p. 449
說出的。「群體」的語言，在第二篇文章中非常突顯，白居易希望這篇 文章能夠刻在石頭上，
p. 450
置於他的墳墓旁邊。在文章裡面，白居易以非常像詩一般的語言來做自 畫像，主人翁「忘了」世俗的自我，卻透過酒和詩來達成精神上的圓滿。
在本文的第二部份中，我以〈唐揚州倉曹參軍王府君墓誌銘并序〉和〈故 饒州刺史吳府群神道碑銘并序〉二文為例，討論白居易所寫的墓誌銘。
就像大多數的墓誌銘一樣，這兩篇文章在描述主人翁的生平時，都非常 強調「結構的」特色（家庭背景、他們所通過的官方考試，他們所擔任 過的官職……）。不過，這兩篇墓誌銘也介紹了「群體的」觀點：在〈王 府君墓誌銘〉中，引用「命運」的概念來批評主人翁的生平；在〈吳府 君碑銘〉中，則以附加於比較「結構性的」傳記段落（指官職），來描 述主人翁的生平，另外還有私人的傳記描述修道過程。就像大多數有關 宗教修持的描述一般，有關修道過程和段落，比較有「群體的」傾向，
但本文卻提出一個比較高的「群體」當作理想，結合了主人翁生平的兩 個層面。
在本文的第三部份，我討論了現存的白居易塔銘，以兩篇文章為例：（西 京興善寺傳法堂碑銘并序）、〈大唐泗州元寺臨壇律德徐泗濠三州僧正 明遠大師塔碑銘并序〉。前者透過一套問答來描述主人翁的生平：在描 述主人翁生平的基本事實、他所受的教法的傳承、他與當代幾位法師的 關係等答案中，「結構的」觀點比較顯著；在描述主人翁的修行經過、
他的教法要旨等答案中，則「群體的」觀點比較顯著。白居易的塔銘，
往往是在前面部分最為重視「結構的」觀點，這也許可以反映出唐代佛 教已經制度化到相當程度，也可以反映出在家學者官員的作品特色。至 於在〈明遠大師塔碑銘〉中，從「結構的」觀點來看，主人翁的生平描 述得相當仔細；「群體的」觀點則見於引用佛經名句的詩偈中。本文的 特色是，在「結構的」和「群體的」觀點之間，似乎並沒有緊張的情形 存在。
[1] Po Chü-yi's biographies in official histories are found in the CTS, chuan l66, pp, 4340-4360; HTS, chüan 119, pp. 4300-4307. Arthur Waley wrote an extended biography of Po Chü-yi, titled The Life and Times of Po Chü-yi, 772-846 A.D.
[2] This inscription is not included in standard editions of Po Chü-yi's works.
For a brief discussion of this document see the Appendix I in Waley's
biography (Waley: 216). The text of the inscription is found in CTW, chüan 679 (p. 6942) and in WYYH, chüan 945 (P. 4973f).
[3] The title of this inscription in the version given in the WYYH collection says explicitly "tomb inscription composed by the subject" (Tzu-hsuan mu-chih). The title in the CTW version uses the expression, "A Drunken Reciter" (tsui-yin hsien-sheng), which Po Chü-yi used to described himself humorously, thus indicating indirectly that the inscription was written by himself. The expression "tzu-ming ch'i mu yüeh (he wrote a verse for his tomb. which went as follows)" that appears in the inscription itself also indicates the autobiographical nature of this document.
[4] For details on different levels of the state examination, see Murakami (67-74). The term chih ts'e is used for the chih-chu examination in Po Chü-yi inscription.
[5] Han Yü (768-824), a contemporary of Po Chü-yi and known above all for his advocacy of the ku-wen style, is generally considered as providing the model for this form of writing. A short and helpful explanation of the literary genre of tomb inscriptions, together with a few annotated examples of tomb inscriptions written by Han Yü, Ou-yang Hsiu and Kuei Yu-kuang is found in an anthology prepared by Ogawa Tamaki and Nishida Taichiro (237-260). My discussion below is based on this explanation.
[6] For details, see the note (6), PCYC. 1505. Earlier. in the second year of Ta-he (828), Po Chü-yi mentions the location Hsia-kuei as the place of his own burial in chi (lang-chung) ti wen (PCYC, 1455). Hsia-kuei was Po's native place, where his ancestors were buried. But the official biography of Po Chü-yi in the CTS notes that he asked not to be returned to Hsia-kuei.
but rather to be buried next to the stupa of Master Ju-man of Hsjang-shan (chüan 166. p. 4358), This matches the present location of Po Chü~yi's tomb.
If Po Chü-yi changed his mind about his place of burial, as the note in the section on this document in the PCYC suggest, then his Buddhist faith might have had something to do with it. His earlier wish was to be buried with his ancestors and later wish to be buried with a Buddhist teacher.
[7] This instruction does not appear to have been followed strictly. Li
Shang-yin's Mu-pei ming, an external tomb inscription, is preserved in CTW, chüan 780, and describes how Po Ching-shou. a relative of Po Chü-yi, and Po Chu-yi's wife went to the capital and requested Li Shang-yin ("the best known poet of the day") to compose the inscription. For details, see Waley's appendix (216 ).
[8] The Yueh-fu shih-chi, chüan 59, lists a number of poems entitled by chiu-ssu, ("Autumn thought") as "words for songs played by cithern"
(ch'in-chu ke-tzu). Two poems by Li Po are included here. The Collected works of Po Chü-yi (Po Chü-yi chi lists two poems titled Chiu-ssu (chüan l4, p. 281, and chüan 26, p. 605).
[9] Ni-shang yu-yi ("The immortal's dress of rainbow and feathers") refers to a famous yueh-fu poem and music of the T'ang court. According to the Li-yuen section of the Hsin T'ang-shu (chüan 22, p.476). this music was presented to the court by Yang Ching-shu, the Military Commissioner of He-hsi (ie., the wide region to the west of the Yellow river). Yüeh-fu
shih-chi quotes a work recording events not included in the official dynastic histories ("T'ung yi-shih"), which tells the following story: Emperor
Hsüan-tsung was taken by the magician Lo Kung-yüan to the Moon Palace and observed hundreds of immortal women dance to this tune in the court yard. The Emperor remembered the tune, After retuning to his own palace, the Emperor called in his musicians and composed this music. According to another story quoted in the same passage, accompanied by the magician Ye Fa-shan Emperor Hsüan-tsung travelled to the Moon and heard this music, The same passage in the Yüeh-fu shih-chi also quotes from another work called "Yüeh-yüan" according to which Emperor Hsuan-tsung visited the Moon and heard a music of immortals. but he could remember only half of it afterward; around the same time Yang Ching-shu presented a piece of
"Brahmanical" music, which happened to be the same as the music that the Emperor had heard (Kuo Mo-ch'ien, p.816).
[10] A number of poems, beginning with several by Po Chü-yi,
entitled Yang-liu chih ("Branches of Willow Tree") are listed in the Yüeh-fu shih-chi, chuan 81, pp.1142-1149. These poems were sung to a popular tune imported recently from Central Asia.
[11] Liu Ling (style, Po-lun) composed the "In Praise of the Virtue of Wine"
(Chiu-te sung); the text of this work is found chüan 47 of
the Wen-hsüan (1977: 3, 662). The biography of Liu Ling, one of the famed
"Seven Sages of Bamboo Grove", is found in the Chin-shu, chüan 49, pp.1375-76, According to this biography, Liu Ling's wife advised him to stop drinking, but he did not listen to her, and Po Chü-yi refers to this incident explicitly in the passage under examination in his inscription.
[12] Wang Chi (style, Wu-kung) was known for his love of wine. His biography is found in the Chiu T'ang-shu, chüan 192 (p. 5116) and in
the Hsin T'ang-shu, chüan 196 (pp.5594-5596). He is said to have composed the Wu-tou sheng-hsien chüan ("The Biography of the Gentlemen of Five Pccks of Wine").
[13] A passage about Jung Ch'i-ch'i appears in the T'ien-jui ("Heaven's Gifts") chapter of the Lieh tzu. In A.C. Graham's translation the passage reads as follows: "When Confucius was roaming on Mount T'ai, he saw Jung Ch'i-ch'i walking in the moors of Ch'eng, in a rough fur coat with a roap around his waist, singing as he strummed a lute. 'Master, what is the reason for your Joy [le in the original–Shinohara]?' asked Confucius?. 'I have very many joys [le]. Of the myriad things which heaven begot mankind is the most noble, and I have the luck to be human; this is my first joy. Of the two sexes, men are ranked higher than women, therefore it is noble to be a man. I have the luck to be a man; this is my second joy. People are born who do not live a day or a month, who never get out of their swaddling clothes. But I have already lived to ninety; this is my third joy. For all men poverty is the norm and death is the end. Abiding by the norm, awaiting my end, what is there to be concerned about?' 'Good!' said Conficius. 'He is a man who knows how to console himself.' (Graham, 1960, p.24.) Jung Ch'i-ch'i was known as a man who knew about "le", which Graham translates as "Joy", but was translated as "happy" here.
[14] Wei Chieh's biography is found in the Chin-shu, chüan 36, p.1067. He is said to have suffered from frequent illnesses.
[15] The name of Jung Ch'i-ch'i in an abbreviated form as Jung Ch'i in this passage. For the famous story about Jung Ch'i-ch'i in the Lieh lzu, see the note on him above. For Liu Ling (style, Po-lun) see the note above him above.
[16] See Twitchett (1961: 95-114) for a discussion of lieh-chuan biographies.
[17] Liu Ling's earlier poem "In Praise of the Virtue of Wine" mentioned above lies behind the description of the drunken state of transcendence here.
[18] Turner describes his concepts of "structure" and "communitas" in several places. A few examples of these descriptions may be useful. The passage in p. 96 (1970) describes these concepts in a manner quite similar to the one quoted above using the term "model".
Turner defines "structure" as "social structure", that is, "as a more or less distinctive arrangement of specialized mutually dependent institutions and the institutional organization of positions and/or of actors which they
imply." (166-7; see, also 125-6.) In describing "communitas", Turner refers to Martin Buber's words: "community is the being no longer side by side (and one might add, above and below) but with one another of a multitude of persons and this multitude, though it moves toward one goal. yet
experiences everywhere a turning to, a dynamic facing of, the others, a flowing from I to Thou. Community is where community happens" (127).
Turner comments: "Buber lays his finger on the spontaneous, immediate, concrete nature of communitas, as opposed to the norm-governed,
institutionalized, abstract nature of social structure. Yet, communitas is a mode evident or accessible, so to speak, only through its juxtaposition to, or hybridization with, aspects of social structure. Just as in Gestalt psychology, figure and ground are mutually determinative, or, as some rare elements are never found in nature in their purity but only as components of chemical compounds, so communitas can be grasped only in some relation to structure. Just because the communitas component is elusive, hard to pin down, it is not unimportant" (127). "(For) communitas has an existential quality; it involves the whole man in his relation to other whole men.
Structure, on the other hand, has cognitive quality; as Levi-Strauss has perceived, it is essentially a set of classifications, a model for thinking about culture and nature and ordering one's public life. Communitas has also an aspect of potentiality; it is often in the subjunctive mood. Relations between total beings are generative of symbols and metaphors and comparisons; art and religion are their products rather than legal and political structures"
(127-8). "Communitas breaks in through the interst1ces of structure, in liminality; at the edges of structure, in marginality; and from beneath structure, in inferiority. It is almost everywhere held to be sacred or "holy",
possibly because it transgresses or dissolves the norms that govern structured and institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by
experiences of unprecedented potency" (128). "There is a dialectic here, for the immediacy of communitas gives way to the mediacy of structure, while, in rites of passage, men are released from structure into communitas only to return to structure revitalized by their experience of communitas. What is certain is that no society can function adequately without this dialectic...
Communitas cannot stand alone if the material and organizational needs of human beings are to be adequately met. Maximization of communitas provokes maximization of structure, which in its turn produces
revolutionary strivings for renewed communitas" (129).
[19] Po Chü-yi uses the expression attributed to Confucius, See, Lun yu, Book 7, verse 19; D.C. Lao (1979: 19).
[20] Turner uses the term "dialectic" in some passages describing this relationship. See, for example, Turner, 1969:97, 129.
[21] In fact. Po Chü-yi dwelled on them extensively in his biographies of his grandfather (Ku kung-hsien ling Po fu-chun shih-chuang) (PCYC. 981-983) and of his father (Hsiang-chou pieh-chia fu-chun shih-chuang and T'ang ku Li-shui hsien-ling t'ai-ynan Po fu-chun mu-chih ming) (PCYC, 983-985;
1473-1474). Po Chü-yi in fact came from a relatively modest background, which he was trying to glorify by tracing it through rather dubious links to an ancient prestigious figure. For a brief historical account of Po Chü-yi's family background, see Yokoyama (1967: 29-36).
[22] In the tomb inscription Po Chü-yi describes his moral and spiritual cultivation by mentioning Confucian cultivation of conduct, Buddhist cultivation of mind, and entertaining himself (le ch'i-chih: this expression appears in T'ao Yuan-ming's Wu-liu hsien-sheng chuan, TYMC, 175) with beautiful scenery, music, poetry, and wine. The analysis here indicates that this characterization of Po Chü-yi's life as involving many dimensions ought to be taken seriously; it also suggests the nature of the logic that holds the many dimensions together.
[23] Thomas Metzgar (1973: 250, 255-65, 400-404) examined the unstable and anxious life of high officials in Ch'ing China in some detail.
[24] The following remark by Turner appears to he helpful in this context:
"in the liminal phases of ritual, one often finds a simplification, even elimination, of social structure in the British sense and an amplification of structure in Levi-Strauss's sense. We find social relationships simplified, while myth and ritual are elaborated. That this is so is really quite simple to understand: if liminality is regarded as a time and place of withdrawal from normal modes of social action, it can be seen as potentially a period of scrutinization of the central values and axioms of the culture in which it occurs" (1970: 167).
Turner also notes that certain type of liminal rituals reinforce structure (200-201.) This analysis, very much in the spirit of his view on the dialectic relation between structure and communitas, may be particularly appropriate in interpreting the "liminal" "communitas" themes in the elite culture of traditional China.
[25] K'uei-tz'u: Po Chü-yi uses this term in another place discussing the writing of inscriptional text. See Yi wen-chang ('discussing literary works"), Ts'e lin: 68 (PCYC, 1369).
[26] Note that the concept of ming* is used in a similar manner in other inscriptions by Po Chü-yi. SeeT'ang ku t'ung-yi t'ai-fu he-chou tz'u-shih Wu-chun Chang-kung shen-tao-Pei ming, PCYC, 907; andT'ang tseng shang-shu kung-pu shih-lang Wu-chun Chang-kung shen-tao-pei ming, PCYC, 909.
[27] This analysis suggests a broader thesis: the highly rhetorical character of tomb inscriptions may also have something to do with this dialectical relationship between "structure and "communitas". Symbolic expressions in certain rhetorical passages in these inscriptions generally throw light on the life of the subject from the "communitas" viewpoint, Yet the inscriptions generally have a very strong tendency to glorify the lives of the subjects by focusing on their backgrounds and accomplishments in "structural" terms.
As we noted above, this tendency is embedded in the convention of tomb inscriptions. It would be a mistake, however, to explain this pattern of combining the strong concern with concrete this-worldly facts of the
subjects with symbolic rhetoric simply as a matter of convention; we need to erplore the deeper significance of this combination. Turner's discussion of the dialectical relationship between "structure" and "communitas" enables us to focus on the significance of this combination and suggests a direction in
which the discussion of this question may proceed. We will return to this issue at the end of this paper in our discussion of the stupa inscription of the monk Ming-yüan.
[28] Details are given in my paper mentioned at the beginning of this article (1986:127).
[29] The inscriptions are titled, "T'ang ku Fu-chou ching-yun-ssu lu ta-te Shang-hung he-shang shih-t'a-pei ming" for Shang-heng and "T'ans Ching-chou Hsing-kuo-ssu lu ta-te Ts'ou-kung t'a-chieh ming" for
Shen-ts'ou. The texts of the inscriptions are found in PCYC, 913-918; the corresponding biographies are found in T, vol. 50, p. 806c and P.807a respectively.
[30] This is the biography of Wei-k'uan found in T., Vol. 50, 768a, which reproduces a large part of the biographical material in Po Chü-yi's
inscription, Ch'uan-fa t'ang pei, PCYC. 911-913. The framework of this inscription, to be examined in some detail below, however. is not
reproduced in Tsan-ning's biography. Tsan-ning reorganized the text somewhat so that the biography appears in a style similar to that of other biographies in his collection.
[31] A comparison of the frequency with which other authors are mentioned in the Sung collection makes this even more clear. Only two other authors (Liu K'e and Ch'ing-hua) are mentioned as frequently as four times in the collection. For details see my paper mentioned above (1986: 127).
[32] This inscription was discussed by Hu Shih in an article entitled
"Po Chü-yi shih-tai ti. ch'an-tsung shih-hsi". Hu Shih's article bears the date of March 24, Min-kuo year 17 (1928 ). the version of this article in the Hu Shih Wen-ts'un, the third collection, pp. 310-313, is reproduced in Yanagida, 1975: 94-97.
[33] The meaning of this term hui-hsiang tao-chang is unclear. The translation here is tentative.
[34] The meaning of the term yu-wei kung-te here and the term wu-wei kung-te below is unclear. Ting Fu-pao (1984: 510d) mentions the Jen-wang ching and explains the term wu-wei kung-te as the highest truth of nirvana and yu-wei kung-te as all other merits that result in conditioned rebirths. The
Jen-wang ching passage is found in Taisho, vol. 8, 825a and 834c, and there these two terms are used to describe the remarkable attainments of the numerous members who constituted the audience of the Buddha's teaching.
Perhpas in the inscription under examination here these terms refer to ritual performances that are meant to lead to these different goals mentioned by Ting Fu-pao. The meaning of the passage would be then that these rituals were performed at the temples mentioned. The interpretation here remains tentative.
[35] The meaning of this sentence is not clear. The translation here is tentative.
[36] A well known example of a Chinese monk's encounter with a
supernatural being is the experience of Tao-hsüan (596-667) toward the end of his life. This incident, recorded autobiographically in Toa-hsüan lu-shih kan-t'ung lu (T. no. 2107) written by Tao-hsüan himself. describes how supernatural beings gave Tao-hsüan instructions on some details of monastic rules. I discussed this document briefly in an earlier paper (1984).
[37] Turner's discussion of the distinction between prajna and vijnana as described by D.T, Suzuki is relevant here, Turner says, "I have recently been paying attention to the notion that the familiar distinction made in Zen
Buddhism between the concepts prajna (which very approximately menas 'intuition') and vijnana (very roughly, 'reason' or 'discursive understanding') are rooted in the contrasting social experiences l have described respectively, as 'communitas' and 'structure'", Turner (1974: 46). The rejection of
distinctions in the subject's answers in this inscription is clearly related to the teaching of prajna. As a student of Tao-yi, the subject belongs to the main stream of Ch'an (ie., Zen) Buddhism.
[38] The relationship between the acceptance of death and "communitas" in Chinese tradition may be seen, for example, in many stories in the
book Chuang tzu where ideal discipleship. friendship and relationship to one's wife are tied to a proper attitude toward death, See, for example, the stories about the funeral of Lao tzu (Graham: 64-65), the illness of Masters Yü and Lia, (87-89), the death of Master Sang-hu (89-90). and the death of Chuang tzu's wife (123-124).