Influence of Sanskrit on Chinese Prosody

7/22/2019 Influence of Sanskrit on Chinese Prosody

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Harvard-Yenching Institute

The Sanskrit Origins of Recent Style ProsodyAuthor(s): Victor H. Mair and Tsu-Lin MeiSource: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Dec., 1991), pp. 375-470Published by: Harvard-Yenching InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2719286

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The Sanskrit Originsof Recent Style ProsodyVICTOR H. MAIR, University of PennsylvaniaTSU-LIN MEI, CornellUniversity

ECENT Style poetry (chzin-t'i-shihWUM) occupied a specialposition among Chinese verse forms. Emerging in the sixthcentury from the literary salons of the Southern dynasties, it be-came an obligatory part of the chin-shih examination during the

The authors wish to express their gratitude to Ludo Rocher, George Cardona, and ErnestBender for explaining some of the niceties of Indic metrics; to James Robert Hightower andthe late Roman jakobson for introducing us to the Bunky5 ifuron; nd to Richard Bodmanformany stimulating discussions.Abbreviations:AP Agni-purainasee note 87). We have also consulted the prose English translation byManmatha Nath Dutt Shastri, AgniPurainam, he Chowkhamba SanskritStudies, vol.54 (Varanasi: The Chowkhama Sanskrit Series Office, 1967).BK Bunkyohifuron see note 7)KD Kdvyddars'asee Appendix IIE)KL Kdvydlankdra,lso spelled Kdvydlarmkdrasee note 83)NS Nat,yas'astrasee note 14)TT TaishoTripitakathe standard edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon)WH Wenhsuian 1:, comp. Hsiao T'ung Wi (facsimile rpt. of 1809 ed., Taipei: I-wenyin-shu-kuan, n. d. ).d defect or dosa/ping as a prosodic term); departing (as a metrical term)e entering1 levelr risingu upamd-dosa"defect of simile")v viparyaya"opposite [of a merit]")y yamaka,or "rhyme" (as a prosodic term); level (as a metrical term)

375


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376 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIHigh T'ang.' Thus assured a steady supply of talented practi-tioners, it was soon transformed by Tu Fu into a versatile instru-ment of lyrical expression.2 Wang Wei, Li Shang-yin, Tu Mu, andmany other T'ang poets also used this form to create great poems.3Even during the Sung when much creative energy was channelledinto tz'u, all aspiring scholars had to master the form because thecomposition of Recent Style poetry was a requirement on the civilservice examination. Thus renowned tz'u poets such as Su Shih, LuYu, and Huang T'ing-chien were also accomplished in the RecentStyle.4 This tradition remains alive among men of letters well intothe twentieth century. Even today, the Recent Style poems of LuHsiin and Ch'en Yin-k'o, from opposite ends of the political spec-trum, are still widely read and much admired.5 Whether in terms oflongevity, vitality, or quantity, Recent Style verse deserves to beconsidered the dominant and most representative genre of Chinesepoetry. When Western scholars discuss "Chinese poetry," or"Classical Chinese poetry," they are sometimes in fact referring toRecent Style poetry.6

THE PROBLEMOne feature that made Recent Style poetry famous is the in-tricacy of its tonal patterns, and the question naturally arises as tohow and when these tonal patterns came about. Previous studies onthe subject have traced the origin of tonal prosody to the theory of"Four Tones and Eight Defects," traditionally attributed to ShenYiieh (441-513).7 They have also shown how individual prosodic

1 Wang Li-ch'i's ETIJWpreface in his Wen-chingmi-fulun chiao-chu ;Z;., NA.8 (Pe-king: Chung-kuo she-hui k'o-hsiuehch'u-pan-she, 1983), pp. 13-14.2 Yeh Chia-ying , Tu Fu ch'iu-hsing a shou chi-shuo -? g (Taipei:

Chung-hua ts'ung-shu pien-shen wei-yiuan-hui, 1966), pp. 1-62.3 See the Recent Style poems by these T'ang and Sung authors in Kao Pu-ying ;T'ang Sungshihchui-yao (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1959).4 Ibid.5 Chou Chen-fu 1ftft Lu Hsiinshih-ko huu$,t ( Hangchow: Che-chiangjen-minch'u-pan-she, 1980); Yu Ying-shih +,* Ch'enYin-k'owan nienshih-wen hih-chengMp#}1 I42+S;C (Taipei: Shih Pao wen-hua ch'u-pan shih-yeh yu-hsien kung-ssu, 1984).6 Encyclopaediaritannica,15th ed. (1975), 15:75e; Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics andPoetics," in Thomas Sebeok, ed., Style n LanguageCambridge: MIT Press, 1960), p. 360.A fuller and more intelligible list of prosodic defects is preservedin Kuikai's ^ (774-835) BunkyohifuronXz;.,JWA, a unique compilation of T'ang and pre-T'ang texts on


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 377rules emerged sequentially during the sixty-year period between488 and 551, and how such rules first produced the tonal prosody ofthe Ch'i-Liang (479-557) Style, and then a more stringent version,the prosody that defined the Recent Style poetry. Scholars have iden-tified twenty-five eight-line poems written before the T'ang that con-form to the tonal patterns of Regulated Verse.8 They have also doneconsiderable work on the social and political milieu that nurturedthe development of tonal prosody and the literary controversy sur-rounding it.9These studies, though informative, leave one important questionunanswered. Namely, they fail to identify the origins of threeradical ideas associated with tonal prosody: the classification of thefour tones into two prosodic categories, level and deflected; the im-position of tonal rules on the internal syllables of a line; and the im-position of additional rules on the matching middle syllables belong-ing respectively to the two lines of a couplet and to the two coupletsof a quatrain. These ideas had no precedent in the Chinese prosodictradition. Up to the time of Shen Yiieh, the four tones were onlyused in prosody as part of the implicit definition of rhyme, and inthat capacity each of the four tones served as its own prosodiccategory; the tradition had up to then made no requirements what-soever of the internal syllables of a line; and the concept of thequatrain as a prosodic unit had not yet arisen. Previous studies tellus a great deal about who the inventors of tonal prosody were, howand under what circumstances they put these ideas into practice,who supported or opposed them on what grounds, and how long ittook for these ideas to come into fruition. In short, all early in-vestigations on this subject simply took for granted that Shen Yiiehpoetics and prosody. KonishiJin'ichi 'YJS-, Bunkyo ifuron o ; 3 vols. (Dainihon yubenkai kodansha, 1948-1953); Richard Bodman, "Poetics and Prosody in EarlyMedieval China: a Study and Translation of Kuikai'sBunkyohifuron" Ph.D. diss., CornellUniversity, 1978); and Wang Li-ch'i, Chiao-chusee note 1) are the three works most usefulfor the purposesof this paper. We have borrowedextensively from Bodman's diss. When theBK is cited, section numbers referto volume 3 of Konishi, which contains his criticaledition.

8 Takagi Masakazu ti% E-, "Liu-ch'ao lii-shih chih hsing-ch'eng" -/ N4 Jffi)$,trans. Cheng Ch'ing-mao *I1'ja, Ta-lutsa-chih . 13.9-10 (1956): 17-18, 24-32. Theoriginal article in NCGH4 (1951): 35-49, with level and deflectedtones marked, is more con-venient.9 Ami YuijigBti, Chu-gokuhuseibungaku enkyui 1t1ffltL ;C*F5E (Shinchosha, 1960);Hayashida Sinnosuke 4It,JtM, Chu-gokuhaseibungaku yoron hi p(Sobunsha, 1979).


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378 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIand his followers somehow got these prosodic ideas, and focused onthe subsequent developments. The question remains: how did theinventors of tonal prosody obtain these revolutionary ideas in thefirst place?

Ch'en Yin-k'o was the first modern scholar who sensed that thetopic could be pursued further. In his 1934 paper, "Ssu-sheng san-wen" (Three questions on the four tones),10 he proposed that theChinese discovered the four tones under Buddhist influence. Citinga number of Chinese sources, including Chapter 13 of Hui-chiao'sBiographies of Eminent Monks (composed between 519 and 533)"which is devoted to the lives of chanting masters of satras and Bud-dhist psalmody-Ch'en called attention to several significant facts.Under imperial patronage, the chanting masters were concentratedin Chien-k'ang (now Nanking), the capital of the Southern dynas-ties, during the second half of the fifth century. Many of the monkswere Central Asians with native training in Sanskrit and in Bud-dhist psalmody. These monks were on good terms with the nativeChinese literati. A key link was provided by the imperial princeHsiao Tzu-liang (460-94, Prince of Chin-ling), whose suburbanresidence on Chi-lung Hill outside Chien-k'ang served as a gather-ing place for both the monks and the literati. Among the prince'sliterary friends were Shen Yiieh, Hsieh T'iao (464-99), WangJung(468-94), Jen Fang (460-508), and Fan Yiin (451-502), all of whomadvocated the use of tonal prosody in poetry. Most importantly, theBiographies of Eminent Monks records that in 489 the prince had adream in which he chanted the "Vimalakirti hymn" before the Bud-dha. The tones and rhymes he employed in his dream so impressedhim with their smoothness and skill that the following morning heassembled the chanting masters of the capital to decide upon newtones for Buddhist chanting. A year earlier, in 488, Shen Yiieh hadcompleted the Sung shu (Sung History), and in that work he used theafterword to the "Biography of Hsieh Ling-yuin" to issue a mani-festo on tonal prosody.

From these and other facts, Ch'en concluded that Shen Yiieh and10 Ch'en Yin-k'o W*M-, "Ssu-sheng san-wen" g _, CHHP 9.2 (1934): 275-87.1 For background, see Arthur Wright, "Biography and Hagiography, Hui-chiao's LivesofEminentMonks," Silver ubileeVolume f theZinbunKagakuKenkyusyo yotoUniversityKyoto:Jimbun kagaku kenkyujo, 1954), pp. 383-432.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 379his associates must have discussed tonal prosody before 488. Thusthe 489 meeting called by Hsiao Tzu-liang, ostensibly to discuss theproper method for Buddhist chanting, was just an occasion to showoff the latest fashion in prosody. Ch'en also suggested that by mak-ing the four tones the basis of the new prosody the Chinese literatimust have come under Buddhist influence.

Ch'en's paper is both brilliant and oddly out of focus. On the mat-ter of the four tones, he cited the well-known fact that ancient In-dians in chanting the Vedas used three tones: uddtta "raised," i.e.,"acute," or "high"), anuddtta ("non-raised," i.e., "grave," or"low"), and svarita (" sounded," i.e., "falling [dkyipta,pranihanyate,or pravana] from high to low"). The Chinese matched these threetones with level, rising, and departing tones, and added a fourth forstopped syllables ending in -p, -t, -k. This, according to Ch'en, iswhy the Chinese discovered four tones instead of five or seven. Thetruth of the matter, however, is that rhyming words from the BookofOdes down to the pentasyllabic verse of the fifth century A.D. arepredominantly in the same one of the four tones, which shows thatthe Chinese had long been making tonal distinctions. The comingof Buddhism probably did make them conscious of the existence ofthe four tones. But neither the Buddha nor anyone else could havemade the number of tones in Middle Chinese other than four. 12 Atthe same time Ch'en presented strong evidence that during the for-mative period of tonal prosody, Shen Yiieh and his followers werein close contact with Buddhist monks. Without making an outrightclaim, Ch'en also implied, on the basis of circumstantial evidence,that Buddhist influence was responsible for the development oftonal prosody. The question then becomes: what did the inventorsof tonal prosody know about Sanskrit prosody and poetics, and inwhat specific ways did such knowledge contribute to the making oftonal prosody?This paper will show that, under the influence of the Sanskrittheory of poetic defects, Shen Yiieh and his followers invented tonal

12 This criticismhas been made by Chou Fa-kao , A, "Shuo p'ing-tse" FAV(,CYYY13 (1948): 153-62; Yu Min , Chung-kuoyii-wen-hsiiehun-wenhsuan P(Koseikan, 1984), pp. 303-306; Jao Tsung-i , "Wen-hsin tiao-lung sheng-Ii p'ien yiuChiu-mo-lo-shih t'ung-yiin" 5 Chung-hua en-shihun-ts'ung@@9;t^it 3 (1985): 215-36, esp. 227-30.


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380 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIprosody in order to reproduce, in Chinese, the same euphonic effectachieved by meter in Sanskrit.

Our first line of argument concerns the long tradition in Sanskritpoetics that classifies and analyzes poetic defects, or dosa ("fault,vice, deficiency"), in Sanskrit."3The tradition may be traced to theNdtyas'astra hereafter NS) of Bharata, composed sometime betweenthe first century B.C. and the first century A.D.4 Though the work asa whole is concerned with dramaturgy, it includes chapters general-ly recognized as representing the first systematic treatment of pro-sody. In the chapter on "Verbal Representation and Prosody," theauthor defines the concept of yamaka as "the repetition of words (orsyllables or sounds) at the beginnning of the feet and at otherplaces," and proceeds to classify this poetic defect into ten types.This line of inquiry was further developed in the Kdvydlankdra(hereafter KL) of Bhamaha and the Kdvyddars'a hereafter KD) ofDandin, both seventh- or eighth-century works that relied heavilyon earlier prosodists. It is our thesis that the famous "EightDefects" of Shen Yuieh and the "Twenty-eight Defects" of theBunkyoIhifuron (819, hereafter BK) were derived from Sanskrittreatises on poetics. In what follows, it will be seen that some of thenames of specific defects are identical in Chinese and in Sanskrit,the number and types of defects in the two traditions are com-parable, and the presentation follows the same format of defining aspecific defect and then citing examples to illustrate it.

Our second argument suggests that it was from Sanskrit conven-tions that Shen Yiieh and his associates got the idea of bifurcatingthe four tones into two prosodic categories. Sanskrit meters arebased upon the opposition between long and short syllables, whichfor the purpose of prosody are called laghu ("light") and guru("heavy"). In a famous passage in the afterword to the "Biographyof Hsieh Ling-yiin," Shen Yiieh used the equivalent terms ch'ing("light") and chung ("heavy") to refer to the prosodic categorieslater called level and deflected: "Within a line, initials and finals

13 Cf. Bechan Jha, Conceptof Poetic Blemishes in Sanskrit Poetics (Benares: The ChowkhambaSanskrit Series Office, 1965).14 Manomohan Ghosh, ed. and tr., The Ndtyasastra (A Treatiseon Ancient Indian DramaturgyandHistrionics) scribedto Bharata-Muni; (revised 2nd ed., Calcutta: Manisha Granthalaya,1967), vol. 1 (Chapters 1-27).


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 381must be different; within a couplet, light and heavy sounds must bedistinct." -MFP1, @N, i,,The third argument stresses that the bulk of Buddhist Sanskritverse is written in the s'lokameter, and asserts that it is the acquaint-ance with this meter on the part of Shen Yuieh and his followers thattriggered the revolution in prosody. In trying to pinpoint the type ofinfluence Sanskrit prosody might have exerted during this period,the historian of literature needs to know with which Sanskrit metersthe Chinese Buddhists were most likely to be familiar. Treatises onSanskrit metrics usually list two or three hundred meters, but thereis only one meter that actually needs to be considered seriously. Inall the Sanskrit texts that we could verify as having been translatedinto Chinese between 450 and 550, the most common meter is thesloka. This is also the case for Sanskrit verses preserved in Tun-huang manuscripts. In addition, the floka is the second most fre-quent meter in the Lotus Suftra (Skt. Saddharmapundaraka-suztra),text that had been several times translated into Chinese before 400but became enormously influential through Kumarajiva's (344-413) version (406?), not only for the period we are primarily in-terested in, but also into the T'ang as well. For most Chinese of thefifth and sixth centuries who professed to have some knowledge ofSanskrit, the s'lokameter was equivalent to "Buddhist verse." Theymight have heard the meter in the Sanskrit verse chanted by foreignmonks, or they might have come across a description of this meter.The sloka meter is a development of the Vedic anustubhstanza ofoctosyllabic lines. Both anustubhand s'lokabasically mean "hymn ofpraise or glory," or in Chinese, sung A ("hymn of praise") or tsanT ("eulogy"). There are several varieties of the sloka. Theauthorities do not always agree in their description, but the basicscheme is clear."5

Odd pdda: x x x x -)(-)-)Even pdda: x x x x - xThe sloka consists of four pdda, or quarter verses, of eight syllableseach, or two lines of sixteen syllables each. Each line allows great

15 Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English ictionary Oxford: Clarendon, 1899),p. 1104.


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382 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIliberty except for the 5th, 13th, 14th, and 15th syllables, whichshould be unchangeable, as in the above schema, where the crossesdenote either long or short, the bars long, and the breve signs short.The authorities differ as to the degree and type of restriction placedon the 6th, 7th, and 8th syllables; hence the parentheses around thesigns for long and short.

Certain distinctive features of tonal prosody can be directlytraced to Sanskrit meter in general and the floka in particular. Theforemost is the bifurcation of the four tones into two prosodiccategories, level and deflected, the Chinese equivalents to long andshort in Sanskrit. This is of considerable importance because thelevel/deflected distinction underlies not only Recent Style prosodybut all varieties of tz'u prosody as well. Other features include theimposition of prosodic rules on internal syllables of a line, the im-position of less restriction on syllables at the beginning of a line, andthe requirement to maintain a balance between level and deflectedsyllables, both in a line and in a couplet. At higher levels of organiza-tion, the emergence of the quatrain as a basic module of composi-tion may be mentioned as a feature due to the four-pdda structure ofthe s'loka.

MotivationThus the inventors of tonal prosody obtained their revolutionary

ideas from Sanskrit prosodic practices. This prompts two furtherquestions: what motivated them to develop a new prosody of theirown? And what gave the new prosody its specific form? A conve-nient place to begin is a passage from the "Biography of Kumara-jiva" in Hui-chiao's Biographiesof EminentMonks:From the very beginning the highly talented s'ramanaHui-jui has been assistingKumarajiva in translating and explicating Buddhist texts. Kumarajiva oftendiscusses the literary genres of Western Regions with Hui-jui, pointing out theirsimilarities to, and differences from Chinese forms. He says: "The custom of Indiaattaches great importance to verse making, and regards the modulations andrhymes that can be set to music as the finest. An audience with the king requiresa eulogy. In Buddhist ceremonies, chants are of the highest value. The gdthas andthe slokas in scriptures all belong to this type. Once Sanskrit is converted into Chi-nese, the subtle nuances are lost. Though the general meaning gets across, thereis no way to bridge the gap in genre and style. It is like feeding another person with


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 383chewed-over rice. Not only is the flavor lost, it will cause the other person to vom-it. ))6

The key phrases are: YLE1IE, . 1 1 1X, , Here sung A corresponds to Skt. sloka("hymn of praiseor glory"), and chi XZto Skt. gdthal "the metrical part of a suitra").Kumarajiva makes clear that in the Indian tradition, to sing praiseto the Buddha and king, one has to use the sloka. The words canbe translated into Chinese, but not the meter. Elsewhere in the"Discussion of Sutra Masters" of the Biographiesof Eminent Monks,Hui-chiao makes the same complaint in less precise terms (TT50:414c-415a):Now the songs of the Eastern countries are such that a succession of rhyming finals(*t~) make up a song. In the chanting of the Western regions, however, a hymn(X gdthd) is made by harmonizing the sounds (Thu).... Ever since the GreatTeaching flowed to the East, translators of texts have been numerous, but transmit-ters of their sounds have been few. This may well be because Sanskrit words arepolysyllabic (i;A), while Chinese is monosyllabic (W4). Moreover, if one uses aSanskrit accent to chant Chinese, then the sounds are cumbersome (14) and thegdthaIs forced. Or if one uses a Chinese song-form to chant a Sanskrit text, then thefinals are shortened (JAE) and phrases are elongated. For this reason, the goldenwords of the Buddha have been translated, while Sanskrit sounds have not beenpassed on.

All translators of poetry are of course familiar with the difficultyof conveying the style and rhythm of the original. But, for the Bud-dhist kings and princes of the Ch'i and Liang dynasties, the failureto transmit Sanskrit meter was tantamount to sacrilege. Not onlydid they wish to pay homage to the Buddha and to receive homagefrom their Buddhist subjects; they also wanted to do it right, as donein the land of the Buddha, which meant using verse in the sRlokameter. Compelling the literati of the realm to compose verse in San-skrit was difficult, even with the aid of the Buddha. A more practicalcourse open to the Buddhist kings and princes was to create thesame euphonic effect in Chinese that was achieved by the siloka nSanskrit.

16 TT50:332b. Robert Shih's Frenchtranslationof chuan1-3 of the Kao-shenghuanAMf,Biographies es moines dminentsLouvain: Institut orientaliste, Bibliotheque de l'Universite,1968), p. 37, translates fX and , of this passage as "les gatha and "les sloka."


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384 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIIn this context we can better understand why the prince HsiaoTzu-liang had a dream in which he chanted before the Buddha.

Whether it be hagiography or biography, the prince's dream en-capsulates the fervent desire to worship the Buddha properly.Significantly, a list of Buddhist works compiled under his patronageincludes three items concerning chanting, one of which is entitled"Resolving Difficulties in the Method of Chanting Sutras."17 Royalinterest and participation in prosodic matters were not just limitedto the prince. After the demise of the first generation of pioneers,the pivotal figure Hsiao Kang (503-51, Emperor Chien-wen), ascrown prince during the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang, continuedto experiment with tonal prosody. Under a succession of powerfulpatrons who were both Buddhists and poets, the search for a newprosody became a national passion spanning two dynasties.

However, formidable difficulties had to be overcome before San-skrit meter, or a prosody structurally similar to it, could be adaptedfor Chinese poetry. One obstacle was the widely differing naturesof the two languages themselves. Chinese was uninflected andisolating, whereas Sanskrit was one of the most inflected languagesknown to man. In Chinese the most prominent suprasegmentalfeature was the presence of tonal distinctions, which before the timeof Shen Yuieh had not yet been fully exploited for prosodic purposes,whereas in Sanskrit the long/short distinction had for centuries beenthe linguistic basis of Indian prosody. Chinese was written in a mor-phosyllabic script composed of more than five thousand characters,18whereas Sanskrit used Devanagari, a syllabary of forty-nine charac-ters with strong alphabetic capabilities. As written, Classical Chi-nese was largely monosyllabic, whereas Sanskrit was polysyllabicand had a predilection for forming enormously long compounds-a fundamental difference, which Hui-chiao had already noted.

Another obstacle was the typological difference between Chineseand Sanskrit prosody at the time of their encounter in Chien-k'ang.'7 Ch'usan-tsang hi chi - TT 55:85-86. These works are no longer extant.'8 Chiu Hsi-kuei (Qiu Xigui) AVfi , Wen-tzu-hsiiehai-yao3;Z 1EMN (Peking: Shang-wu yin-shu kuan, 1988), p. 31, points out that in spite of the large number of characters in-cluded in dictionaries, the actual number of characters in use remains in the range of 4,000-5,000 throughout the ages. There are about 4,000-5,000 distinct characters (Vj) in theoracle bone inscriptions, and 6,544 in the thirteen Classics. These numbers are comparableto the 4,000-5,000 frequently used charactersestimated for Modern Chinese.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 385By the fourth and fifth centuries, before the invention of tonal pro-sody, pentasyllabic verse had become the dominant form of poetry.The majority of the poems by Juan Chi (210-63), T'ao Ch'ien(364-433), and Hsieh Ling-yiin (385-433), for example, are in thisform. The prosodic rules for the pentasyllabic verse were quite sim-ple:19 1) each line has five syllables, (2) each line has a caesura afterthe second syllable, with a second caesura occurring either after thethird or fourth syllable, depending on meaning, (3) a couplet formsan independent two-part prosodic unit, and (4) the rhyme falls onthe final syllable of the second line of a couplet. The pentasyllabicverse differs in two important aspects from earlier poetry, that is,the Book of Odes, the Ch'u Tz'u, and Han ballads: whereas earlierpoetry permits a variable number of syllables per line and a variablenumber of lines per poem, in pentasyllabic verse the number ofsyllables are standardized to five per line, and the number of lines tomultiples of two. And unlike earlier poetry, which was sung, pen-tasyllabic verse was divorced from musical accompaniment andchanted, which may be why the number of syllables was no longervariable. In retrospect, both innovations-the standardization ofthe number of syllables per line and the separation of poetry frommusic-provided a stable platform for the rise of tonal prosody.In a prosodic typology, pentasyllabic verse belongs to the class ofsyllabic verse-a class that also includes the Japanese haiku andtanka and the Classical French Alexandrine.20 With a fixed num-ber of syllables within the line as the organizing principle, syllabicverse seems to be particularly suited to the genius of the Chineselanguage. Theorists of comparative poetics have also identifiedthree other types of prosody: quantitative verse, which includes OldGreek, Latin, and Sanskrit poetry; accentual-syllabic verse, whichis the usual form of English poetry; and accentual verse, which oc-curs in strongly stressed languages such as Germanic. Unlike syl-labic verse, these three types of poetry are informed by meter, withtwo obligatory characteristics: a binary opposition-for example,

19 Kao Yu-kung, "The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse," in Shuen-fu Lin and StephenOwen, eds., The Vitality of the Lyric Voice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986),p. 335.

20 EncyclopaediaBritannica (1975), Micropaedia, 6:842 under "meter" provides a convenientreference for prosodic typology.


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386 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIlong/short or stressed/unstressed-that is applicable to all syllablesof the language underlies the prosody; and a metrical requirementthat in principle pertains to all positions in a line. Specifically,Sanskrit meters are based upon the long/short opposition, andaccording to the above classificatory scheme, the silokameter shouldbe called "quantitative-syllabic" verse. As Classical Chinese wasneither accentual nor quantitative, it was impossible to adopt meterdirectly from Sanskrit or any other Buddhist language with which itmight have come in contact.Perhaps the greatest obstacle was that at the time the Chinese sim-ply had no concept of meter, or more precisely, they had greatdifficulty in expressing the concept of meter, as the translations ofthe following passage from the Lanikavatara-sutra ill illustrate:Atha Ravano Lankadhipatihtotakavrttendnugayyaunar api gathd[bhi]gitenanugdyati ma.Then, Ravana, the Lord of Lanka, after having chanted [these verses] in theTotaka meter, proceeded to chant [the following] in gathais.The author of this passage explicitly identifies the meter ofthe verses as the Totaka, which, incidentally, is an anapestictetrameter: - - - - - - - - - - - -. The Lanikdvatara-sutra astranslated into Chinese three times, by Gunabhadra in 443,Bodhiruci in 513, and Siksananda in 700-704.21 How did thetranslators handle this passage? Gunabhadra does not account forit. Bodhiruci has the following:

Gi4g tb3Ibui, t16%XXtXB, ttAnkfE3 (after having praised theBuddha with various Totaka marvelous sounds), I ff > .Siksananda, an early T'ang translator from Khotan, is somewhatcircumlocutory but still has the same basic details:M*W,WP3ftT, U-416tUE M (after having sung praise to the Buddha withTotaka sounds), .The astounding thing about the Chinese treatment of this passage isthat Bodhiruci and Siksananda had no way to translate vrtta("meter") accurately, which may be why Gunabhadra ignored italtogether. Bodhiruci has vrttaequal to miao sheng09 ("marveloussounds"), while Siksananda equates it with yin r ("sounds").

21 Respectively TT, Nos. 670, 671, and 672.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 387Because the Chinese language was unable to express the concept ofmeter, these translators had no choice but to transpose "meter"into phonological or musical terms.

The term "marvelous sounds" also occurs in the "Discussion ofSuftra Masters" in Hui-chiao's Biographiesof Eminent Monks (TT50:415b):In order for suitra-chanting to be beautiful, it is important that both words and in-tonation be successful. If there is only intonation without [good] words, then therewill be no way to arouse men's spiritual nature. If there are only words but no[good] intonation, then there will be no way to penetrate the feeling of theuninitiated. This is what is meant when the siutra says: "Sing praises of the Bud-dha's virtue with subtle and marvelous sounds."

Recall that the same Hui-chiao, in reporting Kumarajlva's conver-sation with Hui-jui, wrote: "An audience with the king requires aeulogy. In Buddhist ceremonies, chants are of the highest value.The gdthalsand flokas in the scriptures all belong to this type NPH,, WA hA. " Hui-chiao was certainly familiar with the significanceof metered verse for Buddhism. He was also a contemporary ofBodhiruci, who translated vrtta("meter") as "marvelous sounds."Therefore, what Hui-chiao wanted to say in the last sentence onchanting, and what we would have rendered in a freer translation,is the following: "This is what is meant when the suitra says: 'Singpraises of the Buddha's virtue in meters such as the sloka or thegath. .'"Although the Chinese were unable to make direct and specificreference to the concept of meter, this does not mean that they wereunaware of its significance for poetry. Let us also go back to aphrase in the "Biography of Kumarajlva," in which Kumarajiva isdiscussing the similarities and differences between Chinese and San-skrit literary forms and reportedly said: " Lr < tF,ItUA .A, Our translation was: "The custom of India attachesgreat importance to verse making, and regards the modulations andrhymes that can be set to music as the finest." What could Kumara-jiva have been talking about? We believe that in the process oftranslating Buddhist texts, he would have discussed with Hui-jui,his ablest Chinese assistant, the difference between prose and verse


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388 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIin Sanskrit, and the nature and function of various types of verse. Itshould also be noted that Hui-jui knew some Sanskrit and probablywrote a tract on Sanskrit phonetics at the request of Hsieh Ling-yuin(TT 50:367b). But what Kumarajiva was supposed to have said is,in a more literal translation: "Among the forms and rhymes withkung and shangnotes, the ones that can be set to strings are regardedas the finest. " Kung and shang are the names of two notes in the pen-tatonic scale of Chinese music, and the names of musical notes werealso used at the time to refer to the four tones. What Hui-chiao wastrying to do here is to refer to the four tones in musical terms, and in-sofar as the four tones underlie the emergent tonal prosody, to ex-tend the meaning of "kung and shang" to refer to the Sanskritanalogue, namely, meter.

After the Chinese encountered Sanskrit meter, then, two pro-cesses were underway. Since the concept of meter was absent both intheir prosodic tradition and in their language, the Chinese adoptedthe time-honored method of ko-i %X ("matching concepts"); thatis, they referred to Sanskrit meter by using the terminology ofChinese music or phonology. Simultaneously, because the sloka hadreligious significance in Buddhism, the Chinese also embarkedupon the challenging process of creating something that could servethe same function as the "marvelous sounds" of Sanskrit.

Given the typological differences between Sanskrit and Chinese,the imitative process must have resulted from stimulus diffusion,not from direct borrowing. In other words, only after discoveringthe structural principles of Sanskrit meter could the Chinese inventa new prosody of their own that mirrors these principles. Indeed, ifwe define "meter" broadly as the obligatory, rhythmic repetition ofprosodic features across all syllables within a certain domain, thenRecent Style poetry may in a sense be said to have meter or meter-like features.

Two Generations f ExperimentalPoetsIn tracing the origins of tonal prosody, we have so far identifiedthe Buddha as the final cause, Sanskrit meter as the formal cause,and Middle Chinese tones as the material cause. To complete theNeo-Aristotelian analysis, we now turn to the efficient cause, the


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 389craftsmen who invented Recent Style poetry between 488 and 551in the Southern capital Chien-k'ang.

Buddhism enjoyed three periods of florescence during the South-ern dynasties (420-589): the Yiian-chia (424-53) reign, with thegreat poet Hsieh Ling-yiin (385-433) as a leading figure; theperiod when the imperial prince Hsiao Tzu-liang served as primeminister (ssu-t'u IJP) under Emperor Wu of Ch'i (483-93); and thelong reign of Emperor Wu of Liang (502-49).22 This chronology cor-responds well with the early stages in the development of RecentStyle poetry. At the time of Hsieh Ling-yiin, Chinese poetry hadalready been greatly influenced by Buddhist ideas, but not by San-skrit meter; his poetry represents tonal prosody at degree zero. In488, Shen Yiieh used his afterword to the "Biography of HsiehLing-yiin" to issue his manifesto on tonal prosody, thus making aconscious break with the past. The year 549 witnessed the fall ofChien-k'ang to Hou Ching's forces in April and the death ofEmperor Wu of Liang at the age of eighty-six in June. In 551, withthe murder of Hsiao Kang (Emerpor Chien-wen) by Hou Ching'smen, the golden age of Southern literature came to an end. By thattime Recent Style poetry had been fully developed as a verse form,though as yet not widely practiced. Between 488 and 551 flourishedtwo generations of experimental poets. The older group was led byShen Yiieh and the younger by Hsiao Kang.To gain a true appreciation of their achievement, let us go backbriefly to the age of Hsieh Ling-yun. As Erik Ziurcherhas shown inThe BuddhistConquestof China, Buddhism had already spread amongthe gentry and the aristocracy of the South during the period 320-420. By the beginning of the fifth century, with the exodus ofKumarajiva's disciples to the South and the arrival of Fa-hsien inChien-k'ang from India and Ceylon in 414, the stage was set for thefirst florescence of Buddhism during the Southern Dynasties.

One indication of the popularity of Buddhism was the growing in-terest in the Sanskrit language. In 417 and 418, Fa-hsien and Bud-dhabhadra translated the Sanskrit syllabary of fifty letters, arranged

22 T'ang Yung-t'ung ,l, Han-Wei ChinNan-pei-ch'ao o-chiaohihA I -A4 (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chui, 1955), pp. 415-416.


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390 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIin the order of vowels, dipthongs, and consonants that formedchapters of the Mahdparinirvadna-siutraTT 376, 8:887c-888b) .23 Some-time between 418 and 433, at the request of Hsieh Ling-yun, Hui-jui, the disciple of Kumarajiva, also composed a manual entitledShih-ssu yin hsun hsii tEJII, ("Explanation of the FourteenSounds with Semantic Interpretations"; TT 50:367b). This text, asArthur Wright has noted, was also based upon the Mahdparinirva-na-sutra but only treats the fourteen Sanskrit vowels and diphthongs.24At the beginning of the fifth century, another Sanskrit syllabaryof forty-two letters, accompanied by semantic interpretations butarranged in the arapacanaorder, was (after having appeared in var-ious Chinese translations of Buddhist texts at the end of the thirdcentury) retranslated in the Paicavirhsatisdhasrikd-prajnadparamita(TT 223, trans. Kumarajiva, 402-4 A.D.), the Upadesa(TT 1509,Kumarajiva, 404-6), the Avatam'saka-sutraTT 278, Buddhabhadra,418-20), and the Mahasamrnipdta-sutraTT 397, Dharmaksema, 414-20).25 Except for the two items by Kumarajiva, all these texts weretranslated in the south.

During the fifth century, the Chinese were also becoming betteracquainted with the general characteristics of Sanskrit. Buddholo-gists, in discussing the language of primitive Buddhism, often citethe following passage from the Vinayaof Mahisasaka, translated intoChinese by Buddhajiva of Kashmir in 423-24 at Yang-chou:There were two Brahman brothers who recited the text of the Chando-veda "sacredknowledge of metrics"). Later, having been converted to the True Law (saddharma),they quit the life of the householder (pravrajita). Upon hearing the bhiksusrecitingthe sultras incorrectly, they scolded them saying: "You reverends (bhadanta) havebeen monks for a long time. Yet knowing neither the masculine and femininegenders (pum-stri-linga), nor the singular (eka-vacana) and the plural (bahu-vacana),nor the present (bhavat), past (samatita) and the future (bhdvi), nor the long (dfrgha)and short (hrasva) sounds, nor the light (laghu) and heavy (guru) syllables, you recitethe suitras of the Buddha in this fashion." The bhiksusheard this and felt ashamed.These two bhiksuswent to the Buddha and told him what happened. The Buddhasaid: "Let them recite according to the speech of the country (desa-bhdsa ["locallanguage, or dialect," i.e., the vernacular]), but they should not distort the inten-

23 Paul Demieville's review of R. H. van Gulik, Siddham:An Essayon theHistoryof SanskritStudies in China andJapan, TP 45 (1957): 243.24 Arthur Wright, "Seng-jui Alias Hui-jui: A Biographical Bisection in the Kao-sengchuan," Sino-Indian Studies 5.3-4 (1957): 279 n. 30.

25 See note 23.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 391tion of the Buddha. It is forbidden to regard the words of the Buddha as thelanguage of the outsiders (wai, i.e., heretic, non-Buddhist, bdhyaka)."thxmw1 - A, xrArL"rn.=a. AE&m*R. r%mL_r_gx.T-E,aw-3-7xfl"fPQk f?E tEX4GL_r lIR kr_it ifM , Al b ?. ?n o -

AS t , T W ;1{?ii }fiXThe Sanskrit being described was clearly a heavily inflected lan-guage with the long/short distinction in its phonological systemand the light/heavy distinction in its prosodic structure. Aside fromreading translated texts such as the Vinaya of Mahisasaka, theChinese of the fifth century also could have learned these linguisticfacts directly from their foreign friends resident in China. Theabove passage with a precise date provides some concrete evidencefor the sort of information they were gaining about Sanskrit.Although Chinese of the fifth century did know something aboutSanskrit, it would be misleading to conclude that many of themknew Sanskrit. From the roster of translators in the BiograpiesofEmi-nent Monks, it is clear that the overwhelming majority wereforeigners and that very few Chinese monks had learned Sanskritwell enough to translate Sanskrit texts into Chinese on their own.The few exceptions-Fa-hsien, Chih-yen, and Pao-yuin-had ac-tually traveled to either India or other places that had large com-munities of Sanskrit scholars. For those Chinese followers of Bud-dhism who never went abroad, tasks were limited to assisting withthe translation or revising texts already translated, which was whatHsieh Ling-yun did for the Nirvdna-sdtra.27And what Buddhistbiographies really mean when they say that Chinese Buddhistmonks and laymen "had made a profound study of the Sanskritlanguage," is that they were instructed in Siddham-the principlesof Sanskrit script, spelling, and pronunciation that every Indianchild had to learn as he began his education.

26 Wu-fenii E5 TT 22:39c, cited with Sanskrit equivalents for Chinese terms in LinLi-kouang #V)%, L'Aide-Mimoire e la VraieLoi (Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d'OrientAdrien-Maisonneuve, 1949), pp. 218-19; and in Chi Hsien-lin *A11, Yin-tuku-taiyi-yenlun-chiFP9t;tfVi & * (Peking: She-hui k'o-hsiieh ch'u-pan-she, 1982), p. 408; with addi-tional explanations.

27 T'ang Yung-t'ung, Fo-chiaohih,p. 439; J. D. Frodsham, TheMurmuring tream:TheLifeand Works f HsiehLing-yan Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), p. 72.


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392 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEINevertheless, exposure to the Sanskrit language and Indian lin-

guistics for several centuries made the Chinese more aware of thephonological features of their own language. The first fruit was theinvention of thefan-ch'ieh 14P method of spelling (namely, takingthe initial sound of one character and the final sound of a secondcharacter to represent the pronunciation of a third character).Though its date of origin has always been controversial, thefan-ch 'ieh method was clearly in general use by the fourth century. TheSanskrit syllabary of forty-two letters was presented in the arapacanaorder, that is, a, ra, pa, ca, na, etc.; a Buddhist text containing sucha syllabary had been twice translated before the end of the third cen-tury. It did not require too much linguistic acumen to observe thatby holding the vowel a constant and varying the initial consonantone could form a series of syllables, each represented by a separateSanskrit letter. Transferring this principle to Chinese, one obtainsthefan-ch'ieh spelling system, which implies that the canonical formof the Chinese syllable consists of an initial followed by a final. SinceMiddle Chinese was a tonal language, it was necessary, in makingup fan-ch'ieh spellings, to take the tones into account; the secondcharacter of thefan-ch'ieh spelling had to be in the same tone as thecharacter to be spelled. Thus by the first part of the fifth century,shortly before the time of Shen Yuieh, Chinese phonologists hadbecome aware of the four tones. The growing awareness of thephonological properties of words was also operative among poets.For example, Shen Yuieh and Liu Hsieh (465-522), both strongly in-fluenced by Buddhism, were extremely discriminating in choosingrhyming words in their verse.By the latter half of the fifth century, Buddhist psalmody and San-skrit poetics were beginning to influence Chinese prosody. This isevident when, for instance, we consider Hsieh Ling-yiin's poetry,not in terms of its intrinsic merits, but as representing a stage in thedevelopment of Recent Style poetry.29 Particularly noticeable is his

28 Chou Tsu-mo WM& Wenhsueh chi pl (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chui, 1966),p. 466.29 For a study of Hsieh Ling-yuin'spoetry, see Lin Wen-yueh #1ZjA, HsiehLing-yunMA (Taipei: Ho-luo ch'u-pan-she, 1977) and Shan-shuiyuku-tien U71(lt: (Taipei: Ch'unwen-hsueh ch'u-pan-she, 1976), and Kang-i Sun Chang, Six DynastiesPoetry Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 47-78.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 393conscious deployment of alliterative and rhyming binoms, for exam-ple, in these lines from his "I Follow the Chin-chu Torrent, Crossthe Peak, and Go Along by the River":

MMVUtM1jenbieng-.djams'JOMA M kuo buo-tsydng tsjdnDuckweed floats upon its turbid depths,Reeds and cattails cover its clear shallows.30

With alliterative syllables represented by A, and rhyming syllablesby B, the pattern is A A - B B / B B - A A. The use of alliterativeand rhyming bisyllables, a frequent feature in the poetry of HsiehLing-yun and his younger contemporary, Pao Chao (415-66), wasin part stimulated by the rise offan-ch 'ieh spelling. Whether allitera-tion and internal rhyming are desirable would soon be dealt with inthe last four of Shen Yiieh's "Eight Defects." Hsieh Ling-yiin's ar-rangement of alliterative and rhyming bisyllables and his semanticcategories both anticipated the tonal patterns of the couplet and thequatrain in Recent Style prosody. Furthermore, Hsieh Ling-yiinwas a master of the antithetical couplet in his choice of diction, ar-rangement of phonic patterns, and placement of the verb in the mid-dle of the line. But because the poetic convention of his time allowedthe poem to consist of any number of couplets, his landscape poemswere more descriptive than lyrical and resembled a series of beau-tifully crafted still-pictures strung together in linear progressionwithout a formally motivated point of closure. It is also note-worthy that, in spite of his many technical advances, he virtuallyignored the four tones. Finally, we should remember that he wasthe most admired poet of his generation. As the "Biography ofHsieh Ling-yiin" in the Sung shu states: "Whenever one of hispoems arrived [from Kuei-chi] the high and low around the City allrushed to have it copied, and overnight it was read by the gentryand the commoners alike. His poetry was admired far and near; hisfame resounded in the capital." It was against this background of

30 Ting Fu-pao TN9, Ch ian Han San-kuoWeiChinNan-pei-chaoshih4/-fJl= 2M(Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan, 1968), p. 818, cf. Frodsham, pp. 135-36. Middle Chinesetranscription s that of Li Fang-kuei in "Shang-kuyinyen-chiu"Lt; 5E,, CHHP, n.s. 9.1-2(1971), 4-7.


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394 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIheightened prosodic sophistication that Shen Yuieh issued hismanifesto on tonal prosody in the afterword to Hsieh's biography,which states in part:Ying Chung-wen (d. 407) was the first to change the style of Sun Cho (314-70) andHsui Hsuin (ca. 345); and Hsieh Hun (d. ca. 412) greatly altered the manner of theT'ai-yuian period (376-96). In the Liu Sung dynasty, Yen Yen-chih (384-456) andHsieh Ling-yiin were prominent voices. Hsieh Ling-yiin's inspiration was lofty,while Yen Yen-chih's writing was clear and precise. Together they provided amodel by which to measure former blossoms and left an example for posterity tofollow. Now in speaking frankly from the heart about former writers and discussingtheir various instances of skill and awkwardness, it seems as though still more couldbe said.

The reason why the five colors illuminate each other and the eight musical in-struments harmonize with each other is because dark and light colors andyin and

yang notes are each appropriate to specific objects. If you wish the notes kung andyuto alternate and the low and high tones to balance each other, then wherever thereis a "floating sound" in front, there must follow a "cut-off sound." Within a line,initials and finals must be different; within a couplet, light and heavy sounds mustbe distinct. Only those who attain this subtle meaning can begin to discussliterature.How brash and iconoclastic is Shen Yuieh's concluding statementWith one sentence he dismissed all previous poets and critics. ShenYuieh also defended the principle of tonal prosody in a letter to LuChuieh:There are five tones but tens of thousands of distinct words. The matching of theprofusion of tens of thousands with the handful of five tones-high and descending,low and rising-is not something that can be rationally conceived. Nor does it stopmerely at this. Within a couplet of ten syllables, the tones are matched in mirror-fashion. Even with no more than ten syllables, the artful permutations cannot be ex-hausted; how much the more so, then, when there are more? . . . Besides thecategories of rhyming and non-rhyming, there is also the distinction between"fine" and "coarse. "31

The new prosody is further discussed as follows by Liu Hsieh(465-522) in the chapter on sound rules of the Wen-hsin tiao-lung(The LiteraryMind and OrnateRhetoric):There are two kinds of tones-flying and sinking; and there are two kinds ofresonance-that between a pair of words with the same initial consonant, and thatbetween a pair of words with the same final. Alliterative syllables must not be

31 Li Yen-shou lk, Nan-shih t (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1975), 48.1196-7.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 395separated within a line; rhyming syllables must not be scattered within a couplet.The sound of the sinking tone, when uttered, is cut off; the flying tone soarsstraight and does not return. These two must alternate, like the rotation of awindlass; they must match each other like a dragon's rows of opposing scales. Intheir intercourse they observe the maxim of the Changes:"When going leads toobstruction, coming leads to union. " If a defect should occur, it is a stutter on thepart of the author....A poet's full strength and skill is demanded in the ho (harmony) andyuTnrhyme).When different tones follow each other, it is called ho; when the same soundsanswer each other, that is termedyuin.Once the rhyme (yiin)has been determined,the remaining syllables are easy to place; but since the pattern of ho is based on thealternation of rising and falling sounds, it is hard to make them fit together like thetwo halves of a tally.32

Several items are worth noting in these passages. Perhaps mostsignificant is that Shen Yiieh and Liu Hsieh both reveal Buddhist orSanskrit influence. The terms ch'ing ("light") and chung ("heavy")are direct translations of laghu("light") and guru("heavy"); in Bud-dhajiva's Chinese translation of the Vinaya of Mahisasaka, com-pleted in 423-24 A.D., the Sanskrit terms are indeed translated assuch. The term ho-sheng "harmonizing the sounds") used by Hui-chiao to describe the method of chanting Sanskrit gdthd (in thepassage translated above on p. 383) is now used by Liu Hsieh torefer to one of the two main skills in composing Chinese poetry:"When different tones follow one another, it is called ho(harmony). "This suggests that Shen Yiieh and his associates were equatingChinese tones with Sanskrit long and short syllables, and tonal pro-sody with the Sanskrit meters of the gathd.

It also appears that, for Shen and Liu, there are two types oftones, variously named "low and high tones," "floating and cut-offsounds," "light and heavy sounds,'" "flying and sinking tones,'"etc. The prosodic concept underlying these expressions is the binaryopposition in tones.

Last, both Shen and Liu indicate that these two kinds of tonesshould alternate within each line and couplet. Shen calls for thealternation of tones within one line when he states, "Whereverthere is a 'floating sound' in front, it must be followed by a 'cut-offsound' "; and Liu stresses the same sort of contrastive balancewhen he defines ho as "different tones follow[ing] each other."

32 Wen-hsiniao-lung 'LX,Wf (SPPYed.), 7.6ab.


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396 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIOpposition between the tonal patterns of the two lines of a coupletis specified by Shen Yiieh when he says, "Within a couplet of tensyllables, the tones are matched in mirror-fashion," and by LiuHsieh when he says, "They must match each other like a dragon'srows of opposing scales."In short, around 488, half a century after the death of HsiehLing-yiin, Shen Yiieh and his followers were developing a new tonalprosody with the aim of achieving the same euphonic effect as thatachieved by meter in Sanskrit. But their programmatic pronounce-ments still leave two questions unanswered. First, which particularsyllables are required to alternate? And second, should the alterna-tion be required among all four tones, or only between "light"and "heavy" ones? If the latter, how should the four tones bedivided-into two and two, or one and three? These practicalproblems were worked out between 488 and 551 by two generationsof experimental poets. The older group, also known as "the eightfriends of the Prince of Chin-ling," were led by Shen Yueh. Theyounger group, led by Hsiao Kang, crown prince and laterEmperor Chien-wen of Liang, included the great poet Yu Hsin(513-81), his father Yu Chien-wu (ca. 487-551), and Hsui Ling(507-83), the editor of the Yu-t'ai hsin-yung (New Songsfrom a JadeTerrace).

Among the "eight friends" who frequented the salon of HsiaoTzu-liang, it was Shen Yiieh, WangJung, and Hsieh T'iao who didthe most to launch the prosodic revolution. Shen Yiieh came from aSouthern military family of low status." A consummate literary en-trepreneur and astute politician, he was able to channel the literaryenergy of his time in the direction favored by his royal Buddhistpatrons. During the period Hsiao Tzu-liang's salon served as agathering place for foreign monks and Chinese literati, he wassenior both in age and in rank among the "eight friends" and hencetheir leader. In all likelihood, he was credited with some of theachievements of his followers.

Wang Jung and Hsieh T'iao performed most of the prosodic ex-periments. In addition to having precocious poetic talent, theycame from the two greatest aristocratic families of the Southern33 For the life and works of Shen Yiieh, see Richard Mather, ThePoetShenYueh Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1988).


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 397dynasties-families that had produced a succession of primeministers, generals, scholars, poets, calligraphers, and artists. Theelite naturally looked upon these two young poets as trend setters.Indeed, the contemporary critic Chung Jung ranked their contribu-tion to the making of tonal prosody above that of Shen Yiieh.34Wang Jung was a young genius who forfeited his life at the age oftwenty-six as the result of a foolhardy attempt to put the Prince ofChin-ling on the throne. A short life means a thin corpus. Thereforein order to observe tonal prosody at the first stage its development,we need to concentrate on the poetry of Hsieh T'iao, supplementingit when necessary with the work of Shen Yuieh and Wang Jung.

Hsieh T'iao came from the same family as Hsieh Ling-yiin, andeach was regarded as the finest poet of his time.35 The difference intheir poetry can to a large extent be attributed to the shift in literaryambience during the seventy odd years separating them. Hsieh theelder was born at the ancestral estate in Chekiang and returnedthere whenever his official career suffered a setback. In many of hisfamous poems, he assumes the persona of a lonely traveler, enjoy-ing the scenery as he hikes along mountain trails or sails alongcraggy shores-all the while lamenting the absence of an under-standing friend. As we have already seen (p. 393), it was necessaryfor these and other poems written in the provinces to be transmittedto the capital: "Whenever one of his poems arrived [from Kuei-chi]the high and low around the City all rushed to have it copied, andovernight it was read by the gentry and commoners alike. " In sharpcontrast, Hsieh T'iao was born right in the capital, knew the flavorof palace life from childhood, and became famous in court circles atthe age of fifteen. When he was establishing his reputation with hissuperbly crafted couplets and innovative prosody, he was moreoften than not sitting in the pavilion of a luxuriant private garden inthe company of such men as the Prince of Chin-ling, his youngerbrother the Prince of Sui, Shen Yuieh, or Wang Jung. In short,Hsieh T'iao was very much a creature of the literary salons, and no

34 Shih-p'in,"Third Preface," the passage beginning with M7Y OWiMj "Wang Jung initiated (the notions of 'tones' and 'defects'), and Hsieh T'iao and ShenYuiehstirredup its waves."

35 See Kang-i Sun Chang, Six Dynasties,pp. 112-45 for an excellent discussion of HsiehT'iao's poetry.


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398 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIsalon was then more prestigious than that frequently held by thePrince of Chin-ling at his suburban villa outside the capital Chien-k' ang.

The collective enterprise of the salon was to compose poetry.Sometimes the assembled poets wrote on the same topic, for exam-ple, "'On the Zither,'" "'On the Lute,'" "'On the Brazier,'" "'On theLamp, " or "On the Candle. "36 Sometimes they pooled their talentsto compose linked verse by having each poet in turn contribute aquatrain.37 These gatherings were in effect poetry competitions,where budding literati could show off their skills in front of theirelders. When the group assembled was large, the verse form had tobe relatively short so that everyone could take a turn. Thus HsiehT'iao's corpus contains a high proportion of quatrains and octavepoems, many of which were composed for such social occasions.Competition also requires rules and standards. Formal rules suchas those pertaining to tonal prosody and the strict rhyming of finalsare objective and hence highly desirable as criteria for adjudicatingcontests-which is also why Recent Style poetry was made anobligatory part of the chin-shihexamination during the T'ang. Sincethe senior judges were known to favor such rules, the literary salonsof the capital and the provinces were soon transformed into hum-ming laboratories for new prosodies.The emergence of tonal prosody was also fostered by otherchanges in fashions and aesthetic values, which were particularlyevident in the palace gardens as settings for literary salons and asymbol of artistic excellence. Nature in Hsieh Ling-yiin's landscapepoetry consists of the rugged mountains and swift streams of thesouth. The garden, unlike the landscape found in nature, is a self-contained world perfected by human design. The literary analogueto this shift from natural scenery to man-made parks is apparent inHsieh T'iao's replacement of Hsieh Ling-yiin's discursive mode ofdescription with the self-contained vehicle of the quatrain or the oc-tave, miniature forms ideally suited to encapsulate a miniaturizedlandscape. Moreover, just as the landscape architect joins natureand art to create the garden, so Hsieh T'iao fuses subjective emo-

36 These are titles of poems by Shen Yiieh, WangJung, and Hsieh T'iao, cited in Kang-iSun Chang, Six Dynasties, p. 124.

37 See Kang-i Sun Chang, Six Dynasties, p. 139 for an example of linked verse.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 399tion and objective description, whereas Hsieh Ling-yiin tends tokeep them apart. Carry this process of fusion one step further andwe find the principle of formal symmetry, already apparent inHsieh Ling-yiin's arrangement of alliterative and rhyming bisyl-labic expressions and semantic categories, being extended to thedesign of the palace garden and thence to the patterning of tonalfeatures of the poem as a whole. For an aristocrat such as HsiehT'iao brought up exclusively in refined surroundings, everything inlife should approach the perfection of a well-wrought urn. This is in-deed his view of literature when he says, "Good poetry should beround and beautiful; it should roll and turn like a bead."38

What then did the first generation of experimental poets knowabout tonal prosody? The answer can be stated in terms of the firstfour of the traditional list of "eight defects. " Takagi has shown thatShen Yiieh and his immediate followers had already put "raisedtail" and "crane's knee" into effect.39As will be shown later in thesection on "Sanskrit Contributions to the Making of Recent StyleProsody," the joint application of "raised tail" and "crane's knee"generated a binary opposition between level and deflected tones inthe final syllables-an opposition that then spread to the other posi-tions in the poem. The prohibition against "wasp's waist" wasnever observed in the Recent Style poetry of the T'ang and themeaning of the term is still controversial. Among the first fourdefects, only "level head" still remains to be discussed.In the mature tonal prosody informing the Recent Style poetry ofthe T'ang, the second and fourth syllables of a quatrain observe thefollowing pattern, which will hereafter be referred to as Pattern 1:

O A O B O / O B O A 0 // 0 B O A 0 / 0 A O B OA (level) and B (deflected) are opposite with respect to level anddeflected tones and 0 is optional. In Regulated Verse, the firstquatrain follows this pattern and is repeated for the second. Twoprosodic rules are involved here: the second and the fourth syllablesof a line should be opposite with respect to level and deflected; andthe second and seventh syllables of the couplet should be similarlyopposed. The latter is the prohibition against "level head."

38 Li Yen-shou, Nan-shih,22.609.39 See note 8.


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400 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIPrevious scholarship has shown that the obligatory opposition be-tween the second and fourth syllables was one of the first rules put

into effect by Shen Yiieh and his immediate followers. But the roleof "level head" for these poets is less clear.40 There are manycouplets by Shen Yiieh, Hsieh T'iao, and WangJung with the pat-tern 0 A 0 B 0 / 0 A 0 B 0, which shows that during the firststage, "level head" has not yet been established. Hsieh T'iao,however, wrote four quatrains that totally conform to Pattern 1.There are also at least two octave poems by WangJung in which thepattern alternates between even lines and odd lines. For example:

EEO, rm-ZMWO 0 A 0 B 0t t 4 0 B 0 A 04XIE 0 A 0 B 0MntiM8 0 B 0 A 0Th2fflTX 0 A 0 B 04,3 0 B 0 A 0

50t: O A 0 B0tA #M1 0 B 0 A 0Going up a High Terrace

The sightseer wishing to gaze afar,Mounts the steps and goes up a high terrace.Lotuses in the courtyard bloom during summer;Cassia trees by the window open their buds in autumn,The petals fly too low to get in;Birds scatter in the distance to pay a call.He returns to watch the cloud-decorated pillars,Whose shape sways back and forth with the moon.

Scholars from the Ming on have been engaged in tracing the lineageof Recent Style prosody, and their verdict has usually been thatHsieh T'iao and his contemporaries failed to advance to the level ofT'ang Regulated Verse.4" Specifically these scholars charged them

40 Takagi, "Liu-ch'ao lii-shih."41 Hu Ying-lin -f1W (1551-1602), Shihsou (neip'ien)N (FI1) 4.61-62; Li Chih-fangf t:t, Hsieh Hsuan-ch'enghih chu &V I334M (Hong Kong: Wan-yu t'u-shu kung-ssu,1968), in the section "Hsieh T'iao shih yen-chiu" ME i, pp. 38-49.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 401with violating the prohibition against "level head." Surely this isan anachronistic offense since the poets, living a hundred yearsbefore the T'ang, had no way to foresee the outcome of their ex-periments. In light of the evidence outlined above, a more judiciousassessment would be that Hsieh T'iao and Wang Jung were askingeach other, "Should we consider 'level head' a defect?" To that ex-tent they were aware of this prosodic rule.Another contribution Hsieh T'iao made to the development ofRecent Style poetry is a preference for the shorter forms of verse.For example, among the 130-odd shih poems by him, sixteen arequatrains and forty-two are octave poems, whereas among HsiehLing-yun's seventy-odd shih poems, only five are quatrains and twoare octave poems. The trend started by Hsieh T'iao was to becomeeven more pronounced during the next fifty years.In summary, the first generation of experimental poets intro-duced prohibitions against "raised tail" and "crane's knee," ex-plored the issue of "level head," and established the quatrain andthe octave poem as the preferred formed of pentasyllabic verse.In the process of Sinicizing Sanskrit meter, they also instituted"light" and "heavy" as the prosodic categories for a new type ofpoetry. But they left the completion of Recent Style prosody to thenext generation of experimental poets.

The year 502, when Hsiao Yen began his long reign as EmperorWu of Liang, marks the beginning of a .new era. By then just aboutall the prominent members of the first generation of experimentalpoets had passed away-Wang Jung in 494, Hsieh T'iao in 499,and Fan Yiin in 502. Shen Yiieh did live to 513, but he lost his in-fluence at court after 502 and spent the last years of his life insemiseclusion. During the first few decades of Emperor Wu's reign,it seemed that the prosodic revolution, which started out with abang, would peter out with a whimper.Providence then intervened. In 531 the heir apparent PrinceChao-ming, named Hsiao T'ung (501-31), died as the result of aboating accident. Hsiao Kang was immediately summoned to thecapital and installed as the crown prince at the age of twenty-seven.42 The two brothers had vastly different poetic tastes. Hsiao

42 John Marney, LiangChien-wen i (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976)providesuseful in-formationabout Hsiao Kang but fails to mention his contribution to the development of tonalprosody.


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402 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIT'ung preferred the more orthodox literature and classics to the or-nate and sensual poetry then in vogue. Although he did experimentwith tonal prosody to some extent, he was not in favor of it. HsiaoKang, in contrast, belonged entirely to the avant garde. He was par-tial to Palace Style Poetry, a genre that specializes in the sensuousand erotic depiction of palace ladies. Even more important, he wasa dedicated champion and accomplished practitioner of tonal pro-sody. When he was made crown prince, the poets in his circlebecome dominant members of the literary establishment: his twotutors Yu Chien-wu and Hsii Ch'ih (427-551); their two sons HsiiLing and Yu Hsin, and Hsiao Kang's younger brother Hsiao I(508-54, Prince of Hsiang-tung and later Emperor Yuian). Thisgeneration of experimental poets, under the patronage of the crownprince Hsiao Kang, continued the revolution started by Shen Yiieh,and in due time formulated the canonical prosodic pattern of Reg-ulated Verse.

The program to develop a new prosody based on tonal distinctionwas controversial from the start. A few years after Shen Yiieh issuedhis manifesto on tonal prosody, there was the exchange of lettersbetween him and his critic Lu Chueh. Of the two major system-atic works on literary criticism of the time, Liu Hsieh's Wen-hsintiao-lung, especially in the chapter on sound rules, was squarelybehind Shen Yiieh, whereas ChungJung's Shihp 'in (PoetryRankings)attacked tonal prosody as being cumbersome and artificial, andput down Shen Yiieh and Hsieh T'iao by awarding them mediocregrades. Soon the entire literary world was embroiled in this contro-versy.After he mounted the throne, Emperor Wu regarded the con-troversy with studied aloofness, as the following oft-repeated storyreveals. Happening one day upon the courtier Chou She (469-524),the emperor asked, "What are the 'four tones' all about?" ChouShe responded with four words illustrating each of the four in se-quence, "[Your Majesty is] Son of Heaven, sage and wise" (t'ien-tzu sheng-che fl. "Nevertheless," the account concludes, "tothe end of his life the emperor never followed or made any use oftonal rules. " The story presumably was intended to illustrateEmperor Wu's ignorance of, and disapproval towards, tonal pro-sody. But as Richard Mather has observed, the emperor was feign-


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 403ing ignorance.43 A member of the Prince of Chin-ling's salon as ayoung man, he certainly knew what the group was attempting todo. Moreover, he avoided "raised tail" eighty percent of the time, ahigher percentage than the poets who preceded him.44 Had he beentruly ignorant of the four tones this would have been impossible.

Emperor Wu had good reasons to appear uninterested in pro-sodic matters. As the founding emperor, he had to unite all factionsand avoid unnecessary controversy, especially one in which his twooldest living sons, Hsiao T'ung and Hsiao Kang, were aligned onopposite sides. Another reason is that, upon mounting the throne,Emperor Wu sought to distance himself from the power groupformerly associated with the Prince of Chin-ling, and especiallyfrom its senior surviving member, Shen Yiieh. Finally, as a matterof state policy, the emperor tried to give equal support to Confu-cianism and Buddhism.45 It would have been highly impolitic forhim to be openly associated with a foreign-inspired fashion in pro-sody.

With the emperor not taking an active role in the conflict, leader-ship in the literary world devolved upon the crown prince, the posi-tion held by Hsiao T'ung (Prince Chao-ming) before 531 and HsiaoKang after 531. Hsiao T'ung is famous as the editor of the Wenhsuan (LiterarySelections, hereafter WH). A work containing bothprose and verse arranged under thirty-seven heads, it is rightly re-garded by later ages as the Anthology par excellence. Its contentsalso reveal the intense ongoing struggle between the supporters ofNew Poetry and its critics. For example, the WHprizes Hsieh Ling-yiin (42 poems) over Shen Yuieh (17 poems) and Hsieh T'iao (21poems). In making their selection, Hsiao T'ung and his co-editorswere following the lead of Chung Jung, the critic of tonal prosody,who in the Shihp 'in gave an A grade to Hsieh the elder but a B gradeto Shen Yiieh and Hsieh the younger. When Shen Yuieh madehis grand survey of past literary giants in the afterword to the"Biography of Hsieh Ling-yiin," he did not even mention T'aoCh'ien. Hsiao T'ung not only admired T'ao Ch'ien intensely, but

43 Richard Mather, Shen Yueh,p. 38.44 See the statistics cited under Rule 2 in the section entitled "The Rise of the Ch'i-LiangStyle."45 T'ang Yung-t'ung, Fo-chiao hih, pp. 476-77.


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404 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIincluded his poems in the WH and set out to edit his collectedworks. Even more shocking-and more important for our pur-pose-is that the WH gives no indication whatsoever that tonal pro-sody was in the process of being invented. To be sure, a few poemsby Hsieh T'iao in the anthology incidentally conform to some of thetonal rules,46 but they are buried among other non-conformingpoems under the same head. It is therefore no exaggeration to saythat Hsiao T'ung and his associate editors went out of their way torepudiate Shen Yiieh's program. Had the prince survived theboating accident of 531 to succeed his father to the throne, tonalprosody would almost certainly have been suppressed and thenforgotten.Fortunately history took a different turn. After Hsiao Kang be-came the crown prince in 531, he mounted a vigorous campaignto reinstate and further develop Shen Yiieh's program. The lastingtestimony to his efforts is an anthology of love poetry, the Yu-t'aihsin-yung,47dited by Hsii Ling under Hsiao Kang's patronage. Thetitle "New Songs" (hsin-yung) immediately announces the contem-porary orientation of the anthology. Of the 656 poems in the collec-tion, seventy-five percent belong to the century or so before its com-pilation. The poets represented by the largest number of poems aremembers of the royal family, Emperor Wu (41), Hsiao Kang (39),Hsiao I (11). For the late Prince Chao-ming, only one poem, un-doubtedly a token, is included. The New Songs thus repudiates notonly Prince Chao-ming, but his orthodox view of literature as well.Highest on the list among poets outside the royal family are ShenYiieh (37) and Hsieh T'iao (17), with Hsieh Ling-yiin (1) demotedto the bottom of the list, exactly the opposite of the ranking in theWH. Before sponsoring the compilation of the New Songs, HsiaoKang had written a letter stating his views of literature to hisyounger brother Hsiao I, then Prince of Hsiang-tung.48 In the letterHsiao Kang said: "And so by copying Hsieh [Ling-yiin] one doesnot attain his vitality or his vividness. All one achieves is his verbosi-

46 E.g., Hsieh T'iao's "Yu Tung T'ien" iVAkW, included in the WH under L"Sightseeing." The tonal pattern of this poem has been analyzed by Takagi.4' For an English translation see Ann Birrell, New Songsfrom jade TerraceLondon: Allenand Unwin, 1982).48 Text, Nan-shih,50.1247-8; English translation,John Marney, Chien-wenTi, pp. 80-81.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 405ty (OC)." And: "As for contemporary writings, the poetry ofHsieh T'iao and Shen Yuieh and the prose of Jen Fang and LuCh'ui are indeed the crown of belle-lettres and the models fordocumentary writings." Not surprisingly, the New Songs editedunder his patronage expresses his literary tastes.In terms of formal features, the New Songs shows unmistakablesigns that it was intended as the prime exhibit of the ongoing ex-perimentation in tonal prosody. An overwhelming majority of thepoems is in pentasyllabic verse, the stable basis of tonal rules. Of the656 poeins, 515 are no more than twenty lines long. The majority ofthe poems have only four lines (157 poems); the next largest group,eight lines (129 poems); and the next, ten lines (85 poems), thus con-tinuing the trend towards brevity started by Hsieh T'iao. Finally, inthe poems by members of Hsiao Kang's immediate circle (HsiaoKang himself, his younger brother Hsiao I, Yu Chien-wu, YuHsin, and Hsii Ling), conformity to tonal rules in various combina-tions is very much in evidence. There is also reason to suspect thatthe editor Hsii Ling had a hand in injecting tonal rules into the re-vised version of "Southeast Flies the Peacock."49When Hsiao Kang became the crown prince in 531, history camearound full circle. Shen Yiieh's revolutionary program, after an in-terregnum of almost three decades, again became the dominant vi-sion of the literary establishment. Nothing encapsulates better thecontribution made by members of Hsiao Kang's court to the mak-ing of Recent Style prosody than the following list of RegulatedVerse by them:

Yu Chien-wen (ca. 487-551) In Attendance at a Banquet faHsii Ch'ih (472-551) On a Writing Brush U*Yu Hsin (513-81) Looking at the Moon from aBoat 74t@A

Odes on Paintings on a ScreenNos. 11 and 15 R&IlEF)R--Mt-, tEfi:

49 Tsu-Lin Mei, "Ts'ung shih-Ii ho yii-fa lai k'an Chiao Chung-ch'ing ch'i te hsieh-tsonien-tai" i "Mfi+ " f';fq, CYYY53.2 (1982): 227-49.


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406 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIHsii Ling (507-82) To the Tune "Breaking a

Willow Branch" VrthFarewell to Mr. Mao of Yung-chia II 7*Cooling off in the Backyard F'9

Chiang Tsung (518-90) A Courtyard on a Hill inSpring Night *fLUJ1ALooking at Mountain Lights atNight from the Hall of Tri-ple Excellence PI

In addition to these poems, which conform perfectly to the tonalrules of Regulated Verse, many other poems by the same menwould, except for a few minor lapses, be acceptable as specimens ofRecent Style poetry. Historical facts thus contradict the view thatthe theories of Shen Yiieh and his cohorts found few followers "dur-ing their own day, and at least for the next hundred years. "" Themovement to create tonal prosody gained support from the leadersof the literary establishment of two dynasties, Hsiao Tzu-liang,Shen Yuieh, and Hsiao Kang, and attracted the two most talentedpoets of the period between 450 and 600, Hsieh T'iao and Yu Hsin.Prosody, being a social convention, is an invention whose makingrequires a critical mass of like-minded poets. As Takagi has de-finitively stated, "Fifty or sixty years after Shen Yiieh announcedhis program, the foundation for the prosody of Regulated Verse wasfirmly laid. "

THE MAKING OF RECENT STYLE PROSODYOur chronological study of the rise of tonal prosody will beginwith a poem by Yu Chien-wu. This poem, though not particularly

outstanding, is one of the earliest specimens of Regulated Verse.5"Written sometime before 551, it provides a convenient landmarkto measure the distance traveled since Shen Yiieh launched his revo-lutionary program half a century before. In the following scheme

50 Richard Mather, ShenYueh,p. 37.51 Ting Fu-pao, Shih, p. 1339.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 407and elsewhere below, A =Deflected; B = Level; 0 = Optional;(R) = Rhyme; the Deflected tones are xl = d = departing, x2=r=rising, x3 = e = entering; and y = Level.

13tM^:,f14_ DDLLd OAOBx,ff1; k- L L D D L O B O A y (R)c ArA L L L D r O B O Ax2

83aBbXj D D D LL O A O B y (R)fkmntx L D L L e O A O Bx3Wi*iTP L L D D L O B O A y (R)

"I L L D D r O B O Ax226 E4J D D D LL O A O B y (R)In Attendance at a Banquet

Bathed in the Way, I meet a veritable sage,Raising our goblets, I join with leading worthies;Kindly breezes reveal a lovely scene.Auspicious influence moves propitious clouds.Yellow leaves rustle on autumn trees,Dark lotuses sink into the cold pond;My fate does not deserve the royal favor,Which I swear to repay in this life.

Chiangsheng*PLn"someone about to be a sage") in the first line isa term of praise reserved for the crown prince, which suggests thatthe heir apparent was the host of the banquet. The poem beginswith three antithetical couplets, more than the minimum two mid-dle couplets required for Regulated Verse. Overall, the poem con-forms to the tonal prosody for Recent Style poetry. What Yui Chien-wu (who was a member of Hsiao Kang's court both before and afterthe latter became Emperor Chien-wen) did was to sing praises of theprince in metered verse, that is, essentially to compose a floka inChinese.

The column on the right shows the tonal patterns of RegulatedVerse, which operate in terms of two separate systems: that of theA's and B's for even-numbered syllables, and that of x's and y's forthe final syllables. An A or an x may be either level or deflected intone, A is always the opposite of B, and x the opposite of y. A and y


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408 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIare independent variables. The poet's choice of value for two crucialsyllables, the second syllable of the first line and the final syllable ofthe second line, substantially determines the pattern of the entirepoem.

The tonal prosody of Regulated Verse gives structural impor-tance to the principle of binary opposition for tones, which works onthree levels: the line, the couplet, and the quatrain. Within a line,A's are opposite to B's; within a couplet, the pattern of the secondline is opposite to that of the first; and within a quatrain, the A'sand B's of the second couplet are the mirror-reversed images ofthose in the first. Balancing this principle of opposition in the tonesis a principle of similarity embodied in the rhymes. The latter prin-ciple is further complemented by the requirement that the finalsyllables of odd-numbered lines avoid the rhyme-words on the onehand, and show maximum tonal differentiation among themselveson the other (hence xi, x2, x3 in the diagram instead of just x);together these requirements give exclusive prominence to therhymes. The musical effect of Regulated Verse may be compared toa two-part composition, in which one part beats out a constantrhythm while the other part simultaneously plays a melodic varia-tion.To recapitulate, for each of the two quatrains in RegulatedVerse, the tonal patterns are:52

O A 0 B xlO B O A yO B 0 A x2O A O B y

Our next task is to analyze the individual rules for these patterns.Then we shall determine when each rule emerged and relate it to52 G. B. Downer and A. C. Graham, "Tonal Patterns in Chinese Poetry," BSOAS26.1(1963): 145-48, defined the tonal patterns of Recent Style poetry as 0 A y B x / 0 B x A y 11O B y A x / 0 A x B y. Our diagram differsfrom theirs in two respects. First, Wang Li has

shown that during the T'ang dynasty it was still common practicefor the final syllablesof suc-cessive odd-numberedlines not to be in the same one of the four tones (Han-yu hih-l hsuehA*M* [Shanghai: Shang-hai chiao-yii ch'u-pan-she, 1962], pp. 119ff.); hence instead oftwo x's for the final syllables of lines 1 and 3, we have xl and x2. Second, Downer andGraham's alternation between the third and fifth syllables, not attested in actual practice, iseliminated.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 409statements in contemporary texts on prosody. But first we must ex-amine the level/deflected distinction, which the majority of patternspresupposes.

Sanskrit Ingredients n theLevel/DeflectedDistinctionThe history of the level/deflected distinction raises six separatebut related questions. First, when did p'ing and tse first appear asterms for prosodic categories? Chou Fa-kao quotes a poem by therecluse Han Shan that contains the lines: OTf0TINXM,-L,=I;ffi,"You don't know how to place level and deflected [syllables] / Butjust arrange words as they come."53 Han Shan's dates are uncer-tain, but a conservative guess would place him in the late eighth orearly ninth century. However, the terms p 'ing and tse also turn up inan earlier text, Yin Fan's Rf preface to the Ho-yuiehying-lingchiiMaan anthology of poetry dating from about 753. He writes:The poems of Ts'ao Chih and Liu Cheng have much straightforward language,but few antithetical couplets; at times five syllables in a row will be deflected, or tensyllables will all be level (fi-s1U, qtJJAT); yet they still have an enduringvalue.Thus in the absence of further evidence, we may tentatively con-clude that p 'ing and tse first appeared in the eighth century as termsfor prosodic categories.

Second, when did the level/deflected distinction first appear, ir-respective of the terms used to designate it? This question isdifferent from the first, though the two are often confused in theliterature on the subject of Regulated Verse prosody.

The earliest passage testifying to the level/deflected distinction,preserved in BK 88 (under No. 3, "Wasp's Waist"), comes fromthe hand of Liu T'ao, who flourished about 545. Liu Shan-chingquotes from him as follows:Liu T'ao has also said that "of the four tones, the entering tone is the rarest. As tothe remaining two tones, they should be combined with the entering tone, for exam-pleatE tsgjang, ctsjang, f; tsjangD, tsijkD, oriEjctsja, M Ctsja, ff tsja', 1tsjakD.54The level tone is long and drawn-out and is used most frequently. Compared with

53 Chou Fa-kao, "Shuo p'ing-tse."54 To indicate the four tones in Middle Chinese, we adopt the traditionalmethod of mark-ing the four corners, beginning with the lower left and proceeding clockwise.


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410 VICTOR H. MAIR AND TSU-LIN MEIthe other three, the syllables of this tone constitute a majority. Within a five-syllable line, there are usually two or three of them...."In context, "the remaining two tones" refer to the rising tone andthe departing tone. So Liu T'ao says that the rising, departing, andentering tones should be grouped together to form one prosodiccategory, to be opposed to the other prosodic category consisting ofthe level tone alone.We know that the level/deflected distinction was put into effect nolater than 551; witness the tonal patterns of Yu Chien-wu's "In At-tendance at a Banquet." Another indication that the distinctionwas established sometime between 500 and 550 can be drawn fromTakagi's statistical evidence concerning various tone rules, most ofwhich are based on the level-deflected distinction, as will be dis-cussed in the next section.

Third, what were the inventors of tonal prosody thinking whenthey embarked upon the program that eventually led to the adop-tion of the level/deflected distinction? We have suggested that one oftheir aims was to duplicate the long/short contrast in Sanskrit, andthat the key link is the terms "light" and "heavy" used by ShenYiieh. We will now show that up to the eighth century Chinesewriters still understood these terms in Shen Yuieh's sense.In Buddhajiva's Chinese translation of the Vinayaof Mahisasaka,completed in 423-24, the terms laghuand guru were translated quiteliterally as ch'ing ("light") and chung ("heavy"). Some sixty yearslater, Shen Yiieh used the terms ch 'ing and chung n his manifesto ontonal prosody when he declared "within a line, initials and finalsmust be different; within a couplet, light (ch'ing) and heavy (chung)sounds must be distinct."Li Yen-shou (?-628), the author of the Nan-shih (History of theSouthernDynasties), reported Shen Yiieh's position as follows:Shen Yiieh and the others all used the notes kung and shang in writing verse, andregulated the rhymes by means of the four tones: level, rising, departing, and enter-ing. There were [tonal defects to be avoided such as] level-headed, raised tail,wasp's waist, and crane's knee. Within five syliables the initials and finals must bedistinct; within a couplet, the notes chiaoand chihmust be dissimilar [for each corre-sponding position], rP, 'E9 ifilf-, f r ).55

i5Nan-shih, 48.1195.


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SANSKRIT AND RECENT STYLE POETRY 411In paraphrasing Shen Yiieh's statement, Li Yen-shou uses "thenotes chiao and chih" as the equivalent of "the light and heavysounds." Since "chiao and chih" refers to tones, this means Liunderstood "the light and heavy sounds" as signifying types of

Influence of Sanskrit on Chinese Prosody

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