probable that the water-based ink commonly used in China infiltrated easily into paper, making the reverse side unusable for further printing. For the first codices, the Chinese folded the written sheet in the middle, and affixed the folds to a glued spine and cover, generating what is called a “butterfly binding” hudiezhuang 蝴蝶裝: that is, a written sheet that has the appearance of the two wings of a butterfly. When the printed page is turned (from left to right), what is seen next is two blank pages: one is the blank half of the previous sheet, and the other the blank half of the next sheet. (Figure 1 Left). Later, to hide the blank sides and provide a visual continuity for the text, Chinese binders folded the printed sheet the other way, oriented the fold outward, and stacked the loose edges of all the sheets to form the spine. First the spine was glued and wrapped with a cover, forming what is called a “wrapped back” or baobei 包背 binding (Figure 1 Right, the volume on the top). Then to reinforce the binding, holes were punched close to the edge and paper twists were inserted to hold the spine together, and a thread was used to attach the covers to the spine, forming the thread-binding or xianzhuan 線裝 that was normal in China (and then elsewhere in East Asia) from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the twentieth century (Figure 1 Middle, and the bottom volume in Figure 1 Right). More discussions on the development of these bindings can be seen in Chapter 9. One-sided printing inevitably increased the thickness and weight of the Chinese codex. To overcome this drawback, Chinese technology developed a way to produce thin and translucent paper that was affordable, instead of looking for an ink that would not infiltrate or thickening the paper to prevent infiltration.
Figure 1: Chinese Book Bindings. Left: The “butterfly” binding. Middle: The thread-binding. Right: A “wrapped back” volume on top of a thread-bound one; note the difference between their spines.
16 Scattered marks are sometimes found on the reverse side of the bamboo slips. But this is a different matter. 17 For descriptions of these bindings, see Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, Paper and Printing, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 229; Jean-Pierre Drège, La fabrique du lisible, 353–81. Note that the chapter on the scroll of wood- and bamboo-slips was written not by Drège himself, but by Olivier Venture.
8
Introduction
This forms a contrast to the page of the Western codex. The page of the Western manuscript codex could be written on both sides, since the parchment withstood the infiltration of ink. The parchment, originally in landscape orientation, was folded in the center to produce a two-sided portrait pages, and then grouped into gatherings. It thus generated no blank pages. Double-sided printing continued on paper thanks to the oilbased ink used for metal movable-types, which stayed on the surface of the paper. The Chinese and Western cases thus show that the page can appear in very different forms depending on its material conditions. The material technology of binding also affects the material form of the text and the way it is read. When parchment sheets were bound to form a codex, the pages were turned from left to right or from right to left, depending upon the direction of writing in the language involved. Palm-leaves, by contrast, were held together in landscape orientation by a thread that passed through a hole (or two) made in the middle. To read the text, the thread was loosened, so that the leaf could be turned from bottom to top, as in Figure 2. Many more examples are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
Figure 2: An example of a palm-leaf manuscript. Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd).
The Variety of Imprints The chapters in this volume show the heterogeneity of the content that has been placed on the page in different cultures. Chapter 1 studies the differences and relations between text and paratext in papyrus and parchment documents. Chapter 3 analyzes Chinese classics and the multi-level glosses and commentaries that were inserted into the source text. Kimiko Kono elucidates in Chapter 12 the definitional and phonetic glosses of Chinese characters and terms in Japanese texts. Chapters 9 and 10 dissect different registers of information (almanac, sample letters, and even basic English vocabulary, etc.) on the woodcut page of Chinese daily-use encyclopedias and primers. Chapter 11 reviews the lemmata of bilingual dictionaries or wordbooks. Contents can also be graphic. Anthony Grafton studies in Chapter 6 Renaissance humanists’ hand-drawings on the margins of their printed books, Keysook Choi examines the illustrations of popular Chinese moral stories in Korean publications in
Introduction
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Chapter 7, and Rusk shows graphics and images in Chinese compendia in Chapter 9. Few of these graphics stood alone. In fact they were in close dialogue with the text on the same page (or on neighboring ones). Graphics can be static, or dynamic. Chapter 13 considers static graphics, which have been a staple of scientific publications from very early on. Very importantly, modern technology makes the production and especially the display of videos and animations available to virtually everyone on desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones. This makes possible the inclusion of videos and other multimedia files in online scientific articles. Contents on the page are not just informational textual masses for which the particular form or layout is entirely indifferent. They can be arranged in certain shapes or visual structures to produce an aesthetic effect or “visual typography,” as Chapter 8 points out. Such structures include rectangular text blocks, and lines or words arranged as goblets, triangles, or hour glasses. The same chapter also pays attention to type, ink colors, or colophons in special shapes, such as fleurons and vignettes. See, for example, Figures 8.11 and 8.12 in that chapter.
Cultural and Historical Conventions for Impagination Material nature alone does not determine how information is placed on the writing support. For writing, both ancient Greeks and ancient Chinese used scrolls that rolled and unrolled sidewise. The Chinese wrote vertically, whereas the Greek wrote horizontally. The Chinese direction of writing was probably first determined by the material condition of wood slips, the common support for writing in antiquity: the scribe wrote by holding a wood slip in his left hand vertically in the air, and it was easier for him to move his pen, held in the right hand, to move from top to bottom.18 Yet when he could have chosen to write horizontally (either left to right or right to left) on the silk or paper scroll, he continued the convention of vertical writing. Different from the Chinese, the Greeks wrote sideways. Instead of using up the horizontal length of the scroll, however, they gave their lines a definite length to form a textual block of “portrait” orientation. This practice, Chapter 1 argues, owed its origin to the length of lines of poetry, especially Homeric, as poetry formed the bulk of the most prestigious Greek documents in early times. Arabic and Hebrew scribes, both of them working on parchment, wrote horizontally from right to left, while their European counterparts wrote in the reverse direction. Like the Chinese wood slip, the Indian palm-leaf is also narrow and long. Unlike Chinese writing, however,
18 Tsien, Paper and Printing, 5.1:32. The inscriptions on the oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty (ca. 17th–11th century BEC) varied greatly in their orientations and directions, since the medium (the turtle shell or animal bones) did not dictate strictly a particular layout.
10
Introduction
since antiquity Indic scripts have been written on the palm-leaf horizontally. This may have been based on the Greek or Aramaic models on which the first scripts were based.19 All these practices of writing – Chinese, Greek, and Indic – could be said to be cultural conventions rather than the direct effects of materiality.20 One of the most consequential cultural norms for impagination in the Western tradition is “the norm of unobstructed textual linearity” that is central to Chapter 1. Absolutely, if most often unconsciously, obedient to this norm, authors, scribes, and printers since Greek antiquity have taken great pains to maintain the linear flow of the main or source text in a way as uninterrupted and continuous as possible. The source text therefore often stands as the central block of the page, whereas the paratexts, including glosses, commentaries, or footnotes, form “one or more surrounding blocks that are discontinuous and that refer point by point in sequence to the different parts of the central block.” This is a cultural instead of a material norm, for other scholarly traditions, such as the Chinese, did things otherwise. This norm, however, regulates almost all the writings and publications that have been produced in Europe. Somewhat ironically, cultural conventions often build on past practices that, though previously determined by their material nature, have in the meantime lost the determinant physical condition. It is well known that the earliest printed works in Europe, commonly known as incunabula, imitated the scripts, ligatures, crabbed writing, and layout that were characteristic of handwritten manuscripts, even though doing so required more varied fonts and slowed page composition.21 Likewise, when the Chinese switched to paper, they reproduced vertical grids on the page that resembled the boundaries of wood slips (Figure in Chapter 3). Moreover, Chinese books on paper continued the style of one-column main text and double-column annotation that had first taken shape on the wood slip (see Figure 3.2 in Chapter 3), even though paper could have enabled them to free themselves from the constraints of the slip. Likewise, even centuries after the Tibetans adopted paper from the Chinese as the main medium for writing and publication, they cut paper into the India-originated long and narrow rectangular shape of palm-leaves, and pasted several sheets of paper to reproduce the thickness of the palm leaf. They even left a circle (or two) in the middle of the page to represent the hole(s) for the traditional binding string, even when they no longer used a string to hold the leaves together (see Figure 4.3 in Chapter 4).
19 For the models for ancient Indian-Aryan scripts, such as the Brāhmī and Kharosthi, see Richard Salomon, “Writing Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages,” in The Indo-Aryan Languages, ed. Dhanesh Jain and George Cardona (London: Routledge, 2003), 97–98, 102. 20 Of course one may argue that human ears do not receive long verses or sentences very well, giving rise to the limited length of poem lines (which were meant to be recited and heard from antiquity until silent reading became prevalent). This would be a material (or physiological) constraint. 21 See, for example, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800 (London & New York: Verso, 1993), 77.
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Chapter 2 notes that the Hebrew term daf, a column of text on a scroll and later also a page of a codex, derives from Sumerian dub, one of the oldest words for the material text in any language. The chapter offers a historical survey of the impagination of the Hebrew Bible, from the earliest known witnesses among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Rabbis of Late Antiquity standardized, legalised and sacralised earlier scribal practices and textual idiosyncrasies into a set of scribal laws and interpretative traditions, and by the time Jews adopted the codex (after the Christians and Muslims did so) it did not replace the scroll. Instead, a dynamic relationship between scroll and codex ensued. The codex allowed Jewish scribes and scholars to introduce elaborate text-critical, exegetical and artistic innovations in the Hebrew Bible’s impagination. Early Modern editors, in turn, adapted medieval models and superimposed Christian traditions of textual division to shape the Hebrew Bible as printed today. Chapter 5 shows that early modern northern India confronted not just one, but two, manuscript traditions that were associated with different languages. There existed the tradition that used the pothī, the landscape format of loose palm-leaf (or its paper imitations) for writings in Sanskrit and almost all the other Indic languages, and the portrait form of the paper codex that was first associated with Persian and common in the rest of the Islamic world. Vernacular authors navigated between these traditions and the literary, religious, and even illustrative practices that were bound up with them. Examining hand-press books in the early modern Southern Netherlands, Chapter 8 finds that Latin books in this region adopted Roman type before vernacular books did. Because Latin books were written, edited, and read by the intellectual elite across Europe, authors and printers in different regions, such as the Southern Netherlands, followed the footsteps of Italian humanists to adopt Roman type for classical texts.
Inter-linguistic Encounters The comparative approach of this volume reflects, and is reflected in, the rich interlinguistic crossovers that most of its chapters deal with. Indeed only a few chapters in this volume examine a monolingual community. Even in the case of the Hebrew Bible, its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editors and publishers carefully navigated the religious and political complexities that conditioned their products. The humanists dealt with Latin, Greek and at times their own vernaculars. Likewise, China was not a monolingual society, not surprisingly in view of the size of its population. Loretta Kim addresses in Chapter 11 the bilingualism in Qing China, where the Manchu ruled over a large Chinese-speaking population. Chapter 10 shows that even primers in the lower end of the market began to accommodate an interest in the English language in late Qing and early Republican China. Linguistic crossovers are easily visible in medieval and early modern Japan and Korea, where scholars, at first without an indigenous written language of their own, communicated by employing Chinese writing. Their own written languages, once
12
Introduction
developed, still retained a large number of Chinese characters, though the phonetic, semantic, and phonetic-semantic uses of these characters varied from one language to another.22 Down to the present day, the written Japanese language is composed of an amalgamation of wabun 和文, lit. “Japanese (wa) writing (bun)”, and kanbun 漢文, lit. “Chinese (kan) writing (bun)”, or of Japanophone and Sinographic writing systems. As the pronunciation of Sinographs or Chinese characters has always been a challenge for average Japanese readers, the Japanese have experimented with a variety of ways to annotate Chinese characters with Japanophone symbols (or kana) next to them. Thus phonetic annotations and glosses, known as kunten, have often constituted a significant portion of the Japanese page (see images in Chapter 12, Figures 12.2–12.6). Chapter 7 explicates the way in which illustration was used in Samganghaengsildo (An Illustrated Guide to the Three Bonds, 1434) to make Chinese moral lessons accessible to Korean readers, especially commoners and women, who received no literary education in classical Chinese. Each story of Samganghaengsildo consisted of a text written in hanmun (Chinese characters), one written in hangeul (Korean letters), and a multiple-part image (Figures 7.1 and 7.4). Chapter 6 investigates the co-existence of many languages in northern India. Sanskrit and Persian served as two cosmopolitan languages, while vernaculars such as Urdu, Marwari, Gujarati, Prakrit, and Apabhramsá were also in local use.
The Control of Editors, Scribes, Publishers, and Readers Over the Page The editor’s control over the page could be both imaginary (or legendary) and real. Chapter 3 shows that for almost two millennia Chinese students and scholars believed that Confucius, hailed as the Supreme Teacher, was the editor who finalized most of the Five Classics. He was thought to have selected and put in order the texts that passed down to today’s readers. But Confucius’s role in editing the text cannot be verified. What is evident in any case, however, is that later editors dealt with the text he supposedly edited and the commentaries that accumulated over centuries, working to give them a hierarchical presence on the page. Probably after the Han dynasty (which ended in 100 CE), annotations, including glosses and commentaries, were inserted in double column right after the relevant passage in the source text of the classics, which itself was printed in a single column. For centuries the source text could only be read in the way in which it was mediated by the commentaries. Then the great Confucian of the Song Dynasty ZHU Xi23 朱熹 (1130–1200) 22 For an interesting discussion of the different uses of Chinese characters in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, see John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 4–18. 23 In East Asia, the surname goes before the given name. Zhu is the surname of this scholar, for example. To avoid causing confusion to the speakers of European languages, we usually capitalize the
Introduction
13
suggested reading the classics without the mediation of the traditional commentaries, although he had to produce his own commentaries for his edition of the classics. Chapter 3 reviews Jewish scribes who produced their illuminated copies of the Hebrew Bible with remarkable creativity, though at the same time they were restricted by religious conventions or historical precedents. The same chapter also examines how early editors experimented with the page layout and content of the Hebrew Bible in dialogue with the dominant Christian society within which they lived. Marginalia or marginal notes have been quite well studied by now.24 Moving beyond the current state of scholarship on textual notes, Chapter 6 analyzes selected humanists’ drawings on the margin that served as, in the author’s words, “visual glosses.” In this sense the book page also functioned as the reader’s canvas.
Inheritance, Borrowing, and Innovation It was pointed out above that the earliest printed books in Europe continued to manifest elements that had been determined by the physical features of hand-writing. They inherited from manuscripts various cultural conventions such as abbreviations, contractions, columns, marginal notes, and rubrication. So too, as described above, the Tibetans inherited the material and the page format of Indian palm-leaf manuscripts at the beginning of their literacy (Chapter 4). The inheritance of material and format also applied to the Hindi authors/scribes who were the first to write in vernacular languages in a Sanskrit-dominated writing culture. Their writing culture on paper inherited elements from the one on palm-leaf. Even the layout of their woodblock prints can be traced back to the palm-leaf manuscript (Chapter 5). Features of imprint were (and still are) often borrowed. The content and the form of Chinese daily-use encyclopedias and educational primers were often borrowed from one another: “the printer did little more than copy an existing work, most directly by carving new blocks on the basis of a tracing of an old edition” (Chapter 9). This borrowing or copying applied to both text and images of the encyclopedia and the primer, and to the multi-register layout on the page that had become almost universal for such texts since China’s late Ming Dynasty (Chapters 9 and 10).
surname (such as ZHU) of a historical Asian figure when the name appears for the first time in each chapter of this comparative volume. The reader is also alerted that modern Asian authors, like those who contribute to this volume, often follow the Western practice by placing their surname after the given name. 24 For example, Roger Stoddard, Marks in Books, Illustrated and Explained (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
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Introduction
Inventions or innovations existed side by side with inheritance and borrowing. Chapter 9 suggests that the thread-bound format (and its wrapped-back predecessor) of Chinese books was an innovation: “whereas in every earlier format the page that the scribe or printer created was the page that the reader encountered, the thread-bound book introduced a disjuncture between the inscribed sheet and the visible pair of halfsheets.” Chapter 5 discusses the new genres, new types of prosody, and new aesthetic that India’s vernacular brought with it, and new methods of orthography and new types of written artifacts that accompanied the performance of new genres of texts. Innovations are visible in online scientific journals. Internet technology supports a very novel mode of dissemination. It makes possible the Advance Article, namely the PDF versions of articles that are placed on the journal’s website before the hardcopy is formally published. The release date of the Advance Article, rather than that of the print version, becomes the official publication date, a move to accommodate the increasing desire of the members of the scientific community to see the result of their work recognized quickly. The internet also supports publication metrics, namely the constantly updated numbers of downloads, mentions in news outlets, and numbers of tweets, for instance. It also accommodates multimedia supplementary materials, including interactive animation or video, that paper does not. And yet internet publication too displays many traces of inheritance from older modes, such as the webpage (a self-contradiction).
Economics of Imprints and Impagination Publishers have used different layout designs to appeal to different clienteles. To compete in the market of cheap prints, Chinese publishers crammed more and more information onto the page (Chapters 9 and 10). For this clientele, value lay with the increase of the information included in each new edition. Therefore their titles touted adjectives like “expanded,” “supplemented,” “emended,” “on newly-carved blocks,” “freshly-incised,” “third carving” (Chapter 9). More does not always mean better, nor does low cost automatically correspond to value. Chapters 1 and 6 point out that wide margins on papyrus, parchment, and paper folios might not have been reserved for notes, but were deliberately kept as a sign of luxury and conspicuous wastefulness. Though (or precisely because) it was expensive, this blank real estate appealed to a clientele who could afford and display it. Likewise, Chinese printers appealed to wealthy readers by offering them well-illustrated versions of literary works, which were naturally sold at higher prices (Chapter 9). The interest in wide margins and illustrations may be considered cultural values or tastes that were easily converted into economic incentives for printers. Cultural values also explain why Latin books switched from Black Letter to Roman type earlier than vernacular books did. This happened because they catered to a
Introduction
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pan-European market that accepted earlier the Roman type trend first started in Italy. Vernacular books, catering to a local market that had a different taste, at first had little incentive to switch (Chapter 8).
Aesthetics of Impagination Aesthetics applies to both text and non-text, and to the printed (or written) and the unprinted (or unwritten) material space. The cultural taste just described can be seen as aesthetic. Or again, Chapter 4 points out that the Tibetans introduced a rectangular frame to enhance the aesthetic aspect of a page. A Tibetan Buddhist sutra (Kanjur) especially commissioned by the Qing Emperor’s grandmother (Figure 4.3) introduced an artistic engraved pattern between the inner and outer frames. It was also lavishly illustrated, and written with gold ink on lacquer. All these features were employed to increase its sacral beauty and value, and to demonstrate the prestige and the taste of the imperial family. No single aesthetic standard or value works for all classes or communities. Chapter 9 argues that the fullness of the page was an aesthetic value for the clientele of the cheap prints in late imperial China. That gave rise to what the author terms a horror vacui (the fear of blank space on the page). Chinese printers therefore sought to alleviate that fear with a variety of designs to fill the page.
Sociality of Imprints and Impagination As we have already seen, what constitutes beauty or cultural value varies from one society to another, and from one social factor or occasion to another. The wide margins of European folios and the fullness of Chinese daily-use encyclopedias, which seem to contradict each other, both worked well, though for different clienteles in their respective societies. Chapter 10 shows that Chinese primers adopted the page layout of higher-end scholarly texts to look more serious and valuable as educational material. In many cultures, religion plays a powerful role in shaping the forms of the book.25 The Kanjur commissioned by the Qing imperial family is one example that was primarily produced for religious purposes. Likewise ‘holy books’ like the Qur’an were fashioned and treated in northern India in such a way that their materiality mirrored their sacred status. Written and bound for religious leaders in communal worship and teaching, these books displayed fine copying and illumination
25 See, for example, Anthony Grafton and Megan Hale Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
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Introduction
that distinguish them from common artifacts and mark them as objects of veneration (Chapter 5).
Impagination and Philology Historians of the humanities have lately been demonstrating great interest in the comparative and global history of philology. This interest is seen in such publications as James Turner’s Philology: The Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton University Press, 2014), Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin Elman, and Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang’s World Philology (Harvard, 2015), Anthony Grafton and Glenn Most’s Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach (Cambridge, 2016), and Rens Bod’s A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford 2016). This interest is not just nostalgic. Rather, it is a result of the increased exposure of Western humanists to the diverse literary and scholarly subjects, genres, and media in other cultural traditions, and of the enhanced contacts of non-Western humanists with their Western colleagues. These developments make both Western and non-Western humanists ever more aware that “Western practices . . . are neither the only nor necessarily the most ambitious and productive ones,”26 reversing an implicit assumption of much previous classical and medieval philology in the West. The recent works on the history of philology were preceded by distinguished traditions of the historical study of philological practices. Notable studies of philological scholarship in early modern Italy, above all, range from the work of Sebastiano Timpanaro (1923–2000) to that of Giuseppe Billanovich (1913–2000) and the next generation of scholars at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (such as Mirella Ferrari), the Florentine and other Italian scholars who have worked on the methods of Poliziano and other humanists (Vittore Branca, for example), the Roman scholars around the journal Roma nel Rinascimento (e.g. Massimo Miglio).27 Michael Reeve and Julia Haig Gaisser represent comparable scholarship in the English-speaking world.28 Timpanaro also studied the nineteenth-century German
26 Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most, “How to Do Things with Texts: An Introduction,” in Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach, ed. Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 5. 27 For surveys of these scholars’ careers, and especially their works on the history of philological scholarship, see, for example, Robert S. Dombroski, “Timpanaro in Retrospect,” Italica 78, no. 3 (2001): 337–50; Luigi F. Pizzolato et al., “Per Giuseppe Billanovich: Ricordo e Presentazione degli Studi in Memoria,” Aevum 82, no. 3 (2008): 891–916; Attilio Bettinzoli, “Rassegna di Studi sul Poliziano (1972–1986),” Lettere Italiane 39, no. 1 (1987): 53–125; M. Davies, review of Saggi di stampa: Tipografi e cultura a Roma nel Quattrocento, by Massimo Miglio, Renaissance Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2004): 1002–4. 28 Such as Michael D. Reeve, The Transmission of Florus and the Periochae Again (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Michael D. Reeve, Manuscripts and Methods: Essays on Editing and
Introduction
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philologist Karl Lachmann’s work.29 Grafton has published on the philological work of Joseph Scaliger.30 Parallels in classical and medieval studies are many. Most works in these traditions focus on practices, and recreate them with great precision and intelligence. They are often, though not all, local in both objects and audience. This seems therefore to be a good time for historians of philology to take up a comparative and global perspective, and to combine the study of practices with even more attention to the page as a material object. Philological interests figure large in this comparative volume, for impagination is tightly bound to philological work. The paratext on Greek papyrus was often commentary on classical texts (Chapter 1). Renaissance humanists, often excellent philologists, wrote and drew in the margins of the classical texts that they studied (Chapter 6). The format of one-column main text followed by double-column annotation that was a mainstay of Chinese publication served philological functions (Chapters 3, 9, 10). The definitional and phonetic glosses that surround a Sinographic character on the Japanese page did much the same. Significantly, Chapter 4 is a close study of layouts that corroborates the genealogical tree of the Tibetan editions of a Buddhist sutra, much as Drège did when he tried to date documents by first identifying the ages of the paper that support them.31 The contributions to this volume are firmly rooted in local cultures and together address global, comparative themes that are significant for multiple disciplines. Most of the chapters are, understandably, case studies of the philological practices of individual authors, texts, or communities. Nonetheless the authors endeavor to relate their works to, or to compare them with, to practices, materials, and technologies that flourish(ed) in different ages (manuscript, printing, and digital) or cultures. Ideally, specialists in Mesopotamian, Arabic, and Persian studies would also have been included. This unfortunately turned out not to be possible on account of practical exigencies such as the length limit for our volume. But this volume is not intended to provide a definitive, final statement about these issues, but rather to stimulate the in-depth comparison of European and Asian practices on impagination. Given that the Western world has traditionally known more about Western practices than about non-Western ones, this volume may be forgiven for paying slightly more attention to Asian cultures while also maintaining a global scope. Combining the different case studies and the various
Transmission (Rome, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2017); Julia Haig Gaisser, Catullus and His Renaissance Readers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Julia Haig Gaisser, The Reception of Classical Texts in the Renaissance (Firenze: Olschki, 2002). 29 Sebastiano Timpanaro, The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, trans. Glenn W. Most (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 30 Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–2003). 31 Jean-Pierre Drège, “Dunhuang xieben de wuzhixing fenxi (L’analyse matérielle des manuscrits de Dunhuang),” Hanxue yanjiu 4, no. 2 (1986): 109–14.
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Introduction
approaches applied to them, it models a genuinely comparative form of inquiry, and contributes to the intellectual and cultural history of knowledge (both humanistic and scientific), global history, literary and media studies, aesthetics, and studies of material culture, among other fields.
Bibliography Andrist, Patrick, Paul Canart, and Marilena Maniaci. La syntaxe du codex: Essai de codicologie structurale. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Beal, Peter. “Mise-en-page.” In A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450–2000, 255. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Beit-Arié, Malachi. Hebrew Codicology: Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts. Jerusalem, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1981. Bell, Maureen. “Mise-en-page, Illustration, Expressive Form.” In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. 4, 1557–1695, edited by John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, 632–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bettinzoli, Attilio. “Rassegna di Studi sul Poliziano (1972–1986).” Lettere Italiane 39, no. 1 (1987): 53–125. Birt, Theodor. Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Litteratur. Berlin: W. Hertz, 1882. Blass, Friedrich. Palaeographie, Buchwesen und Handschriftenkunde. Nördlingen: Beck, 1886. Croizy-Naquet, Catherine, and Michelle Szkilnik (eds.). Rencontres du vers et de la prose: pensée théorique et mise en page. Brepols, 2015. Davies, M. Review of Saggi di stampa: Tipografi e cultura a Roma nel Quattrocento, by Massimo Miglio. Renaissance Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2004): 1002–4. DeFrancis, John. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984. Déroche, Francois. Islamic Codicology: An Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script. Edited by Muhammad lsa Waley. Translated by Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz. London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2006. Dombroski, Robert S. “Timpanaro in Retrospect.” Italica 78, no. 3 (2001): 337–50. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “De l’image à l’action: texte et image dans le livre illustré chinois.” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 89 (2002): 239–40. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “Dunhuang xieben de wuzhixing fenxi (L’analyse matérielle des manuscrits de Dunhuang).” Hanxue yanjiu 4, no. 2 (1986): 109–14. Drège, Jean-Pierre. La fabrique du lisible: la mise en texte des manuscrits de la Chine ancienne et médiévale. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2014. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “La matérialité du texte: préliminaires à une étude de la mise en page du livre chinois.” In Paroles à dire, paroles à écrire: Inde, Chine, Japon, edited by Viviane Alleton, 241–52. Paris: EHESS, 1997. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “La matérialité du texte: préliminaires à une étude de la mise en page du livre chinois.” In Paroles à dire, paroles à écrire: Inde, Chine, Japon, 241–52. Paris: EHESS, 1997. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “Notes codicologiques sur les manuscrits de Dunhuang et de Turfan.” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 74 (1985): 485–504. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “Papiers de Dunhuang. Essai d’analyse morphologique des manuscrits chinois datés.” T’oung Pao 67, no. 3/5 (1981): 305–60.
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Duplan, Pierre Jauneau, Roger Jauneau, and Jean-Pierre Jauneau. Maquette et mise en page: typographie, conception graphique, couleurs et communication et le web. Paris: Éditions du Cercle de la librairie, 2004. Frank, Barbara. Die Textgestalt als Zeichen: Lateinische Handschriftentradition und die Verschriftlichung der romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr, 1994. Gaisser, Julia Haig. Catullus and His Renaissance Readers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Gaisser, Julia Haig. The Reception of Classical Texts in the Renaissance. Firenze: Olschki, 2002. Gilissen, Léon, and François Masai. Prolégomènes à la codicologie: recherches sur la construction des cahiers et la mise en page des manuscrits médiévaux. Gand: Story-Scientia, 1977. Gitelman, Lisa. Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Grafton, Anthony. Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–1993. Grafton, Anthony. La page de l’antiquité à l’ère numérique: histoire, usages, esthétiques. Translated by Jean-François Allain. Paris: Musée du Louvre/Hazan, 2012. Grafton, Anthony, and Megan Hale Williams. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Grumbert, J. P. “The Layout of the Bible Gloss in Manuscript and Early Print.” In The Bible as Book: The First Printed Editions, edited by Paul Saenger and Kimberly van Kampen, 7–13. London: The British Library, 1999. Gruys, A, and J. P Gumbert. Codicologica, Towards a Science of Handwritten Books. 5 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976. Jackson, H. J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Lied, Liv Ingeborg, and Marilena Maniaci, eds. Bible as Notepad: Tracing Annotations and Annotation Practices in Late Antique and Medieval Biblical Manuscripts. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018. Mak, Bonnie. How the Page Matters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Martin, Henri-Jean. La naissance du livre moderne (XIVe-XVIIe siècles): mise en page et mise en texte du livre français. Paris: Editions du Cercle de la librairie, 2000. Martin, Henri-Jean. Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit. Paris: Editions du Cercle de la librairie-Promodis, 1990. Peikola, Matti. “Guidelines for Consumption: Scribal Ruling Patterns and Designing the mise-enpage in Later Medieval England.” In Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe 1350–1550: Packaging, Presentation and Consumption, edited by Emma Cayley and Susan Powell, 14–31. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. Pizzolato, Luigi F., Gianvito Resta, Pier Francesco Fumagalli, Rino Avesani, Violetta de Angelis, and Cesare Scalon. “Per Giuseppe Billanovich: Ricordo e Presentazione degli Studi in Memoria.” Aevum 82, no. 3 (2008): 891–916. Reeve, Michael D. Manuscripts and Methods: Essays on Editing and Transmission, Rome, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2017. Reeve, Michael D. The Transmission of Florus and the Periochae Again. Oxford: Oxford University press, 1991. Saenger, Paul. “The Twelfth-Century Reception of Oriental Languages and the Graphic mise-enpage of Latin Vulgate Bibles Copied in England.” In Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, edited by Eyal Poleg and Laura Light, 31–66. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013. Salomon, Richard. “Writing Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages.” In The Indo-Aryan Languages, edited by Dhanesh Jain and George Cardona, 75–114. London: Routledge, 2003.
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Sherman, William H. Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Smith, Margaret M. “Mise-en-page.” In The Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, 936. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Staack, Thies. “Single- and Multi-Piece Manuscripts in Early Imperial China: On the Background and Significance of a Terminological Distinction.” Early China 41 (2018): 245–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/eac.2018.3. Stoddard, Roger. Marks in Books, Illustrated and Explained. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Timpanaro, Sebastiano. The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method. Translated by Glenn W. Most. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin. Paper and Printing. Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5.1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
I Slips, Scrolls, and Leaves: Before the Codex
Glenn W. Most
Chapter 1 Text and Paratext in the Greek Classical Tradition Abstract: This chapter explores the relations between the material of papyrus, the format of the roll, and the layout of sporadic marginal paratexts on the one hand, and the material of parchment, the format of the codex, and the layout of comprehensive marginal paratexts on the other. It considers some of the spatial and temporal complexities that are involved in a traditional form of layout in the Western tradition in which a centrally situated text is accompanied by surrounding paratextual materials (e.g., commentary, critical apparatus, translation, footnotes, etc.). It then goes on to examine the development in modes of impagination from early ancient Greek and Roman layouts on papyrus and in rolls to late ancient ones on parchment and in codices, and asks to what extent the specific nature of the materiality of these bearers of the texts and paratexts might have played a role in this development. It argues that instead greater importance should be attributed to psychological aspects and social practices of reading than to the materials themselves. The chapter concludes with reflections on challenges and opportunities that philology currently faces. Keywords: text and paratext, text and commentary, roll and codex, papyrus and parchment, philology as social practice, materiality
Preliminary Considerations In the present essay I consider two basic questions. The first question, put most generally, is, “Given that certain materials that are used as writing supports (such as papyrus and parchment) tend to be strongly associated with certain textual formats (such as rolls and codices respectively), to what extent is this due to their physical nature, to what extent to other kinds of factors?” And the second question is, “Given the tendency for certain textual formats (such as rolls and codices) that are associated with particular writing supports (such as papyrus and parchment respectively) to be strongly correlated with certain layouts of texts (such as the absence or presence respectively of comprehensive marginal commentaries) and accompanying elements (such as commentaries in separate rolls), by appeal to what kinds of factors can we best explain this correlation?” The first question considers the relation between materials and formats, the second that between formats and layouts. Put in the most general terms, these questions involve the interaction of two dimensions that are fundamental to any written text: materiality and social practices. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-002
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Materiality is not identical with the matter of such natural objects as a papyrus plant or a sheep (of course these natural objects have been modified over the millennia by human cultivation and are maintained as they are by human care, but nonetheless even today they still have a physical substance that in some regards is largely independent of human intervention), nor is it the same as a man-made material like a papyrus or parchment sheet, which we may consider to have ceased to be what it originally was – a natural object – and instead to have been transformed by social practices into a cultural artifact in order to serve a social need, viz. to form the basis onto which written texts can be inscribed. Rather, materiality is best taken not as identical with either matter or material but instead as a more general concept located ambivalently at the border between the social and the natural, one that designates the ways in which man-made materials of various sorts, derived ultimately from natural matter of various kinds, interact dialectically with social needs and processes through cultural practices. The questions indicated above involve (not only, but also) issues of physical and chemical composition, of color and surface structure and absorption, which can evidently be described in terms of the categories and concepts of various natural sciences and are susceptible to increasingly refined analysis and measurement using up-to-date instruments of physical investigation. Such natural scientific information can, and therefore certainly should, provide crucial elements for understanding the constraints under which, and the means by which, such objects are produced, and it goes without saying that those of us who study these kinds of questions gratefully accept whatever data the natural scientists can give us. But by the same token it is obvious that such data, by themselves, cannot fully answer all our questions about the intentionalities by which these objects are produced in the specific ways in which they are made. For the objects in question are not natural objects, but cultural products. Rolls and codices, even if they happen to be made out of plant matter, do not grow on trees: they are materials manufactured by human agents, within human institutions, for use by human recipients, and must be understood in the light of human materiality. For the first question indicated above, regarding materials and formats, the natural sciences can tell us with great precision what happens and how it happens, but not why it happens. And even more obviously for the second question, regarding formats and layouts, the what and how of the layout of different kinds of words on a writing support can be described precisely in quantitative, geometric terms, but the question of why the words of different kinds were arranged in the way they are found poses intricate issues of intention, convenience, habit, convention, and communication, for the analysis of which the humanities and social sciences have developed a highly refined conceptual repertory. A written document is not only a physical (not ever: a natural) object, it is also the persisting trace of the productive activity of human creators and the set of intended guidelines for the receptive activity of human users, hence it provides both residual evidence of, and implicit instructions for, modes of human behavior.
Chapter 1 Text and Paratext in the Greek Classical Tradition
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These are the kinds of issues that Classical Greco-Latin philology and other philologies throughout the world have traditionally addressed, with notable success. For example, generations of scholars have studied the material dimensions of the format, layout, and transmission of ancient and mediaeval Greek and Latin texts, and one cannot help but feel profound respect and gratitude for their cumulative achievements.1 On the present occasion I cannot hope to do more than to suggest a few possible hypotheses and to add a couple of tentative reflections to this impressive sum of knowledge.
Text and Paratext on Roll and Codex Let us turn now to the two basic questions with which I began. To simplify matters, it will be helpful to distinguish terminologically between a primary, base, core, or central text (the connotations of these various metaphors would itself themselves merit reflection and analysis), and the various kinds of other associated texts that can (but need not) appear together with it. Borrowing the term from Gérard Genette, we may define a ‘paratext’ as an ancillary text that accompanies, in more or less close physical proximity to it, another, central text in order to assist it in its communicative function.2 Paratexts might include translations, explanations, commentaries, glosses; illustrations, charts, diagrams; advertising, publicity, blurbs, publisher’s information; author’s name and biography; title, page numbers, running titles, etc. One of the most important forms of paratexts in scholarly traditions is the commentary. The base text 1 See among many others at least for example Theodor Birt, Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Litteratur (Berlin: W. Herz, 1882); Guglielmo Cavallo, “I fondamenti culturali della transmissione dei testi antichi a Bisanzio,” in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, and D. Lanza, ed., Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica, vol. 2 (Rome: Salerno, 1995), 265–306; Jean Irigoin, Tradition et critique des textes grecs (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997) and Le livre grec des origines à la renaissance (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2001); Giorgio Pasquali, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (Milan: Mondadori, 1974); Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); L. D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, Fourth edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); E. G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977) and Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, edited by P. J. Parsons (London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987). Most recently, some contributions towards a general overview and important detailed studies, as well as helpful recent bibliography, are provided by the articles in Luca Arcari, Gianluca Del Mastro, and Federica Nicolardi, ed., Dal papiro al libro umanistico. Aspetti paratestuali dei manoscritti dall’antichità all’umanesimo. Atti del Convegno di studi Napoli, 24–25 settembre 2015 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2017) = Segno e testo 15. 2 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
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may be considered primary, the paratext secondary, in the sense that the primary text could be received (read or heard) on its own even without access to or knowledge of the paratext, and at worst it would communicate less effectively; but the paratext could not be received on its own in an acceptably intelligible manner without access to or knowledge of the primary text. One can read a text without consulting a commentary; but it is hard to read a commentary with full pleasure and utility without having the text it comments on ready to hand or in mind. This does not mean that commentaries are unimportant or dispensable; it is simply a question of ends and means. The commentary is essentially a means directed to the end of enabling the text to function more effectively; although it is evident that many culturally central texts have ended up being elucidated by commentaries, we can suppose that most of those texts were not originally conceived by their authors solely as a means in order to ensure the preparation of a commentary on them as an end. To be sure, many commentators go well beyond their official remit of explaining the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text, and can end up adding a considerable amount of extraneous material such as miscellaneous information that might otherwise be lost or polemics with other commentators; but in such cases they seem to be exploiting the form of the commentary to pursue larger or more urgent cultural or personal agenda. Text and paratext do not have to be placed within the same immediate visual field. But it is obvious that there are certain advantages to putting them into close spatial proximity to one another: the commentary becomes easier to consult, with less strain on the user’s memory or eyes or legs and less waste of time, so that the commentary will probably be consulted more frequently than if it is kept separate. So if the decision is indeed taken to put them close to one another spatially, in what ways can this be done? It might seem to be the most convenient arrangement, in those languages that have linear writing systems, to simply continue the line of the writing of the commented text and to insert the commentary into it at the particular point of the commented text to which it is most pertinently directed. But such a system would manifestly have difficulties dealing with situations in which the commentary is not in fact tied closely only to one specific passage in the central text, and in general would run the risk of leading to endless confusion between text and paratext – unless, that is, clear and simple markers could be deployed to identify and differentiate them. For example, in some cultures different colors of ink are used for distinguishing, within a single line of writing, text and commentary; or rubrics can indicate when one kind of text begins and another ends. But colors can fade, and rubrics can be misunderstood. Instead, the Chinese have devised a very simple and effective layout [see Figure 3.1 in Chapter 3], whereby the commented text is written in larger characters in a single, usually vertical line, while, within the same clearly demarcated columns, the commentary is written in smaller characters that fill the same columnar space in two parallel rows.
Chapter 1 Text and Paratext in the Greek Classical Tradition
27
Despite the clarity and convenience of this Chinese layout, little or nothing can be found corresponding to it in the Greco-Roman Classical tradition. This is because, peculiarly, the latter tradition evidently tends to adhere strongly to what we might call “the norm of unobstructed textual linearity.” That is, great pains are taken to maintain the linear flow of the writing of the commented text in as uninterrupted and continuous a way as possible, and therefore to eliminate all paratextual material from that crucial textual flux and instead to locate it elsewhere. Even if texts were regularly written, and later printed, in smaller or larger self-contained blocks of large characters, so that if desired a prose paraphrase could be entered between the lines and longer commentaries could surround these passages, nonetheless within the blocks the linear flow tended to be kept as free from interruption as possible. One of the rare ancient Greek exceptions to this norm, and probably the most significant one, is the Derveni Papyrus, the remains of a papyrus roll from the 4th century BC, found north of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, containing inter alia an allegorical commentary on an Orphic theogony: the author quotes one or more verses of the theogonic poem and then explains what he takes to be their meaning in a longer or shorter prose paragraph; the quoted texts, if combined with one another, make up together the whole of the commented poem (at least for most of the length of the commentary), and the blocks of commentary interrupt their continuous flow.3 Most remarkably, the author does not take this procedure for granted but reflects upon it and justifies it explicitly. Here no confusion between text and paratext is possible, since the commented verses are often shorter than the commenting prose lines and are always metrical; and the early date and geographical marginality of this papyrus suggests that its layout may have represented a local experiment that was to be superseded by the standards of Alexandrian book production in the Hellenistic period starting in the 3rd century BC. Why exactly the Western tradition tends on the whole to adhere so strongly (and so exceptionally) to this norm is a profound and fascinating question that I at least am not yet in a position to answer (I hope that others will be able to provide answers in the future); but there can be little doubt about the fact that it does indeed do so. It is as though any intrusion by extraneous secondary verbal material might hamper or corrupt the purity of the transmission of an important, indeed perhaps salvific message. At most, raised numbers, letters, or other symbols, which hover above the textual line but do not actually obstruct it, can refer the reader to paratextual material located safely some distance away.
3 The text is conveniently available in André Laks and Glenn W. Most, ed., Early Greek Philosophy. Vol. 6: Later Ionian and Athenian Thinkers, Part 1 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 373–435. For other, partial exceptions to this norm, cf. P. Lille inv. 76d+78a-c+79+82+84, 3rd c. BC (fin.), Callim. Aitia 3 proem and commentary; P. Oxy. 1086, 2nd c. BC, commentary to Iliad 2; P.Berol. inv. 9782 (=BKT II, I), 2nd c. AD, commentary to Plato’s Theaetetus.
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If this tradition goes to great efforts to keep the paratextual material separate from the text, where then can it locate such material conveniently, for example on the very same page, but elsewhere on it? One traditional form of scholarly books in the Western tradition places the text in the center and groups different kinds of paratexts around it: the central text is spatially central, and the paratexts are marginal. This layout goes back to a series of monumental medieval Byzantine manuscripts written on parchment [Figure 1.1]. They transmit both profane and sacred texts; there are corresponding manuscripts in Latin from the medieval West. There are also often interlinear paratexts (glosses, variants), but I shall focus here on the marginal ones (which are generally but not exclusively commentaries of various sorts). Such a layout has noteworthy spatial and temporal aspects: 1. Spatially, one observes on the one hand a central block (the text) that is continuous and on the other hand one or more surrounding blocks (the paratext) that are discontinuous and that refer point by point in sequence to the successive parts of the central block. The difference in status and function is usually indicated by different sizes and kinds of scriptural hands or type fonts, and by other means4; the individual entries in the paratext are linked to the relevant points of the central text by numbers, letters, lemmata, or other systems; empty spaces, symbols, or other means are used in order to indicate where one entry in the paratext ends and another begins. The effect is that of a window: attention is focused through the central part at the essential message, while the surrounding parts are disposed around it like a frame, mediating and at the same time separating the central message and the outside world. So too in manuscripts of the Torah and the Qur’an, wide margins around the sacred text prevent it from being touched and thereby defiled by the reader’s profane hands. The central text is protected in the center by the paratexts that surround it; given that the marginal parts of a page are the ones that are likeliest to be damaged, to be broken off or cropped or nibbled or stained or smeared, the durability of the central text is clearly being given a higher priority than is that of the paratexts. The specific spatial disposition in any particular case answers to requirements of practical convenience (one rule is that as far as possible no part of the paratext may ever refer to a part of the central text that is found on a different page from it) and of aesthetic attractiveness (the page should provide not only instruction, and not only pleasure deriving from the content and from the very fact of the instruction, but also further pleasure arising from the sensory dimension of the object and way in which the instruction is conveyed).
4 In the Arabic tradition, the blocks of marginal commentary are often further differentiated from the central commented text by being set aslant, at a greater or lesser angle; in the Hebrew tradition (and some other ones) a different script or font can be used for the commentary.
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Figure 1.1: A page of Venetus A, Homer’s Iliad.
2.
Temporally, this page layout has both a productive aspect and a receptive one. Productively, the person who designed the page had to choose the particular hands or fonts, the hand or font sizes, and the dimensions of the text blocks that would allow the central text and the paratexts to correspond to one another as
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closely as possible. We can doubtless suppose that the page designer usually began by writing out some part of the central text, and gradually filled in the pertinent marginal paratexts above and beside it, then returned to write the next part of the central text, and then added the paratexts pertinent to this alongside it, and so on, back and forth, until the page was full and the paratexts had come to occupy not only its top and side margins but also its bottom part as well. This arrangement required considerable expertise and experience to be done well. We can also doubtless suppose that the central text was always written completely but that, if necessary, some elements of the paratexts could be omitted, shortened, or expanded in order to fill in the available space. How much paratextual material was lost forever by its suppression for reasons of nothing more than the constraints of space on a page is a troubling question. Receptively, the reader must learn to go back and forth between the text and the paratexts: reading only the central text, continuously, is possible, but not advisable (for that would mean dispensing with the benevolent guidance of the paratext), whereas reading only the paratexts, continuously, is certainly far more difficult (though not entirely impossible, especially for highly expert scholars); instead, a complex dynamic of interlocking temporal processes normally links the discontinuous reading of the central text (which is likely in most cases to be read in its entirety) to the discontinuous readings of (only some of or, in some cases, indeed all of) the paratexts. Readers must repeatedly interrupt their reading of the central text and hold in suspense their understanding of its meaning while they search for the relevant paratext, find it, and read it, then, chastened by that paratext, return to the central text, find the point at which they had left it, and resume their reading of it. This is not a self-evident practice, and in order to be performed well it requires considerable training. This kind of layout is a tool that helps to acculturate its readers and gradually separates them out over time as professional scholars from the broad mass of non-readers or casual readers, who do not have to learn to engage in the rarefied pleasures of this kind of systematic intratextual ballet. The origin of this layout is much debated; when exactly commentaries first started to be arranged systematically in the margins around texts in the center is uncertain, and various scholars have proposed dates ranging from late antiquity (ca. 5th century AD?) until the Byzantine era (ca. 9th century AD?).5 My own preference is for a gradual process beginning sporadically at the earlier date but not becoming
5 See for example Kathleen McNamee, “Missing Links in the Development of Scholia,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 36 (1995) 399–414 and “Another Chapter in the History of Scholia,” Classical Quarterly 48 (1998) 269–88; Marco Stroppa, “Some Remarks Regarding Commentaries on Codex from Late Antiquity,” in Franco Montanari and Serena Perrone, ed., Fragments of the Past. Ancient Scholarship and Greek Papyri. Trends in Classics Vol. 1/2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 298–327; N. G. Wilson, “A Chapter in the History of Scholia,” Classical Quarterly 17 (1967): 244–56; G. Zuntz, An
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systematic until the later one, i.e. it seems to me somewhat likelier that the scribes of the Byzantine manuscripts in question, or of their progenitors, were inspired by a layout they found in a few late ancient exemplars and were newly systematizing it in order to deal with new problems and possibilities (above all minuscule writing rather than majuscule, but also the wider availability of suitable writing materials and the reorganization of the institutions of knowledge). Probably the epochal Byzantine “window” manuscripts were simply a standardization of tendencies already found, but only occasionally, in late ancient manuscripts. But the question remains open.6 So much is (relatively) clear regarding post-Classical Greek (and Latin) books. How, on the other hand, were texts and paratexts arranged in ancient Greek culture?7 The ancient Greeks used a variety of materials as bearers of texts: papyrus, parchment (leather from sheep, goats, or other animals), ostraca (pottery sherds), wax tablets, gold, lead, bronze, marble, and others. I shall concentrate here upon papyrus and parchment, as these are the materials that permitted the greatest development of spatial dispositions of textual and paratextual materials and were the most widely used. Papyrus sheets were created by forming a lattice [Figure 1.2]: strips of the plant were laid next to one another in one direction and then other strips were laid perpendicularly to these; when these strips were pounded with a mallet, the juice the fibers contained was extruded and formed a sticky glue that held the strips together.8 Originally and for many centuries these sheets were glued
Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) and Die Aristophanes-Scholien der Papyri (Berlin: Seitz, 1975). 6 Some light might someday be cast on this question by further exploration of mediaeval Arabic manuscripts with commentaries. Such manuscripts are almost always codices; rolls have a virtually negligible importance in mediaeval Arabic culture. Many Arabic codices employ the finestra layout, but it is not clear whether they are copying a Western format and if so whether their models were late ancient or Byzantine. Some mediaeval Arabic manuscripts use rubrication within the line of the main text to signal paratextual material; many write commentaries at a slant to distinguish them from the main text. 7 See now Lucio Del Corso, “Text and Paratext in Early Greek Bookrolls: Some Reflections on Extant Papyrological and Literary Evidence,” in Luca Arcari, et al., ed., Dal papiro al libro umanistico (see note 1), 1–36. 8 See Turner, Typology and Greek Papyri: An Introduction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); also William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004) and “The Ancient Book,” in Roger Bagnall, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 256–81; and for Roman books Rex Winsbury, The Roman Book: Books, Publishing, and Performance in Classical Rome (London: Duckworth, 2009). The most important ancient account of the preparation of papyrus is Pliny, Natural History 13.74–82.1; but the interpretation of this passage is notoriously difficult, see e.g. William A. Johnson, “Pliny the Elder and Standardized Roll Heights in the Manufacture of Papyrus,” Classical Philology 88 (1993): 46–50; Andrew D. Dimarogonas, “Pliny the Elder on the Making of Papyrus Paper,” The Classical Quarterly 45 (1995): 588–590.
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Figure 1.2: Construction of a sheet of papyrus.
to one another in sequence in order to form longer or shorter rolls onto which columns of text were written; but then, starting after a certain time (2nd–3rd century AD), they could also be cut into the form of rectangular shapes, folded vertically in the middle, and sewn together to form pages in codices that looked something like the books we are familiar with today. Sheets of parchment, on the other hand, could not be glued together so easily, and hence from the beginning were used preferentially for making pages of codices by the same process of folding and sewing (except for example in the Jewish tradition, where rolls are made of parchment). Thus rolls have sheets (but not pages) onto which columns of text are written, while codices have pages (but not sheets) onto which columns of text are written; on a roll the columns of writing usually bear no determinate relation to the papyrus sheets of which the roll is composed, while on a codex the page determines the column or columns of writing that are inscribed onto it. While the form of the papyrus or parchment codex may originally have been inspired by waxed writing tablets (deltos, pugillares) tied together and gathered into notebooks, the materials involved certainly permitted much more elaborate textual dis-
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positions than could ever have been possible on such tablets.9 As a basic textual format, the codex came to replace the papyrus roll gradually, starting in the 2nd century AD. Why exactly this happened is uncertain, though it is likely that Christianity had something to do with it: the codex could be consulted more frequently in search of specific passages and it could be concealed more easily than the roll, features that were important for a book religion that was often persecuted; and in fact Christian texts stop being written on rolls and start being written exclusively on codices well before pagan ones do.10 Papyrus rolls involved considerable wastefulness and, at least from our point of view, much inconvenience. Normally the roll was written on only one side, so the whole back surface of the papyrus was wasted unless a writer needed, exceptionally, to add more material than could be fitted onto the front. Only if the papyrus roll were no longer needed and had been discarded would it sometimes be cut apart into smaller sheets, and the back surfaces of these could be written on separately. And papyrus rolls had to be unrolled gradually and partially, so that one could only consult a single column of writing or at most a couple of columns at a time; one could not conveniently consult columns that were distant from one another or flip back and forth between two non-contiguous passages; and the papyrus material was relatively fragile and was liable to gradual degeneration if it was used intensely or carelessly. How were text and paratext arranged on papyrus rolls? Let us distinguish between comprehensive paratexts and sporadic paratexts. Comprehensive paratexts are ones that offer a more or less detailed accompaniment to most or all of a central text, bit by bit, usually from the beginning to the end; they tend to leave out little or nothing of the central text. These are for example critical apparatuses in modern scholarly editions that list textual variants systematically, or accompanying translations or
9 Might such writing tablets, which were generally used for rough drafts in the process of composition in ancient Greece and which offered the writer a fixed rectangular shape for his text that corresponded to and preceded (and may even have helped inspire) the later page in a codex, have helped suggest to the users of papyri codices that their textual columns could be thought of as being in some ways like pages? This possibility cannot be excluded; but it is nowhere attested in extant writings, no ancient Greek writing tablets seem to have been unearthed hitherto, and the Roman ones that have been found are smaller and allow fewer characters per line and per textual column than most literary papyri do. 10 R. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); A. Blanchard, ed. Les débuts du codex (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Benjamin Harnett, “The Diffusion of the Codex,” Classical Antiquity 36 (2017) 183–235; William Harris, “Why Did the Codex Supplant the Book-roll?” in J. Monfasani and R. G. Musto, eds., Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr., (New York: Italica Press, 1991), 71–85; C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
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paraphrases, or especially full-scale commentaries that explain (textual, lexical, grammatical, metrical, historical, mythical, etc.) difficulties of a central text, often in considerable detail and at a great extent. Sporadic paratexts, by contrast, are keyed to specific, particularly troublesome or significant passages or words, and they make no attempt to clarify the entire text but function only to assist the understanding of specific isolated details in the text. As a general rule, we may state that, with such rare exceptions as the Derveni Papyrus, ancient papyrus rolls were never designed by their producers to bear comprehensive paratexts placed in close proximity to the central texts and on the same material bearer together with them, but that, with these exceptions, all the other paratexts that have been discovered so far on them are exclusively sporadic; and furthermore that there is a strong tendency for these sporadic paratexts to be added to the papyrus roll by later scribes or readers rather than by the first scribe or scribes who produced the original edition. What kinds of paratexts did ancient Greeks add to their papyrus rolls, and how can they be distinguished along the parameters we have been discussing so far?11 We can identify at least eight kinds of ancient paratexts (this list is not intended to be exhaustive, but illustrative), all of which have descendants in medieval and modern manuscripts and printed editions: 1. Corrections of errors that arose during the writing of the text. When possible, such errors are corrected at their own location, by erasure or cancellation or rewriting or superposition, or else just above or occasionally below the line; but larger corrections such as additions of material left out by mistake are often found in the margins, just as in medieval and modern manuscripts. 2. Indications of textual material to be added, or of revisions to be made, during the process of the composition of a text. These are found only on autograph manuscripts by authors (of course, the person who was actually doing the writing was usually not the author himself but a scribe or secretary writing to dictation12) and consequently are extremely rare. A notable example is provided by the Herculaneum papyri of Philodemus’ Index Academicorum, where substantial manuscript additions are found on the margins and even sometimes on the back of the papyrus roll.13 These too are found on medieval and modern manuscripts.
11 See especially Kathleen McNamee, Annotations in Greek and Latin texts from Egypt (New Haven, Conn.: American Society of Papyrologists, 2007) and Sigla and Select Marginalia in Greek Literary Papyri (Brussels: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1992). 12 T. C. Skeat, “The Use of Dictation in Ancient Book-Production,” Proceedings of the British Academy 42 (1956): 179–208. 13 P. Herc. 1021, Cornice 1 and 2. Cf. also Holger Essler, “P.Herc. 152/57 – an Author’s Master Copy,” in Luca Arcari, et al., ed., Dal papiro al libro umanistico, 57–80.
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3.
Marks of the mechanical process of scribal production. For example, scribes were paid by the number of lines they wrote, so that stichometric numbers are sometimes found that indicate how many lines had already been written by a certain point.14 The descendants of these signs are the marks of scriptoria and printers in medieval and modern times, for example catchwords for indicating the sequence of pages or of groups of pages for binding. 4. Indications of the beginnings or endings of whole texts or sections of texts. These can be more or less elaborate; often a fairly complex coronis signals the end of a whole text.15 At the end of manuscripts the person who wrote it, or had it written, or who checked and corrected it, can append a subscriptio.16 5. Indications of textual variants that some reader had found in certain manuscripts: these can involve either variants that were already indicated in the manuscript that was copied or else ones that were discovered later in other manuscripts. The former are generally due to the original copyist or corrector, the latter almost always to additions made by later readers. These are rare in ancient times; in medieval manuscripts, with the marker γρ (for γράφεται), they are found much more often, but they remain sporadic until the invention of the comprehensive critical apparatus of textual variants in the early modern period. 6. Indications of the mode of performance by which the text is supposed to be presented orally and publicly. Many such indications of mode of delivery are found within the text itself, in the form of blank spaces or various signs, and they are designed to help the speaker enunciate the text with a suitable rhetorical emphasis and articulation; they are obviously due as a rule to the orator himself, not to the original author or scribe.17 A special case is provided by a number of papyrus rolls with musical annotations, in which a poetic text received the signs of musical notes so that it could be performed in a concert or at a symposium.18 In such cases it is sometimes unclear whether the singer or musician added the signs for the musical notes to a written text he already possessed that lacked them, or whether he copied the text and added the signs at the same time.
14 E.g., Pherecydes of Syros, P. Grenf. II 11. 15 Gwendolen Stephen, “The Coronis,” Scriptorium 13 (1959): 3–14. 16 J. E. G. Zetzel, “The Subscriptions in the Manuscripts of Livy and Fronto and the Meaning of Emendatio,” Classical Philology 75 (1980): 38–59. 17 Cf. Paolo Fioretti, “Percorsi di autori latini tra libro e testo. Contesti di produzione e di ricezione in epoca antica,” Segno e testo 14 (2016): 1–38. 18 E.g., P. Oslo inv. 1413, P. Oxy. 25.2436, P. Oxy. 44.3161, P. Yale inv. 4510.
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7.
Diagrams and other kinds of illustrations. These are found added to various kinds of texts, especially mathematical, scientific, and geographical, and also in a number of school papyri.19 8. Finally, explanatory paratextual material, ranging from glosses on single words to elucidations of allusions or constructions in an individual phrase or sentence to lengthier comments on a whole passage or text. It is clear that these last eventually developed into the comprehensive commentaries of medieval and modern times. But to what extent, if any, and in what spatial relation to the base text, did such comprehensive paratexts exist in ancient Greece? Starting by the Hellenistic period in the 3rd century BC at the latest, Greek scholars at Alexandria and then elsewhere composed comprehensive commentaries, ὑπομνήματα (hypomnêmata), on Homer and other canonical texts.20 But these comprehensive paratexts were apparently never inserted onto the same papyrus rolls as the ones that bore the canonical texts. Instead, they were written and transmitted on separate rolls from the ones that transmitted the canonical texts. On the papyrus rolls that bore the central texts, marginal signs could be used to indicate various kinds of scholarly operations (deletion, doubt, commentary, etc.) but the reader had to consult another papyrus roll in order to see what exactly the intended operation was, whether the scholar explained and justified it, and if so how. In our eyes, this was an extremely inconvenient system. It meant having to have two papyrus rolls open at the same time and going back and forth between the one and the other. Given the size and awkwardness of the papyrus roll, one can imagine that this system worked best, and perhaps worked only, when two people were involved: person A (let us call him the professor) who read the main text on one roll, and another person B (the student, the assistant, the slave, insofar as these categories were not identical) who read the hypomnêma on another roll and who read out loud to person A the contents of each item in the hypomnêma when person A saw a marginal sign at a certain point in his text and told person B to read to him what the corresponding entry in the hypomnêma said (doubtless sometimes person A could read the hypomnêma and person B could read the canonical text, though this seems rather less likely as a general rule since it violates the implicit unequal distribution of power). This is a system that could only work well in a hierarchical society with prestigious and affluent scholars on the one hand and many students, assistants, and slaves on the other, and it meant that reading was a collective operation, not an individual one, and a voiced operation, not a silent one. Just as the king in a Greek tragedy can certainly be assumed never to enter the stage alone (unless he has been shipwrecked) but is always accompanied by the retinue and bodyguards
19 P. Oxy. 29 (Euclid, Elements); the Artemidorus Papyrus. 20 Pfeiffer, History.
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who provide an immediate visual demonstration of his power and prestige, even when these subordinates are not mentioned explicitly by the text (it is only occasionally that they are referred to indirectly, for example by imperatives), so too we must imagine the ancient scholar as always surrounded by a shadowy penumbra consisting of the cohort of his students, assistants, and slaves.21 The plural expression οἱ περὶ Ἀρίσταρχον (hoi peri Aristarchon) designates not only the synchronic group surrounding the person of Aristarchus and the diachronic group of the followers and school who adopt his views: it designates also the singular person of Aristarchus himself. Archaeological support for this hypothesis can be found in the odd and not sufficiently appreciated fact that nowhere, to my knowledge, are desks for readers either represented in ancient art or indicated in ancient texts or found in the ruins of ancient libraries.22 Readers are always shown sitting in a chair, the papyrus roll half-open on their lap (such as this https://quatr.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ womanreading.jpg); even in the few late representations of scholars making use of both a roll and a codex, they are not shown sitting at a desk with two open papyrus rolls but instead the codex (not: a second papyrus roll) is being supported on a pedestal for ease of consultation while the scholar holds the papyrus roll.23 No ancient scholar is ever represented sitting at a desk. There is no word for writing-desk in ancient Greek (it is sometimes suggested that the Latin word pluteus can bear this meaning,24 but in fact the passages cited do not support this interpretation25). The remains of a number of ancient Greek papyrus rolls survive on which both text and commentary are found in close spatial proximity on the same material bearer [Figure 1.3].26 Sometimes the commentaries are fairly extensive, but they are always sporadic, never comprehensive: that is, they do not attempt to cover the whole text but deal only with certain isolated difficulties, and they leave much room in the margins that are blank because they are not covered by paratexts. As far as we can tell, the writers of the central texts and the writers of the paratexts
21 There are useful observations and references on certain aspects of the sociology of ancient reading in William A. Johnson, “Towards a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” American Journal of Philology 121 (2000): 593–627, especially 616–24; however he does not seem to recognize the point made here. 22 George W. Houston, Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and their Management in Antiquity (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 197–203. 23 E.g., sarcophagus with a Greek physician, ca. 300 AD; formerly Villa Balestra, Rome, now Metropolitan Museum, New York. 24 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), s.v. pluteus IV give the definition “A book-shelf, bookcase, desk” and the references Persius Satires 1.106, Juvenal Satires 2.7, and cf. Digest 29.1.17 §4 (sic!), Sidonius Apollinaris Epistles 2.9. 25 The erroneous definition has disappeared from P. G. W. Glare, ed. Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), s.v. pluteus 2.b, replaced by “any other low wall, barrier, screen, etc.” 26 McNamee, Annotations remains fundamental.
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Figure 1.3: Pindar, Paeans, P. Oxy 5.841 (2nd c. AD), on which text and commentary were placed close to each other.
tend not to be identical: it seems likeliest that the papyrus roll, as prepared and sold, contained no explanatory paratexts whatsoever, and that these were added by readers, if they so wished, in the course of their reading in order to make the texts more intelligible or useful to themselves at whatever points they had happened to encounter difficulties or particularly interesting passages. Very often, ancient papyrus rolls have been discovered containing extensive empty margins surrounding the text, but the notion occasionally found in earlier scholarship that these margins were intended to be filled by commentaries that just happened never to have been written is surely usually mistaken: instead, the wide blank margin was probably most often a sign of luxury, of conspicuous wastefulness, and may well also have had, besides this social significance, an aesthetic value. There are only a very few remains of ancient papyrus codices (as opposed to papyrus rolls) bearing commentaries, and they are all quite late, e.g. 7th century CE.27 Only in these codices is there anything approaching comprehensive paratextual commentary.
27 E.g., P. Oxy. 20.2258 (ca. 7th c. AD: Callimachus, Hymns, Aetia).
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The same applies mutatis mutandis to ancient parchment codices (as opposed to papyrus rolls or codices).28 Such infrequent late ancient or early Byzantine codices would be among the occasional forerunners of the standardized Byzantine window layout that I envisioned earlier. There thus seems to be a close connection on the one hand between the material of papyrus, the format of the roll, and the layout of sporadic marginal paratexts, and on the other between the material of parchment, the format of the codex, and the layout of comprehensive marginal paratexts. There are of course exceptions on all sides, but the general tendency seems to be unmistakable. How can one explain this tendency – in other words, why did ancient producers and users of books resist for so long what seem to us to be the manifest advantages, of convenience and economy, that would have been brought about by their switching from papyrus and rolls to parchment and codices, and by appending the paratexts onto the margins of the page? A large part of the answer is surely economic, given that for most of antiquity papyrus was far cheaper than parchment; and we must always bear in mind the leaden weight of habit. But there must have been other factors as well. Might the explanation derive from the specific physical nature of the material of papyrus as opposed to that of parchment? For example, might the lattice nature of the papyrus sheet have worked better in a landscape orientation (broader horizontally than vertically) than in a portrait orientation (taller vertically than horizontally), even if the latter type of papyrus roll could be stabilized by the use of a thin wooden rod through its center? If this were so, then one might perhaps wish to hypothesize that the material of papyrus could have made it less suitable for use for the kinds of framing comprehensive commentaries that we saw earlier, given that, in the Western tradition at least, systematic marginal commentaries seem to work best in a portrait orientation, not in a landscape one. But this explanation in terms merely of the physical material of papyrus is not at all convincing. Surely, if people had really wanted to add comprehensive framing commentaries to papyrus texts, they would have found a way to do so, and it is very difficult to see why the material of papyrus by itself would have sufficed to thwart them. Instead, I would suggest in conclusion that two other factors were far more important. The first is psychological and represents the interaction of a material factor (the page) and a cultural factor (the norm of unobstructed textual linearity). I would suggest that comprehensive paratexts surrounding the central text never became a feature of ancient papyrus rolls because the development of the window layout presupposes the existence of the page (not: of the sheet) as a physical object, one with clearly defined boundaries outside of which the book ceases and the world begins. Psychologically, it
28 E.g., P. Gen. inv. 97 (4th to 5th c. AD: Parthenius, poems).
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is only within the visual delimitations of the finite page that a window paratext can find shelter and sustenance – otherwise, it could threaten to go on forever, and hence can scarcely begin. If the page is to come into being and to be used – and with it, the ontological boundary between the page and the world – there must be the inaugural violence of cutting and the repeated disruption of lifting and turning. Turning a page of a codex to see what comes next obscures the text that one has already read upon it much more drastically than unrolling and rolling a papyrus or parchment roll does. It is no accident that there is no word for “page” in ancient Greek: a σελίς (selis) is a column of writing, a κόλλημα (kollêma) is anything that is glued together, a γραφή (graphê) is whatever is drawn or written. In the ancient Greek world, the unit of a written text was the line or column, not the page, and in a papyrus roll the flow of reading from one line to the next and from one column to the next was evidently felt to be so immediate and continuous that any kind of framing commentary would have violated the norm of unobstructed textual linearity by interpolating into the very heart of the central text an interrupting paratext. In other words, the uninterrupted material continuity of the papyrus roll, sheet after sheet, seems to have functioned also psychologically, to create an impression of the uninterrupted textual continuity of the text written on its sheets, line after line and column after column. It was only with the page in a codex, which was separated by a physical cut from the following page and that itself had to be lifted and turned if one were to see how the text continued on the next page, that that flow could be interrupted sufficiently to allow a framing paratext to come to be constituted around the text. The second factor was determined by social practices. Putting a full commentary into immediate proximity to and surrounding the central text was never an attractive option in the ancient world because the social practices of reading did not require it. The framing commentary corresponds to a mode of reading that is individual, self-reliant, perhaps, in a certain sense, less hierarchical. The inconveniences of the separate hypomnêma roll and the advantages of having the text and commentary on the same page are not natural or necessary inconveniences or advantages, but instead are aspects that can seem to us to be inconvenient or advantageous, and if so only do so because we have been formed in a world of individual, mostly silent readers, all of whom have more or less the same access to the texts we are interested in, or who are at least not assigned necessarily to very different tasks in the reading process on the basis of a hierarchical distribution of power. In other words, the social praxis of shared philological reading was not a response to the fact that the text and commentary were produced in separate rolls, but was instead the reason for their separation in the first place; and in turn, once a different mode of reading started to become predominant, the codex with its framing paratext was invented in order to accommodate it. To understand these physical documents, we must reconstruct the vanished social networks and practices that produced and used them.
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Final Considerations The present moment seems to be particularly propitious for reformulating traditional philological discussions of this kind, because philology now finds itself facing, within the context of a group of present and foreseeable circumstances, at least three urgent challenges that offer it not only an opportunity, but perhaps even an obligation, to reconceive not only itself in the most general terms, but also the specific questions it has traditionally set itself and the strategies it has developed for answering them: 1. Digitalization: The digital revolution has begun to transform profoundly the ways in which texts are conceived, prepared, and presented. Not only does this open up new perspectives for possible methods of scholarship which would have been inconceivable until recently; it also provides a vantage point outside of the traditional book form from which the advantages, constraints, and disadvantages of the media current hitherto and of the procedures based upon them can be recognized more clearly. What will be the effects upon future textual editions of the (possibly) infinite storage possibilities of digital data (but also of the as yet unresolved challenges of archiving for digital media), the ease of cancellation of texts (but also of the difficulty of recuperation of what has been cancelled), or the emancipation from the medium of the page and its constraints regarding the choice and spatial discrimination of variants (but also with new questions of longevity and access)? And by contrast, how much influence did traditional writing materials and instruments have upon the methods scholars developed in order to edit texts? And beyond issues of textual editing alone, the effects of digitalization are already starting to influence the modes and concepts of commentary and interpretation, and indeed of reading and writing in general.29 2. Cross-cultural comparison: As the world has grown more interconnected in the process of internationalization and globalization, especially in the last half century, scholars belonging to different cultural and linguistic traditions have begun to engage with one another more systematically than ever before. The result is that the possibility has begun to open up for even those who work in the philologies of individual countries or languages – traditionally among the most nationally focused of humanistic scholars – to compare and discuss procedures and goals in the hope of arriving at a genuinely global concept of the practices of textual scholarship. Although this inter-cultural dialogue is still in its infancy, it can be expected to develop strongly in the coming decades. And it will surely lead to a kind of deprovincialization of philological studies, to
29 See for example Jerome J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) and A New Republic of Letters: Memory and Scholarship in the Age of Digital Reproduction (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), and Chapter 13 in the present volume.
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their becoming ever more comparative and cosmopolitan. Practices and objects that might have seemed natural or self-evident when viewed only within the terms of the culture in which they were produced will inevitably come to look quite different when they are compared to similar, and dissimilar, practices and objects from different, indeed remote cultures. Even the most familiar sights can look suddenly rather odd when we start to teach ourselves to try to see them with foreign eyes. Practices in the history of science: As long as the history of science tended to focus especially upon the discovery of concepts and the invention of devices in the natural sciences, the humanities seemed to offer little of interest to many historians of science. But in the past several decades, the history of science has turned ever more to the study of practices such as observation, description, classification, and organization, and in doing so has discovered deep and unexpected affinities between branches of scholarship that used to be complexly intertwined but in the past several centuries have been divided into humanities and natural sciences. The techniques of textual scholars offer an exciting new field of study for the historian of science who wishes to understand the development of rational procedures for the preservation, restoration, transmission, and analysis of knowledge in various cultures over thousands of years.30
We philologists will be best positioned to respond to these three challenges, I would suggest, if we conceive of philology as a fundamentally social practice, as the rational, disciplined, and institutionalized form of interpersonal research, testing, and communication, that is directed to (above all written) texts. As such, philological activity is a procedure indispensable for the creation and maintenance of any Classical tradition, defining this latter as set of ancient or at least past texts, institutions, objects, and practices, which continue to retain an overwhelming (even if often criticized) validity for later texts, institutions, objects, and practices and help crucially to define a cultural and linguistic community that can persist over centuries. Turning our attention to the social aspects of philological practices means applying to the history of philological scholarship the kinds of methods and approaches that have become very widespread in other fields of the history of science
30 Lorraine J. Daston and Glenn W. Most, “History of Science and History of Philologies,” Isis 106 (2015): 378–90; see Lorraine Daston, ed., Science in the Archive (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), for case studies that illustrate this point.
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over the past decades.31 Three of the dimensions in which these social aspects can most easily be recognized are the following: 1. Collaboration: In contrast with a widespread misperception, most philological procedures are not performed by an individual in solitude but instead result from an intense communal labor in which small, highly organized teams cooperate in accordance with more or less formalized protocols. Even the collation of manuscripts has historically usually required not the isolated labor of only a single scholar but instead the collaboration of at least two people – one who read out one manuscript, one who checked and if necessary intervened into another one – to say nothing of the various librarians, clerks, and other assistants who were operating in their penumbra. The corrector of manuscripts was often a member of a scriptorium, as the corrector of books worked in a publishing house, and their operations were regulated as part of the productive labor of a much larger team of which they were sometimes not even the most conspicuous or prestigious member.32 In general, the view of the isolated individual scholar is a Romantic illusion which has been projected back misleadingly onto traditions of scholarship which would scarcely have even understood the idea. Just as the history of the natural sciences has been regenerated in the past decades by a widening of its focus, beyond the celebrated individual male scientist whose name is linked with great discoveries, to the team of much less well known assistants and colleagues, female and male, without whose collaboration with him those discoveries would never have been made, so too there is much to discover in the history of the humanities by broadening the focus beyond the great man to the great man’s entourage. 2. Institution: Few if any scholars who have been remembered ever operated entirely on their own in isolation from the social institutions that maintained and were maintained by a culture’s classical tradition – to name only the most important ones: courts, religious establishments, schools, examinations, archives, libraries, publishers, booksellers. The scholars themselves came out of educational institutions in which they were trained, and the teacher-student relationship remained fundamental in all their later collaborative enterprises; each great scholar’s career brought him gradually up the steps of a recognizable cursus honorum, propelled by patrons, sustained by families, guided by teachers, hindered by rivals, assisted by students. No Classical tradition can survive only
31 The fundamental studies in this regard included Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, repr. 2008) and Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, 1989; new edition, 2011); and see more recently e.g. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 32 See especially Anthony Grafton, The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (Panizzi Lectures) (London: British Library, 2011).
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by the efforts of great writers and artists who reinterpret the masterpieces of their predecessors: instead, each such tradition depends for its maintenance, indeed for its survival, upon the unremitting scholarly efforts of generations of such smaller figures: the people who edit the texts, prepare the translations, write the commentaries, set the examinations, and ensure that the tradition will continue into the next generation to support the political, religious, legal, and cultural institutions upon which the culture’s identity depends. Profession: Philologists are linked by the specific nature of their profession not only, consciously, to the many people and institutions of their own culture with which they have constant contact, but also, often unconsciously, to the fellowmembers of their profession who perform analogous kinds of work in different periods and different cultures. Just as textual editors engage in collaboration with assistants, librarians, publishers, and other people, and just as they participate in institutions such as the library, the archive, the school, so too the kind of scholarly activity which philologists perform bears striking similarities, and sometimes also significant differences, when set into comparison with the work of other members of the profession of textual editors. How do the actual concrete practices of a textual editor of ancient Chinese texts in Berlin nowadays compare with those of an editor of similar texts in China in the 2nd century AD, or in Japan in the 20th century? How does the work performed by a commentator on Sanskrit texts in India in the 19th century compare with that by a Persian or Chinese commentator in the medieval period, or by an American or Indian commentator nowadays? The possibilities for intercultural discussion of and research on the humanities in different traditions have increased enormously over the past decades: it is now possible to contemplate a systematic history of philologies (not: of philology) throughout the world and throughout history, and indeed the first publications in this area have already started to appear.33
The evidence and arguments presented here suggest that, at least in the GrecoRoman tradition, it has ultimately been the psychological and social aspects of reading, and not merely the material constitution of the writing surfaces involved and their economic conditions, that have played the most important role in determining the form and usage of books even down to the smallest details of their formats and layouts. How matters stand in other cultures, ancient and modern, in regard to their texts, commentaries, writing materials, formats, and layouts, is one of the questions that I hope the comparative philologists of the future will explore.
33 For example, Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang, ed., World Philology (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
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Bibliography Arcari, Luca, Gianluca Del Mastro, and Federica Nicolardi, ed. Dal papiro al libro umanistico. Aspetti paratestuali dei manoscritti dall’antichità all’umanesimo. Atti del Convegno di studi Napoli, 24–25 settembre 2015 Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2017 = Segno e testo 15 (2017). Bagnall, Roger. Early Christian Books in Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Birt, Theodor. Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Litteratur. Berlin: W. Herz, 1882. Blanchard, A., ed. Les débuts du codex. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Cavallo, Guglielmo. “I fondamenti culturali della transmissione dei testi antichi a Bisanzio,” in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, and D. Lanza, ed. Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica, vol. 2, pp. 265–306. Rome: Salerno, 1995. Daston, Lorraine, ed., Science in the Archive. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Daston, Lorraine J. and Glenn W. Most. “History of Science and History of Philologies,” Isis 106 (2015): 378–90. Del Corso, Lucio. “Text and Paratext in Early Greek Bookrolls: Some Reflections on Extant Papyrological and Literary Evidence,” in Luca Arcari, et al., ed., Dal papiro al libro umanistico (above) (2017) 1–36. Dimarogonas, Andrew D. “Pliny the Elder on the Making of Papyrus Paper,” The Classical Quarterly 45 (1995): 588–590. Essler, Holger. “P.Herc. 152/57 – an Author’s Master Copy,” in Luca Arcari, et al., ed., Dal papiro al libro umanistico (above) (2017) 57–80. Fioretti, Paolo. “Percorsi di autori latini tra libro e testo. Contesti di produzione e di ricezione in epoca antica,” Segno e testo 14 (2016): 1–38. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Glare, P. G. W., ed. Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Grafton, Anthony. The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (Panizzi Lectures). London: British Library, 2011. Grafton, Anthony and Megan Williams. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Harnett, Benjamin. “The Diffusion of the Codex,” Classical Antiquity 36 (2017): 183–235. Harris, William. “Why Did the Codex Supplant the Book-roll?” in J. Monfasani and R. G. Musto, eds. Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr., 71–85. New York: Italica Press, 1991. Houston, George W. Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and their Management in Antiquity. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Irigoin, Jean. Tradition et critique des textes grecs. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997. Irigoin, Jean. Le livre grec des origines à la renaissance. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2001. Johnson, William A. “Pliny the Elder and Standardized Roll Heights in the Manufacture of Papyrus,” Classical Philology 88 (1993): 46–50. Johnson, William A. “Towards a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” American Journal of Philology 121 (2000): 593–627. Johnson, William A. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Johnson, William A. “The Ancient Book,” in Roger Bagnall, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, 256–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Laks, André and Glenn W. Most, ed., Early Greek Philosophy. Vol. 6: Later Ionian and Athenian Thinkers, Part 1. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
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Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, repr. 2008. Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. McGann, Jerome J. A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. McGann, Jerome J. A New Republic of Letters: Memory and Scholarship in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. McNamee, Kathleen. Sigla and Select Marginalia in Greek Literary Papyri. Brussels: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1992. McNamee, Kathleen. “Missing Links in the Development of Scholia,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 36 (1995): 399–414. McNamee, Kathleen. “Another Chapter in the History of Scholia,” Classical Quarterly 48 (1998): 269–88. McNamee, Kathleen. Annotations in Greek and Latin texts from Egypt. New Haven, Conn.: American Society of Papyrologists, 2007. Pasquali, Giorgio. Storia della tradizione e critica del testo. Milan: Mondadori, 1974. Pfeiffer, Rudolf. History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Pollock, Sheldon, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang, ed. World Philology. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Reynolds, L. D. Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. Reynolds, L. D. and N. G. Wilson. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, Fourth edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Roberts, C. H. and T. C. Skeat. The Birth of the Codex. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985; 1989; new edition, 2011. Skeat, T. C. “The Use of Dictation in Ancient Book-Production,” Proceedings of the British Academy 42 (1956): 179–208. Stephen, Gwendolen. “The Coronis,” Scriptorium 13 (1959): 3–14. Stroppa, Marco. “Some Remarks Regarding Commentaries on Codex from Late Antiquity,” in Franco Montanari and Serena Perrone, ed., Fragments of the Past. Ancient Scholarship and Greek Papyri. Trends in Classics Vol. 1/2, 298–327. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Turner, E. G. The Typology of the Early Codex. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977. Turner, E. G. Greek Papyri: An Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Turner, E. G. Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged, edited by P. J. Parsons. London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987. Wilson, N. G. “A Chapter in the History of Scholia,” Classical Quarterly 17 (1967): 244–56. Winsbury, Rex. The Roman Book: Books, Publishing, and Performance in Classical Rome. London: Duckworth, 2009. Zetzel, J. E. G. “The Subscriptions in the Manuscripts of Livy and Fronto and the Meaning of Emendatio,” Classical Philology 75 (1980): 38–59. Zuntz, G. An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Zuntz, G. Die Aristophanes-Scholien der Papyri. Berlin: Seitz, 1975.
Theodor Dunkelgrün
Chapter 2 Tabernacles of Text: A Brief Visual History of the Hebrew Bible Abstract: This chapter explores the history of the Hebrew Bible from the point of view of its layout on the two main material forms of the Jewish book: scroll and codex. It examines several of the fundamental ways in which Jews (and a few Christians) have organized the Hebrew Bible visually, from the earliest surviving witnesses among the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls (third century BCE) to the printed editions of Early Modern Europe. It pays special attention to the way the material and spatial limitations of a writing support spurred various kinds of scribal creativity; and it traces the way practices that began by chance become ritually, legally or exegetically meaningful in the process of transmission across centuries. The chapter explores book-historical evidence internal to the biblical corpus and considers possible models for scribal practices among other, non-Jewish and non-Hebrew cultures of the book in the Ancient Near East. It explores the development of scribal law in early Rabbinic literature, in which ancient textual accidents and idiosyncrasies are reinterpreted as meaningful, visual expressions of a perfect, sacred text. It then considers the dynamic relationship between scroll and codex in the Medieval period, focusing both on the transformative emergence of the Masoretic codex and on the iconography of the Temple therein, as expression of the idea of the Hebrew Bible as portable Temple and a visual response to exile. The chapter then considers various ways in which Jewish and Christian editors and printers adopted and adapted these ancient and medieval visual practices of textual distribution in the early years of print. Finally, it looks at the paratextual superimposition of Christian and Jewish reading traditions onto the text, and therewith, the origin of the shape of the Hebrew Bible as commonly printed to this day. Keywords: Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish scribal law and custom, The Torah scroll in Rabbinic Judaism, The Masoretic codex, Early printed Hebrew Bibles
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-003
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Judaism is poor in images – proudly poor, because images will become idols. But a culture cannot live without images. For Jewish culture, the task was to find an image that will not become an idol. A word is such an image. A text is a holy thing that will not be worshiped. For the Jew, therefore, words became images, and the sight of a text became a spiritual experience. –Leon Wieseltier
Introduction On a freezing first day of January, 2020, nearly 100,000 people streamed into the MetLife Stadium, not to watch a sports game but to read a page. For the occasion, the home of the New York Jets and Giants was transformed into a vast open-air study hall. The playing field was covered with folding chairs, the stadium filled to capacity. Across the world, tens of thousands joined in, connected via digital video, while countless more staged celebrations of their own. This was not the Super Bowl, this was the Siyum ha-Shas: an evening of rapturous celebration centered on the completion of a study program of the entire Babylonian Talmud, the central corpus of Rabbinic Judaism. Known as Daf Yomi (a page a day), the regimen requires participants to read one two-sided Talmud page every day, without interruption. The cycle takes nearly seven and a half years, and a new cycle is begun immediately upon completion. After collectively reading the final page of tractate Niddah that night, dedicated readers began with page two of tractate Berakhot the following morning.1 The first printed edition of the complete Babylonian Talmud (1519–23) counted the unnumbered title page as Page One, and ever since, each of the Babylonian Talmud’s thirty-six tractates begins on Page Two. It is an example of a phenomenon that will recur throughout this essay, and that recurs across cultures of the book: a practice that began by chance becomes imbued with meaning in the process of transmission. In the case of the Babylonian Talmud, what was once an accident of Renaissance print culture now serves to stress the lack of beginning and end, a cyclical reading tradition that has always already begun. It will take 2,711 days, but eventually every page will return. Daf Yomi is a recent tradition. The 2020 Siyum ha-Shas was the thirteenth such event since Rabbi Meir Shapiro, a Polish pedagogue and politician, initiated the program in 1923.2 Yet for all the program’s modernity and ever-expanding use of digital resources, that page itself has been central to Jewish cultures of knowledge and
1 Joseph Berger, “90,000 Jews Gather to Pray and to Defy a Wave of Hate”, New York Times, Jan. 2, 2020, Section A, Page 15; Chaim N. Saiman, Halakha: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 6–7. I am grateful to Menachem Butler for sharing his experiences of the Siyum ha-Shas in 2012 and 2020. 2 See Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 230–233; Marc B. Shapiro, “Talmud Study in the Modern Era: From Wissenschaft and Brisk to Daf Yomi,” in Sharon Liberman Mintz and Gabriel Goldstein (eds.), Printing the Talmud: from Bomberg to Schottenstein (New York: Yeshiva University, 2005), 103–110.
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devotion for some five hundred years. The necessary conditions for this mode of study lie in an era not entirely unlike our own, when new information technology – the printing press – transformed the book, practices of textual scholarship and the organization of knowledge.3 For it is only possible to speak of “the page of the Talmud” in the abstract, without reference to any specific edition, such that over one hundred thousand people worldwide can be on the same page synchronically, because both the pagination and the basic page layout have been largely stable since the sixteenth century. The look of the numbered page, its arrangement of blocks of commentary around a central rectangular block of text and distribution of supercommentaries and short-hand cross-referential apparatuses in the margins, has become so integral to Rabbinic tradition and learned culture that modern editors attempting to depart from it have been met with rejection and even outrage, as if the layout had been revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai. There is no little irony in such protestations. Daniel van Bomberghen (or Bomberg, d. 1553), the Flemish printer of the edition whose pagination commands such pious protection, was a Christian, and the likely models of that layout were the glossed Christian Bibles and legal codes of the medieval Latin West and Byzantine East.4 And as Anthony Grafton has observed, there is a measure of paradox in the fact that the key to consulting what Jewish tradition for centuries has called the Oral Law came to lie in the way in which the text presented itself visually on the printed page.5 The distinction between the Oral and Written Laws is central to the theology of the Rabbinic movement that had to come to terms with the Romans’ destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, that movement sought to replace a culture of priests with a culture of scholars. Prayer, piety, good works and learning became the predominant forms of Jewish worship instead of animal sacrifice and related temple rituals. The study of Torah (Talmud Torah) became the most important Jewish spiritual activity of all, one no longer geographically restricted to Jerusalem. In exile from a world without a sanctuary of stone, the rabbis made a temple out of text, and the Torah became, in Heinrich Heine’s timeless phrase, a portable homeland.6 This drawn-out process, itself part of the highly
3 See Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 4 On Bomberg, see Bruce Nielsen, “Daniel van Bombergen, A Bookman of Two Worlds” in Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear (eds.), The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 56–75. On the origins of the page layout of a primary text surrounded by blocks of commentary, see chapter 1. 5 Anthony Grafton, La page de l’antiquité à l’ère numérique: histoire, usages, esthétiques. Translated from English by Jean-François Allain (Paris: Musée du Louvre/Hazan, 2012, 2015), 30. 6 See e.g. Heinrich Heine, “Geständnisse” (1854), in Gerd Heinemann (ed.), Heinrich Heine Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, Band 15 (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1982), 43. This idea recurs throughout Heine’s oeuvre. See S.S. Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). Among reiterations, see George Steiner, “Our homeland, the text”, Salmagundi 66 (1985), 4–25,
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complex formation of Rabbinic Judaism, encompassed the canonization of Jewish Scriptures, the stabilization of the biblical text, and the codification of Jewish Law. That codification included the laws of a Temple service now no longer practiced – thereby turning the Temple itself into an object of scholarship – and the laws governing the material and visual text of the Hebrew Bible, further consolidating the interdependence of the biblical text and Rabbinic teachings about it.7 Heine was writing about the Hebrew Bible, but his metaphor is more apt when one takes the notion of Torah in the Talmud’s capacious sense. The Rabbis speak of Torah in the singular to mean divine instruction and revelation, but they also speak of two distinct Torot that both have their origin in divine revelation at Mount Sinai. The Torah she-bi-khetav, the Written Torah, consists of the Law of Moses as recorded in the five books of the Pentateuch, the first part of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah she-be-al-peh, the Oral Torah, consists of the activity of explication, elaboration and interpretation of the Law, transmitted orally and first codified in the Mishnah in the Galilee around 200 CE. Two bodies of commentary and debate subsequently built on the Mishnah and related contemporary material. One corpus, redacted in Hellenistic Palestine by the end of the fourth century CE, became known as the Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud. A much larger corpus developed among the Jewish communities of Sasanian Mesopotamia, redacted at some point between c. 500 CE and c. 750 CE, and became the Babylonian Talmud.8 The dichotomy and the mutual complementarity between the Written and Oral laws are both central to Rabbinic Judaism’s self-understanding. Divine revelation at Sinai was Matan Torah, the gift of Torah. The heavenly text is therefore no longer in heaven, its proper interpretation is human work, a form of learned devotion that takes place in the ongoing, open-ended practice of study. The distinction between Written and Oral Torah is paradoxical and somewhat misleading. Firstly, it is a false dichotomy: both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud use
reprinted in George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays, 1978–1996 (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 304–327; Daniel Boyarin, A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 7 On the development of Rabbinic Judaism in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction, see e.g. Martin Goodman, A History of Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018); Naftali S. Cohen, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Simon Goldhill, The Temple of Jerusalem (London: Profile, 2005). 8 See Wimpfheimer, The Talmud: A Biography. According to Ephraim Urbach, the first explicit occurrence of the term Torah she-be-al-peh is at b. Shabbat 31a. See Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: The World and Wisdom of the Rabbis of the Talmud (Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1979, 1987), 290. See now Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE – 400 CE (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2001). On the emergence of the Babylonian Talmud, see Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Unless otherwise noted, the term Talmud in the following pages refers to the Babylonian Talmud, and the English translations are by Adin Steinsaltz.
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the term Torah in multiple additional senses.9 Secondly, the primary manifestation of the Written Law in Jewish communal life is the public recitation of the Pentateuch in the synagogue, while the primary manifestation of the Oral Law is bookish study of the Talmud in the yeshiva (Rabbinic academy). Even in the “oral” Mishnah’s brief stipulations about the writing of a scroll (in tractate Megillah), the point is to ensure a scroll is acceptable for public recitation. In much liturgical and pedagogical practice, then, one might say that the written is oral and the oral is written. By the midsixteenth century CE, the Talmud was not only set in the middle of the printed page, enclosed by medieval commentaries; that page had in a sense become the Talmud, the hermeneutic center of Rabbinic literature and a visual symbol of unbroken study of the Law, indeed of Jewish diasporic life itself.10 The process of the Oral Law’s commitment to writing remains a topic of heated scholarly debate, but ever since, the distinction between Torah she-bi-khetav and Torah she-be-al-peh is largely rhetorical: both are written texts inscribed (manually or mechanically) on units of a writing support (skin or paper). The spatial and material limitations of those units have forced scribes and editors to organize those texts by methods that have long histories of their own: methods on which the Rabbis built castles of commentary, and histories of which Daf Yomi is a late chapter. This essay explores several of the most fundamental ways in which Jews (and a few Christians) have organized the Hebrew Bible visually, from the earliest surviving witnesses among the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls (third century BCE) to the first printed editions of Early Modern Europe. The following pages will look, first, at ways in which ancient Jewish scribes negotiated the limitations of the sheet of parchment in a scroll. The following section looks at the stabilization and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible’s visual character in early Rabbinic literature. A third section turns to surviving medieval codices, with special attention to the transmission of older practices of layout from scroll to codex and the innovation of others. The essay ends with various ways in which editors and printers, Jewish and Christian, adopted and adapted these traditions of textual distribution in the early years of print. Two observations frame the approach that follows and explain why an essay about the Hebrew Bible began with the Talmud. First, the Written and Oral Laws are entangled. The primary subject of this essay is the set of strategies for distributing the Hebrew biblical text on the skin of a scroll or the page of a codex and some of the multiple meanings later generations will ascribe to them. But the history of those strategies and those meanings cannot be told without Rabbinic literature. Part of the
9 See Urbach, The Sages, 286–7; Michael Guttmann, “Torah in the Talmud”, in Samuel Krauss (ed.), Festschrift Adolf Schwartz (Berlin and Vienna: R. Löwit, 1917), 1–8 (Hebrew section); Saiman, Halakha. 10 Boyarin, A Travelling Homeland; Grafton, La page 28–31; Marvin Heller, “Designing the Talmud: The Origins of the Talmudic Page”, Tradition 29:3 (1995), 40–51, reprinted in idem, Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 92–105.
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halakha (legal specifications) governing a scribe’s copying of the Hebrew Bible such that a scroll is kosher (ritually acceptable) pertains to the visual arrangement of the biblical text on each of a scroll’s sheets. The Talmud and related early Rabbinic literature such as the so-called Minor Treatises and Halakhic Midrashim continue to provide indirect testimony to the (ideal) biblical text in the period for which we have no surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible itself, between the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls (second century CE) and the repository known as the Cairo Genizah (seventheighth century CE).11 Second, the history of the book has different strata – practices, materiality, technology, terminology – which do not change at the same pace. Scribal customs and aesthetic ideals persist across technologies and materialities of book production, across epochs and civilizations. Daf Yomi might be modern, but the word daf, as we shall see, is perhaps five thousand years old. The practices of book production of the Ancient Near East, the Medieval Latin West and the printing shops of Renaissance Europe all survive and persist in surprising ways. Millennia since the beginning of writing, we find ourselves “scrolling” through digital texts carried on “tablets”, moving a manicule across a screen, selecting a “font” and commanding our software to “cut” and “paste”.12 Like our abiding use of sunset, long since we know it is not the sun setting but the earth turning, we carry our old words forth, reusing them to describe the latest vessels of our ancient texts.13 It might take five thousand years, but in the history of the book the vestigial can become the vanguard.
The Earliest Surviving Manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible Until the mid-twentieth century, the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated to the turn of the second millennium CE.14 The Leningrad Codex, the oldest
11 See Elvira Martín-Contreras and Lorena Miralles-Maciá (eds.), The Text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to the Masoretes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014); Mordechai Veintrob, “More fragments of early Torah scroll come to light,” Genizah Fragments 77 (April 2019), 1–2. on the challenges of using Rabbinic literature as a historical source for the history of the Hebrew biblical text in the first millennium CE see David Stern, The Jewish Bible: A Material History (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, (2017), p. 27. 12 Joseph P. McDermott and Peter Burke (eds.), The Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe, 1450–1850 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), editors’ epilogue. On the digitization of practices of scholarly publishing in the sciences, see chapter 13. 13 George Steiner, Real Presences (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), 2. 14 One exception is the so-called Nash Papyrus. Bought by Walter Llewellyn Nash in Egypt in 1902 and presented to the Cambridge University Library the following year, the fragment contains twenty-four lines of Hebrew. Scholars now think it was probably part of a pair of tefillin, the
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surviving dated manuscript containing all the books of the Hebrew Bible and the base-text for modern critical editions including the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta, and the Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia, was completed in 1009 CE.15 The Aleppo Codex, the base-text for several editions produced at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, dates to the mid-tenth century CE.16 For centuries after scholars in Early Modern Europe began trying to ascertain the age of manuscripts, a historically vast (and theologically troubling) distance stretched between the antiquity of the Hebrew Bible and the relative youth of its oldest known surviving material witnesses.17 This situation changed radically in the late 1940s and 1950s with the discovery of fragmentary manuscripts hidden in caves in the Judaean Desert. Known collectively as the Dead Sea Scrolls, these manuscripts dated from the third century BCE to the second century CE and included texts of all books of the Hebrew Bible with the exception of Esther. Astonishingly, the scrolls were more than a millennium older than the oldest Hebrew biblical manuscripts known hitherto, illuminating the shape and character of the Hebrew scriptures at the time of the Jewish Revolt against Rome and the beginnings of what would become Christianity.18 While the present focus is on the Hebrew Bible, it should be noted that the Dead Sea corpus contains both biblical and non-biblical texts, and that besides Hebrew they also include Aramaic, Greek and Latin texts. The distinction between biblical and non-biblical manuscripts, moreover, is somewhat anachronistic, given phylacteries observant Jews tie to their heads and arms in weekday morning prayer. First thought to date to the third century CE, scholars now believe it to be as old as the second century BCE. 15 Russian National Library, St Petersburg, Firkovitch Ms Hebrew I B19a; David Noel Freedman (general editor), The Leningrad codex: a facsimile edition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans/ Leiden: Brill, 1998). 16 See Geoffrey Khan, A Short Introduction to the Tiberian Masoretic Bible and its Reading Tradition. Second edition (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013), 8–11. Yosef Ofer, The Masora on Scripture and its Methods (Berlin: DeGruyter 2019), 131–149, 209–218. The oldest known dated manuscript of the Hebrew Bible is a codex of the Hagiographa copied in present-day Iran in 902 CE found in the Cairo Geniza. See Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “The Hebrew Bible,” in Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (eds.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible, volume 2: From 600–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 19–40, at 20. 17 Scott Mandelbrote, “The Old Testament and its ancient versions in manuscript and print in the West, from c. 1480 to c. 1780,” in Euan Cameron (ed.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible, volume 3: from 1450 to 1750 (2016), 82–109. 18 For orientation, see John J. Collins and Timothy H. Lim (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Armin Lange, Kristin De Troyer, Shani Tzoref, Nora David (eds.), The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) and the website of the Orion Centre of the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated literature (orion.mscc.huji.ac.il). Several digital resources allow for research of this large corpus: the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (www.deadseascrolls.org.il), and Brill’s Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library Biblical Texts (referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/dead-seascrolls-electronic-library-biblical-texts).
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that the Rabbinic canonization of Hebrew scriptures only took place towards the end of the period in which the scrolls are written, well into the Common Era.19 Several aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls speak to the ways their scribes organized the biblical text visually: the choice of script (square Aramaic or paleo-Hebrew, or a combination), the ruling of parchment for the creation of text-blocks and the extent of a scribe’s adherence to it, the size and proportion of the margins, the deployment of blank spaces between words and passages, stichography, the incorporation of corrections, variant sizes of letters and the writing of the Tetragrammaton (the fourletter divine name).20 The texts discovered in the Judean Desert are primarily written on scrolls of papyrus and parchment, and the vast majority on one side only (in the case of parchment, commonly on the hair-side).21 The biblical texts are nearly all written on parchment, made from goat, sheep, calf, gazelle or ibex. Since the size of an animal determined the size of a sheet of parchment, variations among individuals of a species meant that no two skins were identical in size. Once stretched, dried, smoothed and tanned, the preparation of the hides for writing involved cutting them into a rectangular shape and then ruling them, a custom attested across the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East, in Greek, Aramaic, Egyptian, Demotic, and Etruscan documents.22 This practice of ruling prepared skins was arguably the most fundamental form of the scrolls’ visual organization of the Hebrew biblical text, a basic shape that will persist for millennia, from scroll to codex and from manuscript to print. Instead of filling the available space by writing across the full width of a writing support, as attested in contemporary inscribed steles, ruling created a set of parallel rectangular blocks or columns on a single material unit. This practice is not self-evident and probably reflects older precedents. But which? Sumerian tablets in cuneiform script, dating back before 3,000 BCE, provide one possible origin. In the second half of the third millennium BCE, the rectangular shape of clay tablets became dominant, and earlier cuneiform writing in columns divided into cells gave way to linear right-to-left writing across a tablet or in
19 S. Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976 and 1991); T. H. Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). 20 The observations in this section are largely taken from Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). 21 On the minority of opisthographs (texts written on both sides of their material carrier), see Tov, Scribal Practices, 68–73. 22 For comparable ancient Mediterranean practices of preparing parchment and papyrus for writing, see chapter 1. On the formation of the Hebrew Bible in light Ancient Near Eastern book culture, see Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
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columns.23 The rectangular shape of such tablets, used across multiple languages and cultures of the Ancient Near East like cuneiform script itself, determined the shape of the area of inscribed text. There is linguistic support for a historical relationship between rectangular text-blocks on tablets and later on scrolls. The Hebrew term daf, which meant a column of text in a scroll before it also came to mean a page of a codex, derives from the Akkadian (i.e. Babylonian and Assyrian) tuppu (often, under the influence of the word’s form in Hebrew/Aramaic, cited as ṭuppu).24 The primary meaning of ṭuppu is “(inscribed) tablet (of clay, rarely of other materials)”, but it comes to mean both “board, flat surface” and “inscription”. Its semantic range includes both the material bearer of text and the text it), self. The Akkadian term, in turn, is a loanword from Sumerian dub ( 25 “tablet”. Such borrowing from the Sumerian by the ancient Semitic language of Akkadian represents a small step in the vast process by which, in the course of the Bronze Age, the Akkadian-speaking world conquered Sumer, adopting and absorbing its pantheon, its language and (critical here) its scribal practices, long after Sumerian ceased to be a spoken language.26 This deep etymology, in which the name for the material carrier of text becomes a description of the text itself, suggests the possibility that the scribal practice of organizing text in rectangular blocks carried over from clay to skin. Dub-ṭuppu-daf represents even more than a chain of loanwords, for the terms in question describe the very media through which much of that transmission took place. Sumerian civilization developed the cuneiform script in Mesopotamia in the latter half of the 4th millennium BCE, when dub is first attested: the Hebrew word daf, with which this essay began, might well derive from the world’s oldest word for text.27
23 Dominique Charpin, Reading and Writing in Babylon (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), 7 and 76. 24 Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: Carta/ [Haifa] University of Haifa, 1987), 128. 25 Martha T. Roth (ed.), The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. 19 (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2006), 129–148 (full entry), at 129; Jeremy A. Black, A. R. George, J. N. Postgate, Tina Breckwoldt (eds.), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000), 415; The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (http://psd.museum. upenn.edu/). Jean-Jacques Glassner, The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 117–18, argues for the simultaneous invention of the sign dub and the clay tablet itself. I am indebted to Martin Worthington, Rients de Boer, Aaron Tugendhaft and Nicholas Postgate for advice on Akkadian and Sumerian. 26 See Charpin, Reading and Writing in Babylon, and Aaron Tugendhaft, “Gods on clay: Ancient Near Eastern scholarly practices and the history of religions,” in Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most, Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 164–182. 27 For a related etymology (Sumerian dub-sar/Akkadian ṭupšarru [“scribe”], Hebrew tafsar [“officer”], at Jeremiah 51:26), see Aaron D. Rubin, “Sumerian Loanwords”, in Geoffrey Khan
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An additional precedent and possible origin for the practice of columnar ruling on parchment comes from wood rather than clay. The thirty-sixth chapter of Jeremiah contains the Hebrew Bible’s most detailed description of a material book. Attempting to interpret the hapax legomenon ( דלתdelet, commonly meaning “door”) in the sense of a column of text on a scroll (Jeremiah 36:23, perhaps also Proverbs 8:34), scholars have pointed to wooden tablets in use throughout the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean.28 Archaeological discoveries from Iraq to Greece have offered material confirmation for the widespread use of wooden writing tablets, covered with beeswax and hinged together into diptychs, triptychs or polyptychs, attested throughout literary sources.29 Based in part on an orthostat (c. 730 BCE) from Sam’al now in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, portraying a scribe holding rectangular writing material before king Barrakib, the Biblicist R. Lansing Hicks argued that “delet was the appropriate technical term at Jer. xxxvi 23 because a column of writing resembled in shape a single writing tablet and a written scroll looked like a hinged, multi-leaved writing board when extended.”30 The Septuagint, likely under influence of the papyrus-based book culture of Ptolemaic Egypt, translated delet in this passage with σελίς (selis), a column in a papyrus scroll.31 The archaeologist William Foxwell Albright, however, enigmatically citing “a scholar whose name I cannot recall”, connected delet in this sense with δέλτος (deltos), a Phoenician loan-word in Greek meaning “writing-tablet” and attested throughout classical Greek literature.32 The commonality of the cognates delet-deltos pertains not to materiality of text (skin/wood) but to its shape, that is, to the visual kinship between parallel columns in the scroll of the scribe Baruch ben Neriah that King Jehoiakim cuts up and throws in the fire (in Jeremiah 36) and, say, the hinged tablets of the letter Agamemnon writes to Clytemnestra to lure their daughter to be sacrificed (Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis 98).
(ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics (Leiden: Brill, 2013), and Paul Mankowski, “Akkadian Loanwords,” in idem. 28 J. P. Hyatt, “The Writing of an Old Testament Book”, first published in 1943 and reprinted in G. E. Wright and D.N. Freedman (eds.), The Biblical Archaeologist Reader (1961), 22–31, cited in Tov, Scribal Practices, 82, n. 130; R. Lansing Hicks “delet and megillāh: A Fresh Approach to Jeremiah XXXVI”, Vetus Testamentum 33:1 (1983), 46–66. 29 For the use of tablets in the Greco-Roman world, see Antonia Sarri, Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World c. 500 BC – c. AD 300 (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2017); for their use in the Ancient Near East, see Béatrice André-Salvini, “Les tablettes du monde cunéiforme”, in Élisabeth Lalou (ed.), Les tablettes à écrire, de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 15–33; Charpin, Reading and Writing in Babylon. 30 Lansing Hicks, “delet and megillāh”, 51. 31 See chapter 1. 32 William F. Albright, “Some Comments on the ʽAmmân Citadel Inscription,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 198 (1970), 38–40.
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Whether its origin be clay, wood or both, it does not seem unreasonable to posit a measure of continuity here between earlier glyptic practices and the scribal culture of Ancient Israel. Comparison of the Dead Sea scrolls with earlier Near Eastern epigraphic discoveries has shown a range of scribal practices and symbols that cross materialities, scripts and languages, such as division markers between words in lapidary inscriptions and in Judaean scrolls written in paleo-Hebrew script. And the Hebrew Bible itself has an internal record of lapidary writing preceding the writing of scrolls (the two “tablets of stone, written with the finger of God” at Exodus 31:18; the commandment to inscribe the Law of Moses on plastered rock in Deuteronomy 27:1–4 and its fulfilment in Joshua 8:30–35). A series of parallel, uniform columns creates a geometrical sight that reproduces on skin the impression of a set of the kind of wooden writing tablets attested across the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, one that scribes, commissioners and others seem to have found both practical and aesthetically pleasing. There is strong evidence for a predilection for geometric columnar uniformity in the biblical scrolls from the Judaean Desert. Based on statistical analysis of the entire corpus, Emanuel Tov observed a basic correlation: “the higher the column, the wider the lines, and the longer the scroll.”33 And in scrolls whose combination of qualities have led scholars to classify them as “deluxe” scrolls, the columns are conspicuous for their uniformity, the clarity of their boundaries, and their flush margins. If columns are visual vestiges of rectangular clay or wooden tablets, their transposition to parchment created a new by-product: blank space, between columns and in margins above and below. In turn, these uninscribed stretches of skin could take on new significance. Blank margins made it possible to touch the scroll without touching the sacred text itself, dividing each skin into areas of varying sanctity. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls there are biblical texts with larger bottom than upper margins, suggesting additional space for hands to touch.34 And it seems that the proportional consistency of blank margins outweighed the consistency of columnwidth. For instance, the final column of the Qumran Isaiah scroll is wider than its predecessors, Tov argued, “to fill out the uninscribed area.” He notes: “It appears that the persons who prepared the leather had a more or less fixed concept regarding the sizes of margins and that they determined the number of columns and lines [per column] according to the space that was left after the margins were taken into consideration.”35 Blank margins seem to have determined the dimensions of textual columns rather than vice versa. Horizontal and vertical rulings provided scribes with a template for columns, usually three or four per skin (the very number at Jeremiah 36:23). The discovery
33 Tov, Scribal Practices, 82. 34 Ibid. 35 Tov, Scribal Practices, 87.
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among the Judean scrolls of ruled but uninscribed skins used instead for attaching a handle to a scroll shows that (at least some) ruling occurred independently from the writing. A scribe did not need to obey pre-ruled column margins. Ruled but uninscribed upper margins attested in the Judaean scrolls show that scribes could select a margin-height different from the pre-ruled column, or used parchment prepared for a longer text to copy a shorter one. The only book of the Hebrew Bible to have survived practically complete among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the scroll of Isaiah found in the first cave at Qumran, is written on 54 columns across 17 skins. These skins are of equal height but varying width (rolled out, the scroll would have stretched for 7.5 meters). This distribution strongly suggests that “the scribe or manufacturer must have made an effort to align the rulings on the different sheets in order to achieve a uniform appearance throughout the scroll”.36 During the Second Temple Period, visual considerations regarding the layout of text came into play before the writing of a scroll began. Scribes likely calculated the approximate length of a text in order to estimate the number of skins required. At the same time, as Tov notes, “the calculation of the number of sheets needed [. . .] could never be precise, as evidenced by the ruled column often left uninscribed following the final inscribed column of a sheet.”37 It was better to have slightly too much writing material than too little – it still is. Ruled columns delimited a separate writing field, but that field needed not to be completely filled with text. Within columns, scribes introduced spaces that indicated – and visually created – section breaks similar to the kinds that later Rabbinic literature will call parashiyyot setumot and petuḥot (closed and open paragraphs). In closed (sg. setumah) breaks, inserted between shorter sections, the scribe leaves an open space in the middle of a line; in open (sg. petuḥah) breaks between larger sections, the scribe leaves the rest of a line blank, and begins the new section on a new line. Alternately, when the section ends on or near the end of the line, the scribe would either leave a line open, or leave an open space indented at the beginning of the following line. In certain cases, to indicate major breaks, a scribe left both the remainder of the line and either the entire next line or an indentation open.38 When a scroll contained more than one biblical book, the scribe indicated the break by leaving several lines unwritten.39 In a few cases, scribes of the Judaean Desert scrolls indicated a new section by using red ink instead of black, a practice attested in South Asian manuscript cultures as well as in the Medieval Latin West, where it gave rise to the term
36 Tov, Scribal Practices, 37. See also Colette Sirat, “La Bible hébraïque: le rouleau d’Isaïe,” in Henri-Jean Martin and Jean Vezin (eds.), Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit (Paris: Promidis, 1990), 57–59. 37 Tov, Scribal Practices, 36. 38 See Josef M. Oesch, Petucha und Setuma (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979). 39 Tov, Scribal Practices, 165–66.
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rubric.40 Such section breaks also provide additional evidence for the above-noted predilection for geometric uniformity. For instance, scribes of Judaean Desert biblical texts sought to avoid so-called “widow lines,” when the final line of a section is written as the first line of a new column.41 There are external, book-historical precedents for such spaces. While we do not have manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible predating the third century BCE, the use of spacing as section division is attested in first-millennium lapidary texts and clay tablets (such as those writings of the Code of Hammurabi and the Mesha Stele) as well as in Aramaic papyri from Elephantine (fifth-century BCE).42 In many cases, there is also strong internal-textual motivation for section breaks, such as lists of names or laws, or the introduction of divine speech.43 In other cases, the interruption of narrative by a spatial break can be a question of interpretation. There, scribal manipulation of blank spaces within the columns constitutes one of the most ancient forms of biblical exegesis.44 Variations between different surviving fragments of the same biblical passage show that section breaks were not stable or consistently employed; they seem to have been ad hoc decisions by individual scribes. Scribes faced the constraints of their parchment’s rulings, especially if the pre-ruled columnar width of the skin to be inscribed differed from that in their Vorlage. Yet in the case of margins and of section breaks, they exercised a substantial measure of freedom in their control and manipulation, not of text, but of empty space.
The Sages and the Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls revealed ancient antecedents for nearly all scribal practices discussed in early Rabbinic literature, demonstrating that the sages had not invented them. The scrolls have allowed scholars to reconstruct numerous ways the Rabbis interpreted, stabilized, and regulated those ancient scribal practices. This process in the development of the text of the Hebrew Bible and of the halakhah governing its copying might best be described as one of standardization, legalization, and sacralization. Early Rabbinic literature contains several discussions of the visual distribution of the sacred text on Torah scrolls. These discussions are found in brief passages across the vast corpus of the Babylonian Talmud (e.g. Menaḥot 29b-32b, Megillah 40 For the use of red ink for rubrics in Sanskrit and early Hindi texts otherwise written in black, see chapter 5. Latin rubrica (red earth, used for coloring) came to mean “the title of a law” (in Justinian’s Digest), because scribes wrote titles in red. 41 Tov, Scribal Practices, 143. 42 Tov, Scribal Practices, 155. 43 Tov, Scribal Practices, 157. 44 On the use of blank space in ancient Greek papyrus scrolls as a form of paratext, see chapter 1.
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8b-9a, 24b-27a, 92a, Shabbat 103a-105a and Baba Bathra 13b-14b), and in the Halakhic Midrashim, such as Sifra and Sifre, as well as a more condensed treatment in the Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 1.71b-72a). In addition, two of the so-called Minor Treatises of the Talmud represent the earliest attempts to codify scribal custom into Law, Massekhet Sefer Torah, probably dating to Mishnaic times, and the post-Talmudic Massekhet Sofrim, compiled in the 8th or 9th century CE, which incorporated and expanded Massekhet Sefer Torah.45 In a recent attempt to write a historically panoramic study of the Hebrew Bible as a material text, David Stern noted the Rabbis’ increasing use of the expression halakha le-moshe mi-sinai (“a law given to Moses at Sinai”) to qualify the extrabiblical legal stipulations for the copying of a Torah scroll. By reading [scribal laws] back to the Sinaitic revelation, the assignation effectively made the material scroll as primordial as its contents (and eliminated any possibility of understanding its material form as a product of historical development). At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, by saying that all these scribal laws were transmitted orally to Moses at Sinai as part of the oral Torah, the attribution also made the written Torah in its material shape a product of the orally transmitted tradition. It thus confirmed the symbiotic complementarity of the two revelations [the Written and Oral Torah].46
Among the rabbis’ main visual concerns is the practice of ruling (sirtut) for columnar inscription. So the Talmud (b. Menaḥot 32b) notes of a mezuzah (the small scroll of scripture affixed to doorposts), “the ruling of a mezuzah is halakha to Moses at Sinai.” And tractate Soferim (I:1) gives it the full status of Sinaitic revelation: “It is also an oral prescription [halakha] delivered to Moses at Sinai that [the parchment of the Torah scroll] shall be ruled with a reed.”47 Along with ruling, the Talmud turns the dimensions, proportions and distribution of columns into law. Our Rabbis taught: a man should use sheets [of parchment] which contain from three to eight columns; he should not use one which contains less columns or more. And he should not put in too many columns for it would look like an epistle, nor too few columns, for the eyes would wander. But [the width of the column should equal] the word lemishpeḥoteikhem [the longest word in the Pentateuch] written three times [i.e. thirty Hebrew letters].48
Soferim (II:6) then codifies it: “A sheet of a Torah scroll must contain not less than three columns and not more than eight.” In part, the Rabbis argue from the practical exigencies of public, liturgical reading of the Torah scroll. So Soferim (II:8): “the 45 See the edition by Michael Higger (1937). English translations by Israel W. Slotki of both Tractate Sefer Torah and Tractate Soferim are included in A. Cohen (ed.), The Minor Tractates of the Talmud (London: the Soncino Press, 1965, 1971), vol. 2, 631–645 and vol. 1, 211–324 respectively. See also Debra Reed Blank, “It’s Time to Take Another Look at ‘Our Little Sister’ Soferim: A Bibliographical Essay”, The Jewish Quarterly Review 90:1–2 (1999), 1–26. 46 Stern, The Jewish Bible, 32. Italics in the original. 47 The Minor Tractates of the Talmud, vol. 1, 211. 48 b. Menaḥot 30a; see parallel passages in y. Meg. 1.71c-d.
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width of a column [in a Torah scroll] must be such as to be recognizable at one glance, and in a small scroll not less than a handbreadth. R. Jose b. Judah says: It must not be less than the width of three fingers.”49 Elsewhere, the stipulations take the form of geometrical proportion, making explicit the above-noted predilections attested in ancient Judaean scrolls. Soferim II:9: “Half the length [of a column] must not be greater than its width, nor its width greater than half its length, but they must be exactly alike, and this is the most correct procedure.” The size and proportions of blank margins likewise become a topic for legal caution regarding the sanctity of the material text, in each case with greatest measure pertaining to the Pentateuch. So Soferim (II:4): In a Torah scroll the space of two finger-breadths must be left between columns but in scrolls of the Prophets and ordinary Pentateuchs a space of one thumb-breadth only. In the lower margin of a Torah scroll the space of a handbreadth is left, and in the upper margin three finger-breadths; but in scrolls of the Prophets and ordinary Pentateuchs three finger-breadths in the lower margin and two finger-breadths in the upper. In all these cases, if it is desired to extend [the margins] this may be done, provided they do not exceed [the space of] the written matter. Between the books in a Torah scroll a vacant space of four lines must be left, and in a scroll of the Prophets three lines.
Just as the blank space in the upper, lower, and inter-columnar margins is specified, so the Rabbis turn the blank spaces between words and passages into law: “Between each line there must be the space of a line, between each word the width of a letter, and between each letter a hairbreadth” (b. Menaḥot 30b). Soferim (II:1–2) repeats these stipulations, adding that spaces between letters too wide or not wide enough make a scroll unfit for public reading. Each of these cases systematizes, legalizes and sacralizes scribal practices attested inconsistently in the scrolls of the Judaean Desert. In the case of the above-noted open and closed section breaks (parashiyot setumot and parashiyot petuḥot), Rabbinic regulation pertains to the general practice, not the codification of specific breaks. As Tov’s analysis of the full corpus revealed, “Qumran manuscripts were usually subdivided into more clearly demarcated units than the Masoretic manuscripts. They often have open sections where [the earliest surviving medieval codices] have closed ones, and section divisions were often inserted where [the earliest surviving medieval codices] have none.”50 The Talmud notes: “An open section may not be written closed nor a closed section open” (b. Shabbat 103b) and Soferim expands: “If an open section was written as closed or a closed section as open, the scroll must be stored away.” But neither provides an inventory of passages where open and closed breaks should occur, or why. 49 Such requirements show that the conclusions to chapter 1, regarding the dominant role of psychological and social aspects of reading in determining the form of the book in Greco-Latin tradition, is valid for the history of the ancient Hebrew book as well. 50 Tov, Scribal Practices, 149.
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In a word play typical of early Rabbinic literature, the Halakhic Midrash Sifre (4th century CE) on Deuteronomy interprets the commandment ‘ וכתבתםukhetavtam’ (“and you shall write them,” Deuteronomy 6:9) as two words “( וכתב תםukhetav tam”), “distinct writing,” ironically arguing for strict clarity of spacing by reading a space separating a single word in two where there is none. The insertion of open and closed sections here is part of a set of instructions for clarity and consistency: Hence the Sages said: If one writes ‘ayins in place of alefs; or alefs in place of ‘ayins, kafs in place of bets, bets in place of kafs, sades in place of gimels, gimels in place of sades, reshs in place of dalets, dalets in place of reshs, ḥets in place of hes or hes in place of ḥets, yods in place of waws, waws in place of yods, nuns in place of zayins, zayins in place of nuns, pes in place of tets, tets in place of pes, straight letters in place of bent ones, bent ones in place of straight ones, sameks in place of mems, mems in place of sameks, open letters in place of closed ones, closed ones in place of open ones, if one writes a closed section open or an open one closed; if one writes without ink or writes the Song [i.e. the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15] the same as the rest of the text [i.e. like prose], or writes the Divine Names in gold, in all these cases the scrolls must be hidden away.51
The commandment to dispose of ritually unacceptable scrolls presumably speaks to the occurrence of such scrolls and to the rabbis’ awareness of textual stabilization as an on-going process. The Halakhic Midrash Sifra to Leviticus (1:9) offers a different account of the origin of the visual section breaks in the biblical text: “And what was the purpose of the section breaks? To give Moses time for reflection between each section.”52 While maintaining a divine origin for the Torah’s visual arrangement, the Midrash acknowledges Moses’s all too human need to pause for comprehension. Among the visually conspicuous practices attested inconsistently among the scrolls that became part of the Hebrew biblical text as it emerges from the Rabbinic era (as the passage from Sifre above attests), is the stichographic writing of particular passages, including poetical books Psalms, Job, Lamentations, Proverbs, as well as particular passages of other books, such as the Song of the Sea (in Exodus 15), the Song of Moses (in Deuteronomy 32), the Song of Deborah (Judges 15), the list of Canaanite Kings (in Joshua 12:19), and the list of the sons of the evil Haman (Esther 9:7–9).53 The Talmud describes two particular forms of layout for verse: (1) ariaḥ ‘al gabei leveinah (“half-brick upon brick”), where a line of text is interrupted by a blank space in the center followed by a line of text with blank space at each end, and (2) ariaḥ ‘al gabei
51 Sifre Deuteronomy 36.1. See Reuven Hammer (transl.), Sifre. A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 67–68. Cf. b. Shabbat 103b. 52 Sifra 1:9, translation by Shraga Silverstein. 53 The term stichography for the visual presentation of Hebrew biblical poetry comes from Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry. As an indication of the inconsistency of this practice in antiquity, Tov notes that for each biblical text found written in stichography there is another fragment of it not written that way. See Tov, Scribal Practices, 166–178.
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ariaḥ (“brick upon brick”), in which texts shorter than a line (a few words at most) are written one directly below the other.54 The origin of these brickwork spacings is unknown, but the Rabbis read them as strategies of impagination that visually sealed the victories that their narratives recount. “What is the reason for this?” the Talmud asks of the brick-stacked-upon-brick layout in Joshua and Esther, before answering “so that they [Israel’s enemies] should never rise from their downfall.” Single columns make shaky buildings (so Soferim 13:3): the Canaanite Kings vanquished by Joshua and the sons of Haman killed at the end of Esther should never rise from the downfall represented by the visual layout of their names on the scroll, while the half-brick-upon brick layout of the song sung by Moses and the children of Israel upon leaving Egypt through the parted sea creates the impression of a firm, insurmountable wall. The Exodus itself culminates in the final verse of the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:19): “For the horses of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea”. A scribal tradition arose – of unknown origin – of writing the final seven words of the verse such that the spacing places the two occurrences of the word “the sea” on either side of the words “but the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst”, a layout that visualises the parting of the sea and the Israelites’ passage through it (see e.g. the line above the blank line on the left page in Figure 2.4, which employs this layout, and the middle column in Figure 2.1, which does not): הים the sea
ובני ישראל הלכו ביבשה בתוך but the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of
הים the sea
Scholars continue to disagree about whether the origins of Hebrew biblical stichography lie in the kind of public, liturgical recitation mentioned in the Bible (cf. Nehemiah 8:8), in a lost art of ancient Jewish antiphonal recitation, or in parallelisms internal to the text itself. Did the oral/aural determine the visual? Or vice versa? Do they reflect the preference of individual scribes or transmitted scribal conventions? Two ancient Jewish witnesses writing in Greek – Philo and Josephus – would insist that Moses and David used hexameters, trimeters and pentameters to write passages attested stichographically in early medieval manuscripts, but such claims probably tell us more about their anticipated Greek and Roman readership than about any Hebrew scrolls they would have known.55 Two ancient Christian authors – Origen and Jerome – likewise believed parts of the Hebrew Bible were metrical poetry, and described them in terms of the Greek and Latin meters they knew. Reading these ancient Jewish and
54 b. Megillah 16b. 55 Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry; Steven Weitzman, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997).
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Figure 2.1: Torah Scroll in the Sephardic tradition, acquired in Aden, Yemen (14th century?).
Christian sources, post-medieval European scholars would wrestle mightily with the question of the possible metrical nature of biblical Hebrew poetry, which they set alongside ancient Greek and Latin models for the renewal of vernacular poetics.56 Today our material sources are centuries older than those of our Early Modern forebears, yet as in so many cases, the absence of evidence older than the Dead Sea scrolls leaves much unknown.
56 See Kristine Louise Haugen, “Hebrew Poetry Transformed, or, Scholarship Invincible between Renaissance and Enlightenment,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes LXXV (2012), 1–29.
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Among the Rabbinic stipulations for the copying of scrolls is the extreme limitation on the amount of permitted corrections. The Talmud tells the story (twice): Rav Judah said that Samuel said in the name of Rabbi Meir: “when I came to Rabbi Ishmael, he said to me ‘My son, what is your occupation?’ I told him, ‘I am a scribe.’ He said to me ‘be exceedingly careful, my son, for your work is the work of Heaven. If you were to omit or add one single letter, you would destroy the entire world.’”57
The Talmud also expresses such extreme care for scribal error in positive terms: R. Sheshet said: “Even if someone corrected but one letter [of a scroll of the law], he is regarded as if he had written it”.58
The prescriptions for the copying of scrolls found in Early Rabbinic literature all seek, in one way or another, to remove the kinds of variations attested in the Judean Desert scrolls and to stabilize the biblical text. Visual considerations form a central part of these attempts, such as the stipulation that only square Aramaic (so-called “ashurit”) script is to be used, where the Dead Sea Scrolls contained Hebrew Bibles not only in both square script and paleo-Hebrew script, but also combinations, such as scrolls in square script with the paleo-Hebrew script used only for the word more sacred than all others, the Tetragrammaton. Jerome, in his preface to the book of Kings, would record seeing Greek manuscripts with a paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton, attesting to the persistence of this practice in the centuries after the latest surviving Dead Sea scrolls. Of all the visual aspects of the biblical text that they discuss, about none do the Rabbis seem more concerned than visible signs and symbols of correction, many of which find parallels, or even their origin, in symbols used in the Greek text-critical practices of contemporary Alexandria, such as the lunate sigma’s that lie behind the inverted nuns that bracket Numbers 10:35–36 in medieval manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinic literature still retains opinions about the questionable place of these verses but makes no mention of the Hellenistic origin of the symbols that led to our own parentheses (see Soferim 6:1). The Rabbis did not entirely reject ancient scribal signs and symbols of correction such as dotted or suspended letters. Instead, in the process of stabilization a heavily reduced number of such signs became an intrinsic part of the transmitted text, no longer in the service of ad hoc correction, but open to non-textual interpretation. The actual Alexandrian origin of the text-critical symbols in the Hebrew Bible would only be rediscovered in the twentieth century by Saul Lieberman. In classical Rabbinic literature meanwhile, they became the subject for expansive exegesis.59
57 b. Sotah 20a; see also b. Eruvin 13a. In both passages the term for scribe is lavlar, a Rabbinic Hebrew loanword from Greek λιβλάριος or Latin librarius. 58 b. Menaḥot 30a. 59 See Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York City: Jewish Theological Seminary of America 1950, second, improved edition 5722–1962), 38–43. Scholars continue to explore ways in
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The large number of letters of variant sizes among the Dead Sea Scrolls likewise significantly decreases in the course of the first centuries of the Common Era. Nonetheless, a certain number survive in the text as it emerges in the oldest surviving codices. Often, the circumstances that occasioned such variations in letter size remain unclear. The cause of an imperfect letter can be as innocent as cracked skin or chipped ink.60 While countless such blemishes will have disappeared as the text stabilized in the post-Temple period, a few such imperfect letters, such as the interrupted or broken vav in shalom (at Numbers 25:12) were copied as such and became part of the transmitted text, only to be incorporated by the Rabbis into legal argument and exegetical commentary. In a discussion of the retroactive validity of the service of a blemished priest: Rav Yehuda says that Shmuel says: As the verse states with regard to Pinḥas: “Wherefore say: Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace [shalom]” (Numbers 25:12), which means that he receives the covenant when he is whole [shalem], but not when he is blemished and lacking a limb. But shalom is written, rather than shalem. Rav Naḥman says: The letter vav in the word shalom is severed. According to tradition, this letter is written with a break in it, and therefore the word can be read as though the vav were missing.61
In this way, Rabbis transformed a transmitted accidental imperfection into a meaningful scribal tradition that illuminates the divine design of the law itself. Other cases are darker, chillingly triumphalist. The Talmud reports that the first letter (vav) of the name Vaizatha, the last of Haman’s sons in the above-noted list, is lengthened. There is no ancient textual evidence for the origin of this lengthened letter – the discoveries in the Judean Desert did not include any fragments of Esther. It might well have been an accidental scribal idiosyncrasy in manuscripts transmitted into the Rabbinic era. To the Rabbis it offered another occasion for strikingly visual exegesis: Rabbi Yoḥanan said: the letter vav in the name “Vaizatha” is a lengthened vav and must be elongated as a pole, like a steering oar of a ship. What is the reason for this? To indicate that they [the sons of Haman] were all hanged on one pole.62
One way to understand such exegetical transformation of human contingency into divine intention, internal to the Rabbinic tradition, is as an expression of what James Kugel called the Hebrew Bible’s ‘omnisignificance’: the conviction, pervasive
which Alexandrian critical practices shaped Jewish scholarship and textual production in the Hellenistic era. See Maren Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Pieter B. Hartog, Pesher and Hypomnema: A Comparison of Two Commentary Traditions from the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 60 Tov, Scribal Practices, 217. 61 b. Kiddushin 66b. The difference between shalom and shalem is one letter vav. 62 b. Megillah 16b. Cf Soferim 13:7: “R. Ze’ira said: The vav of Vaizatha must project like a boatpole on the river Libruth.”
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in Rabbinic literature, that every single detail of the biblical text is both meaningful and intelligible, that nothing in it is there by chance.63 A different, complementary approach is external and social, explaining visual changes to the text as reactions to religious competition in Roman Palestine. Late-antique and early medieval Jewish interpretations of ancient scribal practices might then also reflect, at least in part, self-conscious attempts to make the material and visual biblical text as transmitted in Jewish tradition conspicuously distinct from versions of the same books copied by other contemporary groups for whom those books were sacred, too. So Emanuel Tov has suggested that the Mishnah’s explicit stipulation that the only valid reading of the scroll of Esther (and by extension the Pentateuch) was from parchment as opposed to papyrus (Megillah 2:2) might well have been an antiChristian gesture.64 And David Stern has argued that the permission to use exclusively square Aramaic script reflects the Rabbinic movement’s determination to separate itself from the Samaritan community whose scribes copied their Pentateuchal scrolls in paleo-Hebrew script.65 Whatever their motivation, these requirements helped transform the scroll into a sacred artefact, reflecting the transferral of sanctity from the destroyed Jerusalem Temple to the Torah and its study. In this process, ideological and aesthetic motivations intertwined. As Stern notes, “Visible corrections marred the beauty of the scroll as well as raising suspicions that the text had been tampered with. The rabbis wished to avoid any possible indication that the Torah was less than perfect, materially or textually [. . .] All these tendencies – the canonization of permissible scribal techniques, the reinterpretation of anomalous paratextual features so as to make them meaningful, and the aestheticizing of the Torah scroll into a perfect artefact – were aspects of the rabbis’ overall project to turn the Torah scroll into a holy object.”66 Colette Sirat has argued that the regulation of scribal custom, including the visual layout of the text, and the canonization of Jewish scripture should be considered as closely related parts of one overall movement towards the sacralization of the material text and its visual character.67
63 See James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 104–8. For a recent elaboration, see Yaakov Elman, “Striving for Meaning: A Short History of Rabbinic Omnisignificance,” in Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang (eds.), World Philology (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2015), 63–91. 64 Tov, Scribal Practices, 32. Soferim (1:1) specifies exclusively parchment of ritually pure animals. 65 Stern, The Jewish Bible, 23. See also Giancarlo Lacerenza, “Osservazioni sul cambio di scrittura nell’Israele Antico,” in Raffaella Pierobon Benoit (ed.), Avventure della scrittura. Documenti dal Mediterraneo Orientale antico (Naples: Centre Jean Bérard, 2018), 141–153. 66 Stern, The Jewish Bible, 31. See the lengthy disagreements of permissible and impermissible ways of correcting errors pertaining to the Divine Name (b. Menachot 30b). 67 Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, edited and translated by Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002/2008), 19–26. See also Jean-Christophe Attias, Les Juifs et la Bible (Paris: Fayard, 2012).
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This long process of the Written Torah’s textual stabilization and material sanctification also required a drastic intervention in oral culture that foregrounded the visual written text. To Martin Jaffee, the emergence of the very concept Torah she be’al peh signals Rabbinic Judaism’s self-consciousness as an oral culture, as its own orality becomes an object of reflection within Rabbinic literature in ways that eventually affect its codified and written forms, too.68 Rabbinic prohibitions such as that against copying a scroll from memory69 and against its copying by one who cannot read70 may seem paradoxical: an oral tradition’s proscription of orality. But one can also read them both as a corollary to Jaffee’s thesis and a confirmation of Michael Fishbane’s assertion that the emergence of the notion of a singular Written Torah from an “anthology of materials spanning a millennium” was result of the transformative event of the closure of the Hebrew biblical canon.71 The emergence of the very notion of the Oral Torah required an insistence on the writtenness of the Written Torah.
Medieval Codices Jews adopted the codex only after Christians and Muslims had done so. By the time they did, probably in the eight century CE, the Torah scroll had come to occupy a central role in Jewish worship and law. Its properties were no longer merely scribal custom, they were halakha le-moshe mi-sinai, commandments with the force of revelation. The scroll could not be abandoned. And so when Jews adopted the codex, they did so alongside the scroll, not instead of it. In subsequent centuries the codex and the scroll came to exist in a dynamic relationship unknown in the neighboring Islamic and Christian book cultures from which Jewish scribes would otherwise draw deeply for inspiration and example.72 By the end of the first millennium CE, the written Torah existed in two distinct forms: one old and venerable, its copying meticulously governed and restricted by an elaborate set of laws, the other new, unchartered and unburdened by precedent.
68 See Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE-400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 69 b. Megillah 18b: “It is prohibited to write even a single letter of the Bible when not copying from a written text”. 70 Soferim (1:12): “No one is allowed to write [a scroll of Torah] unless one is able to read.” 71 Michael Fishbane, “Midrash and the Meaning of Scripture,” in Michael Fishbane and Joanna Weinberg (eds.), Midrash Unbound (Oxford and Portland, OR: The Littman Library, 2013), 15–16. 72 The medieval Hebrew word for codex, ( מצחףmitsḥaf), is a loanword from Arabic مصحف (musḥaf). On the Jewish adoption of the codex and the earliest, eight-century, documentary evidence for it, see Olszowy-Schlanger, “The Hebrew Bible,” 25–28; Stern, The Jewish Bible, 66–68; Attias, Les Juifs et la Bible.
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The codex permitted the institution of a wide range of textual and scribal innovations that halakha proscribed from being introduced into the scroll: vowel points, accents and cantillation marks, various kinds of critical apparatus, parallel columns with a Targum (Aramaic paraphrase of the biblical text), blocks of commentary surrounding the biblical text as well as colophons, artistic decoration and illumination.73 In the period from c. 900 CE to c. 1500 CE the page of the codex became the locus of immense scribal and artistic creativity. It is there, rather than the scroll, where Jewish scribes found creative freedom to experiment with different strategies for textual layout, to adopt and adapt scribal and artistic practices from surrounding cultures, and to introduce scribal innovations of their own. The period in which Jews adopted the codex saw the development of several distinct paratextual phenomena absent from the scrolls: systems of diacritics (scrolls were written with consonants only, and continue to be so written today), and the Masorah, a text-critical apparatus that emerged in three distinct schools (Babylonian, Palestinian and Tiberian). Driven to record oral reading traditions and to safeguard the biblical text itself from scribal error, so-called Masoretes incorporated vowel points, accents and cantillation marks into the text and composed a vast set of text-critical notes, commonly called “the Masorah” (from the Hebrew word for transmission), though there was no single stable collection. The Masorah records variants in the text, such as between the written consonantal text and a reading tradition, and all manner of textual peculiarities, such has hapax legomena, rare locutions, occurrences of the same word with variant vocalization, numerous different combinations of letters and words. It also includes lists of scribal corrections, known as tikkunei soferim, “corrections of the scribes” and itturei sofrim, “deletions by the scribes,” which standardized and limited a corpus of acceptable corrections in a way that left the process of correction visible.74 Some of these practices predated the Masoretes. The Talmud (b. Kiddushin 30a) records the practice (of unknown origin) of counting words and letters in the Torah, identifying the middle words and letters of biblical books and deriving the Hebrew word sofer (scribe) from the verb to count. But the Masoretes went far beyond such practices, compiling their notes into separate treatises and developing sophisticated ways to inscribe them into the page of the codex, in an intercolumnar shorthand apparatus (the so-called small Masorah) and in longer form in the upper and lower margins (the so-called large Masorah). In this way, they created a new visual form of the Hebrew Bible: the Masoretic Codex. Along with liturgical Bibles (containing the Pentateuch, prophetic readings, the five “scrolls” read on certain Jewish holidays, and occasionally the Targum), study Bibles (containing the Hebrew Bible
73 Olszowy-Schlanger, “The Hebrew Bible,” 27. 74 Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 64–67.
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with one or more Rabbinic commentaries), the Masoretic Codex represents one of the three major forms of the medieval Hebrew biblical codex.75 While Masoretic traditions continued to develop in the Near East, North Africa, and Europe, Rabbinic scholars continued to elaborate and interpret the laws governing the copying of scrolls. One of the most momentous post-Talmudic moments in the development of scribal halakha (and much besides) took place in the Mishneh Torah of Moses Maimonides (1138–1204). In this legal code, the Cordobaborn rabbi, philosopher and physician attempted to restate the entirety of Jewish law in a concise, coherent and systematic manner, unburdened by the Talmud’s multi-layered, meandering arguments. Maimonides sought to bring order to the variants and instability he found in contemporary copies of the Hebrew Bible, too. When he came to restate the halakha for the copying of a Torah scroll, he noted that he had seen a shibush gadol (great confusion) in the visual layout of the open and closed sections of the biblical text among the copies of his day. In need of a model text to set the norm, Maimonides identified a manuscript then in Old Cairo (where he lived), which he and many others with him considered authoritative.76 Modern biblical scholars believe this model text to have been the Masoretic manuscript now known as the Aleppo Codex (or Keter Aram Tsova), of which the most accomplished Masorete of the Ben Asher dynasty, Aaron ben Moshe, had written the vocalization and Masora.77 The Tiberian Masoretic tradition developed with sufficient distinction from Rabbinic authority that scholars continue to debate whether they might have been Karaites.78 In selecting Ben Asher’s manuscript as his model, Maimonides folded the Tiberian Masoretic reading of the text into Rabbinic halakha as he understood it. This also presented an eclipse of materiality, for in ascribing authority to a codex, Maimonides altered the dynamics between the two material forms of the Hebrew Bible: a codex now recorded the halakhically authoritative visual character of the kosher scroll. In practice, however, variants and variety persisted. Masoretic activity did not come to an end. Furthermore, the Aleppo Codex itself never travelled to the West, where other manuscripts, such as the lost Codex Hilleli, commanded great authority.
75 Stern, The Jewish Bible, 63–87. It should be noted that this three-fold typology, first suggested by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, is an abstraction; surviving manuscripts can have characteristics of more than one type. See Hanna Liss, “A Pentateuch to Read in? The Secrets of the Regensburg Pentateuch”, in Irina Wandrey (ed.), Jewish Manuscript Cultures: New Perspectives (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 89–128, at 95. 76 See Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Ahava, Hilchot Tefilin, Mezuza ve-Sefer Torah 7–10; Menachem Kellner (transl.), The Code of Maimonides. Book Two. The Book of Love (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 96–110. 77 See Ofer, The Masorah, 131–150. 78 Karaite Judaism, a sectarian movement that arose towards the end of the first millennium, rejects Rabbinic tradition and the authority of the Oral Law, accepting only the Written Law as sacred and normative.
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And while Maimonides had included a list of all the open and closed sections according to the Ben Asher codex, the shibush gadol he lamented persisted throughout the diaspora. Several main textual recensions of the Hebrew Bible emerged in the Middle Ages, which Jordan Penkower has classified as Tiberian, Sephardic (Iberia and Southwestern France), Ashkenazi (Germany and Northern France), Italian and Yemenite.79 In the five hundred years between the creation of the Aleppo Codex and the invention of print, the page of the Hebrew codex became the locus for extraordinary artistic creativity.80 In some cases, scribes could look back to precedents in antiquity for the magnificently illuminated Hebrew codices they produced in the Medieval Islamic East and Latin West. The Talmud (b. Shabbat 103b) forbids the writing of the divine names in gold, and both Massekhet Sefer Torah and Massekhet Soferim record a scroll of the Law in which Divine names had been written in gold.81 Whether or not such practices persisted from late antiquity, Rabbinic literature kept their knowledge alive by virtue of transmitting their prohibition.82 Among the most visually striking book art produced in the medieval codex were so-called carpet pages modelled on contemporary Islamic book art in Qurans (such as in the aforementioned Leningrad Codex (1009), the Damascus Keter (Burgos, 1260) and the 15th century Hispano-Portuguese Bible shown in Figure 2.2). Another distinguishing feature of Jewish book art in Medieval codices of the Hebrew Bible are pages with pictorial representations of sacred vessels and implements used in the portable Tabernacle and in the Jerusalem Temple (see. e.g. the Menora in Figure 2.3). Scribes and book artists often set these at the beginning and end of a codex or in between the three sections of the Hebrew Bible. This iconographic tradition – attested in manuscripts from the so-called First St Petersburg (Egypt or the Land of Israel, 929; St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Ms II B 17) to the Perpignan Bible (Perpignan, 1299; Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. héb. 7), the Regensburg Pentateuch (Regensburg, c. 1300; Jerusalem, Israel Museum Ms. 180/52), the Harley Bible (fourteenth-century Catalonia; British Library, Ms Harley 1528), the King’s Bible (Solsona, 1384; British Library, Ms Kings 1) and the Kennicott Bible (La Coruña, 1476; Bodleian Library Oxford, Ms. Kennicott 1) – represents yet further ways in which medieval Jews conceptualized the artefact of the medieval Hebrew biblical codex
79 Jordan S. Penkower, “The Development of the Masoretic Bible”, in A. Berlin and M. Brettler (eds.), The Jewish Study Bible, second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2159–2165. 80 See Katrin Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book Art Between Islam and Christianity: The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain (Boston and Leiden: Brill 2004). 81 See Soferim (1:9), The Minor Tractates of the Talmud, vol. 1, 214. 82 The letter of Aristeas, composed as early as the second century BCE, also describes a Hebrew Bible brought to Alexandria from Jerusalem, in which the letters were written “in letters of gold”.
Figure 2.2: Late 15th-century Hispano-Portuguese Bible with mudéjar carpet page facing the beginning of Genesis, and interlaced micrographic Massorah in the top, bottom and outer margin of the biblical text.
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Figure 2.3: Illuminated Sephardic Hebrew Bible codex known as the Cervera Bible (1300), with a golden Menora at the end of Exodus.
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as a sanctuary.83 The twelfth-century poet, philosopher, and exegete Abraham ibn Ezra, referred to the Hebrew Bible as miqdash (Temple), and throughout the later Middle Ages, Iberian Jews would call Hebrew biblical codices miqdashya, “the sanctuary of the Lord”. The exegete Bahya Ben Asher (1255–1340) noted that while the Temple and its contents were destroyed, the visual images “will exist forever”. To the Catalan Profiat Duran (1360–1412), who practiced Judaism in secret after converting to Christianity, “God intentionally prepared the Torah for Israel in its time of exile, after the destruction of the Temple, precisely so that it could serve as a miqdash me’at (small sanctuary), within whose pages God’s presence might be found just as his presence formerly dwelled within the Temple’s four walls.”84 Aside from carpet- and Temple-pages, pages of the biblical text itself also become works of art, as scribes developed intricate ways of writing the masoretic apparatus by micrography, in abstract-geometrical, vegetal, zoomorphic, or fantastic motifs. The visual effect of this impagination of dense micrographic borders around the biblical text speaks to the way medievals interpreted the saying of Rabbi Akiva in the Mishnah, “the masoret [tradition] is a fence around the law”, in a literal manner to refer to Masoretic scribal craftsmanship.85 As the Masoretic Bible became a genre of its own, practices of ruling expanded to include fields for the Masorah in margins above, below and beside the text.86 The flourishing of such artistic creativity seems to have come at the expense of text-critical practices, as scribes copied the Masorah increasingly for aesthetic purposes and less and less to actually control
83 See Naftali Wieder, “‘Sanctuary’ as a Metaphor for Scripture,” Journal of Jewish Studies 8 (1957), 165–175. Kogman-Appel, Jewish Book Art, explores this iconographic tradition in detail in these and many other medieval manuscripts. See also Katrin Kogman-Appel, “The Messianic Sanctuary in Late Fifteenth-Century Sepharad: Isaac de Braga’s Bible and the Reception of Traditional Temple Imagery,” in Renana Bartal and Hanna Vorholt (eds.), Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 233–253. On the Petersburg Pentateuch, of which the consonantal text was written by Solomon Ha-Levy ben Buya’a, the scribe of the Aleppo Codex, see Ofer, The Masorah, 134–35. 84 Stern, The Jewish Bible, 102–105; Maud Kozodoy, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus, Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), especially 161–181; Talya Fishman, “The Hebrew Bible and the Senses in late Medieval Spain,” in Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Adam Shear and Elchanan Reiner (eds.), Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press/Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 75–84. The biblical source of the expression miqdash me’at is a verse (Ezekiel 11:16) that encapsulates the idea of prophetic scripture as a form of refuge in an exile foretold: “therefore say: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Although I have removed them far off among the nations, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet have I been to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they are come.” 85 The Sayings of the Fathers (Mishnah, tractate Avot) 3:13. See the discussion in Stern, The Jewish Bible, 78–79. 86 Michèle Dukan, La réglure des manuscrits hébreux au moyen âge (Paris: CNRS 1988).
Figure 2.4: Illuminated Hebrew Masoretic Bible (Lisbon 1496), known as the Philadelphia Bible, with interlaced micrographic Massorah in the top and bottom margin of the opening. The scribe has completed Exodus 15:19, in which the Israelites pass through the parted sea, such that “the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of” occupies the middle of the line, with the word “the sea”, on either side, as if letting them through on the page itself.
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the text (as appears from cases where the Masorah explains a reading different from the text itself). As micrographic Masorah in the shape of candelabra show, the Temple iconography could carry over from one kind of decoration to another.87 While the codex allowed for these and many more artistic expressions, illustrations and illuminations, scrolls remained bound by strict halakhic stipulations. Yet a scroll could be an agent of remarkable calligraphic creativity, too, and a scribe could master both genres. Moses ibn Zabara, the scribe of the most sumptuously illuminated and decorated surviving medieval Hebrew Codex (the Bodleian Library’s Kennicott Bible), left Iberia by the end of the fifteenth century for North Africa, where he became known for the quality and talismanic powers of his Torah scrolls.88 The detailed halakhic restrictions governing the copying of a Torah scroll did not preclude scribal creativity in that medium, and indeed might well have spurred ingenuity. One striking example, which provides yet one more instance of the ways in which medieval Jews came to see the material object of the Hebrew Bible as a portable sanctuary, is known as vavei ha-amudim. Exodus 27:10 contains a set of divine instructions for the construction of the altar and tabernacle in the desert, including the stipulation that the hooks of the tabernacle’s pillars should be silver. The Hebrew for “hooks of the pillars”, vavei ha-amudim, can also mean “the letters vav of the columns”. A scribal custom arose – of uncertain place and date of origin but attested as early as the 13th-century commentary to Maimonides’ Code, the Hagahot Maymuniot of Meir ha-Cohen of Rothenburg – in which each column of a Torah scroll save five should begin with a word starting with the Hebrew letter vav. Accomplishing this within the regular boundaries of pre-ruled skins without stretching letters unduly requires extreme scribal control in the columnar distribution of biblical text; a less-than-perfect attempt by one Leontin of Mühlhausen seems to have caused Meir ha-Cohen’s teacher, Meir b. Baruch (MaHaRam) of Rothenburg, to prohibit the practice.89 But if accomplished successfully, the effect transforms each of these columns into visual pillars and turns the scroll as a whole into a visual representation of the portable Tabernacle of the Israelites’ desert wanderings.
87 See Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla (Madrid), MSS 1, and the discussion in KogmanAppel, Jewish Book Art, 60. 88 See Jordan S. Penkower, Masorah and Text Criticism in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Moses ibn Zabara and Menahem de Lonzano (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2014). 89 See I. M. Ta-Shma, Ritual, custom and reality in Franco-Germany, 1000–1350 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), 99–104 [Hebrew], and Liss, “A Pentateuch to Read in?”, 89–128 at 102–4 and 114–7. On another area in which Hebrew scribes found creative methods to embellish Torah scrolls in ways that with time became exegetically or mystically meaningful – the so-called tagin or little crowns on certain letters – see Liss “A Pentateuch to Read in?”, 117–121 and Mauro Perani, “Il Sefer ha-tagin da manuale masoretico a repertorio esoterico in ambienti cabbalistici dei secc. XIII–XV,” in Emma Abbate (ed.), L’eretidà di Salomone (Florence: Giuntina, 2019), 41–79.
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One understands why Heine, writing at his revolutionary mid-nineteenth century moment of European Nationalism, spoke of the Bible as a portable homeland. But the development of the impagination of the Hebrew Bible in the first fifteen hundred years of the Common Era, the language in which medieval Jews described it and the iconography of Temple and Tabernacle with which they illuminated it, suggests a different metaphor: not a portable homeland but a portable sanctuary; a consolation for exile, not its end.
From Script to Print Jews began to print Hebrew books within fifteen years of the Gutenberg Bible. The first Hebrew Psalter appeared in 1477, the first Pentateuch in Bologna in 1482 (see Figure 2.5) and the first complete Hebrew Bible in Soncino in 1488, printed twice again before the end of the century (Naples 1492, Brescia 1494). By 1505, Jews had printed Hebrew Bibles from Lisbon to Constantinople. These Hebrew incunabula and printings of the early sixteenth century show signs of experimentation with layout as with other technical challenges of the new art, such as the incorporation of commentaries and Aramaic Targum, the reproduction of open and closed sections, and the development and use of moveable type for vowel points. They also vary in the ways and extent to which they incorporate (or do not) such paratextual elements of Masoretic tradition as the keri-ketiv (pairs of readings written vs readings to be read) and passages written in stichography. The incorporation of all these elements is experimental in this early stage of printing, and Hebrew incunable Bibles display substantial variation between them. That variation and those experiments with visual and paratextual elements allow us to observe early Jewish editors thinking about what it means to transmit a sacred text from a culture of manuscript to a culture of print.90 Christians printing the Hebrew Bible had to confront theological and historical stakes they did not face when printing other ancient versions. Unlike Latin, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopian versions of the Christian Scriptures, all of which had been transmitted by unbroken Christian traditions of one kind or other, only Jews had transmitted the Hebrew Bible. Going back to the sources, in this case, meant trusting and validating a tradition which much of Church doctrine held to be dead letter. The most prominent early sixteenth-century Christian who defended the study of
90 For editions of the Hebrew Bible up to 1528, see Herbert Zafren, “Bible Editions, Bible Study, and Early History of Hebrew Printing,” Eretz-Israel 16 (1982): 240*–251*. An indispensable reference for Hebrew incunabula is A.K. Offenberg, Catalogue of Books printed in the XVth century now in the British Library (‘t Goy: HES & De Graaf, 2004). The best overview of many (if not all) printed Hebrew Bibles up to 1528 remains Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Masoretico-Critical Editions of the Hebrew Bible (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897), 779–976.
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Figure 2.5: Hebrew Bible (Bologna, 1482), printed on vellum. Editio princeps of the Hebrew Pentateuch, with Targum Onkelos in a smaller column beside the Hebrew text, and the commentary of R. Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi) in the text-blocks above and below the Hebrew text. Here, at Exodus 15, with a stichographic layout of the Song of the Sea.
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the Hebrew Bible and Jewish literature more generally, Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), used the language of Augustine and Aquinas in his defense, describing Jews as “our carriers, our copyists and librarians, who safeguard those books from which we take the witness of our faith.”91 Others had more difficulty trusting the Hebrew text as transmitted and thereby granting persistent theological legitimacy to Jewish law and scribal custom in the Christian era. These diverging Christian positions vis-à-vis halakhic and masoretic traditions of textual transmission informed the visual shape of the Hebrew Bibles that early modern Christians printed, and motivated the editorial decisions they made to retain, modify, or abandon the medieval mise-en-page. In 1517, three editions of the Hebrew Bible left Christian presses nearly simultaneously.92 One of them was not a separate Hebrew Bible but part of a six-volume Polyglot, in which the Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts of the Old Testament were printed in three parallel columns on the page (with a new Latin translation of the Greek printed between the lines of that column, and the Aramaic Targum with a Latin translation at the bottom of the page of the Pentateuch volume; see Figure 2.6). It was the pride of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, primate of Spain and patron of the humanist “Trilingual College” for the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at the university of Alcalá de Henares (Roman “Complutum”), outside Madrid. He designed his Complutensian Polyglot to be the typographic expression of his college’s learned ideal, seeking out Byzantine editors for the Greek text and Jewish conversos for the Hebrew, and spending a small fortune acquiring Hebrew manuscripts.93 In their process of edition, Cisneros’ converso editors removed every visual aspect of textual organization from the Hebrew Bible, breaking up the text into chapters corresponding to those of the Latin Vulgate. It is no mere metaphor to describe their strategy of impagination as a conversion of the text itself. And while the Cardinal’s preface to the reader reads like a manifesto of humanist philology, extolling recourse to the Hebrew and Greek source texts where the Latin is unclear, his other preface, to Pope Leo X, contains one of the most striking descriptions of textual layout in the history of the book: We have placed the Latin translation of the blessed Jerome in the middle [of the page, between the Greek and Hebrew columns] as if between the Synagogue and
91 See Theodor Dunkelgrün, “The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe,” in Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 7, The Early Modern World, 1500 1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 316–348. 92 See Bertram Eugène Schwarzbach, “Les éditions de la Bible hébraïque au XVIe siècle et la création du texte massorétique,” in Bertram Eugène Schwarzbach (ed.), La Bible imprimée dans l’Europe moderne (Paris: BnF, 1999), 16–67. 93 See Antonio Alvar Ezquerra (ed.), La Biblia Políglota Complutense en su Contexto (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2016).
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the Church of the East, setting them, like two thieves, on this side and that, with Jesus, that is the Roman or Latin Church, in the middle.94
The Cardinal claimed to be following the ancient model of Origen’s Hexapla and at first look, with six columns across an opening, the Complutensian Polyglot did indeed resemble its ostensible model. But Origen’s Hexapla provided, besides the Hebrew column and its Greek transliteration, four Greek translations by Jews and in the Septuagint column observed and reproduced the Jewish scribal custom of writing the Divine Name in Hebrew characters within the Greek text.95 The Complutensian Polyglot, by contrast, is remarkable for the way its editors went to great lengths to remove all Jewish scribal customs of layout and text so as to conform to the Vulgate tradition, even though among the manuscripts Cisneros acquired for the project was one that remains one of the oldest Masoretic manuscripts in Spain, in which the Hebrew biblical text is surrounded by a vast, magnificent masoretic apparatus none of which the Complutensian Polyglot’s editors reproduced in print.96 The other two Hebrew Bibles to appear from a Christian press in the year 1517 were printed in Venice, in the printing shop of the Flemish entrepreneur Daniel Bomberg: the very press which, the following year, would begin to print the first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud noted at the start of this essay. The first of these Venetian editions has come to be known as the First Rabbinic Bible. Like Cisneros’s edition, Bomberg’s was the work of a Jewish convert, Felice da Prato (Felix Pratensis). It, too, was printed in folio, dedicated to Leo X and based on multiple manuscripts. But the comparison stops there. Bomberg’s edition included the Aramaic Targums to all books except Chronicles and included a Jewish commentary to each biblical book. It included the keri and ketiv readings (though switching the traditional order by placing the keri in the text itself), and faithfully reproduced the Masoretic layout and the stichographic divisions of the songs. This Venetian edition also introduced a novel layout: two parallel text blocks in the top half of the page, the Hebrew Bible on the inside, its Aramaic Targum on the outside, and a Rabbinic commentary covering (roughly) the bottom half of the page. There were two variants, 94 “Mediam autem inter has latinam beati Hieronymi translationem velut inter Synagogam et Orientalem Ecclesiam posuimus: tamquam duos hinc et inde latrones medium autem Iesum hoc est Romanam sive Latinam ecclesiam collocantes,” Vetus testamentum multiplici lingua nunc primo impressum et imprimis Pentateuchus Hebraico Gr[a]eco atq[ue] Chaldaico idiomate adiuncta unicuiusq [ue] sua latina interpretatione (Alcalá de Henáres: Arnaldo/Arnão Guillén de Brocar s.a. [1517]), f. + iiiv. 95 See Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), esp. 88–89. 96 Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla (Madrid), MSS 1. See Esperanza Alfonso, Javier del Barco, Ma. Teresa Ortega Monasterio and Arturo Prats (eds.), Biblias de Sefarad – Bibles of Sepharad (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2012), 186–187.
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Figure 2.6: Complutensian Polyglot Bible (Alcalá de Henares, 1514–1517), volume 1. Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts in parallel columns (here at Exodus 15:2–16, without stichographic layout), with Targum Onkelos and a Latin translation thereof at bottom.
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one with and one without a Latin epistle to the Pope on the verso of the title page, the former probably intended for Christian readers. But Pratensis’s edition attempted to observe some Jewish traditions of textual transmission and sought to reproduce in print some of the salient and halakhically stipulated medieval practices of manuscript transmission and impagination.97 At the same time, this is the first printed Hebrew Bible to include, in the inner margin beside the Hebrew text-block, Hebrew references to the chapters according to the Vulgate and the Christian division into two books each of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. In so doing, Pratensis managed to incorporate into his layout – in the same space where he noted the ketiv – a subtle paratextual apparatus indicating Christian reading traditions.98 Pratensis’s second edition, printed simultaneously, was an octavo Bible that left out the Targum and commentaries, containing only the Pentateuch, the haftarot readings from the Prophets, and the five “scrolls” read on Jewish holidays, reproducing the contents of medieval manuscripts designed for liturgical use.99 For this edition, Pratensis abandoned the rectangular text-blocks of his Rabbinic Bible. Following the example of the incunable Hebrew Bible printed by Gershom Soncino in Brescia in 1494, he chose instead the basic, popular layout of contemporary nonJewish books. Traditions of impagination in columns or blocks made way for a single rectangle of text, stretching the full width of the page. As the very first Hebrew Bible printed separately by a Christian printer and editor, set in a layout that one still finds in Pentateuchs on the shelves of synagogues around the world, this modest, portable liturgical Bible – surviving in a single copy in Trinity College, Cambridge – represents a subtle but important turning point in the visual and material history of the text (see Figure 2.7).100 Historians commonly point to the next, second Rabbinic Bible that Bomberg printed (1524–5), edited by Jacob b. Haim ibn Adoniya, as the most transformative moment in the textual history of the Hebrew Bible between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century. Jacob ben Haim, a Sephardic scholar from Tunis, accomplished
97 On Pratensis, see Anthony Grafton, ‘Some Early Citizens of the Respublica Litterarum Sacrarum: Christian Scholars and the Masorah Before 1550ʹ, Reformation 23:1 (2018), 6–28; I.S. Penkower, “The First Edition of the Hebrew Bible printed by Bomberg and the beginning of his press,” Kiryat Sefer 58 (1983), 586–604; Paul Kahle, “Zwei durch Humanisten besorgte, dem Papst gewidmete Ausgaben der hebräischen Bibel,” Essays Presented to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday (London: East and West Library, 1954), 50–74. 98 Jordan S. Penkower, “The Chapter Divisions in the 1525 Rabbinic Bible,” Vetus Testamentum 48:3 (1998), 350–374. 99 The books of Esther, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes (read on the Jewish holidays Purim, Passover, Shavuot, 9 Av and Sukkot, respectively), are called the five megillot (scrolls), regardless of their book-form. 100 Trinity College Library, Cambridge, shelf mark F.7.73. Penkower, “The First Edition of the Hebrew Bible printed by Bomberg”.
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Figure 2.7: Pentateuch and Megillot (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1517). Hebrew letters טוprinted in the margin indicate the beginning of Exodus chapter 15 according to the Christian vulgate tradition.
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the monumental task of editing the Masorah magna and parva, adding even more commentaries than Pratensis had, modelling the mise-en-page on medieval codices, and adding a vast collection of Masoretic lists, variants and rubrics as an appendix. Jacob ben Haim’s Bible became the primary way in which Christian scholars encountered Jewish traditions of textual transmission and would be taken as the textus receptus of the Hebrew Bible until the third edition of Rudolf Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (1929–37).101 In the centuries following the invention of print, Christian debates about the authority of the Hebrew Bible grew more sophisticated in ways that foregrounded its visual and material history. The Basel Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) claimed – in print, if not in private, as Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg have shown – that the Masorah was as ancient as the time of Ezra the Scribe and that the vocalisation itself was Sinaitic in origin.102 Many Protestants feared that if the Sacred Scriptures were unstable in ways that could only be explained in terms of human transmission (an argument Catholic polemicists enjoyed making about the Hebrew Bible, if not the Latin), the central Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura would collapse. To Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), the Masorah was human, not divine work. But to him and other early moderns, Catholics and Protestants among them, the Masoretic apparatuses in Jacob ben Haim’s edition and in the medieval Hebrew manuscripts that entered Renaissance libraries demonstrated the extreme care with which Jewish scribes had copied the text: intricate visual symbols of the trustworthiness of the text it surrounded. From Scaliger to Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824), European scholars also mused on the similarities between Alexandrian traditions of Greek textual criticism and the Masorah. “The Jews call Masoretes what the Greeks call critics”, Scaliger told a student around 1600, “and criticism [ἡ κριτική] is called among them Masoreth.”103 Wolf turned the analogy around, comparing Alexandrian critics to Jewish Masoretes, not only in terms of common philological practice (as Scaliger had) but also in terms of the visual affinity between the
101 Schwarzbach, “Les éditions de la Bible hébraïque au XVIe siècle,” 41–57; Jordan S. Penkower, “Rabbinic Bible,” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 2, (Nashville: Abington Press, 1999), cols. 361b-364a; Benjamin Williams, “The 1525 Rabbinic Bible and How to Read It: A Study of the Annotated Copy in the John Rylands Library”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 92:1 (2016), 53–72. 102 See Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 307–28. 103 Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert (eds.), The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger (Geneva: Droz, 2012), vol. 3, p. 562. Nicholas Hardy, Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
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scholia to Homer in Codex Venetus A of the Biblioteca Marciana and the Masoretic apparatus in medieval Hebrew Bibles he had seen.104 Yet even to such Early Modern scholars who did not accuse Jews of corruption of the text, the shift in script and the late addition of the vowel points and the Masorah proved that the biblical text as the prophets wrote it and as the first Christians read it must have been – and looked – different. Textual, material and visual sources kept drawing early modern scholarly attention to the way the Hebrew Bible had changed over time. The ancient sheqel coins with paleo-Hebrew script that the Catalan Rabbi Moses Naḥmanides (1194–1270) mentioned in his commentary to Exodus and that Renaissance scholars such as Benito Arias Montano (c. 1525–1598) added to their numismatic collections, seemed to corroborate Patristic and Talmudic accounts of the ancient shift in script. Jerome, in his preface to the book of Kings included in many early modern Latin Bibles, had written that Ezra the Scribe had introduced the new script, while the Samaritans in Jerome’s own day still used the old script. The French scholar Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) confirmed the observation when he met Samaritans on a voyage to the Holy Land. Upon his return, Postel published the first Samaritan alphabet along with a depiction of the sheqel he acquired.105 Scholars such as the French Calvinist convert to Catholicism Jean Morin (1591–1659) then seized upon the Samaritan Pentateuch, when a scroll finally made its way to Europe, as a potentially more truthful representation of the Hebrew Vorlage of the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate.106 Another scroll, a Hebrew Torah long believed to have been written by Ezra the Scribe and given by the Jewish community in Bologna to the Dominican convent there in the fourteenth century, became a major Renaissance tourist attraction. Unvocalised, it continued to display the persistence of visually and materially different shapes of the Hebrew Bible even after Bernard Montfaucon (1655–1741), the pioneer of palaeography, argued (correctly) that it was not ancient but probably
104 See Anthony Grafton, “Prolegomena to Friedrich August Wolf,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981), 101–129, reprinted in Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 214–243; Anthony Grafton, “Juden und Griechen bei Friedrich August Wolf,” in Reinhard Markner and Giuseppe Veltri (eds.), Friedrich August Wolf (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999), 9–31; and Friedrich August Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer, 1795; translated with introduction and notes by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E.G. Zetzel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), introduction. 105 Jerome, “Prologus in libro Regum,” in Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. R. Webber and R. Gryson (Stuttgart, 2007), 510–11. Guillaume Postel, Linguarum duodecim characteribus differentium alphabetum, introductio, ac legendi modus longè facilimus (Paris: Pierre Vidoue for Denys Lescuyer, 1538), sig. c. ii v.- c iv v. 106 See Hardy, Criticism and Confession; Dirk van Miert, The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1670 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
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written in the century or two prior to its donation.107 As Christian scholars began to read Rabbinic literature to understand early Christianity historically, Talmudic discussions of the copying of the Torah came to shed light on the shape of the Scriptures described in the Gospels. The Cambridge scholar John Lightfoot (1602–1675), for instance, read through tractates Megillah and Soferim to explain just how Jesus read Isaiah from a scroll on a visit to his childhood synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4: 16–21). The Greek terms ἀναπτύξας (Luke 4:17) and πτύξας (Luke 4:20), which the King James Bible (1611) had rendered simply ‘opened’ and ‘closed’, in fact describe Jesus observing Jewish law and synagogue custom by unrolling a scroll upon arising for public recitation and rolling it up again immediately afterwards.108 Even Buxtorf intervened – by hand – to alter the look of the biblical page. In 1534 his predecessor, the Basel Hebraist Sebastian Münster, had published a Hebrew Bible with a new Latin translation, with the Hebrew title Miqdash Ya (suggesting he had seen one of the Medieval Hebrew codices titled ‘holy sanctuary’ noted above).109 Münster’s bilingual Bible was reprinted in 1546, and Buxtorf, in his copy of it, added verse numbers on each of the volume’s 1,600 pages, evidently in order to make it a more powerful instrument for study.110 The need to consult and cross-reference efficiently – evident from other surviving copies similarly annotated – led to the incorporation of chapter and verse numbers into printed editions as “comprehensive paratext” (to use Glenn Most’s term). The Antwerp Polyglot Bible (1568–1673) contained the first Hebrew biblical text divided into verses numbered individually according to the Latin Vulgate column printed beside it. In 1661, a collaborative team of Jewish and Christian scholars in Amsterdam and Utrecht produced a Hebrew Bible that included the traditional Jewish open and closed section with divisions for liturgical readings of the annual cycle as well as chapter and verse numbers derived from the Latin tradition.111 This Bible was more than a handy scholarly instrument. Its layout superimposed two sets of paratextual signs onto a single biblical text. A millennium and a half
107 The scroll was rediscovered by Mauro Perani and determined to be the oldest known complete Torah scroll, dating to the 12th-13th centuries. See Mauro Perani (ed.), The Ancient Sefer Torah of Bologna: Features and History (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019). 108 John Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae impensae in Evangelium S. Lucae (Cambridge: John Hayes, 1674), 81–86. 109 See Wieder, “‘Sanctuary’ as Metaphor for Scripture,” 172. Münster’s spelling of the divine name Ya with three yods arranged in a triangle likely had Christological intentions. 110 Sebastian Münster, En tibi Lector Hebraica Biblia Latina . . . (Basel: Isingrin and Petri, 1546), Universitätsbibliothek Basel, FA I 4. 111 Johannes Leusden, Samuel De Casseres and Eliyahu Judah Leon (ed.), Biblia Sacra Hebraea (Amsterdam: Joseph Athias, 1661).
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Figure 2.8: J. Piza, Ezrat ha-Sofer (Amsterdam: Janson and Mondovy, 1767–9). Printed model text of the Hebrew Bible, enabling scribes to write scrolls in which each column begins with a letter vav.
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since the Parting of the Ways between Judaism and Christianity, Jewish and Christian reading traditions converged in a mise-en-page that is with us to this day.112 One last turn in this long story closes another circle between codex and scroll. In Amsterdam, a century later, Rabbi Jeudah Piza designed a printed Hebrew Bible to serve as a model for scribes, a tiqqun soferim.113 The text in Piza’s edition comprised an unvocalised Hebrew Pentateuch, twenty-one lines to a page, distributed such that every opening contains the top and bottom half of the text to be copied onto each 42-line column of a Torah scroll. Running headers, in Latin and Hebrew, give the number not of the page but of the column (and are hence repeated; see Figure 2.8). Most strikingly, Piza succeeded in organising the text in such a way that he accomplished the layout of vavei ha’amudim without stretching or compressing any letters, thereby removing the primary reason for Rabbinic resistance to the custom noted above. With the aid of a modest model printed codex, this layout has become the default layout for the handwritten scroll the Jews never abandoned.
Bibliography Albright, William F. “Some Comments on the ʽAmmân Citadel Inscription,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 198 (1970), 38–40. Alfonso, Esperanza, Javier del Barco, Ma. Teresa Ortega Monasterio and Arturo Prats (eds.) Biblias de Sefarad – Bibles of Sepharad. Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2012. Alvar Ezquerra, Antonio (ed.). La Biblia Políglota Complutense en su Contexto. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2016. André-Salvini, Béatrice. “Les tablettes du monde cunéiforme”, in Élisabeth Lalou (ed.). Les tablettes à écrire, de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne. Turnhout: Brepols, 1992, 15–33. Attias, Jean-Christophe. Les Juifs et la Bible. Paris: Fayard, 2012. Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. R. Webber and R. Gryson. Stuttgartz: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007. Black, Jeremy A., A. R. George, J. N. Postgate. Tina Breckwoldt (eds.) A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000. Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
112 See Jordan S. Penkower, “The Chapter Divisions in the 1525 Rabbinic Bible.” Vetus Testamentum 48:3 (1998): 350–374; Jordan S. Penkower, “Verse divisions in the Hebrew Bible,” Vetus Testamentum 50:3 (2000): 379–392. 113 Ezrat Sofer Hamisha Humshei Torah . . . Quinque libri Mosis sine punctis (Amsterdam: Gerard Johan Janson and I. Mondovy, 5527–29 [= 1767–1769]), in five octavo volumes. See Ta-Shma, Ritual, custom and reality, 99. On Piza, see David Sclar, “A Letter’s Importance: The Spelling of Daka (h) (Deut. 23:2) and the Broadening of Western Sephardic Rabbinic Culture”, in Yosef Kaplan (ed.), Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 393–413.
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Blank, Debra Reed. “It’s Time to Take Another Look at ‘Our Little Sister’ Soferim: A Bibliographical Essay”, The Jewish Quarterly Review 90:1–2 (1999), 1–26. Botley, Paul and Dirk van Miert (eds.) The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger. Geneva: Droz, 2012. Boyarin, Daniel. A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Charpin, Dominique. Reading and Writing in Babylon. Cambridge, MA. and London: Harvard University Press, 2010. Cohen, A. (ed.). The Minor Tractates of the Talmud. London: the Soncino Press, 1965, 1971. Cohen, Naftali S. The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Collins, John J. and Timothy H. Lim (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Dukan, Michèle. La réglure des manuscrits hébreux au moyen âge. Paris: CNRS, 1988. Dunkelgrün, Theodor. “The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe”, in Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (eds.) The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 7, The Early Modern World, 1500–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 316–348. Elman, Yaakov. “Striving for Meaning: A Short History of Rabbinic Omnisignificance”, in Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang (eds.) World Philology. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2015, 63–91. Fishbane, Michael. “Midrash and the Meaning of Scripture”, in Michael Fishbane and Joanna Weinberg (eds.) Midrash Unbound. Oxford and Portland, OR: The Littman Library, 2013, 13–24. Fishman, Talya. “The Hebrew Bible and the Senses in late Medieval Spain”, in Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Adam Shear and Elchanan Reiner (eds.) Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press/ Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014, 75–84. Ginsburg, Christian D. Introduction to the Masoretico-Critical Editions of the Hebrew Bible, London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897. Glassner, Jean-Jacques. The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Goldhill, Simon. The Temple of Jerusalem. London: Profile, 2005. Goodman, Martin. A History of Judaism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Grafton, Anthony. “Some Early Citizens of the Respublica Litterarum Sacrarum: Christian Scholars and the Masorah Before 1550”, Reformation 23:1 (2018), 6–28. Grafton, Anthony. ‘Prolegomena to Friedrich August Wolf’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981), 101–129, reprinted in Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, 214–243. Grafton, Anthony. “Juden und Griechen bei Friedrich August Wolf”, in Reinhard Markner and Giuseppe Veltri (eds.) Friedrich August Wolf. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999, 9–31. Grafton, Anthony and Joanna Weinberg. “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Grafton, Anthony. La page de l’antiquité à l’ère numérique: histoire, usages, esthétiques. Translated from English by Jean-François Allain. Paris: Musée du Louvre/ Hazan, 2012. Grafton, Anthony and Megan Williams. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Guttmann, Michael. “Torah in the Talmud”, in Samuel Krauss (ed.). Festschrift Adolf Schwartz. Berlin and Vienna: R. Löwit, 1917, 1–8 (Hebrew section).
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Hammer, Reuven (transl.). Sifre. A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Hardy, Nicholas. Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Hartog, Pieter B. Pesher and Hypomnema: A Comparison of Two Commentary Traditions from the Hellenistic-Roman Period. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Haugen, Kristine Louise. ‘Hebrew Poetry Transformed, or, Scholarship Invincible between Renaissance and Enlightenment’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes LXXV (2012), 1–29. Heine, Heinrich. “Geständnisse” (1854), in Gerd Heinemann (ed.). Heinrich Heine Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, Band 15. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1982. Heller, Marvin. Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. Hyatt, J. P. “The Writing of an Old Testament Book”, in G. E. Wright and D.N. Freedman (eds.) The Biblical Archaeologist Reader (1961), 22–31. Jaffee, Martin S. Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE – 400 CE. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Kahle, Paul. “Zwei durch Humanisten besorgte, dem Papst gewidmete Ausgaben der hebräischen Bibel”, Essays Presented to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday (London: East and West Library, 1954), 50–74. Kellner, Menachem (transl.), The Code of Maimonides. Book Two. The Book of Love. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. Khan, Geoffrey (ed.). Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Khan, Geoffrey. A Short Introduction to the Tiberian Masoretic Bible and its Reading Tradition. Second edition. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013. Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem: Carta/ [Haifa] University of Haifa, 1987. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. Jewish Book Art Between Islam and Christianity: The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2004. Kogman-Appel, Katrin. ‘The Messianic Sanctuary in Late Fifteenth-Century Sepharad: Isaac de Braga’s Bible and the Reception of Traditional Temple Imagery’, in Renana Bartal and Hanna Vorholt (eds.) Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 233–253. Kozodoy, Maud. The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus, Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Kugel, James. The Idea of Biblical Poetry. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Lacerenza, Giancarlo. ‘Osservazioni sul cambio di scrittura nell’Israele Antico’, in Raffaella Pierobon Benoit (ed.). Avventure della scrittura. Documenti dal Mediterraneo Orientale antico. Naples: Centre Jean Bérard, 2018, 141–153. Lange, Armin, Kristin De Troyer, Shani Tzoref, Nora David (eds.). The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Lansing Hicks R. “delet and megillāh: A Fresh Approach to Jeremiah XXXVI”, Vetus Testamentum 33:1 (1983), 46–66. Leiman, S. Z. The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Lieberman, Saul. Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, improved edition. New York City: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962. Lim, T. H. The Formation of the Jewish Canon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
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Liss, Hanna. “A Pentateuch to Read in? The Secrets of the Regensburg Pentateuch”, in Irina Wandrey (ed.). Jewish Manuscript Cultures: New Perspectives. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017, 89–128. McDermott, Joseph P. and Peter Burke (eds.). The Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe, 1450–1850. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Mandelbrote, Scott. “The Old Testament and its Ancient Versions in Manuscript and Print in the West, from c. 1480 to c. 1780”, in Euan Cameron (ed.). The New Cambridge History of the Bible, volume 3: from 1450 to 1750 (2016), 82–109. Martin, Henri-Jean and Jean Vezin (eds.). Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscript. Paris: Promidis, 1990. Martín-Contreras, Elvira and Lorena Miralles-Maciá (eds.). The Text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to the Masoretes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Niehoff, Maren. Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Nielsen, Bruce. “Daniel van Bombergen, A Bookman of Two Worlds” in Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear (eds.) The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011, 56–75. Oesch, Josef M. Petucha und Setuma. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979. Ofer, Yosef. The Masora on Scripture and its Methods. Berlin: DeGruyter 2019. Offenberg, A.K. Catalogue of Books printed in the XVth century now in the British Library. ‘t Goy: HES & De Graaf, 2004. Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith. “The Hebrew Bible,” in Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (eds.) The New Cambridge History of the Bible, volume 2: From 600–1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 19–40. Penkower, Jordan S. “The Chapter Divisions in the 1525 Rabbinic Bible.” Vetus Testamentum 48:3 (1998): 350–374. Penkower, Jordan S. “The Development of the Masoretic Bible”, in A. Berlin and M. Brettler (eds.) The Jewish Study Bible, second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, 2159–2165. Penkower, Jordan S. Masorah and Text Criticism in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Moses ibn Zabara and Menahem de Lonzano. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2014. Penkower, I. S. ‘The First Edition of the Hebrew Bible printed by Bomberg and the beginning of his press’, Kiryat Sefer 58 (1983), 586–604. Penkower, Jordan S. “Verse divisions in the Hebrew Bible.” Vetus Testamentum 50:3 (2000), 379–392. Perani, Mauro. “Il Sefer ha-tagin da manuale masoretico a repertorio esoterico in ambienti cabbalistici dei secc. XIII–XV,” in Emma Abbate (ed.), L’eretidà di Salomone. Florence: Giuntina, 2019, 41–79. Perani, Mauro (ed.). The Ancient Sefer Torah of Bologna: Features and History. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019. Prawer, S.S. Heine’s Jewish Comedy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. Roth, Martha T. (ed.). The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, vol. 19. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2006, 129–148. Schwarzbach, Bertram Eugène. ‘Les éditions de la Bible hébraïque au XVIe siècle et la création du texte massorétique’, in Bertram Eugène Schwarzbach (ed.). La Bible imprimée dans l’Europe modern. Paris: BnF, 1999, 16–67. Sclar, David. ‘A Letter’s Importance: The Spelling of Daka(h) (Deut. 23:2) and the Broadening of Western Sephardic Rabbinic Culture’, in Yosef Kaplan (ed.). Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities. Leiden: Brill, 2019, 393–413.
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Secunda, Shai. The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Saiman, Chaim N. Halakha: The Rabbinic Idea of Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Sarri, Antonia. Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World c. 500 BC – c. AD 300. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2017. Shapiro, Marc B. “Talmud Study in the Modern Era: From Wissenschaft and Brisk to Daf Yomi,” in Sharon Liberman Mintz and Gabriel Goldstein (eds.) Printing the Talmud: from Bomberg to Schottenstein. New York: Yeshiva University, 2005. Sirat, Colette. Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, edited and translated by Nicholas de Lange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002/2008, 19–26. Steiner, George. No Passion Spent: Essays, 1978–1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Steiner, George. Real Presences. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. Stern, David. The Jewish Bible: A Material History. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2017. Ta-Shma, I. M. Ritual, custom and reality in Franco-Germany, 1000–1350. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996. Tov, Emanuel. Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Tugendhaft, Aaron. “Gods on clay: Ancient Near Eastern scholarly practices and the history of religions,” in Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most, Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: A Global Comparative Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 164–182. Urbach, Ephraim E. The Sages: The World and Wisdom of the rabbis of the Talmud. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1987. Van Miert, Dirk. The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1670. Oxford University Press, 2018. Van der Toorn, Karel. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Veintrob, Mordechai. “More fragments of early Torah scroll come to light,” Genizah Fragments 77 (April 2019), 1–2 Weitzman, Steven. Song and Story in Biblical Narrative. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997. Wieder, Naftali. “‘Sanctuary’ as a Metaphor for Scripture”, Journal of Jewish Studies 8 (1957), 165–175. Williams, Benjamin. “The 1525 Rabbinic Bible and How to Read It: A Study of the Annotated Copy in the John Rylands Library,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 92:1 (2016), 53–72. Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Wolf, Friedrich August. Prolegomena to Homer, 1795; translated with introduction and notes by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E.G. Zetzel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Zafren, Herbert. “Bible Editions, Bible Study, and Early History of Hebrew Printing”, Eretz-Israel 16 (1982): 240*–251*.
Michael Puett
Chapter 3 Impagination, Reading, and Interpretation in Early Chinese Texts Abstract: This chapter explores the forms of pagination that developed in the early Chinese tradition. It traces these developments from the fourth century BC (when the primary material used for textual production was bamboo) through the first several centuries of the common era (when paper became the primary material). It argues that the forms of pagination that emerged during this period were related to changing understandings of text, interpretation, commentary and the authorities of the author and the commentator. Keywords: Early China, textual production, commentarial traditions
In his autobiography, FENG Youlan, the major twentieth century Chinese philosopher, mentions the incredible impact that HU Shih’s writings had on his generation. Hu was one of the major figures during the May Fourth movement, focused on shifting China into a self-proclaimed “modern” way of thinking. Feng notes in particular the importance of Hu’s Outline History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy, published in 1919: In China’s feudal society, a philosopher's thought, whether or not there was anything new to it, was for the most part expressed in the form of commentaries on the classics, and the texts of the classics were featured in large characters at the top of the page. But in his book HU Shi’s [HU Shih] words were the main text. They were printed in large characters going all the way to the top of the page, while his quotations of ancient authors were indented and in smaller characters. Obviously the writings of the feudal period gave emphasis to the ancients, but writings of the May Fourth period gave emphasis to the writer’s own ideas. This was a spontaneous reflection of the revolutionary spirit of the May Fourth period.1
Hu, in a characteristically modernist format, was presenting his ideas as his own, and the pages of his text were organized accordingly. His own text was written in large characters, with references to ancient authors indented and in small characters. The contrast Feng is drawing here is with earlier writings in China – writings in which authors would present their ideas as merely a commentary to an ancient author who came before. In such cases, the ancient author’s text would be in large
1 Feng, Youlan, The Hall of Three Pines: An Account of My Life, translated by Denis C. Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), p. 224. My thanks to Bryan van Norden for pointing me to this passage. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-004
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characters, and the later writer’s text would be in smaller characters – subordinated, in Feng’s estimation, to the ancient figure before him. But it is important to note that the ancient author was not really given full priority in earlier forms of pagination either. Indeed, a typical page of writings from a recognized great ancient writer would often include a brief phrase by the author, followed by an array of different commentarial readings of that phrase. The commentaries would be so extensive that often only one or two phrases of the ancient author would appear on a given page; the rest of the page would simply be commentaries. It is true, as Feng notes, that the ancient author’s text would be in large characters, while the commentators’ would be in smaller characters. But it is also true that one would only read the ancient author’s text through the commentaries, and these, even if in smaller characters, dominated the page. Indeed, the figure deemed by the editor to be the main commentator would have characters smaller than the main author, but sub-commentaries to the main commentary would be in yet smaller characters. So one would read a phrase by the main author only through several layers of ranked commentaries and sub-commentaries. In a typical example, the large characters on a page might be a line of a poem from the Book of Poetry, or a phrase from the Book of Documents. The rest of the page would be devoted to the commentaries and sub-commentaries. One would only read that line or phrase through the commentaries, and these dominate the page. To return to Feng’s observation: it is not simply that the pagination’s primary emphasis was reversed with Hu’s text, with the modern author’s words being given priority and the early author’s being restricted to a block quotation. It is also the case that even the sentences of the early author would never, in earlier forms of pagination, be strung together. The commentaries and sub-commentaries, even though in smaller characters, would often go on for sentences; the primary author’s text would rarely be longer than a few characters. One would usually have to turn at least one page to even get to the next line or phrase of the primary text. See, for example, Figure 3.1. This paper will be devoted to explicating how this form of pagination came to be dominant in classical Chinese texts. I will utilize paleographic materials to discuss the development of this form of pagination, as well as the changing understandings of text and commentary that underlay them.
Authors and Texts Let’s begin with those early authors to whom, according to Feng, later commentators had to subordinate themselves. It is important to note that they themselves were, in a sense, commentators. The early literary tradition in China consisted of fragments of
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Figure 3.1: Primary text and commentary for the Record of the Rites (Liji zhushu 禮記注疏, commentaries by Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 and Kong Yingda 孔穎達).
earlier materials – stories, phrases, lines of poetry.2 These fragments were not associated – or at least not associated consistently – with particular authors. There were instead a stock set of figures from the past – sages, rulers, ministers, heroes. The stock figures would be variously placed within the stories, and phrases would be variously attributed to the stock figures. The art of telling these stories, attributing these phrases, and quoting or alluding to poetic lines, was based precisely on the variations.
2 For discussions of the quoting lines of poetry in particular, see the excellent discussions by Martin Kern, “Methodological Reflections on the Analysis of Textual Variants and the Modes of Manuscript Production in Early China.” Journal of East Asian Archaeology 4 (2002): 143–81; Kern “Early Chinese Literature, Beginning through Western Han,” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature: Volume 1, To 1375, edited by Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1–115. On the circulation of stories, see the excellent discussions by Dirk Meyer, “‘Shu’ Traditions and Text Recomposition: A Re-evaluation of ‘Jin teng’ and ‘Zhou Wuwang you ji,’” in Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy, edited by Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer, Leiden: Brill, 2017), 224–248; Meyer, “The Art of Narrative and the Rhetoric of Persuasion in the ‘Jinteng’ (Metal Bound Casket) from the Tsinghua Collection of Manuscripts,” Asiatische Studien/ Études Asiatiques 68.4 (2014): 937–968; Sarah Allan, “On Shu 書 (Documents) and the origin of the Shang shu 尚書 (Ancient Documents) in light of recently discovered bamboo slip manuscripts,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (October 2012) 75.3: 547–557.
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Since the stock phrases, figures, and lines were well known, the meaning was developed through attributing a statement to one figure as opposed to another, often in opposition to earlier, different attributions.3 Meaning was further developed through juxtapositions of different fragments – story cycles juxtaposed with each other, lines of poetry quoted in surprising places. The degree to which this was the case is clear by the figure who will later come to be seen as one of the greatest sages: Confucius. Confucius was portrayed as a master of working with these earlier materials. He would come to be seen as the figure who organized the poetic materials into the Book of Poetry and who organized a key series of stories into the Book of Documents. He was, in short, a commentator. The explosion of paleographic materials during the past decades is providing us a glimpse of the way arguments were circulating, as well as the implications of the way Confucius would be portrayed. The recently discovered Tsinghua materials, for example, include stories of key figures related to the early Zhou – figures like King Cheng and the Duke of Zhou.4 All are variations of stories that would later be assembled in the Book of Documents. The selection of a series of these variations into the Book of Documents, therefore, represents a decision by an editor to assemble certain variations, with certain emphases, instead of others. And, when reading it, the focus is accordingly less on the stories themselves and more on the editor who chose the particular variations and assembled them into a particular order. So why is all of this going on?
The Origins of Practices To help orient ourselves in the worlds under discussion here, and to introduce some of the terminology of the time, let us turn to an argument from another paleographic text from the fourth century BCE text, the Xing zi ming chu.5 The text opens with a description of humans in the world: 3 For an analysis of stories of innovation and the various figures – such as Huangdi and Chiyou – placed in different roles within the stories, see Puett, Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 92–140. For an overview of this mode of writing, see Puett, “Text and Commentary: The Early Tradition,” in The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature, edited by Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li, and Xiaofei Tian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 112–122. 4 Qinghua daxue Chutu wenxian yanjiu yu baohu zhongxin 清華大学出土文献研究与保护中心, ed. Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian 清華大學藏戰國竹簡(壹). (Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju 2010). 5 The Xing zi ming chu is one of the texts from the Guodian 郭店tomb. The tomb itself dates to around 300 BCE, so the text presumably belongs to the late fourth century BCE. For a discussion of the Guodian find itself, see Hubei sheng Jingmen shi bowuguaan 湖北省荊門市博物館, “Jingmen Guodian yi hao chumu,” 荊門郭店一號楚墓 Wenwu 文物 (1997) 7: 35–48. An enormous outpouring of scholarship has developed concerning the Guodian materials. The following are some of the
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In general, although humans possess nature (xing), their mind is without a fixed purpose. It depends on things and only then becomes active; it depends on pleasures and only then is moved; it depends on repeated study and only then becomes fixed.6
Without a fixed purpose, humans will simply be moved passively by the things they encounter. The word I translate here as “things” (wu 物) can include people, objects, and circumstances. Only through repeated study can humans obtain such a fixed purpose. The nature of humans – and the basis for our being moved by things we encounter – is that we possess the qi of emotional qualities such as joy, anger, sorrow, and sadness. The things we encounter call forth these forms of qi: The qi of joy, anger, sorrow, and sadness are given by nature (xing). When it comes to their being manifested on the outside, it is because things have called them forth. Nature (xing) comes from the decree (ming), and the decree is handed down from Heaven.7
The ways that things with their different natures respond to each other constitute their disposition (qing 情). The movement that ensues from these responses is called the way (dao 道): The way (dao) begins in dispositions (qing) and dispositions are born from nature.8
The fact that humans have the qi of anger is part of their nature; the fact that such anger becomes manifested in particular circumstances is part of the disposition of humans. The movements that emerge from such dispositions, however, are, as already made clear in the opening lines, rarely based on good responses. The goal, therefore, is to move from these inherent dispositional responses toward responding properly to situations. The text defines acting properly as propriety (yi 儀): At the beginning one is close to inherent dispositions, and at the end one is close to propriety.9
most helpful: Guo Yi郭沂, Guodian zhujian yu xian Qin xueshu sixiang 郭店楚簡與先秦學術思想 (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chuban she, 2001); Dirk Meyer, “Texts, Textual Communities, and Meaning: The Genius Loci of the Warring States Chu Tomb Guodian One.” Asiatische Studien/ Études asiatiques 63.4 (2009): 827–56; Edward Slingerland, “The Problem of Moral Spontaneity in the Guodian Corpus,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7.3 (Fall 2008): 237–256; Attilio Andreini, “The Meaning of Qing in Texts from Guodian Tomb No. 1,” in Love, Hatred, and Other Passions: Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization, edited by Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 149–65; Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, Vols. 1 and 2 (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 2012). 6 Xing zi ming chu, strip 1, Guodian chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), 179. 7 Xing zi ming chu, strips 2–3, Guodian chumu zhujian, 179. 8 Xing zi ming chu, strip 3, Guodian chumu zhujian, 179. 9 Xing zi ming chu, strip 3, Guodian chumu zhujian, 179.
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This ability to move from spontaneous dispositional responsiveness to a proper form of response is, for the text, uniquely human: As for the Way’s four techniques, only the human way can be way-ed [i.e., only the human way involves a fixed purpose]. As for the other three techniques, one is moved and that is all.10
The text then explains how this proper responsiveness can be attained. The focus is on the development of the practices that will allow a proper training to occur. These practices are the poems, the stories that would become the documents, the rites, and music: As for the poems, documents, rites, and music, their first expression was generated among humans. With the poems, there were activities and they put them into practice. With the documents there were activities and they spoke of them. With the rites and music, there were activities and they raised them.11
Each of these traditions emerged out of previous sets of activities. Particular activities occurred – particular responses to particular situations. These were then deemed significant, and were repeated. Some became lines of poetry that would be repeated; some became stories that would be re-told; some became actions and musical performances that would be raised up and re-performed. The result was the development of these four traditions. And only then were the traditions organized by the sages (or possibly just “the sage,” i.e., Confucius): The sages compared their categories and arranged them, analyzed their order and appended admonishments to them, embodied their propriety and put them in order, patterned their dispositions and both expressed and internalized them. As such, they were brought back for use in education. Education is the means by which one generates virtue within. The rites arise from the dispositions.12
The sages organized these four traditions into the Poems, Documents, Rites, and Music – into a curriculum that the latter-born can use to move from their inherent dispositional responsiveness to a proper response. The training achieved through these traditions refines the responses of the educated, allowing them to act with a fixed purpose. The argument being developed here in the Xing zi ming chu is, of course, just one argument among many – one variation of these sets of terms, images, and juxtapositions from the time. But it is a telling one. The claim is not that a set of sages undertook a set of exemplary actions that then became normative. The claim on the contrary is that a set of actions occurred
10 Xing zi ming chu, strips 14–15, Guodian chumu zhujian, 179. 11 Xing zi ming chu, strips 15–16, Guodian chumu zhujian, 179. 12 Xing zi ming chu, strips 16–18, Guodian chumu zhujian, 179.
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in the past that later figures came to see as worth repeating. The initial set of actions may have been undertaken by exemplary figures, or they may have occurred out of a set of responses that, for whatever reason, later figures came to find valuable for repetition. The value, moreover, is that repeating these earlier statements and actions allowed the later practitioner to refine his responses to situations. The argument is not, in other words, that the lines of a poem are themselves exemplary; it is that later usage of them provides the practitioner a way to become trained. The sages came still later. After these traditions had developed, the sages then organized them into a curriculum. The sages here are ex post facto, building upon the earlier utilizations of these activities. In short, the value lies not in the original actions but in each successive utilization of them.
Textual Evidence The Xing zi ming chu provides a way to understand the textual evidence mentioned above. The pedagogy underlying such textual production is aimed at training practitioners to sense situations well and respond effectively – moving, as the Xing zi ming chu puts it – from dispositional responses to proper responses. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to alter situations by the use of these earlier materials. One will quote a line of poetry not because the line itself is normative but because the line has certain associations that, when alluded to a certain situation, will bring out a particular response. Moreover, by quoting that line in a slightly counter-intuitive way, one will bring out a slightly different response that can alter the situation. Similarly, telling a story in a slightly different way from another way the story is told will bring out responses as well – responses that also can shift a situation if done effectively. Much of this, of course, will be oral: practitioners being trained to sense situations and refer to lines of poetry or allude to versions of stories to alter that situation. But texts allow one to go further still. In texts, one can weave together these different versions, paired with various lines of poetry. And one can juxtapose different versions in different ways. This, of course, is what the Xing zi ming chu sees the sages as having done. They took this body of material, which had developed various associations through generations of successive usages, and organized it and juxtaposed it in particular ways. As Tobias Zürn has argued, a good way to think of early literary culture in China is as an act of weaving.13 Along with quoting lines of poetry in counter-intuitive ways and telling surprising variations of stories, one could also juxtapose these stories and
13 Tobias Zürn, “Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016.
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poems in surprising ways. A line from a love poem, for example, could be juxtaposed with a story cycle concerning a minister and a ruler to make a point about a certain dispositional response in a complex situation. Texts therefore consisted of endlessly weaving various earlier stories and phrases together in different ways.14 The fact that the medium of the time was bamboo helped to make this possible. With bamboo strips, it is easy to re-order the strips, juxtapose strands in new ways, and weave together materials in a new way.15 For an example of bamboo strips from the Guodian tomb, see Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2: Bamboo slips from the Laozi A text from the Guodian tomb.
14 For an outstanding discussion of the development of the early Chinese textual tradition, see Heng Du, “The Author’s Two Bodies: Paratext in Early Chinese Textual Culture,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2018. 15 See Dirk Meyer, Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
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It is helpful therefore to think of the underlying elements of the early Chinese textual corpus as consisting of these stories, anecdotes, and poetic lines. The focus is then how to weave the elements together to make new arguments, how to contextualize the elements in different ways, how to interpret the elements differently through different juxtapositions and contextualizations. Even the counter-examples to these practices help to make the point. The Laozi is a text that seems to reject all that we have mentioned so far. It does not refer to a single poem or story from the tradition, and it does not refer to a single stock figure. It is on the contrary written as a timeless piece of wisdom. And yet the Laozi itself comes to us in different forms and in different juxtapositions. The versions that appear in the Guodian tomb mentioned above have arranged the chapters in completely different orders than appear in our other extant versions. They are also set apart as three separate texts, and one of the texts is paired with the cosmogonic text Taiyi sheng shui. Even a text that rejects the traditions we have been discussing is placed within the same culture of re-working and re-weaving.
Texts and Commentaries In this world of juxtapositions and re-workings, however, one still does not have commentaries in the sense that Feng was thinking. The pagination consists of single lines of graphs running down a bamboo slip; the focus is the interweaving of phrases and allusions within these lines, as well as how the strips are arranged. But commentaries of the form that Feng was concerned with appear in the next stage of the development of the early Chinese textual corpus. The traditions we have been discussing were organized during the Western Han dynasty into the Five Classics: the Book of Poetry and the Book of Documents, as well as the Record of the Rites, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals. The Xing zi ming chu referred to the sages or sage organizing the Poetry, Documents, Rites, and Music. By the end of the Western Han, however, the editor was clearly defined: Confucius was explicitly designated as the editor and compiler of the classics. Although this certainly created an authoritative version of the materials in question, it hardly ended the larger pedagogical practice. On the contrary, the focus simply shifted to offering differing and often counter-intuitive interpretations and contextualizations of the texts ordered by Confucius. And much of the work of these counter-intuitive interpretations fell to commentators. The commentators were not able to do what was so common in Warring States textual culture: quoting lines in counter-intuitive ways and weaving these with different versions of stories. On the contrary, they were committed to working with the poetry and stories as organized by Confucius. But the goal of re-working the material continued. The move thus shifted to one of providing differing and counterintuitive readings of the material through the act of commenting upon it.
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A clear example of this can be seen in the different commentaries on the Book of Poetry. The lines are set within full poems, which are in turn organized in a defined order. But the different commentators would ascribe the poems as having been written in different contexts. A particular love poem, for example, would be ascribed to a particular period in the Western Zhou dynasty and involve the relations of a king and a minister. It is not that the commentator could not see that the love poem was a love poem: as before, the concern is not with the actual meaning of the original poem but rather with a successful re-utilization of it. In the case at hand, the emotions ascribed to the lovers in a poem are re-interpreted into the context of the fraught relations between ruler and minister. The counter-intuitive juxtaposition thus occurs not in the re-weaving of different materials but rather in the surprising interpretation and contextualization offered to the materials already organized. Just as any re-organization and surprising juxtaposition in the Warring States period would inevitably inspire a different organization and juxtaposition, so would each commentator’s interpretation inspire a different one as well. Hence the growth of radically different commentaries and commentarial strategies over the subsequent several centuries.16 This radical growth in turn spawned the desire to re-organize the commentaries, just as the earlier juxtapositions had spawned the desire to organize the classics themselves. One of the most significant such attempts was reached in the early Tang dynasty, with the imperially sponsored publication of the “The Correct Meaning of the Five Classics” (Wujing zhengyi 五經正義).17 Organized by KONG Yingda (574–648), the goal was to sort through the enormous body of commentaries to the five classics that had grown up over the previous several centuries and to organize them properly into primary commentaries and sub-commentaries, with the commentaries deemed improper to be left out. For an example of this, let us turn to Figure 3.3, which consists of two pages from the “Correct Meaning of the Mao Songs” (Maoshi zhengyi 毛詩正義) – i.e., the Book of Songs, as interpreted through the Mao commentary and subsequent sub-commentaries
16 John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991); Rudolf G. Wagner, The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). Cai Zong-qi, A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin diaolong (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Cai Zong-qi, Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Hawaii: University of Honolulu, 2004); Ming Dong Gu, Chinese Theories of Reading And Writing: A Route to Hermeneutics And Open Poetics (Albany: State University of New York, 2006); Puett, “Sages, Gods, and History: Commentarial Strategies in Chinese Late Antiquity,” Antiquorum Philosophia 3 (2009): 71–87; Puett, “Manifesting Sagely Knowledge: Commentarial Practice in Chinese Late Antiquity,” in The Rhetoric of Hiddenness in Traditional Chinese Culture, edited by Paula M. Varsano (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), 303–331. 17 For an excellent background to the project, see David McMullen, State and Scholars in T’ang China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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Figure 3.3: Two pages from the Correct Meaning of the Mao Songs (Maoshi zhengyi 毛詩正義).
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to the Mao commentary, and organized by Kong and the other editors of the Tang “Correct Meaning” movement. The two pages deal with the opening of the first poem in the Book of Songs: the “Fishhawk” or “Guan ju” 關雎. Since Confucius was credited with having edited and arranged the Book of Songs, the first poem was deemed extremely important in the commentarial tradition. The poem would appear to deal with the longing of a prince for a maiden, as well as the subsequent courtship. The twentieth century English translator Arthur Waley (1889–1966), who rejected the commentarial traditions and sought to recover an “original” sense of the song as a love poem, translated it as follows: “Fair, fair,” cry the ospreys On the island in the river. Lovely is this noble lady, Fit bride for our lord. In patches grows the water mallow: To left and right one must seek it. Shy was this noble lady; Day and night he sought her. Sought her and could not get her; Day and night he grieved. Long thoughts, oh, long unhappy thoughts, Now on his back, now tossing on to his side. In patches grow the water mallow; To left and right one must gather it. Shy is this noble lady; With great zither and little we hearten her. In patches grow the water mallow; To left and right one must choose it. Shy is this noble lady; With bells and drums we will gladden her.18
The Mao commentary on the contrary reads the text as a poem of praise for the consort of King Wen, who received the mandate to begin the Zhou dynasty in the eleventh century BCE.19 In Figure 3.3, the large characters that occur in the third column are the
18 Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs; translated from the Chinese (London: George Allen and Unwin Limited, 1937), 5–6. 19 For an excellent discussion of these and other commentarial readings of the “Guan ju” poem, see Pauline R. Yu, “Allegory, Allegoresis, and The Classic of Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43.2 (Dec., 1983): 377–412. For an analysis of interpretations of the poem prior to the Mao commentary, see Jeffrey Riegel, “Eros, Introversion, and the Beginnings of Shijing Commentary,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57.1 (1997): 143–177.
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first lines of the poem: “Guan, guan cry the fishhawks, at the island of the river” 關關 雎鳩在河之洲. The small characters immediately underneath the large characters are the Mao commentary. The commentary reads the “guan” as referring to the ospreys calling to each other, as they are properly separated. It then goes on to say that the consort of the king is likewise properly separated from the king, and that this separation maintains the order of the court and thus allows the king’s transforming influence to be completed. This is immediately followed by the annotations (jian 箋) of ZHENG Xuan (127–200) to the Mao commentary. Three columns later, we move to the next line of the poem in large characters (translated as the Mao commentary reads them): “The secluded and modest lady, a good mate for the lord” 窈窕淑女君子好逑. We then again turn to the Mao commentary in smaller characters, followed by the Zheng Xuan annotations. This in turn is followed by Kong Yingda’s explanations (shu 疏), marked in a large character three columns later. Zheng Xuan reads the lady as referring not to King Wen’s consort but rather to the ladies of the court. Kong Yingda then discusses these and other differences for the remainder of the page, as well as the entire next page. (The reader can note the various layers easily enough: zhuan 傳 refers to the Mao commentary, jian 箋 refers to Zheng Xuan’s annotations, and zhengyi 正義 refers to the “correct meaning” that should be arrived at after considering the various interpretations.) This second page in Figure 3.3 thus consists entirely of commentary. Only on the following page does one move on the next line of the poem.
Impagination Let us return to the statements by Feng. Feng was concerned that the earlier pagination represented a subordination of the later thinkers to the earlier ones. But to some extent this misses the point of the earlier pagination. The focus in the earlier pagination was precisely on the interpretations – often counter-intuitive – of the earlier phrases. The commentaries were later and lesser than the organizer (Confucius), but they were also the only source of access to the earlier material. As we have seen, it was common for a page to consist almost entirely of commentaries, with at most one or two lines of the earlier phrase or poetic line appearing. Indeed, pages would frequently consist entirely of commentaries – one might have to turn several pages to get to the next line of primary text. So when did this change? In the twelfth century, ZHU Xi attempted perhaps the most radical re-thinking of the commentarial approach in Chinese history.20 Unlike the earlier forms of
20 Peter K. Bol, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994); Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1986).
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commentaries, which in essence required that the text be read through the differing interpretations of the layers of commentators, Zhu hoped on the contrary for the reader to read the primary texts themselves, rejecting the enormous body of interpretive commentary that had grown up since then. This, of course, required Zhu to write commentaries himself, but the nature of commentary changed dramatically in his hands. For Zhu, a love poem from the Book of Poetry should simply be read as a love poem, instead of being read through the lens of endless replacements of the poem into different historical contexts and different historical speakers, with the attendant re-interpretations that such re-placements entailed. Such a desire for the reader to have direct, unmediated access to the texts themselves also required Zhu to rewrite the texts, since they were not initially organized to be read in this way, outside of the re-interpretations that animated them. Although Zhu was still writing commentaries, this began the shift toward the mode of reading and impagination to which Feng was referring. Feng was moved by Hu’s direct statement of his own ideas, appealing directly to a reader, instead of writing in the form of a commentary to earlier authors. But the same mode of reading that Feng was envisaging was the mode of reading Zhu was advocating as well: a reader who would have direct, unmediated access to a text, and who would accordingly be moved by it directly. The impagination that so inspired Feng finds its equivalent in the modern editions of a love poem from the Book of Poetry, that will print the poem as a poem, in full and with no commentaries, translated in a way that makes it easily understandable to a modern reader. Any editorial notes that might be included are restricted to basic information that may be necessary for the reader to be able to read the poem directly. These notes are intentionally relegated to the background – in footnotes, endnotes, or, in Chinese, side notes. The focus is on a poem that can be read by the reader directly, with no mediation.
Conclusion The twentieth century, which saw the emergence of the form of pagination that so excited Feng, as well as the pagination of earlier texts, written directly, with no commentarial mediation, witnessed as well the emergence of a wide array of hermeneutic theories. Interestingly, however, so many of these hermeneutic theories, despite their radical diversity, took as a starting point the idea of a reader reading a text in front of him. Such a notion of reading, with its attendant ideal of a reader being moved directly and sincerely by the text in front of him has a history. In Europe, it is a mode of reading very much associated with Renaissance humanism and, later, Protestantism, and in China it is associated with Zhu and the emergence
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of Neo-Confucianism.21 The author speaks directly to the reader, and the reader is moved directly by the text. The types of pages we see earlier in Chinese history, based as they are upon endless commentaries and sub-commentaries, emerge out of a very different mode of reading and interpreting. The paleographic evidence we are finding from early China give us a sense of the development of this mode of reading – a mode in which the underlying elements of the corpus consisted of a set of stories, anecdotes, and poetic lines that were endlessly altered and juxtaposed to make new arguments. Out of this later emerged the commentarial tradition, which continued much of the same work, but now focused on contextualizing the elements in different ways, interpreting the elements differently through these contextualizations. From the point of view of claims to direct access – from a Zhu to a Feng, such commentaries are nothing but a mediation between reader and writer – mediations that, for a Zhu, obscure the true teachings of the great sages whose ideas the reader should be able to access directly, and for a Feng force a writer to disguise his ideas as simply explanations to a great sage of the past. For more recent readers of the Book of Poetry, such commentaries represent an embarrassing inability to simply read a straightforward love poem as a love poem. But all such readings miss the goals and strategies that underlay reading, writing, and interpreting in the Chinese tradition before the twelfth century. The pagination that one sees in these texts, with a few large characters followed by pages of commentaries and sub-commentaries, is a telling reflection of a mode of interpretation that has long been obscured by the focus on sincerity and unmediated access in more recent times.
Bilbiography Allan, Sarah. “On Shu 書 (Documents) and the origin of the Shang shu 尚書 (Ancient Documents) in light of recently discovered bamboo slip manuscripts.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (October 2012) 75.3: 547–557. Andreini, Attilio. “The Meaning of Qing in Texts from Guodian Tomb No. 1.” In Love, Hatred, and Other Passions: Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization. Edited by Paolo Santangelo and Donatella Guida. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 149–65. Bol, Peter K. “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994. Cai Zong-qi. Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties. Hawaii: University of Honolulu, 2004.
21 See, for example, the excellent discussion by Christopher Celenza in his Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer (London: Reaktion Books, 2017). My thanks to the volume editors for pointing this volume out to me.
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Cai Zong-qi. A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin diaolong. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Celenza, Christopher S. Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer. London: Reaktion Books, 2017. Cook, Scott. The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, Vols. 1 and 2. Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 2012. Cook, Scott. “The Debate over Coercive Rulership and the ‘Human Way’ in Light of Recently Excavated Warring States Texts.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64 (2004): 399–440. Du, Heng. The Author’s Two Bodies: Paratext in Early Chinese Textual Culture. Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2018. Feng, Youlan. The Hall of Three Pines: An Account of My Life. Translated by Denis C. Mair. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. Gardner, Daniel K. Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1986. Guo Yi 郭沂, Guodian zhujian yu xian Qin xueshu sixiang 郭店楚簡與先秦學術思想. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chuban she, 2001. Guodian chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡. Beijing: Wenwu, 1998. Henderson, John B. Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991. Hubei sheng Jingmen shi bowuguaan 湖北省荊門市博物館. “Jingmen Guodian yi hao chumu.” 荊門 郭店一號楚墓 Wenwu 文物(1997) 7: 35–48. Kern, Martin. “Early Chinese Literature, Beginning through Western Han,” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature: Volume 1, To 1375. Edited by Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 1–115. Kern, Martin. “Methodological Reflections on the Analysis of Textual Variants and the Modes of Manuscript Production in Early China.” Journal of East Asian Archaeology 4 (2002): 143–81. McMullen, David. State and Scholars in T’ang China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Meyer, Dirk. “‘Shu’ Traditions and Text Recomposition: A Re-evaluation of ‘Jin teng’ and ‘Zhou Wuwang you ji.’” In Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy. Edited by Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer. Leiden: Brill, 2017, 224–248. Meyer, Dirk. “The Art of Narrative and the Rhetoric of Persuasion in the ‘Jinteng’ (Metal Bound Casket) from the Tsinghua Collection of Manuscripts.” Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 68.4 (2014): 937–968. Meyer, Dirk. Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Meyer, Dirk. “Texts, Textual Communities, and Meaning: The Genius Loci of the Warring States Chu Tomb Guodian One.” Asiatische Studien/Études asiatiques 63.4 (2009): 827–56. Ming Dong Gu, Chinese Theories of Reading And Writing: A Route to Hermeneutics And Open Poetics. Albany: State University of New York, 2006. Puett, Michael. “Text and Commentary: The Early Tradition.” In The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature. Edited by Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li, and Xiaofei Tian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 112–122. Puett, Michael. “Manifesting Sagely Knowledge: Commentarial Practice in Chinese Late Antiquity.” In The Rhetoric of Hiddenness in Traditional Chinese Culture. Edited by Paula M. Varsano. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016, 303–331. Puett, Michael. “Sages, Gods, and History: Commentarial Strategies in Chinese Late Antiquity,” Antiquorum Philosophia 3 (2009): 71–87. Puett, Michael. Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001, 92–140.
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Qinghua daxue Chutu wenxian yanjiu yu baohu zhongxin 清華大学出土文献研究与保护中心, ed. Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian 清華大學藏戰國竹簡(壹) . Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju 2010. Riegel, Jeffrey. “Eros, Introversion, and the Beginnings of Shijing Commentary.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 57.1 (1997): 143–177. Slingerland, Edward. “The Problem of Moral Spontaneity in the Guodian Corpus.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7.3 (Fall 2008): 237–256. Wagner, Rudolf G. The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Waley, Arthur. The Book of Songs; translated from the Chinese. London: George Allen and Unwin Limited, 1937. Yu, Pauline R. “Allegory, Allegoresis, and The Classic of Poetry.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 43.2 (Dec., 1983): 377–412. Zürn, Tobias. “Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self- Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016.
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Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa* Abstract: This chapter examines the page layout of Tibetan Kanjurs (bKa’ ‘gyur, “translation of Buddha’s words”), a subject largely neglected in previous studies. It investigates as an example the composition and layout of a Tibetan sūtra text. This investigation begins with an overview of the development of Tibetan books that focuses on their formats and writing materials. It then describes the characteristics of the most prevalent loose-leaf format of Tibetan books, known as pecha (dpe cha) in Tibetan. It next analyzes the sūtra text of the Tibetan version of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa in twenty-three pecha editions, dating from before 1035 to 1934. It traces the evolution of the page design, and maps out different transmission lines of Tibetan Kanjurs by measuring certain elements of the page of the sūtra, including the presence of holes/circles on a page and the number of lines on a page. The most prominent difference among the four transmission lines of Tibetan Kanjurs is in the design of text boxes. The result of this analysis corresponds well to a finding based on textual criticism techniques. Keywords: pecha, page layout, Kanjurs, Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, Tibetan texts, textual criticism Tibetan literature is famous for its significance in preserving Buddhist teachings. Within the Buddhist canons still currently available, Tibetan Kanjurs (Tib.: bKa’ ‘gyur, “translation of Buddha’s words”) and Tanjurs (Tib.: bsTan ‘gyur, “translation of Buddhist teachings”) are renowned for the fact that they preserve many Buddhist texts whose Indian originals no longer exist.1 The high quality of translation and
* I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Kevin Chang for the opportunity to write this chapter and for his critical comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Without his patience and help, the completion of this chapter would not have been possible. I also owe gratitude to Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher of the University of Vienna, who has not only drawn my attention to valuable sources and important information–including the dates of the Kanjurs–but also made many suggestions and comments on the first three sections of my draft. Nevertheless, I am responsible for any errors this article may contain. Special thanks go to Buddhist Digital Resource Center, National Palace Museum and Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher/ Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies for allowing me to use images of the Kanjur-texts in this chapter. 1 Peter Skilling, “From bKa’ bstan bcos to bKa’ ‘gyur and bsTan ‘gyur,” in Transmission of the Tibetan Canon, Papers Presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-005
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the linguistic affinity between the Tibetan and Indian languages have allowed scholars to reconstruct the Sanskrit originals of certain Buddhist texts from the Tibetan versions.2 The remarkable quantity and broad content of Tibetan Kanjurs and Tanjurs have also contributed to their indispensability within Buddhist literature of all traditions. Tibetan script was created during the reign of King Srong btsan sgam po (c. 569–649?),3 which is rather late when compared with Sanskrit and Chinese, two neighboring languages. Since then, Tibetan scholars have translated and written a large number of texts comprising not only religious but also secular works, including topics addressing the ten sciences that a “great scholar” in the Indian tradition must master.4 These have had an impact in the regions with which Tibetans had continual contact, or even over which they once exercised power, after the fragmentation of the Tibetan kingdom in the middle of the ninth century. These regions include today’s Tibet Autonomous Region as well as certain parts of provinces in China, such as western Sichuan, most of Qinghai, a small part of Gansu, and northern Yunnan. They also include the Himalayan areas of Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Ladakh, Pakistan, and northern India.5 In terms of its size and the extent of its influence, Tibetan literature constitutes one of the most important literary traditions in Asia. Investigations of Tibetan literature have previously concentrated almost exclusively on its textual content. To a greater extent than in the past, recent scholarly attention has come to encompass topics concerning the appearance and formats of Tibetan books. Much work remains to be done on the historical development and
Tibetan Studies, Gray 1995, ed. Helmut Eimer (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997), 87. 2 For example, Étienne Lamotte and Bhikṣu Prāsādika both have reconstructed the Sanskrit text of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa sūtra, see Étienne Lamotte, L’Enseignement de Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa) (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1962 [Reprint 1987]), 1–273 and Vimalakīrtinirdeśa sūtram, ed. Lal Mani Joshi & Bhiksu Pasadika (Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, 1981), see “Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon,” University of the West, accessed December 9, 2017, http://www.dsbcproject.org/. 3 According to the Tibetan tradition, King Srong btsan sgam po sent his minister Tönmi Sambhota to India to learn the Indian language. After Tönmi’s return, the Tibetan alphabet and written language were invented and were thereafter employed to translate Buddhist literature, José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson, “Editors’ Introduction,” in Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson (Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1996), 13. Scholars have questioned the authenticity of the legend and the existence of Tönmi Sambhota in the history, see for example Sam van Schaik, “A New Look at the Tibetan Invention of Writing,” in Old Tibetan Documents Monograph Series, vol. III, ed. Yoshiro Imaeda, Matthew Kapstein and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2011), 45, 51–52. 4 According to Sakya Pandita (1182–1251), the ten sciences consist of five minor sciences: grammar, poetics, metrics, drama, lexicography, and five major sciences: words, syllogism, healing, construction and Buddhist doctrines, see Cabezón and Jackson, “Editors’ Introduction,” 17–18. 5 Cabezón and Jackson, “Editors’ Introduction,” 11.
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physical characteristics of the different groups of Tibetan Kanjurs. This chapter investigates the page layout of Tibetan Kanjurs by comparing the composition and layout of twenty-three editions of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa that belong to different groups of the Tibetan Kanjurs. This investigation begins with a historical survey of the formats and writing materials of Tibetan books, and a summary of the characteristics of the most prevalent loose-leaf format of Tibetan books, known in Tibetan as pecha (or dpe cha) or poti (Skt.: pustaka, and evolved into pothī in South Asia),6 and a brief history of the development of Tibetan Kanjurs.
Historical Development of Tibetan Books Many manuscripts in Tibetan were collected at the now famous Dunhuang caves from the time of the Tibetan kingdom (seventh-ninth centuries) to the beginning of the eleventh century,7 when the caves were sealed.8 Together with the materials discovered in the twentieth century in Turfan,9 which was ruled by Tibetans from the middle of the eighth century until the middle of the ninth century, the Dunhuang materials constitute the oldest extant Tibetan literature.10 Previous studies of these findings, concentrating mostly on their textual contents, have revised the early history of Tibet that was traditionally accepted by Tibetan scholars. Combining paleography and the modern technology of paper and ink analyses, recent research pays increasing attention to the format, binding, paper, ink, etc., of these texts. The Tibetan texts from Dunhuang and Turfan exhibit various forms. They include the loose-leaf format, scrolls, concertina, glued and stitched books, and single
6 Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014), 53. See also Chapter 5 in this volume. 7 Christina Scherrer-Schaub and George Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” in Dunhuang Manuscript Forgeries, ed. Susan Whitfield (London: The British Library, 2002), 198. 8 Regarding the book collection in the Dunhuang caves, see Imre Galambos, “Manuscript and Print in the Tangu State: The Case of the Sunzi,” in Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, ed. Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 145. 9 The Tibetan materials discovered in Turfan by German scholars are dated between the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, Sam van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing: Evidence from the Turfan Oasis,” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 187. 10 Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, “Tibetan Historiography,” in Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. Cabezón and Jackson, 39. According to Sam van Schaik et al., the dates of the books, which were sealed at the beginning of the eleventh century in the caves of Dunhuang, range from the fifth to the tenth centuries. See Sam van Schaik, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, and Renate Nöller, “Writing, Painting and Sketching at Dunhuang: Assessing the Materiality and Function of Early Tibetan Manuscripts and Ritual Items,” Journal of Archaeological Science 53 (January 2015): 112.
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sheets.11 The locations of Dunhuang and Turfan on the Silk Road contributed to the multiplicity of cultures, languages, and forms of the manuscripts.12 The scroll and concertina are common formats of Chinese literature,13 while the origin of stitched books is more likely Western.14 Single sheets, which started as early as the ninth century,15 are the general format employed by Tibetans for letters and official documents.16 The loose-leaf format, continuing the tradition of Indian palm-leaf texts, became the most prevalent–and almost the only–form for literature in later Tibetan history. According to the Chinese Old Tang Annals, before the Tibetan writing system was in use Tibetans carved on pieces of wood or used knotted strings as signs of their oaths.17 This is attested by an early Tibetan document on the writing of legal codes, in which the usage of small stones and wood slips is mentioned.18 The Old Tibetan Chronicle, a find in Dunhuang, provides the information that Tibetan official records changed from wooden “tallies” (khram) to paper around 744–745.19 Until the late eighth century, however, wood slips were still in use; instead of being 11 Heather Stoddard, “Stitched Books from the Tibetan World,” in Studies on the History and Culture of the Himalayas and Tibet, ed. Franz-Karl Ehrhard (Munich: Indus Verlag, 2010), 376; Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 52; Camillo A. Formigatti, “A Forgotten Chapter in South Asian Book History? A Bird’s Eye View of Sanskrit Print Culture,” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 87; van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing: Evidence from the Turfan Oasis,” 175. 12 The Dunhuang manuscripts are written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Khotanese, and Sogdian. In contrast, the Turfan collections contain a much wider range of languages–including, the ones already mentioned, Tocharian A and B, Tumshuqese, Tangut and Mongolian, Middle Persian, Bactrian, Syriac, Greek, and Hebrew. See van Schaik, Helman-Ważny, and Nöller, “Writing, Painting and Sketching,” 112; van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing,” 175. 13 Scroll had been the “orthodox” book format for Chinese literature. From the middle of the ninth century, other formats became more and more common. This change is testified by the multifarious book forms in the Dunhuang caves, see Galambos, “Manuscript and Print,” 143. On the differences between the scroll and the concertina, see ibid. 14 Several groups of Tibetan books in stitched format, which have come to light in the past few years, are dated between the eighth and twelfth centuries and have a wide geographical distribution including Central Asia, southern Amdo, and southern Tibet, Stoddard, “Stitched Books,” 363. Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher informed me that quite a number of texts in this format were discovered in a eleventh /twelfth century dated, destructed stupa (mchod rten) at Matho, Ladakh. This stash includes birch bark manuscript that might be even older, see Helmut Tauscher, “Manuscript Fragments from Matho, A Preliminary Report and Random Reflections,” in Perspectives on Tibetan Culture, A Small Garland of Forget-me-nots Offered to Elena De Rossi Filibeck, ed. M. Clemente, O. Nalesini and F. Venturi (Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2018), 291–331. 15 van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing,” 175. 16 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 61. 17 Martin Slobodník, “The Perception of Tibet in China: between Disdain and Fascination,” Furen Lishi Xuebao 輔仁歷史學報 [Fu Jen Historical Journal] 17 (2006): 79. 18 van Schaik, “A New Look,” 55. 19 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 179.
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inscribed, they were written on with ink.20 A recent study shows that no later than the first half of the ninth century, Tibetans were able to make paper.21 It is very likely that as soon as the Tibetans acquired the technique of papermaking, paper not only replaced wood as the principal material for official documents but also became the main medium for other writings–including Buddhist literature.22 Even though the Tibetans adopted the loose-leaf format for Buddhist literature, it was not realistic to employ palm leaves, as Indians did, on the Tibetan Plateau, where the conditions are not appropriate for palm trees. As the Tibetan pen was made of a bamboo or reed shaft with its nib cut off,23 Tibetan paper needed a stronger and thicker texture than that produced by their Chinese neighbors. This texture bears a resemblance to Indian palm leaves.24 The records reveal that for the production of Kanjurs, sheets of paper were pasted together to provide a firm basis for writing.25 Later Tibetan scholars formulated certain criteria for the quality of paper for Buddhist writings; they also evaluated different classes of raw material for paper and various types of ink.26 After the Tibetans gave up their control over Central Asia, including Dunhuang,27 and as the once vast Kingdom of Tibet collapsed, Tibetan culture inclined strongly toward India. The famous Indian master Atīśa (982–1054) came to Tibet in the first half of the eleventh century, when the practices of Tibetan Buddhism were in a phase
20 van Schaik, “A New Look,” 55. 21 Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Sam van Schaik, “Witnesses for Tibetan Craftsmanship: Bringing together Paper Analysis, Palaeography and Codicology in the Examination of the Earliest Tibetan Manuscripts,” Archaeometry 55, no. 4 (2013): 739. Most of the Tabo manuscripts were written on hemp paper, Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 188. 22 The fact that all Tabo manuscripts, the philological features of which are considered as legal descendants of the Dunhuang manuscripts and the genre of which is exclusively Buddhist texts, are written on paper can be a convincing support for this assumption. For genre and features of Tabo manuscripts, see Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 185, 187. For procedures of papermaking in eighteenth century Bhutan, see Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book in Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 8. 23 For more about Tibetan pens, see Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 101–102. 24 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 51. 25 Christoph Cüppers, “Some Remarks on Bka’ ’gyur Production in 17th-century Tibet,” in Edition, éditions: l’écrit au Tibet, évolution et devenir, ed. A. Chayet et al. (München: Indus Verlag, 2010), 118. 26 Bo dong Phyogs las rnam rgyal (1376–1451) classified four levels of quality regarding the writing support, i.e. four different combinations of paper and ink for Buddhist writing. Moreover, he specified the conditions of the scribe as well as the principle of writing. See Tsering Dawa Sharshon, “Continuity and New Developments in 15th Century Tibetan Book Production: Bo dong Phyogs las rnams rgyal (1376–1451) and His Disciples as Producers of Manuscript and Print Editions,” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 241. The quality of the paper and ink for the production of Buddhist literature was equally emphasized by the fifteenth and the sixteenth century scholars, e.g. Taktsang Lotsawa and Padma Karpo (1527–1592), see Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book, 8. 27 Regarding the date of Tibetan rule of Dunhuang, see van Schaik, Helman-Ważny, and Nöller, “Writing, Painting and Sketching,” 112.
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of adulteration and corruption. Atīśa was credited with reintroducing the Indian Buddhist teachings into the “land of snow.” He is said to have expressed his preference for the loose-leaf format as the most suitable book form of Buddhist teaching and practice.28 However, Dunhuang documents suggest that by the tenth century the loose-leaf format had become the most frequently used form of Tibetan manuscripts.29 Likewise the Tibetan Buddhist texts in the Turfan collections, although mostly fragmentary, were written on paper of the pothī-style.30 The loose-leaf format for Tibetan Buddhist literature continued from then until modern times. Since the late twentieth century, more and more books have been produced adopting the Western-style book format.31
Tibetan Pecha in Loose-Leaf Format The loose-leaf Tibetan book, the pecha, can be handwritten or printed.32 Although loose, the pages of Tibetan books are kept in order for a long time. Early Tibetan manuscripts, following their Indian predecessors, were “bound” by a string going through holes pierced on each palm-leaf.33 They thus had string-holes. However, later texts forsook the connecting strings. A square cloth cover with a cloth-strip stitched at one corner (see Figure 4.1) replaced the string to fulfill the function of binding. The string-holes were thus transformed into decorative circles drawn on the page, as a way to proclaim the Indian origin of the texts. This practice mostly disappeared in later block-print literature.34 For “binding,” book pages are put in order and placed on top of a square cloth. A tab, usually covered by two layers of brocade flap, is inserted to show the book title before the pages are finally wrapped in the cloth and fastened by the cloth-strip. The wrapped book is usually placed between two wooden boards, as a measure of protection, before being placed on bookshelves.35
28 Stoddard, “Stitched Books,” 375; Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 52–53. 29 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 53. 30 van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing,” 175. 31 An example is the collated Kanjur edition (Bka’ ‘gyur dpe bsdur ma) published in Beijing between 2006–2008. 32 For the techniques of woodblock printing, see Helmut Eimer, “Observations Made in the Study of Tibetan Xylographs,” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 452–454. 33 For pictures of pothī books with binding strings, Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 50, Fig. 16; 57, Fig. 29. 34 Regarding the circles sketched on Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts, see Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 98–99. The fact that none of the post-1671 text editions among the objects used in this study contain any holes or circles attests to its practice in earlier manuscript editions only. For more discussions, see below in the section “Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa.” 35 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology, 53, 54, Figs. 17–18.
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Figure 4.1: The “binding” of a Tibetan pecha. A flat cloth strip is stitched at one corner of the cloth to “bind” the book (left). Before the book is finally wrapped, a title tab is inserted (middle). A well“bound” Tibetan pecha with the title tab (right).
The Tibetan pecha has several features. The leaf or folio is normally in a rectangular shape of varying size,36 corresponding to the Indian pothī or palm-leaf manuscript.37 Tibetans generally write or print on both sides of the folio. In the case of a volume of a Kanjur set, in which more texts were usually collected, the text normally starts directly on the recto of the first folio.38 Exceptions can be seen in the case of a single book, where the title is usually written on only one side of the first folio, with the other side left blank to serve as the book cover; the text may finish anywhere on the last folio without fully occupying both sides. The writing area comes with a border in different degrees of complexity. It may have no borders, single, or double borderlines on two sides, and it may feature a rectangular frame or heavily ornamented margins that enhance the aesthetics of the page. Information regarding the page is recorded on the recto along the left marginal line that is aligned perpendicularly to the direction of the text (see Figure 4.2). Volume and section indications, if they are provided, are normally written along with the folio number, although there are also cases in which these indications are written in
36 As indicated by Schaeffer, while material qualities and aesthetics were concerns for the production of Tibetan books, the size of the book seems to have been less regulated, Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book, 9. Prof. Dr. Tauscher has apprised me about the remark on the regulation of the folio size in the case of a Kanjur by Christoph Cüppers (“Some Remarks,” 118). 37 Christina Scherrer-Schaub, “Towards a Methodology for the Study of Old Tibetan Manuscripts: Dunhuang and Tabo,” in Tabo Studies II, Manuscripts, Texts, Inscriptions and the Arts, ed. C. A. Scherrer-Schaub and E. Steinellner (Roma: Istituto italiano per l’Africa E l’Oriente, 1999), 19. 38 Usually paintings of holy beings appear on the right and left sides of the text area. For illustrations and detailed descriptions, see Cüppers, “Some Remarks,” 119–122.
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Figure 4.2: Shey Palace Kanjur manuscript (Z, top two folios, shortly after 1729, vol. mdo/dza, ff. 415v and 416r) and Basgo Manuscript (X, bottom two folios, shortly after 1630, vol. mdo/’a, ff. 151v and 152r). The volume indication, folio number, and section title are entered along the left marginal line on the recto of Z. They are written in a clockwise direction at a right angle to the main text (red arrows are added to show the writing direction).
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parallel to the folio number so that the “margin note” consists of more than one line.39 On the versos, if they are not included on rectos, only the abbreviation of the text title or the section and/or the volume title is usually recorded at the corresponding position. There are also cases where “margin notes” are only found on the rectos, and the corresponding position on the versos is left blank (see both Z and X in Figure 4.2, Figure 4.3, C in Figure 4.5 and N in Figure 4.6). There are also other symbols that indicate new textual units, such as page, paragraph, or section. The “head letter,” “the opening symbol,” or “the opening crook” (yig mgo, mgo yig, dang kyog) helps to identify the pages in case the folios fall and scatter. Although not uniformly found and shaped in old manuscripts,40 the head letter appears quite consistently in later texts, usually at the very beginning of the first line on the recto, at a slight distance from the text (see Figure 4.2). Continuing an Indian tradition,41 this symbol can also be seen before a text title or the first paragraph of a longer text (see Figure 4.2, the sign after a wide space on the fifth line of the recto of X). In addition, ornamental and auspicious signs, frequently found in old Tibetan manuscripts, may also appear before a new section, chapter, or at the beginning of a new text (in the case of a volume collection, see for example in Figure 4.3).42 They serve as text markers, while also enhancing the aesthetics of the text. Loose-leaf books are read in a particular way. The reader usually leans the page he is reading against the stack of unread folios for convenience. Having finished a folio, it is turned toward or sometimes away from the reader with the recto facing down as if the pages were bound on the lower or upper end. When the book has been completely read, the folios lie in perfectly ordered a stack again.
39 For example, due to a later alteration the “margin note” of Basgo manuscript (X) consists of two lines, see the bottom leaf in Figure 4.2; the original folio number (re bdun=67), which was aligned with the section indication (chos sdud), was blotted out, changed to a new number (nga gnyis=52) and rewritten in parallel to the section indication to form a second line. 40 Scherrer-Schaub, “Towards a Methodology,” 9. “Old Tibetan manuscripts” designate those manuscripts that are dated between the invention of the Tibetan script (mid-seventh century) and the compilation of the first Tibetan Kanjur (the fourteenth century). Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 184. 41 Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 191. 42 For their types, descriptions and functions, see Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 191–194; for their practice and origin, see Scherrer-Schaub, “Towards a Methodology,” 17–19. In Figure 4.3 an auspicious sign was placed between two different texts, at the middle right position on the sixth line of the recto (top image).
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Figure 4.3: Longtsang Jing Kanjur manuscript (K), 1669. Vol. 76 (mdo/mu), ff. 268r and 268v.
Brief History of the Development of Tibetan Kanjurs The most representative texts of all Tibetan literature are Buddhist canons, which by tradition were prepared in the pecha format. As symbols of Buddha’s teachings, Tibetan Kanjurs and Tanjurs are objects of veneration and are almost always placed near the altar in Tibetan monasteries.43 After the invention of the Tibetan scripts in the seventh century, it took Tibetans around six hundred years to translate, collect, and classify Buddhist texts, before they came to form fairly well-organized collections of Kanjurs and Tanjurs.44 In the early diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet (snga dar) from the seventh to the ninth centuries, many Buddhist texts were translated and their
43 Paul Harrison, “A Brief History of the Tibetan Bka’ ‘gyur,” in Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. Cabezón and Jackson, 86; Helmut Eimer, “The Tibetan Kanjur Printed in China,” Zentral Asiatische Studien 36 (2007): 55. 44 The following descriptions of this paragraph rely mainly on the study of Peter Skilling, “From bKa’ bstan bcos,” 87–100.
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titles recorded in palace inventories. The collapse of the Tibetan kingdom in the ninth century and the subsequent wars in Central Tibet caused numerous Buddhist works to disappear or become dispersed. Around the tenth century, Buddhism was reintroduced from India into western Tibet. Thanks to the endeavor of Rin chen bzang po (958–1055), along with the construction of new temples and monasteries, Buddhist texts were translated on a large scale. Several masters, including the great Indian master Atīśa, brought the religion back to Central Tibet in the eleventh century. Buddhist texts–whether translated earlier, once lost and rediscovered, or completed later–were very likely separately copied, circulated, and collected by lineages, monasteries, or religious centers through the patronage of local rulers. Attempts at compiling and classifying accumulated Buddhist texts were probably made very early. The recent revelation of the collections named “proto-Kanjurs” by scholars testifies to the efforts of systematizing a vast quantity of Buddhist literature into a sensible, coherent, and accessible structure.45 Compared with later Kanjurs, the “proto-Kanjur” collections were not yet well organized, and the arrangement of their volumes had no fixed order. The Old Narthang Kanjur, considered to be the first well-organized and earliest Kanjur in Tibet, took form early in the fourteenth century. Its production marked a new phase of the development of Kanjurs. Several monasteries and religious centers devoted their efforts to the compilation of Buddhist texts, with sources available to them, boosting the reproduction and circulation of Buddhist literature. In the following centuries many Kanjurs were produced; they were distinguished from one another by collected texts, classification, structure, etc. Scholars have divided Kanjur editions into four groups: the Them spangs ma, the Tshal pa, the mixed group, and the group of “local” and “independent” Kanjurs (hereafter the local group).46 The Them spangs ma and the Tshal pa are the major groups. The Kanjur editions that contain textual features of both major groups are placed in the mixed group. Those editions that cannot be placed into the above-mentioned three groups are classified into the local group. The Tshal pa group has two subdivisions: one was transmitted in China (starting from the Yongle Kanjur in 1410) and the other in the Sino-Tibetan border area (e.g. ’Jang sa tham/Lithang Kanjur, 1609–14 and Co ne Kanjur, 1721–31). Each Kanjur collection is a unique masterpiece of the era and/or the community in which it was produced. Each Kanjur comprises approximately 750–1100 texts bound in 100–119 volumes; each volume consists of 500 leaves on average.47 To finish a huge project like this requires powerful sponsors such as royal houses or local
45 One example of the “proto-Kanjurs” would be the Gondhla Kanjur. On “proto-Kanjurs,” see Helmut Tauscher, Catalogue of the Gondhla Proto-Kanjur (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2008), xi–xii. 46 Helmut Tauscher, “Kanjur,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 1: Literature and Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 108. 47 Tauscher, “Kanjur,” 104.
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kings. Take the Longtsang Jing Kanjur manuscript (K) as an example. The Qing Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722, reign 1661–1722) sponsored its creation in order to grant the wish of his Mongolian grandmother, Empress Xiaozhuang (1613–1688), who was a devoted follower of Tibetan Buddhism. For its completion, 171 monastics worked for two years as scribes to write 50,300 leaves of texts in golden script.48 It was reported that Xiaozhuang, having spent a tremendous amount of capital and materials on the project, commanded that, when the general manager presented her with a memorial of the estimated expenditure in progress, her income be further directed so as to subsidize the work; this resulted in Kangxi’s investing more heavily in the project.49 For devout Tibetan Buddhist followers, the significance of reproducing Kanjurs lay in sincere devotion; it was deemed necessary to sacrifice one’s own properties or enjoyment for religious dedication. This whole-hearted offering of the financial and material resources at one’s disposal could explain why a community seldom supported more than one edition of Kanjur and/or Tanjur.50 Besides material resources, mental and physical efforts were exerted to the utmost. Tibetan Buddhist society believed that a religious offering was the supreme exertion in all regards, demonstrating the sincere religious devotion of the sponsor(s). Thus, every new creation of the Kanjur was a presentation of the greatest endeavors with the best possible quality. As a result, with only very rare exceptions, a community normally produced only a single Kanjur collection in a certain period.
48 Li Baowen, “The Origin of Tibetan Dragon Sutra Recorded in the Archives of the Imperial Household Department從「總管內務府檔案」述說太皇太后吐蕃特文泥金寫本《甘珠爾經》的修造,” The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly 故宮學術季刊 28:4 (2011): 139. 49 Li Baowen, “The Related Manchu Files from the Archives of the General Manager of the Imperial Household Department 《龍藏經》修造相關滿文《總管內務府檔案》,” in A Wondrous Occasion Predestined: Unveiling the Kangxi Kangyur 殊勝因緣──內府泥金寫本藏文龍藏經探索, ed. Fung Ming-chu & Lu Sheue-yann (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2015), 358–359. For one other example of exerting tremendous financial and man power in producing Sde dge as well as Cone Kanjur and Tanjur, see Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book, 104–110. 50 Both the Kangxi and Qianlong (1711–1799, reign 1735–1796) emperors of the Manchu Qing dynasty made it possible to have Kanjurs reproduced several times; during Kangxi’s reign; in addition to the 1669 Longtsang Jing manuscript, there are 1684–1692, 1700, and 1712–1720 prints; and two later prints were finished separately in 1737 and post-1765 under Qianlong’s rule, see Eimer, “The Tibetan Kanjur,” 42. Yet, except for the 1684–1692 edition, these are basically reprints; amendments were directly made to the old printing plates without preparing new blocks, ibid. 39–40. Therefore, the Kangxi Emperor is one exception, who supported more than one Kanjur: the Longtsang Jing manuscript and the 1684–1692 print. However, although Kangxi sponsored the Longtsang Jing project, he was not the initiator. Xiaozhuang’s persistence and the financial and material resources donated by her Mongolian relatives contributed, to a certain extent, to the completion of the manuscript. One other exception is Pho lha nas Bsod nams stobs rgyas (1689–1747), the Tibetan ruler during 1728–1747, who supported the Narthang block print canon and a Kanjur in golden ink dedicated to his deceased mother, see Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book, 113–119.
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It has taken more than two decades for modern scholars to clarify the lineages of different Kanjurs. Besides consulting historical records and examining the contents and structure of individual Kanjurs, they applied text-critical techniques, comparing different Kanjur editions of a certain text and analyzing variant readings of passages or texts.51 They deduced the genealogical relationship among the Kanjur editions. Based on different texts for collation, they have produced results that deviate to some degree from each other. They came to the conclusion that in order to study the genealogical relationship of Kanjurs, each text must be examined individually.52
Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa In an earlier study, I determined the relationship of thirteen editions of the Tibetan version of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa via text-critical techniques.53 In the present study, I analyze the page layouts of twenty-three pecha editions of the same sūtra. I then examine the correspondences between the findings of these two studies. In the following discussion, different editions are represented by sigla (letter abbreviations). Sigla of the Editions54 B: Berlin manuscript, 1680 C: Co ne block print, 1721–31 D: Sde dge block print, 1733
51 As summarized by Paul Harrison, examining historical information of the production of each edition, comparing the section order and individual titles of different editions, and applying textcritical technique are the three basic methods to determine the correlations of various editions, Harrison, “A Brief History,” 80. 52 Paul Harrison, “Meritorious Activity or Waste of Time? Some Remarks on the Editing of Texts in the Tibetan Kanjur,” in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies Narita 1989, ed. Ihara Shōren and Yamaguchi Zuihō, (Narita: Naritasan Shinshoji, 1992), 78. 53 Shen-yu Lin, “An Investigation into the Tibetan Dunhuang Manuscripts on Vimalakīrtinirdeśa PT610 and PT611《維摩詰經》敦煌藏文寫本殘卷 PT610 、PT611 研究,” Taiwan Journal of Buddhist Studies 台大佛學研究 33 (2017): 14–17. 54 Regarding the dates specified in below, for B, C, D, H, J, N, and T, see Harrison, “Meritorious Activity,” 78–81; for F, see Helmut Eimer, Location List for the Texts in the Microfiche Edition of the Phug brag Kanjur (Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1993), v; for Go1 and Go2, see Tauscher, Catalogue, lii; for I1 and I2, see van der Kuijp, “Tibetan Historiography,” 39; for K, see A Wondrous Occasion Predestined: Unveiling the Kangxi Kangyur 殊勝因緣──內府泥金寫本藏文龍藏 經探索, 2; for Q, W, and Y, see Tauscher, “Kanjur,” 108; for Do, S, X, and Z, private confirmation with Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher; for S, see also Tadeusz Skorupski, A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur (Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1985), xii; for Ta1 and Ta2, see my following discussion, especially in the section “Evolution over Time”; for V, see Jampa Samten, Hiroaki Niisaku and Kelsang Tahuwa, Catalogue of the Ulan Bator Rgyal Rtse Them Spangs Ma Manuscript Kangyur (Tokyo: Yuishoji Buddhist Cultural Exchange Research Institute, 2012), I.
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Do: Dolpo manuscript, late fourteenth cent. F: Phug brag manuscript, sometime between 1696–1706 Go1: Gondhla manuscript,55 turn of the thirteenth/fourteenth cent. Go2: Gondhla manuscript,56 turn of the thirteenth/fourteenth cent. H: Lhasa block print, 1934 I1: Pelliot Tibétain 610 (PT610) Tibetan Dunhuang manuscript, before 1035 I2: Pelliot Tibétain 611 (PT611) Tibetan Dunhuang manuscript, before 1035 J: ’Jan sa tham/Lithang block print, 1609–1614 K: Longtsang Jing Kanjur manuscript/Taipei manuscript, 1669 N: Snar thang block print, 1730–32 Q: Peking block print, 1717–20 S: Stog Palace Kanjur manuscript, shortly after 1729 T: Tokyo manuscript, 1858–1878 Ta1: Tabo manuscript,57 between the tenth and mid-thirteenth cent. Ta2: Tabo manuscript,58 sometime between 1250–1430 V: Ulaanbaatar manuscript, 1671 W: Wanli block print, 1606 X: Basgo manuscript, shortly after 1630 Y: Yongle block print,59 1410 Z: Shey Palace Kanjur manuscript, shortly after 1729 All the objects under investigation are complete editions, except for the Dunhuang (I1 and I2) and the Tabo (Ta1 and Ta2) manuscripts, which are fragments.60 Eight of the complete editions are woodblock or xylographic prints, and eleven are manuscripts. Certain measurable elements of the page were selected and their values determined and recorded. The elements include (see also Table 4.1) the number of lines on a page (lns), the ratio of the length to the width of a page (pg l/w), the ratio of the length to the width of the text area (txt l/w), the number of borderlines of the
55 Tauscher, Catalogue, 60 (vol.23, no.17). 56 Tauscher, Catalogue, 67 (vol.25, no.1). 57 Christina Scherrer-Schaub and Paul Harrison, Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue of the Manuscript Collection of Tabo Monastery, Volume I, Sūtra Texts, by Paul Harrison (Roma: Istitutoitaliano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009), 136 (1.4.0.7). For a folio image of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa of Tabo manuscript, see Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 189, Fig. 16. 58 Scherrer-Schaub and Harrison, Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue, 135 (1.4.0.6). 59 For information related to the printing of the Yongle edition, see Porong Dawa, “New Discoveries in Early Tibetan Printing History,” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 197. 60 The core of the Tabo fragments may date from the late tenth century to the mid-eleventh century, the time of the great translator Rin chen bzang po (958–1055), see Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 212, 209; Scherrer-Schaub and Harrison, Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue, xx.
I
Ta m
Ta m
Go m
Go m
Do
Y
W
J
X
K
V
before
btw th–mid –th cent.
btw -
th/th cent.
th/th cent.
late th cent.
–
shortly after
m
m
m
x
x
x
m
m
m
I
before
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. o (gdln visible)
o (gdln visible)
/sg, light
/sg, light
/sg
/sg
/sg, light
. /db, red
. /db, ext frame decoration
. /sg, thick
.
.
. /sg, light
. /sg, light
.
. o (gdln visible)
.
tp Ins pg l/w txt l/w txt bdlns (factor A)
Sg
Date
Table 4.1: Comparison of editions, evolution over time.
(crcls w ctr pt)
(crcls w ctr pt)
(crcls w ctr pt)
holes
hole
hole
holes/circles
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
(crcls, red)
(db ln crcls, ext thicker)
inside, v:+, rt mg nt Chin
outside, v:-, rt mg nt Chin
outside, v:-, rt mg nt Chin
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:?
–
mg nt (factor B)
(continued )
gold ink on dark blue paper, auspicious sign
red ink, sg vt ln btw mg nt & txt
red ink
st pg lotus decoration
others
Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa
125
Q
C
S
Z
N
D
T
H
–
–
shortly after
shortly after
–
btw –
x
m
x
x
m
m
x
x
m
F
btw –
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
mg nt (factor B)
. /vt db lns, hz sg lns
. /db
. /sg
. /vt db lns, hz sg lns
. /db
. /db
. /db
. /db, ext thicker
. /light
inside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:+
inside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
inside, v:-
outside, v:+, rt mg nt Chin
outside, v:-
. /db, ext black thicker, outside, v:int red
tp Ins pg l/w txt l/w txt bdlns (factor A)
m
Sg
(copied ) B
Date
Table 4.1 (continued )
holes/circles
db vt lns btw mg nt & txt
db vt lns btw mg nt & txt
sg vt lns btw mg nt & txt
red ink
auspicious sign, rd & th lns red
others
126 Shenyu Lin
Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa
127
text area (txt bdlns), the location and description of the margin note (mg nt), and the number of holes/circles on a page (holes/circles). Other significant features of the page design (others) are also recorded. When the actual length and width are unavailable to me, their ratios are determined according to the digitized images (see Table 4.3). Results of the measurements are shown in Tables 4.1 & 4.2.
Evolution over Time Table 4.1 displays the results when the twenty-three editions are placed in order by date. The number of lines (lns) and the number of holes/circles on a page (holes/ circles) change significantly over time. Differences in the numbers of lines are notable between the earliest-dated Dunhuang/Tabo fragments (varying between five/ six/nine) and those editions completed after the thirteenth/fourteenth centuries. The “proto-Kanjurs” (Go1 and Go2) have more lines (ten) than the Kanjurs initiated from the late fourteenth or fifteenth century to 1721, during which time eight lines were constant. After 1729, the value changed from eight to seven, and the principle of applying seven lines to a page continued until the beginning of the twentieth century with one exception, T. Instead of applying seven lines, T maintains eight lines on a page. Although T was handwritten in 1858–1878, it is, like V, known to be one of the many copies of the Them spangs ma manuscript completed in 1431.61 Instead of following the style of those Kanjurs initiated later than 1729, T apparently maintained the format of its original. Regarding the presence of string-holes or circles, the manuscripts and xylographic prints of our objects show differences. None of our xylographic editions, the earliest of which dates to the early fifteenth century (1410, Y), contain holes or circles. Scholars’ reports of their presence on some print fragments dating from circa the thirteenth to the early fifteenth century suggest that the practice of holes or circles was common on Buddhist texts before the early fifteenth century.62 String-holes or the imitation circles were made on our manuscripts until around the middle of the seventeenth century. Except for Ta2 and X, all the manuscripts finished before 1671 contain either string-holes or circles ranging from one (I1, I2) or two real string-holes (Ta1), or two circles with a central point (Go1, Go2, Do), to two decorative circles (K, V). While the one string-hole on the I1 and I2 is positioned slightly left of the vertical middle line, the two holes or aesthetic circles on the
61 Harrison, “Meritorious Activity,” 79. 62 For print fragments with two string-holes dated between circa the thirteenth to early fifteenth century, see Christina Scherrer-Schaub, “Printing versus Manuscript: History or Rhetoric?” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 164–166, Figs. 8.4 & 8.5; Dawa, “New Discoveries,” 199.
Go m
Do
V
S
Z
T
X
F
J
th/th cent.
late th cent.
shortly after
shortly after
btw –
shortly after
btw –
–
x
m
m
m
m
m
m
/sg, light
/sg, light
. /db
/sg, light
. . /sg, thick
. . / light
.
. . /db
. . /db
.
. . /db, red
. . /sg, light
.
.
Go m
th/th cent.
o (gdln visible)
. /sg, light
.
m
o (gdln visible)
. . o (gdln visible)
Ta m
m
. .
txt txt bdlns (factor A) l/w
btw –
I
before
m
pg l/w
. .
I
before
tp Ins
Btw th–mid–th Ta m cent.
Sg
Date
Table 4.2: Comparison of editions, differences among groups.
inside, v:+, rt mg nt Chin
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:?
–
mg nt (factor B)
(crcls,red )
(crcls w ctr pt)
(crcls w ctr pt)
(crcls w ctr pt)
holes
hole
hole
holes/circles
Red ink, sgvt ln btw mg nt & txt
st pg lotus decoration
others
128 Shenyu Lin
C
Y
W
K
B
Q
N
D
H
–
(copied )
–
–
x
x
x
x
m
m
x
x
x
/sg
. . /vt db lns, hz sg lns
. . /sg
. . /vt db lns, hz sg lns
. . / db ext thicker
. . / db ext black thicker, int red
. . / db ext frame decoration
. .
/sg
. /db
. .
.
inside, v:-
outside, v:+
inside, v:-
outside, v:- rt mg nt Chin
outside: v:-
outside, v:-
outside, v:+, rt mg nt Chin
outside, v:+, rt mg nt Chin
inside, v:-
(db ln crcls, ext thicker)
db vt lns btw mg nt & txt
db vt lns btw mg nt & txt
red ink
auspicious sign, rd & th lns red
gold ink on dark blue paper, auspicious sign
red ink
sg vt lns btw mg nt & txt
Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa
129
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Shenyu Lin
aforementioned manuscripts were drawn in a symmetrical way along the horizontal middle line of the text (see Figure 4.3). Their locations are largely in agreement with the principle observed by sTag tshang Lo tsa ba Shes rab rin chen (1405–1477).63 As Scherrer-Schaub points out, string-holes had existed since the earliest manuscript, and disappeared between ca. the mid-thirteenth and the early fifteenth century. From the first half of the fifteenth century, more and more elaborate imitations of stringholes appeared.64 In an earlier study by Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani the classificatory system of manuscripts between the second half of the tenth century and around the sixteenth century is summarized in three types65: Type I: from around 950 to around 1190/1250; Type II: from around 1250 to around 1390/1430; Type III: from around 1430 to around 1500. The form of the string-holes or circles was one of the distinct elements in determining the above types and it changed in these three types of manuscripts from “string-holes or quasi-string-holes with or without surrounding circles” in Type I, to “rare occurrence of string-holes or quasi-string-holes” in Type II, to “imitation of string-holes sometimes with inscribed miniatures or sacred syllables” in Type III. If this trend is applicable to all Tibetan manuscripts of the corresponding period, our early manuscripts in general agree with Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani’s system, except for Ta2, Go1, Go2 and Do. The latter three, according to their styles, can be seen as Type I manuscripts. The dates of these three exceptions would then be earlier than presently recognized.66 The absence of holes/circles in Ta2 can be an indication of its later date (between 1250 and 1430), which accords with Paul Harrison’s indication that some Tabo fragments were in fact produced later.67 Moreover, the date of Ta1 would be between the tenth and mid-thirteenth century. Other elements that also changed over time are the ratios between the length and the width of the text area (txt l/w) and of the page (pg l/w). Figure 4.4 shows the values of our objects arranged in the order of their dates. Although the measurements, due to some practical limitations, are not consistently established from the page of the mentioned sūtra (see Table 4.3), the result can still serve as a reference in observing the overall development of the Kanjurs.
63 Scherrer-Schaub, “Printing versus Manuscript?” 165–166. 64 Ibid., 164. 65 Scherrer-Schaub and Bonani, “Establishing a Typology,” 201–208. 66 The Gondhla manuscripts are tentatively dated to the second half of the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, Helmut Tauscher and Bruno Laine, “Western Tibetan Kanjur Tradition,” in The Cultural History of Western Tibet. Recent Research from the China Tibetology Research Center and the University of Vienna, ed. Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Liang Junyan, Helmut Tauscher, Zholi Yuan (Wien: China Tibetology Research Center, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 2008), 347. 67 According to Harrison, the Tabo collection includes core manuscripts finished in the tenth and eleventh centuries and texts produced later, which can be as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, Scherrer-Schaub and Harrison, Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue, xx.
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Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa
Figure 4.4: Ratio of the length to the width of the text area and of the page.
Table 4.3: Length and width of the folios and the text areas/boxes.* Date
Sg
before
Ia1
pg l/w
l
before
Ia2
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
btw th–mid–th cent.
Tab1
.
.
.
.
btw –
Tab2
.
.
.
th/th cent.
Goc1
.
th/th cent.
Goc2
.
d
late cent.
l
w
w
txt l/w
.
.
.
.
e
Y
.
.
.
–
–
.
We
.
.
.
–
–
.
–
J
–
–
.
–
–
.
(–)
(–)
.
–
–
th
Do
shortly after
X
K
.
.
–
–
.
Vg
.
.
.
.
(copied )
B
.
.
.
.
btw –
F
–
–
.
–
–
.
f
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Shenyu Lin
Table 4.3 (continued ) Date
Sg
l
w
pg l/w
–
h
l
w
txt l/w
Q
.
.
.
–
–
.
–
Ce
.
.
.
.
.
shortly after
S
.
–
–
.
shortly after
f
Z
(–)
(–)
.
–
–
.
–
Ne
.
.
.
.
.
D
.
–
–
.
btw –
i
T
.
.
.
.
.
He
.
.
.
.
.
* The data of Y, W, K, V, Q, C, N, and H are not specific to the sutra concerned. a IDP (International Dunhuang Project), http://idp.bl.uk/ (key in “Pelliot tibetain 610” and “Pelliot tibetain 610” in the “SEARCH THE IDP DATABASE” box), Date accessed, 2017.05.31. b Scherrer-Schaub and Harrison. Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue of the Manuscript Collection of Tabo Monastery, Volume I, Sūtra Texts, by Paul Harrison, 135–136. c Tauscher, Catalogue of the Gondhla Proto-Kanjur, xxxv. d Dr.Markus Viehbeck, University of Vienna. e Helman-Wazny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books, 138 (Figure 72a); 152 (Figure 85), 252, 256–261. f Prof. Dr. Helmut Tauscher, University of Vienna. g Samten et.al., Catalogue of the Ulan Bator Rgyal Rtse Them Spangs Ma Manuscript Kangyur, I. h
https://www.kawachen.org/peking_kangyur_e.htm, Date accessed, 2018.10.20. i
Ms. Yoko Shinozaki, Toyo Bunko, Japan.
The results of pg l/w show that K, V, B and F, produced around the second half of the seventeenth century, roughly stay at the bottom of the curve line; the values of the editions earlier than K, V, B and F tend to decrease over time; after K, V, B and F, the ratio tends to increase. This outcome suggests that after the second half of the seventeenth century there is an inclination to set a page in a narrower and longer form. Before this period, the trend was to become wider and shorter. I will discuss this change later. That the value of T is very close to that of V attests again to its identity as V’s sibling. As for txt l/w, the curve line fluctuates almost in the same way as that of pg l/w, although the values are consistently higher, which suggests that, generally speaking, the written area is narrower and longer than the page itself. D demonstrates a particularly high value of txt l/w. That is to say, D’s text area is much longer and narrower in proportion to its page size.
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Differences among Groups Table 4.2 displays the results of the twenty-three editions put in order by group. Editions in the same group are placed in order by date. I1, I2, Ta1, Ta2, Go1, Go2, Do are either fragments from Dunhuang and Tabo or the so-called “proto-Kanjurs,” so they are not placed in the above-mentioned four groups. Excluding these seven editions, the other sixteen are classified according to recent Kanjur studies in four groups: V, S, Z, and T belong to the Them spangs ma group; J, C as well as Y, W, K, B, Q are two subdivisions of the Tshal pa group; X and F fall within the local group; N, D, and H belong to the mixed group.68 Two main factors differentiate the groups of texts under study: text borderlines (txt bdlns, factor A) and margin notes (mg nt, factor B). The type of text borderlines is the most important feature that distinguishes the groups. Three varieties are observed: 1) no frame at all, 2) right and left borderlines, and 3) a frame of four borderlines like a box. The earliest manuscripts of I1, I2, and Ta1 have no borderlines, although guidelines for writing are visible on the page. The text areas of Ta2, Go1, Go2, Do as well as X and F (the local group) are only surrounded by left and right borderlines, and these are single lines in light ink.69 The difference between the borderlines in Ta1 and Ta2 can be regarded as further evidence for Ta2’s later date, besides their above-mentioned dissimilarity in holes and circles. Employing vertical lines at the right and left end of the written area, V, S, Z, and T (the Them spangs ma group) are distinguished by the use of double lines. In contrast to the aforementioned manuscript Kanjurs, the Tshal pa and the mixed groups surround their written area with a frame, although their design ranges from four single lines (J and D), two vertical double lines and two horizontal single lines (N and H), to a frame made of four double lines (C, K, B, and Q). Y and W, both woodblock prints of the Tshal pa group completed in the Ming dynasty in China (1368–1644), surround their text, just like the earlier manuscript Kanjurs, only with left and right single borderlines. The later editions created in China in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), however, did not continue this tradition.70 Both manuscript editions (K and B) of this subdivision, which theoretically would have followed the manuscript tradition in applying left and right
68 D is classified by scholars in the Tshal pa group, see Tauscher, “Kanjur,” 108. However, I tend to place D in the mixed group. As specified in ibid., the mixed group “are based on a copy from the Tshal pa line, but they include a great number of emendations based on some copy from the Them spangs ma group; thus it combines characteristic features of both traditions.” D’s primary source was J (the Tshal pa group), but the Lhodzong Kanjur (the Them spangs ma group) was also consulted, see Harrison, “Meritorious Activity,” 79. According to the features explored in my recent studies, D in fact carries features of both major traditions. To place D in the mixed group is thus more reasonable. 69 A copy of F’s microfilm edition is used in this study. The right and left borderlines of F are sometimes barely visible. 70 Helmut Eimer also pointed out that the border of Y and W, which was formed by a thin vertical line at the left and the right hand sides, are different from those later reproductions in the Qing dynasty, which enclosed the text with solid bars. See Eimer, “The Tibetan Kanjur,” 47.
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borderlines, enclosed their text with a complete frame. The page setting of Y and W in this respect was obviously not the one upon which the editions finished in the Qing dynasty (K, B, and Q) relied. Nearly all editions of the Tshal pa group, which entirely enclose their text area, employ double lines. An exception is the earliest-dated J, which made use of single lines that are nearly as thick as the distance between the double lines used by its Tshal pa companions: C, B, and Q (see Figure 4.5). A further
Figure 4.5: ’Jan sa tham/Lithang (J, top, 1609–1614, vol. mdo/ma, ff. 184r and 184v) and Co ne (C, bottom, 1721–1731, vol. mdo/ma, ff. 215r and 215v) block prints.
Chapter 4 Sūtra Text in Pecha Format: Page Layout of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa
135
aesthetic development of the borderlines is seen in K. Ornaments with decorative design were used to form an especially elegant frame (see Figure 4.3). N, D, and H of the mixed group follow the tradition of the majority of the Tshal pa group in surrounding their text with a full frame. Nevertheless, two different forms are observed: while N and H made use of a combination of vertical double lines and horizontal single lines, D employed a single-line frame (see Figure 4.6).
Figure 4.6: Snar thang (N, top two blocks, 1730–1732, vol. mdo/pha, ff. 371r and 371v) and Sde dge (D, bottom two blocks, 1733, vol. mdo/ma, ff. 176r and 176v) block prints.
The “margin note” is the other main factor that distinguishes the groups. All editions, except I1, include a margin note.71 Information regarding the page provided in the margin note is aligned in a single line. Only X’s margin note contains two
71 Regarding information provided in a margin note, see previous section of “Tibetan Pecha in Loose-leaf Format” in this chapter.
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lines, which appear to be the result of a later alteration (see Figure 4.2). Besides, J, Y, W, and Q of the Tshal pa group contain a margin note in Chinese at the right hand side of the text (see Figure 4.5), which reminds us of the practice of “Mongolian prints” (hor par ma) developed at the time of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and conveys the impression that the prints may have been finished by craftsmen who were unable to read Tibetan.72 The margin note in general is located along the left text borderline on the recto, however, its design and its form on the verso vary. The margin notes of those editions that have either no borderlines or merely right and left borderlines appear uniformly on the recto at the left of the textual areas. The equivalent location on the verso of all these editions has no entry (see Figure 4.2). The arrangements of those editions that surround their text with a full frame are diverse. Basically, the margin notes of the J and C subdivision of the Tshal pa group are located inside of the frame, being separated from the text by a vertical line (see Figure 4.5). In contrast, K, B, and Q of the Chinese subdivisions have their margin notes outside of the frame (see Figure 4.3). The equivalent location on the versos of all the framed editions of the Tshal pa group, excluding J and Q, has no entry. J and Q also differ from their group companions C, K, and B in adding Chinese margin notes at the right borders of the text area. While the Chinese margin note of J is inside the frame, that of Q is outside. Texts of the mixed group N and H (see Figure 4.6) share with each other the margin note located inside the frame (like J and C), the lack of margin notes on the verso, and the double vertical lines between the margin note and the text. Thus a close affinity between N and H is observable. D, on the other hand, supplies margin notes outside the text frame (see Figure 4.6) and the margin note on its verso provides section information. D distinguishes itself from N and H.
Correspondence with a Previous Study I have tentatively determined the relationship of thirteen editions of the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa according to variant readings by collating a short part of the sūtra.73 The results are displayed as a genealogical tree shown in Figure 4.7. V, S, and Z, which share many similarities in variant readings, are members of the same group (the Them spangs ma), to which F (the local group) shows a closer affinity
72 For “Mongolian prints” (hor par ma), see van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing,” 172, 185. The existence of the Chinese margin note is for the convenience of the Chinese craftsmen who were unable to read Tibetan, see Leonard van der Kuijp, “Faulty Transmissions: Some Notes on Tibetan Textual Criticism and the Impact of Xylography,” in Edition, éditions: l’écrit au Tibet, évolution et devenir, ed. Anne Chayet, et al. (Munich: Indus, 2010), 449–450. 73 Lin, “An Investigation,” 16.
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Translation I1 before 1035
Translation I2
Translation #
before 1035 #
Old Narthang 1310 # Tshal pa 1349-51 Y #
1410 Phyin ba stag rise
Them spangs ma 1431 # Thang po che
Wanli
J
1609 14 K 1669
Lhodzong V
P
1684?
1671 F 1696-1706
Q C
Z
1717-20
1721-31
S
shortly after 1729 shortly after 1729 N
1730-32
D
1733
H
1934 Figure 4.7: A tentative genealogical tree for the Tibetan Vimalakīrtinirdeśa (textual criticism). The xylographic editions are on a red background.
than to the Tshal pa group. I2 has been shown to be an ancestor of the Them spangs ma group, while no evidence can be found to establish its relation to the Tshal pa group. I1 is an edition different from I2 and all the other Kanjur editions. J and C, together with Y, K, P, and Q, which belong to two subgroups of the Tshal pa,
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demonstrate their dissimilarity from V, S, and Z (the Them spangs ma group). Although N, D, and H are in the mixed group, they show differences from one another. N agrees with J and C of the Tshal pa group in the majority of the variant readings, while at the same time taking Them spangs ma as its reference. D follows in most cases V, S, and Z, although it sometimes bears similarities to J and C. The youngest, H, shows a closer affinity to N than to D. In the present chapter, twenty-three editions are studied and the affinities among them are determined according to their page layout. As discussed above, the way of framing the text areas (factor A) and the application of margin notes (factor B) are the two main factors by which the groups in our objects can be differentiated. Figure 4.8 is derived from the information in the columns of factor A and factor B in Table 4.2, based on the principle that four sub-factors are taken in the following sequence as shared features to differentiate the editions into different categories: location of margin note (outside/inside), existence of margin note on versos (v-/v+), text borderlines (none/A0, on right and left sides/A2, and box, namely on all sides/A4), and lines of text boundary (single/double). The outcome basically corresponds to that of the previous study, although some minor deviations are noted. V, S, Z, and T exhibit perfect consistency in all four aforementioned subfactors. This corresponds to their affiliation as members of the same group (the Them spangs ma). X and F (the local group) deviate only slightly from the Them spangs ma in the fourth sub-factor (single/double text borderlines).74 They diverge, however, more from the Tshal pa group, in some cases (J, C, Q) by as many as three sub-factors. They thus demonstrate a closer relationship with the Them spangs ma group. This finding accords with the conclusion of my previous study. Texts of the Tshal pa group are complicated. They differ from one another in both factors to greater degrees. They are, however, united by the frame that encloses the text area in a box, although Y and W are exceptions. In my previous study the relationship observed by analyzing the majority of variant readings suggests a significant difference between the Tshal pa and the Them spangs ma groups. Yet a link still exists between both groups, as revealed by four variant readings, albeit a fairly weak one.75 According to Figure 4.8, individual members of the Tshal pa group show different degrees of affinity with V, S, Z, and T of the Them spangs ma group; while J is an extreme opposite, C and Q link intermediately; Y, W and K, B on the other hand diverge only slightly. These correlations are consistent with the result of the previous study, in which Y, K, Q share common variant readings with V, S, Z, while J never shows its connection with any member of the Them spangs ma group.
74 X and F use a single line to mark their right and left borderlines. 75 For the four variant readings, see Lin, “An Investigation into the Tibetan Dunhuang Manuscripts on Vimalakīrtinirdeśa PT610 and PT611,” footnotes 148 (KPQVY), 179 (FKQSVZ), 185 (KV), 190 (CNKQSZ). Those editions sharing common variant readings are indicated above in the round brackets. Only the first one concerns spelling, the latter three deal with punctuation marks (shad).
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I1
B
B
mg nt outside the text frame
mg nt inside the text frame
V– AO
V+
A2
I2 Ta1
sg Ta2 Go2 Go2 Do
A4 db V+ Y
V–
A4 sg
db
A4 W A4 J
X
db K V db
B F
vt db Q
Hz sg C
S Z
A4 sg
N
D
T H
Figure 4.8: Relationship of the twenty-three editions (page layout). The xylographic editions are on a red background.
Within the Tshal pa group, differences in both factors place J, C (margin note inside) and K, B, Q (margin note outside) into two divisions (Table 4.2). The connection of N, D, and H (the mixed group) with the Tshal pa group is noticeable at first glance.
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On closer examination, the margin notes of J, C, N, and H are all inside, which suggests their close relation. This relation of J, C, N, and H also corresponds to my previous finding.76 The “contaminated” characters of N and H are seen in the combination of the right and left double borderlines, and the upper and lower single borderlines of their frame. The closer relation of H to N than to D is also in accordance with the conclusion of my previous investigation.77 In my previous study, in contrast to N and H, D demonstrates a closer relationship with the Them spangs ma group than with the Tshal pa group. This result is not in agreement with my observation in this study; D deviates from V, S, Z, T of the Them spangs ma group in three sub-factors, however, from J (and Q) only in one sub-factor. D’s closer affinity with J than with the Them spangs ma group members is consistent with the assertion by scholars that J (the Tshal pa group) was D’s primary source and Lhodzong manuscript Kanjur (the Them spangs ma group) the secondary one.78 As this study shows, D has various degrees of affinity with the members of the Tshal pa group. When examined in terms of its consistency with other editions, considering the four sub-factors, D exhibits a stronger connection with J and Q than with K and B; its relation to C is the weakest. D’s association with Y and W (or X and F) is approximately equivalent to that with K and B; and its relation with V, S, Z, and T of the Them spangs ma group is as weak as with C. My previous study, applying text-critical techniques, was a preliminary examination of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, which collated the equivalent text of I1 and I2; its length is less than one twelfth of the sūtra (the sūtra comprises twelve chapters). An investigation of the whole sūtra text is necessary to attain a more comprehensive result before any further conclusion can be made.
Reflections on Formats Two Sanskrit woodblock fragments found in Qočo, dating to the period of Uighur occupation (850–1250) and to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, respectively, carry information of interest to us. The first one, written in the “North-Turkistan Brāhmī” script, has a single-line frame surrounding the whole written area.79 On the recto, the margin note was written in Chinese vertically at the left-hand side inside the frame, and is separated by a thin single vertical line from the text, while on the verso the margin note at the same location was written in Sanskrit and Uighur. The majority of our objects from the Tshal pa group have a complete frame in the
76 Ibid., 16. 77 Ibid., 16. 78 Harrison, “Meritorious Activity,” 79; Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book, 95. 79 The size of the folio is 10.8 x 28 and its both sides contain a sūtra text written in five lines, Formigatti, “A Forgotten Chapter,” 83, 86, 88, Fig. 6.2, Fig. 6.3.
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same way as this Sanskrit print, which uses a popular script of the manuscripts produced on the northern route of the Silk Road. The page layout of the second Sanskrit print, written in Pāla script, demonstrates a very different style.80 Double borderlines appear at the right and left margins of the text area. Its margin notes are located outside the text margins; on the right is the margin note in Chinese, while the note on the left was written in Pāla script, a script in use in Bengal during the Pāla dynasty (eighth-twelfth centuries). V, S, Z, and T of the Them spangs ma group have the same pattern of frame; the frame of Go1, Go2, and Do of the “proto-Kanjurs,” X and F of the local group, as well as Y and W of the Tshal pa group have similar designs. Both Sanskrit prints were produced under the patronage of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, very likely in the capital city Dadu.81 If the frame design is related to the type of script used in both Sanskrit prints, it might be appropriate to surmise that the complete frame probably derived from the layout of the manuscripts once popular in the northern part of Central Asia, while the simpler right and left margin style of frame was a practice that originated in the Indian subcontinent.82 Amy Heller has pointed out that manuscripts discovered in Dolpo from around the fourteenth century demonstrate a local style of the western Himalaya, while a “Pāla-influenced style of painting” was still in its bloom.83 This revelation, combined with the borderline type as shown in Do of our study, supports the latter part of my hypothesis. Nevertheless, further investigations are required in order to corroborate the whole statement. In any case, both forms were inherited and preserved by the Tibetans, and transmitted in different groups of their Kanjurs. Minor modifications are seen in later editions like N, D, and H of the mixed group and C, K, B, and Q of the Tshal pa group. Though printing has advantages that fulfill various objectives,84 the introduction of woodblock printing did not replace the practice of manuscript production in Tibet.85 The continual creation of manuscript editions after the first appearance of
80 The size of the folio is 16 x 37 and the text is in six lines. For more related descriptions, ibid., 83–85, 86, 89–90, Fig. 6.4, Fig. 6.5. 81 Ibid., 118. 82 For impagination practices in south Asia, see discussion in Chapter five of this volume. 83 Amy Heller, Hidden Treasures of the Himalayas: Tibetan Manuscripts, Paintings and Sculptures of Dolpo (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2009), 222–223. 84 The advantages include the increase of scripture accessibility, the enhancement of the efficiency in propagating Buddhist teachings as well as the accumulation of merit (Skt. puṇya, Tib. bsod nams), Sharshon, “Continuity,” 260–261; for objectives of printing, ibid. 244–245, 257; Benjamin J. Nourse, “Revolutions of the Dharma Wheel: Uses of Tibetan Printing in the Eighteenth Century,” in Tibetan Printing, ed. Diemberger, Ehrhard and Kornicki, 441–42. 85 This is also applicable in other regions in Asia, especially those under the influence of Buddhism. There are even cases in which manuscripts and prints complement each other, see Galambos, “Manuscript and Print,” 146–148; Sharshon, “Continuity,” 260; Eimer, “The Tibetan Kanjur,” 40; Eimer, “Observations,” 451. For a description of the development of Tibetan printing in earlier times, van Schaik, “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing,” 171–172.
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printed Kanjurs early in the fifteenth century attests to this statement (see Table 4.1). Yet the introduction of the printing technique to the production of Kanjurs in all probability induced the regularization of the page layout of Kanjurs, whether in xylographic or manuscript forms. Although block printing had already been employed to produce Tibetan texts in other regions as early as the mid-twelfth century,86 it did not become popular in Tibet until around the early fifteenth century.87 At this time, the number of lines on the page, as seen in the texts studied in this chapter, was set to eight (while it had been indeterminate in previous manuscripts); and this number persisted for about three hundred years (see Table 4.1). Also around this period certain aspects became regular for the production of Buddhist literature, such as the quality of the paper and ink, the principles of writing, etc.88 It cannot be just a coincidence that these all took place around the same time. We may infer that the spreading of print fosters the “standardization” of page layout. The convention of eight lines on a page lasted until early in the eighteenth century, when it was reduced to seven lines, which remained valid until the twentieth century. It would require a strong reason to break a convention that had lasted for more than three hundred years. In the eighteenth century, many of the larger projects of printing that had been carried out earlier were undertaken once again.89 The flourishing of printing during this period was probably related to the Dzungar invasion of 1717–1720 and the subsequent political turmoil in Central Tibet throughout the eighteenth century. For Mahāyāna Buddhists, who practiced the perfection of wisdom (Skt. jñāna; Tib. ye shes) and merit (Skt. puṇya, Tib. bsod nams) for the attainment of Buddhahood, the production and proliferation of sacred texts was seen as an effective way to accumulate merit and gain protection from evil events and forces.90 Its flourishing in the eighteenth century coincided with the renovation and transformation in the layout of the revered canonical texts, such as the reduction of line numbers, which appears to fit in with the increased ratio of the length to the width of the text area (txt l/w). As Figure 4.4 shows, the size of the folio and that of the text area evolved gradually and slightly from the earlier time using a long and narrow shape, imitating the form of Indian palm leaves, to a shorter and wider shape in use before the late seventeenth century, and then a subsequent gradual return to a long and narrow shape. As the text area tended to be narrower and longer, the decrease in the line numbers is comprehensible. In this study, the earliest application of reduced line numbers is seen in both manuscripts completed in Ladakh (S and Z); S is a copy of a
86 Schaeffer, The Culture of the Book, 9. Van der Kuijp mentioned a print produced in Khams (eastern Tibet) as early as in the beginning of the thirteenth century, see van der Kuijp, “Faulty Transmissions,” 455. 87 Sharshon, “Continuity,” 244; Eimer, “Observations,” 451. 88 See note 26. 89 Nourse, “Revolutions,” 440. 90 Ibid., 432.
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Kanjur edition from Bhutan.91 The close relation of Ladakh and Bhutan to the Indian subcontinent makes it understandable that the Kanjurs there were produced in a format closer to the Indian palm-leaf style. Further investigations into issues such as the reasons, immediate causes, and operation of the reduction of the line numbers, etc. will certainly contribute to our knowledge of the historical development of Kanjurs. All in all, it seems appropriate to propose that the social turbulence after the political upheaval resulting from the invasion of Dzungar Mongolians prompted the reissuing of the formerly printed scriptures. The alteration to the page layout of these reproduced sacred texts was possibly inspired by an aspiration to enact changes during the social and cultural turmoil at that time and an inclination for separation from the dreadful memory of the past.
Conclusion Since the invention of their writing system more than one thousand years ago, Tibetan scholars have created a remarkable amount of literature, principally with the aim to transplant Buddhist culture to the “land of snow.” Having first applied various formats to book production in earlier times, Tibetans adopted the loose-leaf format of the Indian Buddhist tradition, the pecha, as the common book form. This form, which was generally employed to produce sacred texts, has made Tibetan books distinct. This study traces the development of the page layouts of the different editions of a single sūtra text in pecha format. The result in general confirms the genealogical relationship previously found by textual criticism. The correspondence of this finding with the previous one seems to suggest that when a new Kanjur edition was in preparation, a certain edition was taken as a model or reference both for its textual content and for the page layout.92 This applies especially to the early manuscripts (Ta2, Go1, Go2, Do), the local group (X, F), and the Them spangs ma group (V, S, Z, T). In contrast with these “simple” and “pure” transmissions, the situation in the Tshal pa group is more complicated (Figure 4.8). First, there was an obvious difference in page layouts between its Chinese subgroup and the other subgroup transmitted in the Sino-Tibetan border areas. Furthermore, members within each subgroup are not in
91 Skorupski, A Catalogue, xi. 92 A family tree derived by modern scholars is conventionally based on a collation of different editions of a single text, in which the locations of variant readings are signified, usually by footnotes indicating alternative readings together with the sigla of the editions involved. The quantity of the footnotes in a collated text may imply the extent of diversity among those editions examined or the intensity of divergence among few specific editions. When the position of a certain edition, namely its relationship with other editions, is determined, only those variant readings, to which the edition of interest is applicable, are taken into consideration. Not all variant readings that are signified by footnotes are reckoned with at the same time and in all cases.
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complete agreement with each other. However, correlations between the later editions that derived from each of the subgroups are observed. Although the members of the Chinese subgroup in general followed one textual tradition, the royal houses of different dynasties made different decisions regarding the page arrangement for their Kanjurs. From both frame styles adopted in the Mongolian prints during the Mongol Yuan era, the succeeding Ming court chose the one with only right and left borderlines (Y and W).93 However, the subsequent Qing royal house, without following its predecessor, changed the design to enclose the text in a box (K, B, and Q). As for the other subgroup, J, being the most special member of the Tshal pa group, set itself farthest apart from the Them spangs ma group. Although C in large part identified itself in page design with its antecedent J, it is not in complete agreement with the latter. It is uncertain whether the page layout of J was also based on the Tshal pa Kanjur, as its colophon specifies.94 The mixed group (N, D, and H) indeed mixed the features of the Them spangs ma and the Tshal pa groups in both their text and page layout. However, the Them spangs ma and the Tshal pa were not equally favored. N and H followed the Tshal pa more closely in both variant readings and page layout. D follows the Them spangs ma more closely in textual readings, and stayed closer to Tshal pa in page layout. On the whole, the textual and page format transmissions are noticeably correlated with each other in the Them spangs ma and in the local groups. The textual genealogy and page layout pedigree of the Tshal pa group show similarity (Figures 4.7 & 4.8); this may suggest that the transference of the page layout of the Tshal pa group members could be as complicated as its textual transmission. A similar tactic is likewise observed in the mixed group. Instead of emulating the page design of any member of both major groups, the mixed group members all chose their own style. Further studies are required to investigate how different strategies in dealing with text and page layout were developed in the Tshal pa and the mixed groups. From a geographic perspective, it seems proper to infer that the diverse cultures and ideologies in which the Kanjurs of the Tshal pa group were produced may have contributed to the various patterns of page arrangement. Within the traditional Tibetan territory, the variety of page layout was greater in the mixed group, for which different traditions were simultaneously consulted.
93 The Ming court may have followed a style that was more popular during the time of its predecessor. In a recent study exploring several Tibetan texts that were recognized as “Mongolian prints” (hor par ma), only this style was seen in the plates of the text studied, see Kawa Sherab Sangpo, “Analysis of Tibetan Language Prints Produced During the Yuan Period (hor spar ma),” Inner Asia 15 (2013): plates 1–5. 94 According to its colophon, J was based on the Tshal pa Kanjur. Normally this refers to its textual source. Whether this also applies to its page layout is uncertain. For a translation of related statement in the colophon, see Jampa Samten Shastri and Jeremy Russell, “Notes on the Lithang Edition of the Tibetan bKa’-’gyur,” The Tibet Journal 12, no. 3 (1987): 20.
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Appendices Abbreviations in Figure 4.8 & Tables A A A btw Chin crcl(s) ctr db ext gd hz int l/w ln(s) mg nt pg pt r rt Sg sg tp txt bdlns txt v vv+ vt w
zero text borderline right and left text borderlines four text borderlines between Chinese circle(s) central double external guide horizontal internal ratio of length to width line(s) margin note page point recto right sigla single text type (m: manuscript; x: xylograph) text borderlines text verso verso without margin notes verso with margin notes vertical with
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‘Phags pa dri ma med pas grangs pa bstan pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo. In Tabo Manuscript. Digital scans from Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies. See Scherrer-Schaub and Harrison, Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue, 135 (1.4.0.6). (Ta2) ‘Phags pa dri ma med par grags pas bstan pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo. In Bka’ ‘gyur rgyal rtse’i Them spangs ma, Original manuscript preserved at National Library of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, v. 72 (mdo/dza), n. 221, 267v5–356r2. Tokyo: Digital Preservation Society, 2010. (V) ‘Phags pa dri ma med pas grangs pa bstan pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo. In Basgo Manuscript Kanjur, v. mdo/’a (?), 152r5–241v3. Digital scans from Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies. (X) ‘Phags pa dri ma med par grags pas bstan pa zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo. In Bka’ ‘gyur shel mkhar bris ma, vol. 66 (mdo/dza), 415b5–521a3. Ladakh: Shel thub chen dgon. https:// www. tbrc.org/#!rid=O1VI2|O1VI2VI299$W1PD127393. (Z)
References in Other Languages Cabezón, José Ignacio and Roger R. Jackson. “Editors’ Introduction.” In Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, edited by José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson, 11–37. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1996. Cüppers, Christoph. “Some Remarks on Bka’ ’gyur Production in 17th-century Tibet.” In Edition, éditions: l’écrit au Tibet, évolution et devenir, edited by A. Chayet et al., 115–128. München: Indus Verlag, 2010. Dawa, Porong. “New Discoveries in Early Tibetan Printing History.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 195–211. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Eimer, Helmut. Location List for the Texts in the Microfiche Edition of the Phug brag Kanjur. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1993. Eimer, Helmut. “The Tibetan Kanjur Printed in China.” Zentral Asiatische Studien 36 (2007): 35–60. Eimer, Helmut. “Observations Made in the Study of Tibetan Xylographs.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 451–467. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Formigatti, Camillo A. “A Forgotten Chapter in South Asian Book History? A Bird’s Eye View of Sanskrit Print Culture.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 72–134.Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Galambos, Imre. “Manuscript and Print in the Tangu State: The Case of the Sunzi.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 135–152. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Harrison, Paul. “Meritorious Activity or Waste of Time? Some Remarks on the Editing of Texts in the Tibetan Kanjur.” In Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies Narita 1989, edited by Ihara Shōren and Yamaguchi Zuihō, 77–93. Narita: Naritasan Shinshoji, 1992. Harrison, Paul. “A Brief History of the Tibetan Bka’ ‘gyur.” In Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, edited by Roger Jackson and José Cabezón, 70–94. New York: Snow Lion, 1996. Heller, Amy. Hidden Treasures of the Himalayas: Tibetan Manuscripts, Paintings and Sculptures of Dolpo. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2009. Helman-Ważny, Agnieszka. The Archaeology of Tibetan Books. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014.
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Helman-Ważny, Agnieszka and Sam van Schaik. “Witnesses for Tibetan Craftsmanship: Bringing together Paper Analysis, Palaeography and Codicology in the Examination of the Earliest Tibetan Manuscripts.” Archaeometry 55, no. 4 (2013): 707–741. Lamotte, Étienne, L’Enseignement de Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa). Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1962 [Reprint 1987]. Li Baowen. “The Origin of Tibetan Dragon Sutra Recorded in the Archives of the Imperial Household Department 從「總管內務府檔案」述說太皇太后吐蕃特文泥金寫本《甘珠爾經》的修造.” The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly 故宮學術季刊 28:4 (2011): 133–185. Li Baowen. “The Related Manchu Files from the Archives of the General Manager of the Imperial Household Department《龍藏經》修造相關滿文《總管內務府檔案》 .” In A Wondrous Occasion Predestined: Unveiling the Kangxi Kangyur 殊勝因緣──內府泥金寫本藏文龍藏經探索, edited by Fung Ming-chu & Lu Sheue-yann, 348–382. Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2015. Lin Shen-yu. “An Investigation into the Tibetan Dunhuang Manuscripts on Vimalakīrtinirdeśa PT610 and PT611《維摩詰經》敦煌藏文寫本殘卷 PT610、PT611 研究.” Taiwan Journal of Buddhist Studies 台大佛學研究 33 (2017): 1–58. Nourse, Benjamin J. “Revolutions of the Dharma Wheel: Uses of Tibetan Printing in the Eighteenth Century.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 424–450. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Sangpo, Kawa Sherab. “Analysis of Tibetan Language Prints Produced During the Yuan Period (hor spar ma).” Inner Asia 15 (2013): 201–224. Samten, Jampa, Hiroaki Niisaku and Kelsang Tahuwa. Catalogue of the Ulan Bator Rgyal Rtse Them Spangs Ma Manuscript Kangyur. Tokyo: Yuishoji Buddhist Cultural Exchange Research Institute, 2012. Samten Shastri, Jampa, and Jeremy Russell, “Notes on the Lithang Edition of the Tibetan bKa’-’gyur.” The Tibet Journal 12, no. 3 (1987): 17–40. Schaeffer, Kurtis R. The Culture of the Book in Tibet. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Scherrer-Schaub, Christina. “Towards a Methodology for the Study of Old Tibetan Manuscripts: Dunhuang and Tabo.” In Tabo Studies II, Manuscripts, Texts, Inscriptions and the Arts, edited by C. A. Scherrer-Schaub and E. Steinellner, 3–36. Roma: Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 1999. Scherrer-Schaub, Christina. “Printing versus Manuscript: History or Rhetoric?” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 153–170. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Scherrer-Schaub, Christina and George Bonani. “Establishing a Typology of the Old Tibetan Manuscripts: a Multidisciplinary Approach.” In Dunhuang Manuscript Forgeries, edited by Susan Whitfield, 184–215. London: The British Library, 2002. Scherrer-Schaub, Christina and Paul Harrison. Tabo Studies III, A Catalogue of the Manuscript Collection of Tabo Monastery, Volume I, Sūtra Texts, by Paul Harrison. Roma: Istitutoitaliano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009. Sharshon, Tsering Dawa. “Continuity and New Developments in 15th Century Tibetan Book Production: Bo dong Phyogs las rnams rgyal (1376–1451) and His Disciples as Producers of Manuscript and Print Editions.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 237–266. Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2016. Skilling, Peter. “From bKa’ bstan bcos to bKa’ ‘gyur and bsTan ‘gyur.” In Transmission of the Tibetan Canon, Papers Presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Gray 1995, edited by Helmut Eimer, 87–111. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997.
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Skorupski, Tadeusz. A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1985. Slobodník, Martin. “The Perception of Tibet in China: between Disdain and Fascination.” Furen Lishi Xuebao 輔仁歷史學報 [Fu Jen Historical Journal] 17 (2006): 71–109. Stoddard, Heather. “Stitched Books from the Tibetan World.” In Studies on the History and Culture of the Himalayas and Tibet, edited by Franz-Karl Ehrhard, 363–379. München: Indus Verlag, 2010. Tauscher, Helmut. Catalogue of the Gondhla Proto-Kanjur. Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2008. Tauscher, Helmut. “Kanjur.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 1: Literature and Languages. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Tauscher, Helmut. “Manuscript Fragments from Matho, A Preliminary Report and Random Reflections.” In Perspectives on Tibetan Culture, A Small Garland of Forget-me-nots Offered to Elena De Rossi Filibeck, edited by M. Clemente, O. Nalesini and F. Venturi, 291–331. Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2018. Tauscher, Helmut and Bruno Laine. “Western Tibetan Kanjur Tradition.” In The Cultural History of Western Tibet. Recent Research from the China Tibetology Research Center and the University of Vienna, edited by Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Liang Junyan, Helmut Tauscher, Zholi Yuan, 339–362. Wien: China Tibetology Research Center, Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 2008. van der Kuijp, Leonard W. J. “Tibetan Historiography.” In Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, edited by José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson, 39–56. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1996. van der Kuijp, Leonard. “Faulty Transmissions: Some Notes on Tibetan Textual Criticism and the Impact of Xylography.” In Edition, éditions: l’écrit au Tibet, évolution et devenir, edited by Anne Chayet, et al., 441–464. Munich: Indus, 2010. van Schaik, Sam. “The Uses of Early Tibetan Printing: Evidence from the Turfan Oasis.” In Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities and Change, edited by Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Peter Kornicki, 171–191. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. van Schaik, Sam. “A New Look at the Tibetan Invention of Writing.” In Old Tibetan Documents Monograph Series, vol. III, edited by Yoshiro Imaeda, Matthew Kapstein and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, 45–96. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2011. van Schaik, Sam, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, and Renate Nöller. “Writing, Painting and Sketching at Dunhuang: Assessing the Materiality and Function of Early Tibetan Manuscripts and Ritual Items.” Journal of Archaeological Science 53 (January 2015): 110–132. Vimalakīrtinirdeśa sūtram, ed. by Joshi, Lal Mani & Bhiksu Pasadika. Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, 1981. See “Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon,” University of the West, accessed December 9, 2017. http://www.dsbcproject.org/.
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Chapter 5 Between the Lines and in the Margins: Linguistic Change and Impagination Practices in South Asia Abstract: What happens to impagination practices when the technology of writing, formerly reserved only for “cosmopolitan” literary and liturgical languages, begins to be used for a vernacular language? How do existing impagination practices reshape the vernacular and how do the particularities of the vernacular and its social and performative environment reshape practices of impagination? This essay examines the early manuscript history of Hindi, a literary vernacular of North India, as it began to enter the realm of the written in the fourteenth through early seventeenth centuries, a realm that had until that time been monopolized by the cosmopolitan languages of Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic. This short survey demonstrates how the pioneers of writing in Hindi adopted or adapted existing practices of page layout, paratext, and binding and invented new solutions for the novel problems that the vernacular posed. Special attention is paid to commentarial literature as this genre presented a particular set of challenges for composers, scribes, and readers. Combining the study of large corpora of texts and the detailed study of individual manuscripts, I argue that the material form of early Hindi manuscripts bore a complex but legible relationship to textual genre and performance context. Keywords: vernacular, cosmopolitan, Hindi, South Asia, commentary, India
Impagination practices in late medieval and early modern South Asia, especially those related to commentarial texts, reflect on the one hand writing’s function as a prosthesis of memory – and thus also the use of writing in pedagogical, scholarly, musical, and courtly performance contexts – and on the other hand writing’s existence as an aesthetic object, reflected in the various forms of ornate and valuable manuscripts that increasingly served as symbols of wealth and status in the period under consideration here, the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Impagination practices also reflect changes in language orders and in literary and intellectual culture: in the case of early modern north India, changing practices of impagination reveal important aspects of vernacularization, the process through which, to use Sheldon Pollock’s terminology, vernacular languages ‘of place’ like Hindi came to supplement and sometimes even supplant the ideologically privileged, cosmopolitan language of Sanskrit in the realms of literary, scholarly, and liturgical https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-006
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discourses. This chapter explains how the entry of the vernacular language now known as Hindi (and referred to by various terms including Hindi, Hindavi, Bhasha, Bhakha, Brajbhasha, and Urdu during the medieval and early modern periods) into the realm of written textuality opened up a space for experimentation and novelty in impagination practices, with the early composers and scribes of Hindi choosing and adapting elements from the manuscript cultures of not only Sanskrit but also Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Persian, and Arabic. The chapter begins with a brief description of the rich variety of manuscript forms in circulation at the moment when Hindi first came to be inscribed on paper in the late fourteenth century, then describes how the earliest manuscripts of works in Hindi reflect experimentation across pre-existing linguistic, literary, generic, religious, and aesthetic distinctions. The final part of the chapter takes up the question of impagination practices concerning commentarial texts as a case study in order to reveal the complex interplay between linguistic change, textual genre, and the visual and material aspects of manuscripts. In order to appreciate just how much something like practices of impagination, in particular those regarding commentarial literature, can tell us about linguistic and literary change in South Asia, it is first necessary to understand both the relationship between vernacularization and writing (as practice, as material object, and as ideology) and the importance of commentary as a genre and intellectual tradition in precolonial South Asia. Regarding the former, Pollock contends that until the beginning of the second millennium Sanskrit successfully maintained its hegemony – premised on its ability to transcend time and space – as the cosmopolitan language of literary and intellectual discourse in the Subcontinent and that co-constitutive with this hegemony was a monopoly over the realm of writing.1 Sanskrit was thus ‘super-posed’ above the vernaculars in a linguistic and symbolic hierarchy. Beginning in the early years of the second millennium, vernaculars, or languages ‘of place’ (deśī) began to displace Sanskrit by adopting and adapting its forms, genres, and conventions. Pollock argues that a necessary prerequisite for this transformation of vernaculars into ‘workly’ languages was their commitment to writing, which he calls ‘literization.’ This is followed by a process of ‘literarization’ through which the vernacular is gradually remade in the image of the super-posed cosmopolitan language by incorporating the latter’s discursive forms and conventions.2 As other scholars have argued and as Pollock himself acknowledges, this theory and narrative of
1 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 82–8, 287–88, 298. Pollock demonstrates that, to the minds of pre-modern literary scholars in South Asia, Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Apabhramsha were the only languages capable of carrying poetic and intellectual discourse; however, Sanskrit was still clearly understood to be the superior member of the triad (99–105). 2 Pollock, Language of the Gods, 298–309, 423–436. Pollock adapts the term ‘workly’ from Martin Heidegger to denote a language capable of functioning as a medium of intellectual exchange.
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vernacularization becomes more complicated in the case of north India, where the Islamicate ruling elite established Persian and Arabic as parallel cosmopolitan languages beginning in the thirteenth century.3 In this chapter I demonstrate that the pioneers of writing in Hindi had before them not only the model of Sanskrit but also those of Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Persian, and Arabic from which they adopted, adapted, and combined various elements. Thus just as vernacular languages and literatures were theorized in a manner distinct from that of their cosmopolitan counterparts, the case of Hindi shows that they were also sometimes inscribed in ways that were distinct from the manuscript cultures of those cosmopolitan languages.4 Impagination practices are part of that group of practices that constitutes this distinct vernacular or post-vernacular manuscript culture. Regarding the latter, the centrality of commentarial literature in South Asian intellectual, literary, and religious history cannot be overestimated. As Gary Tubb, Karin Preisendanz, and Michel Angot – among many others – have demonstrated, commentary was not simply an ancillary textual apparatus considered secondary in importance to a root text but rather a primary genre in which intellectual debates took place in spheres as varied as philosophy, linguistics, literary theory, and theology.5 It is noteworthy that the oldest known prose work in Hindi is a commentary, the Vivekadīpikā of Indrajit of Orchā (c. 1600), being a commentary on the Śatakatraya anthology of Sanskrit poems supposed to have been composed by the poet-king
3 Pollock, 393–95, 429, 493–94. For responses to Pollock regarding Hindi and north India, see Allison Busch, “Hindi Literary Beginnings,” in South Asian Texts in History: Critical Engagements with Sheldon Pollock, ed. Whitney Cox, Yigal Bronner, and Lawrence McCrea (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2011), 203–25, and Francesca Orsini, “How to Do Multilingual Literary History? Lessons from Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century North India,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 49, no. 2 (2012): 225–46. 4 Recent work that considers the ways in which the vernacular was theorized by its early composers and critics includes Sarah Pierce Taylor, “When a Sanskrit Fault is a Kannada Virtue: Khaṇḍa Prāsa in Śrivijaya’s Kavirājamārgam” (conference paper, Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, October 23, 2016); Arthur D. Dudney, “A Desire for Meaning: Ḳhān-i Ārzū’s Philology and the Place of India in the Eighteenth-Century Persianate World” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2013); – –, “Urdu as Persian: Some Eighteenth-Century Evidence on Vernacular Poetry as Language Planning,” in Text and Tradition in Early Modern North India, ed. Tyler Williams, Anshu Malhotra, and John S. Hawley (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018), 40–57. The case of Prakrit, though not a vernacular in the sense used here, is also instructive: see Andrew Ollett, Language of the Snakes: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), in particular 111–140. 5 Gary Tubb and Emery Boose, Scholastic Sanskrit: A Manual for Students (New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007); Karin Preisendanz “Text, Commentary, Annotation: Some Reflections on the Philosophical Genre,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 36 (2008), 599–618; Michel Angot, Le Sanskrit Commentarial, I. Les Gloses (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017).
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Bhartrihari in the 5–7th centuries CE. (We will return to the subject of this Hindi commentary later on.) Though plentiful in pre-colonial Hindi, commentarial texts (and with them translations of texts from Sanskrit) have been almost completely ignored by modern literary historians on account of their supposedly ‘derivative’ nature. This is a huge mistake, as commentary and translation are two of the primary modes through which Hindi was transformed from a spoken vernacular into a written medium of literary and scholarly discourse.6 To study commentarial texts is therefore to study the process of vernacularization in action. Mapping this process requires both the close scrutiny of individual manuscripts (‘close reading’) and the comparison of data collected from large corpora of manuscripts (‘distant reading’). In this chapter I tell the story of vernacular impagination practices through examples taken from individual manuscripts but these examples are chosen to reflect general trends observed in a study of three hundred and seventy-three manuscripts in Hindi dating to the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, plus one hundred and twenty manuscripts in the languages of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, and Persian dating to the same period.7 Combining the close study of small details – such as a marginal note about a business transaction in a literary text or the orthographic idiosyncrasies of a particular scribe or the degree of wear evident in a cloth binding – with the abstraction of patterns across large numbers of textual
6 A distinction between ‘commentary’ and ‘translation’ does not map well onto early Hindi literary culture; as I have argued elsewhere, an important if not primary function of commentary in Hindi literary culture was the re-creation of Sanskrit source texts in the vernacular, but since Sanskrit and the vernacular were in no way considered commensurate or interchangeable sign systems this re-creation was not understood to be anything like our contemporary notion of ‘translation’, the phenomenon that the linguist and philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce would call ‘iconic translation’. On commentary versus translation in Hindi, see Tyler Williams, “Commentary as Translation: the Vairāgya Vṛnd of Bhagvandas Niranjani,” in Williams, Malhotra, and Hawley, Text and Tradition, 99–125. 7 Access to the manuscripts used in this study was provided by the following institutions and communities: the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Library, Ahmedabad; the Acharya Shri Kailasasagarsuri Gyanmandir, Koba; the Shri Hemachandracharya Library, Patan; the Oriental Institute at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda; the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute branches in Jodhpur and Jaipur; the Rajasthani Shodh Sanshtan, Chaupasani; the Mansingh Pustak Prakash, Jodhpur; the Anup Sanskrit Library, Bikaner; the Abhay Jain Granthalaya, Bikaner; the Royal Pothi Khana at the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, Jaipur; the Dadu Mahavidhyalaya, Jaipur; the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Varanasi; the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Allahabad; the Vrindavan Research Institute, Vrindavan; the Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai; the Asiatic Society of Mumbai; the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute; the Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the University of Chicago Library; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; the British Library, London; and the Niranjani communities of Didwana and Nawalgarh. I express my gratitude to all of these institutions and their staffs for their assistance. For an introduction to concepts of distant reading and quantitative method in literary studies, see Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (London: Verso, 2005).
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artifacts – such as the appearance of geographic clusters of scribal activity over a given time period or the persistence of a particular text layout across time and different languages – tells us more than either approach could on its own.
The Scene of Writing at the Moment of the Emergence of the Vernacular When composers and scribes in north India began committing vernacular compositions to writing in the fourteenth century, there already existed a rich and varied manuscript culture from which they could draw models.8 Yet they did not simply mimic ways of writing in these pre-existing traditions. The vernacular brought with it new genres, new types of prosody, and a new aesthetic. Its phonology and performance practices required new methods of orthography and new types of written artifacts to be used in the performance of new genres. Into what ecology of multilingual literary manuscript culture did Hindi enter and proceed to orient itself?9 As mentioned earlier, Sanskrit, along with Prakrit and Apabhramsha, had until the second millennium maintained a virtual – though not total – monopoly over writing, particularly in the case of literary genres.10 The world of Sanskrit textual artifacts – especially manuscripts – was incredibly rich in diversity, with manuscripts taking the form of everything from fish to beads to scrolls.11 Yet by the late medieval period in north India, the most common form of manuscript in Sanskrit textual culture was that which is most commonly called a pothī (Sanskrit pustaka > Prakrit potthiyā > Apambhramsha pothī), a series of unbound folios made of palm leaf or paper, and – in the case of palm leaf – usually tied together with string or
8 I consider the Hindi literary tradition to begin with the Candāyan of Maulana Da’ud, composed in 1379 CE. On the question of literary beginnings in Hindi and the place of the Candāyan in the Hindi canon, see Busch, “Hindi Literary Beginnings.” 9 In thinking through multilingual manuscript culture, I have found the work of Francesca Orsini on multilingual literary culture quite helpful; see in particular “How to Do Multlingual Literary History?” I borrow the concept of an ecology of languages from Shantanu Phukan; see “‘Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet’: The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38, no. 33 (2001): 25. 10 Pollock argues that the trans-temporal and trans-regional image of Sanskrit kāvya – belles lettres – was partly predicated upon its ability to travel in written form. One consequence of this ideological formation is that a language without writing – for example, vernacular languages like Hindi – could not claim the status of kāvya. (Pollock, Language of the Gods, 82–8, 99–105, 199). 11 On the different types of manuscripts and textual artifacts from ancient and medieval South Asia, see Jeremiah Losty, The Art of the Book in India (London: British Library, 1982) and B.N. Goswamy, The Word Is Sacred, Sacred Is the Word: The Indian Manuscript Tradition (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2006).
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thread. Before the arrival of paper during the Sultanate period, the material qualities of palm leaf, in particular its dimensions and its rib-like fibers, had dictated several aspects of impagination: its dimensions, the size of characters, and the orientation of text on the folio.12 In north India during the late medieval and early modern period, paper gradually replaced palm leaf because it could be locally and cheaply produced, unlike leaves of the Borassus flabelifer and Corypha umbraculifera palm trees, which had to be transported from the South.13 Yet paper manuscripts retained many of the impagination conventions of palm leaf, most notably the landscape format of the page, the uni-directional, horizontal orientation of the text in scripto continua running left to right, and the inclusion of gaps or visual embellishments where the holes for binding strings would formerly have been placed. (See Figure 5.1 for an example of a paper Hindi manuscript that mimicks this palmleaf format.) Although Sanskrit was written in multiple scripts during the period, in the plains of north India it was most often copied in one of the variants of the
Figure 5.1: The Vivekadīpikā of Indrajit of Orccha. Copied 1707–1708. The medallion in the middle is an example of the decorative elements placed in paper manuscripts where holes would have been made in palm leaf manuscripts so that a binding cord could be passed through. Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Ms. 387–1892–95.
12 For a brief overview of the preparation of palm leaf manuscripts, see Jayant Thaker, Manuscriptology and Text Criticism (Vadodara: Oriental Institute, 2002), 86–66, 142–44. 13 Until the proliferation of colonial presses in the nineteenth century, most paper in India was made from cotton rags. See S.A.K. Ghori and A. Rahman, “Paper Technology in Medieval India,” Indian Journal of History of Science 1, no. 2 (1966): 133–49.
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Nagari script. Such manuscripts circulated among monks, scholars, wealthy merchants, and among the members of royal and local courts.14 The establishment of Islamicate courts in the north after 1200 CE brought the languages and textual cultures of Persian and Arabic to the subcontinent and with them the codex kitāb (book) and safīnah or bayāẓ (notebook). Although sometimes copied on vellum, in the subcontinent these codices were by and large made of paper, in a portrait format, and bound in leather, cloth, or cardboard. Persian and Arabic manuscripts in general are of course famous for the multiple and visually appealing orientations of text, commentary, sub-commentary, etcetera, and the Persian and Arabic manuscripts produced in South Asia during this period are no exception. They circulated among the members of Sultanate and local courts, among scholars and students at madrassas, and among religious specialists at Sufi khānqāhs (hospices).15 Another critical source of Hindi manuscript culture, yet one that has been almost totally neglected by modern scholars, is the Jain textual tradition, in particular multilingual manuscripts including those in Apabhramsha and the vernacular.16 The Jain religious community had already been cultivating a multilingual scriptural and literary tradition for centuries when the vernacular revolution of the second millennium began and the production, giving (as religious gifts), and conservation of manuscripts constituted an important part of ritual and social obligations within the community. Jain monks and lay devotees collected and cared for manuscripts in monastic and community libraries known as granth bhaṇḍārs; these include not
14 For recent scholarship on pre-colonial Indic manuscript culture, see Sheldon Pollock, “Literary Culture and Manuscript Culture in Precolonial India” in Literary Cultures and the Material Book, ed. Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash, and Ian Willison (London: British Library, 2007), 77–94; Saraju Rath, Aspects of Manuscript Culture in South India (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Florinda De Simini, Of Gods and Books: Ritual and Knowledge Transmission in the Manuscript Cultures of Premodern India (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). It is important to note that, in the case of late medieval and early modern north India, many so-called sub-imperial ‘courts’ would better be characterized as the households of local lords that were in turn feudatories to regional Rajput monarchs or smaller Sultanate courts like that of Jaunpur in modern day Uttar Pradesh. The so-called ‘Fatehpur manuscript’ of 1582, the earliest internally dated manuscript of Hindi works, was copied for use in one such household, that of the local lord Narharidas in Fatehpur, Rajasthan. 15 On the Persian manuscript culture of the north Indian sultanates, see Éloïse Brac de la Perrière, L’art du livre dans l’Inde des sultanats (Paris: PUPS, 2008); –, “The Art of the Book in India under the Sultanates,” in After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, ed. Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), 301–338. 16 This neglect is partly an aspect of a larger tendency among modern scholars to treat the Jain tradition in isolation from other religious and cultural traditions and partly the effect of a tendency in Hindi literary historiography dating to the late nineteenth century to search for the roots of Hindi in the prestigious (and supposedly Hindu) domain of Sanskrit. See Imre Bangha, “The Emergence of Hindi Literature: from Transregional Maru-Gurjar to Madhyadeśī Narratives,” in Williams, Malhotra, and Hawley, Text and Tradition, 3–39, especially pages 11–12.
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only Jain religious texts but various types of works in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, and the vernaculars.17 This prolific production and diligent stewardship of the written word gave the Jain community an influence on manuscript culture disproportionate to the size of its population. Jain manuscripts are of particular importance for the history of writing in Hindi for three reasons. First, many contain texts in Apabhramsha, a literary forerunner to Hindi and the primary source of Hindi poetry’s prosody and rhyme schemes. Second, many others contain an early form of the northern vernacular known as Maru-Gurjar or Old Gujarati; as Imre Bangha has convincingly shown, Hindi’s strongest linguistic and literary roots lie in this language which spread from Gujarat to the Madhyadeshi region in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.18 In fact, many of the texts described as being in ‘Old Gujarati’ in library catalogues contain a language much closer to early Hindi than to Gujarati.19 Third, Jains developed highly sophisticated manuscript practices, including the production of manuscripts with multiple commentaries in different languages. These manuscripts are overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) in the aforementioned pothī format, inscribed on paper and sometimes palm leaf. They typically include a ‘root’ text (mūl pāṭh) in Sanskrit, Prakrit, or Apabhramsha, a commentary in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, or Old Gujarati/Maru-Gurjar, and sometimes additional subcommentaries in one of these four languages. Some commentaries were simply copied ‘in-line’ with their root texts, the commentary verses being inserted between those of the root work but in the same line of text, with sequential numbering. Other manuscripts contain interlineal commentaries, with separate numbering sequences for root text and commentary. Yet others present even more sophisticated ways of arranging root text, commentary, and sub-commentaries on the page, with different numbering schemes employed to facilitate different methods of navigating the manuscript. (See Figure 5.2.) These systems of impagination are remarkable in their own right, and as we shall see later, their influence, or lack thereof, on later Hindi manuscript culture is revealing.
17 On the importance of manuscripts in Jain ritual and social relations, see Nalini Balbir, “Is a Manuscript an Object or a Living Being?” in The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions, ed. Kristina Myrvold (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 107–124. On Jain practices of collecting and conserving texts, see John Cort, “The Jain Knowledge Warehouses: Traditional Libraries in India,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 1995): 77–87. 18 Bangha, “The Emergence of Hindi,” 13–24. 19 In my preliminary study of such manuscripts from the Hemachandracharya Jain Jnanamandira in Patan, the Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir in Koba, and the Oriental Institute of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, I have found many that contain a language much closer to the literary Hindi of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in its phonology, morphology, and syntax than to the literary Gujarati of the same period as found in the works of Gujarati poets like Premanand Bhatt.
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Figure 5.2: Navatattvaprakaraṇa and commentaries, 1750. The manuscript is in the format of a pustak or pothī, deriving its shape from palm leaf manuscripts. Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Ms. Indic 13.
The Earliest Hindi Manuscripts The earliest extant manuscripts containing works in a language that can confidently be identified as Hindi date to the late sixteenth century–roughly two hundred years after the language was first used for the purpose of literature by the Sufi poet Maulana Daud in his epic romance, the Candāyan (1379 CE). This presents us with a two hundred-year gap in the manuscript record. Nevertheless, the earliest examples of writing in Hindi to which we do have access shed considerable light on the preceding two centuries of vernacular writing culture and reveal the extent to which the pioneers of this new literary language experimented with forms and conventions taken from the multilingual environment. Appropriately, several of the earliest extant manuscripts in Hindi contain the first work of Hindi literature, the Candāyan. The work is a versified, allegorical romance in the style of the Persian maṯnavī, but composed in prosodic forms taken from Apabhramsha.20 Dating to the mid-1500’s, the earliest manuscripts of the work are
20 Parmeshwari Lal Gupta (ed.) Candāyan: Mūl Pāṭh, Pāṭhāntar, Ṭippaṇī, Evaṃ Khojapūrṇ Sāmagrī Sahit: Maulānā Dāūd Dalamaī Kr̥t (Bombay: Hindi Granth Ratnakar, 1964); Vishvanath Prasad and Mataprasad Gupta (eds.), Candāyan (Agra: Agra Vishvavidyalaya, 1962); Naseem Akhtar Hines, Maulana Daud’s Cāndāyan: A Critical Study (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2009). Shiv Kumar Shandilya, Maulānā Dāūd Kr̥t Cāndāyan Kā Bhāshā Svarūp Evaṃ Bimbātmak Saṃcetanā (New Delhi: Bhasha Prakashan, 1978). On the literary tradition of the Sufi romance, see Aditya Behl, Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
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without exception copied in the Arabic (abjad) script into codices arranged in the kitāb format, i.e. in long rather than wide folios that were bound along the long vertical edge. The orientation of the text followed the model of Persian manuscripts, with individual verses arranged in separate columns or blocks that were then bound within decorative lines or boxes (jadwal). These verse blocks could be staggered on the page (Figure 5.3), or even arranged into a diamond shape. Confronted with the unequal lengths of the Indian verse forms inherited from Apabhramsha – the caupai quatrain and the dohā couplet – Persian-literate scribes invented new and innovative patterns of text layout to produce pleasing visual effects on the page. In contrast to most of the contemporary Persian manuscripts of the time in which illustrations are nestled between columns of text, most early copies of the Candāyan – as well as early copies of other Sufi romances in Hindi like the Mirgāvatī (1503) of Qutaban
Figure 5.3: Candāyan, late 16th century, Mandu (?). Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Accn. No. 57.1.16.
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and the Padmāvat (1540) of Malik Muhammad Jayasi – tend to contain the text on the right-hand folio and the visual illustration of the text on the facing lefthand folio: thus the codex appears and functions like a diptych in which linguistic text and visual text mirror each other.21 These illustrations are a matter of interest in their own right: although some are executed in a style clearly meant to approximate Persian book illustration, others reflect the work of artists allowed relatively free reign in using Indic styles of illustration to interpret the narrative.22 This variety in turn reveals that a single work could be rendered in different ways in manuscripts copied for patrons with different resources and with different access to scribal, illustrative, and book-making labor. Even more striking is that the conventions of impagination for the Sufi romance genre that were established by the late sixteenth century continued to be observed for the next two hundred years, even in manuscripts copied in writing systems other than the Arabic script, including the abugida Devanagari and Kaithi scripts which are, in most modern scholarship, not associated with Islamicate textual genres such as the Sufi romance. For example, the Padmāvat manuscript of 1735 held by the Bharat Kala Bhavan museum in Varanasi is copied in the Kaithi script (a script that was used primarily for accounting and business purposes and, when used for literature, was typically written in scriptio continua) but observes the convention of breaking the text into blocks of verse within ruled jadwal, something that is not found in Kaithi manuscripts of texts from other genres. Put simply, it appears that once they were established, the impagination conventions for a particular genre could travel between different writing systems and therefore between different social contexts – including, for example, provincial Islamicate courts, the households of Hindu petty rajas, and communities of merchants. Dating to roughly the same time as the earliest Candāyan manuscripts are the so-called ‘Goindval pothīs’ (manuscripts copied at the town of Goindval in Punjab), the earliest known copies of hymns composed by the early Sikh gurus and a small number of Hindu and Muslim saints. Copied in the early 1570’s, these four pothīs were the primary sources from which the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan, compiled
21 Unfortunately, none of the existing manuscripts of Sufi romances that date to before the eighteenth century are found in their original bindings. Most, in fact, are incomplete, having been unbound during the colonial or post-colonial period so that the illustrated folios could be sold individually to art dealers. 22 For art historical studies of the Candāyan and other Sufi romance manuscripts, see Qamar Adamjee, “Strategies for Visual Narration in the Illustrated Chandayan Manuscripts,” (dissertation, New York University, 2011); Karl Khandalavala, “The Mṛigāvat of Bharat Kala Bhavan: As a Social Document and Its Date and Provenance,” in Chhavi 1: Golden Jubilee Volume (Varanasi: Bharat Kala Bhavan, 1971), 19–36; –, “Three Laur Chanda Paintings in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco,” Lalit Kala 22 (1985): 19–27; V.H. Bedekar, Chandigarh Museum Laur-Chanda: A Study in Styles (Chandigarh: Government Museum and Art Gallery, 2006). See also Brac de la Perrière, “The Art of the Book.”
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the Sikh scripture of the Ādi Granth (later called the Guru Granth Sāhib) in 1604.23 The hymns contained in the Goindval pothīs are in early forms of Punjabi and Hindi and articulate a theology and religious praxis that draws from both Islamic and Hindu belief systems, yet is distinct from both. What is therefore remarkable about these books – for which the large folios were cut, ruled, written upon, and then bound – is the extent to which they reflect the influence of Islamicate book culture. They are portrait-format codices and though the text is written in Gurmukhi – a form of the laṇḍā script believed to have been developed by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1563–1606) for Sikh liturgical works – the text is rendered in a calligraphic style and includes bounding boxes, margin lines (jadwal), illumination (palmettes) and shading between the letters of the text (byne’s-sütur) that clearly emulate elements of the Islamicate book arts. The amount of labor and ornamentation that went into these manuscripts reflects their use in liturgy and their character as objects of veneration, prefiguring the courtly rituals that would develop around the Ādi Granth as the sovereign Guru over the course of the seventeenth century.24 At the same time, their codex format and the layout of text on the folios give credence to Gurinder Singh Mann’s suggestion that the compilation of the Ādi Granth reflects an appreciation among early Sikh leaders of the symbolic and ritual importance of the Qur’ān for Muslim communities of the time as a material object as well as an orally transmitted ‘text.’25 The Goindval pothīs, as well as manuscripts of the Ādi Granth that date to the early seventeenth century, have been almost totally ignored by scholars of Hindi, presumably because the literature contained therein is understood to be part of the literary canon of Punjabi and the religious canon of the Sikhs. Yet the language of Guru Nanak (the first Sikh guru) and the gurus that followed him is often identical to the language of canonical Hindi poets of the period – the poetry of several of which is also anthologized in the Goindval Pothīs and the Ādi Granth. This is the earliest manuscript in which we find the writings of Kabir, Ravidas, Surdas, and Namdev – some of the founding figures of the Hindi canon. If we include the Sikh Goindval pothīs, as well as manuscripts of the Sufi Candāyan, Mirgāvatī, and Padmāvat among the earliest examples of Hindi in writing – and
23 Gurinder Singh Mann, The Goindval Pothis: The Earliest Extant Source of the Sikh Canon (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1996). See also Mann’s The Making of Sikh Scripture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40–50. 24 For an introduction to the courtly rituals centered on the Guru Granth Sāhib and its status as the Guru of the community, see Kristina Myrvold, “Making the Book a Living Guru: Ritual Practices Among Contemporary Sikhs,” in Objects of Worship in South Asian Religions: Forms, Practices, and Meanings, ed. Knut Jacobson, Mikael Aktor, and Kristina Myrvold (New York: Routledge, 2015), 163–181; –, “Making the Scripture a Person: Reinventing Death Rituals of Guru Granth Sahib in Sikhism,” in Myrvold, Death of Sacred Texts, 125–46. On the historical development of the Sikh court, see Louis E. Fenech, The Darbar of the Sikh Gurus: The Court of God in the World of Men (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008). 25 Mann, Making of Sikh Scripture, 12.
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take seriously Pollock’s contention that written textuality is inextricably linked to the literary character of a language – then the standard historiographical narrative of Hindi’s origin as the literary expression of Hindu devotional and martial sentiment in the late medieval and early modern periods begins to fall apart.26 The first extant manuscript of Hindi works that can possibly be said to have been produced in a Hindu devotional context is the Fatehpur Manuscript of 1582, so called because it was copied at the court (or perhaps more accurately, household) of a local Rajput warlord in the city of Fatehpur, Rajasthan.27 Yet here too, a devotional context for the copying of the manuscript is doubtful since it contains the poetry of religious and non-religious poets of the period, including the poetry of some of the same poets anthologized in the Goindval pothīs. This pothī-style manuscript of wide paper folios was copied, in two hands and three parts, by scribes (possibly teachers) for the warlord’s two sons, suggesting that it served a pedagogical purpose. Among early Hindi manuscripts, this is the specimen that most closely approximates the conventions of Sanskrit manuscript culture, being copied in the Devangari script and in scriptio continua with red ink for rubrics. It is no coincidence then that it was produced in a sub-royal, Hindu courtly context, in which Sanskrit was still a symbol of cultural power (even if its actual use in political and literary discourses was decreasing at the time). The majority of later manuscripts of literary and scholastic works produced in courtly contexts – of these, existing examples date only to the early seventeenth century – continue to follow the conventions of Sanskrit manuscript culture, being wide-format loose folios with uni-directional orientation of the text in scriptio continua, the use of black ink for body text and red ink (or vermillion) for rubrics, and usually vertical margin lines in black or red ink. Although usually commissioned by an individual, copies of texts in this format were intended to circulate among multiple individuals and sometimes across multiple
26 The association of the Hindi language and the Devanagari script with the imagined Hindu nation (hindū rāṣṭra) during the colonial and post-colonial periods has been studied extensively; excellent overviews of this history can be found in Christopher R. King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999) and Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism (Hyderbad: Orient Longman, 2000). Yet the role of Hindi literary historians in identifying Hindi literature with a transhistorical Hindu nation remains to be studied in depth. I would refer interested readers to the Hindī Sāhitya Kā Itihās (History of Hindi Literature, 1929) of Ramchandra Shukla, a work that is to this day read as the standard historical narrative of Hindi in college and university curricula in India. For example, Shukla states unequivocally that literature is the “reflection of the mental state of the people” and that the efflorescence of Hindi beginning in the fourteenth century was the expression of Hindu devotional revival in the face of Muslim political domination. Ramchandra Shukla, Hindī Sāhitya Kā Itihās (Kashi: Nagaripracharini Sabha, 1950), 1, 60–1. 27 A photographic reproduction of the Fatehpur manuscript has been published as Pad Sūradāsajī Kā: The Padas of Surdas (Jaipur : Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, 1984).
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social contexts.28 And though their primary texts were in Hindi, their paratexts – opening invocations, rubrics, section headings, and colophons – continued to be composed in Sanskrit or in a vernacularized form of Sanskrit suggesting that composers and scribes understood themselves to be operating in emerging networks of vernacular intellectuals that modeled themselves on and overlapped with, but were distinct from, Sanskrit intellectual networks.29 A little more than two decades after the copying of the Fatehpur Manuscript (if not sooner), a very different type of textual artifact began to be produced in the very same region, by a very different type of textual community. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century, the Dadu Panth of Rajasthan, a religious sect whose founder Dadu Dayal (1544–1603) rose to prominence on the popularity of the hymns that he composed in the vernacular, appears to have inaugurated a new type of manuscript. This type of manuscript is most often referred to as a vāṇī (lit. ‘voice’), as it contains the hymns and sayings of Dadu Dayal and/or other saints – in other words, this type of manuscript is the voice of the saint in material form. The format was quickly adopted by the Niranjani Sampraday as well, another influential religious order of the region that maintained close ties to the Dadu Panth.30 Composed of long folios stacked and folded then sewn along the fold into a cloth and cardboard cover, this type of manuscript resembles a very tall codex. Inside, however, these vāṇīs are copied in the Devanagari script and observe most of the conventions of Sanskrit pothīs, including the use of scriptio continua, paratexts in Sanskrit inscribed in red ink, and vertical margin lines in red or black ink. (Figure 5.4). These manuscripts were most often copied by initiated disciples for their guru and served sādhus (monks) as vademecums with which they delivered sermons and led the communal singing of hymns – their use in the context of communal worship and as a focal point for ritual is also reflected in the high quality of calligraphy and ruling and particularly in the decorative use of ink. (Again, the vāṇī in Figure 5.4 is illustrative of these elements.) The durable bindings and covers made them ideal for travel – something that all sādhus of these religious orders were obliged to do.31 The vāṇīs are also the earliest manuscripts in Hindi to contain
28 Tyler Williams, “Notes of Exchange: Scribal Practices and Vernacular Religious Scholarship in Early Modern North India,” Journal of Manuscript Studies 3, no. 1 (Fall 2018): 265–301. 29 Ibid. 30 On the Niranjani Sampraday and its connections with the Dadu Panth, see Tyler Williams, “Sacred Sounds and Sacred Books: a History of Writing in Hindi,” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2014), and Tyler Williams, “Nirañjanī Sampradāy,” in The Oxford Bibliography of Hinduism, ed. Tracy Coleman (oxfordbibliographies.com). On the Dadu Panth, see note 31. 31 On the history of the Dadu Panth, see Monika Horstmann, Crossing the Ocean of Existence: Braj Bhasa Religious Poetry from Rajasthan: A Reader (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983); Winand Callewaert (ed.), The Hindi Biography of Dadu Dayal (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1988); James Hastings, “Poets, Sants and Warriors: The Dadu Panth, Religious Change and Identity Formation in Jaipur State Circa 1562–1860 CE,” (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2002); Swami Narayandas, Śrī
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Figure 5.4: A vāṇī manuscript of the Niranjani Sampraday. Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jaipur, Ms. 2165.
Dādū Panth Paricay: Dādū Panth Kā Itihās (Jaipur: Sri Dadu Dayalu Mahasabha, 1979). One seventeenth-century hagiographical text of the Dadu Panth records that, upon the death of the Panth’s founder Dadu Dayal, the saint’s hymns and sayings were collected, collated, and copied into these vademecums that were then distributed to all sadhus (monks) of the order with the directive that all monks must carry a copy. See Monika Horstmann, “Dādūpanthi Anthologies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Bhakti in Current Research: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Early Devotional Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, Heidelberg, 23–26 July 2003, ed. Monika Horstmann (New Delhi: Manohar, 2006), 167–168.
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tables of contents, among other navigational apparatuses; the practice of supplying a table of contents was most likely adopted from Persian and Arabic manuscripts (or possibly from early copies of the Sikh Ādi Granth). Interestingly, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (possibly earlier), there was a practice of installing the vāṇī that had been used by a saint or prominent monk during his life in his samādhi (memorial monument) after his death; this vāṇī would then be worshipped by followers along with certain of the saint’s other personal effects. Like the Ādi Granth of the Sikhs, the centrality of these codices in communal worship as well as their character as objects of reverence suggests the possible influence of Islamic ideas and practices. The vāṇī manuscripts of the Dadu Panth and Niranjani Sampraday thus reflect the kind of vernacular innovation discussed earlier: their combination of the kitāb codex format with the visual layout and paratextual conventions of the Sanskrit pothī archetype suggests a process of adoption, adaptation, and experimentation with practices and forms from multiple linguistic, literary, and religious traditions. In summary, the earliest textual artifacts containing the vernacular of Hindi reflect a field of writing culture that was heavily diversified according to social context, religious tradition, and textual genre. Though the composers of the various works contained in these manuscripts all identify their language as the vernacular – referring to it variously as bhāṣā, bhākhā, hindī, hindavī, etc. – the variety of material forms in which these bhāṣā texts circulated correspond to the different spheres of literary production, consumption, and performance in which the vernacular was developed into a medium of literary and intellectual discourse. These early manuscripts also reflect a process of experimentation as communities of composers, scribes, and patrons explored how to give the vernacular a material form, drawing ideas and influences from the already present and multifarious examples of north Indian multilingual literary culture. Over time, certain conventions of impagination became associated with a particular genre or type of text to such an extent that they were replicated across different writing systems.
A Typology of Textual Artifacts in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century India Once Hindi had become well-established as a medium for literary, religious, and scholastic discourse – and this consolidation of its position in the language order must have occurred by the early seventeenth century, if not earlier – the number and types of texts committed to writing in the language increased rapidly. Consequently there is a substantial manuscript archive for Hindi from the early seventeenth century onward. This archive includes a rich variety of textual artifacts, including paper and cloth scrolls (tūmār, varti, and vijñaptipatra), tabloid-size codices, bound record books (bahī), account books (daftar), and promisory notes (huṇḍī), in addition to the types
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of manuscripts discussed above.32 Despite this variety, the vast majority of manuscripts in the archive conform to a finite number of archetypes, suggesting that by the mid-seventeenth century certain norms and conventions of impagination had been established. The manuscripts produced over the next two hundred or so years can therefore be grouped in terms of both use and form into a broad typology of personal notebooks, books for circulation, and scriptural or “sacred” books.
Personal Notebooks Many of the Hindi manuscripts found in archives today are in fact personal notebooks akin to the commonplace books of early modern Europe. Those notebooks that were produced in social contexts in which literacy in the Devanagari and Kaithi scripts was cultivated including monasteries, non-monastic religious groups, and merchant communities are most often called guṭakā (from the Sanskrit term guṭikā meaning ‘lump’ or ‘ball’).33 They were made by folding wide, thin folios over one another and saddle stitching them along the fold into a cardboard and cloth binding. Additional folios could be added later by unbinding the original block of folios, folding the new folios around this block, then restitching the collection into a larger cover. The notebook would consequently take on an increasingly round shape as it grew, which is possibly the reason that such notebooks came to be called guṭakā. These manuscripts most often contain poetry in the form of lyrics and epigrams (many are clearly notes for singing) but they can also contain other information such as travelogues, financial transactions, recipes, and magic spells – anything their owners needed to document – reflecting their use as personal notebooks. (See Figure 5.5.) That they were primarily used by single individuals is further suggested by the presence of a single hand, the generally hasty and idiosynchratic quality of handwriting, and the absence of any paratextual material that would facilitate navigation of the manuscript like verse numbers, foliation, and subject headings.
32 On the vijñaptipatra, a type of invitation in scroll format, see Harinand Sastri, Ancient Vijñaptipatras (Baroda: Baroda State Press, 1942), Sweta Prajapati, “Jaisalmer Vijñaptipatra: A SocioReligious Portrait of Jainism,” Kriti Rakshana 5, no. 5–6 (July 2010): 11–17, and Dipti Khera, “Marginal, Mobile, Multilayered: Painted Invitation Letters as Bazaar Objects in Early Modern India,” Journal18, no 1 (Spring 2016), http://www.journal18.org/527 (accessed January 2, 2019). On the bahī, huṇḍī, and other types of business and record-keeing documents, see Girija Shakar Sharma, “Sources on Business History of Rajasthan (18th and 19th Centuries AD),” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 54 (1993): 899–908. 33 Although these notebooks are most often referred to as guṭakā, usage of the term is not limited to them; it is sometimes used for the unbound groups of wide folios referred to elsewhere in this chapter as pothī, and is also the name of a genre of Jain religious texts and of a type of Sikh anthology.
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Figure 5.5: A guṭkā-type notebook copied circa 1687 to 1696, containing short Jain and Hindu works as well as magic squares, spells, magic diagrams, and recipes. The folios from the notebook have been re-bound with folios from other notebooks. Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jodhpur, Ms. 26334.
These notebooks are essentially aides-memoire, and one would need to already know the contents of such a manuscript in order to navigate it. Yet some of these notebooks did apparently change hands, as one finds guṭkās in which additional folios in a different hand have been added to the original ‘core’. In social contexts in which literacy in the Perso-Arabic script was cultivated a similar type of notebook was used called a bayāẓ. (This type of notebook was similar to the Persian safīnah mentioned above.) The contents of extant bayāẓ as well as documentary sources from the period tell us that these notebooks served a number of purposes: aspiring poets and connoisseurs would record exemplary verses by great poets in order to learn the craft and the proper appreciation of poetry, poets would use them to draft and revise their compositions, and aficionados would record anecdotes and biographical information about their favorite poets. As Francis Pritchett has pointed out, these bayāẓ would later become the textual raw material from which dīvāns (the collected works of a poet) and taẓkirahs – anthologies of poets, including biographical information, anecdotes, and representative verses – were produced.34
‘Books’ for Circulation In contrast to the aforementioned notebooks, this second type of textual artifact comprises manuscripts that were clearly intended for circulation among multiple
34 Frances Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 64.
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individuals. In Devanagari- and Kaithi-literate social contexts, such a manuscript tended to follow the archetype of the pothī (discussed above), being a group of unbound, wide-format folios numbered on the verso side and having marginal lines on the left and right sides (Figure 5.1). Such manuscripts are usually referred to in contemporary sources as pothī, pustak, or sometimes as granth. They typically contain poetry, literary works, religious songs and narratives, and scholastic and scientific texts, and are further distinguished from notebooks in that they usually contain complete texts or organized collections of poetry rather than excerpts and poetic miscellanies. They are replete with paratexts like opening invocations and colophons, subject headings, verse numbers, and other navigational aids that are copied in red ink or highlighted with vermillion (or sometimes turmeric). Although their colophons often record that they were copied by a scribe for use by a particular individual, these colophons are apparently intended for subsequent or other readers of the text rather than the original patron, again suggesting that these manuscripts were intended to circulate among multiple readers and in multiple social and institutional contexts.35 These contexts included monasteries, imperial, sub-imperial, and local courts, networks of poets and intellectuals, and wealthy merchant households. By the second quarter of the seventeenth century, the production and consumption of another type of codex became widespread among Hindu royal courts. This type is characterized by large, portrait-oriented folios folded that were saddlestitched along the fold in apparent imitation of Perso-Arabic codices but often without the use of separate quires. Produced in the ateliers of Rajput courts, these manuscripts usually contain literary works in the genres of the epic, religious narrative, romance, and rāgamālā (garland of musical modes). Copied in fine Devangari calligraphy and richly embellished and illustrated, these codices appear to have been created as luxury items for elite consumption and to have been influenced by the book connoisseurship practices of the Mughal nobility.36 Yet despite this influence, practices of paper preparation, foliation, and binding appear to have been different than those of the more Persianized and Islamicate Mughal elite.
35 Tyler Williams, “‘Publishing’ and Publics in a World without Print: Vernacular Manuscripts in Early Modern India,” Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 4, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 146–168. 36 For the example of the royal book atelier of the Kacchwaha court of Amber/Jaipur, including its relationship to Mughal courtly practices, see Gopal Narayan Bahura, Literary Heritage of the Rulers of Amber and Jaipur (Jaipur: Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, 1976), 12–20. On the relationship between Rajput and Mughal painting (including illustrations in manuscripts), see Molly Emma Aitken, The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). The peculiar binding techniques used for these manuscripts – i.e. the folding of folios into a single large quire, rather than several separate quires – suggests the emulation of Perso-Arabic or Islamicate book culture but perhaps also a lack of access to the skilled bookbinding labor necessary to produce such codices.
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Among those literate in the Perso-Arabic script, who included many members of the Hindu nobility, scribal classes, merchants, and military officers in addition to the Muslim members of the Mughal nobility and clerical classes, the codex kitāb continued to be the most common form of manuscript. Containing poetic dīvāns, anthological taẓkirahs, dāstāns (romance narratives), Hindu and Persian epics, religious narratives, and rāgamālās, kitāb manuscripts range from the small and modestly-produced to the large and lavishly illustrated. Their paratextual material – including openings, subheadings, marginalia, and particularly colophons – follow the conventions of Persian and Arabic manuscripts of the period. In fact, many such manuscripts containing works in the vernacular include paratexts in Persian, providing an analog to the case of the Sanskrit-influenced pothīs discussed above and reflecting the multilingual context in which these manuscripts were produced, circulated, and enjoyed.37 Like the pothī/pustak manuscripts, their colophons often record the identity of the scribe and commissioning patron, reflecting a consciousness of the manuscripts’ potential circulation – evidence of this subsequent circulation is often found in the form of inscriptions and seals made by later owners, librarians, and book sellers.38
Sacred Books Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and into the early nineteenth, religious communities such as the Sikhs and the Hindu sects of the Dadu Panth and Niranjani Sampraday continued to produce the distinct types of codices discussed earlier in the chapter. Extant copies of the Sikh Ādi Granth dating to the seventeenth century maintain the codex format and high quality of visual embellishment (Figure 5.6); production of vāṇī codices in the Dadu Panth and Niranjani Samraday continued well into the nineteenth century with a high degree of consistency in regard to dimensions, ruling, and number of lines per page. The distinctiveness of these formats and their consistent use over two and a half centuries suggest a consciousness among religious practioners of these material scriptures’ character as symbols of sectarian identity. Their very material form as bound codices, as opposed to collections of loose folios like the pothī, further suggests an understanding of their contents – primarily canonized hymns and epigrams composed by the gurus, both historical and symbolic, of the respective religious communities – as constituting a unified scripture. As discussed earlier, this form also likely reflects an appreciation of the role played by al-kitāb or al-muṣhaf, the material object of the Qur’ān, as a focal
37 Many manuscripts containing vernacular works in Perso-Arabic script also contain works in the language of Persian, providing further evidence of the multilingual character of reader communities. 38 Williams, “‘Publishing’ and Publics in a World without Print,” 151–157.
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Figure 5.6: Ādi Granth manuscript, copied circa 1660–1675. The illumination approximates that found in Persian codices belonging to the period. British Library, Or. Ms. 2748.
point of communal ritual and of the concept of the ‘people of the book’, known as ahl al-kitāb (in Arabic) or ahl-i kitāb (in Persian) within the Islamicate polities of Sultanate and Mughal north India.39 This understanding is quite pronounced in
39 On the influence of the archetype of al-kitāb on Sikhism, see Mann, Making of Sikh Scripture, 11–12. The recognition of certain Indian religious communities as being ahl-i kitāb and their status
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the case of the Ādi Granth: the tenth and final Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), ended the line of human Gurus and declared the scripture to be the living Guru of the community in 1708, naming it the Guru Granth Sāhib, a term that fuses the figure of the human guru with the textual object.40 To this day, codex copies of the Guru Granth Sāhib continue to be the focal point of daily ritual at Sikh temples (gurudvārā) being awoken in the morning, attended to in the manner of a religious authority or monarch throughout the day, and put to sleep in the evening.41 Similarly, in the case of the Dadu Panth community of Rajasthan, a manuscript of the collected hymns and sayings of its founder Dadu, called the Dādū Vāṇī or “Voice of Dadu,” is said to have been ritually installed at the community’s monastic center in Naraina, Rajasthan, upon Dadu’s death in 1603.42 In the case of the Niranjani Sampraday, gurus or senior members of the monastic order would commission personal copies of the sect’s scripture, the simply-named Vāṇī (“Voices”), an anthology of hymns and sayings by saints of the tradition; upon a guru’s death, his copy of the Vāṇī was installed in his samādhi (shrine) and became an object of worship.
Commentarial Texts and Manuscripts in Hindi The final section of this chapter examines how practices of impagination related to commentarial literature developed in the context of the heterogenous and experimental vernacular writing practices in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century north India
as dhimmī (“protected persons”) has a complicated history and different sultans and emperors adopted different policies toward various religious communities. Nevertheless, whether it be a category error or not, Persian writers of the period refer to the practitioners of Indian religions as having ‘kitāb’ which those practitioners deem sacred. See for example the numerous references to sacred ‘books’ in the fourth volume of Abul Fazl’s Āīn-i Akbarī. In translation: H. Blochmann, ed. and trans., The Ā’īn-i Akbarī, (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1927). In the original Persian: Abū alFaz̤l ibn Mubārak, The Ā’īn-i Akbari (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873). 40 Mann, Making of Sikh Scripture, 130. See also Pashaura Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority (New Delhi ; Oxford University Press, 2000), 239. The term guru (from Sanskrit) simply means teacher while granth (also from Sanskrit) refers to a unified textual work. Sāhib is an honorific title from Arabic (via Persian) used for persons of status or rank. Their combination in the title of the Sikh scripture thus evokes the idea of a unitary scripture that is simultaneously a living guru. 41 On contemporary practices involving the Guru Granth Sāhib, see note 24 above. 42 See Horstmann, “Dādūpanthi Anthologies,” 167–168. Horstmann expresses doubts regarding the date of composition given for the Sant Guṇ Sāgar (1604), the hagiography that records the installation of the Dādū Vāṇī; nevertheless it seems clear that with the Dadu Panth the hagiography represents an authoritative narrative concerning the origin and liturgical importance of the Dādū Vānī that is at least as old as the mid-seventeenth century.
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and suggests that certain aspects of performance context and intellectual culture can be inferred from close examination of these impagination practices. The majority of the commentarial literature in Hindi dating to the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries is devoted to performing translation, exegesis, and literary interpretation of Sanskrit texts; relatively fewer Hindi commentaries exist for Hindi mūl or “root” texts.43 What is perhaps most striking about the extant manuscripts of commentarial works is that almost none appear to have been influenced by the sophisticated impagination practices of the Jain manuscripts discussed earlier. For example, there appears to have been no practice of inscribing interlineal commentaries; one finds almost exclusively manuscripts in which the root text and commentary are inscribed on the same line.44 A brief comparison of manuscripts of two different Hindi commentaries on the same Sanskrit root text will highlight some of the more salient features of commentaryrelated impagination practices and their performative contexts.
The Vivekadīpikā (c. 1600) of Prince Indrajit of Orcha Around 1600, the Bhundela Rajput prince Indrajit of Orcha completed his Vivekadīpikā (“Lamp of Discernment”), a bhāṣā commentary on the Sanskrit Śataka anthologies of Bhartrihari (fl. 5–7th century CE).45 The three Śatakas – collections of one hundred verses on nīti (worldly conduct), śṛṅgāra (sexual love), and vairāgya (detachment from the world), respectively – anthologize independent verses composed by Bhartrihari on each of these three themes.46 Such anthologies, called subhāṣita (“well-spoken”), were used as pedagogical texts for courtly elites, providing lessons in the political and erotic arts as well as religious wisdom and a literary
43 This is not to suggest that Hindi commentaries on Hindi works were unimportant; on the contrary, commentaries on prominent works of literary theory like the Rasikapriyā of Keshavdas and devotional narratives like the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas form a tradition in their own right. See for example Sūrati Miśra, Jorāvar Prakāś, ed. Yogendra Pratap Singh (Prayag: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1992), and Tribhuwan Nath Chaubey, Rāmacaritamānas Kā Ṭīkā-Sāhitya (Sulatanpur: Sambhavana Prakashan, 1975). 44 This observation is made even more striking by the fact that manuscripts with interlineal commentaries in Sanskrit and Prakrit continued to be produced during this period. I know of only a couple of interlineal examples. 45 On the Vivekadīpikā of Indrajit, see Ronald Stuart McGregor, “Some Bhartṛhari Commentaries in Early Braj Bhāṣā Prose,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 26, no. 2 (January 1, 1963): 314–28, and The Language of Indrajit of Orchā: A Study of Early Braj Bhāṣā Prose (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968). 46 On the Śatakas of Bhartrihari, see Bhartrihari: Poems, ed. and trans. Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); Śrī Bhartr̥hari Śatakatraya: Saṭīka-Sacitra: Śloka, Śabda Viccheda, Śabdārtha, Bhāvārtha, Viśeṣārtha, ed. D.D. Kosambi (New Delhi: Venkat Rao, 1977); The Nīti and Vairāgya Śatakas of Bhartṛhari, ed. M.R. Kale (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971).
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education.47 Prince Indrajit’s commentary is the first known attempt to translate and explicate such a work in a north Indian vernacular; his composition of the Vivekadīpikā would thus have been considered, on the one hand, a performance of his mastery of the elite knowledge systems and literature of Sanskrit and on the other hand a demonstration of his virtuosity as a pioneer of the emerging literary vernacular. The four extant copies of the Vivekadīpikā – all four of them in pothī format – tell us something about the work’s transmission and performance. Although the earliest manuscripts were copied roughly a quarter of a century after the composition of the work, the correspondence of their verse order with the redactions of the Śataka used by Indrajit as well as the repetition of minor errors in the text suggest that the work’s transmission was relatively stable, making these perhaps second or third-generation copies as demonstrated by R.S. McGregor.48 They can therefore also tell us something about the manuscripts that preceded them and from which they were copied. Indrajit begins his work with a short introduction in Hindi, then gives each of Bhartrihari’s original Sanskrit verses with a prose explication in Hindi. In the manuscripts, the Hindi commentary is inscribed on the same line as the Sanskrit root text and both the verses of the root text and the sections of the prose commentary are numbered together sequentially – in other words, each verse and its attendant lines of commentary are treated as a single unit. (Figure 5.1). This does not point to laziness on the part of the scribes; on the contrary, the scribes have been careful to note interpolated verses in Bhartrihari’s original text with a separate numbering scheme.49 Instead, this suggests that the root text and commentary were read sequentially: i.e. that the order of the verses ‘guides’ the reader or performer back and forth between root text and commentary. Commentary verses intended to introduce a root verse come immediately before the root verse; commentary verses that translate the root verse or perform exegetical tasks come immediately after it. The importance of this structure becomes clear when we compare it to the earlier and contemporary interlineal commentaries of the Jain tradition in which root text, commentary, and even sub-commentary were separately numbered and arranged in separate and distinct text blocks on the folio so that one could easily move between different verses of the root text, between the root text and commentary text, between different verses of the commentary text, etcetera. In contrast to these Jain commentarial manuscripts – which we know were used by Jain monks primarily for studying in groups and perhaps sometimes for private study—these Vivekadīpikā manuscripts suggest a different pedagogical or performance context
47 On the subhāṣita genre, see Ludwik Sternbach, Subhāṣita, Gnomic and Didactic Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974). 48 McGregor, “Some Bhartṛhari Commentaries,” 319–323. 49 Ibid., 319.
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in which the reader (or performer) proceeded through the work in a linear fashion. This is also the case with manuscripts of another commentary on Bhartrihari’s Śatakas, the Vairāgya Vṛnd of Bhagvandas Niranjani.
The Vairāgya Vṛnd (1673) of Bhagvandas Niranjani The Vairāgya Vṛnd (“Group [of Verses] on Detachment”) composed by the Niranjani monk Bhagvandas in 1673 represents a very different approach to commentary from that found in Indrajit’s Vivekadīpika. Writing in a monastic context and in the midst of a movement by Niranjani religious leaders to master Sanskrit religious texts and reinterpret them for both monks and householders more comfortable in the vernacular, Bhagvandas takes only the vairāgya (renunciation) anthology of Bhartrihari’s poetry, leaving aside the anthologies on courtly conduct and erotic love. He reorders the verses of Bhartrihari’s original anthology into chapters corresponding to certain ‘levels of detachment’ from the world and provides an introduction and conclusion that present Bhartrihari as an ideal renunciate and his poetry as a guidebook to religious conduct.50 Whereas Indrajit composed his commentary in prose, Bhagvandas composed his commentary in multiple types of verse, giving one to three poems of explication and exegesis after each of Bhartrihari’s Sanskrit verses. A comparison of copies of Bhagvandas’s Vairāgya Vṛnd found in two different types of manuscripts – pothī and vāṇī – and between these manuscripts and copies of Indrajit’s Vivekadīpikā suggests differences in the manner in which they were circulated and performed. Let us first consider a copy of the Vairāgya Vṛnd in the wide, unbound pothī format, Ms 37973 of the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jodhpur. This unbound set of folios contains two works copied by the scribe Chetandas in 1820: the Vairāgya Vṛnd and the Vicāramāl (“Garland of Meditations”).51 In the Vairāgya Vṛnd,
50 Williams, “Commentary as Translation,” 104–13. There are precedents for this treatment of Bhartrihari as a saintly figure in the vernacular, as opposed to his identity as a king or courtly poet in Sanskrit works. These include verses attributed to Bhartrihari in the Dadu Panthi poetic anthology of the Sarvāṅgī ([Anthology of] All Topics, c. 1620) and Bhartrihari’s inclusion in the hagiographical encyclopedia of the Bhaktamāl (Garland of Devotees, 1660) composed by the Dadu Panthi poet Raghavdas. These writers and communities may also be conflating the identity of this Bhartrihari with that of the protagonist of a cycle of folk narratives in Rajasthan. On that other Bhartrihari see Ann Grodzins Gold, A Carnival of Parting: The Tales of King Bharthari and King Gopi Chand as Sung and Told by Madhu Natisar Nath of Ghatiyali, Rajasthan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 51 The two works have been separately foliated and so it is possible that, despite being copied by the same scribe as a single manuscript, the two works could have been separated and circulated in independent form if necessary. This is a somewhat rare phenomenon in pothī-type manuscripts of the period as most contain a single work or, if they contain more than one work, maintain sequential foliation and do not ‘restart’ folio numbering at the beginning of a new work.
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the commentary verses appear on the same line as the verses of Bhartrihari’s root text, and are sequentially numbered, just as in manuscripts of the Vivekadīpikā. Rubrics, verse numbers, and subject headings have been inscribed in red ink, aiding navigation. The second copy of the Vairāgya Vṛnd is found in a vāṇī-type codex of the Niranjani Sampraday also copied in 1820, Ms. 2165 of the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, Jaipur. As described earlier, these portrait-format codices were both vademecums for the religious leaders of the community and objects of veneration and worship for lay followers. This vāṇī, like others, was copied by a monastic initiate for his guru. It contains hymns and aphorisms by Niranjani and other saints, theological works, and hagiographies, all in the vernacular. The most striking feature of the copy of the Vairāgya Vṛnd in this manuscript is the complete absence of the root text: there are none of Bhartrihari’s Sanskrit verses, only the Hindi verses of Bhagvandas’s commentary. Yet the numbering of the verses is the same as in copies that do include the Sanskrit root text, because the scribe has inserted the word ‘śloka’ (‘stanza’ in Sanskrit) and a verse number where the Sanskrit root text verses would have been. Since, in the ‘full’ version of Bhagvandas’s Vairāgya Vṛnd, i.e. in copies that include both root text and commentary, each śloka is followed by a commentary verse in Hindi that provides a rough translation of the śloka, a reader of this redacted version would be able to recognize where a root verse had been removed and simply substitute it with Bhagvandas’s Hindi equivalent. Another difference between this copy and the aforementioned pothī is a greater use of red ink for virāms (full stops), rubrics, and section headings. This is in harmony with the overall aesthetic of this beautifully-inscribed manuscript (see Figure 5.4), which like other vāṇīs was used in communal worship and was itself an object of reverence. Like the pothīs containing the Vivekadīpikā, the pothī copy of the Vairāgya Vṛnd appears to have been used for private study or possibly teaching. This is suggested by the following clues: first, it was copied independently as a separate manuscript (along with the Vicāramāl) and could circulate independently; second, its loose folios were convenient for extended study while seated but not for transport (in contrast to a bound codex like the vāṇī, which was made to travel); third and most importantly, its inclusion of the original Sanskrit verses would make it a tool for learning and interpreting Sanskrit literature, a necessary skill for a Niranjani monk. The pothī as a textual artifact was both a conduit for and trace of communication and exchange between religious scholars and intellectuals working in courtly milieus; this being the case, the fact that both Indrajit’s Vivekadīpikā and Bhagvandas’s Vairāgya Vṛnd circulated in pothī style manuscripts suggests that they may have circulated in the same intellectual world, or at least in distinct but overlapping intellectual spheres.52
52 On pothī manuscripts as conduits for intellectual networks, see Williams, “Notes of Exchange.”
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The vāṇī copy, on the other hand, was included in a codex with dozens of other liturgical works and could be easily carried by the religious leader and teacher as he traveled, giving sermons and leading sessions of communal singing of hymns. The absence of the Sanskrit root text would have made relatively little difference in such a context: if the manuscript’s owner were using the text to teach lay followers, as was most likely the case, then he would have had little occasion to recite the Sanskrit ślokās (except, perhaps, for ritual effect).
Conclusion The case of Hindi demonstrates that linguistic and literary change – in this case the gradual displacement of a cosmopolitan language or languages by a vernacular – opens up a space for experimentation and innovation in impagination practices. The pioneers of writing in Hindi, including composers, scribes, and their patrons, did not simply or mechanically reproduce the models supplied by Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Persian, and Arabic. Indeed, the very multiplicity of literary cultures and corresponding textual artifacts at hand may have precluded the possibility of such an easy transition: rather than a straight correspondence between a single cosmopolitan archetype and a singular vernacular derivative, Hindi’s early writers were confronted with multiple models of written textuality from which to choose. In the linguistic ideology of the period, the vernacular itself was understood to be impure, hybrid, and macaronic in comparison to the purity of Sanskrit or Quranic Arabic. This mixing of linguistic and literary material from multiple sources in the production of early Hindi literature is paralleled by the mixing of visual and material practices from multiple manuscript traditions in the production of early Hindi books. Although some manuscript types like those of the Fatehpur manuscript or copies of the Vivekadīpikā evince an effort to reproduce existing models, many others like the codices of the Sufi romances, the early copies of the Sikh scripture, and the vademecums of the Dadu Panth and Niranjani Sampraday reflect the creative mixing of multiple archetypes and practices. The fifteenth-century saint Kabir, who composed hymns in Hindi, is said to have remarked, saṁsakarita hai kup jal, bhākhā bahatā nīr – “Sanskrit is [stagnant] well water, the vernacular is flowing water.” The early writers of Hindi appear to have allowed the vernacular to break out from the walls of any one model and flow across the page in all sorts of patterns. The early manuscript record of Hindi consequently presents us with a rich variety of impagination practices, some of which became conventionalized and associated with particular genres and types of texts over time. By paying close attention to the choices that early composers and scribes made and the manner in which they combined various elements we can gain a sense of the aesthetic, literary, and devotional worlds in which they understood themselves to be participating. At the same time,
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the comparison of a single work or type of work inscribed in multiple formats can reveal important clues about intellectual, pedagogical, and performative contexts.
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Mishra, Surati. Jorāvar Prakāś. Edited by Yogendra Pratap Singh. Prayag: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1992. Myrvold, Kristina, ed. The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in World Religions. Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Narayandas, Swami. Śrī Dādū Panth Paricay: Dādū Panth Kā Itihās. Jaipur: Sri Dadu Dayalu Mahasabha, 1979. Ollett, Andrew. Language of the Snakes: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Orsini, Francesca. “How to Do Multilingual Literary History? Lessons from Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury North India.” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 49, no. 2 (2012): 225–46. Orsini, Francesca and Samira Sheikh, eds. After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in FifteenthCentury North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pierce Taylor, Sarah. “When a Sanskrit Fault is a Kannada Virtue: Khaṇḍa Prāsa in Śrivijaya’s Kavirājamārgam.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, October 23, 2016. Phukan, Shantanu. “‘Through Throats Where Many Rivers Meet’: The Ecology of Hindi in the World of Persian.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38, no. 33 (2001): 33–58. Pollock, Sheldon, ed. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Prajapati, Sweta. A Bibliography of Palaeography and Manuscriptology. Delhi: Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, 2004. Prajapati, Sweta. “Jaisalmer Vijñaptipatra: A Socio-Religious Portrait of Jainism.” Kriti Rakshana 5, no. 5–6 (July 2010): 11–17. Preisendanz, Karin. “Text, Commentary, Annotation: Some Reflections on the Philosophical Genre,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 36 (2008): 599–618. Pritchett, Frances. Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Raghavadas. Bhaktamāl. Edited by Agarchand Nathata. Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, 1965. Rai, Alok. Hindi Nationalism. Hyderbad: Orient Longman, 2000. Rath, Saraju, ed. Aspects of Manuscript Culture in South India. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Sastri, Harinand. Ancient Vijñaptipatras. Baroda: Baroda State Press, 1942. Shandilya, Shiv Kumar. Maulānā Dāūda Kr̥ta Cāndāyan Kā Bhāshā Svarūp Evaṃ Bimbātmak Saṃcetanā. New Delhi: Bhasha Prakashan, 1978. Shukla, Ramchandra. Hindī Sāhitya Kā Itihās. Revised edition (originally 1929). Kashi: Nagaripracharini Sabha, 1950. Sharma, Girija. “Sources on Business History of Rajasthan (18th and 19th Centuries AD).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 54 (1993): 899–908. Singh, Pashaura. The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Sternbach, Ludwik. Subhāṣita, Gnomic and Didactic Literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974. Thaker, Jayant. Manuscriptology and Text Criticism. Vadodara: Oriental Institute, 2002. Tubb, Gary, and Emery Boose. Scholastic Sanskrit: A Manual for Students. New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007. Williams, Tyler. “Sacred Sounds and Sacred Books: a History of Writing in Hindi.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2014.
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Williams, Tyler. “Notes of Exchange: Scribal Practices and Vernacular Religious Scholarship in Early Modern North India,” Journal of Manuscript Studies 3, no. 1 (Fall 2018): 265–301. Williams, Tyler. “‘Publishing’ and Publics in a World without Print: Vernacular Manuscripts in Early Modern India,” Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 4, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 146–168. Williams, Tyler, Anshu Malhotra, and John S. Hawley, eds. Text and Tradition in Early Modern North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.
II The Printed World
Anthony Grafton
Chapter 6 The Margin as Canvas: A Forgotten Function of the Early Printed Page Abstract: This chapter examines a little-studied genre of marginalia, one that may be called visual glossing or visual commentaries. It consists of the reader’s drawings on the margin that served as a tool for textual interpretations. Such drawings illustrated the scenes, objects, symbols, historical figures and other characters mentioned in the corresponding passages of the classical texts that Renaissance humanists read. These drawings sometimes existed alone, and sometimes co-existed with textual commentaries. They showed the reader’s understanding, and often imaginations, of the text, more vividly than words. This paper examines closely the visual glossing of Ambrosius Blarer (1492–1564), a Benedictine who eventually became a Lutheran minister, Thomas Smith (1513–1577), an English jurist and statesman, and John Dee (1527–1608/8), an English humanist and magus. Their drawings are suggestive in many ways: as evidence that readers sought a vivid experience of the past not afforded by texts on their own, but also as attempts at a distinctive kind of visual explication of texts. They constitute an unexplored chapter in the history of reading – and, it seems, of pedagogy and philology – in Renaissance Europe. Keywords: marginalia, marginal drawings, engaged reading, enargeia, pedagogy, explication
Readers in Renaissance Europe approached their task, as historians of the book have taught us, in highly varied ways. Joseph Scaliger told friends and students that “I don’t make a habit of reading books until they have been bound” – though he made an exception at least once, for a Catholic pamphlet that he thought especially pernicious.1 Others did not even wait to assemble a complete text of an exciting new book. Lorenzo de’ Medici’s secretary, Piero da Bibbiena, read the innovative architectural treatise by Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, to Lorenzo gathering by gathering in 1485, as the first edition came off the press of Niccolò di Giovanni Alemanno.2 Some liked to read small octavos in informal settings, some to scrutinize massive folios held up by bookrests. Machiavelli told Francesco Vettori, in a famous 1 Scaligerana, ed. P. des Maizeaux (Amsterdam: Covens & Mortier, 1740), II, 187. For the exception see The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger, ed. P. Botley and D. van Miert, 8 vols., (Geneva: Droz, 2012), V, 335; cf. IV, 112 and n. 1. 2 Mario Martelli, “I pensieri architettonici del Magnifico,” Commentari 17 (1966) 107–11 at 107. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-007
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letter, that he read in both ways on a single day. Isaac Casaubon made a habit of combing his hair, and then praying, before he confronted the books of the mighty dead.3 Botticelli and Ghirlandaio portrayed Augustine and Jerome, reading in their cells, in the Chiesa di Ognissanti in Florence. When they equipped the saints with handsome equipment, they were portraying the practices of at least some contemporaries. Scaliger’s teacher of Roman law, Jacques Cujas, owned both a book wheel, with which he could whirl his books around, presumably to compare them, and a barber’s chair, with which he could whirl himself from the books and papers piled up on one table to those on another. In practice, though, he spent most of his working time lying on his stomach on the floor.4 Studies of annotation have taught us much about the history of reading: for example, that texts were sometimes interpreted in company, and that the purposes of such reading could be pragmatic and political. The Cambridge-trained scholar Gabriel Harvey filled margins, blank leaves and other empty spaces in his Basel 1555 edition of the histories of Livy with annotations.5 His notes show that he led younger men like Philip Sidney and Thomas Smith jr. through parts of the text, to prepare them for tasks in the public service.6 Other annotations, however, show that pragmatic reading could be solitary. Philip Sidney’s brother Robert seems to have worked alone when he annotated the folio copy of Lipsius’s edition of Tacitus that he brought with him when he went to fight the Spanish on the Continent.7 Other aspects of annotation await more systematic study. Renaissance readers, for example, often went through texts pen in hand. When Isaac Casaubon read his way through the Greek Fathers, forty or fifty folio pages a day, he covered page after page with underlining even though he wrote relatively little in the margins.
3 A. Grafton, “The Humanist as Reader,” in A History of Reading in the West, ed. G. Cavallo and R. Chartier (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 179–181; A. D. Nuttall, Dead from the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 142. 4 See the description by Jacopo Corbinelli in R. Calderini de-Marchi, Jacopo Corbinelli et les érudits français d’après la correspondance inédite Corbinelli-Pinelli (1566–1587) (Milan: Hoepli, 1914), 174–176, and Scaligerana, II, 75. 5 Harvey’s copy of Livy is Princeton University Library Ex PA6452.A2 1555q. For a digital reproduction of the entire book with a searchable transcription and translation of Harvey’s notes, see The Archaeology of Reading (https://archaeologyofreading.org/). 6 Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy,” Past & Present 129 (November 1990): 30–78; for an expert retrospective view and critique, see Lisa Jardine, “‘Studied for Action’ Revisited,” in Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing, ed., For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions, Volume 18 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 999–1017. 7 Robert Sidney’s copy of Tacitus is British Library C.142.e.13. See Joel Davis, “Robert Sidney’s Marginal Comments on Tacitus and the English Campaigns in the Low Countries,” Sidney Journal 24, 1 (2006), 1–19, and Robert Shephard, “The Political Commonplace Books of Sir Robert Sidney,” Sidney Journal 21, 1 (2003), 1–30.
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Was this practice Casaubon’s way of emphasizing passages that he wanted to retrieve? Or maintaining his concentration as he read? The fairly profuse comments in his commonplace books and diary about the books he read and annotated do not offer enlightenment on his motives.8 We know even less about the elaborate and sometimes handsome visual forms that annotations often took – to say nothing of the intentions of their makers or of the printers who left space for them. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule: cases, for example, in which printers left white space – an expensive decision that they resisted when they could – clearly designed to be filled in. In Germany from around 1490 to 1520 and in Paris in the 1560s and 1570s, printers produced editions of classical texts that they had designed for annotation. They used a large font for the text in question, a smaller one for the printed commentary (if there was one). And they placed bars between the lines of text, producing blank spaces. Wide margins left room for longer comments. Well-behaved students used these books to good purpose: they turned each printed text into a record of what their teacher had had to say about it. Sometimes a subscription localized the lesson in time and place. Paraphrases, in Latin, reorganized classical Latin texts, both verse and prose, into what teachers and students thought of as natural order, making it easy to follow. These were entered, normally, in the spaces between the lines. Longer marginal notes explained unusual words, identified literary allusions and clarified historical and mythological references. These found a home in the margins or in additional blank pages. In the course of this treatment, the book became a manuscript, of a special hybrid kind: one in which a printed text provided an armature to which handwriting of different kinds could be attached. Many of these survive: evidence of the value attached to them by their proud compilers.9 In this case, neither the mise-en-page of the texts used by students nor the practices of their teachers came into being with print. Late medieval German manuscripts of Latin poets were laid out in exactly the same way. The teacher or student assigned numbers to each word so that the student could rearrange the text into a simpler “natural” order. One- and two-word glosses filled the
8 Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon, 1559–1614, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), ch. 11. 9 Jürgen Leonhardt, “Classics as Textbooks. A Study of the Humanist Lectures on Cicero at the University of Leipzig, ca. 1515,” in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, Edited by Emidio Campi, Simone De Angelis, Anja Silvia Goeing and Anthony Grafton (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 89–112; Anthony Grafton, “Teacher, Text and Pupil in the Renaissance Class-Room: A Case Study from a Parisian College,” History of Universities 1 (1981): 37–70; Ann Blair, “Lectures on Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The Class Notes of a 16th-Century Paris Schoolboy,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 50 (1989), 117–44; “Ovidius Methodizatus: the Metamorphoses of Ovid in a Sixteenth-Century Paris Collège,” History of Universities 9 (1990), 73–118; Le livre annoté, ed. JeanMarc Chatelain, Revue de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France, No 2 (June 1999).
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interlinear spaces.10 In the age of print, a single interlinear paraphrase provided both a simplified version of the text and individual glosses. Another, less successful experiment, the printed commonplace book that John Foxe published in 1572, also adapted practices that had existed for centuries. Reading and writing, in the Renaissance, often amounted to a single process. A careful reader would not only mark salient passages in the margin of his books, but also copy them into a “commonplace book:” – a collection of notes systematically gathered under headings called “loci communes” (commonplaces), which might list the virtues and vices, the parts of a discipline, or simply the things that interested him. Bernardo Bembo, Venetian ambassador, scholar, and patron of architecture, collected passages and described experiences dealing with Labor (work), Liber (book), Litterae (letters), and Leges (laws), as well as texts on Architectura and Aedificatio (building) in his Zibaldone or commonplace book, now in the British Library.11 Many of those who took notes in this fashion later extracted the passages they had filed in order to create new textual mosaics from them: the works that they published under their own names.12 Foxe provided printed loci communes, which gave order to pages that could otherwise become quite chaotic, and an index that made rapid consultation possible. At least one learned reader – the prominent English jurist Sir Julius Caesar – found the expedient helpful. Over sixty years he filled his copy of Foxe’s skeleton with some 1200 closely written pages of notes, rewriting the headings and index. When the British Library’s staff catalogued the whole book as a manuscript (MS Add 6038) they did justice to the intentions of author and publisher as well as Sir Julius Caesar.13 More novel was the format that Erhard Ratdolt devised for his 1482 edition of Euclid’s Elements. As he made clear in his preface, Ratdolt supplied this work with almost 500 diagrams of a clarity, precision and typographical elegance that no previous printer had come close to attaining. He used a “new invention” to produce them. Renzo Baldasso has argued that metal strips fixed to wooden blocks, rather than the woodcut technique used by most printers, enabled Ratdolt, as he put it, to print diagrams as easily as the text itself. Their presence transformed the text. Any
10 E.g. Princeton University Library MS Princeton 178, a German miscellany from ca 1436, which begins with Ovid’s Remedia amoris. This is one of fifteen similar manuscripts discussed by Niklaus Henkel, Deutsche Übersetzungen lateinischer Schultexte. Ihre Verbreitung und Funktion im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1988). 11 Bembo’s Zibaldone is British Library Add MS 41,068A. A good introduction appears in Nella Giannetto, Bernardo Bembo: umanista e politico veneziano (Florence: Olschki, 1985), 359–93. 12 Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); Helmut Zedelmaier, Werkstätten des Wissens zwischen Renaissance und Aufklärung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015); Martin Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen: Eine andere Ideengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012). 13 William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 127–48.
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reader who opened the book could see at once that reading Euclid meant not simply working through the text, but toggling back and forth between the prose descriptions of proofs and other procedures and the representations of their main stages in the margins.14 Annotated copies of the book reveal that systematic readers of Ratdolt’s edition worked actively with the spaces and diagrams he had provided. Readers used the white spaces between diagrams to redraw them, sometimes distinguishing between stages of a proof, for example, which a single diagram presented together. They also noted points that the text did not make explicit.15 Often, though not always, the points in question were elementary. Thus, when the reader of a copy now in Leeds University Library worked through Book 2, proposition 9, he found it necessary to remind himself that the angles on either side of a line drawn from the apex to the base of a triangle would both be right angles, “ut docet 11 primi” (as book 1, proposition 11 shows).16 If readers originally found this sort of reading difficult, they soon mastered it. As Renee Raphael has shown, Galileo’s early readers soon learned that they needed to use diagrams to master and present his work. Late in the seventeenth century, advanced mathematicians still worked their way through Galileo’s Two New Sciences pen in hand, redrawing and commenting on diagrams and technical arguments.17 Ratdolt’s innovation created a new form of technical reading as well as a new model for editions of technical works. Other forms of annotation, however, have yet to attract much interest even from historians of reading. In a wonderful article written and printed in the war year 1943, Fritz Saxl called attention to a phenomenon that had, until then, been little studied: “When the printed book became the successor of the manuscript it appeared natural to relieve the uniformity of the printed page with the free work of brush and pen.” As a case in point he offered the 1515 copy of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, printed at Basel, which Hans Holbein illuminated for the humanist Oswald Myconius. In the lovely drawings with which the artist perfectly caught the writer’s irony, Saxl saw a monument of a lost, irenic European civilization: an embodiment of that critical spirit that
14 Renza Baldasso, “Illustrating the Book of Nature in the Renaissance: Drawing, Painting and Printing Geometric Diagrams and Scientific Figures,” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2007, chaps. 6–7; “Printing for the Doge: on The First Quire of the First Edition of the liber Elementorum Euclidis,” La Bibliofilia 115 (2013), 525–52. 15 Baldasso describes an annotated copy in the Johns Hopkins University Library (“Illustrating the Book of Nature,” 232 n. 9); other examples include Folger Shakespeare Library INC E86 and Leeds University Library BC Safe/EUC. 16 Liber elementorum Euclidis (Venice; Ratdolt, 1482), Leeds University Library BC Safe/EUC, sig. b3r. 17 Renee Raphael, “Teaching Through Diagrams: Galileo’s ‘Dialogo’ and ‘Discorsi’ and his Pisan Readers,” Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013), 201–30; Reading Galileo: Scribal Technologies and the Two New Sciences (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017).
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Erasmus and Holbein had shared, and that led them to subject the Catholic church to unsparing criticism without abandoning it for the newer Protestant denominations.18 Saxl, an expert student of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, rightly pointed out that Holbein’s line drawings were less ambitious and less accomplished than the splendid miniatures that accompanied medieval narratives like the Roman de la Rose or the bright evocations of classical scenes that illuminated the first pages of so many Italian Renaissance manuscripts and printed books. Italian manuscript illumination reached a new level of splendor in the same years in which printing houses sprang up in Europe. When woodcuts and other forms of engraving were applied to printed texts, they were often colored by hand. Only gradually did admiration grow for the bare, black-and-white in which they emerged from the press.19 But the dull black and white pages that Saxl evoked attracted a second sort of illustration as well: illustrations that recorded the efforts of readers who were anything but professional wielders of the pen and brush to see – in a strikingly literal sense – the contents of the texts that they read. That was what Holbein provided. In cases like this one, illustration became a curious new form of hermeneutic: a tool for textual interpretation, whose very existence reveals something about both the enterprise of humanism and the limitations of its tools. Instead of claiming the reader’s attention for themselves, Saxl noted, Holbein’s images were “tucked away into a corner or drawn between some printed words.”20 He might also have pointed out that they extended a different tradition, one that went back to the very origins of humanism, more than a century before printing was invented. Petrarch famously had the renowned painter Simone Martini adorn his copy of Virgil with a lively, colorful image of the poet and the subjects of his poems. But he, Boccaccio, Landolfo Colonna, and others also adorned the margins of their books with line drawings of every kind, from manicules (pointing hands) that called attention to particular words, names, and phrases and vivid, energetic profile and full-face portraits to an more elaborate evocation of the “transalpine solitude” of Petrarch’s beloved Vaucluse, complete with a bird with a fish in its mouth, which Boccaccio sketched in the margin of Petrarch’s copy of the Natural History of Pliny.21 The empty printed spaces in many printed books invited sketches – from the drawings of devils, faces and men and women in conversation with which a bored sixteenthcentury student enlivened his copies of Cicero’s De officiis and Erasmus’s De copia
18 Fritz Saxl, “Holbein’s Illustrations to the ‘Praise of Folly’ by Erasmus,” Burlington Magazine 83, 488 (November 1943), 274–79 at 274. 19 See The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination, 1450–1550, ed. Jonathan Alexander (Munich and New York: Prestel, 1994). 20 Saxl, p. 274. 21 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 6802, fol. 143v. See Maurizio Fiorilla, Marginalia figurati nei codici di Petrarca (Florence: Olschki, 2005).
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to the drawings of faces that John Dee entered in a number of his books, sometimes bracketing several lines of text.22 Holbein, however, used the margins of the Praise of Folly to enter what amounted to a visual commentary – one that engaged not only with Erasmus’s own text but also with the printed commentary on it by Gerardus Listrius, and that in turn attracted written comments from Myconius. At times, Holbein literally and simply illustrated what his author wrote. (See Figure 6.1) At the beginning of the text, nestled into a niche formed by the column of text and a printed marginal gloss, Folly stands on a pulpit, wearing her cap and bells, and delivers her speech (a mock-encomium of herself). Ironically appropriate words appear above her in the margin: “Male audire” (to be ill spoken of). At the end of the book, she descends from her platform in the right margin, under the handwritten words “I hate a fellow drinker with a good memory; I hate a listener with a good memory.”23 Yet she still seems less foolish than her audience of fools and animal-like people, crammed into the lower margin of the text. More fools running after hounds, clutching boar spears, illustrate a printed note above them, “Taxat ineptissimum venandi studium” (he criticizes the foolish obsession with hunting) in an equally literal way.24 In cases like this – as in Holbein’s neat drawings of the proverbial ass and the lyre, and of Vulcan catching Venus and Mars in bed and chaining them up – the relation between text and illustration seems simple and direct. In fact, though, Holbein’s images reflected a profound understanding of Erasmus’s Latin book. He joined Erasmus in making fun of the astrologers and philosophers and their jargon (one of them appears, clutching a model of the planetary system and what looks like a crystal for communicating with supernatural beings, under the legend “portentosa vocabula recentiorum philosophorum” – the monstrous terms used by modern philosophers).25 He followed his author, too, when he gave a wealthy man distributing alms to the poor a particularly handsome, ascetic face. And he responded to the commentary by Listrius, rather than the text itself, when he illustrated Erasmus’s central concept of Christian folly with a handsome image of Saint Bernard, mistaking a jar of oil for one of wine and drinking from it in his concentration on holy things.26
22 See respectively New York, General Theological Seminary 910 M 48 and William Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 88. 23 Holbein’s illustrations are reproduced in Erasmi Rott. Encomium Moriae mit den Randzeichnungen von Hans Holbein d. J., ed. H.A. Schmidt (Basel: Oppermann, 1931). These drawings appear on sigs. Br and [X4r] respectively. The text of the note above his drawing at the end of the text reads: “Odi memorem compotorem, Odi memorem auditorem.” 24 Ibid., sig. I3v. 25 Ibid., sig. [N4v]. 26 Ibid., sig. X2v.
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Figure 6.1: Hans Holbein the Younger, Folly speaks, from Encomium Moriae.
The Praise of Folly directs sharp criticism at the materialist side of contemporary Christian life – the foolish tendency, as Erasmus saw it, to pray to the saints rather than to Jesus, and to make offerings of money and candles before their images and relics. In one of Holbein’s illustrations, a simple man prays, standing before a painting of Saint Roche, under a printed marginal note which served as the artist’s cue: “Superstitiosus imaginum cultus” (the superstitious worship of images).27 In another, a woman kneels, placing a lit candle before an image of the Virgil and Child, the whole drawing neatly wrapped around another occurrence of the same marginal note.28 In both cases, Holbein clearly condemns the practice he depicts. Still, he portrays the Christians whom he shows engaging in them as simple
27 Ibid., sig. Kr. 28 Ibid., sig. Mv.
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and devout. Like Erasmus, he rejects the deceptive and primitive practices that the church offered ordinary Christians – but not those deceived, whom he treats with clear sympathy. Most elegant – and ironic – of all is the margin where Erasmus himself appears, sitting before a window, robed and writing on a simple, slanted desk. Above him appears a note by Myconius, which offers a wry comments on the drawing: “Dum ad hunc locum perveniebat Erasmus, se pictum sic videns exclamavit, Si Erasmus adhuc talis esset, duceret profecto uxorem” (When Erasmus got to this point and saw himself depicted in this way, he exclaimed, “If Erasmus still looked like this, he would certainly take a wife”).29 Here and elsewhere, the nature of Holbein’s enterprise is clear. He is providing a pictorial commentary: one that explicates many points directly, but also teases out aspects of Erasmus’s style and tone that would have escaped less sympathetic and perspicacious readers. Consider, for example, a copy of the 1516 Froben edition of the works of Saint Jerome, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, which belonged to Ambrosius Blarer or Blaurer. A Benedictine who eventually became a Lutheran minister, the young man devoted his first note to thanking the aunt who had given him this expensive, perfect set of books.30 In a way now hard to appreciate, the nine volumes of this edition – and the Froben editions of Ambrose, Cyprian, Augustine and others that preceded and followed it – created a second, patristic Renaissance – a movement comparable in scale and import to the classical Renaissance, but far less well explored.31 Readers who had known only fragments of Jerome’s writing now confronted hundreds of letters and treatises. Readers who had known hagiographical biographies, which emphasized the miracles that Jerome had carried out after as well as before his death, now read the critical biography by Erasmus, which set Jerome’s life into what is still recognizable as a late antique context. And readers who had worked their way without help through Jerome’s difficult Latin and manifold allusions now had the guidance offered by Erasmus, who filled pages with
29 Ibid., sig. S3r. 30 Omnium operum Divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus prius [-nonus] (Folger Shakespeare Library 178–014f), I, paste-down: “P. Ambrosius Blarer monachus apud Alpersbacchum Hieronymianos hosce codices Agathae Barerin Amitae suae fert acceptos deum opt. max. cum primis obsecrans ut eam diutiss. velit esse incolumem. Empti vero sunt aureis nummis decem ita ut cernis omnibus angulis absolutissimi anno Christi MDXVII.” See Hans-Peter Hasse, “Ambrosius Blarer liest Hieronymus,” in Auctoritas patrum: zur Rezeption der Kirchenväter im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert = Contributions on the Reception of the Church Fathers in the 15th and 16th Century, ed. Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler and Markus Wriedt (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1993), 33–51. 31 Ibid.; Auctoritas patrum II: neue Beiträge zur Rezeption der Kirchenväter im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert = New Contributions on the Reception of the Church Fathers in the 15th and 16th Centuries, ed. Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler, Markus Wriedt (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1998); The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West; From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus, 2 vols. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1997); Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
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notes that sorted spurious works from genuine ones and glossed obscure references, but also used Jerome’s piety and learning as a stick with which to beat the ignorant theologians of his own time, who responded in the same style.32 New knowledge and new texts created new debates. As Blarer himself noted, quoting Erasmus’s life of Jerome, “Jerome did well by all, and all compete to claim him for themselves.”33 A calligrapher of considerable skill, Blarer adorned both Jerome’s texts and Erasmus’s paratexts and notes with content summaries and comments, written in elegant script and often laid out in ornamental patterns. Neatly drawn brackets emphasized the importance of certain passages – especially those in which Erasmus unleashed his bent nib on the sins and ignorance of the theologians of his day. Blarer’s enthusiasm for Erasmus’s editorial comments of all kinds was unbounded. When Erasmus mentioned, for example, that he – really his assistants – had supplied a list of Jerome’s works organized alphabetically by their incipits (first words), Blarer wrote appreciatively, “An excellent method of citation.”34 And when Erasmus expressed his hope – this time genuinely his own – that one day in the future, scholars would be able to spend their time only on good authors like Jerome, Blarer recorded his agreement: “Fiat, fiat” (May it be so, may it be so).35 True, Blarer’s notes petered out after the first two volumes. But he made up for this lack of thoroughness by the quality and engagement of many of his responses, which took the form of pictures as well as words. Sometimes these vividly reflected the character of what Blarer was reading. Erasmus took a deep interest in the details of Jerome’s life. He described his hero’s decision to become a monk, for example, in some detail, adding details about the nature of monasticism in Jerome’s time.
32 Eugene F. Rice, jr., Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 129–32; Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993; updated ed. 2014), 55–82; Mark Vessey, “Erasmus’s Jerome: The Publishing of a Christian Author,” Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 14 (1994), 62–99; Ulle Dill, “Prolegomena zu einer Edition von Erasmus von Rotterdam, Scholia in epistolas Hieronymi,” 2 vols., PhD thesis, University of Basel, 1997, published online 2004; Alexandre Vanautgarden, “Croire à tout, croire à rien: La question du style dans les lettres-préfaces d’Érasme à son édition de Saint Jérôme (Bâle, Jean Froben, 1516),” in Philologie et subjectivité. Actes de la journée d’étude organisée par l’École nationale des chartes (Paris, 5 avril 2001), éd. Dominique de Courcelles (Paris: École des chartes; Geneva: Droz, 2002), 53–77; Hilmar Pabel, “Credit, Paratexts and Editorial Stategies in Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Editions of Jerome,” in Cognition and the Book: Typologies of Formal Organisation of Knowledge in the Printed Book of the Early Modern Period, ed. Karl Enenkel and Wolfgang Neuber (Leiden and Boston, 2005), 217–56; Pabel, Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Editing of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance (Leiden and Boston, 2008); Nicholas Naquin, “‘On the Shoulders of Hercules’: Erasmus, The Froben Press and the 1516 Jerome Edition in Context,” PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2013. 33 Jerome, Opera (Folger) I, Sig. [β8v]: “Hieronymum de omnibus benemeritum omnes sibi certatim vindicent.” 34 Ibid., sig. δ4v: “Optima citandi ratio.” 35 Ibid., sig. [γ5r].
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Blarer not only imagined the Father as a monk, but actually drew him, with a tonsure and a habit: a powerful way to envision what he described as Jerome’s “embrace of the institution of monasticism.”36 A drawing of a nun, similarly, recorded the decision of Jerome’s sister to enter the religious life.37 Twice, Erasmus mentioned Jerome’s dream of being hauled before the judgement seat and flogged for being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. Blarer adorned each passage with a neatly drawn and rather frightening whip.38 Holbein, as we saw, paid attention to the commentaries on Erasmus’s text as well as the text itself. For Blarer, Erasmus’s paratexts and commentaries seem to have mattered immensely: he often read them more closely than the original texts. Even details that Erasmus mentioned in passing might provoke him to try an illustration. A hopeful reference to Pope Leo X and his desire to reform the Church received a neat marginal drawing of the papal tiara.39 In Jerome’s life of Hilarion, he described how his hero had expelled a demon from a young woman whom it had possessed (21). In his Scholia on this text, Erasmus described a modern case of demonic possession that had some features in common with the ancient one. From 1491 on, the nuns of Quesnoy le Conte at Cambrai had run like dogs, flown like birds, and screeched like cats. Nothing seemed to ease their suffering. In the margin, Blarer drew an elaborate picture of a swaggering, triumphant devil – an image far more relevant to the commentary than to the original text.40 One aspect of Erasmus’s commentaries particularly interested Blarer. Erasmus turned his edition of Jerome into a seminar on forgery and authenticity. The works of the Latin Fathers, he told his readers, swarmed with fakes. He was not wrong. Augustine’s immense corpus includes 120 or so formal works, 250 letters, almost 400 sermons, some 5 million words in total. Between the introduction of print and 1500, 187 editions of works ascribed to Augustine appeared – but 116 of these texts were spurious.41 As Erasmus’s agents scoured monastic libraries, they turned up many false texts ascribed to Jerome. Most of these were nothing more than an interruption to the reader’s studies, foisted on the market by greedy bookdealers, and Erasmus refused to include them in his edition. But many fakes were already in print. Unwilling to leave these out, Erasmus filled a whole volume with them, a textual
36 Ibid., sig. βr. 37 Ibid., sig. βv. 38 Ibid., sig. [β 6r], 66v. 39 Ibid., I, 6v. 40 Ibid., I, 110v; see Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 238. 41 Arnoud Visser, Reading Augustine in the Renaissance: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
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Salon des Refusés.42 In his comments, Erasmus taught the reader how to see these forgeries for what they were. No one, he insisted, hurling all his metaphors into one basket, would take medicine without verifying that it wasn’t poison, accept a coin without testing it, or assume that an expensive gem was emerald rather than amber. In the same way, he argued, reading must become critical. And critical reading yielded stunning results. Erasmus spread the blame for the poor condition of Jerome’s texts widely. Ignorant scribes, female as well as male, had done their worst to ruin the genuine texts. But as he worked his way through the fakes, he came to a more specific – and more radical – conclusion. A single forger was responsible for them – and for many others as well. His poor style and inability to imitate the authors whose works he forged revealed that he had been a mendicant of the fourteenth century – probably an Augustinian hermit.43 Blarer responded to Erasmus’s theory with great enthusiasm. He noted what he called “Insignis quaedam impostoris cuiusdam conspurcandi libido” – the remarkable passion of a certain impostor for polluting Jerome’s works. He connected the separate passages in which Erasmus had developed his thesis. And he showed special interest in Erasmus’s success at providing a vivid, lifelike portrait of the forger, “hominem suis coloribus pingens” – depicting the man in his true colors (Figure 6.2).44 In fact, he went even farther. In the margin of another passage in Erasmus’s commentaries, Blarer sketched a portrait of the forger, tonsured and dressed in an Augustinian habit (Figure 6.3).45 This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first portrait ever attempted of a philological hypothesis. Reading Erasmus, Blarer wanted not just to read about, but to see, as many characters mentioned in the text as he could – even those whose existence was hypothetical and whose role had been harmful. Thomas Smith also liked to see the past. He did his best – which was not all that good – to uphold the Tudor tradition of civic humanism, which obliged scholars to apply their learning in the real world of politics. Like Casaubon, he was a great Hellenist: unlike the Huguenot scholar, he learned his craft and practiced it, in the first instance, inside the university. His pupils included William Cecil and John Ponet, and he fought for the Erasmian pronunciation of Greek until Stephen Gardiner
42 Jerome, Opera, I, [γ5r]: “Repperimus & alia quaedam inscripta Hieronymo, prorsus indigna quovis Hieronymi discipulo. Quandoquidem apparet hoc solenne fuisse librarijs, ut huius unius titulo quemlibet librum emptori commendarent: verum ea quoniam antehac nunquam fuerant excusa formulis, addenda non putavimus. Nihil a nobis praetermissum est eorum quae priores habebant aeditiones. Nimis multa sunt addita huius sane generis. Inviti dedimus hoc illorum iudicio, qui nullo sunt iudicio. Sed quorsum attinet adversus torrentem niti? Spero fore ut aliquando saeculum expergiscatur, id si fiat, bona pars laborum studiosis adimetur, non nisi in optimis authoribus bonas horas bene posituris.” 43 Ibid., II, 189v. 44 Ibid., II, 3. 45 Ibid., II, 189v.
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Figure 6.2: Ambrosius Blarer, Description of Erasmus’s hypothetical forger.
forbade it. He became rich, survived Mary, and under Elizabeth served as ambassador to France, royal secretary and keeper of the privy seal. A last effort to apply scholarship to contemporary life, by using Roman models to colonize Ireland, foundered when his son, who led the expedition, was murdered by one of his servants. Smith retired to catalogue his books (many of which were bequeathed to Queen’s College Cambridge) and die in peace.46 Smith too used images to call attention to striking passages in his books. As he worked his way through the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, for example, he began, in the normal way, by jotting catch words in the margins: one- or two-word summaries of a given passage, designed to call it back to memory when the owner riffled through his book.47 But before long, images replaced words: every few pages, he
46 M. Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith: A Tudor Intellectual in Office (London: Athlone Press, 1964); Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.n. Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577), by I. Archer. 47 Smith read the Jewish Antiquities in the Basel 1544 editio princeps of the works of Josephus in Greek, now Cambridge University Library Adv.a.44.9. For a fuller study, parts of which are drawn on here, see Anthony Grafton and William Sherman, “In the Margins of Josephus: Two Ways of Reading,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 23,3 (2016), 213–238.
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Figure 6.3: Ambrosius Blarer, Image of Erasmus’s hypothetical forger.
inscribed in the wide margins of his copy a neat little drawing, that pointed out one or another feature of his text in a way that could be more easily recalled and grasped by both eye and hand. As he read the Antiquities, he sketched, among other things and people, Noah’s Ark (1.75–76), The Tower of Babel (1.117–118), Lot’s Wife (1.203), Jacob’s Ladder (1.279), The Tables of the Law (3.89–90), Delilah (5.306–307), The Witch of Endor (6.331–333), Saul falling on his sword (6.370–371), Jonah in the mouth of the whale (9.205–206) and much more. In Antiquities 8, Josephus stated explicitly that the statues of cherubim wrought for Solomon’s Temple were too splendid to be described or represented (8.73). Yet Smith, undaunted, sketched the angels, emerging from the text block. Specially important passages received particularly vivid forms of attention. No passage in the Jewish Antiquities mattered more to sixteenth-century readers than
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18.63–64, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum, which described and evaluated the career of Jesus: Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
Christians had debated this passage since Eusebius – who may have interpolated it into the work of Josephus – quoted and called attention to it.48 Humanists were quick to question its historicity. Isaac Casaubon thought of Josephus as a Jew, not a Christian – and not just an obstinate Jew, but one steeped in the teachings he had mastered as a boy and young man, searching the varieties of his faith for the one that he most approved. Casaubon read his works – as he read everything – with a sharp eye out for the sorts of inconsistencies that revealed interpolators at work. When he reached this passage, he wrote, in capitals, “JESUS CHRISTUS.” But alarms immediately went off: “But is this,” he asked, “by Josephus?” – “Sed an sunt ista Josephi?”49 The question was almost certainly rhetorical. Casaubon agreed with Scaliger that the early Christians had done a terrible wrong when they tried to promote their religion with forgeries and lies. By contrast, Smith evidently found the passage both genuine and inspiring – indeed, even iconic – as he indicated by drawing the face of Jesus, rendered in a traditional form, by the passage in question. Casaubon read historical authors in order to establish (or to gauge) his distance from them. In cases like this, it seems as if Smith read to erase the distance – historical, religious, ideological – between himself and an ancient whose works had been popular through the Middle Ages in translation, and who had often been treated as if he were almost a Christian. Smith, in fact, devoted great efforts to picturing the past, in a variety of ways. He owned no fewer than five different editions of the ancient Roman architectural manual by Vitruvius, and he built his country house, Hill Hall at Theydon Mount in Essex, in what he and others took to be an authentically classical style, as seen through the lens of the French courtly buildings he saw on his diplomatic travels.
48 Eusebius DE 3.5.106; HE 1.11.7–9; Theophany 5.44. See D.M. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Eusebius of Caesarea and the Testimonium Flavianum (Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII.63f.),’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 25, 4 (1974), 353–362; A. Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testamonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times (New York: Peter Lang, 2003); H. Schreckenberg and K. Schubert, Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity, tr. P. Cathey (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1991). 49 Casaubon’s copy of the Basel 1544 edition of Josephus is British Library C.76.g.7, finely bound by Samuel Mearne.
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As Paul Drury and Richard Simpson have shown, Smith had the walls of several rooms decorated with murals that combined the Classical, non-Christian story of Cupid and Psyche with the Biblical, pre-Christian story of the life of Hezekiah, King of Judah.50 Smith evidently believed that images had a distinctive power to call up the past. Smith did not restrict his drawing of marginal picures to Josephus – or to texts that retold tales from the Bible. The margins of his copy of Albert Krantz’s history of Scandinavia swarm with vivid images of giants.51 His copy of Justinian displays a complementary set of visual tags used for learning the lessons of the law. And his copy of Plato, now in Lambeth Palace Library, illustrates Socrates’s exclusion of poets from his ideal republic with a memorable picture of a young man, crowned with laurel but looking melancholy, leaving a city.52 What work were Smith’s images doing, and how unusual were they? What did they have in common with Holbein’s and Blarer’s images? Many scholars, and some artists, embellished texts with everything from woodcuts designed to explicate the Greek and Roman arts of war to illustrations of ancient leaders and warriors. At their most systematic, these drew for visual information on many sources, including antiquarian compendia, and were designed to solve puzzles in the texts they adorned. On his deathbed, Joseph Scaliger made a new drawing of the Roman pilum, or throwing spear. He did so while reading parts of book 6 of Polybius, as accompanied by the version and commentary of his supposed friend Justus Lipsius – the book which had served as a model for Maurice of Nassau when he built the new armies of the Dutch republic.53 Scaliger was using his skill as a draughtsman to set a text into context. When Blarer and Smith wanted to, they too could produce images that were historically appropriate to the past scenes and people they represented. Blarer portrayed Erasmus’s forger, as we have seen, in what Erasmus had shown to be the appropriate costume. When Smith portrayed the Jewish high priests mentioned by Josephus, he made a real effort to represent them as ancient, Oriental priests, in appropriate headdresses. Smith, who had the walls of his study decorated with images of Josiah and Hezekiah, may have cherished a special interest in the Jerusalem Temple, as a model for a pure Protestant church. The characters who populated
50 Paul Drury and Richard Simpson, Hill Hall: A Singular House Devised by a Tudor Intellectual (London: Society of Antiquaries, 2009). 51 A. Krantz, Chronica regnorum Aquilonarium Daniae, Suetiae, Norvegiae (Hamburg: n.p., 1561), Queen’s College Cambridge Library D.10.22; Justinian, Codex (Louvain, 1540), Queen’s College Cambridge Library M.2.11–13. 52 Plato, Opera, ed. Simon Grynaeus and Johannes Oporinus (Basel: Froben and Episcopius, 1534), Lambeth Palace Library Arc CII P69 GRY, fol. 253v. 53 Joseph Scaliger, Autobiography, tr. G. W. Robinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927), 112 n. 1.
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Holbein’s images were mostly contemporary – as befitted illustrations of Erasmus’s satire on contemporary society. But when he depicted figures from antiquity, he made no effort to distinguish them from moderns. Vulcan, Mars and Venus appear as modern figures in a modern bedroom. Apelles appears as a modern painter, using palette, maul stick and brush to paint a nude on a large panel.54 The force that drove these readers to draw did not derive from an antiquarian effort to use visual evidence in order to think themselves into a past that had become foreign. Sometimes a text obviously called for visual commentary. When the Italian antiquary Fra Giocondo read Vitruvius’s treatise on architecture with Guillaume Budé, it was only natural that he made sketches of objects and structures, and that some of them wound up in the margins of Budé’s copy of the text.55 Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, the modern treatise that set out to replace Vitruvius, described bridges and buildings, ruins and cities, works of art and machines for construction in precise detail. He emphasized that his book rested not only on inspection of hundreds of sites, but also on the plans and sketches that he had made – a visual counterpart to the humanist commonplace book. Yet Alberti, as is well known, did not believe that illustrations could be reproduced precisely enough to be useful. His book, which appeared in print in 1485, was a straight text. No wonder, then, that owners soon began to adorn it with images of everything from machines to churches – or that sixteenthcentury editions appeared with increasingly elaborate printed visual commentaries.56 In other cases, an image drawn with particular care could be the most effective way to call attention to particular features of a text. In book two of De natura deorum, Cicero quotes a vivid passage from a lost tragedy by the Roman poet Accius. Here a shepherd describes what it was like to see a ship, the Argo, for the first time. At first he thought the ship must be a natural phenomenon. This “moles” (mass), he explains, moved with great force, making loud noises and pushing great waves ahead of it. It called thunderstorms to mind, and looked like a great rock set into motion by the winds, or seas, or the God Triton. Only gradually, when the shepherd saw the ship’s crewmen and realized that it was moving regularly, did he grasp that it was a human creation.57 Latin poets admired Accius’s vision of the ship in motion.
54 Erasmi Rott. Encomium Moriae mit den Randzeichnungen von Hans Holbein d. J., ed. Schmidt, sigs. Ov, L3v. 55 V. Juren, ‘Fra Giovanni Giocondo et le début des études vitruviennes en France’, Rinascimento, 2nd ser., 14 (1974), 102–16. The most spectacular of all illustrated copies of Vitruvius, which bears the spectacular visual commentary of Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, has been reproduced as Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture: The Corsini Incunabulum, with the Annotations and Autograph Drawings of Giovanna Battista da Sangallo, ed. Ingrid Rowland (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 2003). 56 E.g. Pierpont Morgan Library 44056 ChL 1108b; a similarly illustrated copy is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. These illustrations also seem to be the work of the Sangallo circle. 57 Cicero De natura deorum 2.89–90.
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Ovid and Seneca, among others, adapted it.58 John Dee illustrated the passage in his copy of Cicero’s works with a splendid drawing of a ship driven by a powerful wind and pushing a massive wave with its prow. Only a second look reveals the tiny crewmen on deck, whose presence makes clear that the ship is the work of men (an image of Dee’s ship is available on the webpage for a past exhibit of the Royal College of Physicians of London).59 In this case, Dee’s skillful draughtsmanship made clear the equal skill with which he savored Accius’s imaginative artistry. At times, Smith, made similarly artful use of drawing as a tool of interpretation. Some of his drawings were not tiny, primitive representations of their subjects, but coded icons that called the reader’s attention to things that Josephus mentioned repeatedly. Whenever Josephus mentioned circumcision, for example, Smith’s margin exhibited a neat little penis. More important, whenever Josephus quoted a letter – and he quoted a great many of them – Smith called attention to that fact with a neat schematic drawing of a sixteenth-century letter, folded and sealed. Simply to riffle through the pages of Smith’s copy of Josephus was to realize that its text did not resemble those of other Greek historians in every respect. It was a mosaic, pocked and fissured, stuffed with quoted documents and literary texts, and not a smooth, coherent narrative. To that extent at least, Smith brought a critical perspective not wholly unlike Casaubon’s to bear on his text – and found a way to record his impressions visually. For the most part, though, Holbein, Blarer and Smith seem to have had other, simpler aims in view. And these aims too, as William Sherman and I have argued elsewhere, had humanist credentials.60 Their images had their roots in the ancient Greek idea of enargeia, usually translated into Latin as evidentia and English as “vividness.”61 Erasmus defined this term in one of the most famous passages in his best-selling rhetorical handbook, De copia: We employ [enargeia] whenever, for the sake of amplifying or decorating our passage, or giving pleasure to our readers, instead of setting out the subject in bare simplicity, we fill in the colours and set it up like a picture to look at, so that we seem to have painted the scene rather than described it, and the reader seems to have seen rather than read . . . We can take an action which is either in process or completed, and instead of presenting it in bare and insubstantial
58 Mario Erasmo, “The Argo Killed Hippolytus: Roman Tragedy in the (Meta-) Theatre,” in Brill’s Companion to Roman Tragedy, ed. George Harrison (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 24–44. 59 John Dee, note ad loc. (Cicero, Opera [Paris: Estienne, 1539], Royal College of Physicians D 121/17, 16b) II, 213. See the image of Dee’s illustration in the middle of the exhibit page here: https://www. rcplondon.ac.uk/events/scholar-courtier-magician-lost-library-john-dee. 60 See Grafton and Sherman for a fuller account. 61 M. Wintroub, “The Looking Glass of Facts: Collecting, Rhetoric and Citing the Self in the Experimental Natural Philosophy of Robert Boyle,” History of Science 35 (1997), 189–217; C. Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True, False, Fictive, tr. A. Tedeschi and J. Tedeschi (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2012), pp. 9–10.
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outline, bring it before the eyes with all the colours filled in, so that our hearer or reader is carried away and seems to be in the audience at a theatre.62
This method of writing, which Erasmus described here in a cerebral key, had a counterpart in reading, as Sir Thomas Elyot’s Book Named the Governor of 1531, a widely read textbook on the education of young noblemen, shows. Elyot devised a detailed program for training the reader’s eye, one in which drawing or painting became an integral part of reading. In his chapter on portraiture (by which he mean visual representation in general), Elyot begins with the commonplace that pictures made texts vivid and memorable: “whan he happeneth to rede or here any fable or historie, forthwith he apprehendeth it more desirously, and retaineth it better than any other, that lacketh the sayd seate: by reason that he hath found mater apte to his fantasie.”63 Like other humanists, he recommended that lessons in drawing should accompany lessons in reading – in this case so that the boy could enhance his own texts as he worked through them: And he that is perfectly instructed in portrayture, and hapneth to rede any noble and excellent historie, whereby his courage is inflamed to the imitation of vertue, he forth with taketh his penne or pensill, and with a graue and substantiall studie, gatherynge to him all the partes of imagination, endeuoreth him selfe to expresse liuely, and (as I mought say) actually in portrayture, nat only the faict or affaire, but also the sondry affections of euery personage in the historie recited.64
Holbein and Blarer certainly never read Elyot’s book. Smith may have. But all of them practiced the particular form of reading that he described. The fact that Smith needed to fabricate these images – and that in doing so he followed an accepted practice, one recommended by Erasmus and Elyot – suggests that rhetorical enargeia was less effective in practice than the humanists professed. After all, if the prose of Josephus – or any of the other writers illustrated by Smith, Udall and others – had actually been vivid enough to bring the scenes he described directly before the mind’s eye, Smith and his colleagues would have felt no need to transcribe them in visual form on the page. Sketching – like underlining, adding maniculae in the margins, and jotting notes – was not only an art of memory, a way of marking the text for rapid later use, but an art of interpretation. The rules of this period form of visual commentary have not yet been reconstructed in full. But the practices of printers and authors, as well as teachers and readers, reveal them.
62 Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, tr. B. Knott, in Collected Works of Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, ed. C. Thompson, II: De copia. De ratione studii (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 577; for the original see Erasmus, De copia, II, ed. B. Knott, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, Ordo I, VI (Amsterdam: North-Holland,1988), 202. 63 T. Elyot, The Boke Named the Governour (London, 1531), I.8, fol. 24v. 64 Ibid., fol. 25r. On training in drawing as part of the humanist curriculum see Allan Ellenius, De arte pingendi: Latin Art Literature in Seventeenth-Century Sweden and its International Background (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1960).
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Libri annotati Alberti, Leon Battista. De re aedificatoria. Florence: Nicolaus Laurentii, Alamannus, 1485. Anonymous annotations. Pierpont Morgan Library 44056 ChL 1108b. Cicero. Opera. Paris: Estienne, 1539. Annotated by John Dee. Royal College of Physicians Library 10549–50 D1/16-b-5 and 06. Euclid. Liber elementorum Euclidis. Venice: Ratdolt, 1482. Anonymous annotations. Folger Shakespeare Library INC E86. Euclid. Liber elementorum Euclidis. Venice: Ratdolt, 1482. Anonymous annotations. Leeds University Library BC Safe/EUC. Jerome. Omnium operum Divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis tomus prius [-nonus]. Basel: Froben, 1516. Folger Shakespeare Library 178–014f. Josephus, Flavius. Opera, ed. A. Arlenius. Basel: Froben, 1544. Annotated by Isaac Casaubon. British Library C.76.g.7. Josephus, Flavius. Opera, ed. A. Arlenius. Basel: Froben, 1544. Annotated by Sir Thomas Smith. Cambridge University Library Adv.a.44.9. Justinian. Codex. Lyon: Hugues de la Porte, 1540. Annotated by Sir Thomas Smith. Queen’s College Cambridge Library M.2.14. Krantz, A. Chronica regnorum Aquilonarium Daniae, Suetiae, Norvegiae. Hamburg: n.p., 1561. Annotated by Sir Thomas Smith. Queen’s College Cambridge Library D.10.22. Plato, Opera, ed. Simon Grynaeus and Johannes Oporinus. Basel: Froben and Episcopius, 1534. Annotated by Sir Thomas Smith. Lambeth Palace Library Arc CII P69 GRY. Tacitus. Opera quae exstant, ed. Justus Lipsius. Antwerp: Plantin, 1585. Annotated by Robert Sidney. British Library C.142.e.13.
Manuscripts Eton, Eton College Library, MS 128. London, British Library, Add MS 41,068A. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 6802. Princeton, Princeton University Library, MS Princeton 178.
Bibliography Alexander, Jonathan, ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination, 1450–1550. Munich and New York: Prestel, 1994.
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Keysook Choe
Chapter 7 Page Layout and the Complex Semiotic System of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Chosŏn’s Samganghaengsildo Abstract: This chapter analyzes the Samganghaengsildo (삼강행실도三綱行實圖, picture book on the execution of the three fundamental principles of human relations) as a complex semiotic system composed of scripts (hanmun [Chinese script] and Hangeul [Korean script]), narratives, and illustrations, and analyzes their mutual interaction on the printed page. It demonstrates how the editors of Samganghaengsildo tried to close the cultural gaps between male elites, female elites, and commoners with lettered and pictorial presentations on the page. This chapter argues that the Samganghaengsildo served a cultural politics that implemented Confucian ideas in Joseon life by connecting historical knowledge, emotion, and ethics with three narratives – two textual (and of two languages) and one pictorial. Keywords: Samganghaengsildo, hanmun [Chinese script], Hangeul [Korean script], illustrations, emotion, ethics
Motivated by a contemporary patricide case, King Sejong of Korea (1397–1450; r. 1418–1450) commanded Sŏl Sun and other scholars at Chiphyŏnjŏn (Hall of Worthies, a central academic institute of Chosŏn Korea) to compose a book that would provide a moral compass for the people. Published in 1434, Samganghaengsildo (三綱行實圖 삼 강행실도), a picture book on three fundamental moral principles, presents a complex semiotic system composed of diglossic narratives (using hanmun 漢文, Chinese script, and hangŭl 한글, native Korean script) and illustrations. This book, relying heavily on the Confucian text The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (二十四孝), edited by Kwak Kŏgyŏng (C: GUO Jujing 郭居敬) of the Yuan dynasty in China (1260–1368), compiled stories of filial sons, loyal subjects, and chaste women from Chinese and Korean history (which included the periods of the Three Kingdoms, Koryŏ, and Chosŏn). Each episode of the Samganghaengsildo consists of an illustration on the front of each page and hanmun text on the verso. The book contains three sections: “Filial duty,” “Loyal subjects,” and “Virtuous women,” each of which includes 110 episodes. Its publication preceded the creation of hangŭl (1446). The second edition of Samganghaengsildo was published during the reign of King Sŏngjong (r. 1469–1494)
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with the addition of hangŭl text. The number of anecdotes in each section decreased to 35, for a total of 105 episodes. The original version of Samganghaengsildo created during King Sŏngjong’s reign has been lost. However, the same text was republished in 1505, during the reign of King Chungjong (r. 1506–1544), and this is the version that I will analyze here.1 This paper examines how the shared culture, history, ethics, and affect of readers from both the literati and commoner classes are conveyed through three semiotic devices that were presented on the pages of Samganghaengsildo: the hanmun script, the hangŭl script, and illustrations. Previous research has focused on individual narratives rather than on the interrelationship of the three semiotic devices found in each episode. Some studies (Kim Chinyŏng, 1998, 243; Kim Yubŏm, 2011, 28) present this use of a dual script system with illustrations as a purposeful attempt to target not only elite male literati who understood hanmun, but also women and commoners, who could only read hangŭl.2 They suggest that the illustrations were meant for the illiterate, thus concluding that this work was produced to educate all the people of Chosŏn. Building upon previous studies, this chapter provides several new perspectives on the cultural historical meaning of the publication of Samganghaengsildo. First, I interpret the triad of hanmun, hangŭl, and illustration (images) as an integrated project of impagination, not merely as three dissociated elements. I conceptualize this text as a semiotic system of symbol usage, text composition, and page arrangement, and I focus on the editorial construction that informs each page for the edification of various classes of readers. Second, on the narrative level I analyze the organization of the content and the form of the printed page to show how the method of impagination connects Chinese stories to Chosŏn culture, text to daily life, and empathy to ethics. Third, I demonstrate how the editors of Samganghaengsildo constructed the page to help its readers cross the educational borders that separated male elites,
1 The text analyzed in this chapter is a photoprint version of Samganghaengsildo (1481?) kept in the British Library (call number 15113.e.2). Professor Kim Chŏngsu (Samganghaengsildo, 2010) translated the hangŭl text from Old Korean into modern Korean and published the hanmun text in printing type. There is no translation of the hanmun text into Korean. The illustrations in this article are reproduced from this edition. For more on the compilation and transmission of Samganghaengsildo, see Miok Yun, “Tanchi: mobanggwa konggam e kwanhan hamŭi.” [Finger-cutting: exploring the implications of imitation and sympathy]. Ch’ŏlhaksasang 59 (2016): 12–30, and Miok Yun, “Samganghaengsildo ŭi yugyojŏk kach’i yŏngu.” [A study on the Confucian values of Samganghaengsildo]. PhD diss., (Sŏnggyungwan University, 2016): 69–82. 2 Yŏnghŭi Yi categorizes the readers as a group of hanmun-users and a group of commoners; “Haengsildoryu ŏnhae ŭi pigyo yŏngu: munpŏp yosorŭl chungsimŭro.” [A comparative study on books on fundamental principles of human relations between Chinese text and Korean translation]. Hangugmal Kŭlhak 30 (2013): 144.
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women, and commoners. This chapter shows that Samganghaengsildo did not aim to preserve the hierarchy of the “Chinese-reading elite” through an emphasis on difference, but attempted to promote communication between the classes and to empower the non-elite through textual clues. Fourth, I argue that the illustrations of Samganghaengsildo were produced not only in consideration of the illiterate, but were also meant for commoners, women (using hangŭl), and elite literati (using hanmun). The pictures served to strengthen the memory, foster imagination and cultural association, and promote affective edification for all readers. Finally, through this analysis I show that the editors and publishers of Samganghaengsildo assumed a certain level of cognitive ability (intelligence), sympathetic ability (sensibility), and imagination on the part of their readers. Based on my analysis, it appears that they hoped to develop their readers’ potentialities as well as enhance their morality. By examining the interactive relationships among knowledge, history, morality, sensibility, and practice in the structure of the text, I reveal that the design of Samganghaengsildo was an achievement in the history of Korean culture.3 This is shown in the editors’ grasp of the public in the Sejong era, including their literacy and their intellectual, cultural, cognitive, and ethical potential. Unlike previous research, which investigates partial pages or sections, this research considers the entirety of the text, analyzing the storytelling of the narrative, the structure of each lettered text (including the story, annotations, eulogies, and poems), and the interrelationship between illustration and narrative. For this analysis, I employ methods in multiple disciplines, such as history, bibliography, cultural studies, art history, gender studies, statistics, and literary studies.
Narrative and Storytelling: Building a Universal Humanity Each page of Samganghaegnsildo expresses a story through a combination of three semiotic devices: hanmun texts for literati; hangŭl texts for ordinary people, women,
3 Pyŏngsŏng No’s view is consistent with the argument in this chapter, that the compilers of Samganghaengsildo aimed to inspire the people morally (a cognitive process), impress them (an emotional process), and induce action; “Samganghaengsildo e kwanhan k’ŏmyunik’eishyŏnhakchŏk chŏpkŭn” [A study on Samganghaengsildo from the perspective of communication science]. Hangukch’ulp’anhak yŏngu 66 (2014): 81. This chapter further suggests that the readers’ imaginations provided a creative basis for these effects, thus proposing that Samganghaengsildo was created on the assumption of the imaginative and creative capacity of its readers, and that, in turn, the imagination of the readers was inspired and expanded during the reading process.
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and children; and illustrations. These three semiotic devices together present a joint narrative, or unit of narrative, in each episode. In other words, despite the differing expressions of each part – hanmun, hangŭl, and picture – the combination of the three results in a unified semiotic system. This is a consistent rule throughout Samganghaegnsildo, which is organized into three parts that reflect the three fundamental principles in human relations: filial piety (section 1), loyalty (section 2), and chastity (section 3). Each episode of Samganghaegnsildo has the same layout, as in Figure 7.1. The illustration takes up about three quarters of the area on the page. The title of the anecdote is written in four-character Chinese along with the origin country (China or Korea) of the story in one character on the upper right side of the frame. Hangŭl text takes up a quarter of the area at the top on the recto and verso of the folded sheet. Some
Figure 7.1: Example of a single text composition: “Chŏngnan carves parents’ figures in wood” (丁蘭 刻木, Section 1, No. 10). These two pages are the two halves of a printed sheet, folded in the middle and bound at the loose ends. One would have to “turn the page” to see the other printed half. From Samganghaengsildo (1481).
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Chinese characters are annotated in hangŭl. The script of the notes is smaller than that of body. Hanmun (Chinese) takes up the bottom 75% of the page on the verso. Following the hanmun description of the story is a poem or eulogy, also in hanmun. On the page, the proportion of hanmun text, illustration and hangŭl text is 3: 3: 2.4 This chapter investigates the strategies with which the editors used page layout and editing principles to produce an educational effect through storytelling. My analysis of the layout and editing strategies will demonstrate how readers can understand both the universality and the locality of “history-knowledge-ethics” in the process of reading the stories, whether Chinese or Korean.
The Educational Design of Storytelling and Narrative Patterns On every page of Samganghaengsildo, a hero or heroine represents the outstanding practice of one of the three fundamental Confucian moral principles: filial piety, loyalty, or chastity. Each story conveys these moral teachings by employing the same narrative structure: a [situation or condition] that demands a moral choice, the action of a moral subject, and the [result or compensation] of his/her action.5 The first two parts are included in every story, while the last part may or may not be present.6 The process by which the reader understands each episode corresponds to the process of shaping an ethical subject and strengthening moral ideology from a Confucian perspective. The characters in Samganghaengsildo convey their ethical orientation through their utterances, attitudes, and actions, rather than through revelation of their internal thoughts, as they navigate conflictual situations that demand an ethical response. The reader of these texts is reminded of the importance of the ethics linked to each story through his/her real-life associations and integrated thinking that furnishes a correspondence between reality and knowledge.
4 At present, it is difficult to judge whether the ratio of the allocation of hanmun text, illustration and hangŭl text exactly matches the cultural status of each symbol. Such an evaluation requires research on the historicization of scripts and symbols in Chosŏn Korea. Chapter 3 in the volume, which explores the changing historical trends of the Chinese book layout, can serve as a useful reference here. One thing to point out, however, is that hangŭl text was arranged on the page in a way that engaged both hanmun text and illustration. This suggests the need to pay attention to qualitative meaning, which is arguably more important than the quantitative proportion of each symbol. 5 This view corresponds to Chŏngnan O’s view; “Samganghaengsildo ŭi manwhagihohakjŏk punsŏk.” [An analysis of cartoon semiology in Samganghaengsildo]. Inmun’ŏnŏ 10 (2008): 89. She shows that each episode consists of three parts: narrative space (when, where, who), description of behavior (why, what, how), and reward (result). 6 The proportion of result-compensation appearing in each section is 60% in “Filial Children,” 29% in “Loyal Subjects,” and 34% in “Virtuous Women.” Detailed analysis will follow below. The sign of “compensation” is represented by the scripted text and/or visual text (illustration). For more about the illustrations, see below in this chapter and section 4.1 of this article.
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Dutiful Children Except for one episode, “Wongak (C: Yuanjue) looks after his father” (episode 13), which describes the realization of filial piety paradoxically by means of “undutifulness,” all the other episodes are restricted to situations involving the parents’ daily lives, illness, crisis, or death: situations in which the parents may need care from their children. Every episode teaches the child to perform his or her filial duties. The content of the given moral practice varies according to differences in age, persons, and region (China/ Chosŏn). The kinds of filial duties practiced comprise typical behaviors divided according to whether the parents are living (caring, nursing, rescuing) or deceased (avenging, rescuing the body, funeral rites, mourning at the grave, ancestral rites, and yearning). 45% of the stories in the section “Dutiful Children” describe children’s filial duties during the parents’ years of life, while 55% depict incumbent duties after their parents’ deaths.7 Examples of symbolic behaviors that entail “devotedly nursing their parents” include “crying in front of bamboo” (“Maengjong [C: MENG Zong] cries in the bamboo grove” 孟宗泣竹, 16), “cracking ice” (“Wangsang [C: WANG Xiang] cracks ice” 王祥剖水, 17), “tasting feces” (“Kŏmnu [C: QIAN Lou] tastes feces” 黔婁嘗 糞, 21), and “cutting fingers” (“Sŏkchin [C: SHI Zhen] cuts his finger” 石珍斷指, 34).8 When a parent dies, the child practices filial piety by avenging a parent’s wrongful death by an enemy (“Rubaek [C: Loubo] catches a tiger” 婁伯捕虎, 32), rescuing a parent’s body (“Yanghyang [C: YANG Xiang] catches a tiger” 楊香搤虎, 3), holding a funeral (“Kanghyŏk’s [C: JIANG Ge] great filial duty” 江革巨孝, 6), and yearning for the deceased (“Ko’ŏ [C: GAO Yu] cries in the street” 皐魚道哭, 4). The most frequently portrayed duty is holding a funeral for one’s parent. Rather than listing numerous types of filial behaviors, those which were considered to be the most significant are repeated, or juxtaposed. This narrative strategy educated readers about universal ways to practice filial piety, which was considered as a supreme Confucian ideal extending beyond the present time or locality (China/Chosŏn).9 The manner of describing rewards for filial piety also followed typical patterns, comprising social recognition, government compensation, and recognition from heaven. There are 23 cases in which compensation for filial piety is awarded to dutiful children, 66% of the total. Such rewards for a character’s morality are depicted
7 The story titles, as seen in Table 7.1, often, but not always, convey such information. The concept of father/mother is centered on blood parents, but also includes stepmothers (1, 7) and parents-inlaw (5, 29). However, there are no cases in which a male character’s parents-in-law are mentioned. 8 “Symbolic behavior” implies that these actions are not only repeatedly presented as patterns in a story but are also repeatedly expressed pictorially. Illustration is discussed in section 3 of this paper. For the role of “lettered titles,” see Hyŏnu Cho, “Oryunhangsildo tosang ǔi saphwajŏk sŏnggyŏkgwa kǔ hamǔi.” [A study on the images in Oryunhangsildo]. Hankuk Kojŏn Yŏngu 20 (2009): 144–152. 9 For the educational effect of the episode about “cutting one’s finger,” see Miok Yun, “Tanchi: mobanggwa konggam e kwanhan hamŭi.”
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at the end of a given story to justify filial piety. Social compensation is often depicted as social recognition (praise: “Chagang [C: Ziqiang] prostrates himself over the tomb” 自强伏塚, 33), gaining honor (“Hŏja [C: XU Zi] buries a deer” 許孜埋獸, 18), or praise from Confucius (“Charo (C: Zilu) carries grain” 子路負米, 2). Government compensation is indicated by the erection of a red gate (“Yanghyang catches a tiger,” 3) or tombstone (“Hyoa [C: xiao E] holds her father’s corpse” 孝娥抱 屍, 8), naming a town with honor (“Panjong [C: PAN Zong] saves his father” 潘宗救 父, 20), bestowing a government post (“Wangsang cracks ice” 王祥剖氷, 17), or offering a material reward such as clothes, candles, grain, silk (“Hyoa holds her father’s corpse” 孝娥抱屍, 8), or wooden figurines (“Chŏngnan [C: DING Lan] carves parents’ figures in wood” 丁蘭刻木, 10). Some stories feature multiple reward types. Some cases record compensations from heaven, like an unexpected acquisition of gold (“Kwakkŏ [C: GUO Ju] buries his son” 郭巨埋子, 12), a fairy wife (“Tongyŏng [C: DONG Yong] borrows money” 董永貸錢, 11), or a divine epiphany (“O’i [C: WU Er] escapes disaster” 吳二免禍, 29). The story that a person who has ethical behavior is rewarded from heaven is based on a cultural belief which is contextualized in the ethical cosmology of East Asia. These stories indicate that editors and readers shared a common ethical view of nature and the supernatural world.
Loyal Subjects In this section, characters symbolically indicate loyalty to the emperor or king verbally (22%) or through patterned behaviors (78%). The former comprises discussing (“Akpi [C: YUE Fei] tattooed on his back” 岳飛涅背, 22) or swearing (“Chesang’s loyalty” 堤上 [C. Tishang] 忠烈, 30) loyalty, or righteously admonishing the king (“Yongbong [C: LONG Feng] dies while remonstrating with loyalty” 龍逢諫死, 1). The latter typically involves behaviors such as laying down one’s life for one’s country or emperor (king) (紀 信誑楚, 5), fighting until death (“Pinyŏngja [C: PI Ning] rushes into enemy territory” 丕 寧突陳, 31), suffering numerous hardships at the hands of an enemy (“Akpi tattooed on his back” 岳飛涅背, 22), refusing an enemy country’s post (“Kongsŭng [C: GONG Sheng] rejects the King’s document” 龔勝推印, 8), committing suicide (“Wangch’ok [C: WANG Zhu] hangs himself by his neck” 王蠋絶脰, 4), or being murdered (“Changhŭng [C: ZHANG Xing] dies from being sawn into halves” 張興鋸死, 15). The cases of compensation for loyal behavior occur less frequently in this section than in “Dutiful Children” and “Virtuous Women.” Rewards given for loyal behavior in this section can be found in 10 texts (29%). Contents include social recognition (10%: “Hama [C: Xiama] burns himself and dies” 蝦䗫自焚, 28), and winning honor or being commemorated (90%), such as by receiving a posthumous name (“Loyalty and filial piety of Pyŏn’s [C: BIAN’s] family” 卞門忠孝, 11; “Mongju is killed” 夢周隕 命, 33) or preserving, rather than repairing, a symbolic broken banister (“Chuwun [C: ZHU Yun] breaks the railing” 朱雲折檻, 7).
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Virtuous Women The demands on a woman engaging in virtuous behavior relate to her husband (55%), including nursing a sick husband (“Ms. Wang [C: WANG shi] is hung up and dies” 王氏經死, 26), funeral rites (“Sik’s [C: Zhi’s] wife cries for her dead husband” 殖妻哭夫, 3), refusing remarriage (“Ms. Song [C: SONG nü] refuses to remarry” 宋女 不改, 4), and caring for parents-in-law and hospitality for concubines (“Yŏjong (C: Nüzong) knows courtesy” 女宗知禮, 2); her chastity (43%), including doing bodily harm (“Ms. Yi [C: LI shi] lifts up her husband’s corpse” 李氏負骸, 16), committing suicide (“Chŏng’ŭi [C: ZHEN Yi] stabs her neck and dies” 貞義刎死, 8), or being killed while resisting sexual advances (“Ms. Sŏ [C: XU shi] scolds the enemy and is killed” 徐氏罵死, 18); and her refusal to leave the house without parental permission (“Paek’hŭi [C: BO ji] runs into the fire” 伯姬逮火, 1). The first text of the “Virtuous Woman” section is an episode about Paekhŭi (C: Bo ji). When a fire breaks out, Paekhŭi refuses to leave home, saying, “A woman should not leave home at night without an accompanying nanny or permission from her parents.” In the end, she is consumed by the fire. This episode serves as an example to evoke and legitimize the binding power of parents and home on unmarried women, by acting as a declaration of proper behavior in the category of chaste conduct. The anecdote “Yŏjong understands propriety” propagates the concept that as long as Yŏjong shows filial piety to her parents-in-law and respects her husband, society acknowledges her as a virtuous woman. In the anecdote “A virtuous wife dies in her husband’s place,” a wife facing a crisis of chastity decides to sacrifice herself so her husband and father will not be killed. This story demonstrates the ironic situation in which a woman has no choice but to forfeit her life in order to fulfill her filial duties to her father and preserve her chastity for her husband. Only 12 texts deal with compensation for a woman’s virtuous behavior (34%); they include social recognition (17%) and national rewards such as erecting a red gate in her honor (83%: “Ŭibu [C: Yifu] lies on the ice” 義婦臥氷, 24). Social sympathy for the woman who attempts self-injury to maintain her chastity and punish the perpetrator are regarded as just compensation for virtuous behavior (e.g., in “Ms. Yi [C: LI shi] carries her husband’s corpse” 李氏負骸, 16). Rather than receiving a material reward, or even honor as a symbolic reward, emotional understanding (“Yejong [C: Li Zong] scolds Tongtak [C: DONG Zhuo]” 禮宗罵卓, 9; “Ms. Cho [C: ZHAO shi] hangs herself in a wagon” 趙氏縊輿, 17) is offered as a social reward. This suggests that the value of the individual’s life is grasped in the social recognition structure, in particular, emotional consensus. It also shows the effectiveness of cultural politics, which justifies women’s fidelity not at an individual level, but at the legal level of state administration, by conveying narratives that punish their ethical obstructors and attackers.
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Overlapping Stories and the Cultural Politics of Editing Out of all the texts, 14% present episodes of overlapping duties. In these, a character demonstrates how to behave when faced with the ethical conflict of prioritizing one’s obligations to loyalty, filial piety, and chastity. Although each story is selfcontained, the reader understands that the editors have considered the coherence and sequence of ethical presentation. Repeated encounters with characters modeling their moral values would imprint on readers both the importance of becoming an ethical agent and how to apply such values in their own lives. Stories in the section “Filial Children” concentrate only on filial piety itself. In the “Loyalty” section, filial piety is involved in 27% of all stories (for example, “Nansŏng [C: LUAN Cheng] fights with enemy and dies” 欒成鬪死, 2) and chastity in 13% (“Yugap [C: LIU Ge] gives up his life” 劉韐捐生, 19). In the “Virtuous Women” section, filial discourse is involved in 47% of stories (“Chŏng’ŭi dies for chastity by cutting her own throat” 貞義刎死, 8) and loyalty in 13% (“Ms. Cho dies by hanging herself in a wagon” 趙氏縊輿, 17). These combinations coexist without conflict. In a man’s case, filial duty is the essential, basic moral value that surpasses all else. In the case of women, when there is conflict between chastity and filial duty, virtuous behavior takes priority, and loyalty is synonymous with chastity. These hierarchies can be seen as resulting from the intervention of “ethical superiority” and gender politics in the principles of impagination and editing.
The Arrangement of Chinese and Chosŏn Histories Chinese stories placed at the beginning and middle of each section in Samganghaengsildo provide foundational examples of morality (on the levels of knowledge, ethics, and practice), followed by stories set locally, in Chosŏn. Many of the symbolic behaviors included in the Chosŏn episodes mirror those in the Chinese episodes. The Chinese stories edited in Samganghaengsildo were restructured for Chosŏn readers. When comparing Samganghaengsildo with The Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety of Yuan Dynasty China, although ten of the fictional characters are the same (Charo, Tongyŏng [C: DONG Yong], Kanghyŏk, Wangsang, Kwakkŏ, Yanghyang, Kŏmru, Hwanghyang [C: HUANG Xiang], Wangbu [C: WANG Bo], Chŏngnan, Maengjong), the stories differ in the following ways: ① title, ② story (the basic plot is the same, but the details vary), and ③ poems and eulogies. The poems and eulogies accompanying the stories differ in story and form. In Samganghaengsildo, each line of poetry contains seven characters, while each line of eulogy contains 4 characters. In The Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, every story is juxtaposed with a 4-line poem, 4 characters per line. Most Chosŏn episodes feature the same symbolic behaviors found in the Chinese episodes (both the originals and the versions edited for Samganghaengsildo). The
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process of reading the Chinese stories works to build a foregrounded context for understanding the Chosŏn narratives. For example, in section 1, the episode of the 34th anecdote (Sŏkchin cuts a finger 石珍斷指), in which Sŏkchin of Chosŏn saves his sick father by cutting his finger to heal him, also appears in the 31st Chinese anecdote (Ms. Yu [C: LIU shi] cares for her mother-in-law 劉氏孝姑). In this story, which was frequently used as an example of filial piety in China and Chosŏn, the protagonist lets some of his blood in order to make a restorative drink for his ailing parents, a filial act that moves heaven with its sincerity and forms a bond of sympathy with readers. In the 25th anecdote of section 3 (“Ms. Tong’s [C: TONG] face is skinned” 童氏 皮面), Ms. Tong of Yuan dynasty China is killed because she does not stop resisting when her chastity is threatened, even though first one arm, then the other, is cut off. In the 33rd anecdote of the same section (“Ms. Yim’s legs are cut” 林氏斷足), Ms. Yim of Chosŏn resists the Japanese invaders, but her arms are cut off, and finally she dies. The enemy’s method of attack, which threatens fidelity, and the strong resistance of women who do not bow to it, are themes found in both the Yuan dynasty and Chosŏn histories, although at different times: 13th to 14th-century Yuan and 15th-century Chosŏn. However, the virtuous behavior of Tomi’s wife (Tomi’s wife eats grass 彌妻啖草 section 2, no. 30) is found only in Chosŏn. Because the story is unique, the images here are not found anywhere else. Readers can understand the accompanying illustration only by knowing a certain story of past kingdoms on the Korean Peninsula, specifically, “How the Paekche people became Koguryŏ nomads.” As such, it is the only one introduced as a Chosŏn story whose parallel is not found in the Chinese episodes placed toward the front of each section. Among the Chinese episodes, there is a story of a woman leaping into a river to protect her fidelity. But the story of a miracle, in which the woman crosses a river and meets her husband safely on the other side, is found only in the anecdote “Tomi’s wife eats grass.” This, the layering of the similar content in the Chinese and Chosŏn stories, provides readers with a universal and diachronic “knoweldge-ethics” that serves in Chosŏn as well as in China. This editorial principle has the educational effect of crossing borders of histories and localities, with an emphasis on the identification of moral behaviors. This is an editorial strategy that makes the individual and special histories of China and Chosŏn recognizable as part of a universal history of East Asia.
Scripts and Textual Structure: Sharing and Diffusion of Knowledge The binary script choice in Samganghaengsildo suggests the readers’ differing statuses and genders, as in the formulas “hanmun – upper class – male” and “hangŭl – middle and lower classes – female.” This section highlights Samganghaengsildo’s
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educational design, in which the choice and placement of hanmun and hangŭl scripts mirror the educational classes of its readers. This design explains the interrelationship between the educational effect of page layout and the differences between the script layers.
Design for Hangŭl Readers The script system in Samganghaengsildo consists of Sino-Korean characters (Korean words originating from Chinese characters) juxtaposed with their reading in hangŭl, with the addition of annotations to explain the more difficult hanmun. The reader of hangŭl can understand the meaning of Sino-Korean words by reading the characters on the page that correspond to the text written in hangŭl, thereby obtaining linguistic knowledge of hanmun etymology. This approach to page design reflects the editors’ regard for the intellectual and learning capabilities of their less-educated readers. The footnotes, written in hangŭl, were meant to embrace the hangŭl reader as a knowledge subject. The hangŭl footnote was an intellectual recognition of general Chosŏn readers’s lack of literacy of the Chinese language and was meant to raise their level of knowledge on various subjects.10 Annotations appear in several forms.11 First, notes are added when the words are written as Sino-Korean characters (Figure 7.2).12 The editors define the meaning of the word, offer information for utilizing the word, and explain its context. When a hangŭl word originates from Chinese characters, it is annotated to help hangŭl readers understand. For example, to correctly define the meaning of “fidelity,” the hangŭl phrase “a person who remains faithful and practices filial duty” (chŏlhyoch’ŏsa 節孝處士) is appended. This clarifies the reader’s understanding, since the pronunciation of “chŏl (節)” encompasses broad semantic categories, such as joint, courtesy, fidelity, season, and more. Second, notes are added when the reader might require background information to understand the content better.
10 See Glenn W. Most’s article in this book for research on Asian and Western styles of commentaries (such as footnotes) as paratext. The footnotes written in hangŭl could not be arbitrarily modified or changed. They were regarded as a shared repository of knowledge for all, including the hangŭl reader. 11 For more on the manner of annotation in Samganghaengsildo, see Yubŏm Kim, “Haengsildoryu ŭi yŏkchu pangbŏmnon yŏngu.” [A study on the methodology of translating and annotating haengsildo books]. Kugŏsa yŏngu 12 (2011): 23–48. Kim does not analyze detailed information or rules, however. 12 In the original text inserted above, Sino-Chinese characters are juxtaposed with archaic hangŭl of the 15th century; in the phrase I extract, I have rewritten the hangŭl in modern Korean for ease of reading. The annotation is written in a smaller script and printed in two parallel lines that take up the space of one regular column.
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Figure 7.2: An example of Sino-Korean annotations in a hangŭl text, starting from the 3rd column from the left: 節절孝효處처士사– 라 하시니라 節은 절節개介라 (He is considered chŏlhyo ch’ŏsa, a loyal and filial man. Chŏl means loyal). From the story of “Sŏjŏk’s (C: XU Ji) sincere behavior” (徐積篤行, Section 1, no. 28).
- 五刑을 다 호리라 하고
五오刑형은 피조옴과 고 버힘과 발 버힘과 남진 겨집 제 아래 몯 보긔 홈과 주굼괘라
(“I will carry out five punishments.” Five punishments’ refers to tatooing the face, cutting off the nose, slicing the heel, castration, and beheading.)
(“Chesang’s loyalty,” C section 2, no. 30)
- 夷이齊제 周주 粟속을 먹지 아니하니
伯백夷이 叔숙弟제는 商상사람이니 周주 武무王
왕이 商상을 치고 서 서시니, 周주 穀곡食식을 먹지 아니하니라.
(“Paek’i and Sukche [C: Boyi and Shuqi] refuse to eat Zhou dynasty millet. Paek’i and Sukche are Shang dynasty people. When King Mu of the Zhou dynasty defeats the Shang dynasty, they refuse to eat grain from Zhou.”) (“Ch’ŏnsang does not yield to the enemy”
section 2, no. 24) In the section “Loyal Subjects,” the part of the anecdote “Chesang’s loyalty” containing the phrase “five punishments” is annotated so that the reader can know the phrase refers specifically to “tattooing the face,” “cutting off the nose,” “slicing the heel,” “castration,” and “beheading.” In the story of Paek’i and Sukche (C: Boyi and Shuqi 伯夷叔齊), the editors add an annotation to help the reader understand idioms and jargon originating in Chinese historical events.13 In addition, when quoting an episode that is related to historical knowledge, the editors add a brief annotation about the meaning of the story in order to guide readers to cultural understanding.
13 The episode of “Boyi and Shuqi” is a typical “Loyal Subject” story. Boyi and Shuqi died loyal to the Shang dynasty after surviving for a time only on ferns on Mt. Shouyang. They eschewed the shame of benefitting from the conquering Zhou dynasty, even by consuming its food crops. This
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Third, when quoting hanmun words or phrases using hangŭl text, the hanmun script is juxtaposed with its hangŭl counterpart. These annotations reflect the editors’ intention of raising the educational level of hangŭl readers closer to that of cultured hanmun readers. When hangŭl readers cannot fully grasp the meaning of a Chinese-based word written in hangŭl script, they can expand their understanding by referring to the hanmun character written next to it. This was possible because the editor recognized the existence of the “hangŭl reader who knows hanmun characters,” or in consideration of the possibility of mutual cooperation between the hangŭl reader and hanmun reader. (If a hanmun reader read an episode aloud to a hangŭl reader, the hangŭl reader could grasp its contents. This is what King Sejong had in mind when he ordered a compilation of Samganghaengsildo with hanmun script and illustrations before the creation of hangŭl, a fact that is indicated in the preface of the first edition of Samganghaengsildo.14) For example, - 昔석年년에 無무偶우去거하니
옛 해에 짝 없이 가니
(“In the previous year you were unaccompanied. Last year, you went back without a partner.”) (“Ms. Yi [C: LI] moves a swallow 李氏感燕,” section 3, no. 12) The above cases suggest that the compilers of Samganghaengsildo took into consideration their hangŭl readers and attempted to acquaint them with a higher level of cultural knowledge based on hanmun. Rather than pursue a hierarchy of culture, knowledge, and morality via an exclusively fixed semiotic system, the editors sought communication between classes, characters, and genders.
Design for Hanmun Readers The structure of hanmun texts in Samganghaengsildo includes narrated episodes (with footnotes) and select poems 詩 and eulogies 贊. This page layout differs significantly from that of hangŭl texts.
story was familiar to elite literati in Chosŏn (the Chinese language usage class) and is introduced here to hangŭl readers via annotation. 14 King Sejong’s words in the King’s Doctrinal Decree (敎旨) may be summarized as follows: The common people do not know Chinese characters (hanmun), so even if the book is distributed, how can they learn from it if others do not teach it to them? It would be good to let intellectuals in Seoul and the provinces help the people memorize the texts each morning and deepen their understanding in the evenings. (This concerns the first edition published in King Sejong’s era, which is composed only of hanmun and images.)
All texts, totaling
Virtuous Women
Koŏ cries in the street 皐魚道哭 () Ms. Chin (C: CHEN) cares for her mother-in-law 陳氏養姑 () Hyoa holds her father’s corpse 孝娥抱屍 () Hwanghyang fans his father’s pillow 黃香扇枕 () Kwakkŏ buries his son 郭巨埋子 () Wŏnkak (C: YUAN Jue) awakens his father 元覺警父 ()
Charo carries grain 子路負米 () Yanghyang catches a tiger 楊香搤虎 () Maenghi (C: MENG Xi) obtains gold 孟熙得金 () Wangyŏn (C: WANG Yan) finds a fish that jumps out of the ice 王延躍魚 () Panjong saves his father 潘宗救父 () Sukkyŏm (C: Shuqian) looks for medicine 叔謙訪藥 () Kilpun (C: JI Fen) tries to die in his father’s place 吉翂 代父 () Pulhae (C: Buhai) looks for his mother’s corpse 不 害捧屍 () Wangsung (C: WANG Chong) stops hail 王崇止 雹 () Hyosuk’s (C: Xiaosu) portrait 孝肅圖像 () Nojo (C: LU Cao) obeys his mother 盧操順母 () Sŏjŏk’s sincere behavior 徐積篤行 () Oi escapes disaster 吳二免禍 () Wangch’ŏn (C: WANG Jian) brings long life to his father 王薦 益壽 () Ms. Yu cares for her mother-in-law 劉氏孝姑 () Rubaek catches a tiger 婁伯捕虎 () Chagang prostrates himself over the tomb 自强伏塚 () Sŏkchin cuts his finger 石珍斷指 () Ŭnbo (C: Yinbao) moves a crow 殷保感烏 () All texts, totaling
Minson’s (C: MIN Sun) wearing thinly padded outerwear 閔損單衣 () Kanghyŏk’s great filial duty 江革巨孝 () Sŏlp’o (C: XUE Bao) sweeping 薛包 洒掃 () Chŏngnan carves parents’ figures in wood 丁蘭刻木 () Tongyŏng borrows money 董永貸錢 () Wangbu (C: WANG Bo) refuses to read a poem 王裒廢詩 () Maengjong cries in the bamboo grove 孟宗泣竹 () Wangsang cracks ice 王祥剖氷 () Hŏja buries a deer 許孜 埋獸 () Kŏmru tastes feces 黔婁嘗 糞 ()
Filial Children
Body+Eulogy
Body+Poem
Loyal Subjects
Body+Poem+Eulogy
Section
The Hanmun Texts of Samganghaengsildo
Table 7.1: Analysis of the hanmun Texts of Samganghaengsildo.
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When citing other texts, the citation is written in a smaller font to show a visual contrast. This practice reflects a writing convention among literati. An example from Samganghaengsildo appears in the image on page 5 above, in the hanmun text “Chŏngnan carves his parents’ figures in wood” (10). At the end of the last line (from right to left, line 6), there is a note written in smaller lettering and forming two parallel lines of text occupying the space of one column. The annotation states that the information presented here is recorded differently in other documents. In this version, the Emperor orders that the present scene be commemorated in a painting, a kind of social reward that is not found in other versions of this story, and the note informs readers that “The Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety states that Chŏngnan carved his mother out of wood” (as opposed to carving the likeness of both parents from wood). In hanmun texts, a poem and/or eulogy are added after the narrative. The characters “poem” and “eulogy” are embossed. Most hanmun texts take the form of a story, poem, or eulogy in a combination of prose and verse, which is the typical style of East Asian classical writing (Sin Ŭngyŏng 2009). Let us take the text shown on page 5 above as an example. The plot can be summarized as follows: Chŏngnan’s parents die when he is a child. He carves the shape of his parents in wood and greets their images every morning and evening. When Changsuk [C: ZHANG Shu, literally Elder ZHANG], a neighbor, asks Chŏngnan’s wife to show her the wooden figurines, she refuses because the figurines appear to be in a bad mood. When Changsuk hears this, he drunkenly screams at the wooden figurines and beats them on their heads. When Chŏngnan returns home and realizes what has happened, he strikes Changsuk in anger. Soon an official arrests Chŏngnan, and the wooden figurines shed tears. Chŏngnan’s filial piety becomes known to the emperor, who then commissions a painting of the scene. The poem is as follows: ① 刻木爲親出至情 Carving wooden figurines of his parents, out of utmost affection. ② 晨昏定省似平生 [Chŏngnan] greeted them morning and night as though they were living. ③ 恍然容色能相接 The countenance of the figurines seemed to approximate to that of his parents in life. ④ 感應由來在一誠 The reason for this correspondence was sincerity. ⑤ 孝思精徹杳冥間 His filial piety reached the dark underworld. ⑥ 木像能爲戚戚顔 The wooden figures showed sad faces. ⑦ 當代圖形旌至行 [Chŏngnan] was honored with portraits, banners and flags in his time. ⑧ 誰人不道漢丁蘭 Who would not praise Chŏngnan of the Han dynasty?
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The eulogy reads, ⓐ 哀哀丁蘭 早喪慈顔 Sad Chŏngnan! My parents died early. ⓑ 衆人皆有 我獨無母 All people have mothers, but I alone do not. ⓒ 木刻肖形 事之猶生 I carved my parents’ forms from wood and worship them as if they were living. ⓓ 晨昏定省 以盡誠敬 Every morning and night I care for them sincerely. ⓔ 噫彼世人 不有其親 Ah! People who have lost their parents! ⓕ 生不能養 能不泚顙 How could their foreheads not sweat if they did not serve their parents when they were alive? Poems and eulogies may comprise a story summary (①-③, ⑤-⑦; ⓐ, ⓒ, ⓓ), affective response (④, ⓑ), or reader critique (⑧, ⓔ, ⓕ). In this poem, the ratio of over 50% anecdote summary and moral lesson ensures that the meaning of the story and its educational effect will be conveyed to readers. The eulogy also summarizes the story and emphasizes its ethical theme. The poem consists of eight lines, and each line consists of seven characters. The eulogy consists of 12 phrases, and each phrase consists of four characters. Layered comments from successive readers on each page draw readers into a sympathetic community, thus enabling the mapping of the cultural politics of every text in Samganghaengsildo.
Relation of Hangŭl to Hanmun Text Delving more specifically into the relationship between hangŭl text and hanmun text in Samganghaengsildo, we find a lack of uniformity. Careful analysis reveals six different relationships between the two types of text (some of which overlap). In the first case, the hanmun text is translated into hangŭl sentence by sentence, which occurs only twice out of a total of 105 examples (section 1, nos. 4 and 14). In the second case, the hangŭl text abbreviates the story. The proportion of these cases is the largest: 99 of the 105 correspond to this relationship. In the hanmun text, most elements of a story are presented in great detail, including a character’s place and year of birth, surname, first name, nom de plume, geographic background, context of the events, and the flow of narrative development. In contrast, the hangŭl text is best described as employing “economics of composition:” supplying the minimum information necessary to convey the subject. Thus, in these cases the hanmun text comprises a highly detailed narrative writing structure, while the hangŭl text focuses on the process of information transfer by providing a simple structure based on the core contents of “cause – process – result.” In the third case, a slight difference in the arrangement of information between the hanmun and hangŭl texts (section 1, nos. 3 and 25; section 3, no. 12) requires close attention. It implies that the two symbolic systems are designed as independent narrative structures influenced by the grammatical structure to which they belong.
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Let us look at the example of “Yanghyang catches a tiger” (section 1, no. 3) (Figure 7.3). The first sentence of the hanmun text (above left) records i) the name of the main character (Yanghyang), ii) the place of residence, iii) the name of her father, and iv) the family relationship (daughter). In the hangŭl text (above right), only the main character’s (i) name is specified. In the hanmun text, because the name of the main character’s father (Yangp’ung [C: YANG Feng] 楊豐) is introduced at the beginning, the name is used throughout the story. However, in the hangŭl text, only the word “father” is used. The narrative focuses on the heroine. In the hangŭl text, information about the age of the heroine is presented earlier than in the hanmun text. The arrangement of information proceeds as needed according to the flow of the text.
Figure 7.3: The story of “Yanghyang catches a tiger” (楊香搤虎, section 1, no. 3). From Samganghaengsildo (1481).
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In the fourth case, contents not present in a hanmun text are added in the hangŭl text. It was assumed that the elite reader of hanmun texts aleady knew the story or could reason through the context, thus the dialogue might be abbreviated or the story condensed. However, in the hangŭl text, it was necessary to help the reader understand the story, so both the first and last names of a character are included (section 2, nos. 10, 13, 17, 24, and 32), the speaker is named when presenting dialogue (section 2, no. 3), the situation is introduced in detail (section 1, no. 10), and detailed dialogue is provided (section 2, no. 26). While most hangŭl texts tend to abbreviate dialogue between characters more than their hanmun counterparts, the addition in a hangŭl text of dialogue that does not appear in a hanmun text (section 2, no. 26) functions to “emphasize the theme.” In the fifth case, there is a difference in the delivery, or wording, between the two texts. The contents of a narrative explanation in a hanmun text are written as dialogue in the hangŭl text (section 3, nos. 30 and 33), and a hypernym in the hanmun text is replaced by a hyponym in the hangŭl text, which can be seen as selective judgment to help the readers of hangŭl. For example, in the text of “Tomi’s wife eats grass 彌妻啖草” (section 3, no. 30), the expression “the king was lost in gambling” in the hanmun text is translated to “the king was lost in Ssangnyuk” (a type of Korean traditional gambling) in the hangŭl text. In the sixth case, only the hangŭl text is annotated (this is covered in detail in section 3.1 of this paper, so I have omitted these statistics in the table above). Finally, all hanmun texts are accompanied by a poem, and in some cases a eulogy is also attached. There is no poem or eulogy in any hangŭl text.
Page Layout of Illustrations and Images: Affect and Imagination This section compares the illustrations to the scripted narratives in order to highlight the symbolic selection of images and the affective element of illustration patterns. The structure of the selection and placement of each illustration reflects the editors’ understanding of the book’s readers.
Image Selection Strategy Previous research on Samganghaengsildo suggests that illustrations accompany the texts as “alternative letters” for the illiterate. Illustrations are arranged on the bottom three-quarters of the first page in each story, and hanmun texts are located on the verso in the same position. If readers wish to view the hanmun text, they will encounter the illustration when turning the page to get to the hanmun. Hanmun
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readers could skip the small area of hangŭl script, which occupies the area above the picture on the front page, but the illustrations are placed in such a way that all readers will see them. What might this strategy of page layout mean? It would not be possible to grasp the meaning of the stories in Samganghaengsildo merely by viewing the illustrations. The narratives themselves are heavy with information, to the point that if a reader is not already familiar with the stories, the illustrations will not be useful for clarification. Without reading the text (or listening to it), the reader will fail to understand the story and the moral lesson conveyed by the pictures.15 The limited scope of the illustrations suggests that they were printed as mnemonic aids to help readers recall the stories rather than as a way to reproduce the stories for the illiterate. In other words, the illustrations were used to help readers who already knew the stories to review and remember them.16
15 The process of imagining a cohesive story or a single ethical theme through deciphering discontinuously arranged paintings was not first attempted with Samganghaengsildo. Buddhist sutra paintings and “Ten Oxherding” murals on Buddhist temples present pictorial compositions comprised of several discrete scenes. Stories and illustrations are closely related in artistic woodcuts of Buddhist fables, Buddhist scriptures with illustrations, and Pumoŭnchunggyŏng 父母恩重經, which, although an apocryphal book of scripture produced in China, was widly circulated in Chosŏn because of its emphasis on filial piety. (Regarding various editions of Pumoŭnchunggyŏng and its acceptence in Chosŏn, see Yi Taeho 2000 and Kim Chahyŏn 2014). Often a single scene would accompany a story, which was also true of concurrent texts China and Japan, but it was not uncommon to find multiple scenes illustrating one story. In the Koryŏ era, predating Chosŏn, several Buddhist paintings portray a scene linked to a story, as in Sojabonmyobŏmnyŏnhwagyŏng 小字本妙法蓮華經 (Koryŏ, 1286), Miok Yun, “Tanchi: mobanggwa konggam e kwanhan hamŭi”, 25.; Kwangyŏngsŏbunbyŏnsangdo 觀經序分變相圖 (kept in Japan’s Saifuku Temple 西福寺; Koryŏ, 1312), Taeho Yi and Ilki Song, “Ch’op’ŏnpon Samganghaengsil hyojado ŭi p’yŏnch’an kwajŏng mit p’anhwayangsik e kwanhan yŏngu.” [A study on the editing process and the pattern of engraving pictures in the first edition of Samganghaengsildo]. Sŏjihak yŏngu 25 (2003): 430.; and Ilch’eyŏraesimbimiljŏnsinsaribohyŏptaranigyŏng 一切如來心秘密全身舍利寶篋印陀羅 尼經 (Koryŏ, 1007). (For further information, see Chahyŏn Kim, “Pumoŭnjunggyŏng ŭi pyŏnch’ŏngwa tosang ŭi hyŏngsŏnggwajŏng yŏngu.” [A study on transformations in Pumoŭnjunggyŏng (父母恩重經) and the formation process of its iconographies]. Pulgyomisulsahak 18 (2017): 447, picture no. 169). Yi Taeho and Song Ilki mention that depictions of thunder, mountains, and hills in Samganghaengsildo are influenced by Buddhist paintings from the Koryŏ period. However, during the Chosŏn era, Buddhism was suppressed in favor of Confucianism, so it is unlikely that ordinary people would be exposed to woodcut prints of Buddhist fables or paintings of Buddhist scriptures. (For Chinese paintings of Buddhist scriptures, see Pak Tohwa, 2013). The fact that paintings or woodcut prints of Buddhist fables and scriptures existed would have been widely known to commoners, but estimating the specific period or breadth of their reception is another subject of study, one best investigated by art historians. In this article, I mention only the possibility of influence. 16 According to Pyŏngsŏng No (“Samganghaengsildo e kwanhan k’ŏmyunik’eishyŏnhakchŏk chŏpkŭn,” 83), illustrations in this text serve as long-term reminders of the story for all readers, rather than just for illiterate commoners. This is consistent with my view. In this article, I note further that the editors understood that the imagination, emotional factors, and associative action mobilized in the memory processes of readers was not limited to the elite class but could expand to illiterate commoners and women who listened to the stories read aloud.
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However, reminding readers of story content is not the sole purpose of illustrations in Samganghaengsildo. Rather than representing the exact contents of every tale, the illustrations compress or emphasize certain aspects of a given story. Scenes are selected to depict symbolic behaviors based on the generic narrative contents (situation-condition, process-practice, and result-compensation), much like the structure of the scripted texts. The efficiency with which illustrations could display the most relevant information from the anecdotes may have been considered in their size and placement on the page. Several images from the “Virtuous Women” section picture the scene of a woman committing suicide in order to preserve her chastity (“Ms. Ong [C: Yong] dies with her husband” 雍氏同死 20; “Myŏngsu [C: Mingxiu] prepares her coffin” 明秀具棺 23; “Ms. Chu [C: Zhu] is afraid of violence” 朱氏懼辱 27). Although the specific character, era, background, and situation vary from one anecdote to another, the preservation of chastity by suicide is often symbolized pictorially by a cord hanging from the ceiling. As discussed in previous research, this image operated as a fixed code.17 Another illustration shows a character enduring physical pain at the hands of his enemy (“Sŏkchak [C: SHI Que] is a loyal servant” 石碏純臣, 3) to symbolize his loyalty. The two most frequent pictorial representations of receiving bodily harm as a symbol of loyalty are “under the threat of sword” (“Susil [C: Xiushi] extorts a scepter” 秀實奪 笏 16; “Yŏnpun [C: Yanfen] is willing to die” 演芬快死 17; “Yaksu [C: Ruoshui] dies for loyalty” 若水效死 18) and “being grabbed by the hair” (“Sŏkchak is a loyal servant” 石碏純臣 3; “Hwani [C: HUAN Yi] dies” 桓彛致死 12; “Chang and Hŏ [C: ZHANG and XU] defend a city to their death” 張許死守 14). Additional symbolic behaviors include being killed by being strapped (“An and Wŏn [C: YAN & YUAN] scold the enemy” 顔袁 罵賊 13) and the sawing of the body (“Changhŭng [C: Zhang Xing] dies from being sawn in halves” 張興鋸死 15). Swords or arrows may be drawn against a loyal subject, whose depiction as a fallen figure indicates death. Other examples concern illustrated texts that represent a result-compensation scene. Compensation tends to be highlighted more in the written narratives than in the illustrations. In other words, the visual page focuses more on the attitudes and behaviors of characters than on the compensation received at the end of a story. Only by approaching the text/narrative/illustration as a fixed, complex semiotic system in Samganghaengsildo can the reader comprehensively grasp the whole meaning of the text, including historical knowledge, ethics, social cues and values, practical effects, and moral sentiments.
17 Chŏngnan O (“Samganghaengsildo ŭi manwhagihohakjŏk punsŏk,” 82) analyzes the images and coding of pictures in the section “Filial Piety” in Tongguksinsoksamganghaengsildo.
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Affective Signs of Emotion and Attitude What are the features of illustrations in Samganghaengsildo? Various devices are used to represent a story in a narrative image, such as background, placement of scenes,18 and characters’ faces, attitudes, gestures, or actions. For example, Figure 7.4 consists of five story units. 1) A man kneels in mourning on the lower left, indicating that he is holding a funeral for his father. 2) The children kneel at the foot of the house at the bottom right, paying their respects to their mother, the old woman sitting in the room with her cane. 3) The fence drawn in the center of the picture divides the two scenes in the foreground from each other and from the scenes in the middle ground and far distance. 4) The two scenes above the fence contain hills drawn as diagonal lines to separate each
Figure 7.4: The story of “Pulhae takes care of his mother’s corpse” (不害捧屍, section 1, no. 24). From Samganghaengsildo (1481).
18 A “scene” indicates a discrete unit of narrative image in an illustration.
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scene. 5) The tomb at the top indicates a funeral is being held, and the crying man shows filial piety. (The brick tomb is patterned after Chinese Han-Dynasty tombs.) Particularly when elements of a character’s attitude and affect are not narrated but are depicted in pictorial form, the reader reconstructs the entire contents of a story by combining the stated information of the written text with the emotional information of the image. Every scripted story in Samganghaengsildo expresses in condensed form a combination of [situation-condition] and [process-practice]. Information highlighted in the text comprises typical behavior that expresses filial piety, loyalty, or chastity. Some texts record direct affective expressions of respect, loyalty, sincerity, devotion, and so on, but in most cases only typical behaviors such as “cutting a finger,” “tasting feces,” “suffering physical pain,” and “committing suicide” are portrayed. These phrases are presumed to be sufficient to impart the meaning at hand without the use of attitude adverbs. For example, the stories “Minson’s singlet clothing” (閔損單衣, 9), “Hyosuk’s portrait” (孝肅圖像, 26), and “Chagang prostrates himself on a grave” (自强伏塚, 33) in the section “Filial Piety” do not describe the characters’ actions by using the adverb “respectfully.” Rather, the behaviors of “nursing,” “warming the bedding with one’s body heat,” and “mourning at the graves of one’s parents” imply attitude adverbs such as “respectfully,” “sincerely,” or “devotedly.” In the illustration of “Minson’s singlet clothing” (閔損單衣, section 1, no.1), a kneeling shape expresses the adverb “respectfully” in pictorial form, although kneeling is not described in the story’s text. The picture for “Sukkyŏm seeks medicine” (叔 謙訪藥, section 1, no. 22) indicates “sincerity” by depicting a figure bowing down to the floor. The print of “Wangsang cracks ice” (王祥剖氷, section 1, no. 17) communicates industriousness by depicting a figure in rolled-up sleeves. The woodcut of “Ms. Yang’s (C: LIANG) murder” (梁氏被殺, 22) shows two figures sitting side by side, engaged in conversation, to convey the meaning of an affectionate couple.19 The illustrations in Samganghaengsildo not only convey the meaning of the narrative text, but also realize visually the core meaning of affects such as impressions, sentiments, attitudes, and emotions that are not described in detail in the scripted text. The image-signs illustrated on each page achieve semiotic homogeneity by means of their recurrence across the three sections. As seen above, the semiotic homogeneity of the narrative image reminds the reader of the similarity between fidelity toward one’s husband and loyalty toward the emperor, and again fidelity toward one’s husband and filial piety toward parents. This semiotic device has the effect of reinforcing the ethical binding power of a culturally-accepted gendered perspective.
19 In the written text Ms. Yang swears that she will remain faithful to her husband. In the illustration, she is depicted as a wife talking to and sitting by her husband, which conveys the message that they are an affectionate couple.
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Thus, readers absorb the proffered Confucian ideology through a complex semiotic system that involves acquiring morals from reading the stories and attaining affective edification from viewing the illustrations. The interactions between the lettered texts and the illustrations in Samganghaengsildo formed an interdependent relationship from their conception.
Placement of Scenes for Imaginative Readers The scene structure and page layout of illustrations in Samganghaengsildo are designed in consideration of the reader’s cognitive ability, affective capacity, and imaginative power. The number of scenes on each page of Samganghaengsildo ranges from one to seven. According to previous research (Chŏng Pyŏngmo 1998, 194–201; O Chŏngran 2008, 73–74; Choi Chŏngran 2008, 77–85), the temporal placement of scenes within an illustrated panel falls into eight categories, as follows: [single], [top ⇒ bottom], [bottom ⇒ top], [left ⇒ right ⇒ top], [bottom right ⇒ left ⇒ top], [right ⇒ left ⇒ right top ⇒ left ⇒ right], and two types of [zigzag]. However, having categorized all the illustrations, I find further arrangements of scenes: [clockwise] and [counterclockwise], [whirlwind], [semi-circle: ∩, ⊂], and [random].20 There are 18 types of image-arrangements each in “Filial Piety” and “Chastity,” and 7 types in “Loyalty.” In sum, there are 34 distinct versions of image layout. The layout employed most often is [top ⇒ bottom], with 33 appearances, while [bottom ⇒ top] occurs 22 times. Some illustrated scenes are arranged like a puzzle, lacking pattern or direction. In such cases the reader is required to think imaginatively in order to place the scenes in order for proper understanding of the print’s meaning. In order to understand the narratives in the picture and the placement order of the scenes, readers can obtain clues from the written text. However, when the picture and the story do not coincide, readers must employ their imagination to discern the proper order of the pictures. Let us look at Figure 7.5, which is composed of six pictorial units. 1) King Kaeru hears about the beauty and fidelity of Tomi’s wife and sends his servant to her home. 2) When the king tells his servant to make her a court lady, she lies by pretending to accept it. 3) When King Kaeru finds out he has been deceived, he blinds Tomi. 4) Tomi’s wife lies again to the servant that she will accept King Kaeru’s proposal. 5) Tomi’s wife decides to run away from King Kaeru. When Tomi’s wife reaches the river, she looks up to appeals to the sky. 6) Tomi and his wife meet by chance and live by eating grass roots.
20 Pyŏngmo Chŏng categorized four directional types of story line: upward, downward, irregular, and undirected.: “Samganghaengsildo p’anhwae taehan koch’al.” [An examination of the woodblock prints in Samganghaengsildo]. Chindanhakpo 85 (1998): 194.
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Figure 7.5: The story of “Tomi’s wife eats grass” (彌妻啖草, section 3, no. 30). From Samganghaengsildo (1481).
In the above case, the information contained in the narrative text and the information in the pictures are not equivalent. The story is more descriptive, the pictures more implicit. If the textual description is focused on delivering a detailed plot, the pictorial illustrations are capable of promoting a stronger emotional delivery.21 By integrating the semiotic meanings of textual description and pictorial information, readers can reach a more complete undertanding of a single story. In addition, the ways in which readers connect various scenes of the narrative to a single illustration
21 In the third and fourth scenes of “Tomi’s wife eats grass,” the facial expressions of the king provide an emotional contrast. The king is angry in the third cut, but he smiles in the fourth cut. Thus the illustration depicts the dual aspects of the king (violent and affectionate) through the contrast of his facial expressions.
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is determined by the reader’s previous knowledge of the story and understanding of the ethics and emotions it contains, and thus a full understanding requires considerable intellectual and imaginative abilities. This diagram is indicative of a number of the printed illustrations that were designed in consideration of the reader’s ability to engage in free association and imagination, not focusing only on exact representation, straightforward transmission, or provision of a simple mnemonic aid for the narrative. The fact that both hanmun and hangŭl readers are expected to imagine and interpret the subject at hand suggests that the pictures in Samganghaengsildo are not intended for the illiterate only. The editors of Samganghaengsildo may have considered that the illiterate were as capable of association, memorization, and imagination as the elite literati and the women and lower classes who understood hangŭl. The dynamic and multilateral mapping of the illustrations draws on the imaginative capacity of readers already familiar with the stories while simultaneously strengthening the interaction between knowledge and reminiscence, by assuming the ability of the pictorial symbology to promote the reader’s memory of the narratives. The complex semiotic system in Samganghaengsildo creates a dynamic interaction between knowledge-offering narratives in two scripts (hanmun and hangŭl) and affect-offering illustrations, thus vitalizing the action of complete content comprehension (history and ethics) with affective sympathy.22
Conclusion This chapter analyzes Samganghaengsildo as a complex semiotic system, comprised of scripts (hanmun and hangŭl), narratives, and illustrations, that was presented on the page. My analysis highlights the effects and roles of cultural politics in Samganghaengsildo: the readers’ acquisition of historical knowledge, ethical values, and sensibility (moral emotions and humanity), and the realization of these moral values in their daily lives. The printed illustrations in Samganghaengsildo are included not simply for the illiterate, but for hanmun and hangŭl-readers familiar enough with the stories to engage in free association and memory-enhancing imagination. Readers must read each
22 Each narrative pictorial scene in an illustrative text is connected by buildings, clouds, mountains, water, the sea, and sometimes roads or yards, which indicates continuity of chronotope and openness of story line. In addition, each paragraph of a story is interconnected, which suggests openness and connectivity (including change and transformation) in a character’s attitude, mind, or ethics. O Chŏngran (“Samganghaengsildo ŭi manwhagihohakjŏk punsŏk,” 76) interpretes this as a free “imagination space” that presents some communicative slack, but I propose that the arrangement of each scene not only provides the reader with the freedom to imagine, but also suggests a function of autonomous interpretative possibilities to the reader through the connectivity and continuity of scenes and the characters’ attitudes, sentiments, and transformations in ethical consciousness.
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scene on the page and then compose a coherent story in their minds, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. If the editors did not recognize the readers’ capacity for imagination and learning (with male elites reading hanmun, the lower classes and women reading hangŭl), such a complex semiotic system would fail to inspire or teach readers. In terms of impagination, then, the editors considered the potential equality of readers’ intellectual abilities, emotional quotients, and imaginations rather than falling back on the hierarchical stratification according to status, gender, or literacy endemic in their society. By contrast, in later works, the number of scenes in an illustration is greatly reduced (for example, in Oryunhaengsildo 五倫行實圖). Often only one picture is selected to represent a story, so that the associative ability to frame several pictures in one’s mind is not required. In this case, the picture does not provide its own narrative system, itself containing several narratives, but becomes merely a representation of the theme. In terms of scripted narratives, Samganghaengsildo places Chinese historical anecdotes at the front of each section of the book, followed by stories of Chosŏn. The reader comes to understand the similarity and specificity of history and culture, and likewise the pervasiveness (the “world,” which for Koreans meant China) and locality (Chosŏn) of moral behavior. The resulting multi-layered cognitive experience attests that the content of Samganghaengsildo synthesized and systematized contemporary people in terms of knowledge, ideas, ethics, and affect. Each of the sections “Filial Piety,” “Loyalty,” and “Chastity” is composed of two or three narrative parts: situation-condition, process-practice, and sometimes result-compensation. The plot of each narrative is strategically interlaced with ethically acceptable, typical behaviors, such as “cutting a finger” or “suspending a cord from the ceiling.” In terms of lettered text, Samganghaengsildo uses a double script system of hanmun and hangŭl. This system is designed to provide cross-references and interaction between the two scripts rather than an isolated and locked system. The hangŭl text provides annotations for the etymology of Sino-Korean words and for historical idioms, thus allowing hangŭl-only readers to reach toward the cultured, educated level of the elite literati. The hanmun text reflects the prose and verse genres conventionally used by literati in East Asia; beyond the historical tale (including legends), affective responses and historical criticism are written in prose, juxtaposed with eulogies, ethical commentaries, and verses. The editors cite original hanmun texts to maintain the erudition respected in the literati culture. In terms of iconography, pictorial signs are designed to denote affects not specifically mentioned in the scripted text, such as respect, humility, and devotion. Such affective signs are used repeatedly across sections as universal semiotic devices, creating a synergic effect with the lettered texts. In sum, this research shows that the semiotic system of Samganghaengsildo and its impagination served to implement Confucian ideals in the reader’s daily life by way of linking historical knowledge and moral emotion.
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Kim, Chin’yŏng. “Haengsildoŭi chŏngiwa p’anhwaŭi sanggwansŏng: Samganghaengsildo rŭl chungsimŭro.” [The relation between biography and woodcut in haengsildo: Focusing on Samganghaengsildo]. Hangugmunhagnonch’ong 22 (1998): 239–257. Kim, Munkyŏng. “Koryŏ pon hyohaengnokkwa chungguk ui ‘ishipsahyo.” [The Koryŏ editions of the Record of Filial Piety and China’s The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety]. Chungguk munhwa 45 (2009): 3–14. Kim, Yubŏm. “Haengsildoryu ŭi yŏkchu pangbŏmnon yŏngu.” [A study on the methodology of translating and annotating haengsildo books]. Kugŏsa yŏngu 12 (2011): 23–48. Kwŏn, Chŏng’ŭn. “Oryunhaengsildo rŭl t’onghae pon munhakgwa kŭrim ŭi kyoukchŏk silch’ ŏn.” [The educational realization of literature and images in Oryunhaengsildo]. Kojŏnmunhakkwa kyoyuk 24 (2012): 221–46. Luo Shubao. Shūxiāng Sānqiānnián 書香三千年 [A history of Chinese books]. Translated by Cho, Hyŏnju. (Seoul: Tarŭnsaenggak, 2008). No, Daewon. “Munhwajeok k’euronotop’euwa sinch’ehwa: paheuch’in soseol irongwa 2sedae injigwahak ui mannam.” [Literary chronotopes and practicalization: Bakhtin’s theory of novels and encounters with the second generation of cognitive science]. Hangugmunhakirongwa bip’yeong 67 (2015): 93–113. No, Pyŏngsŏng. “Samganghaengsildo e kwanhan k’ŏmyunik’eishyŏnhakchŏk chŏpkŭn” [A study on Samganghaengsildo from the perspective of communication science]. Hangukch’ulp’anhak yŏngu 66 (2014): 69–93. O, Chŏngran. “Samganghaengsildo ŭi manwhagihohakjŏk punsŏk.” [An analysis of cartoon semiology in Samganghaengsildo]. Inmun’ŏnŏ 10 (2008): 63–96. Pak, Tohwa. “Ŭimiwa yuhyŏng-ǔro pon pyŏnsangǔi punhwa.” [Differentiation of ‘Pyŏnsang’ according to Meaning and Type]. Misulsahak yŏngu 277 (2013): 41–67. Pak, Kyŏngch’ŏl. “Soksamganghaengsildo ŭi manhwagan kiho yŏngu” [A study of the symbology of cartoon frames in Samganghaengsildo II]. Hanguk k’ont’ench’ŭ hakhoe nonmunji 11–10 (2011): 156–64. Sin, Sukyŏng. “Yŏllyŏjŏngwa yŏllyŏdo ŭi imiji yŏngu.” [Research on the images in Lienü Zhuan]. Misulsa nondan 21 (2005): 171–200. Sin, Ŭnkyŏng. “Sanㆍun honhaptamnonŭrosŏŭi Samganghaengsildo yŏngu.” [A study on Samganghaengsildo as biographies of mixed discourse of prose and verse]. Kukche’ŏmun 46 (2009): 387–412. Yi, Taeho. “Chosŏnsidae mokp’anbon Pumoŭnjunggyŏng ŭi pyŏnsangdo p’ansŏ e kwanhan yŏngu.” [A study of the woodcut prints in Pumoŭnjunggyŏng, Buddhist Sutras of the Chosŏn Era]. Sŏjihak yŏngu 19 (2000): 219–53. Yi, Taeho and Song Ilki. “Ch’op’ŏnpon Samganghaengsil hyojado ŭi p’yŏnch’an kwajŏng mit p’anhwayangsik e kwanhan yŏngu.” [A study on the editing process and the pattern of engraving pictures in the first edition of Samganghaengsildo]. Sŏjihak yŏngu 25 (2003): 407–46. Yi, Yŏnghŭi. “Haengsildoryu ŏnhae ŭi pigyo yŏngu: munpŏp yosorŭl chungsimŭro.” [A comparative study on books on fundamental principles of human relations between Chinse text and Korean translation]. Hangugmal Kŭlhak 30 (2013): 143–59. Yun, Miok. “Tanchi: mobanggwa konggam e kwanhan hamŭi.” [Finger-cutting: exploring the implications of imitation and sympathy]. Ch’ŏlhaksasang 59 (2016): 5–36. Yun, Miok. “Samganghaengsildo ŭi yugyojŏk kach’i yŏngu.” [A study on the Confucian values of Samganghaengsildo]. PhD diss., Sŏnggyungwan University, 2016.
Goran Proot
Chapter 8 The Transformation of the Typical Page in the Handpress Era in the Southern Netherlands, 1473–c. 1800 Abstract: This chapter discusses how the layout of the typical page in handpress books evolves between the introduction of the handpress in the Southern Netherlands and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It links this constant and delicate transformation to changing societal needs and developments, which are in turn reinforced themselves by changing book design. The fundamental argument in this contribution is that the book was, is, and will always be a cultural instrument at the service of the community, and a deeper understanding of its layout requires an understanding of its function within user’s communities, in which economy and tradition keep each other in pace. The longue durée of this survey is essential, because typically typographical evolutions are slow and delicate. Elements of page design include the three dimensions of paper, the relationships between book block and text block, text and paratext, and navigation features both in Latin and vernacular (mainly Dutch) editions. Title pages are not included in this survey. Furthermore, the focus is on the common book – not on the sometimes unrepresentative highlights of printing. Keywords: layout, book design, book history, early modern period, western history
This contribution studies changes in book production, and more specifically the transformation of design of the typical page in handpress books produced in the Southern Netherlands in the period 1473–c. 1800. The former date refers to the introduction of printing with moveable type in this region by Joannes van Westfalen and his socius Dirk Martens in Alost, the latter to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when technical innovations such as steam presses and new paper machines radically impacted book production. I will argue that the page, as a canvas of text and image, does not only carry and transmit information, knowledge and culture, but that the page also responds to societal change and in turn can function as a catalyst of societal change.1 Because of its political, religious, economic, social and cultural history, the Southern Netherlands by and large form a unity, which is also reflected in the overall
1 “. . . the page can be read as evidence of its social history”, cf. Bonny Mak’s excellent How the Page Matters, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 10. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-009
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design of handpress books that were produced in its printing centres. The most important ones were located in the economic capital of Antwerp, the academic city of Leuven and the court-capital Brussels (all three of them in the duchy of Brabant). In the county of Flanders, the largest centre is Ghent, ranking before secondary centres such as Ypres, Bruges and Courtrai. Apprentices and journeymen often learned the trade in one centre and moved during or after their training to other centres within this region before settling as printers themselves. Within cities, compositors and printers moved from one printing shop to another; in addition they could switch from one task to another one, while working on parts of larger book projects only, and sometimes on several projects concurrently.2 In this volatile situation of coming and going of workmen, the role of the master, the typographus or prote was crucial in order to guarantee the outcome of the shop.3 A certain degree of standardization across printing shops was in other words necessary to guarantee the successful production of books. These elements help to explain the homogeneity in the look and feel across books produced in a specific region at a specific moment in time. When the new craft was still young, differences in book design between regions were not obvious. In the beginning all printers came from Germany, the only place where one could learn the tricks of the trade, and secondly, they all plainly followed the design of manuscript books.4 But after the first decades of printing with moveable type in the west, in different European regions different customs in book design began to evolve, the exact mechanisms of which are not yet clear. At any rate, books produced in the sixteenth century more clearly began to show different compositorial practices and were marked with a variety of different design features. This makes it possible to distinguish books produced according to, for instance, Italian or German, practices, even if they do not bear imprints mentioning places of publication.5 Differences in compositorial practices even allow for the identification of forgeries or facsimilés avant la lettre.6 It is generally accepted that book design in the west changed dramatically between the introduction of moveable type around the middle of the fifteenth century
2 Stijn van Rossem, Het gevecht met de boeken. De uitgeversstrategieën van de familie Verdussen (Antwerpen, 1589–1689) (Antwerpen, Universiteit Antwerpen, 2014), 111–118. See also Donald F. McKenzie, “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printinghouse Practices,” in Studies in bibliography, 22 (1969): 18–21. 3 Alain Riffaud, Une archéologie du livre français moderne, Genève: Droz, 2011, 72. 4 Jean-François Gilmont, Le livre & ses secrets (Genève: Droz/Louvain-la-Neuve: UCL, 2003), 31, 55. 5 Richard Antony Sayce, “Compositorial Practices and the Localisation of Printed Books, 1530–1800,” in The Library, 21 (1966): 1–45. 6 Erik Geleijns, “Niet gedrukt in Den Haag. Achttiende-eeuwse boeken met een vals Haags impressum,” in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis, 15 (2008): 109–124; Goran Proot, “Damned Usury, ‘Cologne’, ‘1715’: Delusion or bona fide? Typographical Evolution on Title Pages in the Southern Netherlands in the 18th Century and its Potential as a Means of Identification,” in Histoire et civilisation du livre, 14 (2018): 287–333.
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and the period 1520–1540, and that, by the latter time, printed books had acquired a definitive look of their own.7 It is an undeniable fact that book design underwent a sea change before the 1540s, but this did not stop book design from ceaselessly evolving throughout the ancien régime and afterwards – be it perhaps in less striking ways than before. Unfortunately, for most countries or regions, studies meticulously describing the transformation of handpress books are still wanting. The most extensive survey in this field probably is Henri-Jean Martin’s La naissance du livre moderne. Mise en page et mise en texte du livre français (XIV–XVIIe siècles).8 It still stands on its own because it is so difficult to emulate this work for other regions, as it deals with book design over a period of three centuries in a country which produced thousands of books per decade. As a result, most studies focus on a limited number of design features (e.g., type) or specific techniques or traditions surveyed in small corpora; in addition, they limit themselves to a specific place or country and cover relatively brief periods of time.9 This leaves us with fragmented visions on typographical evolution sensu largo obscuring the broader picture and making it difficult to develop a theory explaining this evolution. As a requirement of the present volume, what follows is limited as well, i.e., to the development of the layout of the typical page in handpress books produced in the Southern Netherlands between 1473 and c. 1800. In contrast to most studies, this survey includes a wide number of minute typographical parameters derived from large corpora. The method deployed is a statistical one, favouring trends and tendencies and avoiding an anecdotal approach. It will become clear that both the longue durée and the micro-levels on which this research is based are essential to the study of layout and design of books. It is my hope that other scholars will take advantage of the methods and tools described below to continue this work.
Aim and Scope The first part of this surveys offers a description of the development of the page design in handpress books published in the Southern Netherlands between 1473 and c. 1800. This is followed by a theory explaining how typographical change works, and why it evolves as it does in this region in the period under consideration.
7 Gilmont, Le livre & ses secrets, p. 31. 8 Henri-Jean Martin, La naissance du livre moderne. Mise en page et mise en texte du livre français (XIV–XVIIe siècles), (Paris: Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie, 2000). 9 To give just one example, Frans A. Janssen discusses one book only in “The graphic design of the first book printed by Johann Schöffer (1503)”, in Christoph Reske and Wolfgang Schmitz (eds.), Materielle Aspekte in der Inkunabelforschung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017), 43–57.
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The subject of this contribution is the typical page within the book proper. Discussed are the physical dimensions, the main type area, its inner organization and surrounding paratextual elements, such as foliation, running titles and marginalia. Other paratextual elements (e.g., title page) of the book are only referred to when appropriate. Illustrations are not included in this survey either. In order not to complicate the story, the focus is on Latin and Dutch-language books, leaving aside books printed in other languages (Greek, Hebrew, French … ). In many cases, new designs are developed in Latin books first, subsequently filtering through into vernacular books. It is also known that specific text genres play an important role in the transition from one layout design to another one. In most cases, the datasets used for this survey are large enough to distinguish subsets according to language, but not large enough systematically to compare subsets for all different text genres.
Methodology On the following pages, the typical page is discussed, though one should bear in mind that the page, in most cases, constitutes only one half of a spread. In the period under consideration, pages 2 and 3, 4 and 5, etc., of the book proper are always laid out symmetrically. The visual aspect of the spread is to a large extent defined by the relative proportions of the margins. In the middle of the spread, in the gutter between the left and right pages, the margin usually is small to avoid the optical effect that the text blocks left and right appear to be pushed sideways. The one at the top of the page is often somewhat larger. Even larger are the outer margins and the margin at the foot of the page. Measures presented here are mainly based on the right-handside page of a spread. The information in this contribution is derived from a number of different, mostly large, corpora of different periods, spanning as a whole the period 1473–c. 1800 (cf. infra). Measures are taken in millimeters, x-heights (i.e., the height of letters such as a, e, o, u, c, m, n, r, s, v, w or x) in points Cicero, and as many different typographical elements as possible are distinguished and recorded in relational databases, pertaining to features of editions, copies or type. Data stemming from books which are difficult to locate or date have been omitted.
Corpora The majority of the data are derived from actual copies, surveyed book in hand. This is the case for all information pertaining to the period before 1541, and for a number of published and unpublished case studies on a number of text genres, spanning the
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entire period under consideration.10 Published case studies include sixteenth-century folio Bibles in Dutch and Jesuit theatre programmes from the period 1601–1773.11 Other case studies include editions of the Imitatio Christi (1484–1829), song books (1605–1792), Dutch-language octavo Bibles (1524–1577), legal publications by Judocus de Damhouder (1555–1699), catechisms (1613–1789) and ordinances (1535–1735) amongst others.12 In total, more than 290 individual post-1540 editions have been analyzed in depth. Additional data is derived from volumes 1 and 2 of the so-called NK, namely W. Nijhoff’s and M.E. Kronenberg’s Nederlandse bibliographie, covering the period 1501–1540.13 The analysis of the use of single vine leaves and paragraph marks is based on this excellent source.14 The online Universal Short Title Catalogue was used to get raw numbers for the distribution of bibliographical formats in the period 1541–1600. Last but not least, bibliographical and typographical data are also derived from the Short Title Catalogue Flanders (STCV), a state-of-the-art online bibliographical database, which also gives access to thousands of linked images of title pages and other pages. As I have explained elsewhere, one should be aware of the nature of the collections surveyed, how they have been created, when and by whom, because statistically they may not be entirely representative of the entire book production at large.15 Nevertheless, an effort has been made to include as many editions as possible, regardless their fame or status, because the aim of this contribution is to sketch a picture of the typical page in “common” publications. In view of statistical analysis,
10 The data for the period 1473–1540 is also analysed in the context of an exhibition about the evolution of layout and design in the Southern Netherlands, see the catalogue: Goran Proot, Metamorfose. Typografische evolutie van het handgedrukte boek in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1473–1541. Catalogus bij de tentoonstelling in de Bibliotheek Stadscampus van de Universiteit Antwerpen, 13 november 2017–29 november 2017 (Antwerpen: Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibiofielen, 2017). 11 Goran Proot, “Designing the Word of God. Layout and Typography of Flemisch 16th-Century Folio Bibles Published in the Vernacular” in De Gulden Passer, 90:2 (2012): 143–179; Goran Proot, “The Evolving Typographical Identity of Theatre Programmes Produced for the Flemish Jesuits in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” in W.A. Kelly & G. Trentacosti (eds.), The Book in the Low Countries, (Edinburgh: Merchiston Publishing, 2015), 11–53. 12 The typographical features of these text genres were discussed at the annual international Sharp Conference, Washington, DC, July 2011, and specific cases also at other conferences. 13 Wouter Nijhoff & Maria-Elisabeth Kronenberg, Nederlandsche bibliographie van 1500 tot 1540, 3 vols. (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1923–1971), hereafter cited as NK. 14 Steven van Impe, Goran Proot & Susanna de Schepper, “Beyond Description: Bibliographic Tools as ‘Big Data’ for the Study of Belgian Handpress Books. With an Example on the Use of Typographical Ornaments, 1501–1540,” in De Gulden Passer, 92:1 (2014): 103–124. 15 Goran Proot, “Survival Factors of Seventeenth-Century Hand-Press Books Published in the Southern Netherlands: the Importance of Sheet Counts, Sammelbände and the Role of Institutional Collections,” in Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (eds.), Lost Books. Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 160–201 at 199–201.
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I tried to work with subsets of data large enough to obtain reliable results. This was not always possible, especially not for the period before 1541. Table 8.1 gives an overview of the datasets per decade. It is clear that the information for Latin editions is much more solid than for Dutch-language books, let alone for editions of specific formats within both groups. When previously unpublished information is discussed, details are given in tables and graphs.
Table 8.1: Number of editions per decade, language, bibliographical format.
– – – – – – –
Total
Latin
°
°
°
Dutch
°
°
°
Bibliographical Format Most books in the handpress period were printed on rectangular sheets of laid paper. In the 1470s, printers began to use so-called two-pull presses, which enabled them to print with complete forms of type on full sheets.16 Posters and bills are usually printed on one side of full sheets, the verso left blank for posting up. The most prestigious and important books, like the Gutenberg Bible, were printed as so-called folios, having two pages on either side of the printing sheet. After printing, those sheets were folded once in the middle parallel to the short edge, making two leaves or four pages per sheet. Quartos have four leaves (eight pages) per sheet and are folded twice, octavos come from sheets folded three times and have eight leaves (sixteen pages) per sheet. Folio (2o), quarto (4to) and octavo (8vo) are, in quantitative terms, the most important bibliographic formats. For the Southern Netherlands, “new” formats, sedecimo (16mo) and duodecimo (12mo), become more important in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, respectively. In most cases, books were conceived with individual pages in portrait shape, as opposed to books designed in Italian form, commonly known as oblong or “landscape” form.
16 Jean-Paul Pittion, Le livre à la Renaissance. Introduction à la bibliographie historique et matérielle, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 82.
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At present, no single overarching source provides information about the evolution of bibliographical formats for the whole period. The information presented in Figure 8.1 combines different sources of varying quality using different criteria.17 At this point, not all spikes in the graph can be explained to the full,18 but the overall trends it shows are nevertheless indicative for our purposes.
Figure 8.1: Relative share of editions published in the Southern Netherlands according to bibliographic format.
A first major shift happened in the period before 1501: the numerical preponderance of books produced as folios in the beginning of the period is taken over by quartos. This is followed a few decades later by a second shift, when octavo books numerically
17 The data for the period 1473–1500 is based on visual inspection of 286 editions, the data for the period 1501–1540 is based on bibliographical descriptions in volumes 1 and 2 of NK. The information for the period 1541–1600 is based on numbers given in the USTC for “Antwerp”, at that time the leading printing centre in the Low Countries (numbers from 2 January 2018). Post-1600 information is derived from the STCV (numbers from 2 October 2017). 18 Especially the relative share of 4tos and 8vos in the period 1541–1600, as well as the numbers for folios in the period 1601–1610 and 1761–1790 require further investigation.
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become the most important bibliographical format. Editions in sedecimo, apparently a Venetian innovation, were known early on, but remain rare until the 1530s. They come to be used more regularly in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, but lose importance afterwards. At this time, another, previously rarely used format, gains importance: more and more editions in duodecimo appear. By the end of the seventeenth century, 4to, 8vo and 12mo are equally important (each about 25–30%). In the course of the eighteenth century, the share of 12mos again appears in favour of that of 8vos. In the period 1791–1800, two in five books are octavos, one in four is a quarto. About 10% of all editions in this survey are duodecimos, and an equal number are folios. Three times in a row, a new book format comes to the fore physically halving the most important one at that moment. The third time, with 16mos, is not as successfull as with 4tos and 8vos; the more versatile duodecimo format seems to become a more powerful alternative to 16mos and 8vos. In addition to pure technical features (sheets printed as 12mos can be assembled in gatherings counting 12, 6, 8 and 4 leaves), this may be linked to cultural reasons as well. Both the common and long impositions of 12mos make tall and slender books, probably lending them a more pleasing aesthetic look, while 16mos always make stocky forms.
Paper Thickness In addition to bibliographical formats, the thickness of paper stocks also changes gradually from, on average, 1.58 millimeter in the period 1473–1480 to 1.14 mm in the 1530s for 10 leaves combined (Figure 8.2). The graph also shows that paper thickness varies within a certain range, from about 1.40 to 2.10 mm in the first years, to about 0.75 to 1.40 mm in the last period.19 This indicates that printers could draw from different paper stocks within a given period, and that the tendency was gradually to use thinner paper. Systematic information for later years is lacking, but there are indications that paper could become even thinner in the second half of the sixteenth century, to levels of about 0.80 to 0.90 mm for 10 leaves.20
19 The statistic approach of this analysis wipes out variances in thickness both within and among sheets, which result from the dipping. 20 This is supported by a case-study of books published by the Antwerp printer Martinus Nutius I around the middle of the sixteenth century, cf. Goran Proot & Giles Mandelbrote, “Prices for Spanish and Latin books published by Martinus Nutius I, ca. 1558,” in Goran Proot, David McKitterick, Angela Nuovo & Paul F. Gehl (eds.), Lux Librorum: Essays on Books and History for Chris Coppens (Mechelen: Flanders Book Historical Society, 2018), 65–122, esp. 70–71, and Table 1 on p. 71. A broader study about paper thickness running up to 1650 is in preparation.
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Figure 8.2: Thickness in 1/100 mm for 10 leaves combined; numerous data points are overlapping.
The average numbers in Table 8.2 indicate that (1) the thickness of paper shrinks in a period of 67 years with about 28%; (2) that, on average, folios are printed on thicker paper than quartos throughout the entire period; (3) that the average thickness of octavos is mostly even lower than that of quartos in the same period; (4) that, except for the period 1473–1480, books in the vernacular are printed on paper which is slightly thicker than books in Latin.
Table 8.2: Average thickness of 10 leaves, in mm, per decade, format, language (n copies = 564).
– – – – – – –
Total
°
°
°
Latin
Dutch
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
- . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
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Differences in paper thickness have an impact on the look and feel of books. The thickness of the selected paper stocks at the beginning of printing in the Southern Netherlands is very similar to the thickness of the parchment of mediaeval books.21
Height and Width of the Book Block Data about the heigth and width of book blocks are unstable. Unless books remain unbound after printing and gathering, the book block is usually trimmed by the binder, and often once again when rebound. As a result, height and width are often designated unreliable, and so are data derived from those data, such as the book block surface and the width of margins surrounding printed areas. Only measures of the inner margin are considered stable, because book blocks cannot be trimmed in the gutter. The following considerations may help to deal with this apparent deadlock. For binders there is an interest in trimming enough to get rid of uneven edges of sheets, and thus to obtain even edges which can be decorated afterwards. The paper that is cut away ends up in the book binder’s vat and can be recycled. In general, it is in the owner’s interest to have margins as wide as possible, as wide margins traditionally signal status, allow for easier annotation and for a more comfortable handling of the book. Each act of trimming takes all those considerations into account; trimming into the text cuts away information and turns away customers. By contrast, considered trimming will result in returning customers. The best way to chart trimming practices is by measuring uncut and trimmed copies of editions, but uncut copies are rare. Moreover, because typographers always factored in trimming when producing books, this data would also not reflect intended designs. The method I propose is to measure as many copies of editions as possible, and to measure maximum and minimum dimensions, allowing for derived, average dimensions, probably better reflecting common practice. For a total of 140 different editions published between 1473 and 1540, 382 copies were measured. For each edition, the height of the tallest copy was compared to the smallest one (see also Figure 8.3). In relative terms, the difference between both extremes ranges from 0% to 18%, but in 50% of the cases, the difference is 5% or less, and in 76% of the cases, the difference is 8% or less. When all copies are considered, the average difference between a copy and the tallest copy of an edition is 3.3%. This number is lower, because when 3 or more copies of an edition are measured, they are not all trimmed in the same way. Similarly, the average difference in width measured between copies is 3.2%.
21 A random selection of 10 parchment manuscripts results in an average parchment thickness of 1.63 mm.
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Figure 8.3: Height of the tallest copy, difference from the smallest copy, for 140 editions measured in 2 or more copies. The average height is indicated for octavos, quartos, and Chancery and Royal folios.
For the following information about height, width and surface of book blocks and netto type areas, I base calculations on the average height and width of copies of an edition in the dataset. In contrast to paper thickness, height and width of the book block remain more or less stable throughout the period 1473–1540 within different bibliographical formats. The average height of folios is about 281 mm, their average width about 200 mm; quartos measure on average 197 by 135 mm, and octavos 139 by 95 mm. As a result, the average surface of book blocks shows not many important fluctuations either. The average surface of folio book blocks is between 504 cm2 and 614 cm2, or, for the entire period on average 567 cm2. Quartos measure on average between 257 cm2 and 278 cm2 (overall average: 266 cm2), octavos between 120 cm2 and 140 cm2 (overall average: 132 cm2). The greatest differences are found in the category of folios, because no distinction is made between folios produced on Chancery paper and Royal paper. Figure 8.3 shows the height of octavos, quartos, and folios. In the latter category, the impact of the use of large sheets becomes obvious.
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The Main Type Area on the Typical Page As book blocks maintain more or less the same dimensions, change happens within the available space on the page. In the course of the first 67 years, proportions between the printed surface and surrounding margins dramatically change. To simplify matters, I will focus now on the main type area of typical pages within the book proper that contains the main text. In most cases, the main type area consists of one vertical, rectangular block of horizontally running text lines. In folios, and to a lesser degree in smaller formats, the main text is sometimes printed in two vertical columns standing side by side with a small white area, a gutter, between them. In what follows, the information about the “main text area” refers to the contours of the central, main text block, whether or not it consists of a single column or a combination of columns with the gutters in between. In addition, abstraction is made of running titles and/or folio or page numbers above this area, as well as of printed marginalia in outer or inner margins, and of the so-called direction line holding signatures or catchwords below this area (Figure 8.4). This allows for comparisons of “netto main text areas” across bibliographical formats, languages and consecutive periods of time.
Figure 8.4: Relative surface of the typical main netto type area as a percentage of the surface of the book block.
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The evolution of the dimensions of the netto text area is given in Table 8.3, showing how both the average height and width systematically increase decade after decade in all three bibliographical formats. Table 8.3: Height (H) and width (W) of the main type area of a typical page in millimeter, rounded up to 1 mm.
– – – – – – –
° H
° W
° H
° W
° H
° W
-
-
Case studies indicate that this process continues after 1541. The width of Dutchlanguage folio Bibles published in Antwerp and Leuven remains stable between 1526 and 1566, but there is a small increase of the column height.22 Similarly, the width of the main text area in Dutch-language octavo New Testaments published in Antwerp between 1524 and 1577 shows almost no increase, but the height increases by about one quarter in that period, from 109 mm in 1524 to 138 mm in 1577.23 Quarto Jesuit theatre programmes published in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Courtrai between 1601 and 1773 show that type areas – in this case, of title pages – on average continue to expand, both in height and width, by about 30% in total.24 The average width of the type area measured for those quarto booklets grows from 120 mm in the period 1601–1610 to about 152 mm in the period 1771–1773; average measures for heigth in those periods amount respectively to 157 mm and 205 mm. This results in surfaces of type areas which are in square centimeters about two thirds larger in the second half of the eighteenth century compared to those at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
22 Proot, Designing the Word of God, p. 155, Table 4. Both the 1599 and 1715 Bibles in that study are not considered here: the former seems to be an outlier, the latter was actually produced in the Dutch Republic with a false imprint, see Paul Hoftijzer, “Antwerpen of Leiden? Opkomst en ondergang van de Leidse katholieke uitgever en boekverkoper Christiaen Vermey (werkzaam 1704–1724)” in De Gulden Passer, 93 (2015): 37–58, esp. 45. 23 Goran Proot, “Layout for a nic(h)e market? The relationship between the evolving design of vernacular Bibles and its readerships in the Southern Low Countries, 1524–1577,” unpublished paper presented at the international colloquium Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform, Leuven (Belgium), 29–30 November & 1 December 2012. 24 Proot, “The Evolving Typographical Identity of Theatre Programmes”, 27–28, Diagram 6.
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Stable book block dimensions in combination with growing type areas result in changing proportions between blank and printed areas on the page. The effects are especially conspicuous in the period before 1541 (Figure 8.4). Figure 8.5 clearly demonstrates the inversion of the proportions between printed and blank areas, from about 44% printed against 56% white space in the period 1473–1480 to about 60% printed space against 40% potential space for the margins (Table 8.4, Figure 8.5). In most cases, the actual surface left blank on the page is even smaller, as it will be increasingly taken by paratext (cf. infra).
Figure 8.5: The proportion of text area/book block in a folio from the 1470s (left) and from the 1530s (right).
Table 8.4: Average surface of main type area of a typical page as a percentage of the surface of the book block (n copies = 609); in the case of multiple copies per edition, numbers are based on averages for height and width (n = 140).
– – – – – – –
Total
°
°
°
Latin
Dutch
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
% .% .% .% .% .% .%
– .% .% .% .% .% .%
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
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Table 8.5: Average 20-line measure for text set solid, in mm.
– – – – – – –
Total
Black L
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
°
°
°
Rom.
°
°
°
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
– . . . . . .
– .* – . . . .
– . – – . –
– . – . . . .
– – – – . . .
* In total, three editions only, by Joannes van Westfalen (Leuven) in 1483.
Type and Text Lines In principle the extra room reserved for the text area allows for more text. In addition, type sizes systematically reduce in size up to a certain point. A way of monitoring this is by measuring the height of 20 lines of text set solid, i.e., without leading (strips of lead or cardboard which could be added between two lines of lead type) between lines of type.25 Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, almost all books produced in the Southern Netherlands are set in black letter; after 1501, Latin books are increasingly printed with roman type or, to some extent, in italics, whereas Dutchlanguage books hang on to black letter for text until the 1660s.26 Table 8.5 indicates how the 20-line measure of type sizes used for text systematically shrinks. For the entire period 1473–1540, the overall average 20-line measure drops by a fifth. A logical effect of increasing type areas and decreasing 20-line sizes, is that the former can fit more lines of text, and this is what happens in most bibliographical formats in the period up to the 1530s (Table 8.6).27 Later, too, the average number of lines to a page increase. Octavo Dutchlanguage editions of the Imitatio Christi have, at the beginning of the sixteenth century 20 to 24 lines of text on a typical page. In the eighteenth century, 30 lines has become the norm. Duodecimo editions published between 1591 and 1821 of the same title are marked by the same trend, be it more moderately. Another way of looking at this phenomenon is by measuring the x-height of type used for text, because type designs with smaller faces fit on smaller bodies. Figure 8.6 gives sizes for black letter and roman type over a period of about three and a half
25 H.D.L. Vervliet, Sixteenth-century printing types of the Low Countries (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger 1968), 5. 26 Goran Proot, “De opmars van de romein. Het gebruik van romein en gotisch in Nederlandstalig drukwerk uit de zuidelijke Lage Landen,” in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 19 (2012), 65–85 at 69, graph 1. 27 Compare Figs. 20 and 21, based on NK, in Proot, Designing the Word of God, 168.
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Table 8.6: Average no. of lines in the netto type area of a typical page.
– – – – – – –
Total
Black L
°
°
°
Rom.
°
°
°
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
– . . . . . .
– . – . . . .
– . – – . – .
– . – . . . .
– – – – . . .
Figure 8.6: The x-height of type for text in editions published in the Southern Netherlands.
centuries as they appear in editions in a variety of bibliographical formats and languages, expressed in points Cicero, being 0.375 mm per point. It shows that there is tendency for smaller type, roughly speaking with x-heights of about 6 to 8 points Cicero in the first decades to x-heights of about 4 to 6 points.
Type Styles This section focuses primarily on black letter and roman. Spurred on by humanists, a new type face was designed by Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz in 1466 in Rome, the city after which it was called. Roman type began to push out black
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letter in Italy early on.28 In the Southern Netherlands, it appeared for the first time in 1483 in four Latin, humanistic editions by Joannes van Westfalen, then active in the university town of Leuven. Until that date, Van Westfalen had always used a letter from the black letter family, an Italianate rotunda, which he also used for his other editions published in 1483, ánd for all other editions appearing after 1483. It will take another 17 years before another printer, Van Westfalen’s first associate Dirk Martens, re-introduces the so-called white letter in Latin editions. In contrast to Van Westfalen, Martens often uses roman in combination with black letter from 1500/1501 onwards, the latter for text, the former for paratext, such as titles and on the title page. Eventually, Martens systematically uses roman type for text. In about 40 years time, all other printers in the Southern Netherlands follow in his footsteps, and by the 1530s, roman type has become the norm. The transition from black letter to roman type for text also takes place in Dutch-language books, but at a much slower pace. All in all, this process takes about 150 years to be completed. Similarly to the early experiment in 1483 by Van Westfalen for Latin books, a very early attempt is recorded for books in the Dutch language. In 1539, the Ghent punchcutter and printer Joos Lambrecht publishes a Dutch poetry book with text in roman type, a choice he explicitly defends in the prelims of this work.29 But like Van Westfalen’s, Lambrecht’s experiment does not catch on either, and Dutch-language texts stick to black letter for text until the seventeenth century, when printers slowly but surely begin to opt for roman type for text. From 1601 onwards, roman type drives out black letter from one text genre after the other.30 The tipping point for plays is in the first decade of the seventeenth century, for other language and literature publications this happens ten years later. State publications make the shift in the 1630s, history publications in the 1660s, when the majority of all Dutch-language books are being printed with roman type. The tipping point for devotional and liturgical books, and topical publications, comes one to two decades later. At the end of the century, black letter has become an exception. The ground for this process was being prepared in the paratext. From the 1540s onwards, single words in roman upper case and lower case, as well as in italics and in other type styles, begin to appear on Dutch-language title pages.31 Gradually, more
28 H.D.L. Vervliet, “Humanisme en typografie: de introductie van de romein en cursief in de Nederlanden (1483–ca. 1540)” in Boek, bibliotheek en geesteswetenschappen: opstellen door vrienden en collega’s van dr. C. Reedijk geschreven ter gelegenheid van zijn aftreden als bibliothecaris van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek te ’s-Gravenhage (Hilversum: Verloren, 1986), 316–30; Proot, “De opmars van de romein”. 29 Vervliet, “Humanisme en typografie,” 327; Proot, “De opmars van de romein,” 84. 30 Proot, “De opmars van de romein,” 68–76, graphs 2–12. 31 Goran Proot, “Converging Design Paradigms: Long-term evolutions in the layout of title pages of Latin and vernacular editions published in the Southern Netherlands, 1541–1660”, in The Papers of
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and more elements set in other types than black letter are mixed in on a growing number of title pages, and eventually also elsewhere in the paratext of Dutch-language publications. In vernacular editions of the Imitatio Christi, for instance, parts of titles within the book proper are set in roman upper case or roman lower case as early as in 1591. To do so for text, most printers will wait another seventy years.
Articulation and Navigation Aids in the Main Text Area The signs that help readers to navigate in fifteenth-century handpress books differ considerably from those produced in the sixteenth century. In this section articulation and navigation aids within the main type area are discussed; those surrounding the main type area follow in the next section. Like manuscripts, early editions are imperfect without rubrication with ink or paint. In the Southern Netherlands, rubricators used red, blue and yellow to add structure to the text. The beginning of important sections (the so-called rubric) was added manually in red ink, or, as an alternative, if they had been printed in black, they were underscored with red. The text begins with a large, ornamental initial in one color or a combination of colors.32 Subsequent sections or sections of secondary importance mostly receive less elaborated or smaller initials. Red or blue paragraph marks are added manually, too, and important capital letters are sometimes brightened with red or yellow. These interventions articulate the text, which is a necessity because text is usually set flush in solid, perfect, rectangular blocks. New paragraphs usually do not begin on a new line. Other than an extra space left to be filled in manually with paragraph marks, printers use very few white lines and if they do so, this mostly happens in inconsistent ways. In the beginning, there is a clear predilection for filling up any white space within the text area, for instance at the end of chapters, where the last text line may fall short. Few printers use different type sizes to differentiate text from paratext, and until the 1490s, text and paratext of the books are often entirely set in a single type font. On title pages, two type sizes appear in combination in the period 1491–1500, combinations of three type sizes become more frequent from the 1510s onwards.
the Bibliographical Society of America 108, no. 3 (September 2014): 269–305, at 282–284, graphs 6–8; Proot, “De opmars van de romein,” 76–81, graphs 13–14. 32 In exceptional cases, miniatures had to be added by artists.
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Figure 8.7: Incipit (fol. A3 recto) of: Thomas a Kempis, Dit is een schoe[n] boexke[n] en[de] is ghehete[n] (Qui seq[ui]tur me) Tantwerpen, Henric eckert van homberch (col. 1511) (The Hague, Royal Library, 231 J 43, 135 × 99 mm). Like medieval manuscripts, early editions required rubrication for navigation.
Between 1473 and 1540, rubrication is gradually disappearing. Of 72 copies surveyed for the period 1473–1480, 62 are (at least partly) rubricated (86.1%). In the 1480s, this number drops by 5%, but in the 1490s, only 52.3% of all copies seen
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from that period have rubrication. This process continues until the 1530s, when only 2 copies of 82 are rubricated.33 Parallel to this evolution, printed ornamental initials are being introduced, replacing on edition level what rubricators had to add on copy level (Table 8.7). They appear in the 1470s in one edition only, in three editions in the 1480s and in 22 editions one decade later.
Table 8.7: Printed articulation.
– – – – – – –
Paragraph marks
Ornamental initials
Uncial initials
Large initials
% .% .% .% .% .% .%
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
% .% .% .% .% .% .%
% % .% .% .% .% .%
The second element to appear in print are paragraph marks, which turn up from about 1483. Almost immediately, the printed paragraph mark becomes omnipresent, but from the 1520s onwards, its use diminishes again, first in Latin works and then in Dutch-language editions.34 At the same time, printers also begin to use uncial initials to mark the beginning of specific parts of the text. Uncial initials come in different sizes: initials cast on bodies of the same size as the rest of the text, or initials two or more lines high. Because of their specific uncial shape, which refers to the shape of manually added lombards (i.e., larger initials with an uncial shape added in manuscripts in red or blue), even the small uncial initials stick out. They can be considered a replacement for capital letters heightened with red, blue, or yellow. In contrast, uncial initials two or more lines heigh always appear hanging out at the beginning of new sections at the left hand side of the text block. Although they will never completely disappear, their design goes out of fashion in most text genres, and plain, large initials in roman type, two or more lines heigh, will take their place in the 1510s. In 1518, the single vine leaf makes its entry in the Southern Netherlands. This fleuron or typographical flower was introduced in type by Erhard Ratdolt in Augsburg in 1505 and soon became fashionable in western printing.35 For about twenty years,
33 Proot, Metamorfose, 31, graph. 3.1. 34 See also Van Impe, Proot & De Schepper, “Beyond description,” 120–122, graphs 2 and 3. 35 Hendrik D.L. Vervliet, Vine Leaf Ornaments in Renaissance Typography. A Survey (Houten: Oak Knoll, 2012), 16.
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its use systematically increases, first in Latin books and with some delay in vernacular editions, because it is linked with the roman lettercase, while the paragraph mark has its place in the case of black letter.36 Around the middle of the sixteenth century, the single vine leaf is on its way out, becoming rare by the end of the century, both in Latin and in vernacular books. After 1540, both ornamental and larger initials to mark the beginning of a text will remain in use until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Until the seventeenth century, the first chapter of a work is usually marked with an ornamental variant, while subsequent chapters normally have a simpler variant. The design of these initials changes according to contemporary fashions, but the overall concept remains the same. Around the turn of the century, typographers sometimes use a plain large initial to mark the first chapter, too, and in the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, ornamental initials become less frequent. Perhaps this is linked with the introduction of the so-called factotum at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A factotum is a xylographic ornamental design with a central cut out, wherein fits any type (usually a capital letter), mimicking an actual ornamental initial with different means. Factotum-initials become less frequent by the end of the last quarter of that century. Around that period, typographers begin to place first large initials as an element rising up from the first text line instead of hanging them out, as had been the custom for about three centuries at that moment. From the 1520s, and certainly from the 1530s onwards, another, much more important phenomenon begins to emerge. More and more frequently, new paragraphs begin with an indent, usually one em-space deep. Around this time, rubrication had almost completely disappeared, implying that white space can function independently to articulate the text. From the 1510s onwards, typographical white is also used in even more subtle ways, i.e., to letterspace words and titles in caps, on title pages and elsewhere in books. In addition, in this period, more and more white lines begin to appear to set titles apart in a consistent way throughout the book. Those uses of typographical white remain in place until the present day. In the second half of the sixteenth century, other means are also used to add structure to texts. Citations are mostly printed in a secondary type face, usually italics when the text proper is set in roman type, and (important) proper names often appear in small caps, especially on the title page but also, to some degree, in the book proper.
36 Van Impe, Proot & De Schepper, “Beyond description,” p. 121–122, graph 4.
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Figure 8.8: Opening page (fol. A2 recto) of: Thomas a Kempis, Nauolghinghe Christi. Tantwerpen, Jan van Waesberghe, 1565 (Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus, A 2461, 140 × 93 mm). Single vine leaves were omnipresent around the middle of the sixteenth century.
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Figure 8.9: Opening page (fol. A1 recto) of: Thomas a Kempis, De nae-volginge van Christus. Brussel, Eugenius Henricus Fricx, 1703 (Antwerp, Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience, F 113002, 157 × 95 mm). In the beginning of the eighteenth century, instead of a full ornamental initial (compare Figure 8.8), printers frequently began to use factotums at the beginning of a first chapter.
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Articulation and Navigation Aids in the Paratext In addition to articulation and navigation aids in the main text area, more and more of those aids appear in print in the paratext, i.e., in the surrounding margins. Two features appearing in the so-called direction line of the main text area, printed signatures and catchwords, are omitted here, because their function is primarily a technical one for the trade.37 In contrast, numbering of leaves or pages, running titles above the main text block, and marginalia, mostly in outer margins, but sometimes also in inner margins, helps readers quickly to distinguish sections and parts in texts and to navigate through the book efficiently. Before those paratextual elements appeared in print, they were in a number of cases added by rubricators or readers by hand. As with ornamental initials and paragraph marks, typographers begin to add those elements in print, i.e., at once in the entire print run, thus increasing the uniformity of copies on edition level. Table 8.8 shows a constant increase for each element up to the 1530s. One important shift is that of foliation to pagination, which hesitantly starts in the period 1510–1550. In the second half of the sixteenth century, both systems are frequently used, but from the seventeenth century onwards, pagination becomes the norm. Table 8.8: Share of editions with printed foliation, pagination, running titles and marginalia, 1473–1540.
– – – – – – –
Foliation
Pagination
Running titles
Marginalia
Editions
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
% % % % .% .% .%
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
.% .% .% .% .% .% .%
At the end of the eighteenth century, marginalia sometimes begin to appear at the foot of the main text area as footnotes.
37 Proot, Metamorfose, about signatures: 29–30; about catchwords: 77.
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The Emergence of Visual Typography and Typographical Discontinuity To conclude this descriptive section, I will briefly describe two typographical phenomena which are important for understanding the important shift which takes place from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century.38 The first phenomenon is known as “visual typography”, the deliberate act of arranging titles (on title pages or in the book proper) or the end of a main text section in playful ways, for instance, as chalices of different kinds (with or without base), as hourglasses, (truncate) triangles, or different geometrical shapes.39 In the Southern Netherlands, an early example turns up in a colophon in 1480, but more examples appear only around 1499. In the first decade of the sixteenth century, it can be observed in one out of ten editions, in the 1510s in half of them, and ten years later basically all of them have colophons in special shapes.40 Soon after the introduction of colophons, visual typography appears elsewhere in books: at the end of main text sections, in titles and on title pages.41 In one generation’s time, it becomes the trademark of the “Renaissance” book, but around the middle of the sixteenth century, it already begins to disappear. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, it mainly survives in “milder” forms in titles. By that time, colophons have mainly fallen into disuse, and visual typography at the end of text sections has by then been replaced by xylographic end pieces, flowers, or a formula such as “FINIS” at the end in the middle of the main text area.42 What remain are visually less prominent chalice-shaped titles on title pages and in the book proper, which are increasingly mixed with simply centered lines of text. From the 1650s onwards, titles are built up by a number of centered paragraphs, each of which holding a specific piece of information, and in which the most important elements are typographically emphasized, either by type size or the use of a different type style.
38 For a detailed discussion, see Proot, “Converging design paradigms,” esp. 284–294, and Goran Proot, “Mending the broken word. Typographic discontinuity on title-pages of Early Modern books printed in the Southern Netherlands (1501–1700),” in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 22 (2015), 45–59. 39 The term visual typography is introduced by Frans A. Janssen, Technique and Design in the History of Printing. 26 Essays (’t Goy-Houten: hes & De Graaf, 2004), chapter 3: The typographical design of the “Poliphilus” (1499–1600). 40 Proot, Metamorfose, 40. 41 For details, see Goran Proot, “Mending the broken word. Typographic discontinuity on titlepages of Early Modern books printed in the Southern Netherlands (1501–1700)”, in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 22 (2015), 45–59. 42 Proot, “Een passend sluitstuk.”
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Figure 8.10: Title page (fol. *1 recto) of: Henricus Canisius, Svmma ivris canonici, Antverpiæ, apud Hieronymvm Verdvssivm, 1643 (Leuven, KU Leuven BRES-R5A23107, c.16 × c.10 cm). The design of the first and second parts of hyphenated words (e.g., on line 3, line 9, and line 16) often differed until the first half of the seventeenth century and later fell in disuse.
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Figure 8.11: Colophon (fol. OO8 verso) in: Godschalc Rosemondt, Confessionale. Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, also on the expenses of Henrick Eckert van Homberch; also sold at Leuven: Thielmannusn, May 1518, octavo (NK 1819) (Dilbeek, Cultura Fonds Library, NC 1036, 136 × 99 mm). Visual typography applied in the colophon through lines tapering off.
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Figure 8.12: Title page (fol. [A]1 recto) in: Godschalc Rosemondt, Confessionale (Dilbeek, Cultura Fonds Library, NC 1036, 136 × 99 mm). Visual typography.
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The second phenomenon which emerges at the end of the fifteenth century is known as “typographical discontinuity”. It can be defined as follows: Typographical discontinuity is a kind of rupture in the way a piece of information is formally presented. This definition consists of two important elements: on the one hand there is the notion of “a piece of information”; on the other hand there is the way in which this piece of information is presented in a book. Typographical discontinuity concerns both content and form and the way in which those two elements relate to each other. In the definition of this term, this relationship is characterised as “discontinuous”; it contains a break, a rupture or a crack – therefore, it could be described as illogical. The way in which a certain piece of information is formally rendered in print appears to be incongruous with the content. When we use the term typographical discontinuity, we are saying that form no longer fully reflects content.43
The present survey indicates that this phenomenon appears as soon as the typographical material for it is available, i.e., as soon as printers have different type sizes at their disposal. A simple example makes clear what is meant. The first line of a text begins in a large type size, after which the following lines use a smaller size throughout the book. Often, the change to the second line happens in the middle of a grammatical constituent or even in the middle of a word. As a result, the first part of that constituent or of that word is printed in a different way as the second part. Typographical discontinuity has its origin in manuscript codices at the level of incipits. In many cases, the first line or lines of the text are written in a larger hand, switching to the “regular” text size on the second or following lines. The transition from a larger hand to the regular size is not governed by content but by form: it is caused by the length of the line, regardless of content. Both on the level of constituents and on that of words typographical discontinuity can come in three shapes: change of size, change of type style (for instance black letter/roman type), or change of color. In print, this phenomenon emerges at the end of the fifteenth century and becomes more and more frequent, until the 1520s, when it seems to have reached its apex at the level of words. Its importance clearly begins to diminish in the second half of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century its frequency systematically decreases until it has almost completely disappeared at the end of this century.44 By extension, typographical discontinuity can also appear between pages, columns or in the way titles are placed above sections they introduce. During the first decades, books with columns in most cases end with pages showing columns of uneven length. From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, columns on the last text page of a section have the same height. Throughout the entire period until 1540, widows and orphans are found in allmost all editions. It is typical for books designed in this period to find titles
43 Proot, “Mending the Broken Word,” 47. 44 Proot, “Mending the Broken Word,” 53–55, graphs 1–4.
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announcing a new section at the bottom of a page or a column, while the text announced features at the top of the following page or column, even when a leaf has to be turned to read it. There seems to be no concern at all to keep title and text visually together. A third phenomenon can be associated with visual typography and typographical discontinuity. Until the middle of the seventeenth century, the use of epigraphical “V” representing a “U” is almost omnipresent on Latin title pages, and on a stable portion of Dutch-language title pages.45 This tradition gradually disappears in the second half of the seventeenth century, only to reappear in the next century in isolated cases.46
The Work of Change Early modern book design evolves delicately, slowly and on microlevels. At the same time, typographical evolution is incremental and becomes visible only when series of editions are systematically lined up chronologically. What eyes cannot see, or hands cannot appreciate, comes to the surface only when measures are being taken in a clinical way. Over about seventy years, paper systematically becomes thinner, type areas become larger, margins smaller; type sizes diminish and more lines fit on the page. In contrast, the withdrawal of color is visible. It is systematically replaced by printed features designed in black and white, and by the increasing use of typographical white. Most spectacular and yet so delicate, is the introduction of recessed paragraphs to articulate textual entities. Other techniques to articulate texts are increasingly being introduced in print, i.e., on the level of the edition, such as foliation, running titles and marginalia. Another manifest transition takes place at the beginning of the sixteenth century in the replacement of black letter type by roman type for text in Latin books. The same change happens about one century later for Dutch-language editions. In both cases, this transition is less abrupt than it seems, because the foundations of this process had been laid long before in the paratexts. In addition, it usually takes place first in books that belong to advanced genres geared to international audiences, subsequently being implemented in vernacular editions. Similarly, when specific fashions fade out, such as the use of flowers, they do so in Latin books first, and, with a delay of ten to twenty years, in vernacular publications.
45 Proot, “Mending the Broken Word,” 57–58, graph 5. 46 Proot, “Damned Usury.”
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This is the nature of the work of change when surveyed statistically. What this method risks obscuring, however, is that in any give case, any change in book design was a typographer’s decision. Typographers opted for those materials which would serve the purpose best within the actual typographical context. This means that, for instance, printers in the 1520s had the option to set a Latin text either in black letter or in roman type. Thirty years earlier, roman type was not even an option, and around 1510 it would have been possible, but would have been considered a potential risk; in contrast, in the 1540s, roman type had become the norm and black letter probably a retrograde step. For any book project, this evaluation took place for the combination of all typographical features at once. As a result, layouts may hold newer and older characteristics concurrently, which explains why specific case studies may seem confusing. The nature of typographical evolution is both lasting and progressive. Changes on page level continue to happen well after 1540, after 1660, and after 1750. These dates may perhaps mark important turns for specific typographical features, but as a whole change ceaselessly goes on. Once a specific change is made and seen as an improvement, it often steadily becomes more common and remains in use for a long period of time. Paper that becomes thinner, text areas that become larger, and type becoming smaller are just three examples that demonstrate this point. Their slow pace, taken with their steady development, suggests that book design reacts to underlying global visions and needs.
Forces of Change Changes in book design are driven by different major forces, which balance each other out in different ways according to circumstances. In later mediaeval and early modern society, tradition is probably the strongest force determining book design. Since the introduction of the codex, centuries before the introduction of printing with moveable type in the west, different book forms had been honed into the right shapes to serve their purposes best, and it is logical that the transition in media did not immediately cause dramatic design changes. On the contrary; during the first decades of the handpress book, characteristics of manuscript books are carefully imitated, suggesting continuity rather than showing a rift between old and new. This probably is the reason why typographers in the beginning consciously opt for a paper thickness identical to that of manuscripts and why the dimensions of text blocks and margins are retained in handpress books. By nature, traditions are conservative and will change only if the circumstances are right. It is obvious that economic considerations often lie at the basis of design changes. Increasing competition among printers and publishers called for techniques to lower production costs and to make final products cheaper. More affordable
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books also allow for broader markets and speed up return on investment in a trade requiring considerable investments of capital. Thinner paper directly reduces costs of primary materials; increasing text areas allow, in principle, for editions counting fewer printing sheets than before; editions in smaller bibliographic formats with better text/surface ratios such as octavos were increasingly used to replace larger ones, and so on. Characteristic for all these – in the end – fundamental changes, is that they are introduced piecemeal and with utmost caution. In general, the trade avoids sudden change in order not to turn away customers with traditional expectations – blatant experiments have proved to have little chance to find succession. In addition, change in book design is driven by cultural forces. For instance, the development of roman type was clearly promoted by the views of Italian humanists. Their high cultural status and influence induced printers to make the transition from black letter to white letter. When this new custom definitively had replaced the old one and made its way over the Alps, it was carefully introduced in the Southern Netherlands as well. First it was used in paratexts and afterwards for text in Latin editions. From the 1540s onwards it appeared in paratexts of Dutch-language publications as well, and some sixty years later in the text of those editions. It is not a coincidence that the new type appears in works for the intellectual elite first and then in other books. In addition, innovation often pioneers in works of art and creative text genres – architecture, literature, language … – probably because agents in those fields are more sensitive to culture and its transmission. A number of conspicuous changes in book design can be labeled as fashions, which are also cultural phenomena but with relatively short life-times. The fairly fast appearance, universal spread and relatively fast disappearance of single vine leaves is a good example. Other examples are the quick succession of different designs of ornamental initials (not discussed above), the introduction of factotum initials around the beginning of the eighteenth century, or of initials rising above the first text line at the end of that century. In contrast to their obviousness, those fashionable features are only secondary to more fundamental elements such as paper, proportions of text areas and margins, diminishing x-heights and the like, which have a much deeper and more lasting impact on the book. Mechanical improvements and material innovations help to bring about typographical change. Surrogates in relief for articulation features such as ornamental initials and paragraph marks – either cast or engraved in wood – make the interventions of rubricators increasingly redundant, speed up production and reduce cost. But in order to make this transition successful, audiences have to accept uniform products in black and white as an alternative to the colorful books they have been used to for many generations. This example, like any other one, demonstrates that there always is a number of forces at work, one reinforcing or on the contrary curbing another one.
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Book and Society, Society and the Book To conclude, a broader question must be asked: what governs the factors of change discussed above? It helps to look at the global typographical changes in summary. In a first phase books are printed in large formats, on heavy paper, and with large margins allowing for annotation and decoration. The way texts are articulated and organized as rigid, almost impenetrable, perfectly rectangular blocks suggests that they are primarily geared to elites who are already familiar with their content. The earliest handpress books in the Southern Netherlands are first and foremost beautiful luxury objects for selected publics. In a first movement, between 1473 and c. 1540, the overall look and feel changes dramatically. Books become thinner, lighter, smaller, more portable, and more affordable. Surrogates for color and the insertion of more paratextual features in print reduce production costs and also help readers more easily navigate through texts. Instead of half-finished products, from the sixteenth century onwards presses deliver completely finished end products, which are uniform on the level of the edition. More text fits onto the page, and it is systematically made more accessible through the use of typographical white – at the beginning of new paragraphs, in between title and text blocks, and even in between elements in full caps. As a result, often a great deal of the space won on margins on the one hand and through the use of smaller and lighter type faces on the other is re-invested in typographical white, which makes the book more readable. No longer status, but accessibility prevails. Books underwent this fundamental transformation in response to changing societal needs and norms which marked the transition from a late-mediaeval to an early modern society. In turn, those transformed objects fed back into that society, reinforcing and deepening societal change. The relationship between society and the book is dynamic, and society and the book reconfigure each other iteratively through time. The three dimensions of the book and of the page, and the way text, paratext and image are laid out on the page, are defined by and dependent on ever evolving functions and meanings of the object “book” within that society.47 People involved in its production, time and time again re-assess procedures and materials in order to re-adjust the book to an ever changing context, giving its look, feel, and organization little nudges into new directions, i.e., those which best fulfill actual societal needs. When this phase is completed in the second half of the sixteenth century, a new transformation in book design takes place in order to comply with changing societal requirements. It was pointed out how the phenomenon called typographical discontinuity enters the design of titles in the first half of the sixteenth century, and visual typography becomes the trade mark of the “Renaissance” book. This practice, which
47 These ideas are inspired by Mak, How the Page Matters, 3–8.
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values formal features over content, is at its apex around 1550. In fact, it had been present in a simpler form before. Early on, the first line on title pages had been printed in a larger size, switching to normal font on the next one, at the beginning of books as well as, later on, on title pages. But in the second half of the sixteenth century, larger first lines and typographical discontinuity gradually disappear, first from Latin, and later from Dutch editions. By the mid-seventeenth century, form follows function in a way we are used to today. This is not a trivial evolution, but one which identifies important societal changes to which the book responds. This is exactly the period in which a scientific revolution takes place, marking “a real discontinuity in intellectual history.”48 New methods are based on rational premises.49 Similar to scientific instruments such as lenses and telescopes, books become more accurate as well in the ways they subdivide texts and refer to information with numbers, in tables of contents and in indexes. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the two different layout paradigms which existed for Latin editions on the one hand, and books in Dutch on the other, disappear and become one, marking a pinnacle of rationalization in book design. This achievement is consolidated in the Age of Enlightenment, which is not to say that typographical evolution comes to a stand-still – on the contrary.
Bibliography Crayling, A.C. The Age of Genius. The Seventeenth Century & the Birth of the Modern Mind. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Geleijns, Erik. “Niet gedrukt in Den Haag. Achttiende-eeuwse boeken met een vals Haags impressum,” Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 15 (2008): 109–24. Gilmont, Jean-François. Le livre & ses secrets. Genève: Droz/Louvain-la-Neuve: UCL, 2003. Hoftijzer, Paul. “Antwerpen of Leiden? Opkomst en ondergang van de Leidse katholieke uitgever en boekverkoper Christiaen Vermey (werkzaam 1704–1724),” De Gulden Passer 93 (2015): 37–58. Janssen, Frans A. Technique and Design in the History of Printing. 26 Essays. ’t Goy-Houten: Hes & De Graaf, 2004. Janssen, Frans A. “The graphic design of the first book printed by Johann Schöffer (1503).” In Materielle Aspekte in der Inkunabelforschung, edited by Christoph Reske and Wolfgang Schmitz, 43–57. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017. McKenzie, Donald F. “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printinghouse Practices,” Studies in Bibliography 22 (1969): 1–75. Mak, Bonny. How the Page Matters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Martin, Henri-Jean. La naissance du livre moderne. Mise en page et mise en texte du livre français (XIV–XVIIe siècles). Paris: Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie, 2000.
48 Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science (London: Penguin 2016), 146. 49 A.C. Crayling, The Age of Genius. The Seventeenth Century & the Birth of the Modern Mind (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 209–230.
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Nijhoff, Wouter and Maria-Elisabeth Kronenberg. Nederlandsche bibliographie van 1500 tot 1540, 3 vols. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1923–1971. Pittion, Jean-Paul. Le livre à la Renaissance. Introduction à la bibliographie historique et matérielle. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Proot, Goran. “Designing the Word of God. Layout and Typography of Flemisch 16th-Century Folio Bibles Published in the Vernacular,” De Gulden Passer 90, no. 2 (2012): 143–79. Proot, Goran. “De opmars van de romein. Het gebruik van romein en gotisch in Nederlandstalig drukwerk uit de zuidelijke Lage Landen,” Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 19 (2012): 65–85. Proot, Goran. “Converging Design Paradigms: Long-term Evolutions in the Layout of Title Pages of Latin and Vernacular Editions Published in the Southern Netherlands, 1541–1660,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 108, no. 3 (September 2014): 269–305. Proot, Goran. “The Evolving Typographical Identity of Theatre Programmes Produced for the Flemish Jesuits in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In The Book in the Low Countries, edited by W.A. Kelly and G. Trentacosti, 11–53. Edinburgh: Merchiston Publishing, 2015. Proot, Goran. “Mending the Broken Word. Typographic Discontinuity on Title-Pages of Early Modern books Printed in the Southern Netherlands (1501–1700),” Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 22 (2015): 45–59. Proot, Goran. “Survival Factors of Seventeenth-Century Hand-Press Books Published in the Southern Netherlands: The Importance of Sheet Counts, Sammelbände and the Role of Institutional Collections.” In Lost Books. Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe, edited by Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree, 199–201. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016. Proot, Goran. Metamorfose. Typografische evolutie van het handgedrukte boek in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1473–1541. Catalogus bij de tentoonstelling in de Bibliotheek Stadscampus van de Universiteit Antwerpen, 13 november 2017–29 november 2017. Antwerpen: Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibiofielen, 2017. Proot, Goran. “Een passend sluitstuk (Antwerpen, 1535).” In Een oud Boeck is oud Goud. Studies over bijzondere werken bij het afscheid van Ad Leerintveld als conservator moderne handschriften van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ed. Jan Bos et al., 215–25. Den Haag: Koninklijke Bibliotheek/Amsterdam: De Buitenkant, 2017. Proot, Goran. “Damned Usury, ‘Cologne,’ ‘1715’: Delusion or bona fide? Typographical Evolution on Title Pages in the Southern Netherlands in the 18th Century and its Potential as a Means of Identification,” Histoire et civilisation du livre 14 (2018): 287–333. Proot, Goran and Giles Mandelbrote. “Prices for Spanish and Latin books published by Martinus Nutius I, ca. 1558.” In Lux Librorum: Essays on Books and History for Chris Coppens, edited by Goran Proot, David McKitterick, Angela Nuovo and Paul F. Gehl, 65–122. Mechelen: Flanders Book Historical Society, 2018. Riffaud, Alain. Une archéologie du livre français moderne. Genève: Droz, 2011. Sayce, Richard Antony. “Compositorial Practices and the Localisation of Printed Books, 1530–1800,” The Library 21 (1966): 1–45. Van Impe, Steven, Goran Proot and Susanna de Schepper. “Beyond Description: Bibliographic Tools as ‘Big Data’ for the Study of Belgian Handpress Books. With an Example on the Use of Typographical Ornaments, 1501–1540,” De Gulden Passer 92, no. 1 (2014): 103–24. Van Rossem, Stijn. Het gevecht met de boeken. De uitgeversstrategieën van de familie Verdussen (Antwerpen, 1589–1689). Antwerpen: Universiteit Antwerpen, 2014. Vervliet, H.D.L. “Humanisme en typografie: de introductie van de romein en cursief in de Nederlanden (1483–ca. 1540).” In Boek, bibliotheek en geesteswetenschappen: opstellen door vrienden en collega’s van dr. C. Reedijk geschreven ter gelegenheid van zijn aftreden als bibliothecaris van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek te ’s-Gravenhage, 316–30. Hilversum: Verloren, 1986.
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Vervliet, H.D.L. Sixteenth-Century Printing Types of the Low Countries. Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1968. Vervliet, Hendrik D.L. Vine Leaf Ornaments in Renaissance Typography. A Survey. Houten: Oak Knoll, 2012. Weinberg, Steven. To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science. London: Penguin, 2016.
Bruce Rusk
Chapter 9 Writer’s Block or Printer’s Block: The Book and Its Openings in Early Modern China Abstract: This paper argues that although the layout of most woodblock-printed books in early modern China treated the text they contained as a formless, running whole, certain commercial printers in the last century of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) paid special attention to the layout of their chapters (juan) and adjusted both formatting and content to achieve certain aesthetic or conceptual ends. It examines several late-Ming “daily use encyclopaedias” (riyong leishu) to assess how their editors organized material within the chapter and manipulated the space of the page, which once bound was different from that of the woodblock on which it was printed, to create visual consistency and ease of consultation. In particular, certain editors worked to ensure that the entirety of diagrams and other visual features remained visible at once, rather splitting them between pages, and moved textual elements around visual ones to bring this about. They also betray a horror vacui (perhaps both aesthetic and material) by leaving as little empty space as possible at the end of each chapter. In these ways, the form of the book could dictate its content and we can see, if askance, some of the concerns of those who produced the books rather than those who wrote the words. Keywords: page layout, woodblock printing, Ming dynasty, popular literature, book design, illustration
In December 2017 the French government blocked the sale of the Marquis de Sade’s original manuscript of the 120 Days of Sodom, declaring it a national treasure that was not to leave French hands. Whatever one’s judgment of the value of the work, the manuscript, as an object, is noteworthy within the history of the European book for its material form: a narrative scrawled in tiny letters on a roll 12 centimeters wide and twelve meters in length. The marquis’ choice of a scroll was practical: according to legend, it was smuggled out of his cell in the Bastille rolled up in a dildo.1 But the unusual format could also affect the way a reader would encounter it, since it lacks a standard feature of the Western book. Its lines run horizontally
1 Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “Halting Auction, France Designates Marquis de Sade Manuscript a ‘National Treasure,’” New York Times, December 19, 2017; Jean-Michel Normand, “Le rouleau du marquis de Sade dans les fossés de la Bastille,” Le Monde, July 29, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-010
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across the narrow scroll and follow one another without interruption, making it a book without pages. The marquis would not have expected his book to reach most of its readers in the same form; rather, it would be copied onto sheets of paper, whether by hand or in print, and these would circulate as bound codices whose text would be segmented into units defined by the dimensions of its surface, their boundaries – page breaks – coming at points that were generally arbitrary and unrelated to the content. Such repackaging of a stream of words into uniform boxes is, ontogenetically, characteristic of the passage from composition to publication, in which a manuscript consisting of documents on surfaces of arbitrary and perhaps variable size, whose layout is transitory and accidental, is laid out in a gridded space of identical sheets and uniform script or type. Within East Asian book history, however, this passage also describes an important phylogenetic transition in the history of the book, a development that is tied to but has been obscured by the rise of the codex. For perhaps two millennia – until approximately the eighth century – pages were not a feature of Chinese books. And it was only centuries later that books began to be designed around their pages. In this brief study I will show that by the late sixteenth century commercial publishers had pioneered new pagecentric ways of laying out their books. In very general terms, one conception of the book in early modern China was as a stream of text that was put by necessity onto a sequence of printed sheets. Linear text is spatialized by inscription. Think of a plaintext computer file with no inherent line breaks or page breaks until it is displayed on a screen or printed on paper; it carries no expectation that every viewer will encounter the same layout. A different conception would understand the book as born impaginated – think PDF. In even more general terms, the view of text as an amorphous fluid and the book as a nonreactive vessel into which it was poured corresponds in East Asia to the ideals of elite literary genres and the transmission of esteemed classical texts. The second conception, in which the design of pages was integral to the work, was more closely associated with genres less valued by the elite. For example, it is difficult to imagine an elite poet choosing his or her words with an eye to the layout of the words on the page: line breaks were not marked in Chinese poetry, as they would come be in modern European languages, though stanza breaks could be.2 Text simply ran, and the duration of its laps was the height of the page divided by the pace of the hand. One copy or edition of a work might have twenty-two characters to the line, another eighteen, a third twenty-four; there might be eighteen lines per page, or twentytwo. The words reflowed. This could not happen the same way with the more complex layout of multiple columns or registers, or with integrated images and tables, or when an editor is concerned with the full use of the space of the page.
2 The main exceptions would be acrostic-like literary games and texts written on non-book surfaces such as inscriptions on paintings.
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This chapter examines books of this second sort issued by commercial publishers in China during the period from the late Ming (1368–1644) to the early Qing (1644–1911) and how their creators used the space of the page. I find that these editors, like those of modern newspapers and magazines, could adjust the dimensions of graphic elements to compensate for the space the text occupies or leaves empty, and that they paid attention to the page as a space in which two-dimensional, information-bearing structures could be built within a continuous flow of words. Although the books in which this happens were cheap mass productions and the execution of the printing was often shoddy, as examples of page design they could be inventive, effective, and distinct from other books of the time. This essay represents a few sondages into one cache of this material, with an eye to using one category of sources to begin addressing a set of questions about the culture of the printed book in early modern China. First of all, when and how do printed books acknowledge and respond to their printed materiality? Close on the heels of that question is another: Who were the agents of that recognition? At the level of the page, these questions intersect with one that has been too little asked in the history of the East Asian book, “Why do pages look the way they do?” Other contributions in this volume explore how the page has structured bookly traditions of Europe and the Near East since antiquity.3 In the ancient Mediterranean world, text on scrolls was typically written in horizontal lines parallel to the length of the roll and arranged in blocks of comfortable and uniform width (in Latin paginae, whence the English page). This layout prefigured and translated easily into the leaves of the codex, which presents pairs of facing pages to the exclusion of all others. Much the same can be said of the South Asian tradition, in which the archetypal form of the book is a stack of inscribed leaves, encountered sequentially; this model translated easily to paper.4 The development of the East Asian book over the past two millennia seems, at first glance, to follow a similar trajectory from roll to codex. Paper scrolls replaced bamboo strips and were in turn supplanted by bound volumes of paper leaves. However, paying attention to the visual encounter with the book and the page as a framing device suggests that the move to the codex was a more fundamental shift in East Asia than elsewhere in Eurasia. As discussed in chapter 3 of this volume, the first surviving written corpus from China consists of Shang dynasty (ca. 1200–1045 BCE) inscriptions on bone and shell, but texts longer than a few sentences were generally written on strips of bamboo or wood strung together as a roll. In general, each strip contained a single column of characters, and as many strips were used as the length of the text required. A reader would unroll the bundle section by section, moving from
3 See especially chapters 2 (highlighting the significance of page boundaries in Jewish sacred books, where they are far from arbitrary) and 13 in this volume. See also Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters, Studies in Book and Print Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), chap. 1. 4 See chapters 4 and 5 in this volume.
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right to left to expose one segment at a time and rolling up the excess at the two ends. The other medium of early Chinese books, silk sheets, likewise offered no inherent boundaries. They could be rolled or folded when not in use, then opened to reveal all or part of their surface.5 By the second century CE paper began to replace silk and bamboo as the writing surface of choice, yet the format of books was largely unchanged: like their forerunners, paper scrolls consisted of continuous running text with no demarcations except section headings. Even books and documents containing both text and image, which required a user to expose an area equivalent to multiple lines of text, created only ad hoc sections dictated by the content.6 The same applies to text arranged in a tabular layout: the width of charts, tables, and pictures, as they spread over part of a scroll or across multiple bamboo strips, was dictated by their content, not by structural factors.7 In other words, early East Asian books had no pages, if by “page” we understand a unit of surface that in the course of reading is exposed to the exclusion of all others (except for a possible facing page) in the same volume. In such books, there is no natural unit between a single line of text and an entire roll. Even if a roll were to be, quite exceptionally, opened to its full length, a reader’s field of vision could only encompass a portion of the whole at any given moment. Ordinary reading entailed viewing one segment at a time, but the width of that segment could be wider or narrower for individual readers, depending on personal preference or the affordances of furniture. The page became a feature of Chinese books around the eighth century, when new binding techniques created formats in which individual surfaces were accessed sequentially or as needed. These were the first East Asian books with pages. The neologism that came to designate this codicological unit, ye
5 For a good introduction to early forms of the book in China, see Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, Written on Bamboo & Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books & Inscriptions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 6 For observations on the basics of medieval book layout, see Jean-Pierre Drège, “La matérialité du texte: préliminaires à une étude de la mise en page du livre chinois,” in Paroles à dire, paroles à écrire: Inde, Chine, Japon, ed. Viviane Alleton, Recherches d’histoire et de sciences sociales 75 (Paris: École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1997), 241–52; and Jean-Pierre Drège and Constantino Moretti (eds.), La fabrique du lisible: La mise en texte des manuscrits de la chine ancienne et médiévale (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des hautes études chinoises, 2014), esp. 345–377. 7 On the integration of text and image and the category of tu 圖, which includes both verbal and non-verbal graphics, see the contributions in Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, and Georges Métailié (eds.), Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China: The Warp and the Weft, Sinica Leidensia 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). In thinking of the page as a structuring element I am indebted to recent work in media studies such as Lisa Gitelman, Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents, Sign, Storage, Transmission (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014); Bernhard Siegert, Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Meaning Systems (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015).
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葉 (“leaf,” later written ye 頁), suggests a tie to South Asian forms.8 The first widespread format with pages was “whirlwind binding,” in which a series of sheets was affixed on one edge to a shared backing, allowing users to jump to any passage without first moving past all the preceding text, as one has to do with a typical scroll.9 Books in “folded sutra binding” consisted, like scrolls, of a continuous series of textual columns, but the paper was folded at regular intervals, creating a sequence of equally-sized rectangles several columns wide. Sutra binding continues to be used in religious contexts, but whirlwind binding was replaced by various codex-like formats, which consist of a series of rectangular sheets bound to a single spine. In some cases the paper was thick and opaque, and both faces could bear writing. Over time, however, increasingly thin and translucent paper, which could only be inscribed on one side, became the norm; this would be folded to create two half-pages. During the Song period (960–1279) and into the Yuan (1271–1368), the inscribed faces were typically folded toward each other and gathered together at the folds, which were glued to a backing to form a spine; the flapping pairs of half-pages inspired the name “butterfly binding” (hudiezhuang 蝴蝶裝). In the Yuan or early Ming, a new pattern emerged: the sheets were folded in the opposite way, so that the blank sides touched and the fold faced outward. The loose edges would be pasted to a sheet that formed the front and back covers as well as the spine, hence the name “wrapped back” (baobei 包背). The pages were folded the same way in the “thread-bound” (xianzhuang 線裝) format that became popular in the last half of the Ming period, which instead of a glued spine and cover had pages bound together with paper twists and covers attached by fine thread (for the “butterfly,” the “wrapped back,”the “stitch-bound” bindings, see Figure 1 in the Introduction to this volume). In both of these formats, the right and left sides of a sheet were no longer visible simultaneously: when a book was opened flat, the viewer, reading from right to left, sees, the second half of one sheet on the right and the first half of the next sheet on the left.
8 On the etymology of words for pages, see Ye Dehui 葉德輝, Shulin qinghua 書林清話 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1957), 16–17. I exclude from consideration here non-Chinese books in the South Asian tradition, which were known in East Asian after the arrival of Buddhism and likely inspired some of these innovations, perhaps through Tibetan influence. See Jean-Pierre Drège, “Les ôles chinoises,” in La fabrique du lisible, ed. Drège and Moretti, 361–64; John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 164–85. 9 The sheets were not brought together in a spine but pasted in sequence close to one another against a backing that was rolled up into a scroll, not folded together as a codex. In fact, this is only one of several interpretations of the term “whirlwind binding” (xuanfengzhuang 旋風裝), which is not completely described in early sources. See the discussion in Fang Junqi 方俊琦, “Cong Dunhuang yishu kan guji xingtai de tanbian yu fazhan” 從敦煌遺書看古籍形態的演變與發展, Zhejiang shifan daxue xuebao (shehuikexue ban) 浙江師範大學學報(社會科學版) 2013, no. 06 (2013): 50–54.
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This innovation has been portrayed in most histories of the East Asian book as an evolutionary step, significant because it created durable and inexpensive codices. Thread-bound books indeed became the norm throughout East Asia until new techniques were imported in the nineteenth century, and their rise coincided with and may have facilitated a boom in commercial printing that made books more available than ever before.10 From the perspective of book design, however, the new format is also revolutionary, in that it introduces a new degree of complexity into the creation of a finished volume. The wrinkle was this: whereas in every earlier format the page that the scribe or printer created was the page that the reader encountered, wrapped-back and thread-bound books introduced a disjuncture between the inscribed sheet and the visible pair of half-leaves.11 This new surface, made up of part of two separate sheets, is what in European codicology is called the “opening.” A designer who sought to offer the reader a unified visual experience, such as an image or chart that spread across the whole opening, bridging the gap of the gutter, would have to plan to ensure that the appropriate halves of two pieces of paper met neatly. In the case of woodblock printing, which accounted for the majority of book production in China (and probably all of East Asia) until the twentieth century, this meant coordinating material drawn from two separate blocks. This additional step makes the thread-bound book more of a planned object than its predecessors. Although designing half a page ahead is not as involved as, for example, laying out a sheet to be printed, folded, cut, and gathered as an octavo quire in European printing, the disconnect it introduced was a novelty in the East Asian book tradition. Cousins of the Western practice, first attested in Coptic books, of folding multiple sheets into quires that were in turn bound into a codex were rare. Booklets produced by folding and cutting larger sheets seem to have been used in a limited way in northwestern China (perhaps under Western influence), and a similar form of binding was known in Japan.12 Rather, sheets could always be added to 10 One reason for the resilience of thread-bound volume is that almost no paste (which wears out and attracts pests) is required to assemble them: the leaves are held together with paper twists near the spine and covers are affixed with thread. For overviews of the past generation of scholarship on book history in China, especially the developments on the Late Imperial period, see Cynthia Joanne Brokaw, “Book History in Premodern China: The State of the Discipline I,” Book History 10, no. 1 (2007): 253–90; Tobie Meyer-Fong, “The Printed World: Books, Publishing Culture, and Society in Late Imperial China,” Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 3 (August 2007): 787–817. 11 There were earlier forms of codex bound with stitched binding, dating back at least to the late medieval period, but they were fundamentally different from Ming and later xianzhuang binding in that they were on thick paper with writing on both sides. See Li Zhizhong 李致忠 and Wu Fangsi 吳芳思, “Zhongguo shushi yanjiu zhong de yixie wenti (zhi er): gushu Fanxiazhuang, xuanfengzhuan, hudiezhuang, xianzhuang de qiyuan yu liubian” 中國書史研究中的一些問題(之二) 古書梵夾裝、旋風裝、蝴 蝶裝、包背裝、線裝的起源與流變, Tushuguanxue tongxun 圖書館學通訊 1987, no. 02 (1987): 74–85; Jean-Pierre Drège, “Les codices,” in La fabrique du lisible, ed. Drège and Moretti, 373–76. 12 Jean-Pierre Drège, “Les cahiers des manuscrits de Touen-Houang,” in Contributions aux études sur Touen-Houang, ed. Michel Soymié, Hautes études orientales 10 (Geneva: Droz, 1979), 17–28; Drège, “Les codices.” The Japanese method of yamato-toji 大和綴 also involved creating bundles of
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thread-bound books individually, as needed, in a procedure that was essentially the same for original composition, scribal copying, and preparation for printing.13 It is not surprising, then, that printers – the parties involved most directly in the passage from manuscript to woodblock to loose sheets to bound volumes – were apparently the first to adjust to and make use of this development. The change is visible in the positioning of images in sixteenth-century woodblock-printed books, which begin around the middle of the Jiajing 嘉靖 period (1522–1567) to feature images that fill both sides of an opening in a thread-bound volume because their two halves are printed on two adjoining sheets from two different woodblocks.14 The same applies to tabular material, especially when information was keyed to row and column headers or other labels referencing material elsewhere on the page. Older imprints, produced with the expectation that the entire sheet would be visible, with its inward center fold at the spine, were often rebound in the new style and the full-page images or tables would be divided by the folded page, making it impossible to view the sheet in its entirety. A good example of this reshuffling comes from a Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) divination manual, Xinbian wanli jinnang xingjia zongkua 新編萬曆錦囊星家總括 (Newlycompiled portable eternal calendar for astrologers), of which a copy survives in the National Central Library, Taibei. The body of the work consists largely of tables setting out numerological correspondences and prognostications for each year in the sixty-year calendrical cycle, much of it summarizing material from other works. Two pages explain the prospects for each year, an A type and a B type (each contains a different set of numerological and astrological calculations for the year in question). Every A page has the same layout, with a uniform set of headings in the same positions and boxes filled with the appropriate data. The same goes for all the B pages. As a Yuan-dynasty user would have encountered it, this portion of the book would have consisted of a series of easily-read charts. But the copy now in the National Central Library, Taibei, like
nested, folded sheets that were in turn sewn together into volumes. Its name implies, perhaps incorrectly, a uniquely Japanese practice. Peter F. Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century, Handbook of Oriental Studies 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 43–44. 13 For an excellent introduction to the forms of Chinese books as represented in a European collection, see David Helliwell, “The Repair and Binding of Old Chinese Books Translated and Adapted for Western Conservators,” East Asian Library Journal 8, no. 1 (1998): 27–150. On bookbinding in pre-modern Japan and Korea, see Kornicki, The Book in Japan, chap. 2; Minah Song, “The History and Characteristics of Traditional Korean Books and Bookbinding,” Journal of the Institute of Conservation 32, no. 1 (March 2009): 53–78. 14 Further research is needed to determine exactly when and where the shift occurred. An initial examination of a series of local gazetteers and other books finds no examples of staggered layout before the mid-Jiajing period, while single-block layouts persist but becomes less common over the rest of the Ming.
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virtually all old imprints, has been rebound in thread binding, splitting the charts in two. As a result, the openings in this section always show half of an A chart and half of a B chart, making it difficult to read across the whole of either.15 When it was first printed, the Eternal calendar was probably sold as a stack of loose sheets that buyers could bind as they wished. Its charts would presumably still have made the same sense once the customer had had it bound in the style of the time, typically in butterfly binding, with the sheets folded inwards and affixed to a glued spine and cover. The wrapped back format was becoming popular in the Yuan, when the Eternal calendar was printed: it also glued pages to a spine and cover, but with the folds facing outward and the edges of the page coming together at the binding (and the two blank faces of the pages hidden inside).16 Had the book been bound this way, its layout would have been disrupted as described above. It was presumably a later owner, sometime in the last five centuries, who disrupted the original charts by rebinding the books. The Eternal calendar was never reissued, but had a late Ming publisher decided to print a new edition they would have had to decide how to handle the problem of layout. Simply recreating the original blocks would make the book unwieldy to use in the modern thread-bound format, so an up-to-date version would require a reorganization of the content. The same is true of many books printed up until the late sixteenth century, most surviving exemplars of which have since been rebound in the newer thread-bound style. In many cases the images and tables have ended up out of joint, as in the Eternal Calendar. In the Yuan and early to mid-Ming (from the thirteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries), printed books continued to be laid out as if the entire printed sheet would be open to view, with images or tables that would not fit on one side spreading over the fold. Once bound in either wrapped-back or thread binding, in which the fold isolated the two parts from one another, this layout became disjointed and difficult to read. A good example is a publication of the Ming state, a compilation of state rituals titled Collected Rites of the Great Ming (Da Ming jili 大明集禮). The first version was compiled in the early fifteenth century, but the only printed edition was of a revised version completed in 1530. There are several full-page spreads in this edition, with images that spread across either side of the fold. The surviving copies I have seen are in thread binding, so the images are difficult to read, and can only be
15 Lei Yingfa 雷英發, Xinbian wanli jinnang xingjia zongkua 新編萬曆錦囊星家總括. I have only examined the images of the first volume available at “Newly Compiled Pocket Astrological Calendar,” World Digital Library, May 24, 2017. It was probably printed in Jianyang, Fujian around the turn of the fourteenth century. 16 There is much confusion in secondary scholarship over the distinctions among these forms. Some assert that the pages of baobei books are held together with paper twists, like xianzhuang ones, others that they are glued to the spine. In fact there may have been intermediary forms, and old books were frequently modified in rebinding, and the whole topic deserves systematic analysis separately from the analysis of traditional nomenclature.
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interpreted by flipping back and forth between the two sides – in some cases, characters lie atop the fold. This design would make perfect sense, however, if the book was meant to be bound with the pages folded inward, so the two sides would be legible. Another hint that this is the designer’s intention comes from the way the running title is indicated: most pages have a standard column in the middle with the title, and below it the chapter number and page number, inside a cartouche defined by a “fishtail” shape that also guides the folding of the page. The full-page spreads, however, move this label to the bottom-right corner of the right-hand page. Hence this book was either meant to be bound so that these images remained intact, or the conceptual sway of older design patterns was so great that an impractical layout suited to an archaic mode of book production was retained.17 Whatever the reason, only in the mid-sixteenth century did publishers begin to adjust to the innovations in format. In some books, all the images take up only a half-sheet, for example as a frontispiece at the start of a chapter. Images that occupy the full opening appear as two distinct halves, printed from two different blocks and meeting at the spine. The binding of the book took up a centimeter or more of each sheet, so printers had to leave adequate space for the gutter. Depending on how tightly the book was bound and how narrow the margins were, there could be a visible gap in the form of a vertical band between the two halves of a continuous image, or part of one or both sides could be swallowed by the binding. In figurative works such as illustrations of fiction and drama, this constraint structured the composition around two distinct frames, requiring the artist to ensure that visual objects such as humans and animals fit on one side or the other while also using background and other design elements to create continuity between the opposing pages.18 Preparing woodblocks for such illustrations required forethought and attention to detail; even well-executed images like that in Figure 9.1, from a Wanli-era 萬曆 (1572–1620) drama collection, did not always fit together perfectly. In this case, the two sides differ slightly in height, so that features extending from the shorter page on the right to the taller one on the left do not all line up, while in this exemplar the blocks have taken the ink unevenly, leaving the diagonal grid of the courtyard floor crisp and dark on the left and indistinct on the right. Still, the illustrator has taken 17 Xu Yikui 徐一夔 et al., Da Ming jili 大明集禮 (Beijing?: Neifu, 1530). I have examined scans of copies at the Harvard-Yenching Library (http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:29113256) and the Library of the University of Tsukuba (http://dbrec.nijl.ac.jp/KTG_B_100222465); the two are paginated identically. For good examples of diagrams and characters bisected by the fold, see 10.17ab, 17.58ab, 25.61–62b, 26.55ab. 18 This set of ten plays is illustrated with pictures that fill either the full page or one half. In gutterspanning illustrations, each figure is drawn on one side or the other, never crossing the divide. On drama illustration, see Li-ling Hsiao, The Eternal Present of the Past: Illustration, Theatre, and Reading in the Wanli Period, 1573–1619, China Studies 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), chaps. 3 and 5. On fiction, see Robert E. Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
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care to build a continuous scene and used the bifurcation to dramatic effect, stationing the two voyeuses on the right as if they were peeking across the gap in the middle. Just as the figures’ gaze crosses the page boundary in Figure 9.1, illustrators of other books played with the midline by making it a site of action: in one Wanliera edition of Xiyang ji 西洋記 (Record the Western Ocean), a novel featuring high seas adventure and many battle scenes, the human figures generally stay to one side or the other of the central gutter, but some objects in motion such as the trailing hoof of a galloping horse, the tip of a boatman’s pole, or the business end of a thrusting spear extend across the frame, heightening the sense of dynamism.19 Play with page boundaries, and with the reader’s movement from one page to the next, was one of several features with which book designers experimented in the late Ming and into the early Qing. Recent scholarship has found many examples of this kind of play in luxury publications, both lavish editions of dramas and other works that could be considered “art books,” in that the images were not supplementary illustrations but a main selling point of the publication, often taking up more space than the text, or sharing most of the space with it.20 These expensive productions were available to only the wealthiest consumers and represent the top end of the book market. This can create the impression that “high end” publishers pioneered book design and were the most careful and inventive ones in their exploration of the possibilities of woodblock printing. Turning to the opposite end of the market, however, suggests that in their own way some “low end” publishers were innovators too, albeit using different techniques to different ends. Histories of the printing and publishing process in China in the first three quarters of the last millennium have often excluded detailed analysis of the form of the printed book, leaving that study to the bibliographers, art historians, and their allies. Indeed there is good reason to believe that many contemporary readers shared such an attitude, viewing the woodblock-printed book as a non-reactive vessel for the fluid text poured into it, the latter taking the shape of the former only accidentally and temporarily. Much printing was of pre-existing words, often very old text such as Classics and other standardized writings whose wording and order could not be lightly tampered with. Even works commissioned from authors by publishers were
19 Luo Maodeng 羅懋登, Xinke quanxiang Sanbao taijian xiyang ji tongsu yanyi 新刻全像三寶太監 西洋記通俗演義 (Nanjing: Sanshan daoren, between 1597 and 1620), 1.1a–2b, 7.1b–2a, 19.28b–29a, 19.49b–10a. 20 Among many other works, see Hsiao, The Eternal Present of the Past; Suzanne Elaine Wright, “Visual Communication and Social Identity in Woodblock-Printed Letter Papers of the Late Ming Dynasty” (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1999); Tamara Heimarck Bentley, The Figurative Works of Chen Hongshou (1599–1652): Authentic Voices, Expanding Markets, Visual Culture in Early Modernity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). For an important study of regional traditions see Michela Bussotti, Gravures de Hui: étude du livre illustré chinois: fin du XVIe siècle-première moitié du XVIIe siècle, Mémoires archéologiques 26 (Paris: Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, 2001).
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Figure 9.1: The two sides of an image, on two facing pages, differed in height. Shan Ben 單本, Xinke Wunao jiaopa ji 新刻五鬧蕉帕記.
likely written as running text that was laid out for print once it was in the printer’s hands. So where and how the words fell on the page would be a matter of simple arithmetic, of fitting the words into a typographic grid with a fixed number of characters per line and lines per page.21 Additions such as illustrations and commentary can disrupt this layout, especially if they are injected into the text rather than being sequestered to marginal registers or to the heads of chapters. Nonetheless, they are 21 Such grids were generally uniform in printed books, in some cases across the entire output of a publishing house. In printing, if not always in handwriting, there was neither word spacing nor variation in glyph width, unlike European alphabetic writing or the Japanese kana syllabary. The presence of the “grid,” as an abstraction, does not mean that characters all fit into inviolable isometric rectangles; see Martin Heijdra, “Typography and the East Asian Book: The Evolution of the Grid,” in The Scholar’s Mind: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Mote, ed. Perry Link (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2009), 115–45. An important, and to my knowledge unexplored, development in the late Ming is the increasing use of readymade stationery with a grid laid out like a printed book, including a special column for the fold. Such paper could in principle be used to plan the layout of printed books; more research is needed to explore how it functioned in practice.
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usually considered paratextual, affecting the interpretation but not the form of what they parasitize. Inevitably, choices made in the publication process shape what readers encounter, as the work of book historians such as Roger Chartier and D.F. McKenzie has shown for early modern Europe.22 Equivalent processes in China have been studied in less detail, but the output of pre-modern printing survives in vast quantities that will permit, along with textual sources, the reconstruction of much of what went into the making of books.23 In some cases the printer did little more than copy an existing work, most directly by carving new blocks on the basis of a tracing of an old edition, most easily by having a scribe make a good copy of the text and tracing that. But what happens when the publisher is more actively involved in the selection of the text, and shapes it to their own purposes and preferences? The deep involvement of the editor makes it impossible in this case to separate form from content. Commercial publishers from the late Ming offer abundant examples of such reworking, and their choices can tell us about their preferences and priorities in making books. Some produced books that reveal a strong concern with visual design and, in particular, careful attention to the page. Some of the most complex layouts in Chinese book history come from late-Ming publishers. At the top end of the market were lavishly illustrated books with finely detailed woodcuts and multicolor editions with parallel commentary by multiple authors each in its own hue. The middle and bottom of the market, meanwhile, were long derided by bibliophiles for low quality, especially the perceived shoddiness and overall ugliness of the characters, which strayed from the calligraphic ideal against which aesthetes measured them. Their angular strokes, with many straight lines and proportions that differ from those of handwriting, were easier to carve into wood, so they have been interpreted as guided mainly by efficiency and cost-saving, at the expense of aesthetics. As Martin Heijdra has argued, however, these graphic developments represent design choices that took into account the
22 Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Roger Chartier, The Author’s Hand and the Printer’s Mind, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014); D. F. McKenzie, Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, ed. Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez, Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book (Amherst: University Of Massachusetts Press, 2002). 23 For a good introduction see Joseph Peter McDermott, A Social History of the Chinese Book: Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China, Understanding China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), chap. 1. For some comparisons with Europe, see Joseph Peter McDermott and Peter Burke (eds.), The Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe, 1450–1850: Connections and Comparisons (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015).
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experience of reading printed text and can work better for that purpose than forms that hew more closely to brush writing.24 Similarly, some features of low-end imprints that have been perceived as markers of commercial cheapness may at the same time be responses to new design challenges. The clearest example comes from books with multiple parallel registers of separate running text. Unlike intertextually related registers – typically, source text and commentary – these parallel passages were distinct texts, meant to be read separately (though they could be topically related). This layout was common in “merchant books” (shangshu 商書), including route books describing transportation networks across the empire, and in “daily use encyclopaedias” (riyong leishu 日用類書), ubiquitous compendia of diverse knowledge that were accessible to readers of all levels of education.25 Many books in both categories feature pages with at least two, sometimes three, registers of distinct material, each running continuously across the juan 卷 and sometimes through multiple juan. The term juan is a holdover from older book forms: although it literally means “roll,” and in early bibliography did designate the multiple scrolls that made up a single title, in the age of the codex it was a conceptual unit, something like a chapter. Sometimes a single volume (ce 冊) contained a single juan, but more often several juan were grouped in a volume, and could be reorganized when the book was rebound. Daily use encyclopaedias usually devote one juan to each major topic (geography, poetry-writing, pharmacology, etc.), with various texts on that topic in the two or three registers. This multiplicity of texts under a single title makes daily use encyclopaedias especially suitable for such the study of how publishers reworked their material. They were especially free to do so because the encyclopaedias operated under a very weak regime of authorship and were issued exclusively by private printers. If any named person is identified in their paratexts, it is typically the compiler and/or publisher, but these books typically do not indicate that their words are by anyone in particular – even when the words have been lifted from another source. At the same time, they were issued in multiple editions, under a myriad of titles, similar in form and overlapping in content, suggesting a large and competitive market.26 The demographics of this market remain the subject of speculation and uncertainty. The absence of riyong leishu from elite collections signals that they were not taken as serious scholarly works, but does not mean that scholars did not own or read them. How widely they were distributed and read is difficult to know, but many modern studies treat these works as having been consumed by, and reflecting the
24 Heijdra, “Typography and the East Asian Book.” 25 On route books, see Timothy Brook, Geographical Sources of Ming-Qing History, 2nd ed, Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies 58 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, 2002). 26 For the most complete study of riyong leishu and their publishing history, see Wu Huifang 吳蕙芳, Wanbao quanshu: Ming-Qing shiqi de minjian shenghuo shilu 萬寶全書 : 明清時期的民間生活實錄, Zhengzhi daxue shixue congshu 6 (Taibei: Guoli zhengzhi daxue lishixuexi, 2000).
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preferences of, a class of people with basic literacy but few scholarly pretensions.27 However accurate this assessment, these books do contain a variety of material relevant both to the practicalities of everyday life and to making sense of the wider world. They also, as He Yuming has shown, provided material for leisure activities such as drinking games.28 And Shang Wei has demonstrated that elite writers of fiction could draw on them as representations of the everyday life of commoners.29 These works thus seem to have largely served a market of people who were not frequent buyers of books, to whom they appealed with claims to reliability and novelty as well as visual interest. They did not typically claim to represent an authorial voice (or set of voices), or to reproduce an established text or corpus with whose content or at least existence the reader would be familiar – which is not to say that they did not contain material drawn from existing sources, indeed quite the opposite.30 There is thus an enormous flexibility in what they present and how. At the same time, for a modern reader with access to dozens of these books for simultaneous examination, they can seem numbingly alike, with more similarity than difference in structure and content (woodblocks for whole chapters were reused from one title to another). Hence daily use encyclopaedias, in their shabby profusion, offer an excellent source for thinking about the imprint as a designed object. Moreover, they are more explicit about their physical bookness than their better-studied elite counterparts. Consider the table of contents (mulu 目錄). In traditional Chinese books these commonly appear in an introductory and unnumbered juan, along with other prefatory material. In some cases they instead show up at the head of a juan or are absent entirely. The typical mulu of a Ming or Qing book is textual, not codicological, in that it lists headings following the order in which the contents appear but the only location markers are juan numbers, which do not always correspond to volume breaks. A typical riyong leishu, by contrast, provides in its mulu much more information about the physical location of the entries, most notably because it commonly
27 See Benjamin Elman, “Collecting and Classifying: Ming Dynasty Compendia and Encyclopedias (Leishu),” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 2007 (January 2007): 131–57; Yuming He, Home and the World: Editing the “Glorious Ming” in Woodblock-Printed Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 82 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013); Wu Huifang, Wanbao quanshu; the various prefaces and introductions in Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫, Sakade Yoshinobu 坂出祥伸, and Ogawa Yōichi 小川陽一 (eds.), Chūgoku nichiyō ruisho shūsei 中國日用類書集成, 14 vols. (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1999–2004). 28 He, Home and the World, chap. 1. 29 Shang Wei, “The Making of the Everyday World: Jin Ping Mei Cihua and Encyclopedias for Daily Use,” in Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation from the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond, ed. David Der Wei Wang and Shang Wei, Harvard East Asian Monographs 249 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 63–92. 30 Some did, however, bear claims that they had been edited by famous men of letters such as Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 (1558–1639) and Ai Nanying 艾南英 (1583–1646). Such spurious attributions were common among late-Ming commercial publications.
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has separate entries for the two parallel horizontal registers into which pages are typically divided. Some mulu even indicate volume breaks (each volume contained multiple juan), which are as a rule not marked in the mulu of other books (see Figure 9.2). This difference may have to do with their pattern of distribution: elite buyers normally purchased books as sheets in unbound stacks or in a rough and temporary binding, which they would have rebound, often combining several juan into one volume according to the owner’s preference. Thus various copies of the same imprint would be clustered into volumes in different ways. Books for the occasional buyer, however, were more likely to be bound uniformly by the publisher, so the scope of each volume was known at the time of publication and could appear in the table of contents. Likewise, the use of parallel registers made it especially pertinent to reference loci described in terms of placement on the page. Finally, like many commercial publications of the time, most riyong leishu reference their own production in their names, prefixing to the core title a plethora of adjectival phrases about the processes of editing (“expanded,” “supplemented,” “emended”), illustration, and, especially, preparation for print (“on newly-carved blocks,” “freshly-incised,” “third carving”). This is in addition to the self-presentation of the editor-publishers, some of whom famously graced the frontispieces of their productions with self-portraits illustrating their scholarly demeanour or devoted editorial labours.31 The encyclopaedia the start of whose table of contents is shown in Figure 9.2 identifies itself on its title page as the “Completely revised complete book of myriad treasures, marvelous brocade in the forest of letters” (Quanbu wenlin miaojin Wanbao quanshu 全補文林玅錦萬寶全書) with an additional note that it is the “third carving, on new blocks” (sanke xinban 三刻新板).32 The title page bears a further
31 On such publishers see Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries), Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 56 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002); Anne E. McLaren, “Constructing New Reading Publics in Late Ming China,” in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. Cynthia Brokaw and KaiWing Chow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 152–83; Richard G. Wang, Ming Erotic Novellas: Genre, Consumption and Religiosity in Cultural Practice (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011), chap. 2. 32 The table of contents has “Complete Book of Myriad Treasures, Marvelous Brocade in the Forest of Letters, For the Convenience of All in the Realm, Expanded and Supplemented, On Newly-Carved Blocks” (Xinkeban zengbu tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu), while the running title of individual chapters is given variously as Xinban quanbu tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu 新板全補天下便用文林玅錦萬寶全書, Xinban zengbu tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu 新板增補天下便用文林玅錦萬寶全書, Xinban zengbu tianxia bianyong wanbao quanshu 新板增補天下便用萬寶全書, and Xinqie sanzhen tianxia bianyong wanbao quanshu 新鍥三真天下便 用萬寶全書. Such inconsistent titling is typical of Ming riyong leishu. Liu Ziming 劉子明 (ed.), Xinban zengbu tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin Wanbao quanshu 新板增補天下便用文林妙錦萬寶全書 (Jianyang: Anzheng tang, 1612), passim. For examples of the variation in naming, see Wu Huifang, Wanbao quanshu.
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Figure 9.2: First page of table of contents, Tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu.
warning that only if the publisher’s seal mark is present is this a copy of the genuine version authorized by the editor Liu Shuangsong 劉㕠松 (Liu Ziming 子明). In short, these texts acknowledge themselves as books and their publishers highlighted the value that their work added. Some of that work by publishers is obvious, or at least tends to be referenced. Below, I consider a few of the ways in which editors made text, images, and charts (text arranged tabularly or mixed with images) fit into the space they inhabited. Specifically, I look at three features noticeable in late-Ming riyong leishu, though not only there. First, as described above, the layout is based on the facing halfsheets of the thread-bound book, not on the unbound sheets taken directly from the woodblock. Second, I examine some of the ways in which images and text adjust as they are impaginated, fitted to the space defined by the rectangular frame. Finally, I find evidence for a horror vacui, a distaste among certain editors for unoccupied space, especially gaps between sections. The first feature, the tailoring of layouts to the new thread-bound binding, is discussed above. Riyong leishu editors make use of this feature to varying degrees. The first page of a juan is always a singleton, with a blank or unrelated page facing it (as in many modern printed books in the West). Some printers chose to fill this page, or just its bottom register, with an image signalling the chapter’s content;
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others open with the text directly.33 A related practice is the tailoring of images to the space created by the page (and, if applicable, to the register within it). This can mean simply fitting an image to the rectangle available, adjusting the shapes even of natural objects to its contours (Figure 9.3), or it can mean playing with the possibilities of both vertical and horizontal flow through the page. Above all, it entails recognizing the breaks that a reader encounters at page boundaries and preventing widowed or orphaned bits of information. The complexity involved in achieving this is demonstrated by the amount of that data that ends up divided by page borders in other books whose editors seem less concerned with this issue. Tables become difficult to use when the reader must flip back and forth to determine how rows line up or to follow connecting lines. One reason for these disparities is variation in the number of lines per page: most riyong leishu were laid out at 14 lines per
Figure 9.3: Physiognomic face, adjusted to the space of the lower register of a riyong leishu. Liu Ziming, Tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu 天下便用文林妙錦萬寶全書.
33 An encyclopaedia falsely attributed to the eminent scholar Chen Jiru has chapters of all three sorts (no illustration, half-page, and full-page illustrations); of the last sort, some have captions and some do not. Chen Jiru, Xinke Meigong Chen xiansheng bianji Zhushu beicai wanjuan souqi quanshu 新刻眉公陳先生編輯諸書備採萬卷搜奇全書, ed. Chen Huaixuan 陳懷軒 (Jianyang: Cunren tang, 1628).
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half-page in the main register, but some had only 12 or 13; resetting the material wreaked havoc on the organization of charts and tables. Consider the two sets of pages in 9. They come from riyong leishu chapters on divinatory calendrics, a subject that typically relies on charts and tables to explain relationships or present data. On the pages from Miaojin Wanbao quanshu, in the upper image, the charts are all laid out in the lower register so that they remain within a single opening, making it easy for the user to consult them. Wanyong zhengzong buqiuren, in the bottom image, presents some of the same charts in a different order and mixed with other material. Its editor was less successful in maintaining the integrity of these elements, and as a result the user has to flip back and forth between the two sides of a folded sheet. Wanyong zhengzong buqiuren has unusually narrow pages, at only twelve lines per half-page, so if its contents were copied from a source like Miaojin Wanbao quanshu it would have been a challenge to lay the material out elegantly, as charts designed for wider pages would inevitably run over or simply not line up. The third and final layout feature is horror vacui, an avoidance of blank space within the body of a book. I noticed this tendency in certain riyong leishu accidentally when a ruse I often use in skimming electronic texts failed me. I had learned to scan for section boundaries in electronically scanned books by looking for the large blank areas that often appear at the end of juan. Juan are textual segments something like chapters that originated with roll-based forms of the book, but did not strictly correspond to other material divisions. A single juan could contain multiple entries (dozens of poems, for example, or a few chapters of a novel), or a single entry could stretch across multiple juan (for example, within a historical work a series of biographies in a particular category could be divided over many juan). Codicologically, juan could form a single volume (ce 冊), but often two, three, or more were bound together; rarely, however, were juan divided into two ce. After the text of a juan ends, at a point on the last page determined more or less by chance, the rest of the block is normally left blank (save, in some cases, a marker indicating “end of juan”). These blank areas tended to stand out visually and allowed me to find the boundary with ease from image thumbnails. But not so with these riyong leishu. There, the last page was often filled to the very last line, or at least the blank area was only a few lines long, in one if not both of the parallel registers. And very rarely was there more than a page of disparity between the lengths of the registers, although they consist of two different texts, if on related topics. The absence of an obvious gap made it much more difficult to spot the break when scrolling through scanned images. I concluded that these editors were working to ensure that their material filled each juan completely, or nearly so. These editors must have had some reason for laying their books out in this way. Part of the concern may have been economic: one can imagine a publisher setting out to lower the cost of producing a book by reducing the number of pages, and excising text line by line until it just fit a target length. But this explanation is incomplete – why not simply cut whole paragraphs and sections, even if it meant
Figure 9.4: Well- and poorly-framed tables in two riyong leishu. Charts that remain within the same opening are outlined in green, those divided between two openings (thus never entirely visible) are outlined in red. Dashed blue lines indicate boundaries between openings. Top: Miaojin Wanbao quanshu, 21.6a–11b (right-to-left). Bottom: Wanyong zhengzong buqiuren, 25.5b–11a (right-to-left).
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leaving a stretch of empty lines? The most plausible explanation I have found is aesthetic: the editors found a completely full juan more appealing – or believed that potential readers would find it so. This jibes with the marketing of the books: they promise abundance (many different topics, multiple texts on each topic, plentiful illustrations) and completeness (a sense of knowing, if not a little about everything, enough about a sufficient range of things). Perhaps this fullness matched the taste of the buyers who chose among such books in the marketplace. The capacity of editors to write to fit the page is apparent from the very beginning of many encyclopaedias: strikingly often, their prefaces run to the very last line of the page, no further but also no shorter. It is as if these writers knew exactly how much space they were dedicating to the preface (typically, the two halves of a single sheet) and knew how to write to that length. These were writers who could think in the equivalent of the modern newspaper journalist’s column inch, crafting prose with an eye to its final, laid-out form.34 Some of this skill may have been acquired in the course of ordinary education: many, perhaps most, of these publishers would have sat for the civil service examinations, and therefore have learned to write highly formulaic essays in the “eight-legged” style with its rigid template of predefined parts (indeed some of the same publishers also issued books of model examination essays). The preface is typically the only portion of the book to which the editor signs his name as creator. The rest is most often unattributed; though occasionally it claims derivation from an ancient source, there are usually no clear statements of authorship. Editors were free to reorganize and modify the material that made up the majority of these books; the wholesale copying from one riyong leishu to another that was the primary mode of their creation was tempered by major and minor changes. Although editors say very little about this process – aside from platitudes about verification, improvement, correction, and so forth – the results suggest that many worked toward a final product whose visual properties included a minimum of unsightly blank surfaces. When a substantial portion of a woodblock is without text or image, it can either be filled with the blank grid of vertical lines or left completely uncarved, sometimes with an outer frame defining the margins. In the latter case there is a large undifferentiated area with no raised features, so when a print is made from the block the paper tends to settle on it. If the printer has not taken care to avoid inking that portion, the paper can pick up ink from the roughly-chiseled void, leaving random splotches that sometimes reveal the grain of the underlying wood. Such stray ink is common in early modern Chinese woodblock printing, especially in stretches at the ends of juan where the text runs out and there is a long blank. It is not difficult to imagine that, although this effect would be unappealing, the careful handwork
34 For insight into how twentieth-century American journalists worked with such spatial constraints, see John McPhee, “Omission: Choosing What to Leave Out,” The New Yorker, September 14, 2015.
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necessary to prevent it was incompatible with the rapid, low-skilled production methods of commercial publishers: although block-carving was a skilled task, printing could be carried out by almost anyone, including illiterate people and children. Whatever the reasons, a few editors seemed to have made a concerted effort to produce books without such gaps, or at least this was the impression given by a quick scan. To test this hunch, I performed a simple statistical analysis. Table 9.1 shows the “fullness,” meaning the ratio of non-blank lines (or equivalent width, in the case of images) to blank space on the last block of the imprints listed, where it could be determined.35 It shows that some editors made extraordinary efforts to ensure that there was virtually no empty space at the end of their juan, while others were less concerned. The degree to which editors were willing to leave pages blank varied, but some were especially perspicacious, permitting just a few lines of white space. As anyone who has written a document in a word processor knows, the odds
Table 9.1: Mean fullness (ratio of lines with text to blank lines) of last page of juan in selected lateMing riyong leishu (ordered by descending fullness). Title, editor, date
Last pg fullness
No. juan examined
Quanbu wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu 全補文林妙錦萬寶全 書, Liu Shuangsong,
%
Xin quanbu shimin beilan bianyong wenlin huijin wanshu yuanhai 新全補士民備覧便用文林彙錦萬書淵海, Yang Qinzhai,
%
Santai wanyong zhengzong 三台萬用正宗, Yu Xiangdou,
%
Dingqin Chongwen’ge huizuan shimin wanyong zhengzong buqiuren quanbian 鼎鋟崇文閣彙纂士民萬用正宗不求人全編, Longyangzi 龍陽子,
%
Xinke souluo wuju hebing wanbao quanshu 新刻搜羅五車合併萬 寶全書, Xu Qilong 徐企龍,
%
Xinkan hanyuan guangji buding simin jieyong xuehai qunyu 新刊 翰苑廣記補訂四民捷用學海群玉, Wu Weizi 武緯子
%
Xinqi quanbu tianxia simin liyong bianguan wuju bajin 新鍥全補 天下四民利用便觀五車拔錦, Zheng Shikui 鄭世魁,
%
Xinke qunshu zhaiyao shimin bianyong yishi buqiuren 新刻群書 摘要士民便用一事不求人, Chen Yunzhong 陳允中, Wanli period (–)
%
35 Prefatory juan, those with missing or damaged last pages, and tables of contents were excluded from the count.
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that a text will naturally end precisely at the end of a page are low. If we assume that the contents of a juan are of arbitrary length, calculating the amount of blank space at the end is simple modular arithmetic, subtracting from the total length the next-highest multiple of the number of characters that fit on a page (after taking into account line breaks for new sections and headings). No one length should be more likely than another, so any degree of fullness should be equally likely and the average should be about 50%.36 Note that these numbers understate the degree of fullness if the option of leaving the whole B side of a page blank is taken into account. For some editors filling up only the A side was a satisfactory alternative because a narrower sheet (and half-width woodblock) could be used, either unfolded or with a flap extending just a few centimeters beyond the fold. This may also have been a way to use up odd-sized or damaged paper. Figure 9.5 illustrates the final pages of several juan from the “fullest” book examined, Quanbu wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu. It is obvious that the editor has done a remarkable job of reducing blank spaces – three of the six pages shown have none at all, in either register. On the other hand, this metric somewhat overstates the fullness of the books since in juan with two registers it counts as blank the space in whichever of the two is fuller. If the distribution of lengths in the two registers were random and independent, the expected average would be about 2/3, or 67%, which is right where the “least full” encyclopaedias fall. A more granular analysis would take this factor into consideration by capturing the extent to which the content of the two registers matches up in length: just as editors avoided leaving long blank stretches at the end of juan, they avoided them in the top or bottom half of the page too. Multi-register layout added complexity to the editor’s task, because if the material for one register was substantially longer than that in the others, it would leave many half-filled pages. But it also gave editors flexibility, since they could move material between the two registers. Figure 9.6 shows a clear example of this phenomenon. The second juan of most Ming riyong leishu concerns the geography of the empire, and at the end of this juan many have the same block of text, a list of the gates of the two capitals, Beijing and Nanjing. In the example shown in Figure 9.6, this material moves between the top and bottom registers. In both books the list follows an outline of the administrative divisions of the empire (on the lower register) and a jingle describing the route from Nanjing to Beijing (on the upper register). The layout of the two books created a gap in the lower register of the one and the upper register of the other, so the editors placed it where it fit, just as newspaper and magazine editors do today. Editors who made this effort were, I believe, prioritizing the layout of the finished product, and the thread-bound xylographic page shaped their approach to
36 Some books feature juan ending markers (a tag stating “End of juan number X”), which can be on their own line or share the last line of text, and never appear as the only text on a page. In such cases the average will be slightly above 50%.
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Figure 9.5: Final pages of juan in Quanbu wenlin miaojin wanbao quanshu. Top (right to left): juan 1, 2, 3, and 6. Bottom: juan 7 and 8. NB: Last pages of juan 4 and 5 are damaged or missing.
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Figure 9.6: Placement of list of capital gates in two riyong leishu. Left: Dingqie longtou yilan xuehai buqiuren 鼎鍥龍頭一覽學海不求人 (undated), final page of juan 2. Right: Liu Ziming 劉子明, ed. Xinban zengbu tianxia bianyong wenlin miaojin Wanbao quanshu 新板增補天下便用文林妙錦萬寶 全書 (Jianyang: Anzheng tang, 1612), final page of juan 2. The highlighted section is a list of gates of the two Ming capitals (Nanjing first on the left, Beijing first on the right). The black marks (moding 墨釘) in Dingqie longtou yilan xuehai buqiuren stand in for missing characters.
book design. Although the riyong leishu examined here were among the least expensive and most commodified items in the early modern book market, they contain design innovations that have been unrecognized by historians and that seem not to have trickled up to elite or scholarly book production. The horror vacui they exhibit does, however, seem to have affected book design into the subsequent Qing period: I have found a few examples of early- and mid-Qing books that share the high level of “fullness” of some of these late-Ming works. Most are either primers or basic dictionaries, suggesting that the taste of the less educated reader, or of those who published for such an audience, sought a particular sort of visual plenitude.37 A notable exception are the colophons (xiaoyin 小引and tici 題辭) by the literatus publisher Zhang Chao 張潮 (1650–ca. 1707) in his series Zhaodai
37 A good example, which shares a design vocabulary with the Ming riyong leishu, is Zengbu youxue xuzhi zazi daquan 增補幼學須知雜字大全 (Jianyang?: Langxuan ge, 1678).
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congshu 昭代叢書: they consistently fill two half-leaves, the a and b sides of a single block.38 Much more research will be needed to understand how editors achieved this end: what text was added and subtracted, how images and charts were stretched or compressed, and how parts of books were reorganized to yield a pleasing and user-friendly sequence of pages. It is clear, nonetheless, that the page became a novel part of design vocabulary as a result of a seemingly small shift in binding technique. The evidence from the history of the Chinese book suggests that the passage from roll to codex, a development seemingly mirrored at opposite ends of Eurasia, in fact took paths whose shape and significance were quite different. The Western codex made the preexisting pagina coextensive with a writing surface; the new bindings that replaced scrolls in East Asia in the late first millennium brought with them the very notion of a page. This feature carried across multiple binding formats and shaped the design of books and of graphic and tabular information in particular: what in a scroll could be of arbitrary dimensions now had to fit into a prescribed space. The advent of woodblock printing and the shift to thread-bound books precipitated a further change: the block and the page fell out of sync, and printers had to design their books around this more complex graphic rhythm. In the late Ming, some responded to this challenge with careful planning that created easily legible, visually copious pages that made full use of the xylographic block and of the openings that it created.
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38 On Zhao and his series, see Suyoung Son, Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 112 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018).
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Beyond, edited by David Der Wei Wang and Shang Wei, 63–92. Harvard East Asian Monographs 249. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. 2005. Siegert, Bernhard. Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real. Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. Meaning Systems. New York: Fordham University Press. 2015. Son, Suyoung. Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial China, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 112. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018. Song, Minah. “The History and Characteristics of Traditional Korean Books and Bookbinding.” Journal of the Institute of Conservation 32, no. 1 (March 2009): 53–78. Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin. Written on Bamboo & Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books & Inscriptions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004. Wang, Richard G. Ming Erotic Novellas: Genre, Consumption and Religiosity in Cultural Practice. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. 2011. Wright, Suzanne Elaine. “Visual Communication and Social Identity in Woodblock-Printed Letter Papers of the Late Ming Dynasty.” PhD dissertation. Stanford University. 1999. Wu Huifang 吳蕙芳. Wanbao quanshu: Ming-Qing shiqi de minjian shenghuo shilu 萬寶全書 : 明清時 期的民間生活實錄 [Complete books of myriad treasures: A record of folklife in the Ming-Qing period]. Zhengzhi daxue shixue congshu 6. Taibei: Guoli zhengzhi daxue lishixuexi. 2000. Xu Qilong 徐企龍. Bansho enkai [Wanshu yuanhai] 萬書淵海 [Source and sea of the myriad books]. Edited by Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫, Sakade Yoshinobu 坂出祥伸, and Ogawa Yōichi 小川陽一. Chūgoku nichiyō ruisho shūsei 6–7. Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin. 2001 [1610]. Xu Yikui 徐一夔 et al. Da Ming jili 大明集禮 [Collected rites of the Great Ming]. Beijing?: Neifu. 1530. Ye Dehui 葉德輝. Shulin qinhua 書林清話 [Plain talk from the forest of books]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. 1957. Zengbu youxue xuzhi zazi daquan 增補幼學須知雜字大全 [Expanded complete dictionary of basic characters for young learners]. Jianyang?: Langxuan ge. 1678.
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Chapter 10 Placing Texts on Chinese Pages: From Bamboo Slips to Printed Paper Abstract: This chapter explores two particular features on Chinese pages that organized different layers of texts. “Multi-section structure” that places texts from different sources on the same page by two or three horizontal sections can be traced to sixteenth-century woodblock-printed books as the commercial book market greatly expanded and publishers attempted to include more content on their crowded pages. “Inserted double-column annotation” that inserts annotations and various subtexts into primary texts in two columns of small characters might originate from the layout of bamboo slips and can be found on manuscripts from no later than the fourth century. This format to place annotations was adopted when the state attempted to standardize Confucian classics by making woodblock-printed versions since the tenth century. Both features to organize different layers of texts on the same page were commonly used on woodblock-printed pages of commercial publication from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and smoothly translated into books printed using lithography, which further penetrated into rural China during the late nineteenth century. These two features not only framed the hierarchy of texts on Chinese pages, but also modified the reading experience of Chinese readers. Keywords: Chinese book culture, page format, multi-section structure, inserted double-column annotation
This article investigates the arrangement of primary and secondary texts on traditional Chinese pages. Modern Chinese books, in most cases, have one primary text on each page, and secondary texts, such as footnotes, are printed either on the upper or left-hand margins of the pages, or on the pages following those of primary texts. This kind of arrangement did not become the norm of Chinese pages until publishers in China adopted mechanical movable-type printing, as well as Westernstyle book binding and page layout, in the late nineteenth century. Before the late nineteenth century, compilers had several ways to organize primary and secondary texts on pages. Certain Chinese books might have more than one primary text on each page, and secondary texts were not always separated from the primary texts. This article traces the arrangements for differentiating primary and secondary texts on traditional Chinese pages, which shaped readers’ perceptions of the text.
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The Evolution of a Reader To illustrate these arrangements concretely, I start by analyzing the page layout of a popular reader for young students printed in the nineteenth century, on the eve of the prevalence of Western-style book binding. A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students (Youxue gushi qionglin 幼學故事瓊林) was one of the most popular readers in nineteenth-century China, even in the rural areas where few printed books circulated.1 In my fieldwork in Fujian mountain villages, I found four different editions of A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students in two villages, even though many books had been burned during the destructive Cultural Revolution.2 A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students is attributed to an otherwise unknown schoolteacher, CHENG Dengji 程登吉 of Jiangxi. An early printed edition, with the title A Concise Reader of Allusions: Necessary Knowledge for Young Students (Youxue xuzhi biandu gushi 幼學須知便讀故事), has Cheng’s 1637 preface attached.3 In the preface, Cheng claims he compiled this book by selecting literary quotations from various sources and classifying them into several topics, so that young students could learn them easily without having to consult all the original materials. This reader comprises thirty-three essays written in parallel prose; the topics of the essays range from the universe to daily utensils.4 It follows the typical form of Chinese reader for children or young students, which conveys characters by simple and memorable sentences in verse or prose.5 Students were supposed to memorize them and take them as the basis of their literary compositions. Cheap editions bearing the title Necessary Knowledge for Young Students (Youxue xuzhi 幼學須知) could still be found during the nineteenth century, but the most popular version available bore the title A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students. This version had been recast by ZOU Shengmai 鄒聖脈 (1692–1762), a very successful
1 For a brief introduction to this book see Cynthia J. Brokaw, Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007), 349–353. 2 The nineteenth and early twentieth-century readers shown in this section were all collected by me during my fieldwork in rural Fujian during 2008–2009. 3 This edition, A Concise Reader of Allusions Necessary for Young Students to Know, Revised by Jiangtang (Jiantang chongding youxue xuzhi biandu gushi 簡堂重訂幼學須知便讀故事), is now in the library of Keio University. Thanks to Bruce Rusk for bringing this edition to my attention. 4 The thirty-three topics are: the universe, the Earth, the seasons, the imperial court, civil officials, military officers, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, uncles and nephews, teachers and students, friends, marriage, women, affinal relatives, ages and birthdays, human bodies, clothing, social interactions, food and drink, houses and rooms, tools and utensils, treasures, wealth and poverty, illness and death, literature, civil service examinations, manufactured goods, crafts, legal affairs, gods and ghosts, birds and beasts, and flowers and trees. 5 On Chinese readers, see Bai Limin, Shaping the Ideal Child: Children and Their Readers in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005).
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publisher based in Sibao, the center of cheap book production in southeastern China from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century.6 The most recent edition of this book currently available is one revised in the mid-eighteenth century. To attract more buyers for A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, Zou and later publishers inserted new paragraphs, added annotations and illustrations, and combined the original texts with content from other sources. It was common for publishers to edit a popular title, declaring it “the best edition” to gain more customers. Publishers added illustrations, supplemental or updated contents, and celebrities’ prefaces and comments to previously published works. Therefore, a vernacular novel, a daily use encyclopedia, or a literary manual that achieved commercial success would typically have several “expanded,” “supplemented,” “illustrated,” “newly carved,” “annotated,” or “with comments” editions produced by different publishers. Although later editions still named Cheng as the author with Zou acknowledged as the primary adapter, each time the book was reissued it had different contents. In A Genuine, Improved, and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students (Zhengben gailiang huitu youxue gushi qionglin 真本改良繪圖幼學故事瓊林, Figure 10.1),7 published in the nineteenth century, the publisher added not only new paragraphs and detailed annotations, but also new content from other sources: glossaries from Expanded and Corrected Glossaries (Zengbu gaizheng zihui 增補改正 字彙) and sentences from A Newly Expanded Selection of Model Texts for Social Exchange (Xinzeng yingchou huixuan 新增應酬彙選). In another nineteenth-century edition, Expanded Garden of Allusions for Young Students (Zengbu youxue gushi qunfang 增補幼學故事群芳) ( Figure 10.2), the publisher wanted his book to be a practical reference work. This edition had fewer annotations to the main texts but added far more content from other sources, which were divided by the compilers into nine categories: correspondence, eulogies, celebratory essays, couplets, etiquette for greetings, official ranks, announcements, glossaries, and modes of address. In addition to these nine categories, which the compiler placed on the upper register, five sections appended at the end of the book offered model texts used in coming-of -age ceremonies, marriages, funerals, ancestral worship, and festivals. Although “for young students” was still in the title, the contents of this greatly-expanded version were no longer for children. This book, now more than a reader, amounted to an encyclopedic handbook for formal literary composition. To some extent, the function of these new editions of A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students significantly
6 On the Sibao book business, see Brokaw, Commerce in Culture. For Zou Shengmai, see Brokaw, Commerce in Culture, 135–136. 7 This title was printed on the cover page, but the title that appears at the beginning of each chapter is Xinzeng huitu youxue gushi qionglin, which is the same as the one mentioned in the next paragraph. However, these are two different editions published by different publishers in different locations.
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resemble another popular Sibao production, Precious Guide to Social Exchanges (Choushi jinnang 酬世錦囊), which also had many expanded editions.8 As the market for cheap editions grew, publishers attempted to produce affordable products with more attractive contents – in the field of references and handbooks, this meant more knowledge that one could use on more occasions. Therefore, a reader for young students in the seventeenth century first turned into a reference work for literary composition, and then turned into an encyclopedic collection of writing examples in the nineteenth century. As the new era came, young readers needed new knowledge.9 A Newly Expanded and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students (Xinzeng huitu youxue gushi qionglin 新增繪圖幼學故事瓊林), which was published in the early twentieth century, included the original texts from A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, the same annotations as those found in A Genuine, Improved, and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, and the same additional sections of literary composition. It was expanded further by including new materials such as English vocabularies, a map of China, a dynastic timetable (ending with “Long Live the Republic!”), descriptions of “civilized etiquette” (including an illustration of a “civilized wedding”), and a chart of English pronunciation. After the establishment of the Republic of China in the twentieth century, this seventeenth-century schoolteacher’s text using literary allusions from the era of ancient sage kings became a textbook for citizens of a modern state.
One Page of a Popular Reader The editors of these many-layered books encountered a challenge as they added more and more material: how were they to arrange the pages so that they included Cheng’s original texts, annotations to those texts (inevitably much longer than the actual texts themselves), and supplemental materials from various sources? I shall treat one page from A Genuine, Improved, and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, published by Jianqing zhai 簡青齋 (The Studio of Green Bamboo Slips) in Shanghai, as an example. The book was printed with lithography, a technology favored from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century because of the ease with which it duplicated images. Borrowed from earlier woodblock editions, the layout drew on a standard template used in late imperial China. The design can be found among woodblock-printed and lithographically-printed daily use
8 See Brokaw, Commerce in Culture, 412–416. 9 For encyclopedias of new knowledge in China, see Milena Doleželová-Velingerová and Rudolf G. Wagner (eds.) Chinese Encyclopaedias of New Global Knowledge (1870–1930): Changing Ways of Thought (Berlin: Springer, 2014).
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Figure 10.1: A Genuine, Improved, and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students.
encyclopedias and other popular genres of illustrated reference books published since the sixteenth century. The page I have selected, the first of the third juan, or chapter, is divided into three separate horizontal registers (Figure 10.1). The upper register contains the material borrowed from Expanded and Corrected Glossaries, the terms classified by their radicals. Following a heading for each radical, the characters were printed in two columns in normal size. Under each character were two columns printed in smaller type: the right indicated the pronunciation of the character, while the left gave a brief definition. The middle register contains material from A Newly Expanded Selection of Model Texts for Social Exchange, all in small type. These texts are categorized by the occasions to which they are applied to. For example, the middle register in this chapter begins with celebratory texts for an official’s birthday.
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The upper two registers contain contents from sources other than A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, the main title of this book. The lower and main register is occupied by Cheng’s original texts and their annotations. Each chapter in this register begins with the book title, the author’s name, and the names of the various adapters, annotators, and correctors. This group of people did not necessarily know each other, and in the case of the page in question they did not even live in the same century. However, some important names, such as Cheng and Zou, help to establish the authority of the texts. Our page starts with the category to which it belongs, “Social Interactions,” followed by a string of small characters – “with twelve newly added parallel sentences” – a reference to the newly added material, probably by Zou. Briefly speaking, the compiler combined the contents from three different books onto one page. Three unrelated “primary texts” were placed in three horizontal sections, but only the larger, lower section has both the book title and the authors’ names at the beginning of the chapter. However, the smaller title of each section was printed on the left margin of the recto page (or the right margin of the verso page). If a reader wanted to read the contents from a single book, he had to trace the same register on different pages. However, as with other reference books, readers did not usually read them straight through from beginning to end, but only looked up the material they needed. Only the texts in the lower section were printed with annotations. Cheng’s original texts and the later supplements are printed in characters of normal size, and the annotations, printed in two columns of small characters, are inserted into the main text. The main text, though written in relatively simple language, still contains many literary allusions that had to be further explained. To explain these allusions, and to convey the pronunciation and the meaning of certain characters and terms, the annotations often comprise quotations from other works. For example, the “Social Interactions” chapter opens as follows: “The opening of The Great Learning emphasizes ‘enlightenment’ and ‘renovation’; [the cultivation of] young people starts with manners for social interactions.” The annotation quotes the first sentence from The Great Learning and goes on to cite a passage from The Book of Rites in which Confucius and his disciples discuss proper manners. The Great Learning is one of the Four Books, the basic materials for Confucian learning as well as the materials for civil service examinations. Instead of giving its original title, the annotator referred to The Great Learning as “The Sacred Scripture” (Shengjing 聖經). The Book of Rites is one of the Five Classics, which is also a fundamental Confucian text and source material for civil service examinations. However, not all of the books quoted in the annotations (and alluded to or quoted in Cheng’s document) are Confucian classics; other histories and works of literature are also mentioned. While some annotations explain the succinct main texts in plain language, many are simply quotations from authoritative sources – no further explanation is given. These annotations illustrate a longtime feature of the Chinese tradition of annotation, especially that of annotating Confucian classics. Since the most important meanings
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had been declared by the sages, originality was not the main concern of later authors. So long as they clarified or quoted what had been said by the sages in various classics, they had done their job – directly or indirectly quoting sages’ words was a substantial component of literary composition. Even in the essays meant to serve as models for children and young students, allusions were made to passages from authoritative sources. One might say that the annotations functioned to reveal the intertextuality among these works, so that readers could understand the meanings of the essays and come to appreciate how crucial allusions to the grand tradition were. One in a vast genre of encyclopedic literary how-to guides, A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students helped beginners to establish such literary skills. The annotations were inserted between sentences, or sometimes between characters, and printed in small type, stacked two columns to a line. Chinese characters were mostly printed as scriptio continua before the Western page layout was adopted, so that there was no space between vocabularies or sentences (although glosses on punctuations were sometimes printed besides or between characters). The annotations could be inserted right after either the character(s) they referred to, which might be in the middle of a sentence, or at the end of the sentence, and they would explain the whole passage. However, because the annotations were printed in small type and two columns, a reader could read a secondary text right after the primary text it referred to, and the change in scale eliminated the possibility of confusion. Furthermore, either a key term or the title of the book cited in an annotation was set in circled characters that permitted readers to understand quickly the structure of the annotation. On this sample page, we can see different textual layers, and two features of book design reflect ontological distinctions. First, “multi-section structure” permits one page to contain two or more primary texts, while Western page layout uses columns to divide a page into several sections, with the contents of these columns belonging to a single source. The multi-section structure of the Chinese page layout places texts from different sources on the same page and at the same time maintains the distinctions among them. Second, “inserted double-column annotation,” or shuanghang jiazhu 雙行夾註, differentiated secondary texts from their primary texts. A reader could easily read the primary text (in large type) continuously, but when a question arose he could instantly turn to the annotation without having to search for it on another page or another section of the same page. “Multi-section structure” and “inserted double-column annotation” were used very early in Chinese books, and the practice was prevalent when inexpensive woodblock-printed books became popular commodities during the sixteenth century. In a woodblock-printed edition of An Expanded Garden of Allusions for Young Students (Figure 10.2), one page was divided into two sections for two primary texts from different sources. Cheng’s texts and their annotations were placed in the much larger lower register, and the upper sections contained texts from various references. Only the primary texts received annotations, and these annotations, though simpler than those on our sample page, followed the inserted double-column format.
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Figure 10.2: A page of a woodblock-printed edition of An Expanded Garden of Allusions for Young Students.
In other words, these lithographed books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries simply copied the page layout from their woodblock-printed predecessors, as well as copying the ways they dealt with different layers of texts. The only difference between them was that the lithographed Newly Expanded and Illustrated Treasury of Allusions for Young Students added English terms on the upper margins. In some woodblock-printed books, commentaries were printed on the upper margins, but in most cases, the upper margins were left blank. English terms were presumably printed on the upper margins because publishers could add new material without changing the overall structure of the page. Moreover, lithographic printing made it easy to add new contents to what had previously been blank space. Unlike mechanical movable-type printing, which became popular in China at the end of the nineteenth century, lithographic printing shared the principle of graphic duplication – mechanically creating the mirror image of the desired page – with woodblock printing, so the publisher did not have to change the basic page
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layout. Furthermore, because it cost less and had a greater capacity to duplicate images, lithography became very popular.10 Zou’s publishing business in Sibao, relying on woodblock technology, turned a local schoolteacher’s reader into an encyclopedic reference book and a transregional publishing phenomenon in the eighteenth century. A little over a century later, commercial lithographic printing in Shanghai expanded the markets for this title even further, taking it into rural areas, including the villages in Fujian where I collected a number of editions. These cheaper but more visually dynamic editions introduced to new readers the distinctive layout used in woodblock-printed books for several hundred years, shaping the mode through which textual information was received.
Multi-Section Structure Before later compilers turned Cheng’s primer into a multipurpose manual, this text was printed in a relatively simple layout. The early-seventeenth-century Treasury of Allusions for Young Students had only one primary text on each page, which is, of course, Cheng’s primer. There were two kinds of annotations printed on different locations on the pages. Simple definitions of the characters were printed beside the characters and between the lines. Longer explanatory notes about the sentences were printed on the upper register of each page. Neither multiple primary texts nor inserted double-column annotations were used in this early version; they were only adopted by later compilers to transform the nature of the primer. However, neither features for graphically organizing primary and secondary texts was new to these nineteenth-century readers, for both features can be traced to the era when neither printing technology nor even paper had been used to make a page. Because of the belief that copying Buddhist sutras could help to accumulate merit, duplicating religious canons became the most important motive in the early stage when woodblock printing was adopted in medieval China. In addition to religious texts, early printed materials were mostly functional, and almanacs were among them. One of the earliest printed almanacs, or “calendars with notes” (juzhuli 具注曆) in its Chinese original title, was found in Dunhuang and dated 877 AD.11 Its single-page sheet was divided into five horizontal sections. The upper two sections are calendars
10 See Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Printed Capitalism, 1876–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), especially the second chapter for lithographic printers in Shanghai, and YANG Liying 楊麗瑩, Qingmo minchu de shiyinshu yü shiyinben yanjiu: Yi Shanghai diqü wei zhongxin 清末民初的石印術與石印本研究:以上海地區為中心 (A Study of Lithography and Lithrographed Book in Shanghai Area in the 1840s-1920s), (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2018). 11 British Library Or.8210 P.6. This is the second-earliest printed almanac to be found in China. The earliest one was printed in 834 AD but only a small part of it survives.
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with each date marked by astrological terms. Each of the lower three sections was further divided into smaller sections, containing contents such as the best dates to build a house, the best dates to sow, or portraits of “illness ghosts.” As all information was on the same sheet, one could easily look up requisite information on this sheet. We can find these forms of contents in hand-copied almanacs during the same period, but the organization of the hand-copied editions was not as compact or dense as that of the printed ones. The advantage of woodblock printing, which efficiently duplicates both texts and illustrations, made this multi-section layout reasonable; otherwise, it would consume much time for a scribe to copy such a complicated structure. In the later period, when almanacs began to be printed in the form of codices, this compact layout was maintained. A codex is easier to carry; moreover, when more astrological and practical knowledge was added into an almanac, a singlepage sheet could no longer contain all the information. When the Chinese market for cheap books greatly expanded, starting in the sixteenth century, printed almanacs (tongshu 通書) and various household reference works became profitable products. To keep down the cost of production, to make them easier to carry, and yet at the same time to keep as much content as possible, compilers used layouts similar to medieval ones. An almanac or daily use encyclopedia was divided into several chapters by topic, and in each chapter, pages were divided into two or three registers. The contents in different registers on the same page was related to the general topic of the chapter, though the contents in these registers did not necessarily relate to each other. The upper and smaller registers usually contained relatively simple content, while more complicated contents were usually put into the lower and larger registers. This multi-section layout was often seen in almanacs and household reference works; besides, sometimes commercially-printed books that emphasized their comprehensiveness also adopted this layout.12 For example, The Complete Book of Myriad Treasures 萬寶全書 (Wanbao quanshu) was the most popular daily use encyclopedia and had been available in numerous editions since the sixteenth century.13 The most common page layout among these editions divided each page into two horizontal registers. In a thirty-eightchapter Complete Book of Myriad Treasures, prefaced in 1614, the table of contents shows the titles in each chapter by two groups: “upper layer” and “lower layer.” For instance, the fourth chapter, “The Department of Barbarians/Foreigners,” had an upper layer containing “Strange Mountain and Sea Creatures” and “Birds and Beasts,” and a lower layer containing “Portraits of Barbarians/Foreigners” and “(Foreign) Products and People.” The two-section layout functioned to show the
12 See also the Chapter by Rusk. 13 For Wanbao chuanshu and its editions, see WU Huifang 吳蕙芳, Wanbao quanshu: Ming-Qing shiqi de mingjian shenghuo shilu 萬寶全書:明清時期的民間生活實錄 (The Complete Book of Myriad Treasures: the veritable records of daily life during the Ming-Qing period) (Taipei: Huamulan, 2005).
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richness of its content; however, the juxtaposition between beasts and barbarians reveals the compilers’ general attitudes toward foreigners. When the compiler attempted to turn Necessary Knowledge for Young Students, an elementary reader, into a literary reference work, he adopted the multi-section layout, which was known to be used by almanacs and daily use encyclopedias. The strategy of the publisher was to add the contents that his potential readers might like to know, such as writing exemplars or a brief dictionary. This multi-section layout packed the most contents into the least space, and fulfilled the readers’ desire to acquire the most knowledge with the least expense.
The Commentarial Tradition of Confucian Canons The compiler on the one hand used the multi-section structure to turn a primer into an encyclopedic reference book; on the other hand, he inserted annotations to transform Cheng’s essays for young students into a scholarly text. There were several ways to place secondary texts on traditional Chinese pages. On the pages of the seventeenth-century Necessary Knowledge for Young Students, annotations were placed on the upper margins and between the lines. The appearance of these two kinds of printed notes was similar to that of handwritten notes added on the pages. Notes printed beside the characters and between the lines were usually glosses on pronunciation or brief definitions of characters or sentences, and were mostly used in educational texts. Explanatory notes or comments were often printed on the upper margins for textbooks, and also for literary texts, such as short stories, novels, or drama scripts. Since the sixteenth century, the celebratory commentaries by literati on literary texts were printed in the upper margins as “edition with commentaries” to attract readers.14 Both sorts of annotations were separated from the primary texts. Even though they were carved onto the blocks at the same time as the primary text, they appeared to be additional to the original text. The nineteenth-century Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, however, adopted another layout: inserted double-column annotation. This manner of placing annotations was usually used for scholarly texts, especially classics and histories. In addition to the format, the contents of annotations supposedly added by Zou in the eighteenth century were also very different from those printed in the seventeenthcentury Necessary Knowledge for Young Students. Those of the seventeenth-century version were brief and plain, while the annotations of the nineteenth-century version were formal and complicated. A striking difference is that the nineteenth-century ones tended to directly quote sentences from Confucian classics and other canonical
14 For reading fiction commentary, see David L. Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing Between the Lines (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
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sources related to Cheng’s original text. A common pattern is that several quotes from Confucian classics were listed after the phrases, and then a further explanation was added at the end. By adding such annotations in this kind of format, the nineteenth-century compiler gave this text a scholarly appearance, promoting it from a primer composed by a country schoolteacher to some kind of authoritative text. To trace the development of the format of scholarly annotations, it is necessary to review the commentarial tradition of Confucian classics and the hierarchy of annotations.15 The earliest interpretations of classics during the ancient era were called zhuan 傳, or commentaries. The word originally meant “transmission,” as these insights were believed to have been transmitted from early masters who had lived not long after the composition of the sacred texts. Many zhuan were thought to have begun as oral traditions, which explains why many were composed in a dialogic form. For example, the Commentary of Guliang (Guliang zhuan 穀粱傳) was attributed to Guliang 穀粱, who was the disciple of Zixia 子夏, one of Confucius’s leading students. This commentary, clarifying the hidden meanings in Confucius’s Spring and Autumn Annals, takes the form of a series of questions followed by answers. Because they were the earliest interpretations of sacred texts, some of these old interpretations, such as the Commentary of Guliang and the Commentary of Gongyang (Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳), took on a status on a par with the classics themselves. Although Confucianism was elevated to the official ideology of the Chinese empire early in the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), the classics either were lost or suffered from intellectual eclipse. Therefore, scholars started to organize these works systematically, devoting enormous efforts to extracting and explaining their meaning. During the Han scholars began to refer to their interpretations as zhu 注, or annotations. The original meaning of zhu was “to channel water in the proper direction,” suggesting that these zhu were meant to guide readers to the true understanding of these ancient texts. While the words of sages could not be altered, they could be reframed through annotations, which became the principal field for scholars to exhibit their knowledge and wisdom. Scholars formed schools, compiling annotations that shored up the particular philosophical and political stance they adopted. While many scholars produced their own annotations to classic texts, in the third century AD some scholars started to compile collections of these annotations (jizhu 集注 or jijie 集解). By selecting from different annotators, these editors assembled exegetical mosaics that expressed the editors’ understanding of the classical texts. Collected Explanations of the Analects (Lunyu jijie 論語集解), attributed to HE Yan (何晏, d. 249), was the most prominent work of this period. Having collected
15 For a comparative study on Chinese commentarial tradition and other exegetical practices, see John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
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the annotations to the Analects, the record of the conversations between Confucius and his disciples that scholars had set down from the second century BC to the second century AD, He then attempted to synthesize these different perspectives. He also left his interpretation on this collection by omitting anything from the obscurantist yinyang school and synthesizing Daoist ideas with Confucianism.16 In the fifth century, another scholarly genre, shu 疏, or subcommentaries, emerged as a new way to interpret the classics. The original meaning of shu is “to dredge,” as one would a waterway. In zhu, the annotators’ comments had to follow the original texts of the classics strictly. However, the authors of shu commented on both the original texts and previous annotations to get at an overall meaning, and arguments were accorded greater creative freedom. Sometimes shu annotators recorded comments of contradictory opinions in order to form their own arguments. The rise of shu was in part a result of the introduction of Buddhism to China. Many scholars applied a variety of intellectual resources to interpreting Buddhist scriptures, drawing on ideas from Confucianism and Daoism. Scholars debated with one another to clarify the true meaning of Buddha’s words. The way they studied Buddhist canons influenced the study of Confucian texts.17 For examples, in his famous Extensive Annotations to the Analects (Lunyu yishu 論語義疏), HUANG Kan 皇侃 (488–545) even used ideas from Buddhism to get at the supposed true meaning of Confucius’s pronouncements.18 In the early medieval era, a hierarchy of interpretations of classics was broadly accepted, running from jing/classics to zhuan/commentaries, zhu/annotations, and shu/subcommentaries. This notion was also applied to non-Confucian texts, such as official dynastic histories, and scholars quoted texts from various sources to support their annotations. Annotators who had quoted from a variety of texts achieved an unexpected distinction: the limited circulation of texts (all copied out by hand at this time) made the preservation of otherwise lost documents quite welcome. Some annotations comprised abundant eclectic materials, surpassing in significance the original texts that inspired them. For example, Annotations to the Classic of Rivers (Shuijing zhu 水經注), by LI Daoyuan 酈道元 (446 or 457–527), is more than 300,000 characters
16 TSAI Chen-feng 蔡振豐, “He Yan Lunyu jijie de sixiang tese ji qi dingwei” 何晏論語集解的思想 特色及其定位 (The thought in He Yan’s Lunyu jijie and its historical significance), Taida zhongwen xuebao 15(2001.12): 41–60. John Makeham has different opinions about the authorship of Lunyu jijie. See John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), 23–47. 17 MO Runsun 牟潤孫, “Lun ru shi liangjia zhi jiangjing yü yishu” 論儒釋兩家之講經與義疏 (On oral interpretation of classics and subcommentaries in Confucian and Buddhist traditions), Shinya xuebao 4.2(1960): 353–415. While Mo’s argument on the Buddhist influence on the rise of subcommentaries has been widely accepted, Kogachi Ryūichi emphasizes the Chinese origins of this genre. See KOGACHI Ryūichi, Chūgoku chūko no gakujutsu 中国中古の学術 (Academic studies in Medieval China) (Tōkyō: Kenbun, 2006). 18 Makeham, Transmitters and Creators, 79–167.
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long, thirty times the length of the Classic of Rivers, an early work of geography. These annotations describe more than a thousand rivers, and they preserve a wealth of written materials and transcriptions of stone inscriptions that no longer exist. Throughout medieval China, making annotations for authoritative texts was one of the most important academic activities by means of which scholars displayed their erudition and creativity. Annotations, which helped readers to access the sages’ words, did not just stay on the margins. They played a central role.
Placing Annotations on Different Media Decisions regarding the presentation of a celebrated text and its annotations while maintaining their hierarchical relationship could only be made by considering the physical nature of the written document. Before paper was widely used, bamboo (or sometimes wooden) slips and silk were the primary media for writing. Slips dated from the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD have been found at archaeological sites. Characters are found to have been written vertically on narrow lengths of the excavated bamboo slips, and slips to have been strung together with threads. A string of these slips was collectively termed a ce 冊, which became the term equivalent to “fascicle” or “volume” in Chinese book publishing.19 Because of its cost and vulnerability, silk was used less often than bamboo slips. The precedence of bamboo is also clear from the form that silk manuscripts took. Scribes working on silk would set down the vertically ladder-like form of a bamboo scroll before they started writing. Studies indicate that silk manuscripts were sometimes directly copied from bamboo scrolls; sometimes errors of transcription can be safely attributed to the faulty threading of one or more bamboo slips.20 This kind of mistake reveals the close relationship between the layout of texts on bamboo slips and silk manuscripts. Various documents were written on bamboo slips and silk, such as Confucian classics, calendars, medical and astrological manuals, legal codes, and official registers. Among the bamboo slips and silk manuscripts found so far, classics and commentaries were transcribed separately. During the Former Han dynasty, the study of the Confucian canon was limited to a small group of scholars and oral transmission among masters and disciples. Only after the debate between the OldText and the New-Text scholars were comments from renowned scholars written
19 Tsuen-hsiun TSIEN, Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 20 GENG Xiangxin 耿相新, Zhongguo jianbo shuji shi 中國簡帛書籍史 (History of bamboo slips and silk manuscripts) (Beijing: Sanlian, 2011), 26.
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down and circulated among disciples or general readers.21 This took place in the Later Han, which was also the period when paper gradually replaced bamboo slips and silk and became the primary material for writing. It was believed that a great scholar, MA Rong 馬融 (79–166), started to put annotations and their original texts together when he annotated The Rite of Zhou, so that “scholars need not read back and forth.”22 Several later prefaces also emphasized that the annotators deliberately attached the original texts to the annotations. For example, in the preface to his annotated Huainanzi in the early third century, GAO You 高誘, who was a disciple of Ma Rong’s disciple, claimed: “I thought over the teachings of my past teacher and referred to the quotes from Confucian classics and commentaries and Daoist literature, [so that I could] elucidate the contents and make annotations. I also attached the original texts and marked the pronunciations.”23 The need to declare such an arrangement in the preface implied that not all the original texts were attached to the annotations in previous times. How did scholars differentiate annotations from the main texts after they put them together? In a preface to the Classics of Filial Piety falsely attributed to a Former Han scholar, the author claimed to have found the bamboo slips of the missing Classics of Filial Piety within walls. He “glossed and annotated the texts, attaching the original texts to them. There were in total more than ten thousand characters. The texts of the classics were written in red, and the texts of comments in black.” Although this preface was not written in the Former Han, it used exactly the same expression, xizhai quanwen 悉載全文, found in many Later Han texts, implying that this description might fit the situation in the Later Han. In comments by a sixth-century scholar, LIU Xuan 劉炫 (ca. 546–613), on the first part of this sentence (“attaching the original texts to them”), he claimed: “Before the Former Han, commentaries and glossaries were circulated separately from the main texts. To make readers need not to read back and forth, Kong [the compiler and annotator of the missing Classics of Filial Piety] transcribed the main texts first, following with commentaries.” Moreover, he explained the latter part of this sentence: “It was difficult to differentiate the texts of classics from those of commentaries, so that they were written in black and in red. Since the Later Han, annotators differentiated them by writing large and small characters. The copyists also transcribed them with
21 Because most Confucian classics were said to be burnt by the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, there was a debate since the Han that whether the versions of Confucian classics memorized by old scholars and written in current Han scripts, or the versions discovered later and written in ancient scripts, were authentic. The debate on the authenticity of texts gradually became the debate on their basic understanding of the nature of Confucian classics. See Michael Nylan, “The Chin Wen/ Ku Wen Controversy in Han Times,” T’oung Pao 80(1994): 83–136. 22 Kogachi, Chūgoku chūko no gakujutsu, 68–72. 23 GAO You, “Huainan hunglei xu” 淮南鴻烈序 (Preface to Huainanzi), quoted from Kogachi, Chūgoku chūko no gakujutsu, 73.
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large and small characters. Because it was easier to write characters in different sizes, people did not use the colors of ink to differentiate them anymore.”24 This comment actually mentioned three ways to differentiate main texts and commentaries: the order, the color, and the size. If his comment was accurate, then since the Later Han, differentiation by the sizes of characters became the most popular way, because it was more convenient for scribes, who no longer needed to prepare different colors of ink. Although the commentator did not mention “double-column,” the principle of font size fit into the format of inserted annotations. The tiny number of extant early manuscripts makes it exceedingly difficult to offer a generalization about the early evolution of the layout of book pages, as well as the placement of annotations. Fortunately, the medieval documents found in Dunhuang, Turfan, and western China, where an arid climate preserved paper admirably, open a window onto early page layouts. Most of the texts found in these places were handwritten on paper; a few of them, mostly Buddhist sutras, were printed. These manuscripts show that no later than the fourth century scribes were employing inserted double-column annotation. In his book on the transition of writing media in ancient China, TOMIYA Itaru 冨谷至 shows several paper slips found in Loulan 樓蘭, dated from the third to the fourth centuries. One small piece of paper (M.259) had sentences from The Commentary of Zuo written in a normal size, with smaller-size two-column characters inserted between the original sentences as annotations.25 The layout of this piece of paper fits Liu’s description of annotations written in a smaller size. This paper slip from Loulan might be the earliest extant page of scholarly contents with inserted double-column annotations. Full pages in this format can be found from later periods. For example, on a copy of He’s Collected Explanations of the Analects the scribe left his name and the date, the twenty-fifth day of the third month, in the third year of the Qianfu reign (876 AD). The manuscript opens with a preface, which has no annotations, then presents the text of The Analects interspersed with He’s annotations, which follow the double-column form still practiced a millennium later.26 The format of the annotations closely resembles what we saw in our nineteenth-century reader. It may be that inserted double-column annotation was used much earlier. It is obvious that the page layout of paper manuscripts derived from the layout on silk, itself imitating bamboo scrolls. But not all bamboo writing was the same. While the conventional bamboo slip bore a single column of characters, there were also “twoline” (lianghang 兩行) bamboo slips, wider than the single-line slips, with characters 24 Kogachi, Chūgoku chūko no gakujutsu, 71 and 90. 25 Tomiya Itaru, Mokkan, chikukan no kataru Chūgoku kodai: shoki no bunkashi 木簡・竹簡の語る 中国古代: 書記の文化史(Ancient China on Bamboo and Wooden Slips: Cultural History of Writing) (Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 2014), 164–166. 26 Pel. chin. 3193.
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in two (and sometimes more) columns. On special occasions, protocol demanded the use of this kind of “two-line” slip.27 If one conventional bamboo slip was transcribed as one column on silk and paper, perhaps a two-line bamboo slip was transcribed as two columns of smaller characters in a single line. There were cases where “singleline” and “double-line” were both used on a single bamboo or wooden slip. On several official documents and registers, the main topic was written in one line with larger characters, and further information or explanations were written in two (or more) lines under the one-line main topic.28 Although there is no direct evidence proving a connection between two-line bamboo slips and the form annotations eventually took on paper, the formal continuity is suggestive. In addition to Confucian classics, dictionaries and Buddhist scriptures found at Dunhuang made use of double-column insertions for, respectively, definitions and annotations. However, it seems that at Dunhuang and in western China, the manuscripts of Confucian classics always maintained a sharp distinction: while annotations (zhu) appeared together with the primary texts in the form of inserted double columns, subcommentaries (shu) were always copied separately as an independent item. In the early seventh century, the Tang emperor Taizong ordered a team of scholars to compile a set of official subcommentaries to the Confucian classics, following the format that had emerged starting in the fifth century. These grand works, called “orthodox interpretations” (zhengyi 正義), became the standard reference to the classics – but they too were produced as books physically distinct from the classics themselves.29 Moreover, although woodblock printing became widespread during the middle of the Tang dynasty, no Confucian classic, no set of annotations or subcommentaries, was ever printed. The first time the classics were printed on a grand scale was in the early tenth century, following the suggestions of several ministers that the Later Tang emperor Mingzong 後唐明宗 (r. 926–933) publish a standard edition. During the Han and Tang dynasties, the court had erected stone steles bearing inscriptions of the sacred texts in front of the Imperial Academy, thereby fashioning a standard version. Scholars could make copies either by rubbing or by transcription. Only classics and selected commentaries were inscribed on the stone steles; no annotations or subcommentaries were included. However, when the officially printed classics appeared,
27 ZHANG Xiancheng 張顯成, Jianbo wenxianxue tonglun 簡帛文獻學通論 (General Introduction to the philological studies of bamboo slips and silk manuscripts)(Beijing: Zhonghua, 2004), 151–154. 28 H00252 Digital Archive of the Han Wooden Slips, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. 29 See the manuscript of Orthodox Interpretations of the Book of Changes(周易正義 Zhouyi zhengyi)in ZHANG Yongquan 張涌泉 et al. (eds.) Dunhuang jinbu wenxian heji 敦煌經部文獻合集 (The collection of Dunhuang documents in the department of the classics)(Beijing: Zhonghua, 2008), picture 1.
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they not only included the standard texts from the steles; authoritative annotations selected by the ministers were also inserted here and there in double-column small characters. After the Song dynasty reunified the country, the new court followed this practice, publishing its own official edition of the classics. It looked much like the Later Tang edition, ensuring that “double-decker” annotations became standard in printed classics.30 Over the course of the Song dynasty, civil service examinations gradually became the primary route into the bureaucracy, including the highest civilian offices. The expansion of the examination system created a demand for printed Confucian classics, the basic curriculum of the scholar and the core of the examinations. Readers were no longer satisfied with the editions that comprised only the classics and annotations. During the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), along with the rise of the commercial book market, various editions of classics were published by either official institutions or private publishers. The first printed classics with both annotations and subcommentaries were published by a local official bureau, the Tea and Salt Administration of the Eastern Circuit of Liangzhe, in 1192.31 In the following decades, various editions were published in Jiangyang and other commercial publishing centers, some with illustrations, some with charts, and others with other reference materials, such as an authoritative glossary that provided the pronunciation and definition of difficult characters in the classics.32 In order to display these supplemental contents and at the same time maintain the demarcation among them, publishers not only adopted the doublecolumn small-character format to illustrate secondary texts, they also inserted markers that highlighted different sorts of texts.33 For example, the different manuscripts of a popular glossary, Definitions of Characters in the Classics (Jingdian shiwen 經典釋文), composed by LU Deming 陸德明 (550?-630), were found in the Dunhuang collection. Each chapter of the glossary contains the pronunciations and definitions of difficult characters by their order of appearance in each classic. In the Dunhuang collection, each chapter of a single classic was copied as a single item. However, in a few copies of annotated classics, scribes transcribed the entries from this glossary next to the characters they refer to, or on the same spot as the characters on the back of the paper. The scribes might look items up in the glossary and write those entries down as notes while reading the manuscripts.
30 WANG Guowei 王國維 did the first comprehensive research on this project. See Wang Guowei, “Wudai liang Song jianben kao” 五代兩宋監本考 (On the books printed by the Imperial Academy during the Five Dynasties and the Song dynasties), Guoxue jikan 1.1(1923): 139–45. 31 See ZHANG Lijuan 張麗娟, Songdai jingshu zhushu kanke yanjiu 宋代經書注疏刊刻研究 (Research on the publication of annotated classics during the Song)(Beijing: Beijing daxue, 2013), 296–317. 32 For Jianyang publishers, see Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th centuries) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 33 Zhang Lijuan, 197–228.
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During the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), when printed classics gradually became popular, some publishers started to include this glossary at the end of the classics as an appendix. Beginning in the Southern Song, publishers started to place the entries as small characters in the form of double columns, and at the same time made the entries easier to access by simplifying the definitions, applying modern pronunciation, and marking the characters with circles.34 A famous bibliographer claimed: “During the end of the Southern Song, there was no printed classic without the definitions [from this glossary].”35 When publishers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attempted to make their annotated primer look more serious and valuable, they arranged it by the format that had been shaped during the Southern Song dynasty for scholarly texts. Since subcommentaries were printed together with the original texts, secondary texts inserted between characters or sentences of primary texts became very long. For later readers, it became a common format that larger and shorter primary texts were interspersed with smaller and longer annotations and comments.
Conclusion The transformation of this particular primer, A Treasury of Allusions for Young Students, shows that the compilers strategically chose the page layout for primary and secondary texts that shaped the nature of the text as well as the readers’ reading experience. In the seventeenth century, Cheng Dengji’s text was treated as a primer for young students. The annotations were brief and placed between the lines or on upper margins. Although the original title was preserved, publishers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries added extra content, including scholarly annotations, to the primer, turning it into an encyclopedic literary reference work. The use of two particular features of traditional Chinese pages – multi-section structure and inserted double-column annotation – followed this transformation. The evolution of multi-section structure and inserted double-column annotation illustrates the continuity in arranging primary and secondary texts on Chinese pages. Multi-section structure can be traced to handwritten sheets and scrolls in ancient and medieval China, which continued into woodblock-printed codices. The format of inserted two-column annotation is a vestige of the vertical arrangement of 34 For example, see Fu shiwen Shangshu zhushu 附釋文尚書注疏 (Book of Documents, with Annotations, Subcommentaries and Entries from Definitions of Characters in the Classics), printed by a Jianyang publisher during the late Southern Song, from Daguang: Songban tushu tezhan 大觀: 宋版圖書特展 (Grand View: Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Rare Books) (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2006), 165. 35 YANG Shoujing 楊守敬, Riben fangshu zhi 日本訪書志 (A record of rare books found in Japan), 1/35b. Also see Zhang Lijuan, 120.
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bamboo slips. Scribes preserved this format in the age of paper; publishers applied it in their woodblock-printed and lithographically printed books. This continuity might come from the graphic nature of Chinese characters, which was also the reason for the dominance of woodblock printing in China for more than a thousand years. Once mechanical movable-type printing conquered China in the late nineteenth century and changed the principle of textual duplication, these two features were completely replaced. While commercial concerns were the main consideration of publishers in adopting the multi-section structure that allowed more than one primary text on the same page, Confucian commentarial tradition might have resulted in the use of inserted annotation in scholarly texts. Certain commentaries, annotations, and subcommentaries were not “additional” notes to canonical texts, but an inseparable part essential to understanding the true meanings of these texts. The format of inserted annotations gave these commentaries and annotations a certain status of quasi-primary text, which directly followed the canonical text. When scribes duplicated annotations, they did not treat them as additional notes to the canon, but instead transcribed them as integral to the canon. The scribes had to carefully calculate the number of characters in target annotations and the space for them, so that the annotations could be placed perfectly in two columns without leaving unnecessary space.36 This format also implies that a reader should read the annotations between the primary texts, and study them as a whole. Although there had been several ways to place annotations on Chinese pages, inserted double-column annotation became a standard format for scholarly text on both manuscripts and printed pages. This case of traditional Chinese pages provides a basis for further comparisons to other page traditions. Several factors determined how a page layout was formulated. The shift of medium and duplication technology played important roles, and the nature of the writing system was also essential. Scribes and compilers adjusted the format based on both intellectual and commercial concerns, choosing the most suitable layout according to the genre and its target readers.
Bibliography Bai, Limin. Shaping the Ideal Child: Children and Their Readers in Late Imperial China. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. Brokaw, Cynthia J. Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.
36 Using examples from the Dunhuang manuscripts, ZHANG Yongquan shows several cases where scribes corrected wrongly-transcribed annotations, which proves that they had to carefully calculate the space for inserted annotations. See ZHANG Yongquan 張涌泉, Dunhuang xieben wenxian xue 敦煌 寫本文獻學 (Studies on written documents from Dunhuang) (Lanzhou: Gansu jiaoyu, 2013).
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Chia, Lucille. Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th centuries). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena and Wagner, Rudolf G. (eds.) Chinese Encyclopaedias of New Global Knowledge (1870–1930): Changing Ways of Thought. Berlin: Springer, 2014. Geng, Xiangxin 耿相新. Zhongguo jianbo shuji shi 中國簡帛書籍史 (History of bamboo slips and silk manuscripts). Beijing: Sanlian, 2011. Henderson, John B. Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Kogachi, Ryūichi 古勝隆一. Chūgoku chūko no gakujutsu 中国中古の学術 (Academic studies in Medieval China). Tōkyō: Kenbun, 2006. Lin, Boting 林柏亭 (ed.) Daguang: Songban tushu tezhan 大觀: 宋版圖書特展 (Grand View: Special Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Rare Books). Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2006. Makeham, John. Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003. Mo, Runsun 牟潤孫. “Lun ru shi liangjia zhi jiangjing yü yishu” 論儒釋兩家之講經與義疏 (On oral interpretation of classics and subcommentaries in Confucian and Buddhist traditions), in Shinya xuebao 4, 2 (1960), 353–415. Nylan, Michael. “The Chin Wen/ Ku Wen Controversy in Han Times,” in T’oung Pao 80, 1 (1994), 83–136. Reed, Christopher A. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Printed Capitalism, 1876–1937. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005. Rolston, David L. Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing Between the Lines. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Tomiya, Itaru 冨谷至. Mokkan, chikukan no kataru Chūgoku kodai: shoki no bunkashi 木簡・竹簡の 語る中国古代 : 書記の文化史(Ancient China on Bamboo and Wooden Slips: Cultural History of Writing). Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 2014. Tsai, Chen-feng 蔡振豐. “He Yan Lunyu jijie de sixiang tese ji qi dingwei” 何晏論語集解的思想特色 及其定位 (The thought in He Yan’s Lunyu jijie and its historical significance), in Taida zhongwen xuebao 15 (2001), 41–60. Tsien, Tsuen-hsiun. Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Wang, Guowei 王國維. “Wudai liang Song jianben kao 五代兩宋監本考 (On the books printed by the Imperial Academy during the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasties), in Guoxue jikan 1, 1 (1923), 139–45. Wu, Huifang 吳蕙芳. Wanbao quanshu: Ming-Qing shiqi de mingjian shenghuo shilu 萬寶 全書:明清時期的民間生活實錄 (The Complete Book of Myriad Treasures: the veritable records of daily life during the Ming-Qing period). Taipei: Huamulan, 2005. Yang, Liying 楊麗瑩. Qingmo minchu de shiyinshu yü shiyinben yanjiu: Yi Shanghai diqü wei zhongxin 清末民初的石印術與石印本研究:以上海地區為中心 (A Study of Lithography and Lithrographed Book in Shanghai Area in the 1840s-1920s). Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2018 . Yang, Shoujing 楊守敬. Riben fangshu zhi 日本訪書志 (A record of rare books found in Japan). Beijing: Zhonghua, 1897, reprinted in 2006. Zhang, Lijuan 張麗娟. Songdai jingshu zhushu kanke yanjiu 宋代經書注疏刊刻研究 (Research on the publication of annotated classics during the Song). Beijing: Beijing daxue, 2013.
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Zhang, Xiancheng 張顯成. Jianbo wenxianxue tonglun 簡帛文獻學通論 (General introduction to the philological studies of bamboo slips and silk manuscripts). Beijing: Zhonghua, 2004. Zhang, Yongquan 張涌泉. Dunhuang xieben wenxian xue 敦煌寫本文獻學 (Studies on written documents from Dunhuang). Lanzhou: Gansu jiaoyu, 2013. Zhang, Yongquan et al. (eds.) Dunhuang jinbu wenxian heji 敦煌經部文獻合集(The collection of Dunhuang documents in the department of the classics). Beijing: Zhonghua, 2008.
Loretta E. Kim
Chapter 11 Recovering Translation Lost: Symbiosis and Ambilingual Design in Chinese/Manchu Language Reference Manuals of the Qing Dynasty Abstract: This chapter examines how the layout of three Chinese/Manchu language reference manuals published in China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 CE) reveals how the two featured languages were arranged to serve the purpose of translation reference for specialized vocabulary and set phrases. Analyzing the juxtaposition of these languages suggests that conventional understandings about how users were likely to go from one language to another should be re-examined, as well as the assumption that a person using these texts would have followed the practice of starting from one as source language and the other as target language. This chapter also argues that the primacy of Manchu as the most favored language by Qing rulers and of Chinese as the dominant language of politics, economy, and culture did not matter when the two languages “faced” each other in these texts which served to inform persons who needed to perform standardized translations. Keywords: Chinese language, Manchu language, language reference, Qing dynasty, standardized translation
Introduction The success of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 CE) in achieving an enduring reputation as an empire, not only in the context of Chinese history but in the annals of human civilization, is evident in the body of literature created to fulfill the Qing government’s mandate of operating as a multilingual state.1 With comparable precedents set only by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368 CE), which conducted political affairs in many more languages than just Chinese, the Qing center produced legal documents, correspondence between bureaucratic sub-units and officials at various levels, official histories, and religious texts in Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan,
1 All subsequent dates are in the Common Era, so the abbreviation CE will not be included for following references to years. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-012
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and Chaghatai.2 These bilingual and multilingual texts, whether rendered in manuscript or typeset form, required their authors to think about how two or more languages could be arranged on the same page or spread so that each would be legible and also that their relationship as synonymous versions of the same content would be clear. A person reading one of these texts performed simultaneous mental translation or relied on his knowledge of one of the languages to presume that the information in the other language(s) that he did not know would be one in the same. In the twenty-first century, translation is a process that demands less of the human mind or faith in the authenticity of written records. Google Translate and other internet-based digital applications are demystifying and simplifying translation by giving users the impression that it is just an act of matching up indisputably equivalent forms of expression in two or more languages. Users of all types may assume that it is important to understand neither the grammar of a language as a form of scientific logic, nor the sociolinguistic dimensions or what might be considered the arts and humanities aspects, in order to convert a single lexeme or grammatical construction from one language to another. When a word or phrase in the translated form appears with a click of the mouse or simultaneously as the original word or phrase is inputted, the gap between any two given languages may become one that only computers, through machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence, must learn to cross. This chapter examines the attributes of translation and pagination in a very different context from that of the present. In doing so, it sheds light on how even as translation develops from being a human-driven to a machine-regulated activity, the process and meaning of performing a translation is still attached to the format of a page. This study is explicitly not a work of translation studies and does not purport to enhance or contravene existing theories about the psychological or social aspects of translation. It is instead a historical contemplation about how we must understand and respect translation as more languages become moribund, and both tangible and intangible repositories will store the only data that we can draw upon to match ideas from those extinct idioms with ones that continue to survive, and vice versa. Three Chinese/Manchu manuals for translating terms and phrases used in official documents that were written and published during the Qing period form a sample of case studies in this chapter which is illustrative of the greater flexibility in human translation than the apparent “magic” of machine translation.3 Analysis of
2 Other languages like Russian and Latin were also employed for particular purposes such as composing treaties with the Russian Empire. 3 The slash between “Chinese” and “Manchu” emphasizes that both languages are of equal importance in the content rather than a dash which may be construed as meaning “Chinese to Manchu” translation. As will be seen in the chapter, the texts were originally designed to facilitate translation from Manchu to Chinese as well as from Chinese to Manchu.
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these texts also questions the assumptions that have been made about how translation between the two featured languages, Chinese (Hanwen 漢文 in the pre-modern era, rather than Zhongwen 中文 as the written language is most commonly known now) and Manchu (Ch. Manwen 滿文, Ma. Manju hergen) may have happened.4 I argue that the delineation of a source language and target language for translation could be fluid, as these texts helped users to translate from one language to another according to their linguistic competence, but not necessarily in a single direction, because of their impagination. These three case studies are relatable to the current practice of transforming an “input” from one language into another in two ways. First, the two languages are extremely different from one another – in script and grammar among other traits – and the action of translation is markedly difficult in comparison to translating from a language to one that is similar, as between the Romance languages of Spanish and Italian. Secondly, one language (Chinese) was much more well-known and well-developed during the Qing than the other (Manchu), so there was an inherent asymmetry in numbers of “native users” and the utility of the language as a medium of communication in all sectors of society. This difference can be likened to how translation programs of the present enable a user to convert a word or sentence from a language that he knows to one that he does not. Such disparities between Chinese and Manchu during the Qing have led to perceptions that are grounded in evidence and yet reflect biases in favor of one language and consequently against the other. One example is the perception of Manchu being easier to learn than Chinese. This notion may be considered positive when associated with non-Chinese people who learned Manchu, such as Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries working in the Qing domain, and with how such people used Manchu as a “bridge language” to Chinese. It can also be considered pejorative when the implication is that Manchu was much less useful than Chinese, and hence, for political, economic, and socio-cultural advantages, people who should have cherished Manchu as their “native language” defected to learning and only using the harder but much more prestigious and practical language of Chinese. Another problem in analyzing the relationship between Chinese and Manchu as languages engaged in translation is the prevailing narrative that Manchu gradually fell into disuse as a medium of written communication over the course of the Qing dynasty. If this account is taken at face value, then Manchu has either risen from being nearly dead in the late twentieth century with the proliferation of dictionaries, grammars, and conversational phrase books, or the written usage of Manchu
4 The abbreviations “Ch.” and “Ma.” denote Chinese and Manchu terms, respectively. Terms without abbreviations stated are all Chinese. Also, non-English personal and collective names are in regular text, rather than italics, when given in the Romanized versions of their original-language forms.
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was severely limited but did not end entirely after the Qing state was formally removed from power in 1912.5 Contemporary members of the Sibe ethnic group (Xibo zu 錫伯族) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may take issue with either or both the ideas of “Manchu as a dead language” and “Manchu undergoing revival” because their people continued to use Manchu script and to transmit knowledge of Manchu grammar and vocabulary, albeit as Sibe language (Xiboyu 錫伯語文), all the way to the present.6 This chapter examines the three case study texts in the context of broader questions about translation and language acquisition during the Qing, the fundamental distinctions between the Chinese and Manchu languages, disparate patterns in language usage for Chinese and Manchu officials, and the scope of language contained in reference manuals for the translation of official document terminology. It explores these questions utilizing the concept of ambilinguality as applied to a text rather than the ability of an individual person. When referring to a person, being ambilingual is much like being ambidextrous, a rare trait that indicates equal mastery of two separate things, whether one’s own hands or languages. The use of “ambilingual” in this study is more like the way that “ambidextrous” can describe an object like scissors that both right-handed and left-handed persons can use. An ambilingual text serves the needs of readers who are proficient in two (or more) languages. This characteristic makes a text more versatile than one which is monolingual, or, in the case of a translation tool like a dictionary, it guides the reader from one designated target language to the explanation in the source language or otherwise facilitates translation explicitly from a specific language to another one. The chapter is organized as follows. The next section will introduce key ideas about how and why Chinese/Manchu bi-directional translation was necessary for government correspondence and will introduce the specific genre of language reference manuals written about set phrases (Ch. chengyu 成語, Ma. toktobuha gisun). The three subsequent sections will each concentrate on one text. The final section of the paper will serve as a comparison and conclusion.
5 For varying assessments of Manchu’s status on the scales of usage and sustainability in the current decade, see for example, “Last of the Native Manchu Speakers,” and “Manchu, Once China’s Official Language, Could Lose Its Voice.” Publications about the vocabulary and grammar of Manchu language number in the hundreds, including Aixin Jueluo, Manyu yufa 滿語語法 (Manchu grammar), Li, Manchu: Textbook for Reading Documents, Kawachi and Kiyose (eds.), Manshūgo bungo nyūmon 満洲語文語入門 (Introduction to Manchu language), An (ed). Man Han da cidian 漢滿大辭典 (Manchu-Chinese dictionary), and most recently published, Lee, comp., Man Han sajeon 滿韓辭典 (Manchu-Korean dictionary). 6 Whether spoken Sibe language is a mesolect vernacular of Manchu language, or an inherently different language than Manchu is a topic of ongoing debate. See Stary, “Sibe: An Endangered Language,” and Zikmundova, “Sibe Language.” Also note that Chinese transliterations of proper nouns are in regular style, not italicized.
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Balanced Inequality: Status and Corpus Differences of Chinese and Manchu Almost every scholar of late imperial and early modern China will agree that the Chinese and Manchu languages were entwined in a unique relationship by the needs and interests of the Qing bureaucracy. Manchu had higher official status than Chinese because the imperial Aisin Gioro clan (Aixin Jueluo zongzu 愛新覺羅 宗族) claimed it as its ancestral language and utilized it for a range of specific functions, from shamanic rituals to the protection of sensitive information in correspondence about diplomatic and military affairs. The corpus of Chinese language, however, was greater and, even by the most favorable estimation of Manchu, it dwarfed Manchu in every linguistic dimension, from vocabulary to applicability in all facets of life. Since the Qing was a colossus of physical space and human cultural diversity, but with an overwhelming Han Chinese social and economic core, the Qing imperial center could not expect all official personnel, especially ethnic Chinese bureaucrats serving outside of the capital, to use Manchu as the sole language of communication. Using only Chinese was also deemed unacceptable, given that knowledge of Manchu was a linguistic identity marker for the Qing elite much as Ottoman Turkish and French distinguished Ottoman and Russian aristocrats from the humbler classes in those empires. Since Manchu was adequate but not fully serviceable for imperial administration when the Qing regime succeeded the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the Qing central government, particularly during the reigns of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors (altogether 1654–1799), engaged in extensive corpus planning to add more vocabulary and to standardize its usage as a written language. The Qing government sponsored the compilation of several lexicons and grammars that featured Manchu as the main language and commissioned Manchu-language translations of Chinese-language philosophical and literary works. The Qianlong emperor was particularly conscious of how the use of Manchu as both a spoken and a written language was eroding and he believed that codification was a key to longterm preservation.7 Among the roughly eighteen Manchu lexicons prepared during the Qing, the imperially commissioned (Ch. yuzhi 御製, Ma. han-i araha literally meaning “written by the khan”) and imperially endorsed (Ch. qinding 欽定, Ma. hesei toktobuha literally meaning “set by (imperial) edict”) texts are most well-known and studied.8 Starting from the 1708 Han-i araha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe (Imperially commissioned Manchu Mirror, Ch. Yuzhi Qingwen jian), the content of which was put together with
7 See Elliott, Emperor Qianlong, 57. 8 For a chronologically ordered list, which includes multiple editions of some works, see Clark, et. al., comps., Bibliographies of Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, and Tibetan Dictionaries, 132–34.
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Mongolian translations in the 1717 Han-i araha Manju Monggo gisun-i buleku bithe (Manchu and Mongolian combined Qing-language Mirror, Ch. Yuzhi Manzhou Menggu hebi Qingwen jian 御製滿洲蒙古合璧清文鑑, Mongolian (Mo.) Qaγan-u bic̆igsen Manǰu Monggol ügen-ü toli bic̆ig) and later the Imperially Commissioned Tetraglot and Pentaglot Mirrors, multilingual lexicons became more expansive in content.9 The incremental addition of languages can be connected to the growth of the empire during the eighteenth century and to the way in which the Qing imperial center displayed its cultural power over an increasingly diverse population of subjects.10 The official dictionaries have been studied extensively as vehicles for Qing rulers to extol the virtues of their ancestral language and to wield symbolic control over other linguistic communities by codifying and coupling their languages with Manchu.11 Another genre, less important in conveying the power of a Manchu political elite but nevertheless contributing to the effective use of Manchu language, are the reference manuals containing set phrases in both Chinese and Manchu. Most of these texts were organized by subject rather than by the alphabetical or other morpheme-based order of the terms they contained, as Chinese-based dictionaries were arranged by the radical-determined sequence of Chinese characters, and they can be considered as classified dictionaries (fenlei cidian 分類詞典).12 These set phrase manuals are different from those written for a spoken language, like phrasebooks that help users learn how to express ideas in certain situations, like salutations and apologies. The general purpose of such phrasebooks is to teach analogous ways of conveying the same meanings in two languages and, indirectly, the correct grammar for the language which is less known or not known at all by a given user. However, since no two languages correspond entirely and because speech is more
9 The Imperially Commissioned Pentaglot Mirror was completed first in 1791. Its full titles are Ch. Yuzhi wu ti Qingwen jian 御製五體清文鑑, Ma. Han-i araha sunja hacin-i hergen kamciha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe, Mongolian (Mo.) Qaɣan-u bičigsen tabun ǰüil-ün üsüg-iyer qabsuruɣsan Manǰu ügen-ü toli bičig, Tibetan (Ti.) Rgyal pos mdzad pa’i skad lnga shan sbyar yi manydzu’i skad gsal ba’i me long, Chagatai/Central Asian Turkic (Tur.) Ḫān-nïng fütügän beš qismi qošqan ḫat mānjū sözning ayrïmčïn ḫati. The Imperially Commissioned Tetraglot Mirror, which was derived from the Pentaglot, was then published in 1795. Its full titles: Ch. Yuzhi si ti Qingwen jian 御製四體清文鑑, Ma. Han-i araha duin hacin-i hergen kamciha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe, Mo. Qaγan-u bic̆igsen γurban ǰüil-ün üsüg-iyer qabsuruγsan Manǰu ügen-ü toli bic̆ig, Ti. Rgyal-pos mdzad pa’i skad bźi śan sbyar Mañdzu’i skad Gsal ba’i me long). Note that titles of Qing lexicographical texts are given in “Manchu title / Chinese title” pairs. 10 See Crossley, Translucent Mirror and Berger, Empire of Emptiness, among other works, about the adoption of cultural practices as tools of governance. 11 See Kim, “Illumination and Reverence” and Scharlipp, “Zu einigen Bearbeitungsmethoden lexikalischer Einträge und deren türkische Ergebnisse im manjurischen Fünfsprachenspiegel (Some remarks concerning lexicographical entries and their Turkish results in the Manchu Pentaglot Dictionary).” 12 About Qing classified dictionaries, see Chunhua and Wang, “Lun Qingdai Man Meng wen daxing ‘fenlei cidian’.”
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commonly subject to improvised variation, phrasebooks provide approximate ways to speak and the most socially acceptable ones. By contrast, the set phrase manuals under discussion in this chapter are much like legal and scientific dictionaries that exist today. Even for users who have achieved comprehensive proficiency in a language, official or technical vocabulary comprises another kind of “non-native” language, because it must be acquired through exposure to norms that are not included in the basic curriculum of formal education at the primary and secondary levels, and to a limited degree at the tertiary level. In the Qing, learning official document set phrases by consulting customized references was important because few people would be equally trained in Chinese and Manchu, much like bureaucrats today in countries with more than one official language. Officials in the central government, as well as high-ranking officials dispatched to oversee regional administrative units, were expected to use Manchu when communicating with the emperor for one or both of two reasons. Officials who were bannermen (qiren 旗人), especially if they were Manchu, wrote in Manchu to express their more intimate loyalty to the throne, and their competence in the language reinforced their identities as part of the Eight Banners as a socio-military class. Officials would also be required to write in Manchu because they were discussing certain matters that were highly classified, such as about frontier administration and military campaigns. However, Chinese was the working language for most of the bureaucracy from the provincial level downward, so documents were duplicated in Manchu and Chinese both for record-keeping and for the practical aim of comprehension by all relevant officials. To generate documents in both Chinese and Manchu, and translations from one language to another, the Qing bureaucracy included corps of translators, some of whom attained prestigious qualifications through standardized examinations. It was also expected that Manchus and nonManchu officials serving in the military and compound military-civil divisions of the government would know how to read and write Manchu.13 Where scholarly opinion has diverged about Chinese and Manchu as official languages of the Qing mirrors both academic and popular understandings of the Qing government as becoming more “Chinese” over time. Both direct evidence in the form of fewer documents being composed first in Manchu and indirect evidence in the anecdotally revealed failings of officials to write properly in Manchu support the conclusion that over time more Qing bureaucrats were proficient in Chinese and conversely fewer were so in Manchu. However, the presumption that knowledge of Manchu became merely nominal for bureaucrats is more speculative than irrefutable. This supposition
13 About formal institutions of Manchu-language education and Manchu-language government examinations, see Crossley, “Manchu Education,” and Söderblom Saarela, “Manchu and the Study of Language.”
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should be considered tentative because there is not enough positive proof that increasingly more officials were deliberately ignorant or incompetent in Manchu or that the Qing imperial government did not maintain proper standards of Manchu proficiency because it became thoroughly Sinicized.14 It is difficult to assess whether the “decline” of Manchu can be reliably traced, especially in the absence of stable measurements for competency in the language, and where many other factors, such as the lack of material resources to teach Manchu to all (male) persons officially classified as Manchu or more broadly as bannermen, should be taken into account. Turning to the texts themselves, they look and read like glossaries of concorded vocabulary rather than like sources of interpretive definitions, as most contemporary dictionaries are.15 These references were tools of the trade for the clerks who consulted these pocket-sized books when they needed to verify how a certain phrase should be translated.16 These texts were like set phrase dictionaries for other specialized translation purposes, like the 4-fascicle (juan 卷) Manju Nikan ging bithe toktoho gisun / Man Han jingwen chengyu 滿漢經文成語 (Manchu/Chinese set phrases in Buddhist scripture) compiled by Mingdo (Mingduo 明鐸) of the Dunggiya (Dongjia 董佳) clan published in 1737. These manuals of set phrases in official documents were also more distantly related to publications like the Manju gisun-i untuhun hergen-i temgetu jorin bithe / Qingwen xuzi zhinan bian 重刻清文虛字指南編 (Guidebook of function words [particles] in the Qing [Manchu] language), compiled by Wanfu 萬福 and published in 1885, because function words had to be used precisely so that the phrases containing them would be grammatically correct. Likewise, a set phrase in an official document, or in a Buddhist scripture, would be translated according to an expected convention, rather than rendered with creative license. Many studies of Manchu lexicons and grammars have concentrated on the utility of these texts by hypothesizing how users converted lexemes and phrases from Manchu as a source language to Chinese (or Mongolian, Tibetan, Chaghatai) as a target language. Each text certainly has an order which is set by its format. The three case study texts are all double leaf, bound in Oriental style, meaning that the paper leaves are stitched and tied together with a silk cord concealed in the spine. A distinguishing feature is that Manchu monolingual texts and multilingual texts with Manchu content are read with pages turned from left to right as most present-
14 For an argument that Sinicization started from the founding of the dynasty and even affected the Qing government at the apex of its power, see Huang, Reorienting the Manchus. 15 For the most recent work arguing that the officially commissioned lexicons are more accurately understood as multilingual thesauri, based on the concordance of meaning rather than definition of vocabulary, see Söderblom Saarela, “Mandarin over Manchu.” 16 Bosson and Elliott have described the texts as literal hand and pocket-sized books in “Highlights of the Manchu-Mongolian Collection,” 90. Besides clerks performing the original translations of documents, it is likely that official proof-readers (Ch. zuanxiu guan 纂修官, Ma. acabume arara hafan) were also using these texts.
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day books are, not right to left as books in Chinese were arranged until the midtwentieth century. The left-side binding and resultant organization of each spread to be read from left to right is due to the fact that Manchu script is written vertically from the top to the bottom of a page, and from the left to the right of that page. The direction of Manchu writing also contrasts with Chinese which during the Qing was written vertically but from the right to the left of the page. The actual sequence of content is considered by many scholars to be more significant than the differences in orientation by the binding between Manchu and Chinese. The Man Han lei šu bithe / Man Han leishu 滿漢類書 (Classified dictionary of Manchu and Chinese), compiled by Sangge (Sang’e 桑額) and first published in 1706, is organized by Manchu letters so the user must know the order of the Manchu alphabet to find entries.17 The order of a text does not lead to absolute conclusions about how the users consulted it. The 1683 Daicing gurun-i yooni bithe / Da Qing quan shu 大清全書 (Complete book of the Great Qing dynasty) was similarly organized by the Manchu syllabary. James Bosson and Mark Elliott argue that the pairing of each Manchu lexeme with a concise definition in Chinese was most useful for readers who knew both languages and wanted to know the Chinese equivalents.18 In the three case study texts, the pairing of equivalent phrases functioned because it was understood that they corresponded to each other without the need for further interpretation. To understand how this principle operates, one can think of how content in a monolingual dictionary is arranged. It is taken for granted that the user wants to know the meaning of a word and understands enough of the language to which that word belongs in order to make sense of the given definition. The word is thus explained in other words that are laid out next to or below it, with the relationship between them being made clear through their placement in that manner. Bilingual dictionaries also work in a similar manner. The term to be defined is often introduced first, whether to the left for a script rendered left to right, or on top, for a script written from top to bottom, followed by any combination of the following elements: transliteration in the same language, in the second language, or both languages, and the definition in the second language. Some compromises might be made to accommodate both languages, as seen in Figure 11.1, which is a sample page from a Manchu-French dictionary, Dictionnaire tartare-mantchou François (Dictionary of Tartar Manchu and French), compiled by the Jesuit missionary Jean Joseph Marie Amiot. The Manchu term is the first element on each line. It is turned 90 degrees counter clockwise from how it would normally be rendered in Manchu monolingual or multilingual texts produced in China. The next element is the transliteration. Using the top word as a sample, it is likely that the transliteration replicated the actual pronunciation 17 This text is based on Man Han tungwen funlei ciyan [sic.] shu / Man Han tongwen fenlei quan shu 滿漢同文分類全書 [Complete book of classified concordance of Manchu and Chinese] that Sangge published in 1700. 18 “Highlights of the Manchu-Mongolian Collection,” 83.
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Figure 11.1: Dictionnaire tartare-mantchou françois, vol. 2, 45.
at the time the dictionary was produced. The use of transliteration rather than plain transcription, which would render all the sounds as indicated by the letters within the word, is evident in the example of the word “serkoun” in Figure 11.1 which differs from the way in which the same Manchu lexeme is transcribed according to the Romanization system created by Paul Georg von Möllendorff in the
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nineteenth century.19 To the right of the Manchu in script and transliterated forms is the corresponding French term and a brief explanation, also in French. Moving beyond the level of individual elements to the full page, we see that the page is densely arranged so that all the elements for a given lemma are clustered horizontally. The entry for each term is separated from the ones preceding and following it by indenting the lexeme in Manchu script and starting each cluster on a new line. The reader is guided through the elements within each cluster, whether skimming the page or looking specifically at one cluster, with the use of italicization for the transliterated version of the Manchu, which makes it distinct from the original word in script. The italicized transliteration also separates it from the French definition. Another example of absolute concordance, as reflected in lexicographical design, is in the twenty-first century Qingdai Man Meng Hanwen ciyu yinyi duizhao shouce 清代滿蒙漢文詞語音義對照手冊 (Trilingual manual of the pronunciation and meaning of Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese vocabulary, referred to as MMHW), based on the Han-i araha Manju Monggo Nikan hergen ilan hacin-i mudan acaha buleku bithe / Yuzhi Manzhu Menggu Hanzi san he qie yin Qingwen jian 御製 滿珠蒙古漢字三合切音淸文鑑 (Imperially commissioned Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese Mirror organized by the system of indicating sounds, referred to as MMHZ) compiled between 1775 and 1780. Both texts are organized in thematic parts starting with the Celestial Section (tian bu 天部). In MMHZ, all three languages are translated and transcribed vis-à-vis one another, as seen in Figure 11.2. Each cluster, such as the one in the top-left hand corner marked in the sample, consists of three sub-columns. From left to right, each sub-column consists of: Left [elements numbered for reference purposes, not in the original text] [1] Chinese transliteration of Manchu lexeme [2] Manchu lexeme [3] Mongolian transliteration of Manchu lexeme [4] Chinese transliteration of Mongolian transliteration of Manchu lexeme Element 1 is a transliteration according to the fanqie 反切 system developed to describe the pronunciation of one character by using two characters with corresponding consonant and vowel sounds.20 This authorial or editorial choice is rational because readers would be familiar with this form of linguistic conversion, since it is employed
19 The term “serguwen” appears in modern dictionaries like Norman, Concise Manchu-English Lexicon, 239. About the Möllendorff system, which is now the standard way of converting Manchu script into Latin letters, see von Möllendorff, Manchu Grammar. 20 For a recent work about fanqie and other transliteration systems using Chinese characters, see Yong and Peng, Chinese Lexicography.
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Figure 11.2: Han-i araha Manju Monggo Nikan hergen ilan hacin-i mudan acaha buleku bithe, 1:3a–b. Note that this image is a two-page spread presented vertically.
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in Chinese monolingual texts. However, element 3 is not dichotomized into two characters per syllable of the Mongolian lexeme, as would be expected with a Chinese one. Instead, each syllable is associated with one Chinese character. This diversity in arrangement suggests that MMHZ served at least two different audiences. Readers consulting the text for Manchu could either be proficient in the conventions of literary Chinese and consider the Mongolian translation as a supplementary detail for which the “exact” or accurate pronunciation was less significant than the Manchu lexeme. The second type of audience could consist of readers who knew Manchu and Mongolian well, and thus the pronunciation of the featured (Manchu) lexeme in fanqie and the Mongolian equivalent are ornamental. Middle [1] Chinese fanqie transliteration of Mongolian lexeme [2] Mongolian lexeme [3] Manchu transliteration of Mongolian lexeme [4] Chinese transliteration of Manchu transliteration of Mongolian lexeme Elements in this cluster also follow the pattern of the preceding (left) one. The fanqie pronunciation helps readers with no knowledge of Mongolian, and “honors” the Mongolian lexeme with the more precise transliteration rather than the more approximate one for the corresponding Manchu equivalent. Right [2] Manchu transliteration of Chinese lexeme
[1] Chinese lexeme [3] Mongolian transliteration of Chinese lexeme
The simplicity of this cluster suggests at least two possibilities. The first one is that most of the readers were most proficient in Chinese and did not need to know the pronunciation of element 1. The second rationale is that there were many readers who were competent in Manchu and Mongolian as well, and the inclusion of Manchu and Mongolian transliterations is a gesture to make all three parts of the clusters similar if not entirely consistent in content and format. An indirectly political consideration that may have influenced this authorial decision is that element 1 standing alone in this cluster may give the unintended and undesirable impression that this is a lexicon of Chinese, with Manchu and Mongolian as auxiliary languages of translation. The Qianlong emperor, as the reigning sovereign when the text was compiled, would not approve of such misunderstandings. Looking more broadly at this text, the configuration, arranged on the page to be turned in the Manchu style, orients the reader to view each cluster from left to the right. This arrangement can affect actual reading comprehension in at least two possible ways. A reader may concentrate on just the most familiar script(s) and
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consider the rest of the cluster elements to be supplementary or even ornamental. We can also surmise that the Manchu was the dominant language in this layout because the Manchu lexeme is the first or leftmost cluster. When the MMHZ was republished in the Siku 四庫 (Four Treasuries) collection of texts after the original 1780 edition, the text was bound in Chinese style so the Chinese (rightmost) cluster would be the one that the reader would see first, because Chinese texts were composed and read from right to left.21 The actual order of entries was also changed in this version, with the original pages “flipped.” Such modifications are significant in that the text became explicitly Chineseoriented, but the co-existence (and possible contemporaneous use) of both versions demonstrates that MMHZ was ambilingual because Manchu and Chinese were both dominant languages, depending on the binding. Each cluster, as in the French dictionary of Manchu, was also inherently ambilingual because the placement of the elements enabled a reader to absorb a lexeme from one of three languages, with ample supporting content for readers with monolingual, bilingual, or even trilingual ability in the featured languages. MMHW, published in 2009, contains clusters that are comparatively simpler to read. As seen in Figure 11.3 each entry consists of three lines.22 Line 1: Manchu in romanization Line 2: Mongolian in romanization Line 3: Chinese in Manchu transliteration with corresponding Chinese character by its side Such a configuration is similarly ambilingual in that it does not force the reader to adopt any single starting point. The reader’s gaze could gravitate towards the most familiar language, which, given that this text has been published in contemporary China, would be the Chinese character. The absence of Manchu or Mongolian text suggests that proficiency in these scripts is unnecessary or not expected because persons who are not native in those languages usually learn to read and spell using Romanization. Although Manchu and Mongolian in the late twentieth (1980s onward) and current centuries are accessible to non-native speakers with Romanization, the Chinese character as the only original script element – readers are not compelled to guess what “tiyan” (tian 天, meaning heaven) might be – suggests that this text is mainly for readers of Chinese, while retaining some of the flexibility of the Qing text. Proceeding to the next three sections, each of which examines one of the three case studies, we must bear in mind that for these Qing publications, the layout of each text varied according to the kind of reference work it was intended to be. Some were annotated (zhujie 注解), stressing the definition and interpretation of
21 For an online version of the edition in the Chinese pagination sequence, see https://archive.org/ details/06052918.cn. 22 Qingdai Man Meng Hanwen ciyu yinyi duizhao shouce, 1.
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Figure 11.3: Qingdai Man Meng Hanwen ciyu yinyi duizhao shouce, 1.
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the vocabulary included in them. Other lexicons were phonetic (biaoyin 標音), with the primary function of informing users how to pronounce the lexemes. A third type of reference work was the parallel (duizhao 對照) form with lexemes in the featured languages arranged so that the reader could compare them by viewing them as a group. All three of the following examples are foremost parallel texts but could also be used in other ways.
Ninggun jurgan-i toktoho gisun / Man-Han hebi liu bu chengyu 滿漢合璧六部成語 (Manchu-Han set phrases of the Six Boards) [NJTB] The first text, abbreviated as NJTB, consists of six fascicles. Each fascicle includes vocabulary related to one of the Six Boards: fascicle 1 – Board of Personnel (li bu 吏部), fascicle 2 – Board of Revenue (hu bu 戶部), fascicle 3 – Board of Rites (li bu 禮部), fascicle 4 – Board of War (bing bu 兵部), fascicle 5 – Board of Punishments (xing bu 刑部), fascicle 6 – Board of Works (gong bu 工部). The Six Boards formed the core of the Qing imperial government, each assuming responsibility and authority over matters within its jurisdiction. Of unknown authorship, NJTB was published several times, first in 1742 by the Yongkuizhai 永魁齋 in Beijing, 1795 and then 1816 by the Wensheng tang 文盛堂, also in Beijing. Manuscript versions of this text were also produced throughout the dynasty. Figure 11.4 shows a sample page of NJTB with boxes demarcating spaces, two columns, to demonstrate how elements are separated on the page. On the far left is the title of the fascicle in two columns. The first column consists of the Manchu title hafan jurgan-i toktobuha gisun on the left, and the Chinese title li bu chengyu 吏部成語 on the right. The rest of the page is laid out in four columns. Each column consists of two to three pairs of Manchu and Chinese lexemes. Each pair is distinguished from the ones above and below it by the punctuation mark resembling a dot below the last component of each Manchu lexeme. All the lexemes on this page are related to one another as terms that bureaucrats in the Board of Personnel would use in their internal correspondence and with other government organs. A user could scan the page for the lexeme that he would need to translate, and then look either right of it if that lexeme is Manchu for the Chinese equivalent or left of it if the lexeme is Chinese for the Manchu equivalent. The Manchu and Chinese terms on this page are not alphabetized by initial (first) letter but rather are related to a common theme or concept. This organizing principle is most explicit in the Chinese terms such as the first five which all contain the character xuan 選, meaning “selection” (of officials).
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Figure 11.4: Ninggun jurgan-i toktoho gisun, juan 1, 1a. Note that this image is a horizontally oriented page that has been presented vertically.
A key clue about the fundamental orientation of this layout is that one lexeme starts at the bottom of the second column and ends on the top of the third column, and similarly another lexeme starts at the bottom of the third column and ends on the top of the fourth. A user who is not familiar with Manchu language could not necessarily tell where a lexeme begins and ends unless he relies on the punctuation mark. Even with punctuation, the placement of the corresponding Chinese characters next to a Manchu phrase only shows equivalence in meaning, not a word-for-word alignment. Therefore, it is probable that this text was most serviceable to people who could at least read Manchu script well enough to find the term to be translated.
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A 2006 reprint of NJTB helps such a reader by re-formatting the terms so that the initial part of each Manchu lexeme is lined up with the first character of the Chinese one. This edition also eliminates the guesswork of determining the beginning and end of each Manchu lexeme by placing the whole phrase in one column and forming a cluster around it with the Chinese lexeme and a brief definition in Chinese below it. The primacy of Chinese is evident in the fact that the definition of the Chinese and Manchu lexemes, which are equivalents of one another, is in Chinese. This text is clearly intended for readers who want to understand Manchu through Chinese. Manchu Chinese Lexeme Lexeme Chinese Definition The reprint additionally helps users by providing an index of the Manchu lexemes, but according to English alphabetic order (A through Y), like Hanyu Pinyin 漢語拼音, the international standard for Romanizing Modern Chinese, and an index of the Chinese lexemes by the number of strokes in the initial characters (1 stroke to 17 or more strokes).23 These modifications are useful for users who want to concord a Manchu set phrase with the Chinese equivalent or a Chinese set phrase with the Manchu equivalent. Returning to the Qing period version of NJTB, its layout too supports two types of users. Our contemporary eyes may consider the Manchu lexeme, as the left-hand element in each pair, to be the featured term, which is then matched with a Chinese one. However, it is equally possible that a user with stronger proficiency in Chinese would be drawn towards the Chinese set phrases, and then locate the corresponding Manchu ones. Since all the terms in a given section are related, skimming through a few pages to find an entry would not be that onerous. The relatively similar size of the Chinese and Manchu scripts in this text also promotes a visual symmetry in the content. Neither language is privileged because it is larger or smaller than the other. The “parity” of languages is also achieved by the pairing of terms with the Manchu one, which is longer than the combination of characters constituting the Chinese one, setting the parameters of the space on the page that the entry occupies. Since most of the set phrases are originally Chinese, the Manchu terms are approximate and descriptive translations rather than direct equivalents which would
23 For the Manchu index, see Liu bu chengyu, 2–62, for the Chinese index, ibid., 2–47. Each section is paginated discretely (starting on page 2 because the cover page for each section is considered page 1). The Manchu index precedes the Chinese index in the front matter of this book.
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be comprehensible in textual contexts other than bureaucratic documents. The Chinese terms are not necessarily the principal pieces of information in this text because they occupy a secondary position “following” the Manchu. Equally significant is the fact that the Chinese term is not a mere translation of the Manchu, as might be inferred in a page design that either renders the Chinese elements in a smaller size than the Manchu ones or places them next to the corresponding Manchu terms in an irregular way. By matching their “heads,” the terms counterbalance one another’s political and linguistic importance.
Gongwen chengyu 公文成語 (Set phrases in official documents) [GWCY] The second example is an 1889 publication of 36 leaves by the Juzhentang 聚珍堂 in Beijing (see Figure 11.5 for an excerpt). It is part of a 4-fascicle compilation entitled Qingyu zhaichao: Man Han fenlei 清語摘抄:滿漢分類 (Excerpts of Qing (Manchu) language: Manchu and Chinese categories). Each fascicle of the Qingyu zhaichao, like NJTB, is a glossary for a specific type of information. The first fascicle is a table of names of government offices (Ch. yashu mingmu 衙署名目 / Ma. jurgan yamun-i gebu). The second fascicle is a table of names of official titles (Ch. guanxian mingmu 官銜名目 / Ma. hafan hergen-i gebu). GWCY is the third fascicle, and the title is translated into Manchu as siden-i bithe baitalara toktoho gisun. The fourth fascicle lists set phrases in memorials presented to the imperial throne (zhezou chengyu 摺奏成語 / wesimbure bithe ichiyara de baitalara toktoho gisun). GWCY is organized by Chinese character radical according to the order standardized by the Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 (Kangxi dictionary) named eponymously after the Kangxi emperor who mandated its compilation in 1710. Each spread is laid out, as suggested in Figure 11.3, with nine columns per page and two rows per column. Each column is evenly spaced set apart from the adjoining ones. Each row consists of nine clusters, each cluster made up of one Chinese and one Manchu lexeme, which are of different lengths depending on the Manchu. Since none of the clusters carries over from one column to another, GWCY is easier to read than NJTB. Like the other case study texts, this one is bound in Manchu style, so each page starts on the right side of the spread. On the surface, this text looks different from the first example. The columns are arranged without the user needing to separate entries from one another as in NJTB, which has some clusters that occupy two adjoining columns, so that the user can read easily either from left to right or top to bottom. But it is evident that this text is actually intended to be read from right to left, fitting the habit of a person accustomed to reading Chinese, because the Chinese lexeme is the first term in each
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Figure 11.5: Gongwen chengyu, 1b–2a.
cluster. Reading the bottom half of a column and then a top one is less likely since both Manchu and Chinese were read from top to bottom. However, the layout does not exclude that option. There are no physical markers that denote a single correct reading order. Yet the reader’s eye is more likely to move in the direction of a Chinese-ordered text. Pairing of corresponding lexemes in vertical clusters (two down) rather than horizontal ones (two across) in GWCY can also be considered as following a similar if not identical logic as in NJTB. A user could flip through the text turning pages from left to right or right to left, which would be “forwards” and “backwards” in Manchu pagination and “backwards” and “forwards” respectively in Chinese pagination. However, the text is oriented by the binding and order of lexemes with the default “forward” and “backward” modes of turning pages determined by Chinese convention. The user could skim the top of each column if more familiar with Chinese or targeting a certain Chinese term, or the bottom of each column if inclined or needing to look for Manchu. This text is more “user-friendly” than NJTB because each page is effectively divided into two halves as well as nine columns, and each spread is complete in and of itself. No parts of a cluster or column are what word processing programs recognize as widows or orphans.
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Dergi hesei toktoho gisun-i bithe / Shangyu chengyu 上諭成語 (Set phrases for edicts) [DHTG] The third and final example is an anonymously authored and undated work consisting of 6 fascicles. Like GWCY, this manuscript is organized by Chinese character radical. DHTG also resembles GWCY in having columns that make up two halves per page and entries as vertical clusters of Chinese on top and Manchu on bottom. Unlike GWCY, the number of columns varies slightly per page, such as 12 on the left-hand side of the spread and 11 on the right-hand side of the excerpt below (Figure 11.6). Since this text is handwritten, the spacing is slightly more uneven and requires the reader to look more carefully in order to separate entries. The person writing the manuscript added some punctuation (dot equivalent to a modern comma) at the end of each cluster, as in NJTB.
Figure 11.6: Dergi hesei toktoho gisun-i bithe, 1:1b–2a.
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A manuscript like this, because both written Chinese and written Manchu require more aptitude to decipher than the printed versions do, would have been suitable for a user who was proficient in both languages. If the reader was only competent in one language, such as Manchu, the Chinese lexemes would be hard to read quickly. Likewise, if the user was unfamiliar with Manchu, a very cursive language, he could not identify all the letters. However, considering how the text is organized, with the Chinese lexeme on top of the Manchu equivalent and the lexemes ordered by Chinese radicals, it is likely that users were more familiar with reading Chinese and needed to learn how to recognize the written Manchu or perhaps even how to copy it. What makes this text different from the other two examples, especially GWCY, is that it most resembles the way in which official documents would be written. The Manchu content, although written in a neat manner, would be especially helpful for reading the emperor’s handwriting, not only for edicts but also for rescripts on memorials from his officials. It is furthermore telling that like GWCY, there are no references to pronunciation for either the Chinese or the Manchu terms. One explanation is that for purely written translation, the user would not need to know or even be curious about how a word is spoken. Another justification for the lack of pronunciation is that a user of this text would be familiar enough with both languages, so the inclusion of transliterations would be unnecessary.
Conclusion These three examples call into question several assumptions that have become accepted in very specialized fields like Manjuristics and broad ones like late imperial Chinese history. The decline in use of Manchu, particularly among Qing bureaucrats who were expected to be competent in the language, is an assumption worth challenging by various approaches. Although more studies are starting to reveal that Manchu continued to be meaningful in the latter third of the Qing, both as a court language and as a vernacular one, such work has maximized a highly limited textual corpus and some anecdotal evidence in oral histories.24 Rather than regarding the dearth of “hard data” to be a weakness, I see in it an opportunity to delve into sources other than the lamentations of the emperor about his officials’ ineptitude and the hearsay about Manchu bannermen unable or unwilling to converse in their mother tongue. Concentrating on how Manchu continued to be used for official correspondence, even in the most nominal way, I see in the three featured texts the possibility that many more people than formerly imagined were working and thinking in varying admixtures of Chinese and Manchu. They may have been less 24 See Porter, “Manchu Racial Identity” and Söderblom Saarela, “Alphabets avant la lettre.”
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competent in either language than if they were monolingual, or as might be inferred from the production of ambilingual texts, they may have achieved comprehensive competence in one and only specialized competence in the other. Unfortunately, the lack of relevant and explicit data precludes any investigation comparing how language competence changed at particular periods during the Qing. We know that there were individuals like the literatus BUJILGEN Jakdan (Buji’ergen Zhakedan 布吉爾根·扎克丹) who could write macaronic poetry, interspersing Chinese and Manchu words and phrases.25 There were also people like SHEN Qiliang 沈啓亮, compiler of the Daicing gurun-i yooni bithe / Da Qing quan shu and other lexicons, who started learning Manchu when he was about 30 years old.26 These texts open up the possibility that many people of the Qing experienced compound bilingualism, knowing one set of concepts through two different sets of words in two languages, or coordinate bilingualism, dividing ideas into two different sets of concepts as expressed through two different sets of words in two languages.27 Rather than focusing just on the eventual decline of language use, or considering Manchu persons’ adoption of Chinese as a zero-sum game involving their losing their native language, the three case study texts in this chapter show that bilingualism during the Qing should be investigated in relative terms, much as bilingualism today does not imply equal competence in two languages.28 As seen in Elena Chiu’s work on the zidishu 子弟書 (translated literally as “bannermen tales”), a mix of Manchu and Chinese, or Manjurized Chinese, developed and was widely used in spoken and written forms, chiefly in Beijing during the nineteenth century.29 Although the case study texts mainly prove that written bilingualism was sustained through the perpetual translation of government documents, the existence of reference tools for this linguistic purpose could also mean that people were maintaining varying standards of spoken bilingualism in Manchu and Chinese, and perhaps other pairs of languages, such as Manchu and Mongolian, and Tibetan and Mongolian. Although Yeh Kao-shu 葉高樹 has argued that emphasis on translation (instead of the ability to produce original writing, as I understand Yeh’s line of reasoning) was a weakness of language education for Qing bannermen, who were the most favored candidates for positions as translation officials,30 prioritizing translation in education may have also been an inadvertent strength of the system because 25 See Bosson and Toh, “Jakdan and His Manchu Poetry,” and Toh, “The Poetic Forms.” 26 See Kanda, “Shen Ch’i-liang,” 131. This article does not specify whether “years of age” refers to modern reckoning of a person’s age as “zero” at birth or by the Chinese sui 歲 by which a person is one sui at birth and gains age by lunar year. 27 See Weinreich, Languages in Contact. 28 This conclusion builds upon other scholars’ previous discoveries about how the Manchu language changed in form and purpose throughout the late Qing. See for example von Mende, “In Defence of Nian Gengyao.” 29 Chiu, Bannermen Tales, 130–35. 30 Yeh, “Qingchao de qixue.”
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the imperative of translating from Manchu to Chinese and Chinese to Manchu preserved symbiotic competence. The ambilingual design of these texts can also inform the current development of modern Manchu, as persons learning it are all non-native.31 Although handwritten and even paper-printed texts with Manchu content will become less common in the future, the act of translation, between Manchu and Chinese, or Manchu and other languages, can still be guided by proper pagination of digital formats that can help users who have achieved various degrees of proficiency in the featured languages to find meaning and equivalence for both set phrases in disparate languages as well as to extend such knowledge of standardized expressions to more literary and humanistic heights. The non-static nature of Qing ambilingualism is also relevant to shaping knowledge about impagination in a comparative manner. The texts in this chapter include both handwritten and printed graphemes. In typeset media, every glyph is set in designated places to be printed but can be more flexibly re-arranged than the oracle bones of ancient China discussed in chapter 3. Like the bamboo strips that replaced bone media, as explained in that chapter, and then developed further to paper in the Ming dynasty onward as considered in chapter 10, the languages in the Qing texts featured in this chapter were interchangeable in order because they could be put together in different combinations. Each page of the text was designed to fit a standard layout, but depending on the actual lexemes featured on a specific page or spread, each cluster – column or row – could be larger or smaller than the ones adjoining it. The variety of scripts, some running from left to right, or right to left, or top to bottom, also meant that individual phonemes, syllables, or logographs could not be lined up with the same degree of precision as found in the Hebrew Bible and the Babylonian Talmud examined in chapter 2 and the Tibetan Kanjurs investigated in chapter 4. As with the mutable alignment of words, images, and other elements in European (chapter 6), Korean (chapter 7), and Japanese (chapter 12), Qing texts served and still reflect the ever-creative and serviceable combination of complementary multiple official languages sharing space on the same page, despite their many political and linguistic differences. As applications that produce instant translations of scanned text and other digital tools change the ways in which people learn to communicate in languages that are unfamiliar to them, but without necessarily acquiring enough knowledge of the languages’ grammar and vocabulary to be able to evaluate the accuracy of translations performed by machine intelligence, impagination will be an important consideration for the design of online texts that will become more ubiquitous and used than printed ones, as discussed in chapter 13. Bilingual and multilingual digital texts can build in features that assist users who are unequally ambilingual
31 Regarding Modern Manchu, see “Manc.hu.”
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in the featured languages. Unlike the Qing texts in this study that could help several types of users with layouts that conjoined Manchu and Chinese content so that one could read one or both languages at a glance, digital texts may provide more individualized support to compensate for a user’s lesser proficiency (or complete ignorance) of one language and, in doing so, preserve languages that might otherwise risk obsolescence. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang for his extensive guidance as editor that enhanced this work substantially as well as to Anthony Grafton and Glenn Most for their constructive corrections, Eugenia Kim for assistance with image refinement, and for image acquisition and permissions: Marco Carboara and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library, Ma Xiao-he 馬小鶴 and the Harvard-Yenching Library, and Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局.
Bibliography Notes: As in the body text, “juan 卷” refers to Chinese fascicle, “ce 冊” refers to volume; titles in multiple languages for lexicons are given in this order of the English-language names of the languages (those in parentheses are languages that only appear in some of the lexicons): Manchu, Chinese, (Chagatai), (Mongolian), (Tibetan); editors for the imperially commissioned lexicons are generally not cited because the officially named editors were high officials who supervised large teams that composed and edited the texts, with one exception in which the chief editor played a substantial role in the compilation. Aixin Jueluo Wulaxichun 愛新覺羅‧烏拉熙春, comp., Jin Qicong 金啓孮, rev., Manyu yufa 滿語語法 [Manchu grammar]. Huhhot: Nei Menggu renmin chubanshe, 1983. Amiot, Jean Joseph Marie. Dictionnaire tartare-mantchou françois. Edited by Louis Mathieu Langlès. 3 vols. Paris: Didot l’aîné, 1789–1790. An Shuangcheng 安雙成 (ed.) Man Han da cidian 漢滿大辭典 [Manchu-Chinese dictionary]. Shenyang: Liaoning minzu chubanshe, 2007. Berger, Patricia Ann. Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003. Bosson, James and Mark Elliott. “Highlights of the Manchu-Mongolian Collection.” In Treasures of the Yenching: Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Harvard-Yenching Library Exhibition Catalogue. Ed. Patrick Hanan, 79–122. Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Library, 2003. Bosson, James, and Toh Hoong Teik. “Jakdan and His Manchu Poetry.” Tunguso-Sibirica 15. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2006. Chiu, Elena Suet-Ying. Bannermen Tales (Zidishu): Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018. Chunhua 春花 and Wang Sanyue 王三月. “Lun Qingdai Man Meng wen daxing ‘fenleicidian’ de fazhan yanbian 論清代滿蒙文大型 「分類辭典」的發展演變 [On the evolution and development of full-length “classified dictionaries” of Manchurian and Mongolian in the Qing dynasty (authors’ official translated title)].” Nei Menggu shifan daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 內蒙古師範大學學報 (哲學社會科學版) 35, no. 3, 30–36.
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Clark, Larry V., John R. Krueger, Manfred Taube, Hartmut Walravens, and Michael L. Walter, comps. Bibliographies of Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, and Tibetan Dictionaries. Edited by Hartmut Walravens. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 2006. Crossley, Pamela Kyle. “Manchu Education.” In Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600–1900. Edited by Benjamin A. Elman and Alexander Woodside, 340–78. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Crossley, Pamela Kyle. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Daicing gurun-i yooni bithe / Da Qing quan shu 大清全書 [Complete book of the Great Qing dynasty]. Comp. Shen Qiliang 沈啓亮. 14 ce. [n.p.] 1683. Elliott, Mark C. Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World. New York: Longman, 2009. Gongwen chengyu 公文成語 [Set phrases in official documents]. 36 leaves. Beijing: Juzhentang 聚珍堂, 1889. Han-i araha duin hacin-i hergen kamciha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe / Yuzhi si ti Qingwen jian 御製 四體清文鑑 / Qaγan-u bic̆igsen γurban ǰüil-ün üsüg-iyer qabsuruγsan Manǰu ügen-ü toli bičig / Rgyal-pos mdzad pa’i skad bźi śan sbyar Mañdzu’i skad Gsal ba’i me long. 32 juan + 4 supplementary juan. Beijing, 1795. Han-i araha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe / Yuzhi Qingwen jian 御製清文鑑 [Imperially commissioned Manchu Mirror]. 20 juan. Beijing, 1708. Han-i araha Manju Monggo gisun-i buleku bithe / Yuzhi Manzhou Menggu hebi Qingwen jian 御製 滿洲蒙古合璧清文鑑 / Qaγan-u bic̆igsen Manǰu Mongγol ügen-ü toli bic̆ig [Manchu and Mongolian combined Qing-language Mirror]. 20 juan. Beijing, 1717. Han-i araha Manju Monggo Nikan hergen ilan hacin-i mudan acaha buleku bithe / Yuzhi Manzhu Menggu Hanzi san he qie yin Qingwen jian 御製滿珠蒙古漢字三合切音清文鑑 / Qaγan-u bičigsen Manǰu Mongγul Kitad üsüg γurban ǰüil-ün ayal γu neilegsen toli bičig [Imperially commissioned Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese Mirror organized by the system of indicating sounds]. 32 juan. Beijing, 1780. Han-i araha sunja hacin-i hergen kamciha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe / Ḫān-nïng fütügän beš qismi qošqan ḫat mānjū söz-ning ayrïmčïn ḫati / Yuzhi wu ti Qingwen jian 御製五體清文鑑 / Qaɣan-u bičigsen tabun ǰüil-ün üsüg-iyer qabsuruɣsan Manǰu ügen-ü toli bičig / Rgyal pos mdzad pa’i skad lnga shan sbyar yi manydzu’i skad gsal ba’i me long [Imperially commissioned Pentaglot Mirror]. 32 juan. Beijing, 1791. Huang, Pei. Reorienting the Manchus: A Study of Sinicization 1583–1795. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Jiang Qiao 江橋, comp. Qingdai Man Meng Hanwen ciyu yinyi duizhao shouce 清代滿蒙漢文詞語音 義對照手冊 [(Trilingual) manual of the pronunciation and meaning of Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese vocabulary]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009. Kanda Nobuo 神田 信夫. “Shen Ch’i-liang and his Works on the Manchu Language.” Proceedings of the Third East Asian Altaistic Conference August 17–24, 1969 Taipei, Republic of China. Ed. Ch’en Chieh-hsien (Chen Jiexian 陳捷先) and Sechin Jagchid. Taipei: National Taiwan University, 1969. Kawachi Yoshihiro 河內 良弘 and Kiyose Gisaburō Norikura 清賴 義三郎則府 (eds.) Manshūgo bungo nyūmon 満洲語文語入門 (Introduction to Manchu language) Kyoto: Kyōtodaigaku gakujutsu shuppankai, 2005. Kim, Loretta E. “Illumination and Reverence: Language, Identity, and Power in the Prefaces of the Manchu Mirrors.” Tunguso Sibirica 16. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007. “Last of the Native Manchu Speakers.” Straits Times, June 29, 2016. http://www.straitstimes.com/ asia/east-asia/last-of-the-native-manchu-speakers (accessed April 8, 2018). Lee Hun 李勳, comp. Man Han sajeon 滿韓辭典 [Manchu-Korean dictionary]. Seoul: Goryeo daehakgyo Minjong munhwa yeonguwon, 2017.
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Li, Gertraude Roth. Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents. 1st edition: Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000; 2nd edition: Mānoa: National Foreign Language Resource Center, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2010. Man Han lei šu bithe / Man Han leishu 滿漢類書 [Classified dictionary of Manchu and Chinese]. Comp. Sangge (Sang’e 桑額). 32 juan. [n.p.]: Tianhui ge shufang, 1706. Man Han tungwen funlei ciyan [sic.] shu / Man Han tongwen fenlei quan shu 滿漢同文分類全書 [Complete book of classified concordance of Manchu and Chinese]. Comp. Sangge (Sang’e 桑額). [n.p.], 1700. “Manc.hu.” https://manc.hu/en (accessed April 16, 2018). “Manchu, Once China’s Official Language, Could Lose Its Voice.” Sixth Voice, May 30, 2017. http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1000272/manchu%2C-once-chinas-official-language%2Ccould-lose-its-voice (accessed April 9, 2018). Manju gisun-i untuhun hergen-i temgetu jorin bithe / Qingwen xuzi zhinan bian 清文虛字指南編 [Guidebook of function words (particles) in the Qing (Manchu) language]. Comp. Wanfu 萬福. 2 ce. [n.p.] 1885. Manju Nikan ging bithe toktoho gisun / Man Han jingwen chengyu 滿漢經文成語 [Manchu/Chinese set phrases in Buddhist scripture]. Comp. Mingdo (Mingduo 明鐸). 4 juan. Beijing: Yinghua tang 英華堂, 1737. von Möllendorff, Paul Georg. Manchu Grammar. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1892. Ninggun jurgan-i toktoho gisun / Man Han hebi liu bu chengyu 滿漢合璧六部成語 [Manchu-Han set phrases of the Six Boards]. Reprint edited by Yong Zhijian 永志堅. Urumqi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 2006. Ninggun jurgan-i toktoho gisun-i bithe [Set phrases of the Six Boards]. n.a. 6 juan. Beijing: Yongkuizhai 永魁齋, 1742. Liaoning Provincial Library, rare books number 30167. Norman, Jerry. A Concise Manchu-English Lexicon. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1978. Porter, David C. “Manchu Racial Identity on the Qing Frontier: Donjina and Early Twentieth -Century Ili,” Modern China 44.1 (2017): 3–37. Qingyu zhaichao: Man Han fenlei 清語摘抄: 滿漢分類 [Excerpts of Qing (Manchu) language: Manchu and Chinese categories]. 4 juan. Beijing: Juzhentang 聚珍堂, 1889. Scharlipp, Wolfgang. “Zu einigen Bearbeitungsmethoden lexikalischer Einträge und deren türkische Ergebnisse im manjurischen Fünfsprachenspiegel [Some remarks concerning lexicographical entries and their Turkish results in the Manchu Pentaglot Dictionary].” Central Asiatic Journal 59, no. 1–2 (2016): 239–54. Söderblom Saarela, Mårten. “Alphabets avant la lettre: Phonographic Experiments in Late Imperial China,” Twentieth-Century China 41.3 (October 2016): 234–57. Söderblom Saarela, Mårten. “Manchu and the Study of Language in China (1607–1911).” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2015. Söderblom Saarela, Mårten. “Mandarin over Manchu: Court-sponsored Qing Lexicography and Its Subversion in Korea and Japan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 77.2 (December 2017): 363–406. Stary, Giovanni. “Sibe: An Endangered Language.” In Language Death and Language Maintenance: Theoretical, Practical and Descriptive Approaches, edited by Mark Janse and Sijmen Tol, 81–88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Toh Hoong Teik. “The Poetic Forms and Two Longer Poems in the Manju gisun i yobo maktara sarkiyan.” Bulletin of the SOAS 73.1 (2010): 65–99. von Mende, Erling. “In Defense of Nian Gengyao, or: What to Do about Sources on Manchu Language Incompetence?” Central Asiatic Journal 58, no. 1–2 (2015): 59–87.
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Yeh, Kao-shu 葉高樹 [Ye Gaoshu]. “Qingchao de qixue yu qiren de fanyi jiaoyu 清朝的旗學與旗人 的繙譯教育 [The School System and Translation Education of the Bannermen in the Ch’ing Dynasty (author’s translation)].” Taiwan Shida lishi xuebao 48 (2012): 71–154. Yong Heming and Peng Jing. Chinese Lexicography: A History from 1046 BC to AD 1911. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Weinreich, Uriel. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. The Hague: Mouton, 1968. Zikmundova, Veronika. “Sibe Language.” In Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Edited by Rint Sybesma, et al. Consulted online on 26 November 2017 http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000264.
Kimiko Kono
Chapter 12 Japanophone Glosses (kunten) in Printed and Digitized Manuscripts Abstract: Two characteristics make books written in Japan during the pre-modern era unique. The first of these is that among books composed by Japanese authors, in addition to those written in the Japanese language, or wabun 和文 (lit. “Japanese (wa) writing (bun)”), there were also a large number of books written in Classical Chinese, or kanbun 漢文 (lit. “Chinese (kan) writing (bun)”). The second characteristic is that the literary world of premodern Japan consisted not merely of books by such Japanese authors alone, but also allotted a prominent place to Chinese and Buddhist Classics, both of these being likewise composed not in Japanophone wabun, but in the Sinographic kanbun of Classical Chinese. Learned people in ancient Japan expended a great deal of effort on the reading and understanding of such kanbun texts. At the same time, they also developed a system for graphically assigning the Chinese characters and Chinese vocabulary found in these texts to specific words in their native Japanese, creating thereby a script suitable for the recording of that language. Later, around the 9th century, a separate script called kana, itself graphically derived from Chinese characters, was developed to write Japanese phonetically. The modern custom of writing Japanese in a mixture of Sinographic characters and phonetic kana is a direct result of this process, and throughout the history of Japanese language and writing, the question of how to assign Chinese characters and vocabulary to Japanese words – the method known as kundoku, or “gloss-reading” – has been an issue of crucial importance. Known collectively as kanbun kundoku – the Japanophone gloss-reading of Sinographic text – this practice was born together with, and has persisted throughout, the history of Japanese language, learning, and culture. In this article, I look at texts that embodied this practice, examining in particular documents of the Japanophone “gloss-pointing” method known as kunten. I focus on how shifts and transformations in media – originally from manuscript to print, and now from print to digital – have produced changes in the page layouts used to convey such gloss-borne intellectual information. I also consider how these changes in media and page layout have influenced people’s learning habits and knowledge. Indeed, precisely because of its adoption and re-adoption across various successive forms of media, the Japanese practice of kanbun kundoku, together with its kunten glossing, has a relevance far beyond the East Asian sphere where Sinographic script and literary culture were shared. It harbors the potential, I believe, to open up an entirely new perspective for the pursuit of a world philology as a whole.
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Keywords: Classical Chinese, Chinese Classics, Buddhist Scriptures, Japanophone Glosses (kunten), gloss-reading, scholastic traditions
Introduction The General Catalogue of National Books (Kokusho sōmokuroku 国書総目録)1 is the title of the most comprehensive modern catalogue of books that were written in Japan during the pre-modern era (i.e. before 1868). The term “national books” (kokusho 国書) here signifies that the authors of the works recorded in the catalogue are Japanese, but it also hints at two distinguishing characteristics that make the world of Japanese books unique. The first of these is that among such “national books” of Japanese authorship, in addition to those written in the Japanese language, or wabun 和文 (lit. “Japanese (wa) writing (bun)”), one also finds a large number of books written in Classical Chinese, or kanbun 漢文 (lit. “Chinese (kan) writing (bun)”). The world of Japanese books is thus one constructed from a wa/kan, Japanese/Chinese amalgamation of texts, one spanning both the Japanophone and the Sinographic. The second characteristic is connected with the situation that gave rise to the first. In Japan, which initially had no script of its own, the history of writing begins instead with at first study of, and at length independent use of, a script which had been brought over from the continent: kanji 漢字, literally “Chinese (kan) characters (ji).” Indeed, in ancient Japan the very foundations of culture – from the various fields of higher learning to the structures of political and social systems – were established on the basis of knowledge gained from the classic texts of ancient China, or kanseki 漢籍 (lit. “Chinese (kan) texts (seki)”). In addition to this, another major influence on the formation of ancient Japanese state and society was Buddhism. Yet even the Buddhist scriptures that came to early Japan were in fact Sinographic texts, being mainland-produced translations of Buddhist scriptures into kanbun. The world of books in premodern Japan, in other words, did not consist of “national books” by Japanese authors alone, but also allotted a large and important role to Chinese classics and the scriptures of Buddhism, both of which were written not in Japanophone prose (wabun), but rather in Classical Chinese (kanbun). Learned people in ancient Japan expended a great deal of effort in their attempts to read and understand such kanbun texts. At the same time, however, they also developed a system in which by assigning Chinese characters and Chinese words to Japanese vocabulary, it became possible to repurpose them as a script for the written expression of Japanese itself. The methods by which Chinese characters
1 Kokusho sōmokuroku 国書総目録 [General Catalogue of National Books], 8 vols. and supplementary vol. (Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1963–1976).
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and words were incorporated into Japanese can be broadly divided in two. One of these involved adopting Chinese words and characters with their original Chinese readings intact. The other involved the reassignment of Chinese words and characters to specific native Japanese words. The former method is referred to as on-yomi 音読み, or “reading by sound (on 音),” while the latter is called kun-yomi 訓読み, or “reading by gloss (kun 訓).” The character for “mountain” 山, for example, has both the on-yomi “sound-reading” of san (as in the mountain Fuji-san, cf. the Mandarin shan), and the kun-yomi “gloss-reading” of yama (the native, everyday Japanese word for “mountain”). Later, around the 9th century, a separate script called kana 仮名 (in two varieties, hiragana 平仮名 and katakana 片仮名), also itself derived graphically from Chinese characters, was developed to write Japanese phonetically. The custom of writing modern Japanese using a mixture of Sinographic characters and the phonetic kana syllabary is the direct result of such a history. Thus, in the history of the Japanese language and Japanese texts, the question of how to read Chinese words and characters by assigning them Japanese values – the process known as kundoku 訓読, or literally “gloss (kun) reading (doku)” – has been an issue of truly central importance. As a result, even now in the 21st century, the kundoku “gloss-reading” of Sinographic texts, or kanbun, remains a topic of mandatory coverage in primary-school Japanese classes,2 and continues to be tested in university entrance exams.3 Today, the kundoku procedure for reading such Sinographic texts is systematized, involving the addition of certain specialized marks called kunten 訓点, literally “glossing (kun) points (ten)”, which are then in turn read and interpreted according to a defined set of rules. This too, however,
2 In current guidelines on Japanese education from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology – under the sub-heading “Traditional Linguistic Culture and Characteristics of the Japanese Language” – one finds stipulated the teaching of both “the rules of Classical Japanese (bungo 文語)” and “the rules of gloss-reading (kundoku 訓読).” See Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Kōtō gakkō gakushū shidō yōryō kaisetsu: Kokugo-hen 高等 学校学習指導要領解説: 国語編 [Senior High School Course of Study Teaching Guide for Japanese Language] (Tōkyō: Kyōiku Shuppan, 2010.6). 3 In the most recent guide published by the National Center for University Entrance Examinations, the outline summarizing question formats for the examination section on “Japanese Language 国語” states that: “For the topic ‘Japanese Language: Comprehensive’ there will be questions on passages both from the modern era and from classical works (including texts in Classical Japanese and in Sino-Japanese).” Out of 200 points in total, it stipulates the following breakdown: “Passages from the modern era – 2 questions, 100 points; Passages from classical works – 1 question on Classical Japanese (50 points) and 1 question on Sino-Japanese (50 points).” See the online document by the National Center for University Entrance Examinations, “Heisei 30-nendo Daigaku nyūshi sentā shiken shutsudai kyōka, kamoku no shutsudai hōhō tō” 平成30年度大学入試センター試験出題教 科 ·科目の出題方法等 [National Center Test for University Admissions, Heisei 30 [2018]: Question Formats for Tested Curricula and Subjects], http://www.dnc.ac.jp/center/shiken_jouhou/h30.html (accessed November 2017).
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uses a method produced and transmitted over the long course of more than a thousand years. The practice of kanbun kundoku – the Japanophone gloss-reading of Sinographic texts – was born together with, and has persisted throughout, the history of Japanese language, learning, and culture. In this article, I will be looking at texts that embodied this practice, examining documents, in other words, of the Japanophone “gloss-pointing” kunten method. In particular, I will focus on how shifts and transformations in media – as kunten texts moved from manuscript to print, and now from print to digital – have produced changes in the page layouts used to convey such gloss-borne intellectual information. I will also consider how these changes in media and page layout have influenced people’s learning habits and knowledge.
Chinese Classics and Buddhist Scriptures: Formats and Methods of Annotation Before moving on to discuss kunten-glossed texts in detail, however, I will briefly review some bibliographic aspects of these Chinese classics and Buddhist scriptures that had been read and studied for so long throughout the East Asian Sinographic cultural sphere: namely the basic textual formats they tended to assume and the methods used to inscribe these formats with commentary information. In ancient China – particularly from the Later Han Dynasty onward – classical works that had become objects of study were typically supplemented with various types of commentary, the body of which tended to grow over time by accreting layer upon layer of additional commentary. For instance, the case of the Analects (Lunyu 論語) of Confucius – paradigmatic example of a classic always among the most read and studied both in China and in Japan – went as follows. The oldest extant commentary on the Analects that we possess, by ZHENG Xuan 鄭玄 of the Later Han, survives only as a set of annotations incorporated into the body of the main text. The format taken by these annotations – even in older manuscripts – is that of the “twinned line” (sōgyō 双行), where commentary text is inserted directly into the main text under the relevant commented phrase, yet written in halfsize characters, thereby permitting two parallel lines of commentary within the width of a single column of base text [See Puett’s and Li’s chapters in this volume]. This format is also found in The Analects: Collected Commentaries (Lunyu jijie 論語集解), an exegetical work by HE Yan 何晏 of the Wei Dynasty, of which the 1364 Shōhei-era 正平 edition – the earliest extant Japanese printing of any secular Chinese classic – likewise arranges its commentary in such “twinned” lines (Figure 12.1). A further important point worth noting is that, in the case of works like the Analects which had become objects of study, comments were also frequently inscribed by hand at the margins of the page and between lines (both in printed books and in manuscripts) on
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Figure 12.1: 1364 colophon from vol. 10 of The Analects: Collected Commentaries 論語集解, here dating its printing by the Japanese regnal era of Shōhei 正平.
a broad range of topics: Chinese characters (their pronunciation and meanings), the explication of certain phrases, textual variants, and so on. Yet commentary information of this sort, aiding the interpretation of the main text, was not always necessarily added into the main text directly at the site of the relevant passage. An alternative method, often seen in Buddhist scriptures, was to collect for each volume of the text a running list of all annotations on difficult-toread or difficult-to-understand Chinese characters found therein, and then to place this list at the given volume’s end. Such is the method employed, for example, in older manuscripts of Japan’s earliest collection of setsuwa religious tales, the Record of Miraculous Events in Japan (Nihon ryōiki 日本霊異記), where after each
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individual story, notes explaining all the difficult-to-read or difficult-to-understand Chinese characters it contains are appended at that story’s end (Figure 12.2).
Figure 12.2: 904 colophon to Kōfukuji Temple manuscript of Miraculous Stories of the Reward of Good and Evil from the Country of Japan.
Furthermore, in the case of books in scroll-format, we find many examples of commentary written on the verso side that points to a corresponding passage on the recto opposite. Any such commentary or other information needed for interpreting the text, in other words, could be inscribed at a number of different positions on a book’s pages. In what way, then, did Sinographic documents in Japan tend to be inscribed with the information necessary for kundoku reading?
The Formats of Kunten-glossed Texts and Methods of Kunten Annotation Kundoku “gloss-reading” is in its essence a method by which one can understand and interpret a Sinographic text through Japanese, while simultaneously reading it in Japanese. As such, it might even be described as a kind of translation of the
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target Sinographic text, if not indeed an act of commentary performed upon it. Parallel to the practice of kundoku reading was the practice of inserting into the Sinographic text a variety of marks that signaled how the kundoku was to be executed. Collectively, these marks added for the sake of kundoku are called kunten 訓点, or “glossing points” (with ten 点 in this usage subsuming – much like the word “punctuation” – a range of differently-shaped marks beyond its literal sense of “point”). There are various kinds of kunten. The set of marks used to indicate sentence segmentation, for example, are called kutōten 句読点, a word combining the kuten 句点 used to break up sentences (ku) with the tōten 読点 (“reading points”) used to mark the boundaries between phrases. There are also other kinds of marks used to indicate the structure of longer passages and paragraphs, as well as another set of marks called shōten 声点 (“voice points”) that indicate the proper Chinese tone for a given character, and so on. These examples can also moreover be found in the manuscript materials excavated from sites in western China, such as Dunhuang.4 As a complement to these, in regions whose languages were typologically different from Chinese, there arose marks such as kaeri-ten 返点 (lit. “turning-back points”) designed to invert a text’s reading-order, or more precisely, to indicate where and how words in a Sinographic text could be read in a “reversed” order that more closely matched that of the reader’s own language. Other marks were developed to supply those expressions and grammatical elements found in the reader’s language – particles, verbal inflections, etc. – that Chinese lacked. Marks of this kind were used not only in Japan, but also on the Korean peninsula. Another way of saying this is that kundoku reading was not a practice unique to Japan. Most broadly speaking, kunten might be defined as “marks added to a Sinographic text to facilitate its understanding,” with kundoku in turn referring to “the practice of reading a Sinographic text according to the guidance of kunten marks.” Here, however, I will examine kunten that were unique to Japan, and after explaining briefly how they functioned, move on to look at actual Japanese kunten-glossed documents. In contrast to an isolating language like Chinese, an agglutinative language like Japanese indicates grammatical function by means of what are called in Japanese grammar “dependent words” – i.e. “words” such as particles and auxiliary verbal inflections that are unable to stand alone. In order to add this element of “dependent words” that was absent from Sinographic texts, and thereby make it possible to read such Sinographic texts while transposing them into Japanese in real time, it became the practice in Japan to add glosses using phonetic kana characters and a set of marks called wo-koto-ten ヲコト点 (“wo-koto points”). The oldest
4 For further detail, see Ishizuka Harumichi 石塚晴通, “Kuntengo gaisetsu, sōron” 訓点語概説. 総 論 [Overview and Summary of Kuntengo], in Kuntengo jiten 訓点語辞典 [Kuntengo Dictionary], ed. Yoshida Kanehiko 吉田金彦 et al. (Tōkyō: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2001), 2–3.
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extant materials that exhibit such marks go back to the beginning of the Heian period, in the early 9th century. The following is an account of how they work. Glosses in the phonetic kana script – called in this usage kana-ten (“kana points”) – are added to words to indicate their proper (in-context) pronunciation, or “reading.” They are usually written directly to the right of the relevant Chinese characters in the main text, but in some cases, such as when multiple “readings” are thought to be equally possible, differing kana glosses may be found written on both the right and the left sides. Wo-koto-ten, on the other hand, indicate how characters are to be read without using phonetic kana, adding instead points, dashes, and other marks at set locations on the four corners and four sides of a given character, as well as inside and outside of it. There is, moreover, a good deal of variation in the rules governing precisely what kind of mark, placed at which location, indicates what manner of reading, and not all such rule systems are alike. To take one of the more representative
Figure 12.3: A “pointing chart” (tenzu 点図) found in vol. 3 (“New Music-Bureau Poetry,” part 1) of the Kōzanji Temple manuscript of the Bai Juyi Collection.
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patterns, according to the rules of the “academic-house” pointing system (hakaseke-ten 博士家点) – so-called for its association with the Kiyohara 清原, a house descended from Imperial Academy scholars – a single dot at the character’s top right indicates that the accusative particle wo is to follow, while a dot at the character’s middle right side indicates that the nominalizing particle koto should be added. This particular sequence of wo and koto is also the source for the general name applied to glossing marks of this category: wo-koto-ten. In the case of wo-koto-ten, however, without a thorough grasp of which mark, where, indicates what reading, kundoku reading of a text according to such marks is impossible. For this reason we sometimes find a diagram known as a tenzu 点図, or “pointing chart,” included in such a text as a key to the particular system of wokoto-ten marks and readings used therein (Figure 12.3). Today too, when researching documents containing wo-koto-ten, it is common practice to make such a tenzu chart and read the glossed text in kundoku with that for reference.
The Teaching and Study of Kundoku Reading The benefit of wo-koto-ten was that one could easily add to a Sinographic text those “dependent words” of Japanese that did not exist in Chinese – and more easily than with glosses in phonetic kana, which required spelling out, one character per syllable. This was moreover achieved without modification of the underlying page layout. As a method, wo-koto-ten permitted the addition of exhaustive guidance for the supplementation of such Japanese “dependent words” without producing any changes in the original kanbun text’s appearance, either in its lineation or in its inter-character spacing. This can be seen in the survival of standardized page layouts, for example the fixed 17-characters-per-column style characteristic of mainland translations of Buddhist scriptures. That wo-koto-ten left such layouts fully undisturbed was central to their convenience: even as they appended all the information a Japanophone kundoku of the text might require, the original layout itself they would transmit intact. For all their usefulness, however, wo-koto-ten was not the sort of thing one could learn to read entirely on one’s own. Without being explicitly taught the rules governing the types and placements of the various marks used, it was a difficult system to master. How, then, were such wo-koto-ten glossing systems in fact taught and acquired? Among the documents that include kunten glosses like wo-koto-ten, there are some in which we find, often in colophons, information providing an account of when those kunten were added to the text, and by whom. One such example is the manuscript text of the Spring and Autumn Annals and Commentary: Collected Commentaries (Chunqiu jingzhuan jijie 春秋經傳集解) currently housed in the Imperial Household
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Archives, whose 30 volumes are furnished with a detailed apparatus of wo-koto-ten and other kunten glosses across the full length of the work. From its colophon we know that the text was transmitted to people in the Hōjō 北条 clan, then Japan’s preeminent warrior house (HŌJŌ Sanetoki 北条実時, etc.), by scholars of the Kiyohara 清原 family, then the most prominent among houses specializing in the study of Confucianism (KIYOHARA Noritaka 清原教隆, etc.).5 When one undertook to read and study a Chinese classic text, one first of all prepared a personal copy of the text in question. Kunten glosses would then be used to inscribe in that copy the authoritative kundoku reading received from one’s instructor. Nor was such a method of study practiced only before printed books were available: as a traditional study method it seems to have continued even after books began to be printed and published. Yet something brought about a turning point all the same, thoroughly transforming what had been an essentially closed study environment, as well as the methods long used in that environment to transmit kundoku reading traditions. This was the appearance of woodblock-printed books whose main text came already equipped with the kunten needed for kundoku reading, in the form of phonetic “kana points” – and not wo-koto-ten – pre-carved directly into the printing blocks. An early example of this is the Japanese-Glossed Lotus Sutra (Waten Hokekyō 倭 点法華経) printed in Kakei 嘉慶 1 (1387)6 (Figure 12.4). A work of Buddhist scripture, across its entire length the text is equipped with a detailed glossing apparatus of kugiri-ten 句切点 (“sentence-dividing points”), kaeri-ten 返点 (inversion points), and phonetic kana glosses. At the volume’s end a postscript explains that “Japanese points” (waten 倭点) – meaning here kunten in the kana script – had been added as aids to kundoku reading for those less expert in Chinese characters, laity and clergy, men and women alike. Precisely as intended, after its publication the work went on to find a broad audience of readers, indeed becoming a great success. Later, such embedded kunten would also be common in the numerous domestic editions of Chinese classics produced during the Edo period. It may be said that as a result, the kundoku reading of Sinographic texts – and thus the reading of Chinese classics in general – became no longer the exclusive province of a small elite. Compared to the previously dominant style of authoritative transmission face-to-face, the mass-media
5 See the bibliographic explanation for Shunjū keiden shikkai 春秋経伝集解 [Spring and Autumn Annals and Commentary: Collected Commentaries] (30 vols., commentary by Du Yu 杜預 (Jin Dynasty), copied in Bun’ei 文永 4–5 [1267–68]) in the database Kunaichō shoryōbu shūzō kanseki shūran: shoshi shoei, zenbun eizō dētabēsu 宮内庁書陵部収蔵漢籍集覧: 書誌書影・全文影像デー タベース― [Sinographic Texts in the Imperial Household Archives Collection: Image Bibliography and Full-text Image Database], http://db.sido.keio.ac.jp/kanseki/T_bib_search.php. 6 See Nakada Norio 中田祝夫, Shinkū-ban Kakei gannen-kan Waten Hokekyō 心空版嘉慶元年刊倭 点法華経 [Shinkū-edition Kakei 1 [1387] Japanese-Glossed Lotus Sutra] (Tōkyō: Benseisha, 1977).
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Figure 12.4: Page from Waten Hokekyō 倭点法華経, an edition of the Lotus Sutra printed with kunten (here waten 倭点, lit. “Japanese pointing”).
character of print technology had made possible a dramatic change and expansion in both how, and by whom, Sinographic texts were read and studied. Nonetheless, the shift of kunten-glossed texts to print-publication was not without its dangers. In a manuscript age, the site for the construction and transmission of textual knowledge was the (successively re-annotated) individual manuscript.
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The “sedimentary” character of knowledge accumulated in such a manner put it at risk of being lost in the transfer to print – indeed this whole style of knowledge was at risk of being lost. There are, for examples, cases like the following. The Saidaiji 西大寺 Temple manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light (Konkōmyō saishōō kyō 金光明最勝王経), in ten volumes, is a manuscript (and registered National Treasure) copied in the sixth year of Tenpyō Hōji 天平宝字 (762). It contains an extremely detailed apparatus of kunten, indeed a layered combination of two different sets of kunten, added at two different dates. The two sets are moreover inscribed in different colors, the first, from the early Heian period (c. 830), being in white ink, and the second, from Eichō 2 (1097), being in red, meaning that any attempted reproduction of the document in print – with black ink for the base text – would require three colors in all. There is, however, no known example in pre-modern times of a kunten-glossed text being printed by woodblock in multicolored ink. Moreover, the single text produced by such layered combination of different kunten from different eras has, by this very fact, a unique potential for documenting change and development – as much in the Japanese language itself as in the interpretation of the Sinographic text concerned. Yet such differences, though perceptible immediately in manuscripts through variations in ink-color and handwriting, lose all their distinction when printed in woodblock, making it difficult to grasp even the fact of multiple strata coexisting on a single page. In recent years, an answer of sorts to this problem has appeared in the form of publicly accessible image data and published facsimile volumes, both made with high-definition full-color photography. Before discussing these, however, I will review the history of how kunten documents have been handled, in the modern age, by research and by technology connected with textual artifacts.
Modern Research on Kunten Glosses and its Achievements Kundoku – the reading practice that binds the Japanese language to the Sinographic script – has been passed down across the span of over a thousand years, from the beginning of Japan’s reception of Chinese classics, when Sinographic texts first came to be read, and Sinographic characters used for writing, up to the present day. In the course of time, it has also produced countless numbers of kunten-glossed texts. The ultimate reason for this lies in premodern Japan’s adoption of China as the common model for its state, society, scholarship, and culture, which made the gleaning of various kinds of information from Chinese texts always a matter of high priority. One result of this is that, as classics imported from China were read in Japan with such enduring zeal, many works long lost on the Chinese mainland itself have survived in Japan into the present era – the so-called “surviving lost texts” (itsuzonsho 佚存書).
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With the advent of modernity, the value of these rare Sinographic texts still extant in Japan was “discovered” by Chinese scholars as well,7 leading to the reproduction of numbers of such texts in facsimile, not only as artifacts of cultural heritage, but also as objects for research. And among the texts thus chosen, many were found to contain kunten glosses. Of particular note in this vein is the collection Facsimiles of Old Manuscripts in the Literature Department of Kyoto Imperial University 京都帝国大学文学部景印旧鈔 本, published in ten volumes from 1922 to 1942. A collotype reproduction of Chinese texts published through the collaboration of LUO Zhenyu 羅振玉 (1866–1940) and WANG Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927), two Chinese scholars then living in Kyoto, it remains in use today, still earning high praise for its singular achievement in publicizing and circulating in their fullness texts which had previously lain hidden away in the possession of libraries, temples, and personal collections all over Japan. Nonetheless, for Chinese scholars, the value of rare books extant in Japan – the “surviving lost texts” in particular – derived chiefly from their potential as materials for supplementing gaps in other ancient Chinese texts. Yet the kunten glosses contained therein also hold great significance from the standpoint of the history of books in Japan, or the history of Japanese culture. An example of this is the manuscript “Fragments of the YANG Xiong Biography from the Book of Han” (Hanshu Yang Xiong zhuan canjuan 漢書楊雄伝残巻), contained under that title in the second volume of Facsimiles of Old Manuscripts in the Literature Department of Kyoto Imperial University (1935). Essentially a fragmentary manuscript of the Book of Han, it contains kunten glosses datable to the second year of Tenryaku 天暦 (948), from the hand of FUJIWARA no Yoshisuke 藤原良佐. As KOSUKEGAWA Teiji 小助川貞次 has noted previously,8 the gloss-readings indicated by the kunten in this manuscript can shed light on the sort of commentary information people at the time in Japan were likely to consult when they read and studied the Book of Han.
7 One famous example is Guyi congshu 古逸叢書 [Library of Old Lost Texts] (1884), a reprinting of rare Chinese texts extant in Japan, by Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Japan Li Shuchang 黎庶昌 and Yang Shoujing 楊守敬. Research into such “Chinese texts abroad” has also been an active field in recent years, resulting in, for example – under the chief-editorship of Zhang Bowei 張伯偉, Head of the Institute for the Study of Chinese Texts Abroad 域外漢籍研究所 at Nanjing University – the ongoing publication of the series Yuwai hanji yanjiu jikan 域外漢籍研究集刊 [Collected Research on Chinese Texts Abroad], ed. Zhang Bowei 張伯偉, 14+ vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005-). 8 See the explanation of kuntengo 訓点語 under the entry “Kanseki” 漢籍 [Chinese texts] (by Kosukegawa Teiji 小助川貞次) in Kuntengo jiten, 95 (see note 4 above). Regarding “Hanshu Yang Xiong zhuan canjuan” 漢書楊雄伝残巻 see, for example, Ōtsubo, Heiji 大坪併治, “Kanjo Yōyū-den Tenryaku-ten kaidokubun” 漢書楊雄伝天暦点解読文 [A Reading of the Tenryaku-era Glosses on the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han], Okayama daigaku hōbun gakubu gakujutsu kiyō 岡山大学法文学部学術紀要 36 (1975.11). (Since 2015, this manuscript has been in the collection of the Kyoto National Museum.)
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One such case is found in the kunten given for the phrase 擬而不敢下. To the right of the first character 擬 there is a (kata)kana-script Japanese gloss, written in red ink, that reads: ウタ (uta). The import of this gloss is that here the character 擬, which usually means “imitate,” should instead be understood as equivalent to the similar character 疑, meaning “doubt,” whose conventional Japanese reading is indeed utagai. (Abbreviations like uta ウタ for utagahi ウタカヒ – the historical spelling – are not uncommon in kunten.) The source for such a gloss can be traced back to a Tang-era commentary on the Book of Han by Yan Shigu 顔師古, where for the same phrase one finds the gloss: 擬疑也, literally “擬 is 疑” (a terse, stereotyped formulation meaning roughly “The character 擬 is equivalent to the character 疑”). There is, however, in the same manuscript a second kana gloss given for the character 擬 – though placed to its left, and this time in black ink – that reads: ムカ (muka). This alternative gloss interprets the character 擬 (imitate) as being equivalent in meaning to mukai (historically mukahi ムカヒ), or “heading towards” – a Japanese word usually associated with the entirely different Chinese character 向. In this case, however, the commentary source for the gloss is quoted explicitly in the manuscript’s own margins, where we find: 察案説文云擬相向也 (roughly, “Cha’s proposal: the Shuowen [jiezi] says that the character 擬 is equivalent to 相向”). The Japanese gloss would seem to be a partial reflection of the phrase 相向, literally “heading towards (向) each other (相),” in its fullness a reciprocal expression indeed suggesting some concept of similarity more in keeping with the character 擬 (imitate). This “Cha” 察, who here cites the Shuowen jiezi 説文解字 (an ancient lexicographical work) as justification for taking 擬 to mean 相向 in the given Book of Han passage, is none other than YAO Cha 姚察 (522–605), author of an early commentary work on the Book of Han entitled Book of Han: Compiled Glosses (Hanshu xunzuan 漢書訓纂). There is record of this Book of Han: Compiled Glosses in the “Bibliographic Treatise” (Jingjizhi 經籍志) of the Book of Sui (Suishu 隋書), under the “Histories” section (Shi bu 史部) in the subcategory of “Official Histories” (Zheng shi 正史). The entry there reads: 漢書訓纂 三十巻 陳吏部尚書姚察撰 (“Book of Han: Compiled Glosses, 30 volumes, by YAO Cha 姚察, Secretary 尚書, Ministry of Personnel 吏部, Chen 陳 [Dynasty]”). The work itself is no longer extant today. There is, however, further record of it in the “Official Histories” (Seishika 正史家) section of the Catalogue of Books Extant in the Land of Japan (Nihonkoku genzaisho mokuroku 日本国見在書目 録), a catalogue of (Chinese) texts in Japan compiled by FUJIWARA no Sukeyo 藤原 佐世 at the end of the 9th century, where we find exactly the same description: 漢書 訓纂卅巻 陳吏部尚書姚察撰 (“Book of Han: Compiled Glosses, 30 volumes, by Yao Cha, Secretary, Ministry of Personnel, Chen [Dynasty]”). In 948, in other words, when kunten were being added to the manuscript of “Fragments of the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han,” it is entirely possible that Yao Cha’s Book of Han: Compiled Glosses was among the texts directly consulted, and that this bit of commentary quoted here in the margin was information directly sourced from it. Whether or not such is the case, owing to its preservation of textual fragments from works
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otherwise lost in China, this “Fragments of the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han” contains information of extreme importance to the study of Chinese Classics, making it a manuscript of high documentary value.9 Yet the value of “Fragments of the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han” goes beyond what it offers to the field of Chinese Classics studies. The various kunten discussed above for the character 擬 are only one example of what the manuscript can teach us about precisely how – and with reference to what commentaries – people in 10th-century Japan would read and study the Sinographic text of a Chinese classic like the Book of Han. Such a manuscript also suggests how information provided by Japanese kunten documents can meaningfully contribute to future research on the developmental history of language and culture, not only in the Japanese and Chinese cases, but also in the wider East Asian sphere wherever the culture of Sinography was shared. And nothing did more to further such research than the publication of photographic facsimile editions. At the same time, regardless of how clear collotype-printing ever became, for the accurate interpretation of extremely detailed kunten glosses, physical examination of the original manuscripts remained indispensable. The “Fragments of the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han” manuscript discussed above, for example, happens to have kunten not only in black, white, and red ink, but also in yellow and blue, for a total of at least five colors of ink in all. Beyond this it even includes kunten inscribed by making depressions in the page, using a stylus (kakuhitsu 角筆) of wood or bamboo. With a collotype-edition printed in monochrome black and white, it is simply not possible to reproduce on paper the information from all these types of kunten. How, then, has kunten research so far dealt with the information in such documents? A breakthrough in the study of kunten documents was made by KASUGA Masaji 春日政治 with his A Linguistic Study of the Old Glosses in the Saidaiji Temple Manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light (Saidaiji-bon Konkōmyō saishōō kyō koten no kokugogakuteki kenkyū 西大寺本金光明最勝王経古点の国語学 的研究).10 Here he employed a layout that set in the top half of each page a reduced-size collotype photograph from a section of the Saidaiji Temple manuscript
9 The fragments of Hanshu xunzuan 漢書訓纂 cited in “Hanshu Yang Xiong zhuan canjuan” 漢書楊 雄伝残巻 are not contained in the Honpō zanson tenseki ni yoru shūitsu shiryō shūsei: zoku 本邦残存 典籍による輯佚資料集成: 続 [Collection of Collated Textual Fragments from Chinese Texts Preserved in Japan: Addendum], ed. NIIMI Hiroshi 新美寛, rev. SUZUKI Ryūichi 鈴木隆一 (Kyōto: Kyoto University Institute for Research in Humanities, 1968). 10 Kasuga Masaji 春日政治, Saidaiji-bon Konkōmyō saishōō kyō koten no kokugogakuteki kenkyū 西 大寺本金光明最勝王経古点の国語学的研究 [A Linguistic Study of the Old Glosses in the Saidaiji Temple Manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light], Shidō bunko kiyō 斯道文庫紀要 1 (Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1942).
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Figure 12.5: Early print representation of a kunten-glossed text. Above: photograph of text. Below: Japanophone rendering of pictured text according to kunten.
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of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light, while setting in the bottom half a typeset Japanophone rendering of that above-pictured stretch of text (i.e. “writing out” the Sinographic text according to its kunten apparatus). Such a layout would become the model for studies of kunten that followed (Figure 12.5). As an example of an attempt to organize, and render in print, the information contained in a document to which kunten had been added at several different points in time, there is also the model of the Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan in the Oriental Library Collection (Tōyō bunko-zō Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki 東洋 文庫蔵岩崎本日本書紀) by TSUKISHIMA Hiroshi 築島裕 and ISHIZUKA Harumichi 石塚晴通.11 A further, even more fine-grained revision of the same was later produced by Ishizuka Harumchi alone, under the title “The Hōtoku 3 and Bunmei 6 Glosses in the Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan” (Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki Hōtoku 3-nen oyobi Bunmei 6-nen ten 岩崎本日本書紀宝徳三年及び文明六年 点).12 The Chronicle of Japan (Nihon shoki 日本書紀), completed in 720 as Japan’s first official history, was composed as a Sinographic text. Accordingly it also became the subject of Japanophone glossing, of which the Iwasaki manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan (mid-Heian period, 10th century), with its very detailed kunten apparatus, is a prime example. This apparatus, moreover, is in fact the result of kunten being added at a total of four different stages: (1) mid-Heian (late 10th century) kunten in red ink, (2) late-Heian (late 11th century) kunten in black ink, and then from much later on (3) Hōtoku 3 宝徳 kunten (1451) and (4) Bunmei 6 kunten (1474), both of these also in black, by the hand of a literatus scholar of the era, Ichijō Kaneyoshi 一条兼良. Ishizuka Harumichi’s transcription of this text, his success in differentiating between its complexly interwoven layers of information, and then organizing and reproducing these on the page in a visually distinguishable manner, have been praised for “tak[ing] the possibilities of the typeset edition to their utmost limit.”13 In addition, there have also been attempts to reproduce on the printed page any color-differences in the original manuscript text, using the technology of multi-color printing. One such example is the Lotus Sutra Single Character [Glossary] (Hokekyō tanji 法華経単字),14 which reproduced in red print any parts of the original manuscript
11 Tsukishima Hiroshi 築島裕 and Ishizuka Harumichi 石塚晴通, Tōyō bunko-zō Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki 東洋文庫蔵岩崎本日本書紀 [Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan in the Oriental Library Collection], ed. Japan Classical Literature Foundation (Tōkyō: Kichō-bon kankōkai, 1978). 12 Ishizuka Harumichi 石塚晴通, “Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki Hōtoku san-nen oyobi Bunmei rokunen ten” 岩崎本日本書紀宝徳三年及び文明六年点 [The Hōtoku 3 and Bunmei 6 Glosses in the Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan], in Tsukishima Hiroshi-hakushi sanju kinen: Kokugogaku ronshū 築島裕博士傘寿記念: 国語学論集 [80th Anniversary Festschrift in Honor of Professor Tsukishima Hiroshi: A Collection of Essays on the Study of Japanese Language] (Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin, 2005). 13 Ibid., 543. 14 Hokekyō tanji 法華経単字 [Lotus Sutra Single Character [Glossary]] (Tōkyō: Kojisho Sōkan Kankōkai, 1973). A facsimile edition of the Hōen 保延 2 (1136) manuscript.
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written in red ink. There was also Research on the Kanda Manuscript of the Bai [Juyi] Collection (Kanda-bon Hakushi bunshū no kenkyū 神田本白氏文集の研究) of ŌTA Tsugio 太田次男 and KOBAYASHI Yoshinori 小林芳規,15 whose transcription not only used red print for red ink in the original, but also used green print to indicate those kunten made by the depressions of a stylus.
High-definition Full-color Photographic Facsimiles and Image Databases Through many such experiments, 20th-century research on kunten-glossing was able to establish methods for accurately deciphering, transcribing, and reproducing in print all kinds of kunten-glossed documents, contributing thereby greatly to the advancement of research concerning the history of Japanese language and texts. As we enter the 21st century, the most salient new phenomena to emerge – particularly in recent years – are undoubtedly the publication of images of classical texts over the internet, and the wave of facsimile editions being published in high-definition full-color photography using the latest digital technology. An example of the latter trend is the publication of full-text, full-color photographic facsimile reproductions in original size and color for the two texts described just above: the Saidaiji Temple manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light, and the Iwasaki manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan in the Oriental Library collection.16 In the case of the former, this has made it possible to tell the difference – in a printed book and by sight alone – between glosses in white and red ink. And in the latter case, one can now distinguish between different sets of black-ink
15 Ōta Tsugio 太田次男 and Kobayashi Yoshinori 小林芳規, Kanda-bon Hakushi bunshū no kenkyū 神田本白氏文集の研究 [Research on the Kanda Manuscript of the Bai [Juyi] Collection] (Tōkyō: Benseisha, 1982). 16 Kokuhō Saidaiji-bon Konkōmyō saishōō kyō: Tenpyō hōji 6-nen Kudara no Toyomushi gankyō 国宝西 大寺本金光明最勝王経: 天平宝字六年百済豊虫願経 [National Treasure Saidaiji Temple manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light: Tenpyō Hōji 6 [762] Votive Sutra of Kudara no Toyomushi], ed. Sōhonzan Saidaiji 総本山西大寺, commentary by Saeki Shungen 佐伯俊源, Tsukimoto Masayuki 月本雅 幸, and Nojiri Tadashi 野尻忠, 2 vols. (Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan, 2013). Kokuhō Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki 国 宝岩崎本日本書紀 [National Treasure Iwasaki manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan], ed. Kyōto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 京都国立博物館, commentary by Ishizuka Harumichi 石塚晴通 and Akao Eikei 赤尾栄 慶 (Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan, 2013). There are also many other high-definition full-color facsimile editions currently being published, for example series like the Shin Tenri toshokan zenpon sōsho 新天理図書館善 本叢書 [Rare Books of the Tenri Central Library: New Series] and the Sonkeikaku zenpon ei’in shūsei 尊経 閣善本影印集成 [Facsimile Collection of Rare Books in the Sonkeikaku Library], both from the publisher Yagi Shoten. In the case of the latter, the sizes chosen for the printed volumes follow the form of the originals, in an effort to produce something closer to the experience of viewing the original text.
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glosses – one from the Heian period (11th-c.) and two more from the later Muromachi period (in 1451 and 1474) – merely by gauging differences in ink gradation with the naked eye. In addition, many such publications offer not only facsimile photography but also transcription of the text. The Transcribed Series of Kiyohara Nobukata Commentaries on the Chinese Classics 清原宣賢漢籍抄翻印叢刊,17 introduces what are called shōmono 抄物 commentaries – essentially prepared or recorded lecture notes – on the scholarship and teachings of KIYOHARA Nobukata 清原宣賢 (1475–1550), a representative scholar of late medieval Japan and scion of the “academic” house mentioned above. Providing transcriptions of texts along with photographs, the series further augments these with such information as Japanese renderings of the kunten glosses, accounts of textual variants, notes on source quotations, and so on. All of these, however, remain publications in paper media, while the most truly striking progress of recent years has been made in the opening of image databases to the public. Among these, Waseda University Library’s “General Database of Classical Texts” 古典籍総合データベース receives particular praise for the high quality of its images.18 Another is the “Sinographic Texts in the Imperial Household Archives Collection: Image Bibliography and Full-text Image Database,” which opened to the public in 2016.19 This latter offers not only a full-text image database of the chief Chinese and Buddhist texts in the Archives’ collection, but also bibliographic information on the same. Through its “image bibliography” database, moreover, alongside the bibliographic information itself, one can additionally view images of a text’s bibliographically significant features. With books in scroll format, one can literally scroll to navigate the text, and even those annotations appearing on the scroll’s verso side are available as images online.
17 Kiyohara Nobukata kanseki shō hon’in sōkan 清原宣賢漢籍抄翻印叢刊 [Transcribed Series of Kiyohara Nobukata Commentaries on the Chinese Classics], ed. Shisho Chūshakusho Kenkyūkai 四 書註釈書研究会, 1 vol. to date (Tōkyō: Kyūko shoin, 2011). 18 Waseda Daigaku Toshokan Kotenseki sōgō dētabēsu 早稲田大学図書館古典籍総合データベース [Waseda University Library General Database of Classical Texts]. www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/ index.html. Texts can be viewed online or downloaded as pdf files. 19 The establishment of this archive is the product of contributions from: (1) the 2012–2016 Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research (Class A) project “A Reexamination of the Provenance of Sinographic Texts in the Imperial Household Archives: Towards the Creation of a Digital Archive”; (2) the 2012–2013 collaborative research project of the Research and Information Center for Asian Studies, at the Tokyo University Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, “Research into the Cultural History of the Dissemination of Japanese Sinographic Texts: An Experiment in Diachronic Study of a Library, Using the Case of the Imperial Household Collection”; and (3) the 2014–2015 collaborative research project at the same Center, “Research into the Circulation History of East Asian Texts through the Case of Sinographic Texts in Japan: Surveying the Provenance of Sinographic Texts in the Imperial Household Archives.”
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Figure 12.6: Modern edition. Upper right: kanbun text with kunten. Bottom right: Japanophone rendering. Center: Japanese translation. Left: commentary. Mōgyū 蒙求, vol. 1, ed. Hayakawa Kōzaburō 早川光三郎.
The Significance and Potential of Kunten-glossed Texts Over the years, Japanese kunten-glossing employed various characters and symbols – inscribed using various writing implements – to supply Sinographic kanbun texts with the various kinds of information necessary for their reading and interpretation, all in the layered presentation of a single page. The techniques of such a glossing practice moreover made it possible for later generations to continue adding information, with the result that the individual text, over the course of its transmission, came to incorporate an historical accumulation of readings and commentary that transcended any single era. A variety of efforts have been made in turn by modern scholars of kunten glosses and Sinographic writings to reproduce this accumulation, expressing these historical readings and interpretations of the text through the medium of print, producing a new range of complex and diverse page layouts. For example, annotated editions of Sinographic kanbun works published today in Japan contain a wealth of information. After the kanbun text itself in original form, they also present a summary of textual variants, a version of the text glossed
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with kunten, a Japanophone rendering of the text according to those glosses (a kakikudashi 書き下し文 or “writing-out”), a commentary on the text, a full translation of the text into modern Japanese, and so on. The reader must be able to read and process all this information even while moving back and forth between a number of different points on the same page, if not across several pages (Figure 12.6). Given such a format, in other words, most of the work needed to understand a text is done by eye. Yet this is not how the task has traditionally been conceived, as symbolized by the fact that “pointing” idioms referring narrowly to glossing practices – such as ten wo kiru 点を切る (“cutting points”) or ten wo sasu 点を指す (“sticking points”) – could also refer in general to the act of reading kanbun itself. Such usages indicate that originally it was rather the hands that were seen as most deeply connected to the work of understanding kanbun. The Sinographic text was something to be “read,” so to speak, as much “by hand” as “by eye.” To such a way of thinking, when reading or studying texts through the medium of books on paper – whether in manuscript or in print – it was always possible for people to add notes to the page by hand. It was always possible, in the course of their teaching or study, to write in by hand all sorts of additional information, and to thus in effect “read by hand.” This is something that remains equally possible with modern print and facsimile editions. Nowadays, however, in terms of its ability to faithfully reproduce kunten-glossed texts and deliver them to large numbers of people, the medium that has seen the most significant advances is probably that of digitized image data. What would it be like to proactively incorporate the practices of “reading by hand” into such a medium? Arguably, the recent increase in computers equipped with the handwriting functionality to make “notes” directly on-screen is a sign that the manuscript format, and the manuscript mindset, continue to have relevance in the present. No doubt there are also various possibilities for future developments in screen design, where, for example, in a feature already familiar from translation software, placing the cursor over a certain word might bring up on screen additional information such as commentary. Indeed, the advent of an age of digitization has seen a great proliferation of methods for displaying and obtaining various kinds of information. For thinking about language in such a context, there is much that is instructive in the history of Japanese kanbun kundoku, and in the corpus of kunten-glossed texts it produced as its practices were adopted into various new media. The case also offers a unique standpoint from which to consider both the nature of scholastic transmission and media, and how these two elements relate to one another. Such information has a relevance far beyond the East Asian sphere where Sinographic script and literary culture were shared. It harbors the potential, I believe, to open up an entirely new perspective for the pursuit of a world philology. (Translation: Jeffrey Knott)
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Addendum: After the completion of this chapter, on December 28th, 2018, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics made open to the public the Wo-kototenzu dētabēsu ヲコト点図データベース [Wo-koto-ten Pointing Chart Database], which aggregates data from the 26 major wo-koto-ten pointing charts contained in vol. 1 of the Kunten go’i shūsei 訓点語彙集成 [Compendium of Kunten Vocabulary] edited by Tsukishima Hiroshi 築島裕 (Kyūko Shoin, 2007). Such a database may serve as a signal example of the progress being made by wo-koto-ten research in the age of digitization. URL: https://cid.ninjal.ac.jp/wokototendb
Bibliography Hokekyō tanji 法華経単字 [Lotus Sutra Single Character [Glossary]]. Tōkyō: Kojisho Sōkan Kankōkai, 1973. Ishizuka, Harumichi 石塚晴通. “Kuntengo gaisetsu, sōron” 訓点語概説·総論 [Overview and Summary of Kuntengo]. In Kuntengo jiten 訓点語辞典 [Kuntengo Dictionary], edited by Yoshida Kanehiko 吉田金彦 et al., 2–3. Tōkyō: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2001. Ishizuka, Harumichi 石塚晴通. “Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki Hōtoku san-nen oyobi Bunmei roku-nen ten” 岩崎本日本書紀宝徳三年及び文明六年点 [The Hōtoku 3 and Bunmei 6 Glosses in the Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan]. In Tsukishima Hiroshi-hakushi sanju kinen: Kokugogaku ronshū 築島裕博士傘寿記念: 国語学論集 [80th Anniversary Festschrift in Honor of Professor Tsukishima Hiroshi: A Collection of Essays on the Study of Japanese Language]. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin, 2005. Honpō zanson tenseki ni yoru shūitsu shiryō shūsei: zoku 本邦残存典籍による輯佚資料集成: 続 [Collection of Collated Textual Fragments from Chinese Texts Preserved in Japan: Addendum], edited by Niimi Hiroshi 新美寛, revised by Suzuki Ryūichi 鈴木隆一. Kyōto: Kyoto University Institute for Research in Humanities, 1968. Kasuga, Masaji 春日政治. Saidaiji-bon Konkōmyō saishōō kyō koten no kokugogakuteki kenkyū 西大寺本金光明最勝王経古点の国語学的研究 [A Linguistic Study of the Old Glosses in the Saidaiji Temple Manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light]. Shidō bunko kiyō 斯道文庫紀要 1. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1942. Kiyohara Nobukata kanseki shō hon’in sōkan 清原宣賢漢籍抄翻印叢刊 [Transcribed Series of Kiyohara Nobukata Commentaries on the Chinese Classics], edited by Shisho Chūshakusho Kenkyūkai 四書註釈書研究会. 1 vol. to date. Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin, 2011. Kobayashi Yoshinori 小林芳規. Zusetsu: Nihon no kanji 図説: 日本の漢字 [Illustrated: Kanji in Japan]. 1998.11. Reprint, Tōkyō: Taishūkan, 1999.9. Kokuhō Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki 国宝岩崎本日本書紀 [National Treasure Iwasaki manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan], edited by Kyōto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 京都国立博物館, commentary by Ishizuka Harumichi 石塚晴通 and Akao Eikei 赤尾栄慶. Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan, 2013. Kokuhō Saidaiji-bon Konkōmyō saishōō kyō: Tenpyō hōji 6-nen Kudara no Toyomushi gankyō 国宝 西大寺本金光明最勝王経: 天平宝字六年百済豊虫願経 [National Treasure Saidaiji Temple Manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light: Tenpyō Hōji 6 [762] Votive Sutra of Kudara no Toyomushi], edited by Sōhonzan Saidaiji 総本山西大寺, commentary by Saeki Shungen 佐伯俊源, Tsukimoto Masayuki 月本雅幸, and Nojiri Tadashi 野尻忠. 2 vols. Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan, 2013. Kokusho sōmokuroku 国書総目録 [General Catalogue of National Books]. 8 vols. and supplementary vol. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1963–1976.
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Kosukegawa, Teiji 小助川貞次. “Kanseki” 漢籍 [Chinese texts]. In Kuntengo jiten 訓点語辞典 [Kuntengo Dictionary], edited by Yoshida Kanehiko 吉田金彦 et al. Tōkyō: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2001. Kunaichō shoryōbu shūzō kanseki shūran: shoshi shoei, zenbun eizō dētabēsu 宮内庁書陵部収蔵 漢籍集覧: 書誌書影・全文影像データベース― [Sinographic Texts in the Imperial Household Archives Collection: Image Bibliography and Full-text Image Database]. http://db.sido.keio. ac.jp/kanseki/T_bib_search.php. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Kōtō gakkō gakushū shidō yōryō kaisetsu: Kokugo-hen 高等学校学習指導要領解説: 国語編 [Senior High School Course of Study Teaching Guide for Japanese Language]. Tōkyō: Kyōiku Shuppan, 2010.6. Mōgyū 蒙求. Vol. 1. Edited by Hayakawa Kōzaburō 早川光三郎. Shinshaku kanbun taikei 新釈漢文 大系 58. Tōkyō: Meiji Shoin, 1973.8. Nakada, Norio 中田祝夫. Shinkū-ban Kakei gannen-kan Waten Hokekyō 心空版嘉慶元年刊倭点法華 経 [Shinkū-edition Kakei 1 [1387] Japanese-Glossed Lotus Sutra]. Tōkyō: Benseisha, 1977. National Center for University Entrance Examinations. “Heisei 30-nendo Daigaku nyūshi sentā shiken shutsudai kyōka, kamoku no shutsudai hōhō tō” 平成30年度大学入試センター試験出 題教科・科目の出題方法等 [National Center Test for University Admissions, Heisei 30 [2018]: Question Formats for Tested Curricula and Subjects]. http://www.dnc.ac.jp/center/shiken_jou hou/h30.html. (accessed November 2017) Nihonkoku genpō zen’aku ryōiki jōkan 日本国現報善悪霊異記上巻 [Miraculous Stories of the Reward of Good and Evil from the Country of Japan. Vol. 1], edited by Saeki Ryōken 佐伯良謙. Tōkyō: Benridō, 1934. Ōta, Tsugio 太田次男 and Kobayashi, Yoshinori 小林芳規. Kanda-bon Hakushi bunshū no kenkyū 神田本白氏文集の研究 [Research on the Kanda Manuscript of the Bai [Juyi] Collection]. Tōkyō: Benseisha, 1982. Ōtsubo, Heiji 大坪併治. “Kanjo Yōyū-den Tenryaku-ten kaidokubun” 漢書楊雄伝天暦点解読文 [A Reading of the Tenryaku-era Glosses on the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han]. Okayama daigaku hōbun gakubu gakujutsu kiyō 岡山大学法文学部学術紀要 36 (1975.11). Shōhei-ban Rongo 正平版論語 [Shōhei Era-edition of The Analects]. Tōkyō: Shibunkai, 1922. Tsukishima, Hiroshi 築島裕 and Ishizuka, Harumichi 石塚晴通. Tōyō bunko-zō Iwasaki-bon Nihon shoki 東洋文庫蔵岩崎本日本書紀 [Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan in the Oriental Library Collection], edited by Japan Classical Literature Foundation. Tōkyō: Kichō-bon kankōkai, 1978. Waseda Daigaku Toshokan Kotenseki sōgō dētabēsu 早稲田大学図書館古典籍総合データベース [Waseda University Library General Database of Classical Texts]. www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/koten seki/index.html. Yuwai hanji yanjiu jikan 域外漢籍研究集刊 [Collected Research on Chinese Texts Abroad], edited by Zhang Bowei 張伯偉. 14+ vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005-.
III Beyond the Book
Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang
Chapter 13 Beyond the Physical Page: Latest Practice of Scientific Publication Abstract: Scientific publication is going online today. Few scientists still find articles in hard-copy journals. Most of them look for and access periodical publications online. This chapter explains why historians of philology/writing practice cannot ignore the new practice in scientific publication. It investigates several new phenomena in scientific publication that the physical page on paper cannot accommodate, including the so-called Advance Articles (which are released on the web ahead of the hard copy), instant publication metrics (bibliometrics), and visual supplements such as animation and videos. It analyzes the materiality of the internet that supports these phenomena, and points out that online publication elevates the trend of visualization in scientific publication to a new level by going beyond static graphics to accommodate audio and especially video information. These new phenomena may shed light on the future of humanistic publications in the age of the internet. Keywords: scientific publication, history of philology, advance articles, instant metrics, visualization, online publication
Scientific periodicals have been shifting online. More and more journals maintain websites that provide their subscribers with online access to the articles in the latest and even past issues. Some continue to issue hard copies, though increasingly their readers prefer to view or download specific articles. Others have discontinued the circulation of hard copies. One of the latest causalities was the Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, whose editor announced in the last printed issue that “Goodbye Paper. We Are Moving to Online Only Publication.”1 This signals the latest age of impagination, an age in which publication goes beyond the physical page. Because publication in life and physical sciences shifts online much faster and more broadly than their counterpart in the humanities, this chapter focuses on the latest practice of scientific publication. As the introduction of this volume suggests, this study of impagination integrates book history and the history of philology. Is the study of scientific writing of interest
1 Quique Bassat, “Goodbye Paper: We Are Moving to Online Only Publication,” Journal of Tropical Pediatrics 63, no. 6 (2017): 417–417. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-014
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to both fields? Historians of books and print have regularly paid attention to scientific publication – or, more precisely, historians of science have done great work on scientific books and publications.2 In contrast, the recently revived interest in the history of philology has not turned its focus to scientific publications. Should historians of philology pay attention to scientific publication as they do to literary, philosophical, and religious works? There are three strong reasons for historians of philology to work on scientific publication. One lies in the past, one in the present, and the last in the future. In the nineteenth century, when modern philological scholarship became institutionalized, ancient scientific writing was an integral part of philological pursuits. Aristotle’s works on physics, astronomy, and biology were an essential portion of the Aristotelian corpus that nineteenth-century philologists critically edited and compiled.3 The works of Euclid, Archimedes, Hippocrates, and Galen received the attention of critical scholarship exactly as the literary and philosophical works of Homer and Plato did. If studying scientific writing is traditional for philology, then researchers on the development of philology have no excuse for neglecting scientific writing. The present-oriented reason is that the scale of scientific publication is too great to ignore. Today journals in natural sciences far outnumber their counterparts in the humanities and social sciences. As of May 2020, the Scientific Citations Index (SCI) tracks more than nine thousand journals in natural science and engineering, whereas the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) sorts through 3,400 journals and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) not even two thousand (see Table 13.1). Despite possible overlaps, the difference in scale is unmistakable. If studies on scholarly writing were to pay attention only to works in the humanities, they would be destined to miss a huge section of academic output.
2 See just a few examples: Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Alan G. Gross, Joseph E. Harmon, and Michael S. Reidy, Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Mario Biagioli and Peter Galison, eds., Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science (New York: Routledge, 2003). 3 See a brief description of the nineteenth-century edition of the Aristotelian corpus and commentaries, see for instance, Silvia Fazzo, “Aristotelianism as a Commentary Tradition,” in Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, ed. Peter Adamson, Han Baltussen, and Martin W. F. Stone (London: University of London. Institute of Classical Studies, 2004), 1–19. On Carl Gottlob Kühn (1754–1840), who produced the critical editions of the Galenic and Hippocratic Corpuses, see, for example, Vivian Nutton, “In Defence of Kühn,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement, no. 77 (2002): 1–7. For the editions on Archimedes and Euclid, see, for instance, Reviel Netz, “Introduction,” in The Works of Archimedes: Translation and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–28; Christine Roughan, “Digital Texts and Diagrams: Representing the Transmission of Euclid’s Elements,” Digital Classics Online 2, no. 1 (2016): 32–48.
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Table 13.1: Numbers of journals included in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and AHCI (Arts and Humanities Citation Index).
No of journals No. of disciplines
SCI Expanded
SSCI
AHCI
,
,
,
The future-looking reason is that scientists very often move ahead of their colleagues on the other side of the university campus in their practice of writing and publication. Personal computing, communication by email and internet, electronic journals, citation indices, and reference organization software like Endnote and Zotero are just a few examples of scholarly practices that were started by scientists and only later accepted by their colleagues in the humanities and social sciences. If this trend continues, what scientists do with their writing and publication today may well become humanists’ practice tomorrow. These reasons show that a collected volume on the history of impagination is incomplete without a chapter on scientific publication, especially scientific publication online. This paper fulfills this need by studying the practice of online scientific publication and analyzing the technologies and culture that produce and sustain this practice. It will first elucidate the materiality of the online page, and the ways in which it supports three features of online publication, namely advance publication, instant metrics, and supplementary materials, especially visual material in the supplements. These three features do not exhaust all that are new with online publications. Structured open data, for example, may be an important new development. These features, however, are significant, for none of them can be supported by the traditional page, be it made of wood, papyrus, parchment, palm leaves, bamboo slips, silk, clay tablets, or paper. Instead they can only be supported by a new form of page that is empowered by features exclusive (at least so far) to personal computing and internet. This shift to online publication, I argue, reflects today’s scientific culture and marks an important shift in the history of scholarship.
Advanced Publication, Instant Metrics, and Materiality of the Digital Page The printed and digital editions of scientific publication differ in their materiality. The printed edition can be held in the hand and tucked under the arm. Its ink does not look pale under the sun, so it can be read outdoors. It has weight, tangible for the reader who carries it, and for the publisher who pays its postage. It also has
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volume, taking up space that the publisher feels when his storage runs out and that a regular subscriber realizes as his bookshelf space diminishes. Its volume is proportional to the cost of paper, ink, and printing. The combination of weight, space, postage, and printing cost gives rise to the length limit. The online version, in contrast, creates less concern about multiplication and space. It can appear on as many screens of the computer or tablet as have online access to the journal. It is accessible to readers anywhere without incurring postage. Its PDF can be downloaded to the hard-drive, and then sent by email or shared with Dropbox. Though it does take some space in the hard drive (though usually only a tiny fraction of it), it occupies no space on the shelf. The printed and online editions of scientific publication circulate in ways that are almost opposite to each other. The printed edition is delivered to readers one by one by mail. Literally speaking, the online version does not circulate. It stays at a particular address. All interested readers travel across cyberspace to visit the address. This nature of “circulation” enables the online version to be updated in the publisher’s office as frequently as necessary without making changes to thousands of hard copies, and without entailing additional deliveries. This materiality, and to some extent immateriality, of online publication makes possible what is known as Advance Online Articles (Figure 13.1) in scientific journals. The advance article is published ahead of its printed edition. Once an article is accepted after peer review and goes through revision and copy-editing, it is posted, or “published,” on the web with a release date. This date now serves as the official one for publication.4 It may be weeks or months ahead of the delivery of the printed edition, for popular journals usually have long backlogs, a result of their length limit. Advance publication serves two functions. First, it guarantees that the author’s credit for publication is recognized as soon as possible. It also ensures that the reader will have access to new scientific findings just as quickly. Following the same rationale, journal websites even put forth Accepted Manuscripts, which are PDFs of manuscripts already accepted for publication but not yet copyedited or typeset. The updatable nature of the web also supports another new feature of online publication, namely instant metrics. As in Figure 13.2, the online metrics show the numbers of times the article has been reported, blogged, and tweeted. They also indicate the number of times the abstract and the paper have been viewed and the PDF version downloaded. These numbers are regularly updated by a company, AltMetrics, to which such work is outsourced. In the middle of the rainbow circle is the so-called AltMetric Attention Score (631 at the time of image capture) which measures the public attention that it has received. This score is generated by a scoring algorithm that takes various factors into account, including the relative reach of
4 http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/recent.
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Figure 13.1: An explication of Advance Online Publication, from the website of Genome Research.
the different sources of media. Such a metric gives information about the size of the readership and the impact of the article.5 Instant metrics address the scientific community’s concern about readership and impact. They are based upon the Citation Index and the Impact Factor.6 The Citation Index traces the number of citations of an individual article by other authors in the 5 For studies on AltMetrics, see, for example, João de Melo Maricato and Jayme Leiro Vilan Filho, “The Potential for Altmetrics to Measure Other Types of Impact in Scientific Production: Academic and Social Impact Dynamics in Social Media and Networks,” Information Research: An International Electronic Journal 23, no. 1 (2018); Grischa Fraumann, “The Values and Limits of Altmetrics,” New Directions for Institutional Research, no. 178 (2018): 53–69. 6 On academic evaluation based on bibliometric numbers including the citation index and impact faction, see, for example: The PLoS Medicine Editors, “The Impact Factor Game,” The PLoS Medicine 3, no. 6 (2006): e291; Yves Gingras, Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016); Mario Biagioli, “Quality to Impact, Text to Metadata: Publication and Evaluation in the Age of Metrics,” KNOW 2, no. 2 (2018): 1–27.
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Figure 13.2: An image of an “article-level” metric page on the website of Science.
scientific journals that its dataset includes. The impact factor is a number that represents the importance or impact of an individual journal, based on the yearly average number of citations of articles recently published therein. The new online metric differentiates itself from the Citation Index by tracing citations or mentions beyond the world of scientific publication, onto news outlets and social media. It also identifies itself as an “article-level” metric, as it provides real-time information on the reportage of an individual article. This identification makes it different from the impact factor, which is a journal-level measure. A third new feature of the digital version is known as supplementary materials (Figure 13.3). By definition it is not found in the printed edition, since it is meant to supplement the latter only on the journal’s website. The materials are of many
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Figure 13.3: The kinds and numbers of supplementary materials for an article in Science.
kinds. For a very recent article, “DNA Fountain Enables a Robust and Efficient Storage Architecture,” published in Science, for example, its supplementary materials include a further account for materials and methods, 11 figures, 4 tables, 14 additional references, and a movie (Figure 13.3).7 The supplementary materials for a recent article in Nature, “Nomadic Ecology Shaped the Highland Geography of Asia’s Silk Roads,”, include 14 pages of methodological discussion, additional 24page references, a table, 4 graphs, and an executable file.8
Supplementary Material and Visualization The greatest part of the online supplements are visual objects or graphics – tables, graphs, photos, or videos. Today no scientific writing or publication comes without
7 Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski, “DNA Fountain Enables a Robust and Efficient Storage Architecture,” Science 355, no. 6328 (2017): 950–54. 8 Michael D. Frachetti et al., “Nomadic Ecology Shaped the Highland Geography of Asia’s Silk Roads,” Nature 543, no. 7644 (2017): 193–98.
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graphics. In comparison, many publications in the humanities include nothing but text. Visualization has become a trademark of scientific publication today as a result of centuries-long developments.9 One of the earliest scientific visualizations is the set of geometrical illustrations in Euclid’s Elements that is discussed in Chapter 6. The use of numerical tables and their converted graphs became regular and intensified in the past few centuries. The age of the internet extends and expands this trend by providing three new possibilities. First, the website of the scientific journal is much more generous about space than its length-limited printed edition. The journal Science, for example, is very rigid about the length of the printed article: only up to about 4,500 words for a research article, and up to six figures or tables. In contrast, it grants 25 MB for supplementary material, and another 25 MB for up to 10 files of movie, or what is known as “Auxiliary Supplementary Material,” that cannot be saved as docx or pdf format. To make the printed article as short as possible, the editors of Science even order its contributors to shift technical descriptions of experimental methods and materials as much as possible to supplementary materials.10 While the control on the length of the printed article is tight, supplementary materials are welcome and well accommodated. Second, online journals support two developments in the increasing visualization of scientific publication. There are different kinds of graphic or visual materials that serve various functions. Geometrical and astronomical illustrations, maps, diagrams of experimental setups, and representations of molecular structures belong to one kind. They show the shape, position, and relative size (and sometimes colors) of a material body or land, or the spatial relationship of multiple parts or objects. Photography, with its supposed direct reproduction of an object, often serves as immediate visual evidence. The numerical table organizes, classifies, or analyzes a large number of data from observations or experiments into columns and rows. It plays an important role for empirical surveys or experimental sciences, which often generate a mass of data. The numerical table can often be translated into a graph in a variety of forms: pie, bars, or distribution lines, each serving some function better than the others do. For those who are trained appropriately, the graph can serve as evidence, a narrative, or
9 By surveying scientific literature from the 17th to the 20th century, Alan Gross shows a trend of intensifying use of visuals, or visualization, in scientific language. This trend is not just a linear increase over time. It took dramatic turns at specific times, and left behind trajectories that varied by disciplines. Botanical illustration, Brian Ogilvie notes, thrived in the sixteenth century and then declined in the next. Martin Rudwick identifies the emergence of a visual-heavy language in geology in the 19th century out of various sources that had been in place in the 18th century. Gross, Harmon, and Reidy, Communicating Science; Brian W. Ogilvie, “Image and Text in Natural History, 1500–1700,” in The Power of Images in Early Modern Science, ed. Wolfgang Lefèvre, Jürgen Renn, and Urs Schoepflin (Birkhäuser Basel, 2003), 141–66; Martin J. S. Rudwick, “The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760–1840,” History of Science 14 (1976): 149–95. 10 “Science: Information for Authors,” Science | AAAS, January 31, 2018, http://www.sciencemag. org/authors/science-information-authors.
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an argument for a change or pattern, ideally communicated “at a glance.” Other forms of visualization integrate statistical information into descriptive visuals. Figure 13.4, for instance, maps the locations and frequencies of the observed presence of different domesticated species in the Amazon with various symbols, colors, and shades.
Figure 13.4: A graph that integrates a variety of statistical and geographical information, reproduced with permission.
The first development that the increase of visual supplements in online publication testifies to is that the screen blurs the distinction between book page and canvas – a theme that Anthony Grafton studies in his chapter in this volume. The book page and the canvas represent different archetypes of media. The book page, produced primarily for text, has a size limit that constrains the dimension of graphics. Its size and use often derive from material conditions. The palm tree leaf in traditional India, for
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example, is bound to be long and narrow, often too limited to support large drawings. Or they may derive from the cultural or material conventions for the production or circulation of books. Folio, quarto, octavo, etc., are various sizes of such conventions. Folio, for example, is usually the largest format that can support large images. That constraint does not satisfy visual artists. They prefer a medium that is large by itself and can expand at ease, like the canvas (in the West) or the scroll (as for Chinese ink paintings). Thanks to online supplements, more and more scientists upload images that are too many or too large for the printed edition. As an indication of its qualification as a canvas, the computer screen on the scientist’s desk grows in size, or even doubles or triples in number. Though the screen cannot expand indefinitely, the computer screen provides the features of zoom-in, zoom-out, scroll-up and -down for dealing with images. While the screen has provided steady service for the display of texts – that is, as a page – it also readily serves as a digital canvas. Online supplementary material exists also to support the next development in visualization: the increasing use of movie/video or animation. The graphic on paper is static. In contrast the movie, moving pictures by definition, shows objects in motion. It supersedes the various kinds of graphical materials surveyed above. It reproduces phenomena that move or change with a similitude or precision that static images cannot. When adequately prepared, a video shows, for example, the planetary movement that Nicolaus Copernicus described, or the cardiac movement that William Harvey demonstrated, much better than static illustrations. The authors of a recent article in Science, for instance, used a video of bone marrow cavity that shows cells migrating along the wall of blood vessels.11 Some authors prefer animation, for it can be more effective than plain video, by featuring or controlling a particular element (or several) in the visual field. It may accelerate a slow movement (for example, Earth’s motion around the sun, one cycle of which takes a year) or show a rapid movement (the heartbeat, for instance) in slow motion. The video in an article in Nature simulates the bonding of bacteria to a receptor protein “fibronectin.”12 For physical reasons, audio and especially video cannot be transmitted by paper or any other traditional medium for writing. The twentieth century has tried different media for audio and video distribution: the wax cylinder, vinyl record, cassette, and then CD, and then DVD, for example. Though more or less successful, these media for the most part only worked for commercial music and movies, media that were produced and distributed very differently from academic publications. In practice very few academic works have circulated through mass production of audio/video cassettes or CDs. Only until recently have academic videos become available for a significant number of readers, as the internet provides affordable, if not entirely free, and reliable distribution for works that are not as profitable as commercial music or movies.
11 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343427/bin/srep44097-s4.mov. 12 https://media.nature.com/original/nature-assets/nrm/journal/v15/n10/extref/nrm3874-s1.mp4.
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The appearance of video is an important step in the history of senses as applied to scholarship. The first sense that human scholarship employed was sound (through speaking and listening). Spoken words, however, dissipate as soon as they are uttered and reach only as far as human ears can hear them. The next sense is sight, which writing responds to. Writing supplements (and even replaces) spoken words, for it can endure the test of time on a physical medium, sometimes for centuries, and can be transported thousands of miles away. Its long endurance and distant circulation are possible because it is separated from the author. Once separated, it gains its own life. It can last longer than the moment of writing, even longer than the author’s life. It can circulate far away from the author. It can also be multiplied, and be edited and revised as often and much as its author wants to (or more than he may want). It supports better emotional management on the author’s part, for it separates him from his reader, thus keeping him from immediate emotions, such as rage and urges for physical fights.13 This advantage of separation had been exclusive to writing alone until voice became recordable for the first time in the nineteenth century with the arrival of the phonograph and phonogram. Thereafter sound voice became separable from its speaker and editable, though at first only inside the professional studio. After voice, moving images became recordable and editable with the availability of motion pictures, which was built on photography, already developed over the nineteenth century to capture and reproduce still images. The first moving pictures or movies were silent. Then “talking films” and videos appeared, combining sound and sight. It is thanks to such technologies that interested audience today can see several talks by famous authors, such as Anthony Grafton and Glenn Most, on YouTube without the medium of writing. The indispensability of writing for the distribution of knowledge is challenged by the new audio-video culture. For visualization to become possible, adequate schooling for users is necessary. In modern society all children receive rudimentary knowledge of reading and making tables and graphs in elementary or middle school. That is to say, a certain degree of visual literacy is universal today. Scientists receive further training in technical imaging and visualization in college and graduate school. Indeed literacy in visualization has become an essential part of professionalization in science. Foreseeing that the use of visual media will also expand in general education and the humanities, a pioneer like Shigehisa Kuriyama of Harvard has been teaching the making of videos and interactive files in his undergraduate courses in East Asian Studies and the history of science. He asks his students to turn in videos, instead of papers, as their mid-term and final assignments. Harvard also has opened Critical Media Practice, a secondary field for graduate students who want to integrate
13 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London & New York: Methuen, 1982), 103–104; Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang, “From Oral Disputation to Written Text: The Transformation of the Dissertation in Early Modern Europe.” History of Universities 19 (2004): 167–168.
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visual media into their academic work. This program asserts that it “reflects changing patterns of knowledge dissemination, especially innovative research that is often conducted or presented using media practices in which written language may only play a part.”14 The availability of personal computing supports what may be called the explosion of visualization in scientific publication and its gradual spill-over to the social sciences. Visualization in scientific publication has intensified rapidly since the 1980s. Before then, most scientists drew their charts by hand on grid paper and publishers hired professionals to convert raw graphics into professional-looking ones. Beginning in the 1980s, scientists gradually became able to produce graphs directly on their computers, with suitable printers (or plotters) and packaged software, and later with PDF.15 Today the contributing scientist and his team take over the tasks that professional graphic editors once did. As this visual culture grows, more and more journals, including Science and Nature, select for the cover image of each issue the best-looking illustration in the articles to be published.16 Scientific authors are well equipped to produce, tailor, and control the images that will appear in their publications. Saving the cost of cover design, the authors’ newly acquired power to create images makes the publisher’s job easier and cheaper. The technical barriers and cost of visualization are reduced by the affordable power of personal computing. Executable files in online supplements also result from the ubiquity of personal computing and internet. In an age when almost every scientist has access to internet and personal computers, an executable file can be distributed for free by skipping the circulation channels of books and magazines. When the format is right, the file can be played by any interested scientist simply on his desktop. An important reason why the digital screen can serve these different functions is that it is interlinked and can display multiple windows. Usually a webpage is filled with many hyperlinks. For example, the online reader may switch between the text and its endnotes by clicking the note numbers, which are hyperlinks. He may also be directed to the author’s affiliation and email address by clicking his name, which again is a hyperlink. To tweet an article or post it on Facebook, the reader likewise clicks corresponding buttons or banners that are interlinked. The links open up different windows for viewing PDFs, images, videos, instant messaging, email, and so forth, each of which is supported by a program. These windows may be superimposed on one another, or they may line up side by side for the convenience of comparison. Visualization has not been exclusive to publications in natural science. Medieval monks or scholars often illustrated their manuscripts, as shown in Chapter 6. Or
14 “Critical Media Practice,” accessed January 27, 2019, http://cmp.gsas.harvard.edu/. I thank Peter Galison for this reference. 15 Howard Wainer, “Preface to the 2010 Edition of the English Translation,” in Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2010), xi. 16 “Cover Story,” Nature Chemistry 2, no. 3 (2010): 147, https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.555.
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Figure 13.5: Ramus’s analytical chart of dialectic, in Petrus Ramus, Professio regia.
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Peter Ramus (1515–1572), a humanist, made good use of diagrams or what he called tables (tabula) to analyze logic and other subjects (Figure 13.5). In this diagram he analyzed dialectics into dichotomized headings that go down nine levels.17 In spite of the early start of graphics in humanistic works, today scientific publications take visualization much more seriously than works in the humanities do. It is the result of the intensification of visualization in natural sciences since the early modern period, as mentioned above. To show the difference between scientific publication and its counterpart in the humanities, just take as an example art history, a humanistic discipline for which the study of visual art lies at its heart. Though art historians may do close analyses of visual artworks (sometimes of many of them), the language of their reasoning and argument remains predominantly textual. Most of them do not reason or argue with tables, graphs, or images. In comparison, scientists today use graphics not just to illustrate or provide evidence; they also narrate, demonstrate, and argue with graphics.18 Meanwhile, visualization has spilled over to the social sciences. Scholars in quantitative social sciences (economics, sociology, and political science) and experimental social sciences (psychology and linguistics), for example, make use of almost as many graphics in their publications as do their colleagues in natural sciences. This is easy to understand. Like scientists, they ask questions that can be answered only by the production and management of a great deal of data. They also rely on similar or even identical statistical tools to process, classify, and analyze their data.
Conclusion: Scientific Impagination and the History of Scholarship Online scientific publication goes beyond the physical page. The online article can be viewed on any screen in the reader’s office, library, laboratory, or home, as long as he has a valid subscription, personal or institutional, to an individual journal. As it is housed on the publisher’s end, the online journal can be updated frequently, post the latest advance publications, and show real-time metrics. It is electronic, so that text and graphics, including videos, can be easily produced, edited, modified on the publisher’s computer, and easily multiplied on the reader’s end. It comes with
17 On Ramus’s dichotomized tables, see Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 199–202, 300–301, 310. 18 For an elaboration on the use of graphics as scientific argument, see, for example, James Elkins, “An Introduction to the Visual as Argument,” in Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline, ed. James Elkins et al. (New York: Routledge, 2013).
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relatively ample space for supplementary material that does not go into the printed edition. It is interlinked, readily opening texts, images, videos and executable programs simultaneously on many screens at a time. Almost all these features are enabled by the material nature of online publication that makes its production, storage (or space), and access different from the comparative features of paper publication. Advance publication and instant metrics reflect today’s scientific culture. Everintensifying competition for positions and grants, together with a culture that demands accountability and objective evaluation, compels scientists to quantify their contributions and constantly update them – though some scholars lament this development. Advance publication accommodates to the intellectual and sometimes commercial interest in the latest discoveries (in computer technology for instance), and to the tenure clock, grant application deadlines, and annual reports of progress. Instant metrics cater to the trend that the scientist’s contribution is judged by not just the number of their publications, but also the importance of the journal that accepts his articles and the number of times fellow scientists cite him. Instant metrics continue the rationale behind the Citation Index and Impact Factors and expand it in the new age of social media. Online publication accommodates supplementary material that traditional publication on paper cannot contain. Tables, graphs, and images have appeared frequently on the pages since almost the beginning of scientific publication, and even photographs have been adopted in printed material for more than a century. Sound, video, and animation, however, were not available for scholarly publication until the technical problems with the reproduction and delivery of these materials were resolved by the virtual ubiquity of personal computing and the internet. Thanks to the increasing availability of cloud storage, online publication immensely expands, if not downright does away with, the length limit. Scientists take advantage of this possibility in order to provide visual supplements in sizes and numbers that are much larger than the original article. One may argue that, by definition, “supplementary” materials are at most secondary. Indeed, just as the online supplements are not primary, they do not receive much of the publisher’s editing. On the other hand, almost every article in Science and Nature seems to furnish supplementary materials. Prospective authors are told to submit supplements together with their article, as both parts will be reviewed by the referees as integral parts of the submission. As seen above, authors are now instructed to shift methodological and material descriptions to online supplements and to cross-reference them. The referees and serious readers who wish to understand the methods and materials of the article therefore cannot ignore the supplements. Although they might sound optional, online supplements are becoming integral to today’s scientific publication. One may also argue that the electronic version mimics the print version in important ways, showing the lasting power of print in academic publication. It is true that, though most of the electronic papers can be read online in html format, when they are
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downloaded they appear as PDFs that preserve the typography of the printed edition. Typography is in fact less a concern, however. What matters is pagination, crucial for the modern scholarship that requires precise documentation. I have talked to a publisher in the history of science about the feasibility of publishing e-books with his press. His response was that, while casual readers readily accept e-books on Amazon Kindle, academics, especially humanists, are very stubborn in rejecting e-books. The latter need to cite their reference with a precise page number, or they would look unprofessional. The protean “page” layout of Kindle E-books, an advantage on the one hand, becomes a disadvantage on the other, for they do not provide a consistent page number for humanists to cite – unless a PDF version is displayed on Kindle. Nonetheless the PDF version of the article might become obsolete with scientific publication, if not with its counterpart in the humanities. Natural scientists do not usually pursue the precision of scientific citation as much as their humanist colleagues do. They cite an article in their reference, but not the precise page number(s) on which a particular passage appears. Today, a doi (digital object identifier), the universal ID for the location of an online article, is created for every online article. Since most scientists, no longer accessing the printed journal, shift online for its digital version, a URL and doi may suffice for their documentation. If this shift is completed someday, scientists might dispense with the PDF article altogether. For the humanists, as long as there is no replacement for standard pagination, the PDF version and its printed twin will remain. Visualization in scientific publication is an important development in the history of human scholarship. Passing on learning from mouth to ear, the conventional scholar of the earliest learned traditions was a rhetor or speaker. It was relatively late in human history when society began to assume that the scholar was a writer. For a few centuries, however, we have taken for granted the assumption that the scholar preserves his work by writing. We also expect that a junior scientist is trained to write. Today’s scientific publication shows that the scientist is no longer just a writer. He is also a table- or graph-drawer, a photographer, a video-maker or an animator. That is to say, he is a graphic producer. This scientific scholar’s new qualification in graphic production is to a significant extent sustained by affordable personal computing. Today almost all scientists write, create numerical tables, and draw graphs on their personal computers. Even when they take images with advanced imaging instruments, they output their images to the screens of their computers, where they are viewed, analyzed, and edited for publication. Less professional pictures may even be taken with a smart phone and then transferred to the computer. The written culture of human society has been sustained by the accessibility and affordability of the pen, ink, and paper to writers. Today personal computing, though more expensive than pen and paper, has become almost ubiquitous. It is essential that scientists on both the supplying and the receiving ends of publication be well equipped. Not only do scientists have powerful computers in their laboratories or offices. Their readers – and indeed almost every college student
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in affluent countries – also have computers, laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Both the authors and the readers of scientific publication have the computing power to produce graphics, and compatible software to view them. And they receive adequate schooling to produce and view these features. There are several material reasons for the generous storage for the online supplements of scientific journals. First of all, subscriptions to journals in natural sciences are in general much more expensive than are those in the humanities. That is, scientific journals charge their readers more to support their publication. Worse still, publishers sell bundled access to their online journals. If an institution can’t afford the huge price set differentially by the publisher, its faculty and students lose access to the entire bundle of journals.19 Second, scientific journals often charge authors additional pre- or post-publication fees. They may charge $50–200 at the time of manuscript submission. They may also impose printing fees of $100–250 per page and of $150–1,000 per color figure, and a flat fee or a charge per item of $150–500 for supplementary material. A growing number of open-access journals charge an article processing fee of as much as $3,900 per piece.20 These fees, often unfamiliar to humanists, are usually paid out of the scientist’s grant or by his institution. Still, they create a serious inequality between scientists at institutions with large resources and those at places (or countries) with less. While those who can afford it seem to enjoy free access to digital journals and unlimited space for online supplements, those who cannot are stripped of the full access to important journals in their fields.21 Is scientific publication the future for its counterpart in the humanities and social sciences? On the one hand, this seems to be the case. Visualization, as seen above, spills over from natural sciences to quantitative or experimental social sciences. It is also taking hold in projects of digital humanities, such as the website “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes,” which visualizes the scale, sources, and
19 For an analysis of the bundled access to online journals, see Theodore C. Bergstrom et al., “Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 26 (2014): 9425–30. 20 Michaela Panter, “Understanding Submission and Publication Fees,” | AJE | American Journal Experts, 2017, https://www.aje.com/en/arc/understanding-submission-and-publication-fees/. On the article processing charge for open-access journals, see also, Francesco M. Marincola, “Introduction of Article-Processing Charges (Apcs) for Articles Accepted for Publication in the Journal of Translational Medicine,” Journal of Translational Medicine 1 (2003): 11, https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5876-1-11. 21 To dodge the so-called paywall, some scientific communities created arXiv.org, a repository in which scientists deposit a copy of their publications for free circulation. The deposited copy has all the information in the published edition, but not the typography. First created to serve the high energy physics community, arXiv has expanded to cover physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and system science, and economics. In 2018 alone the repository received 140,616 submissions. Oya Y. Rieger, “ArXiv Update – January 2019 – ArXiv Public Wiki – Dashboard,” accessed January 27, 2019, https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/ar xivpub/arXiv+Update+-+January+2019. I thank Peter Galison for this reference.
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destinations of slave trade across the Atlantic over three centuries. Historians have begun to discuss the integration of this and similar projects into the scholarship in the humanities.22 The Citation Index, which started for scientific journals, has been reproduced for the social sciences and the humanities.23 Submission fees have now been introduced for journals in certain disciplines in social sciences, such as finance and economics.24 On the other hand, differences between natural sciences and the humanities in their cultures of presentation and writing are entrenched. Just as scientists rely heavily on graphics, for their oral presentations they need a screen (or at least a flat surface) onto which graphics may be projected. They move around the screen when they speak. In contrast humanists usually speak behind the podium, often without any slides. Even if they use PowerPoint at times, their slides are not as elaborate or visually appealing as those of scientists. In scientific writings, there are few endnotes (or footnotes), whereas for a humanistic publication to be taken seriously, precise and detailed documentation and quotations of original passages that fill many notes are necessary. Scientific journals do no or very little traditional editing, whereas humanities journals (or books) do a lot of editing, from citations and wording to the prose.25 For the humanists, citation indices will never offer the promise of “objective” measurements for their peers in natural sciences, for the bulk of their publication in the forms of monographs and chapters in collected volumes are not indexed. Impact factors may work relatively well for natural scientists, for most of them publish in a lingua franca, namely English, which is supposedly accessible to a global readership. The humanists often continue to publish in their own native languages, producing somewhat segregated readerships of unequal sizes. In addition, most humanists do not welcome publication fees and will resist them as long as they can. Some humanists protest loudly at the increasing pressure from the natural sciences to evaluate academic performance by citation indices and impact factors.26
22 Andrew Kahn and Jamelle Bouie, “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes,” SLATE, July 30, 2019, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_inter active_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html, accessed May 20, 2020; Britt Rusert, “New World: The Impact of Digitization on the Study of Slavery,” American Literary History 29, no. 2 (2017): 267–86. I thank Anthony Grafton for these references. 23 “History of Citation Indexing,” Clarivate, accessed January 5, 2018, https://clarivate.com/essays/ history-citation-indexing/. 24 Joop Dirkmaat, Robert E. Kohn, and Theodore C. Bergstrom. “Comments: Pricing and Cost of Electronics Journals.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, no. 4 (2002): 227–38. 25 I thank Anthony Grafton for pointing this out to me as an accomplished author and an experienced editor of a humanities journal. 26 David Pontille and Didier Torny, “The Controversial Policies of Journal Ratings: Evaluating Social Sciences and Humanities,” Research Evaluation 19, no. 5 (2010): v, https://doi.org/10.3152/ 095820210X12809191250889; Thed van Leeuwen, “Foreword,” in Research Assessment in the
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Even though the humanists find problematic what is now known as bibliometrics, the competition for positions and resources, as real and intensive for them as for their colleagues in the natural sciences, makes it impossible for them to dodge evaluations that are considered objective. The pressure often comes from national and international funding organizations that try to impose a single standard onto all disciplines. To the humanists’ dismay, these organizations often accept the quantitative measures in natural sciences, which look objective to them, as the joint standard.27 This is not the place to predict where the different practices between natural sciences and the humanities will end. Recent developments, however, show clearly that the humanists – and the historians of human scholarship – cannot ignore the practice of scientific publication, for they will not escape its influence.
Bibliography Bassat, Quique. “Goodbye Paper: We Are Moving to Online Only Publication.” Journal of Tropical Pediatrics 63, no. 6 (December 1, 2017): 417–417. Bergstrom, Theodore C., Paul N. Courant, R. Preston McAfee, and Michael A. Williams. “Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 26 (2014): 9425–30. Biagioli, Mario. “Quality to Impact, Text to Metadata: Publication and Evaluation in the Age of Metrics.” KNOW 2, no. 2 (2018): 1–27. Biagioli, Mario, and Peter Galison, eds. Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science. New York: Routledge, 2003. Chang, Ku-ming (Kevin). “From Oral Disputation to Written Text: The Transformation of the Dissertation in Early Modern Europe.” History of Universities 19 (2004): 129–87. “Cover Story.” Nature Chemistry 2, no. 3 (2010): 147. https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.555. “Critical Media Practice.” Accessed January 27, 2019. http://cmp.gsas.harvard.edu/. Dirkmaat, Joop, Robert E. Kohn, and Theodore C. Bergstrom. “Comments: Pricing and Cost of Electronics Journals.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, no. 4 (2002): 227–38. Elkins, James. “An Introduction to the Visual as Argument.” In Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline, edited by James Elkins, Kristi McGuire, Maureen Burns, Alicia Chester, and Joel Kuennen. New York: Routledge, 2013. Erlich, Yaniv, and Dina Zielinski. “DNA Fountain Enables a Robust and Efficient Storage Architecture.” Science 355, no. 6328 (2017): 950–54. Fazzo, Silvia. “Aristotelianism as a Commentary Tradition.” In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, edited by Peter Adamson, Han Baltussen, and Martin W. F. Stone, 1–19. London: University of London. Institute of Classical Studies, 2004. Frachetti, Michael D., C. Evan Smith, Cynthia M. Traub, and Tim Williams. “Nomadic Ecology Shaped the Highland Geography of Asia’s Silk Roads.” Nature 543, no. 7644 (2017): 193–98.
Humanities: Towards Criteria and Procedures, ed. Michael Ochsner, Sven E. Hug, and Hans-Dieter Daniel (Cham: Springer, 2016), v. 27 I again thank Anthony Grafton for bringing up this point to me.
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Fraumann, Grischa. “The Values and Limits of Altmetrics.” New Directions for Institutional Research, no. 178 (2018): 53–69. Gingras, Yves. Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Gross, Alan G., Joseph E. Harmon, and Michael S. Reidy. Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Clarivate. “History of Citation Indexing.” Accessed January 5, 2018. https://clarivate.com/essays/ history-citation-indexing/. Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Kahn, Andrew, and Jamelle Bouie. “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes.” SLATE, July 30, 2019. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_inter active_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html. Leeuwen, Thed van. “Foreword.” In Research Assessment in the Humanities: Towards Criteria and Procedures, edited by Michael Ochsner, Sven E. Hug, and Hans-Dieter Daniel. Cham: Springer, 2016, iv–vi. Maricato, João de Melo, and Jayme Leiro Vilan Filho. “The Potential for Altmetrics to Measure Other Types of Impact in Scientific Production: Academic and Social Impact Dynamics in Social Media and Networks.” Information Research: An International Electronic Journal 23, no. 1, paper 780 (2018). Retrieved from http://InformationR.net/ir/23-1/paper780.html (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6xmqq4Nvh). Marincola, Francesco M. “Introduction of Article-Processing Charges (Apcs) for Articles Accepted for Publication in the Journal of Translational Medicine.” Journal of Translational Medicine 1, Article 11 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5876-1-11. Netz, Reviel. “Introduction.” In The Works of Archimedes: Translation and Commentary, 1–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Nutton, Vivian. “In Defence of Kühn.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement, no. 77 (2002): 1–7. Ogilvie, Brian W. “Image and Text in Natural History, 1500–1700.” In The Power of Images in Early Modern Science, edited by Wolfgang Lefèvre, Jürgen Renn, and Urs Schoepflin, 141–66. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London & New York: Methuen, 1982. Ong, Walter J. Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Panter, Michaela. “Understanding Submission and Publication Fees.” | AJE | American Journal Experts, 2017. https://www.aje.com/en/arc/understanding-submission-and-publication-fees/. PLoS Medicine Editors. “The Impact Factor Game.” The PLoS Medicine 3, no. 6 (2006): e291. Pontille, David, and Didier Torny. “The Controversial Policies of Journal Ratings: Evaluating Social Sciences and Humanities.” Research Evaluation 19, no. 5 (2010): 347–60. https://doi.org/ 10.3152/095820210X12809191250889. Rieger, Oya Y. “ArXiv Update – January 2019 – ArXiv Public Wiki – Dashboard.” Accessed January 27, 2019. https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/arxivpub/arXiv+Update+-+January+2019. Roughan, Christine. “Digital Texts and Diagrams: Representing the Transmission of Euclid’s Elements.” Digital Classics Online 2, no. 1 (2016): 32–48. Rudwick, Martin J. S. “The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760–1840.” History of Science 14 (1976): 149–95.
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Rusert, Britt. “New World: The Impact of Digitization on the Study of Slavery.” American Literary History 29, no. 2 (2017): 267–86. Science | AAAS. “Science: Information for Authors,” October 20, 2014. http://www.sciencemag. org/authors/science-information-authors. Wainer, Howard. “Preface to the 2010 Edition of the English Translation.” In Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps, xi–xii. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2010.
Index 120 Days of Sodom 273 Aaron ben Moshe 70 abbreviations 13, 119, 123, 145, 323n1, 325n4, 364 abjad script (See also Perso-Arabic script) 160 Abraham ibn Ezra 274 abugida scripts 161 Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 1n*, 317n28 “academic-house” pointing system (hakase-ke-ten) 359, 369 accepted manuscript 14, 238, 380 Accius 201–202 account book 166 Ādi Granth (see Guru Granth Sāhib) advance article, or advance publication xi, 4, 14, 377, 380, 390–392 aesthetic/aesthetics 4, 5, 9, 14, 15, 18, 28, 38, 52, 57, 67, 74, 102n16, 107, 117, 127, 135, 151, 155, 176, 177, 244, 273, 284, 292 ahl al-kitāb (ahl–i kitāb) 171 aide-memoire 168 Āīn–i Akbarī of Abul Fazl 172n39 Aisin Gioro clan (Aixin Jueluo zongzu 愛新覺羅 宗族) 327 Alberti, Leon Battista 185, 201, 204 Albright, William Foxwell 56 Alcalá de Henares vii, 79, 79n93, 80n94, 81, 88 Aleppo Codex 53, 70–71, 74n83 Alexandria 27, 36, 65, 66n59, 71, 84, 91 A Linguistic Study of the Old Glosses in the Saidaiji Temple Manuscript of the Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light (Saidaiji–bon Konkōmyō saishōō kyō koten no kokugogakuteki kenkyū) 365–367, 372 al-kitāb (see Qur'ān)170–171 almanac 8, 309–311, 309n11 al-muşhaf (see Qur'ān) 170 Alost 237 ambilinguality 326 Amiot, Jean Joseph Marie 331, 347 Amsterdam vii, 86, 87, 88, 185n1, 203, 205, 206, 251n25, 271, 272, 349 Analects 論語 (Lunyu) x, 312–313, 316, 354, 355, 373 Andrist, Patrick 4, 18 Angad, Guru 162 Angot, Michel 153, 178 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110698756-015
animation 14, 377, 386, 391 annotated lexicon 336–338 annotation (See also commentary) xiii, 10, 12, 35, 105, 186–187, 189, 211, 219–221, 223, 234, 246, 269, 301, 303–304, 306–307, 309, 311–320, 354, 355–356, 369 – inserted double–column annotation 雙行夾註 12, 301, 307, 309, 311, 316–320 Annotations to the Classic of Rivers 水經注 (Shuijing zhu) 313–314 antiquarianism 200–201 Antwerp ix, 86, 204, 238, 241n10, 243n17, 244n20, 249, 249n22, 258, 259, 263, 270 Antwerp Polyglot Bible 86 Apabhramsá 12, 152–155, 157–160, 177 apprentice 238 Aquinas, Thomas 79 Arabic 3, 9, 17, 18, 28, 31, 68, 77, 151–153, 157, 160, 161, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172n40, 177, 178, 179, 378n3, 395 Aramaic script 10, 53, 54, 59, 65, 67, 77, 79, 80 Aramaic writing 10, 54, 55, 59, 77, 80 Archimedes 378, 396 architecture (See also genre) 201, 207, 268, 383, 395 Aristarchus 37 Aristeas, Letter of 71n82 Aristotle 378 Arjan, Guru 161–162 art historians 227n15, 282, 390 articulation (See also navigation) 1, 35, 254, 256, 260, 268, 276n7, 300 artificial learning 324 Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) 378–379 Atīśa 115–116, 121 audio (sound) 377, 386, 387 Augsburg 256 Augustine 79, 186, 193, 195 author x, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 26, 27, 34, 35, 63, 93, 94, 95, 100, 106, 107, 191, 194, 196, 199, 203, 282, 284, 285, 292, 303, 306, 307, 313, 324, 335, 351, 352 – as writer 333, 364, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 391, 393 – as graphic producer 386, 388, 393
400
Index
bahī 166–167, 167n32 Bahya ben Asher 74 bamboo slips or strips 2, 6, 7, 100, 275, 276, 301, 304, 314, 314n20, 315, 316, 317, 320, 346 Bangha, Imre 157–158 bannermen (qiren 旗人) 329–330, 344–345 bannermen tales 子弟書 (zidishu) 345 Baruch ben Neriah 56 Basel 84, 86, 186, 189, 197n47, 199n49 bayāẓ 157, 168 Bembo, Bernardo 188 Bengal 141 Bhagvandas Niranjani 154n6, 175–176 Bhaktamāl 175n50 Bhartrihari 154, 173–176 Bhutan 112, 115n22, 143 Bible vii, 3–4, 49, 63, 68n69, 71–77, 82, 84–87, 200, 241–242, 249 – First St Petersburg Bible 71 – Gutenberg Bible 77, 242 – Harley Bible 71 – Hebrew Bible vii, 5, 11, 13, 47, 49–60, 63, 65–66, 68–71, 73–82, 84–88 – Biblia Hebraica (Rudolf Kittel’s third edition) 53, 84, 86n110 – Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia 53 – Biblia Hebraica Quinta 53 – Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia 53 – Chronicles 80, 82 – Deuteronomy 57 – Ecclesiastes 80, 82n99 – Esther 53, 63, 66–67, 82n99 – Exodus 57, 63, 73, 75, 76, 78, 81, 85 – Ezekiel 74n84 – Jeremiah 55n27, 56–57 – Job 62 – Joshua 57, 62–63 – Judges 62 – Kings (I–II) 62–63, 65, 71, 82, 85 – Lamentations 62, 82n99 – Leviticus 62 – Nehemiah 63 – Numbers 65–66 – Proverbs 56, 62 – Psalms 62 – Ruth 82n99 – Samuel 65, 82 – Song of Songs 82n99
– Kennicott Bible 71, 76 – King James Bible 86 – King’s Bible 71 – Luke (Gospel) 86 – Pentateuch (Law of Moses) 50–51, 60–61, 67, 69, 71, 74n83, 77–79, 82–83, 85, 88 – Perpignan Bible 71 – Rabbinic Bible (first) 80 – Rabbinic Bible (second) 82 – Vulgate (Latin Bible) 79–80, 82–83, 85–86 “Bibliographic Treatise” (Jingjizhi) 經籍志 of the Book of Sui 364 bibliographical format 241, 242–244, 247–249, 251–252 – duodecimo, common or long 242, 244, 251 – folio 14–15, 80, 117–119, 124n57, 131, 140n79, 141n80, 142, 155–156, 160–164, 167, 170, 174–175, 185–186, 241–245, 247–250, 386 – oblong 242 – octavo ix, 82, 88n113, 185, 214–245, 246, 249, 251, 263, 268, 278, 386 – quarto ix, 242–245, 247, 249, 386 – sedecimo 244 bibliometrics 4, 377, 395 bi–directional translation 326 bill 242 Billanovich, Giuseppe 16 binding vii, 7, 8, 10, 35, 113, 116–117, 151, 154, 156, 161, 164, 167, 169, 216, 230, 376–281, 287–288, 297, 301–302, 331, 336, 341 – butterfly biding (Chinese binding) 7, 277 – cardboard binding 157, 164, 167, 251 – cloth binding 116–117, 154, 164, 167 – folded sutra binding 277 – palm–tree leaf binding 3, 6, 115, 143, 156 – stitched books (Tibetan) 113, 116–117, 278n11 – thread–bound binding (Chinese binding) 7, 8, 277–280, 288, 297 – whirlwind binding (Chinese binding) 231, 277 – wrap-back binding (Chinese binding) 7, 14, 277–278, 280 – leather binding 157 Birt, Theodor 3 Black Letter (See also type styles) 14–15, 251–254, 257, 265–267 Blass, Friedrich 3 Blarer (Blaurer), Ambrosius viii 185, 193, 197, 198
Index
Boccaccio, Giovanni 190 Bod, Rens 16 Bologna 77, 78, 85 Bomberg (Van Bomberghen), Daniel 48n2, 49, 49n4, 80, 82, 83 book binder 246 book block ix, 237, 246–248, 250, 254, 267, 307 Book of Changes 易經 (Yijing, Chinese classic) 101 Book of Documents 書經 (Shujing, Chinese classic) 94, 96, 101, 319n34 Book of Han 漢書 (Hanshu) 363–365 Book of Han: Compiled Glosses 漢書訓纂 (Hanshu xunzuan) 364 Book of Poetry 詩經 (Shijing, Chinese classic) 94, 101–102, 104, 106–107 Book of Sui 隋書 (Suishu) 364 bookseller 43 border 5, 24, 74, 117, 121, 143, 210, 218 borderline 124, 133–136, 138, 140–141, 144–145 Bosson, James 330n16, 331, 345n25 Botticelli, Sandro 186 Brabant, duchy of 238 Branca, Vittore 16 Brescia 77, 82 bridge language 325 Bronze Age 55 Bruges 238 Brussels 238, 249 Buddhism 4, 12, 121, 141n85, 142–143, 227n15, 277n8, 313, 352 – early diffusion in Tibet (snga dar) 120 – Mahāyāna 142 – Tibetan Buddhism 15, 17, 115, 122 Buddhist 111–112, 115, 116, 120–122, 141n84, 142–143 Buddhist scriptures 120–121, 127, 142 Budé, Guillaume 201 BUJILGEN Jakdan 布吉爾根・扎克丹 344–345 Butler, Menachem 48n1 Buxtorf, Johannes 84, 86 byne's-sütur 162 Caesar, Sir Julius 188 Cairo 70 Cairo Genizah 52, 53n16
401
Calendars with notes 具注曆 (juzhuli) 309 calligraphy 164, 169 Canart, Paul 4 Candāyan (1379 CE) viii, 155n8, 159–162 canon/canonical 16, 36, 68, 111, 120, 122n50, 142, 155n8, 162, 170, 162, 309, 311–314, 320 canonization of Jewish Scriptures 50, 67 canvas 6, 13, 237, 385–386 carpet pages 71, 74 Casaubon, Isaac 186–187, 196, 199, 202 Catalogue of Books Extant in the Land of Japan 日本国見在書目録 (Nihonkoku genzaisho mokuroku) 364 catchword 35, 260 catechisms 241 ce 冊 (fascicle, volume), see scriptorial units Celestial Section 天部 (tian bu) 333 Central Asia 114n14, 115, 141, 328n9 Chaghatai language 330 Chang, Ku–ming (Kevin) 4, 16, 44n33, 67n63, 347, 387n13 Chartier, Roger 186n3, 284 chastity 212, 213, 216–218, 228, 230–231, 234 CHENG Dengji 程登吉 302, 319 Chinese classical texts 6, 94, 274, 312, 351–354, 369 Chiphyŏnjŏn 集賢殿 209 Chiu, Elena 345 chŏl 節, see also chastity 219–220 Chosŏn 朝鮮 209–210, 213–214, 217–219, 229n13, 227, 234 Choushi jinnang 酬世錦囊 (Precious Guide to Social Exchanges) 304 Chronicle of Japan (Nihon shoki) 367–368 Churches 77, 193, 195, 200, 201 – Church of the East (Orthodox Church) 79–80 – Roman Catholic 190, 325 Cicero 187n9, 190, 195, 201, 202, 252 circulation, of printed and online publications 377, 380 citations 194, 223, 257, 378–379, 381, 382, 391, 392, 394 civil service examinations 292, 302n4, 306, 318 Classic of Filial Piety 孝經 (Xiaojing) 315 Classical Chinese 17, 94, 351–354 classified dictionary (dictionaries) (分類詞典 fenlei cidian) 328, 331
402
Index
Classified dictionary of Manchu and Chinese (Man Han lei šu bithe / 滿漢類書 / Man Han leishu) 331 clay tablet (Akkadian tuppu) 6, 54–57, 59, 379 Critical Media Practice, a secondary field at Harvard 387, 388n14 Code of Hammurabi 59 codex 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 23, 25, 32, 33, 37, 39, 40, 47, 51–55, 68–71, 73–74, 76, 88, 157, 61–162, 164, 166, 169–170, 172, 176–177, 267, 274–275, 277, 278, 285, 297, 310 Codex Venetus A (Bibliotheca Marciana) 85 codification of Jewish law 50 Collected Commentaries of the Analects 論語 集解 (Lunyu jijie) 312, 313n6, 354 Collected Rites of the Great Ming 大明集禮 (Da Ming jili) 280 collotype 363, 365 colophons 9, 69, 164, 169–170, 261, 296, 359 – fleurons 9, 256 – vignettes 9 color 1, 2, 9, 24, 26, 59n40, 190, 196, 254, 265–266, 269, 274, 316, 362, 365, 367–368, 384–385, 393 column 1, 6, 10–13, 17, 26, 32–33, 40, 54–63, 69, 76, 78–82, 86–88, 104–105, 138, 160, 191, 219–220, 223, 248–249, 265–266, 274–275, 277, 279, 281, 283, 292, 301, 305–307, 309, 311, 316–320, 333, 338–339, 341–342, 346, 453m 359, 384 commentarial literature 151–153, 172–173 commentary (See also annotation) vii, xi, 3–4, 23, 25–27, 28n4, 36–38, 40–41, 49–51, 66, 76, 78, 80, 85, 93–95, 102, 104–106, 151–154, 157–158, 173–176, 180, 187, 191, 193, 195, 200–201, 203, 283–284, 311n14, 312, 354–357, 360n5, 363–364, 368n16, 370–371 – Chinese, see zhuan 傳 – Chinese subcommentaries, see shu 疏 – Japanese commentaries of classical Chinese texts, see shōmono – marginalia commentary, see marginalia – visual commentary 185, 191, 201, 203 Commentary of Gongyang 公羊傳 (Gongyang zhuan) 312 Commentary of Guliang 穀梁傳 (Guliang zhuan) 312 Commentary of Zuo 左傳 (Zuo zhuan) 316
commentators 26, 44, 93–94, 96, 101–102, 106, 316 common books 143, 237, 241 commmonplace book 167, 187–188, 201, 203 – Loci communes 188 compendia 9, 200, 285 Complete Book of Classified Concordance of Manchu and Chinese (Man Han tungwen funlei ciyan [sic.] shu / 滿漢同文分類全書 Man Han tongwen fenlei quan shu) 331n17 Complete book of the Great Qing dynasty (Daicing gurun–i yooni bithe / 大清全書 Da Qing quan shu) 331 Complete Book of Myriad Treasures 萬寶全書 (Wanbao quanshu) ix, x, 287–291, 293, 295–296, 310 Completely Revised Complete Book of Myriad Treasures, Marvelous Brocade in the Forest of Letters 全補文林玅錦萬寶全書 (Quanbu wenlin miaojin Wanbao quanshu) 287, 293–295 Complutensian Polyglot Bible 79–81 compositorial practice 238 compound bilingualism 345 concertina 113–114 Confucianism, Confucian ideas, or Confucian ideology 107, 209, 213–214, 227n15, 231, 234, 312–313, 360 Confucius 孔子 12, 96, 98, 101, 104–105, 215, 206, 312–313, 354 Constantinople 77 coronis 35 corpus planning (of Manchu language) 327 cosmopolitan languages 12, 151–153, 177 court (royal) 43, 105, 144, 151, 162, 199, 238, 302n4, 317–318, 344 Courtrai 238, 249 Cujas, Jacques 186 culture 3, 8, 15, 17, 42–44, 55, 69, 101, 114, 144, 210, 221, 234, 237, 268, 322, 351, 352, 254, 362, 391–392 – Arabic 31n6 – Asian 17 – audio–video 387 – book 54n22, 56, 68, 162, 169n36, 275, 301 – Buddhist 143 – commentary 3 – identity 44 – image 48
Index
– Japanese 363 – Jewish 48 – Korean 210–211 – literary 99, 151, 154, 166, 173, 177, 234, 351, 371 – local 17 – manuscript 77, 152–153, 155, 157–158, 163 – material 18 – of priest 49 – of print 77 – of scholar 49 – of Sinography 365 – oral 68 – remote 42 – scientific 379, 391 – scribal 57 – textual 101, 155, 157 – Tibetan 115 – visual 388 – writing 13, 159, 166, 394 Dadu 141 Dadu Dayal 164–165 Dadu Panth 166, 170, 172, 177 Dādū Vāṇī 172 daf (Jewish page or block of text) 6, 11, 55 Daftar (account books) 166 daily use encyclopedias (日用類書 riyong leishu) 8, 13, 15, 303–305, 310–311 Damascus Keter 71 Damhouder, Judocus de 241 dāstān 170 Daud, Maulana 159 Dead Sea Scrolls 11, 47, 51–54, 57–59, 64–66 Dee, John 185, 191, 202 Definitions of Characters in the Classics 經典釋 文 (Jingdian shiwen) 318 Delet (Hebrew) 56 deltos (Greek) 32, 56 dependent words (in Japanese grammar) 357, 359 Derveni Papyrus 27, 34 desks 37 design features 238–239 Devanagari script (see also Nagari script) 161, 163n26, 164, 167, 169 devotional books (See also genre) 253
403
diagrams 25, 36, 168, 188–189, 273, 281n17, 384, 390 – manuscript diagrams 188 – printed diagrams 188 dictionary or wordbooks 8, 311, 326, 328n11, 331–332, 336, 341, 357 Dictionary of Tartar Manchu and French (Dictionnaire tartare–mantchou François) 332 Digest 59n40 digital age 4–5 digital technology 4, 368 direction line 248, 260 directions of writing (left-to-right, right-to-left, vertical) 9, 31, 117–118, 331 dīvān (poetic anthology) 168, 170 doi (digital object identifier) 392 Drège, Jean–Pierre 2 Dub (Sumerian) 11, 55 Duran, Profiat 74 Dunggiya clan (Dongjia shi 董佳氏) 330 Dunhuang 2, 5, 113–117, 124, 132–133, 309, 316–318, 320n36 Dunhuang manuscripts 113, 115, 309, 318, 357 Dutch–language books 240–242, 251, 253–254, 266, 268 Dzungar 142–143 economics or economy, of printing 14–15, 237–238, 267 Edo 江戸 period, in Japanese history 360 Eight Banners 329 Elephantine 59 Elliott, Mark 331 Elman, Benjamin 16, 286n27 Elyot, Thomas 203 enargeia 185, 202–203 Endnote (bibliographical software) 379 epigram 167, 170 epigraphical “V” 266 Erasmus, Desiderius 189–198, 200–203, 205–207 Euclid 188–189, 378, 384 Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 56 Europe 1, 5, 6, 9, 10–13, 15, 17, 47, 51–53, 64, 70, 77, 84–85, 106, 167, 185, 187, 189–190, 238, 273–275, 278, 279n13, 283n21, 284, 346
404
Index
Excerpts of Qing (Manchu) language Manchu and Chinese categories (清語摘抄: 滿漢分類 Qingyu zhaichao: Man Han fenlei) 341 executable files, as supplementary material 383, 388 exegesis, also see commentary 59, 65–66, 173, 175 exile 47, 49, 74, 77 explication 50, 174–175, 185, 355, 381 Extensive Annotations to the Analects 論語義疏 (Lunyu yishu) 313 Ezra the Scribe 84–85 facsimile editions 238, 362–363, 367–369, 371 Facsimiles of Old Manuscripts in the Literature Department of Kyoto Imperial University 363 factors of change in book design 267–269, 276 – culture 237, 268, 275 – economy 237 – fashion 256–257, 266, 268 – mechanical and technological innovation 268 – tradition 237, 239, 266–268 factotum (see also initials) 257, 259, 268 fanqie 反切 (phonetic representation in Chinese) 333, 335 fashion (See also factors of change) 256–257, 266, 268, 317 Fatehpur manuscript 157n14, 163–164, 177 Fazl, Abul 171–172 FENG Youlan 馮友蘭 (20th-century Chinese scholar) 93 Ferrari, Miralla 16 Filial duty or filial piety 209, 212–220, 222–223, 227–228, 230–231, 234, 315 Fishbane, Michael 68 Five Classics, Chinese 12, 101–102, 306 Flanders, county of 238, 241 foliation (See also pagination) xiii, 167, 169, 175n51, 240, 260, 266 Folio (see bibliographical format) forgery 195–196, 199 – detection of forgery 196, 238 form follows function 270 format 2, 11, 13, 14, 17, 23–26, 31, 33, 39, 44, 93, 111–117, 120, 127, 140, 143–144, 156–160, 162–164, 166, 167n32, 169–170,
174–176, 178, 188, 243–245, 248–249, 251–252, 268–269, 273, 276–278, 280–281, 297, 301, 307, 311–312, 316–320, 324, 330, 335, 339, 346, 353n2, 354, 356, 369, 371, 384, 386, 388, 391 Four Treasuries (siku 四庫) 336 “Fragments of the Yang Xiong Biography from the Book of Han” (Hanshu Yang Xiong zhuan canjuan) 363–365 frame 15, 117, 125, 129, 133–136, 138–141, 144, 212, 281–282, 288, 291–292 France 71, 197 Frank, Barbara 4 French 1–3, 85, 199, 240, 273, 327, 331, 333, 336 Froben 193 FUJIWARA no Sukeyo 藤原佐世 364 FUJIWARA no Yoshisuke 藤原良佐 363 Gaisser, Julia Haig 16 Gaizheng zihui 改正字彙 (Corrected Glossaries) 303 Galen 368 Gansu 112 GAO You 高誘 315 Garden of Allusions for Young Students 幼學故 事群芳 (Youxue gushi qunfang) 303 genealogical relationship/tree viii, 17, 123, 136–137, 143–144 General Catalogue of National Books (Kokusho sōmokuroku) 352 Genette, Gérard 25 genre 5, 14, 16, 74, 76, 112, 115n22, 151–153, 155, 161, 166–167, 169, 177, 185, 234, 240, 241n12, 253, 256, 266, 268, 274, 305, 307, 313, 320, 326, 328 Germany 71, 187, 238 Ghent 238, 249, 253 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 186 Giocondo, Giovanni (Fra Giocondo) 201 Gitelman, Lisa 5, 276n7 glosses 8, 10, 12–13, 17, 25, 28, 36, 187–188, 307, 311, 351–352, 358–360, 362–371 – visual glosses or glossing 13, 185 glossing points 353, 357 gloss–reading, Japanophone gloss–reading see kundoku 351–356, 358 Gobind Singh, Guru 172 Goindval pothīs 161–163
Index
Gondhla manuscript 124, 130n66 Google Translate 324 Grafton, Anthony 1, 3, 5, 8, 15n25, 16–17, 33n10, 43n32, 49, 51n10, 55n26, 80n95, 82n97, 84, 85n104, 186–187, 197n47, 347, 385, 387, 394n22, 394 n25 granth viii, 157, 162, 166, 169, 170–172 granth bhaṇḍār 157 graphics (or visual objects) 1, 3, 4, 9, 276, 377, 383–385, 388, 390, 393–394 Great Learning 大學 (Daxue) 306 Greek vii, 6, 7, 9–11, 17, 23, 25, 27, 31, 33n9, 34, 36–37, 40, 53–54, 56, 59n44, 63–65, 77, 79–81, 84–86, 114n12, 186, 196, 297n47, 200, 202, 240 Guidebook of function words [particles] in the Qing [Manchu] language (Manju gisun–i untuhun hergen–i temgetu jorin bithe/ [Chongke] Qingwen xuzi zhinan bian [重刻] 清文虛字指南編) 330 Gujarat 12, 158 Gujarati (see Old Gujarati) Gumbert, J. P. 3–4 Gurmukhi script 162 guru 161–162, 164, 170, 172, 176 Guru Granth Sāhib viii, 162–163, 166, 170–172 gurudvārā 172 guṭakā 167 gutter 240, 246, 248, 278, 281, 282 Hagahot Maymuniot 76 Halakha 51–52, 59–60, 68–70 half–finished books 269 Han Dynasty (in Chinese history) 12, 101, 230, 312, 315, 364 handpress books 237–239, 242, 254, 267, 269 hangŭl or hangeul 한굴or한글 (Korean characters) viii, 12, 209–213, 218–221, 224–227, 233–234 hanmun 한문 (Chinese characters) viii, 12, 209–213, 218–226, 233–234 hanwen 漢文 (Chinese language, vs. Manchu or other non–Chinese languages) hanyu pinyin 漢語拼音 viii, 12, 209–213, 218–219, 221–226, 233–234 Harvey, Gabriel 186 HE Yan 何晏 312–313, 354 head letter/ opening crook/ symbol 119
405
Hebrew 3, 6, 9, 11, 28n4, 53–55, 57, 63–65, 67, 68n72, 69, 71, 76–88, 114n12, 240 Heidegger, Martin 152n2 Hexapla 80 Heian 平安 period (of Japanese history) 358, 362, 367, 369 Hicks, R. Lansing 56 Hilleli, Codex 70 Himalayan 112 Hindi 13, 59n40, 151–160, 162–164, 166–167, 172–174, 176–177 Hinduism 157n16, 161–163, 168–170 Hippocrates 378 hiragana (Japanophone script) 353 historical distance 53, 199 history publications (See also genre) 1, 253 Hōjō 北条 (medieval–period warrior clan) 360 Hōjō Sanetoki 北条実時 (medieval–period warrior aristocrat) 360 Holbein, Hans, the younger viii, 189–193, 195, 200–203 holes/circles 7, 111, 116, 125–128, 130, 133, 156 Homer vii, 9, 29, 36, 85, 378 horizontal 9–10, 39, 57, 130, 133, 135, 145, 156, 248, 273, 275, 287, 289, 301, 305, 309–310, 339, 341 horror vacui 15, 273, 288, 290, 296 Hōtoku 3 and Bunmei 6 Glosses in the Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan 岩崎 本日本書紀宝徳三年及び文明六年点 (Iwasaki–bon Nihon shoki Hōtoku 3–nen oyobi Bunmei 6–nen ten) 367 HU Shi or HU Shih 胡適 93 Huainanzi 淮南子 315 HUANG Kan 皇侃 313 humanists 8, 11, 13, 16, 17, 189, 199, 201–203, 252–253, 268, 379, 390, 392–395 huṇḍī 166–167 hymns 161–162, 164–165, 170, 172, 176–177 hyperlinks 388 Hypomnêmata 36 ICHIJŌ Kaneyoshi 一条兼良 367 illumination 15–16, 69, 76, 162, 171, 190, 204 Illustrated Exemplars of the Five Relationships 오륜행실도 (Oryunhaengsildo) 五倫行 實圖 234 Illustrated Exemplars of the Three Fundamental Moral Principles 삼강행실도
406
Index
(Samganghaengsildo) 三綱行實圖 viii, ix, 12, 209–213, 217–234, illustration 1, 3, 8, 12, 14, 160–161, 169n36, 190–192, 200–202, 209–214, 221, 226–234, 259, 273, 281–283, 287, 289, 292, 303–304, 310, 384, 386, 388 image databases 241, 360n5, 368–369 Imitatio Christi 241, 251, 254 Impact factor 381, 382, 391, 394 Impagination 1–6, 9–10, 14–17, 23, 63, 74, 77, 79, 82, 93, 105–106, 141n82, 151–154, 156, 158, 161, 166–167, 172–173, 177, 210, 217, 234, 325, 346, 377, 379, 390 Imperial Household Archives 360, 369 Imperially commissioned Manchu Mirror (Han–i araha Manju gisun–i buleku bithe, Yuzhi Qingwen jian 御製清文鑑) 327 Imperially commissioned Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese Mirror organized by the system of indicating sounds [MMHZ] (Han–i araha Manju Monggo Nikan hergen ilan hacin–i mudan acaha buleku bithe / Yuzhi Manzhu Menggu Hanzi san he qie yin Qingwen jian / 御製滿珠蒙古漢字三合 切音淸文鑑) 333 Imperially commissioned Pentaglot Mirror (Han–i araha sunja hacin–i hergen kamciha Manju gisun–i buleku bithe, Yuzhi wu ti Qingwen jian / 御製五體清文鑑 / Qaɣ an–u bičigsen tabun ǰüil–ün üsüg–iyer qabsuruɣsan Manǰu ügen–ü toli bičig, Rgyal pos mdzad pa’i skad lnga shan sbyar yi manydzu’i skad gsal ba’i me long / Ḫā n–nïng fütügän beš qismi qošqan ḫat mānjū söz–ning ayrïmčïn ḫati) 328 Imperially commissioned Tetraglot Mirror (Han–i araha duin hacin–i hergen kamciha Manju gisun–i buleku bithe, Yuzhi si ti Qingwen jian / 御製四體清文鑑 / Qaγan–u bic̆igsen γurban jüil–ün üsüg–iyer qabsuruγsan Manǰu ügen–ü toli bic̆ig / Rgyal–pos mdzad pa’i skad bźi śan sbyar Mañdzu’i skad Gsal ba’i me long) 328 imprint 3, 4, 8, 13–15, 217, 238, 249n22, 279–280, 285–287, 293 incunabula 10, 77 index xiii 34, 188, 270, 340, 369, 378–379, 381–382, 391, 394
India 5, 6, 9–15, 44, 111–117, 119, 121, 141–143, 151, 153, 155–157, 159–160, 163n26, 164, 166–167, 169, 171, 172, 174, 385 Indrajit of Orcha 153, 173 Industrial Revolution 237 Ingeborg, Liv 4 initials 254, 256–257, 260, 268 – factotum 257, 259, 268 – hanging out 256–257 – large, plain 257 – ornamental 119, 194, 254, 256–257, 259, 260, 268, 335 – rising up 268 – uncial 256 ink 2, 7–9, 15, 26, 58, 59n40, 62, 66, 113, 115, 122n50, 125–126, 128–129, 133, 142, 163–164, 169, 176, 254, 281, 292, 316, 362, 364–365, 367–369, 379–380, 386, 392 ink rubbings 2 inscriptions 2, 9n18, 57, 170, 274n2, 314, 317 instant bibliometrics 4, 377 – AltMetrics 380–381 interlinear paraphrase 187–188 Internet 14, 324, 368, 377, 379, 384, 386, 388, 391 interpretation 31n8, 37, 50–51, 59, 65, 67, 93, 101–102, 104n19, 105–106, 173, 185, 190, 202–203, 277, 284, 312–313, 317, 331, 336, 355, 362, 365, 370 Isaiah Scroll 57–58, 86 ISHIZUKA Harumichi (modern Japanese scholar) 367–368 Islam 11, 68, 71, 153, 157, 161–162, 166, 169, 171 Islamicate book culture 157, 162, 169 Italian language 325 italics (See also type styles) 251, 253, 257, 325n4 Italy 15–16, 253 Iwasaki Manuscript of the Chronicle of Japan in the Oriental Library Collection (Tōyō bunko–zō Iwasaki–bon Nihon shoki) 367–368 Jacob b. Haim ibn Adoniya 82 jadwal (ruling lines) 160–162 Jaffee, Martin 50n8, 68 Jainism 157–158, 167–168, 173–174
Index
Japanese-Glossed Lotus Sutra 倭点法華経 (Waten Hokekyō) x, 360–361 Japanophone symbols 12 Japanophone gloss–reading (kundoku) 351–354, 356–357, 359–360, 362, 371 Jaunpur 157n14 Jayasi, Malik Muhammad 161 Jehoiakim (Biblical King) 56 Jerome of Stridon 63, 65, 79, 85, 186, 193–196 Jerusalem Temple 49–50, 67, 71, 74, 76, 200 Jesuit theatre programs 241, 249 Jesus of Nazareth 86 Jewish Revolt 53 Jianqing zhai 簡青齋 304 Jiménez de Cisneros, Francisco (Cardinal) 79 Josephus, Flavius 63, 197–200, 202, 203 Jorāvar Prakāś (1744) of Surati Mishra 173n43 journeyman 238 juan 卷, see scriptorial units Judaean Desert 53, 57–59, 61 Justinian 200 Juzhen tang 聚珍堂 341 Kabir 162, 177 Kacchwaha 169n36 kaeri-ten (reading-order inversion points) 357, 360 Kaithi script 161, 167, 169 Kakei (Japanese era–name) 360 kaki-kudashi (Japanophone “writing–out” of Sinographic text) 371 kana (Japanophone script) 12, 283n21, 351, 353, 357–360, 364 kana-ten (gloss-pointing in kana script) 358 kanbun 漢文 (Chinese writing) xi, 12, 351–354, 359, 370–371 kanbun kundoku (Japanophone gloss–reading of Sinographic text) 351, 353–354, 359, 371 Kangxi Dictionary 康熙字典 (Kangxi zidian) 341 Kangxi 康熙, emperor of Qing China 122–123, 327, 341 kanji 漢字 (Chinese characters) 352 Kanjurs vii, viii, 15, 111–113, 115–124, 127, 130, 132–133, 137, 140–144, 346 – “local” and “independent” group (the local group) 121 – mixed group 121, 133, 141, 144
407
– Them spangs ma group 121, 127, 132–133, 137, 140–141, 143–144 – Tshal pa group 121, 134–141, 143–144 – proto–Kanjurs 121, 127, 133, 141 kanseki 漢籍 (Chinese classical texts) 352, 360n5, 363n8 Karaite Judaism 70n78 KASUGA Masaji 春日政治 (modern Japanese scholar) x, 365 katakana 片仮名 (Japanophone script) 353 kāvya 155n10 Keri and ketiv readings (See also Masorah) 77, 80 Keshavdas 173n43 khānqāh (Sufi hospice) 157 Kindle (e–book reader) 392 King Chungjong 中宗, of Joseon Korea 210 King Kaeru 蓋婁王, of Baekje Kingdom in Korean history 231 King Sejong 世宗, of Joseon Korea 209, 211, 221 King Sŏngjong 成宗, of Joseon Korea 209–210 King Wen of Zhou China 周文王 104 King Wu of Zhou China 周武王 220 King Yejong 睿宗, of Koguryŏ 216 kitāb (See also ahl–i kitāb and Qur'an) 157, 160, 166, 170–172 Kittel, Rudolf 84 Kiyohara 清原 (medieval-period scholarly clan) 359, 360, 369 KIYOHARA Nobukata 清原宣賢 (medieval-period Japanese scholar) 369 KIYOHARA Noritaka 清原教隆 (medieval-period Japanese scholar) 360 KOBAYASHI Yoshinori 小林芳規 (modern Japanese scholar) x, 368 Koguryŏ 高句麗 218 kokusho (“national” books, i.e. of Japanese domestic origin) 352 KONG Yingda 孔穎達 vii, 95, 102, 105 Korea viii, 5, 8, 11–12, 209–213, 218–220, 226, 234 Koryŏ 高麗 209, 227n15 KOSUKEGAWA Teiji 小助川貞次 363 Krantz, Albert 200 Kronenberg, Maria-Elisabeth 241n13 Kugel, James 66–67 kugiri–ten 句切点 (sentence–dividing points) 360
408
Index
kundoku 訓読 (gloss–reading) 351, 353–354, 356–360, 362, 371 kunten 訓点 (glossing points in Japanese) x, xi, 12, 351–354, 356–357, 359–372 – modern research on 351–353, 362–363, 371 – photography/digitization of 362, 368–369, 372 – premodern study of 351–352, 362 – significance of 12, 369–371 kunten-glossed texts 354, 356–357, 361–362, 368, 370–371 kun-yomi 訓読み (“gloss” reading of Chinese characters) 353 kuten 句点 (punctuation points) 357 kutōten 句読点 (punctuation–reading points) 357 Lachmann, Karl 16–17 Ladakh 112, 114, 142–143 laid paper 242 Lambrecht, Joos 253 laṇḍā script 162 language acquisition 326 language orders 151 Laozi 老子 vii, 100–101 large initials (See also initials) 256–257 Latin-language books 11, 79, 240, 242, 245, 251, 253, 266, 268 Lavlar (Hebrew) 65n57 layout 1–4, 9–10, 13–15, 17, 23–31, 39, 44, 47, 49, 51, 58, 62–63, 67, 69–70, 77–82, 86, 88, 111, 113, 123, 138, 141–144, 151, 155, 160, 162, 166, 212–213, 226–227, 241, 237, 239–241, 267, 270, 273–276, 279–285, 288, 290, 294, 301–302, 304, 307–311, 314, 316, 319–320, 323, 336, 339, 340–341, 346, 351, 354, 359, 365, 367, 370, 392 – ordinaria layout 4 – for pecha 111, 113, 116–117, 123, 143 – spatial and temporal aspects of 23, 28 length limit 10n20, 17, 380, 384, 391 Leningrad Codex 52, 71 Leo X, Pope 79, 195 Leontin of Mühlhausen 76 Leuven ix, 238, 249, 251, 253, 262–263 Lhodzong manuscript Kanjur 133, 137, 140 LI Daoyuan 酈道元 313 lianghang 兩行 (two–line) 316 librarian 43–44, 79, 170
Lieberman, Saul 65 Lightfoot, John 86 lines 9, 27, 35, 57–59, 61, 79, 88, 95–98, 101–102, 105, 107, 111, 119n39, 124, 127, 133–136, 138, 140–142, 160, 162–164, 170, 174, 187, 191, 211, 219, 223–224, 229, 248, 251–252, 254, 256–257, 261, 263, 265–266, 270, 273–276, 283–284, 289–293, 309, 311, 317, 319, 336, 354, 384 linguistics 153, 372, 390 Lisbon vii, 75, 77 Listrius, Gerardus 191 literarization 152 literary culture, see culture literary theory 153 literature (See also genre) 47, 51, 52n11, 56, 58–59, 62, 65, 67–68, 79, 86, 111–116, 120–121, 142–143, 151–153, 159, 161–162, 162n26, 172–174, 176–177, 253, 268, 273, 302n4, 306, 315, 323, 384n9 lithography 301, 304, 309 liturgical books (See also genre) 253 liturgy 162 LIU Xuan 劉炫 315 Lombard, Peter 4 loose–leaf 11, 111, 113–116, 119, 135n71, 143 Lotus Sutra Single Character [Glossary] 法華経 単字 (Hokekyō tanji) 367 Loulan 樓蘭 316 loyalty 209, 212, 213n6, 215, 217, 220, 222, 228, 230–231, 234, 329 LU Deming 陸德明 318 LUO Zhenyu 羅振玉 323 lyric 167 MA Rong 馬融 315 machine learning 324 Madhyadesh region 158 madrassas 157 magic 167–168, 324 Maimonides, Moses 70 Mak, Bonnie 5 Manchu language (manwen 滿文, Manju hergen) 323, 325–331, 333, 336, 338–340, 343–346 Manchu/ Chinese set phrases in Buddhist scripture (Manju Nikan ging bithe toktoho gisun, Man Han jingwen chengyu 滿漢經文 成語) 330
Index
Manchu–Han set phrases of the Six Boards [NJTB] (Ninggun jurgan–i toktoho gisun / Man–Han hebi liu bu chengyu / 滿漢合璧 六部成語) 338 Manchu and Mongolian combined Qing–language Mirror (Han–i araha Manju Monggo gisun–i buleku bithe, Yuzhi Manzhou Menggu hebi Qingwen jian / 御製滿洲蒙古合璧清文鑑 / Qaγan–u bic̆igsen Manǰu Monggol ügen–ü toli bic̆ig) 328 Maniaci, Marilena 4 Manjuristics 344 Mann, Gurinder Singh 162 manuscripts xii, viii, 1–6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 17, 28, 31, 34–35, 43, 52–54, 58–59, 61, 63, 65–66, 70–71, 74n83, 77, 79–80, 82, 84, 113–114, 115n22, 116, 118–120, 122–124, 127, 130, 132–133, 140–143, 145, 151–178, 187–190, 238, 246n21, 254–256, 265, 267, 273–274, 279, 301, 314, 316, 318, 320, 338, 342, 343, 351, 354–358, 361–365, 367–368, 371, 380, 388, 393 – manuscript books 238, 267 margin 1, 8, 13–15, 17, 28, 30, 34, 37–39, 39, 54, 57–59, 61, 69, 72, 74–75, 82–83, 117–119, 127, 133, 135–136, 138–141, 145, 151, 162–164, 185–193, 196–198, 200–203, 240, 246, 248, 250, 260, 266–268, 281, 292, 301, 306, 308, 311, 314, 319, 354, 364 – foot 240, 260 – inner 15, 82, 246, 248, 260 – outer 15, 72, 240, 248, 260, 292 – top 30, 72, 75, 266 marginalia (marginal notes) xiii, 3, 13, 14, 119, 127, 133, 135–136, 138–141, 145, 154, 170, 185, 187–188, 191–193, 196, 202–203, 248, 260, 266, 311 – commentary 6 – maniculae 203 pictorial commentary 193 – icons 202 Martens, Dirk 237, 253 Martin, Henri–Jean 1–2, 10n21, 58n36, 239 Maru-Gurjar (See Old Gujarati) Marwari 12 Masorah 69, 74, 76, 84–85 Masoretes 69, 84
409
Masoretic Codex 27, 69–70 Matan Torah (the gift of the Torah) 50 material 1–11, 13, 15, 17–18, 23–25, 27–28, 30–34, 36–37, 39–41, 44, 47, 50, 52–58, 60–61, 64, 67, 68, 70, 76, 82, 84–85, 93–96, 99–102, 105, 111, 113, 115, 117n36, 122, 151–152, 156, 162, 164, 166–168, 170, 177, 192, 215–216, 265, 267–269, 273, 275, 278–279, 285–286, 290, 292, 294, 302, 304–306, 308–309, 313–315, 318, 357–358, 377, 379, 382–386, 391, 393 – kinds 23–25, 28, 34, 36, 39–40, 44, 47, 383–384, 386 materiality 5, 6, 10, 23–24, 52, 56, 70, 275, 377, 379–380 – and material (and matter) 5–6, 10, 23–24 – of online publication 377, 379–380 maṯnavī 159 McGregor, Ronald Stuart 173n45 McKenzie, D. F. 284 mechanical innovation (See also factors of change) 268 media for non–textual material 9, 386–387 medieval period 36, 44, 47, 58, 151, 155–156, 163, 255 316 medium for writing 9, 10, 41, 115, 160, 276, 320, 386–387 Meir ha–Cohen of Rothenburg 76 Meir ben Baruch (MaHaRam) of Rothenburg 76 merchant books 商書 (shangshu) 285 merchants 161, 167, 169–170 Mesha Stele 59 Mesopotamia 6, 17, 50, 55 Mezuzah 60 micrography 74 Miglio, Massimo 16 Ming court/dynasty in Chinese history (1368–1644) 7, 13, 133, 144, 273, 275, 282, 327, 346 Mingdo or Mingduo 明鐸 330 Mirgāvatī (1503) of Qutaban 160, 162–163 mise en page 1–5, 58n36, 79, 84, 88, 187, 239 Mishnah 50–51, 67, 74 Mishneh Torah 50–51, 67, 74 Mitsḥaf (Hebrew) 68n72 Model Texts for Social Exchange 應酬彙選 (Yingchou huixuan) 303 Möllendorff, Paul Georg von 332–333
410
Index
Möllendorff romanization system (for Manchu) 332–333 Mongol Yuan dynasty 136, 141, 144, 209, 217, 218, 279, 323 Mongolian 114n12, 122, 136, 143, 144, 323, 328, 330, 333, 335–336, 345 monks 157, 164–165, 174–175, 388 monolingual 11, 326, 330–331, 335–336, 344 Montfaucon, Bernard 85 Moretti, Franco 154n7 Morin, Jean 85 Moses 49–50, 57, 60, 62–63 Moses ibn Zabara 76 Most, Glenn 5, 16, 55n26, 85n104, 86, 219n10, 347, 387 moveable type 77, 237–238, 267 Mughal 169–171 multilingual culture 155, 157, 159, 166, 323 multi–color printing 367 multi–section structure 301, 307, 309–311, 319–320 mulu 目錄 (see tables of contents) Münster, Sebastian 86 Muromachi period (of Japanese history) 369 Musḥaf (Arabic) 68n72 Myconius, Oswald 189 Nagari script (See also Devanagari script) 157 Namdev 162 Nanak, Guru 162 Naples 77 Naraina 172 Nash Papyrus 52n14 navigation (See also articulation) 176, 237, 254–255, 266 Nazareth 86 Necessary Knowledge for Young Students 幼學 須知 (Youxue xuzhi biandu gushi) 302–303 Nepal 112 Newly–Compiled Portable Eternal Calendar for Astrologers 新編萬曆錦囊星家總括 (Xinbian wanli jinnang xingjia zongkua) 279–280 Nijhoff, Wouter 241 Niranjani Sampraday xiii, 164–166, 170, 172, 176–177 nīti 173 notebook viii, 21, 157, 167, 169
official histories 正史 (zheng shi) 313, 323, 364 oblong (See also bibliographical format) 242 Old Gujarati 158 Old Narthang Kanjur 121–122, 137 Old Tang Annals 114 Old Tibetan Chronicle 114 on–yomi 音読み (“sound” reading of Chinese characters) 353 oracle bones 9n18, 346 Oral Law 49–51 ordinances 241 Origen 63, 80 ornamental initials (See also initials) 254, 256–257, 259–260, 268 orphan (typographical) 265, 289, 342 orthography 14, 155 ŌTA Tsugio 太田次男 (modern Japanese scholar) 368 Ottoman (empire) aristocrats 327 Ottoman Turkish language 327 Padmāvat (1540) of Malik Muhammad Jayasi 161–163 Paekche 百濟 218 page 1–15, 17, 25, 28–30, 32–33, 35, 39–40, 48–49, 51, 55, 63, 69, 71–72, 74–75, 79–80, 82–86, 88, 93–94, 102–105, 107, 111, 113, 116–117, 119, 1123–124, 127, 130, 132–134, 138, 141–144, 151, 156, 158, 160, 170, 177, 186–190, 202–203, 209–213, 219, 221, 223–224, 226–228, 230–235, 239–242, 248–254, 258–270, 273–285, 287–290, 292–297, 301–311, 316, 319–320, 324, 330–331, 333–342, 346, 351, 354, 356, 359, 361–362, 365, 367, 370–371, 377, 379, 382–383, 386, 390–393 – and sheet 1, 2, 6–8, 10, 14, 32–33, 40, 51, 115, 212, 242, 274, 276–281, 287–288, 290, 292, 294, 309–310, 319 page orientation 8, 9, 39, 156–157, 160, 331, 339 – landscape 8, 11, 39, 156, 242 – portrait 8, 9, 39, 157 page sizes (folio, quarto, octavo) see bibliographical format pagination (See also foliation) xiii, 1, 49, 93–94, 260, 324, 336n21, 341, 346 Pakistan 112 Pāla (script) 141
Index
Paleo–Hebrew script 54, 57, 65, 67, 85 palm–leaf vii, 3, 6, 8–11, 13, 114–117, 143, 155, 156, 158–159, 385 Pannartz, Arnold 252 paper (See also laid paper) 1, 3, 5–6, 9, 51, 115, 379, 386–387 paper machine 237 paper thickness 7, 10, 244–247, 267 papyrus vii, 1, 3, 5–6, 8, 14, 17, 23–24, 27, 31–40, 54n22, 56, 59n44, 67, 379 papyrology 3 paragraph 1–2, 27, 58, 119, 120n44, 233, 241, 254, 256–257, 266, 268–269, 290, 303, 357 – indented 1, 58, 257 paragraph mark 119, 241, 254, 256–257, 268, 357 parallel lexicon 338 paratexts (See also foliation, indexes, marginalia, running titles, tables of content) 3,8, 10,17, 23, 25–31, 33–34, 36–40, 59n44, 86, 151, 164, 166–167, 169–170, 194–195, 219n10, 237, 240, 250, 253–254, 260, 266, 268–269, 284–285 – aslant 28n4 – Byzantine 28, 30, 31, 39 – character size 26–27, 33n9, 156 – columns 17, 26, 33, 40 – Comprehensive 33, 36, 37–39, 86 – distinguishing features 26 – ink colors 26, 254 – kinds 23, 25–26, 28, 30, 34, 36, 39–40 – marginal 3, 23, 27, 28, 30, 36, 39, 195, 260 – rubrics (See also rubrics below) 26, 164 – script 28 – sporadic 23, 30–31, 33–34, 39 parchment 1, 3, 5–6, 8–9, 14, 23–24, 28, 31–32, 39–40, 51, 54, 56–60, 67, 246, 379 patristics 85 – Patristic Renaissance 193 pdf 5, 14, 274, 369n18, 380, 384, 388, 392 pecha (palm–tree leaf, Tibetan, or dpe cha) vii, 6, 111, 113, 115–117, 119–21, 123, 143 Petrarch (Petrarca, Francesco) 190 pedagogy 99, 185 Peirce, Charles Sanders 154n6 Penkower, Jordan 71 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 326
411
Perani, Mauro 76n89, 86n107 Pergamon Museum (Berlin) 56 Persian 11–12, 17, 44, 151–161, 166, 168–172, 177 Perso–Arabic script (See also abugida scripts) 168–170 Personal computing 379, 388, 391–392 Philo 63 Philodemus 34 philology 1, 16–17, 23, 25, 41, 42, 44, 79, 185, 351, 371, 377–378 – and digitalization 41 – and globalization 41 – and the history of science 42 – as social practice 23, 42 – collaboration 43–44 – history of 16, 42, 44, 185, 377–378 – institutions 42–44 – profession 44 philosophy 93, 153 phonetic lexicon 338 phonology 155, 158n19 photography (of manuscripts) 362, 368–369 physical dimensions 240 pian 篇, see scriptorial units Piza, Jeudah 88 Plato 27n3, 200, 378 plays (See also genre)253 poetry x, 9, 62n53, 63–64, 95–96, 98–99, 101, 158, 162–163, 167–169, 175, 217, 253, 274, 345, 358 point Cicero 240, 252 Poliziano (i.e. Angelo Ambrogini) 16 Pollock, Sheldon 16, 151–153, 157n14 possession (demonic) 195 Postel, Guillaume 85 poster 242 pothī (Skt. pustaka), or potī 2, 6, 11, 113, 116–117, 155, 158–159, 161–164, 166–167, 169–170, 174–176 Prakrit 12, 152–155, 158, 173n44, 177 Pratensis, Felix (Felice da Prato) 80, 82, 84 Preisendanz, Karin 153 Pritchett, Francis 168 promissory note 166 prosody 14, 155, 158 proper names 257 prote (see typographer) Protestant missionaries 325
412
Index
publication xi, 4–6, 8–10, 14, 16–17, 44, 102, 209–210, 238, 241, 253, 266, 274, 280, 282, 284, 286–287, 301, 330, 336, 341, 360–361, 363, 365, 368–369, 377–386, 388, 390–395 – scientific 4–5, 9, 377–384, 388, 390–395 – online xi, 4, 14, 377, 380–381, 384–385, 390–393 publication fees 393–394 Punjab (region) 161 Punjabi (language) 162 pustak 159, 169–170 Pyŏnmun (Bianmen 卞門) 215 Qianlong 乾隆, emperor of Qing China 122n50, 327, 335 Qing (dynasty) in Chinese history 11, 15, 122, 133–134, 144, 275, 282, 286, 296, 323–331, 336, 338, 340–341, 344–346 Qing Board of Personnel (li bu 吏部) 338 Qing Board of Punishments (xing bu 刑部) 338 Qing Board of Revenue (hu bu 戶部) 338 Qing Board of Rites (li bu 禮部) 338 Qing Board of War (bing bu 兵部) 338 Qing Board of Works (gong bu 工部) 338 Qing imperially commissioned texts (yuzhi 御製, han–i araha) 327–328, 333 Qing imperially endorsed texts (qinding 欽定, hesei toktobuha) 327 Qinghai 112 Qočo 140 Qur’an 15, 28, 162, 170–171 Qutaban 160–161 Rabbinic Judaism 47–48, 50, 68, 88 rāgamālā 169–170 Rajasthan 163–165, 168, 172, 175–176 Rajput 157n14, 163, 169, 173 Rāmacaritamānas (c. 1600) of Tulsidas 173n43 Ramus, Peter 389–390 Rasikapriyā (1591) of Keshavdas 173n43 Ratdolt, Erhard 188–189, 256 ratio 124, 127, 130–132, 142, 145, 224, 268, 293 rationality 270 Ravidas 162 readers 4–5, 12–14, 27–28, 30, 34–38, 40, 48, 63, 79, 82, 105–107, 119, 151, 169, 170n37, 174–176, 185–186, 188–190, 193, 195–196,
198, 201–203, 210–315, 217–221, 223–224, 226–228, 230–234, 249, 254, 260, 269, 273–276, 278, 282, 284–286, 289, 292, 296, 301–304, 306–307, 309, 311–316, 318–320, 326, 331, 333, 335–336, 338–339, 341, 343, 357, 360, 371, 377, 379–381, 386–388, 390–394 reading 1, 6, 10n20, 13, 23, 30, 36, 38, 40–41, 44, 48, 60–63, 67, 69–70, 76, 80, 82, 86, 88, 94, 96, 101, 106–107, 119, 123, 136, 138, 143n92, 144, 154, 185–186, 188–189, 194, 196, 200, 203, 213, 218–219, 227, 231, 234, 276–277, 285, 301, 311n14, 318, 324, 335, 341, 344, 351, 353, 356–360, 362, 364, 370–371, 387 – close reading 154, 195 – distant reading 154 – engaged reading 185, 191 – paraphrase 27, 33–34, 69, 187–188, – social and psychological dimensions of 44 – technical reading 189 – visual interpretation 185, 203 recipe 167–168 Record of Miraculous Events in Japan (Nihon ryōiki) 355–356 Record of the Rites 禮記 (Liji) 95, 101 Record of the Western Ocean 西洋記 (Xiyang ji) 282 recto ix, 117–119, 136, 140, 145, 212, 255, 258–259, 262, 264, 306, 356 – recto side (of a scroll) 256, 356 Reeve, Michael 16 Regensburg Pentateuch (Israel Museum, Ms. 180/52) 70–71 register (page) 8, 13, 274, 283, 285, 287–290, 294, 303, 305–307, 309–310, 314, 317 religion 15, 33, 55n26, 121, 172n39, 199 Renaissance 8, 17, 48, 52, 84–85, 106, 185–186, 188, 190, 193, 261, 269 Research on the Kanda Manuscript of the Bai [Juyi] Collection 神田本白氏文集の研究 (Kanda–bon Hakushi bunshū no kenkyū) 368 Reuchlin, Johannes 79 Rin chen bzang po 121, 124n60 Rites of Zhou 周禮 (Zhou li) 315 roll (See also scroll) 6, 23–27, 31n6, 32–40, 273, 275–276, 285, 290, 297 – inconveniences of 40
Index
Roman Catholic missionaries 325 Roma nel Rinascimento 16 Rome 53, 252 rotunda (See also type styles) 253 rubric 26, 58–59, 84, 163–164, 176, 254–257, 260, 268 rubrication 13, 31n6, 254–257 rubricator 254, 256, 260, 268 running titles 25, 240, 260, 266 Russian (empire) aristocrats 327 Sade, Marquis de 273 sādhu (See monks) safīnah 157, 168 Saidaiji Temple 362, 365, 368 samādhi 166, 172 Samaritans 85 Sanskrit 11–13, 44, 59n40, 112, 114n12, 140–141, 151, 163–164, 166–167, 170, 172n40, 173–177 Sant Guṇ Sāgar (1604) of Madhavdas 172n42 Sarvāṅgī 175n50 Śatakatraya of Bhartrihari 173 Saxl, Fritz 189–190 Scaliger, Joseph 17, 84, 185, 200n53 scholarly evaluation 391 Scientific Citation Index (SCI) 378–379, 381–382, 391, 394 Scientific Revolution 270 screen (of digital devices) 3–6, 52, 380, 386, 388, 392 scribe 9–15, 31, 34–35, 51–54, 56–59, 63, 65, 67–69, 71, 74–76, 84, 87–88, 122, 151–152, 154–155, 160, 163–164, 166, 169–170, 174–177, 196, 278, 284, 297, 310, 314, 316, 318, 320 scriptio continua 163–164, 307 scriptorial units 6 – ce 冊 (fascicle, volume) 314, 330, 338, 347 – column 1, 6, 10–13, 17, 26, 32–33, 40, 54–61, 63, 76, 78–82, 86–87, 104–105, 138, 160, 191, 219n12, 220, 223, 248–249, 265–266, 274–275, 277–279, 281, 283n21, 292, 301, 305–307, 309, 311, 316–320, 333, 338–339, 341–342, 346, 354, 359, 384 – hang 行 (Chinese unit of writing; column) 6, 316
413
– juan 卷 (Chinese unit of writing) xiii, 6, 273, 285–288, 290, 292–296, 305, 330, 339, 347 – line 2, 4, 6, 9, 26–28, 31n6, 33n9, 34–35, 40 – pian 篇 6 – sheet 1, 2, 6–8, 10, 14, 24, 31–33, 39–40, 51–52, 54, 58, 60, 114–115, 212, 242, 244, 246, 247, 268, 274, 277–281, 288, 290, 292, 294, 309, 310, 319 – stanza 6, 176, 274 scripture 50, 53–54, 60, 67, 77, 84, 86, 143, 162, 170, 172, 177, 227n15, 317, 330, 352, 354–355, 359, 360 scroll (See also roll) vii, 2, 6, 7, 9, 11, 47, 51–71, 76, 82, 85–88, 113–114, 155, 166–167, 273–277, 285, 297, 314, 316, 319, 356, 369, 386 – Chinese scroll 7, 9, 114, 276–277, 319, 356, 386 – Egyptian scroll 7, 54 – Greek scroll 6, 9, 54, 56, 59n44, 63, 65, 86 – paper scroll 2, 9, 114, 155, 166, 275–276, 386 – papyrus scroll vii, 6, 54n22, 56, 59n44 – scroll–format 356 secondary type face (See also type styles) 257 Sefer Torah (Minor Treatise of the Talmud) 60, 71, 85 selis (Greek) 40, 56 Septuagint 56, 80, 85 sermon 164, 177, 195 set phrase(s) (chengyu 成語, toktobuha gisun) 323, 326, 328–330, 338, 340–342, 346 Set phrases for edicts [DHTG] (Dergi hesei toktoho gisun–i bithe, Shangyu chengyu 上諭成語) 342–343 set phrases in memorials presented to the Qing imperial throne (zhezou chengyu 摺奏成語/ wesimbure bithe ichiyara de baitalara toktoho gisun) 341 Set phrases in official documents [GWCY] (Gongwen chengyu 公文成語, siden–i bithe baitalara toktoho gisun) 341 setsuwa (religious tales) 355 shamanic ritual 327 Shang dynasty, in Chinese history 9n18, 220, 275
414
Index
Shapiro, Rabbi Meir 48 Sheet (see page) SHEN Qiliang 沈啓亮 345 Sherman, William 202 Shibu 史部 (histories) 364 Shōhei 正平 (Japanese era–name) 354–355 shōmono 抄物 Japanese commentaries of Chinese texts 369 shōten 声点 (voice points) 357 shu 疏 (Chinese subcommentaries) vii, viii 95, 105, 313, 317 Explication of Written Characters 說文解字 (Shuowen jiezi) 364 Sibao 四堡 302–304, 309 Sibe ethnic group 錫伯族 (Xibo zu) 326 Sibe (written) language 錫伯語文 (Xibo yuwen) 326 Sichuan 112 Sidney, Philip 186 Sidney, Robert 186 Sifra 60, 62 Sifre 60, 62 signature 248, 260 Sikhism 171n39 Sikkim 112 Silk Road 114, 141, 383 Sinai, Mount 49–50 single vine leaf 256–257 Sinicization 330n14 Sinographic Texts in the Imperial Household Archives Collection: Image Bibliography and Full–text Image Database 宮内庁書陵 部収蔵漢籍集覧―書誌書影・全文影像 データベース (Kunaichō shoryōbu: shūzō kanseki shūran shoshi shoei, zenbun eizō dētabēsu) 360, 369 Sinographic texts 351–357, 360–363, 365, 369–371 Sinographic writing 12, 353, 362, 367, 370–371 Sirat, Colette 67 Sirtut 60 Siyum ha–Shas 48 small caps (See also type styles) 257 Smith, Thomas 185–186, 196–197 social practice 5, 23–24, 40, 42 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) xiii, 378–379 sociality 15 societal change, needs and developments 237
Socrates 200 Soferim (Minor Treatise of the Talmud) 60–61, 63, 65–69, 71, 86, 88 Sola Scriptura 84 Soncino, Gershom 77, 82 song books 241 Song of Deborah 62 Song of Moses 62 Song of the Sea 62–63, 78 South Asia 58, 151–3, 157, 275, 277 Southern Netherlands ix, 237, 239, 241n10, 242–243, 246, 251–254, 256, 261, 268–269 Sovereign King Sutra of Golden Light (Konkōmyō saishōō kyō) 362, 367–368 Spanish language 325 spell (magic) 167–168 spread 240 Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋 (Chunqiu) 101, 312 Spring and Autumn Annals and Commentary: Collected Commentaries 春秋經傳集解 (Chunqiu jingzhuan jijie) 359–360 śṛṅgāra 173 Ssangnyuk 226 Srong btsan sgam po, King (reign ca. 622–649) 112 Stag tshang Lo tsa ba Shes rab rin chen (1405–1477) 130 standardization 31, 59, 142, 238 state publications (See also genre) 253 status 15, 28, 60, 151, 155n10, 162n24, 171n39, 172n40, 213n4, 234, 241, 246, 268–269, 312, 320, 327 steam press 237 Stern, David 60, 67, 74 stichography 54, 62n53, 77 stichometric signs 35 string–holes 116, 127, 130, 156 structured open data 379 stylus 角筆 (kakuhitsu) 365, 368 subhāṣita (genre) 173–174 subscriptio 35, 187, 390, 393 Sufism 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 177 superstition 192 supplementary materials (of online scientific articles) 379, 382–384, 386, 391 Surati Mishra 173n43 Surdas 162
Index
surviving lost texts 佚存書 (itsuzonsho, texts lost in China but extant in Japan) 363 sūtra x, 15, 17, 111, 123, 130132, 136, 140, 143, 227n15, 277, 309, 316, Sweynheim, Conrad 252 table of contents 166, 270, 286–288, 310 table of names of Qing government offices (yashu mingmu 衙署名目, jurgan yamun–i gebu) 341 table of names of Qing official titles (guanxian mingmu 官銜名目, hafan hergen–i gebu) 341 tablets, waxed writing 32 Tabo manuscripts 115n22, 124, 127, 130, 133 Talmud 48–52, 59–63, 65–66, 69–71, 80, 85–86, 346 – Talmud, Babylonian 48, 50, 59, 80, 346 – Talmud, Palestinian 50 Tanjurs 111, 112, 120 taste 14–15 Targum 69, 77–82 taẓkirah 168, 170 ten sciences 112 Tenpyō Hōji 天平宝字 (Japanese era–name) 362 Tenryaku 天暦 (Japanese era–name) 363 tenzu 点図 (pointing chart) x 358–359 Testimonium Flavianum 199 Tetragrammaton 54, 65 text (proper) 50, 97–99, 144, 240, 248, 254, 257, 261, 358 text area ix, 117, 124, 127, 130–134, 136, 138, 141–142, 248–251, 254, 260–261, 267–268 text block 6, 9, 28, 49, 54–55, 80, 82, 161, 174, 198, 237, 240, 248, 250, 254, 256, 260, 269, 294 text borderline 117, 124, 133–136, 138, 140–141, 144–145 text–critical technique 11, 65, 69, 74, 123, 156 textual communities 161, 166–167, 186, 172 textual linearity, unobstructed, as a norm 10, 27, 39–40 theology 49, 162 Three Kingdoms in Korean history 209 Tibet or Tibetan kingdom 112–113, 115, 121 Tibetan vii, viii 6n14, 10, 13, 15, 17, 111–124, 127, 130, 132–3, 136, 141–144, 277n8, 322–323, 345–346
415
Timpanaro, Sebastiano 16 title page 48, 82, 236, 240–241, 249, 253–254, 257, 261–262, 264, 266, 270, 287 Tiqqun Soferim 88 tone (of Chinese words) 357 topical publications (See also genre) 253 Torah 28, 47, 49–52, 59–62, 64, 67–71, 74, 76, 85–86, 88 – Torah she–be’al peh (see Oral Law) – Torah she–bi–khetav (see Written Law) tōten (reading points) 357 Tov, Emanuel 54n20, 57, 67 tracing 13, 284, 382 tradition (See also factors of change) 237, 239, 266–267, 275, 278 Transcribed Series of Kiyohara Nobukata Commentaries on the Chinese Classics 368, 369 Treasury of Allusions for Young Students 幼學 故事瓊林 (Youxue gushi qionglin) 302–304 TSUKISHIMA Hiroshi 築島裕 (modern Japanese scholar) 367, 372 translation 23, 25, 33–34, 44, 50n8, 79–81, 86, 111, 137, 144n94, 154, 173, 176, 199, 210n1, 323–326, 328–329, 335, 340, 344–346, 352, 356, 359, 370–371 travelogue 167 Trilingual manual of the pronunciation and meaning of Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese vocabulary [MMHW] (Qingdai Man Meng Hanwen ciyu yinyi duizhao shouce 清代滿蒙漢文詞語音義對照手冊) 333 trimming 246 Tubb, Gary 153 Tulsidas 173n43 tūmār 166 Tunis 82 Tuppu (Akkadian) 55 Turfan 113–114, 116, 316 Turner, James 16 Twenty–four Paragons of Filial Piety 二十四孝 (Ershisi xiao) 209, 217, 223 twinned–line writing 双行 (sōgyō) 354 two–pull press 242 type area ix, 240, 247–252, 254, 266 type font (See also type style) 28, 254 type size 251, 254, 261, 265–266 type styles 252–253
416
Index
– black letter 254 – italics 60n46, 251, 253, 257, 325n4 – roman type 11, 15, 251–254, 268 256–257, 265–268 – rotunda 253 – secondary 257 – small caps 257 typewriter 5 typography 1, 9, 261, 263–264, 266, 269, 392, 393n21 – typographical discontinuity 261, 265, 266, 270 – typographical evolution 239, 266–267, 270 – typographical trends 239 – typographical white 254, 257, 266, 269 typical page xiii, 94, 236, 239–241, 248–252 typographer (typographus) 246, 257, 260, 267 Uighur 140 uncial initials (See also initials) 256 Urdu 12, 152 Utrecht 86 Vairāgya Vṛnd (1673) of Bhagvandas Niranjani 175–176 vairāgya 173, 175–176 vāṇī 164–166, 170, 172, 175–177 Varanasi (Banaras) 161 variant readings 123, 136, 138, 143n92, 144 varti 166 Vavei ha–amudim 76, 88 vellum 78, 157 Venice vii, 80, 83 vermillion 163, 169 vernacular language(s) 13, 151–155, 157–159, 166, 170, 177 vernacular editions 254, 257, 266 vernacularization 151–154 verso viii, ix 82, 119, 136, 140, 145, 209 – verso side (of a scroll) 169, 356, 369 vertical 9–10, 26, 32, 39, 57, 127, 133, 135–136, 140, 145, 163–164, 248, 281, 289, 292, 314, 319, 331, 334, 339, 341–342 Vicāramāl 175–176 video (movie, or motion pictures) 4, 9, 14, 48, 377, 383, 386–388, 390–392 vijñaptipatra 166–167 Vimalakīrtinirdeśa viii 111–113, 123, 136–137, 140
visual supplements 379, 383, 385–388, 391, 393 visual typography 9, 261, 263–264, 266, 392–393 – goblets 9 – hourglass 9, 261 – triangles 9, 261 visualization 377, 383–385, 387–388, 390, 392–393 – in the humanities 377, 384, 387, 390, 392–393 – in social sciences 388, 390, 393 – in natural sciences 390, 392, 393 Vitruvius 199, 201 Vivekadīpikā (c 1600) of Indrajit viii, 153, 156, 173–177 wabun 和文, Japanese writing, Japanophone prose 12, 351–352 Wanfu 萬福 330 WANG Guowei 王國維 318n30, 363 Warring States period (in Chinese history) 2, 102 Waseda University Library “General Database of Classical Texts” 369 waten 倭点 (“Japanese points”) x, 360–361 Wensheng tang 文盛堂 338 Westfalen, Joannes van 237, 251, 253 white (see typographical white) white letter (see roman type) white line (See also typographical white) 254, 257 widow (typographical) 59, 265, 289, 342 Widow lines 59 Wieseltier, Leon 48 wo–koto–tenヲコト点 (wo–koto pointing) 357–360, 372 Wolf, Friedrich August 84–85 woodblock printing (or xylography) x, 13, 116n32, 124, 133, 140–141, 273, 278–279, 281–282, 286, 288, 292, 294, 297, 301, 304, 307, 309–310, 317, 319–320, 360, 362 wood slips (or bamboo slips) 2, 6–7, 9–10 100, 114, 300–301, 304, 314–317, 320, 379 writing 1, 3–6, 9–13, 23–24, 26–27, 30–34, 37, 40–41, 44, 47, 50–52, 54, 56–59, 62–63, 71, 74, 77, 80, 93–94, 106, 111, 113–115, 117–118, 133, 142–143, 151–155, 158–159,
Index
161–162, 166, 172, 175, 177, 188, 193, 203, 223–224, 276–277, 278n11, 282, 283n21, 285, 297, 304, 311, 314–316, 320, 331, 343, 345, 351–353, 370, 377–379, 383, 386–387, 392, 394 writing support(s), also medium for writing, bamboo slips, oracle bones, palm–leaf, paper, parchment, wood slips 1, 3, 5–6, 9, 23, 24, 46, 51, 54 Written Law 49–51, 57, 59n40, 60, 68, 71 Xerography 5 Xiaozhuang 孝莊, empress of Qing China 122 Xing zi ming chu 性自命出 (Chinese bamboo–slip manuscript) 96–99, 101 xylography (or xylographic printing) (see woodblock printing) YAN Shigu 顏師古 364 YAO Cha 姚察 364 YEH Kao–shu 葉高樹 345
417
Yongkuizhai 永魁齋 338 Yongzheng 雍正, emperor of Qing China 327 Ypres 238 Yuan dynasty, in Chinese history, see Mongol Yuan dynasty Yunnan 雲南 112 ZHANG Chao 張潮 296–297 Zhaodai congshu 昭代叢書 296–297 ZHENG Xuan 鄭玄 95, 105, 354 zhengyi 正義 (orthodox interpretations) vii, 102–103, 105, 317 Zhou dynasty, in Chinese history 102, 104, 220 ZHU Xi 朱熹 12, 105–106 ZOU Shengmai 鄒聖脈 302–303 zhu 注 (Chinese glosses or annotations) 8, 307, 311 zhuan 傳 (Chinese commentaries) 8, 10, 95, 101, 105–107, 311–315, 317, 319–320 Zotero 379