Studies in Chinese Religions ISSN: 2372-9988 (Print) 2372-9996 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rstu20 Confucius and Laozi at the altar: reconsidering a Tangut manuscript Imre Galambos To cite this article: Imre Galambos (2016) Confucius and Laozi at the altar: reconsidering a Tangut manuscript, Studies in Chinese Religions, 2:3, 237-264, DOI: 10.1080/23729988.2016.1246088 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23729988.2016.1246088 Published online: 30 Nov 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rstu20 Download by: [University of Cambridge] Date: 30 November 2016, At: 08:44 STUDIESINCHINESERELIGIONS,2016 VOL.2,NO.3,237–264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23729988.2016.1246088 Confucius and Laozi at the altar: reconsidering a Tangut manuscript Imre Galambos Faculty ofAsianandMiddleEasternStudies,UniversityofCambridge,Cambridge,UK ABSTRACT ARTICLEHISTORY In the Russian collection of Tangut material there is a manuscript Received21August2016 whichdescribesameetingbetweenConfuciusandanoldsage.It Accepted14September isgenerallyassumedthatitisatranslationofaChineseworkbut 2016 attempts at identifying the source text have not been successful. KEYWORDS The Tangut title survives on the last page and it has been trans- Tanguttexts;Confucius; lated as the Altar Record of Confucius’s Conciliation. This paper Laozi;secretsocieties; identifies the Chinese original among Ming-Qing religious scrip- PatriarchLuo;Wubuliuce; turesofsecretsocietiesandsuggestsanewinterpretationforthe ApricotPlatform Tangut title. Connecting the title and the text with Chinese reli- giousandintellectualtraditionsoftheSongperiodalsoenablesus to date the Chinese source text to the late eleventh or early twelfthcentury. In the collection of Tangut material kept at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg, there is a handwritten booklet with a text describing an encounter between Confuciusandanoldman.1Thetitleofthetext,preservedattheendofthemanuscript,is Go̱r no ɣwa wạ la 刳区蚯萃云 (Figure 1), which was translated into English by E. Kychanov, the first scholar to conduct an in-depth study of the text, as the Altar Record on Confucius’ Conciliation.2 Later on, Kychanov published a facsimile edition of this manuscript with a complete translation and study, and subsequently this book, with additional information and an improved layout, also appeared in Chinese.3 Scholars who have studied the text agree regarding its Daoist content and that the old man who teachesConfuciusaboutthemysteriesoftheWayisnootherthanLaozi老子himself.Itis likewiseassumedthatthisworkisatranslationfromChinese,eventhoughnooriginalhas been found so far. While it has an obvious connection with the ‘Old Fisherman’ 漁父 chapteroftheZhuangzi莊子,ithasbeensuggestedthatitismorelikelyatranslationofa morerecentworkofpopularliterature.4ThispaperidentifieshithertounnoticedChinese versions of this text in Ming and Song religious literature, drawing attention to their similaritywiththeTangutmanuscript.AlthoughthesepostdatetheTanguttranslationby severalcenturies,theyattesttotheexistenceofearlier,possiblyoral,versionsthatdidnot survive in Chinese. Therefore, even though the Tangut version was unquestionably translatedfromChinese,itrepresentstheearliestextantwitnessofthistext.Thediscovery CONTACTImreGalambos [email protected] ©2016InstituteofWorldReligions,ChineseAcademyofSocialSciences 238 I.GALAMBOS Figure1. ThelastpageoftheTangutmanuscript,showingthetitle(fourthlinefromtheright)and the colophon. (Source: Kychanov, Zapis’ u altarja, 149.) ofChineseversionsamongreligiousliteraturecommonlyassociatedwithsectarianmove- mentsandsecretsocietiesmayforceustoreassesswhethertheTangutmanuscriptshould be classified as a Daoist text. In addition, the Chinese versions offer an opportunity to reconsiderthetitle ofthework, which inits current formisrather enigmatic. STUDIESINCHINESERELIGIONS 239 1. Former research The Tangut manuscript in question was first noticed in the early 1930s by Nikolaj A. Nevskij (1892–1937) who mentioned it as an example of translations of apocryphal texts that praise Daoist ideas and ridicule Confucian ones.5 He translated the Tangut titleintoRussianasZapiskiobaltareprimirenijaKonfutsija(RecordsabouttheAltarof Confucius’sConciliation),andreconstructedtheChinesetitleasFuzihetanji夫子和壇 記.YetforsomereasonhedidnotincludeitinhisinventoryofTangutbookswhichhe was compiling at the time. Sometime later, the manuscript seems to have been mislaid butwaslaterlocatedonceagainbyKychanovwhoassigneditthepressmarkTang.426, No. 3781. Kychanov introduced this manuscript in an article, providing an extensive summary of its content and drawing attention to similarities with the ‘Old Fisherman’ chapter of the Zhuangzi.6 As the central focus of his article, he suggested that it might be possible to identify the ‘old man’ in the story with the Daoist philosopher Laozi.7 Finally Kychanov voiced his doubts about the possibility that this was a native Tangut composition merely inspired by the thirty-first chapter of the Zhuangzi, and suggested that it was a translation of a lost Chinese work, possibly, but not necessarily, an unknown edition of the Zhuangzi. Kychanov continued to work on the Tangut text and in 2000 published a complete translation and study in a book form. He also included facsimile images of the entire manuscript, thereby making the text available for study.8 The central emphasis of his studywasstillonthemanuscript’sconnectionwiththeZhuangziandLaozi’sencounter with Confucius. Based on remaining fragments of the colophon (Figure 1), Kychanov managed to date the booklet to 1122, although he also noted that it was impossible to determine whether this date pertained to the translation or the creation of this specific manuscript copy.9 As for the title of the work, based on the idea that in the Zhuangzi the encounter transpires at the xingtan 杏壇 (‘Apricot Altar/Platform’), Kychanov changed his original idea of reading the title as ‘records about’ an altar to ‘record at’ the altar.Accordingly,hetranslatedthe title(intoRussian)asRecordattheAltarabout Confucius’s Conciliation. A few years later Kychanov’s book, in an updated form, came out in Chinese.10 The Chinese version included the translation of his introductory study and an improved arrangement of the original text with aligned Chinese translation supplied by Nie Hongyin 聶鴻音. While in the Russian version the facsimile images are placed at the end of the book and thus it is not immediately apparent how particular characters are interpreted, the Chinese edition conveniently mimics the manuscript’s layout and provides a character-by-character translation (zhiyi 直譯) of the original, as well as a semantictranslation(yiyi意譯).Thislatter,however,isdonenotintomodernChinese, which would have been the equivalent of Kychanov’s Russian translation, but into classical Chinese, in an effort to approximate the original text used by the Tangut translator. There are obvious reasons to opt for such a reconstructive translation but withoutaChinesetexttomatchit,italsocreatesthe illusionthatweareabletorestore the missing original fairly well and that the result of this endeavour successfully reproduces the lost Chinese text. Following Kychanov’s translation of the title (i.e. Record at the Altar about Confucius’s Conciliation), the Chinese version reconstructed the original title as Kongzi hetan ji 孔子和壇記.11 240 I.GALAMBOS In a separate paper about this manuscript, Nie confirmed that the text in the manuscript was indeed connected with the ‘Old Fisherman’ chapter of the Zhuangzi, yethealsomadeaconvincingpointthattheTanguttextwasprobablybasednotonthe Zhuangzi itself but some later Chinese work closer in time to the date of the manu- script. He suggested that the Chinese original belonged to the realm of popular literature and pointed out that the level of education of the translator was not high.12 He also drew attention to a parallel passage with four adjacent clauses in the commen- tarytotheYinfujing陰符經,asquotedintheMing-dynastyencyclopaediaYulin喻林, compiled by Xu Yuantai 徐元太 (b. 1536; jinshi 進士 1565). Even though the date of the composition of the Yulin is quite late and the Yinfu jing commentary has no other contentthatmatchesthe Tanguttext,Nie stressedtherelevanceofthesefourmatching clauses, suggesting that they may go back to a common source with the Tangut manuscript. Since the commentary of the Yinfu jing is generally understood to be the work of the mid-eighth century scholar Li Quan 李筌 (fl. 713–760), he was of the opinion that the text that served as the basis for the Tangut translation must be later than the mid-eighth century.13 In addition, he called attention to Confucius being described in the manuscript as wearing a fine sword, a habit he considered atypical of the image of the Master in early China and during the early medieval period but attested in Tang-dynasty art. More specifically, the portrait ofConfucius by the famous painter Wu Daozi 吳道子 (680–740), a stone-engraved copy of which is still preserved in theTempleofConfuciusinQufu曲阜,atteststhatduringthefirsthalfofthe eighth century Confucius was indeed imagined as having worn a sword. Thus Nie suggested that this was yet another indirect evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the Chinese originaloftheTanguttextmusthavebeenproducedduringoraftertheTangdynasty.14 A further important point noted by Nie is that the philosophy advocated in the Tangut text is not specifically Daoist, as the Zhuangzi is typically classified, but instead discusses the concept of withdrawal from the world, which is typical of both Buddhist and Daoist writings.He highlightedthat abelief system thatcombined the teachings of thetwomainreligionswasrelativelywidespreadinthelatemedievalperiodandmaybe viewed as a sign of secularization.15 2. Chinese antecedents of the Tangut text TheTangutmanuscriptessentiallynarratesanencounterbetweenConfuciusandanold man who appears to be a Daoist sage. According to the story, Confucius happens to be playinghiszither(qin琴)whenanoldmanapproachesand,payingnoattentiontothe Master and his disciples, begins to sing and dance as he was all by himself. Afraid that he might disturb the Master, the disciple Zilu 子路 politely tries to strike up a conversation with him, to which the old man pays no attention whatsoever. Zilu raises his voice and the old man finally returns his greeting, calling him a ‘general.’ This greatly irritates Zilu, as he considers himself a man of learning, rather than someone with a military background. The old man explains that he meant no disrespect but simply made an assumption on the basis of Zilu’s forceful demeanour and arrogance, addingthatifhewasindeedamanoflearningthenhismastersurelyhadnoknowledge oftheWay.Promptedbytheoldman,ZilusummarizestheteachingsofConfuciusand proudly boasts that he has 3000 followers in various states. The conversation continues STUDIESINCHINESERELIGIONS 241 alongsimilarlinesuntiltheoldmangetsbackintohisboatandleaves.Ziluinturngoes backtohisownmasterandrelatestohimtheencounter,attheendofwhichConfucius scolds him for not recognizing a sage and goes in pursuit of the old man himself. He eventuallycatchesupwithhimandengagesinaconversationinthecourseofwhichhe learns about the Way and eventually gains some sort of epiphany or realization. Thus the story ends with Confucius fully accepting the teachings of the old man, unlike the less talented Zilu who walks away from the encounter with nothing. As both Kychanov and Nie have pointed out, the story is undoubtedly inspired by the ‘Old Fisherman’ chapter of the Zhuangzi, which relates a version of the encounter between Confucius and the old man. The story in the Zhuangzi, however, is quite differentandlackssomekeymotifsthatappearintheTangutversion.Therelevantpart in the Zhuangzi begins as follows: 孔子遊乎緇帷之林，休坐乎杏壇之上。弟子讀書，孔子絃歌鼓琴。奏曲未半，有漁 父者下船而來。須眉交白，被髮揄袂，行原以上，距陸而止。左手據膝，右手持頤 以聽。曲終而招子貢、子路，二人俱對。客指孔子曰：「彼何為者也？」子路對 曰：「魯之君子也。」客問其族。子路對曰：「族孔氏。」客曰：「孔氏者何治 也？」子路未應，子貢對曰：「孔氏者，性服忠信，身行仁義，飾禮樂，選人倫， 上以忠於世主，下以化於齊民，將以利天下。此孔氏之所治也。」又問曰：「有土 之君與？」子貢曰：「非也。」「侯王之佐與？」子貢曰：「非也。」客乃笑而還 行，言曰：「仁則仁矣，恐不免其身，苦心勞形以危其真。嗚乎，遠哉其分於 道也。」 Travelling in the Forest of Ziwei, Confucius sat down to rest on the Apricot Platform (or Altar).Hisdisciplesbeganstudying,whileConfuciussangandaccompaniedhimselfonthe zither.Beforehewashalfwaythroughthetune,afishermangotoutofaboatandcameover. His beard and eyebrows were turning white, his hair was dishevelled and his sleeves were hanging down. He walked up from the riverside and, stepping on dry land, stopped. He listenedwithhislefthandonhisknee,supportinghischinwiththerighthand.Whenthetune finished,hecalledoverZigongandZilu,bothofwhomresponded[tohiscall].Thestranger pointedatConfuciusandasked,‘Whoishe?’Zilureplied,‘HeisagentlemenfromLu.’The strangeraskedabouthisclan,towhichZilureplied,‘HeisfromtheKongclan.’Thestranger asked,‘SowhatdoesMr.Kongdoforaliving?’ZiludidnotrespondbutZigonganswered,‘By naturehefollowsloyaltyandtrustworthiness,inhisconductheisbenevolentandrighteous,he embellishes the rituals and music; he focuses on people’s relations to eachother; above, he advocates being loyal to the hereditary lords; below, he labours on the transformation of ordinarypeople.Tryingtobenefitthesubcelestialrealm–thisiswhatMr.Konginengagedin.’ Thestrangeraskedagain,‘Ishearulerofanyland?’Zigongreplied,‘No,heisn’t.’‘Ishethenan assistantofamarquisoraking?’Zigongsaid,‘No,heisn’t.’Atthisthestrangerbegantolaugh and walk away,saying, ‘Benevolenceisindeed benevolence, yet Iamafraid that a man can neverescapeoneself.Byconstrainingthemindandexhaustingthebodyoneendangersone’s truenature.Alas!FarindeedishefromtheWay!’ Even though the narrative contains no interaction between Confucius and the fish- erman, after the old man’s leaving Zilu asks why the Master gave so much respect to him,eventhoughheisusuallyquiteunmovedwhentalkingtopowerfulrulersofstates. To this Confucius scolds Zilu and explains that the old fisherman is a sage who possesses the Way and should be honoured accordingly. It is undeniable that this passage is the basis of the story we find in the Tangut text but the connection is rather loose and more of an inspirational nature. It seems that the encounter with the fisher- man was used as the basic plot for a more elaborate story, which in turn served as an 242 I.GALAMBOS excuse for delivering a lengthy philosophical argument on the inferiority of the teach- ings of Confucius in comparison with a complete withdrawal from society and politics. In the Zhuangzi, Confucius does not attain realization but simply explains to Zilu, and thereader,thesuperiorstandpointoftheoldfisherman.Accordingly,theTanguttextis notbaseddirectlyontheZhuangziandNieHongyiniscertainlyrightintryingtofinda text much closer in time to the twelfth-century date seen in the colophon of the manuscript. A version of what seems to be the same story is found in the Lunyu 論語 (18.7), describing the encounter of Zilu and an old man who, looking at the unimpressive appearance of Zilu, voices his doubts regarding the abilities of his master. The passage in question reads, in D. C. Lau’s translation, as follows:16 子路從而後，遇丈人，以杖荷蓧。子路問曰：「子見夫子乎？」丈人曰：「四體不 勤，五穀不分。孰為夫子？」植其杖而芸。子路拱而立。止子路宿，殺雞為黍而食 之， 見其二子焉。明日， 子路行以告。子曰：「隱者也。」使子路反見之。至則 行矣。 Zilu, whentravellingwith[Confucius],fellbehind. Hemet anoldman,carryinga basket on a staff over his shoulder. Zilu asked, ‘Have you seen my Master?’ The old man said, ‘You seem neither to have toiled with your limbs nor to be able to tell one kind of grain from another. Who may your Master be?’ He planted his staff in the ground and started weeding.Zilustood,cuppingonehandrespectfullyintheother.TheoldmaninvitedZilu tostayforthenight.Hekilledachickenandpreparedsomemilletforhisguesttoeat,and presented his two sons to him. The next day, Zilu resumed his journey and reported this conversation.TheMastersaid,‘Hemustbearecluse.’HesentZilubacktoseehimagain. When he arrived, the old man had departed. Following this, Zilu presents his assessment of the old man’s philosophy, criticizing him for not taking office, which he considers one of the most important duties of an intellectual.TheoldmaninthestoryisclearlyrelatedtothatintheZhuangzi,onlyhere his teachings are rejected as being impractical and unethical from the point of view of society.17 Considering that the Lunyu is a collection of stories advocating values that ensure the proper functioning of society, the disapproving attitude to the old man’s teachingsishardlyasurprise.Still,whatisrelevantfromourpointofviewisthatinthe Tangut text we find a similar episode in which the old man, shortly after meeting Zilu, comments that Zilu’s teacher seems to have no knowledge of the Way.18 The above examples show that various elements of the text translated into Tangut have antecedents in early Chinese literature. Yet the parallels are too haphazard and fragmentary to enable us to establish a direct link with any of these early sources. Fortunately, there is a later text that shows a much closer connection with the Tangut manuscript, taking us considerably closer to identifying the source text on which the translationwasbased.Twoseparateversionsofthisworkarepreservedamongthetexts affiliated with Ming dynasty secret societies. Even though there are significant discre- pancieswith theTanguttext,thesimilaritiesseem tojustifythe assumptionthatweare dealing with different versions of the same text and a now lost version of the same text was used as the source for the Tangut translation. One of these two Chinese versions appears in the annotated edition of the Wubu liuce 五部六冊 (Five Books in Six Volumes19) written by Patriarch Luo 羅祖 (1442– 1527), founder of the popular religious movement known under the name of Non- STUDIESINCHINESERELIGIONS 243 Action Teachings (Wuweijiao 無為教).20 In his writings, Luo relied on a wide range of sources, freely quoting from a variety of Buddhist and Daoist texts and incorporating these into his own revelations.21 The longest of the five scriptures that make up the Wubu liuce is a text titled Poxie xianzheng yaoshi juan 破邪顯證鑰匙卷 (Scroll of the Key to Destroying Heresy and Manifesting Evidence; hereafter: Poxie juan), chapter 22 of which quotes from a certain Laojun xingtan ji 老君行壇記 (Record of the Mobile Altar of the Elderly Lord):22 《老君行壇記‧覽集般若品》云 ﹕ 子路下拜曰：「莫不是聖人乎？」老人曰：「夫聖人者，生而自悟，不假脩持，死而不 懼，常言如是，故曰聖人也。」 The ‘Lanji bore’ chapter of the Laojun xingtan ji writes: Zilubowed deeplyand said,‘You mustbeasage!’The oldmanreplied,‘Nowthe sageis enlightenedofhisownaccordassoonasheisborn,hedoesnotrelyoncultivation,hehas no fear at the time of dying. This is what they ordinarily say about him; this is why he is called a sage.’ Merely based on its title, the Laojun xingtan ji appears to be a Daoist work.23 Yet, as wewillseebelow,thesituationismorecomplexandtherearealsoBuddhistovertonesin thetext.Thisholdstrueevenforthisbriefquote,inwhichthephrase‘hedoesnotrelyon cultivation’不假脩持comesfromthepoem‘OneStrikeandIForgotallIKnew’一擊忘 所知 by the Chan master Xiangyan Zhixian 香嚴智閑 (d. 898). This shows that even though the Laojun xingtan ji is essentially a record of a Confucian-Daoist debate, it is eclecticinitssourcesandattimesdrawsonBuddhistliteratureandimagery.Itisquoted only once in the six volumes of the Wubu liuce and the quote is introduced as coming from the ‘Lanji bore’ chapter 覽集般若品 of the same work. Yet as I will discuss below, the Laojun xingtan ji was probably too short to be divided into chapters. Therefore the ‘Lanji bore’ chapter must denote the ‘Bore’ chapter of the Dazang yilanji 大藏一覽集, which is the second most quoted text in the Wubu liuce, with a total of 35 quotations.24 Infact,afewlinesafterthequotefromtheLaojunxingtanjiwefindasectionintroduced as being cited from the ‘Bore’ chapter of the Dazang yilanji.25 But what is important for us now is that this short quote has obvious resonances with the Tangut text not only because it mentions Zilu talking with an old man about sagehood but also because of the title which is analogous to the title of the Tangut text. Just like the Tangut title, this is also an ‘altar (or platform) record’ 壇記 and while it is uncertain what the word ‘altar’ is meant to signify here, it immedi- ately suggests several connections. On the most basic level, it is surely related to the story in the Zhuangzi, which describes how Confucius sat on the Apricot Platform (xingtan 杏壇) and played the zither while his disciples studied. By modern times the phrase xingtan came to refer to the place where Confucius taught his disciples, but this meaning ultimately goes back to this particular place in the Zhuangzi and offers no clues to what an ‘apricot platform’ actually was.26 Indeed, the term must have been obscure and confusing even in early medieval times, prompting commentators to try to come up with an explanation. For example, the Jingdian shiwen 經典釋文 cites Sima Biao 司馬彪 (246?–306?) who claimed that the word tan referred to a higher spot in a lake.27 The Tang commentator Cheng Xuanying 成玄英 (fl. 631–655) concurs with this, adding that the word xing (‘apricot’) signifies that 244 I.GALAMBOS there were lots of apricot trees in that place.28 Whatever the meaning of the phrase may have been in the Zhuangzi, by the Northern Song period it was regarded as the place where Confucius taught his disciples, and was depicted in art as a raised platform surrounded by apricot trees. It is probably not inconsequential that the word xing 杏 (‘apricot’) in the Apricot Platform in the Zhuangzi and xing 行 (‘to go; portable’) in the title of theLaojun xingtan jiareverycloseinpronunciation.ThiswastrueinmedievalChina(i.e.haengXvs.hang29) andevenmoresoonceweenterthemodernperiod.Consideringthattextsusedinpopular religionwereoftencirculatedorally,thexingtan(‘portablealtar’)inthetitleoftheLaojun xingtanjiisprobablyaphoneticloanfortheApricotPlatformwhereConfuciustaughthis disciples, at least in the eyes of Song intellectuals. Apart from an apparent phonetic similarity, the identity of the two terms is further corroborated by the fact that in each case they occur in connection with a story recounting the meeting with a wise old man, whichcannotbewrittenoffasamerecoincidence.Consequently,thexingtaninthetitleof theLaojunxingtanjimostlikelyoriginallydesignatedtheApricotPlatformoftheZhuangzi butwas miswritteneitherbyPatriarch Luohimself orinthe source he was drawingon.30 ItisalsoconspicuousthattheLaozixingtanjihastheElderlyLord(Laojun老君)inits title, whereas the title of the Tangut text has Confucius. Strictly speaking, the title of the manuscript (Go̱r no ɣwa wạ la 刳区蚯萃云) does not actually contain the name of Confucius, especially not his surname Kong 孔. Instead, the first two characters of are go̱rno刳区,whichcorrespondtotheChinesewordfuzi夫子(‘master’).Thefirstsyllable ofthis word, written with the character go̱r 刳, simply means a ‘man’ ora ‘maleperson,’ muchthesamewayastheChinesewordfu夫isusedinvariouscompoundwords.Thusif we translate the Tangut title into Chinese character by character, we end up with Fuzi hetan ji 夫子和壇記, which is how Nevskij reconstructed it in the 1930s when he first described the manuscript.31But,in ordertomakeitmoreaccessible for Russian readers, hetranslatedthisintoRussianasRecordsabouttheAltarofConfucius’sConciliation.Since go̱rnoisusedconsistentlyinboththismanuscriptandtheTanguttranslationoftheLunyu 論語 to refer specifically to Confucius, rendering the name in the title as Confucius was reasonable, if not entirely accurate. Kychanov adopted this title but later changed it to Record at the Altar about Confucius’s Conciliation. This Russian title later became trans- latedintoChineseasKongzihetanji孔子和壇記,insteadofmakinguseofthetechnically morecorrect Chinese title reconstructed by Nevskij (i.e. Fuzi hetan ji). A conspicuous discrepancy between the titles is that in the position where the Chinese one has the word xing 行, the Tangut text uses the word ɣwa 蚯, which is generally understood to mean ‘peace; to make peace.’ This is why modern scholars interpreted the title as referring to ‘conciliation.’ There are two different forms of this character (蚯 and 蠻), and in the first of these, used in the title of our manuscript, the last stroke of the left side component stretches all the way underneath across the character, touching the final stroke of the rightmost component. Modern dictionaries do not define the first form but refer the reader to the second one, and the word is explained under the entry for this second form. This seems to indicate that the second form with a shorter last stroke in the left side component (i.e. 蠻) is the standard form and the other one (i.e. 蚯) is merely an allograph. Examples of this character in the Tangut versions of the Sunzi bingfa 孫子兵法 and the Leilin 類林 seem to be of this standard type, whereas our manuscript clearly uses the first form.32 STUDIESINCHINESERELIGIONS 245 Even if we accept that the two characters are allographs, it is hard to make sense of what 蚯 actually means in the title. In an attempt to provide a solution, Nie suggests that the word in question means not ‘reconciliation’ but ‘to accom- pany on an instrument,’ similar to the Chinese meaning of the word he 和 when read with the fourth tone. In support of this theory, he cites Kychanov’s dictionary where this meaning is attested, unfortunately without specifying a primary source where it comes from.33 Without seeing the word used in this sense in a specific Tangut text, we should probably treat this reading in Kychanov’s dictionary with caution. As mentioned above, the title of the Laojun xingtan ji quoted in the Poxie juan is problematicinthesamelocation,anditishardtounderstandthemeaningoftheword xing 行 in this context, which is why I suggested that it should be a phonetic loan for the original word xing 杏 (‘apricot’). The Tangut word for ‘apricot’ is xiəj 癈 and is considered to be a loanword from Chinese. But it is only attested in medieval diction- aries as part of the compound be̱ xiəj 笘癈, which is explained by the Tangut lexico- graphers using the Chinese compound word lixing 栗杏 (‘chestnut-apricot’).34 This combination does not typically occur in Chinese and thus it is questionable whether it actually denotes the fruit known in China as apricot. In fact, the medieval Tangut dictionary Sea of Characters (18.271) defines the word be̱ 笘 (‘chestnut’) with the compound be̱ xiəj 笘癈 (‘chestnut-apricot’), which is an indication that the second syllableofthecompoundwordbe̱ xiəj笘癈maynotactuallybetheusualTangutword for ‘apricot.’35 As far as I am aware, there are no examples of the word for ‘apricot’ in non-lexicographictexts,whichmakesithardtoverifywhetheritwasinanywayrelated to the character 蚯 used in the title of the Tangut manuscript. Nevertheless,becauseofitsapparentconnectionwiththeChinesetraditionofApricot Platform,themosttemptingsolutionistoassumethatthewordinquestionintheTangut title originally derives from the word ‘apricot.’ Even if the character 蚯 is indeed an allographof蠻andnormallystandsfortheword‘peace;topacify,’itmakeslittlesensein thetitle.Accordingly,wemaybejustifiedtoconsideritanerrorandtrytofindaplausible explanation for its corruption. The most probable solution to this is that the Tangut characterindeedisatranslationofChinesehe和(‘peace;topacify’),whichis,however,a scribalerrorfor杏.Thegraphicsimilarlyofthetwocharactersisapparent,especiallythat they consist of nearly the same components arranged differently. It is perhaps not coincidental that such a mistake occurred in the title, as titles were often written in seal charactersor other fancy scripts. Perhaps the Tangut translator, who may have been less familiar with ornamental scripts, encountered the character 杏 on the front cover of the Chinesebookandmisreaditasoneofthevariantsof和(i.e.咊,㕿).36Sincetheworddoes not repeat in the main text, he would not have caught the mistake. In view of above, I believe that the Chinese text had the word ‘apricot’ in this place and the Tangut title should be Recordof the Master atthe Apricot Altar. 3. A Chinese precious scroll ThePoxiejuanonlyquotestheshortbitoftextcitedaboveand,apartfromsuggestinga connection with our manuscript, this does not give us enough material for a compar- ison withthe Tanguttext.Fortunately, the Kaixin fayao開心法要edition oftheWubu