English-language Studies of Precious Scrolls: a Bibliographical Survey (original) (raw)

Before trying to summarize the history of English language scholarship on precious scrolls (baojuan 寶卷), it is first necessary to introduce the early developments of the field in China and Japan. The modern study of precious scrolls can be said to begin with the publication by Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸 of his "Foqu xulu" 佛曲敘錄 (A catalogue of Buddhist songs; 1927) in Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu 中國文學研究 (Studies on Chinese Literature). This article presented brief descriptions of a few bianwen 變文 (transformation texts), followed by more detailed descriptions of 36 precious scrolls. In his Zhongguo su wenxue shi 中國俗文學史 (A History of popular literature in China; 1938), Zheng devoted a separate chapter to the discussion of precious scrolls, in which he provided lists of the titles he had seen and illustrated his argument by extensive quotations from selected precious scrolls. 1 Precious scrolls were part of the materials that were collected in the 1930s by the Academia Sinica. 2 Scholarship on precious scrolls in China in the 1950s and 1960s was basically limited to the publication of catalogues, such as Hu Shiying 胡士瑩, Tanci baojuan shumu 彈詞寶卷書目 (A catalogue of plucked string ballads and precious scrolls; 1957), and Li Shiyu 李世瑜, Baojuan zonglu 寶卷總錄 (A comprehensive catalogue of precious scrolls; 1960). Li Shiyu had encountered precious scrolls in his research on local religions (sects) in Northern China, which he published in his Xianzai Huabei mimi zongjiao 現在 華北秘密宗教 (Secret religions in contemporary North China; 1948). For the first three decades of the People's Republic of China (PRC), scholarship on precious scrolls was almost non-existent because of the obvious link of the genre to popular religion, but it should be pointed out that Chen Ruheng 陳汝衡 treated precious scrolls briefly as a * A Chinese version of an earlier draft of this research note will accompany the reprint of the precious scrolls in the collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library by the Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe 廣西師 範大學出版社 (Guangxi Normal University Press). This publication, edited by Dr. Huo Jianyu 霍建瑜, will mostly consist of texts from the Hanan Collection. I would like to express my thanks to Dr. Huo Jianyu, Dr. Rostislav Berezkin, Prof. James Robson, my student Sun Xiaosu, and an anonymous reviewer for pointing out omissions and mistakes in earlier versions of this research note and drawing my attention to additional materials. 1 See Rostislav Berezkin, "Zheng Zhenduo's Contribution to the Study of Baojuan (Precious Scrolls