¹ The Peking, 1933, catalogue Kuo-li Pei-p'ing t'u-shu-kuan shan-pen shu-mu , chuan 3, includes it among the works on Taoism. The expanded edition () of the joint catalogue Kuo-li Chung-yang t'u-shu-kuan shan-pen shu-mu Taipei, National Central Library, 1967, puts it in the yen-i category, which here evidently denotes prose fiction. The same course is followed by the Kuo-li Pei-p'ing t'u-shu-kuan shan-pen shu-mu, Taipei. National Central Library, 1969.

² Peking, 1959, ed., 230–2, ‘Li Ch'ing’.

³ See the Shanghai, 1915, ed., Shtto-yiian section, chüan 8, ‘Li Ch'ing chuan’.

⁴ ‘Chang Kuo’, 192–4.

⁵ pp. 63b–66a.

⁶ See pp. 60b, 63b. Cf. Moule, A. C., ‘A list of the musical and other sound-producing instruments of the Chinese’, Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxxrx, 1908, 50–1, 14Google Scholar.

⁷ p.108a.

⁸ pp.48b–49b.

⁹ For a discussion of the pre-modem tao-ch'ing, see Te-chün, Yeh, Sung-Yüan-Ming chiang-ch'ang loen-hsüeh , Shanghai, 1957, 4–5, 24–5, 67–8Google Scholar, and Ju-heng, Ch'en, Shuo-shu shih-hua , Peking, 1958, 245–9Google Scholar.

¹⁰ p. 63b. Note that the word used for composing the passage is tsou ‘to put together’. It is a technical term, found also in Ch'ing chantefable literature, though much less commonly than tsan , for the composition of these ten-syllable passages. The terms are associated with the Ch'ing t'an-tz'u, but are not confined to it.

¹¹ See Yeh Te-chün, 25, 68.

¹² See Yeh Te-chün, 68.

¹³ Yeh Te-chün, 51–8, lists a plethora of names for what may well be a single genre.

¹⁴ See Ju-ch'eng, T'ienHsi-hu yu-lan chih-yü , Shanghai, 1958, ed., chüan 20, 361Google Scholar.

¹⁵ p. 62a. On p. 60a, he is described as t'an-tz'u ku-che‘a blind man who sings chantefables’. In the Yün-men chuan, t'an and tz'u are still verb and object.

¹⁶ See his Fu-pao-t'ang chi , Shanghai, 1958, ed., chüan 3, 57–8, ‘T'an-tz'u hsiao hsü . Tsang claims that they are old works, and even reports speculation that they were by the famous Yüan writer Yang Wei-chen .

¹⁷ Fu-tso's, HsüSan-chia-ts'un-lao ch'ü-t'an Hsin Ch'ü-yüan ed., Shanghai, 1940, 8aGoogle Scholar, implies that two famous plays of the Ming playwright T'ang Hsien-tsu were based on the chantefables Tsang reprinted. Since the chantefables do not survive, there is no way of checking the claim, but it does tell us the subject-matter of the lost works. They were clearly based on the Classical tales Chen-chung chi and Nan-k'e chi both of which are of Taoist persuasion. Hsü's text is obviously corrupt in all of its extant editions, but the conclusion is not affected. See Yeh Te-chün, 64, for a possible reading.

¹⁸ See Hsi-hua, Fu, Ch'ü-i lun-ts'ung , Shanghai, 1953, 12Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See his song collection Fang-ju-yüan yüeh-fu , 15b–17a, contained in Chao Chung-i Kung ch'üan-chi , late Ming ed., ts'e 5.

²⁰ For the Han-tan chi reference, see the Liu-shih-chung ch'ü rev. ed., Peking, 1958, iv, Han-tan chi, 95Google Scholar. For the Erh-k'e song, see the Shanghai, 1957, ed., i, 307. The Erh-k'e was first published in 1632. For P'u Sung-ling's songs, see P'u Sung-ling chi, Peking, 1962, n, passim.

²¹ Still the best account of the Ming popular tunes is a series of articles by Yeh Te-chün which appeared in the weekly ‘Popular literature’ section of the Shanghai newspaper Ta Wanpoo between 19 January and 23 February 1948. The title of the series was ‘Ming-tai su-ch'u hsü-lun’ . The brief section on the Yin chiao ssu, which supplies some of the information used here, appeared on 16 February 1948.

²² The writer has in his possession a 1900 lithographic edition of this obscure work, which claims to be a reprint of a revised edition by Yüan Mei. See chüan 5, 13a.

²³ Wan-li Yeh-huopien , Peking, 1959Google Scholar, ed., chüan 25, II, 647, ‘Shih-shang hsiao-ling’ .

²⁴ See the facsimile ed. by the Shih-chieh Shu-chü, Taipei, 1959, III.

²⁵ A few examples from the beginning of the Yün-men chuan are: the words kuei yün on p. 9b, chu-k'uei on p. 10a, ching-shen on p. 10a, chih on p. 11b, and tsu also on p. 11b. These are found solely in the verse sections of the Yün-men chuan and in the T'ai-p'ing kuang-chi, not in the prose sections of the Yün-men chuan or in the short story.

²⁶ See the first part of ch. iv of th e writer's The, Chinese short story: studies in dating, authorship and composition, which is in the course of publication by Harvard University Press.

²⁷ See pp. 20b–22a.

²⁸ See, for example, Te-chün, , Sung- Yüan-Ming chiang-ch'ang wen-hsileh, 60Google Scholar.

²⁹ See the facsimile edition by the Shih-ehieh Shu-ohü, Taipei, 1958, chüan 28, 13a.

³⁰ See the facsimile edition of the 1624 ed. by the Shih-chieh Shu-chü, Taipei, 1958.

³¹ This is the modern title under which the stories published by Hung P'ien (fl. c. 1540) are collected and issued. See the Peking, 1955, facsimile edition.

³² Yeh Te-chün has noted that the text of K'uai-tsui Li Ts'ui-lien chi contains a reference to the wang-chin , a sort of cap of silk net which came into fashion only at the beginning of the Ming dynasty. See Sung- Yüan-Ming chiang-ch'ang wen-hsileh, 58. Cf. Ch'i, Wang, San ts'ai t'u hui , Taipei, 1970Google Scholar, facsimile edition of the 1607 ed., clothing section, chüan 1, 1513. The other story contains distinctively Ming place-names.

³³ The first group of ‘literary’ chantefable writers of whom we have much knowledge is the Shantung group of the latter part of the seventeenth century, among whom P'u Sung-ling is the best known. Note that the late Ming writers, in basing themselves on the Classical tale, were merely following an old, lapsed practice in the composition of the short story; some of our earliest stories are patently based on Classical sources. Perhaps, however, the late Ming authors were on a different level, in social and cultural terms. This essay has not referred to popular literature after the seventeenth century, when ‘genre translation’ between popular chantefables and prose fiction becomes a commonplace.