BOOK REVIEWS
333
"On the Road to Mt. T'ien-chu” (or as Prof. Li prefers, "On the Road to the Peak that holds up the sky"). This very Mt. T'ien-chu is geographically located in the present western An-hui Province16, south of the Huai River. During the 6th century B.C. (or the active period of Yen Tsu), the area which included Mt. T'ien-chu was part of the territory of the State of Ch'u17. Thus, to associate the oranges of Ch'u to Mt. T'ien-chu is but to relate some old historic and geographic references to the real scenery that Huang Shen might have seen in 1729.
Secondly, in structure and in style, as far as those example-characters in the "Dictionary of Six Different Scripts for Characters of Chinese Calligraphy" is concerned, the 16th character hand-written by Huang Shen for leaf 9 of his landscape album, certainly bears more physical resemblances to 'ch'u' rather than ‘yeh'.
Thus, there seems to be reason enough to conclude that this problematic Chinese character 'yeh' should be more properly identified as 'ch'u' instead of ‘yeh'. This is not only because the new identification has more possibilities to conform with the old geographical and historical information, but also because it is able to fit in with other calligraphical references as a whole.
The second example of this nature happens to be Prof. Li's failure in identifying a literary reference. In Volume II, Plate CVII illustrates a fan-painting attributed to K'un-ts'an. In Volume I, p. 203, Prof. Li's English translation, together with the original poem in Chinese inscribed by the artist himself, are presented side by side. It does seem essential to quote them both here again:
“Leisurely I sit in my boat below the valley
In the vast twilight of dusk, smoke rises gently from an old house;
水屋蒼冥起昏煙;
the autumn scene is there for me to sing and
to enjoy, 自有秋光共嘯傲,
and one needs no money to own mountains".
I47#★¶¤·
It is obvious that after comparison, the literary implication of the term "Chang-tou" which appears in the last Chinese line has not been rendered by any literary equivalent in the English version. In fact, this term happens to be not only the key word in terms of an overall understanding of the last line but seems a key point in interpreting the poet's intention as expressed by the whole poem. Documentarily, “Chang-tou” §§ is a reference to Juan Hsiu #k.