The
Resurrected
Skeleton
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
Translations from the Asian Classics
EDITORIAL BOARD
Wm. Theodore de Bary, Chair
Paul Anderer
Donald Keene
George A. Saliba
Haruo Shirane
Burton Watson
Wei Shang
The
Resurrected
Skeleton
FROM ZHUANGZI TO LU XUN
Wilt L. Idema
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
NEW YORK COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright 2014 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-53651-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Idema, W. L. (Wilt L.)
The Resurrected Skeleton : from Zhuangzi to Lu Xun / Wilt L. Idema.
pages cm. (Translations from the Asian Classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16504-4 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-53651-6 (e-book)
1. Chinese literatureHistory and criticism.
2. Resurrection in literature. 3. ZhuangziIn literature.
I. Title.
PL2275.R47134 2014
895.109'351dc23 2013027557
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .
COVER IMAGE: Li Song, Kulou huanxi tu (A Magical Performance of Skeletons). (Reproduced with permission of Palace Museum, Beijing [photograph by Zhou Yaoqing])
COVER DESIGN: Misha Beletsky
References to Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
This book has had a relatively long time of gestation. I first became interested in Daoist storytelling and the legend of Master Zhuangs encounter with the skeleton more than twenty years ago when I was doing some research on Li Songs painting of the skeleton marionetteer. I became intrigued by references to Master Zhuang Sighs over the Skeleton in Northern and Southern Lyrics and Songs, a text that survived, it seemed, only in a single copy kept in the library of Yamagata University in Japan. This institution eventually provided me with a photocopy of (its own photocopy of) that text through the good offices of the then librarian of the Library of the Sinological Institute at Leiden University, John T. Ma. With generous funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, I was able to invite Professor Tseng Yong-yih of Taiwan National University to Leiden in the summer of 1998 to spend a number of weeks reading the text with me, but unfortunately the photocopy was of such a quality that many passages were not legible, and I had to lay aside my plans for a translation of this text.
Over the years, I continually asked many colleagues for references to skulls and skeletons in premodern Chinese culture, and many of them obliged. These notes and materials languished in increasingly fatter folders. Only quite recently did I become aware that a complete and highly readable version of the Master Zhuang Sighs over the Skeleton in Northern and Southern Lyrics and Songs is available to all at the Web site of the University of Tokyo Library. This discovery provided the stimulus for me to return to the legend of Master Zhuangs encounter with the skeleton. The result is the following study and its accompanying translations.
A special word of thanks is due to Professor Wang Xiaoyun of the Institute for Chinese Literature of the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, who provided me with photographs of The Precious Scroll of Master Zhuangs Butterfly Dream and Skeleton, which is available only in a single manuscript copy in the institutes library. Professor Oki Yasushi of the University of Tokyo kindly provided me with photographs of the edition of Wang Yinglins play preserved in the Naikaku Bunko and also assisted me in securing permission for the reproduction of the illustrations in Master Zhuang Sighs over the Skeleton. Professor Jeehee Hong of Syracuse University assisted me for the other illustrations. The Beijing Palace Museum kindly granted permission to use Li Songs painting of the skeleton marionetteer for the cover illustration. My student Sun Xiaosu alerted me to the popularity of Guo Degangs Skeleton Lament. The staffs of the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard and the East Asian Library at Leiden University have been extremely helpful, as always, in locating various secondary materials used for this study.
Last but not least I would like to express my gratitude to Columbia University Press for its willingness to publish this work in its series Translations from the Asian Classics.
Once upon a time, the story tells us, the Daoist philosopher Master Zhuang, while traveling to the capital of the state of Chu, came across a skull by the roadside. After wondering aloud how the deceased may have come to his end, he laid himself down to sleep, using the skull as his headrest. The deceased thereupon appeared to him in a dream, praising the untrammeled pleasures of death over life. For all his vaunted relativism, Master Zhuang was not convinced and offered to bring him back to life, only to see his suggestion rudely rejected by the skull. We first encounter this little story in chapter 18 of the Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi), a collection of writings by Zhuang Zhou (ca. 300 B.C.E.), writings about him, and writings of other ancient philosophers that struck later Chinese scholars as equally extravagant. The text of the Master Zhuang, with its many fictive anecdotes and fanciful parables, has provided Chinese literature with an almost unlimited supply of allusions for over two thousand years, but few of the numerous dialogues and stories have successfully been taken up by later writers and developed into full-length poems, tales, dramas, or ballads. The story about Master Zhuang most popular from the early seventeenth century onwardhow Master Zhuang tested his wifes fidelity by faking his own death, a test she miserably failedhas no clear source in the Master Zhuang at all. The only story from the Master Zhuang itself that continued to inspire poets, dramatists, and storytellers was the anecdote of Master Zhuangs meeting with the skull. This anecdote was taken up by the leading poets of the second and third centuries (Zhang Heng, Cao Zhi, and L An), each of whom developed the short account of the Master Zhuang
