A GLOSSARY OF WORDS AND PHRASES IN THE ORAL PERFORMING AND DRAMATIC LITERATURES OF THE JIN, YUAN, AND MING

This work covers the oral performing and dramatic literatures of China written over the four hundred year period from a.d. 1200 to 1600. It contains approximately 8,000 entries based on the reading notes and glosses found in various dictionaries, thesauruses, glossaries, and editions of works from that period. As late as 1981, no comprehensive dictionary or glossary for this literature existed in any language, Asian or Western. With this aid even a relative novice having a reasonable command of Chinese can read, translate, and appreciate this great body of literature with an ease undreamed of even two decades ago.Now retired, Dale R. Johnson was Professor of Chinese and chair of East Asian Studies, Oberlin College. He has published "Yuan Music Drama: Studies in Prosody and Structure" and "A Complete Catalogue of Northern Arias in the Dramatic Style."

INTRODUCTION Introduction (D ADI AN), published in 1993. The latest work, Wang Xueqi' s i ^ -If" 1994 Yuanquxuan jiaozhu ?Li£l 3 1 $ 1 i&, an eight-volume annotated edition of the complete Yuanqu xuan 9t> 1& ^S. (YQX), did not come to my attention until last year, too late to be incorporated in this work.
The glosses here are those that a student cannot expect to find in two standard dictionaries, Chinese-English Dictionary by R. H. Mathews (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943) and the ABC Chinese-English Dictionary edited by John DeFrancis (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996). There are some exceptions to this rule. A few entries that one might expect to discover in a standard dictionary have been included because of their many variant written forms. For example, baihuai If!] J|| appears in the Xinhua zidian iff^^r-jfer but it can be written variously as "If J j , $A> IH ftl> ^ 4;> tf* M> $f J4» o r ^ M-A textual locus is provided after each definition, except for those entries understandable to any reader of Chinese. With minor exceptions, then, words and phrases easily construed with the use of a good dictionary are excluded, as are place names and personal names.
Pronunciation throughout the glossary is based on modern usage. One might question the value of adding pronunciation to eight-hundred-year-old terms whose original pronunciation is unknown or uncertain, but having workable modern pronunciations will benefit students and facilitate scholarship in this area. During the process of compiling the glossary, I created approximately five hundred characters that do not appear in standard Chinese word processing systems. Some of these are no longer in use and cannot be found in any dictionary. HUJIII85n.8 %> If di GHQ572n.33 ft ?f ti DXX115n.l5 ft, ff di Introduction During the period in which these genres flourished there was little orthographic standardization. There was universal agreement about how to write common words such as jade i , mountain »1|, and dragon "ft,, but the variety of written forms for words with more subtle shades of meaning could be extensive. There are at least eleven differing versions of the word aza meaning There is wide latitude in the choice of written forms, especially when a graph is selected on the basis of sound rather than meaning. When the graph £ is used in a word containing the syllable ba, one can often expect to see -J&, | £ , 4&» and ^£« used as variants. The following variants can be found for the entry biezao: '|St '^. , f& '1^ , '1ft. J^, % '^., *$L'1^., $8t %>, H j^. Pronunciation choices can be highly arbitrary in these cases: '^. may be read cao or zao\ 'lift , %^, and tfe all may be read bie; 3â nd ^3 both are read zao; j^ may be read sao or zao; Ht is read pie, while ^t does not appear in any standard dictionary. My designated pronunciation of biezao, while arbitrary, is premised on the fact that in the examples known to me, '[ft and '^t are the written forms used most often and biezao is the dominant pronunciation among these variant forms.
The fact that sounds can be expressed with widely varying graphs demonstrates not only the lack of standardization in orthographic practice but also may reflect regional variation in pronunciation during this period. Writers practiced their craft in different places and communication between regions was undeveloped; free use was made of graphs without great concern for "correctness. "  to topple backwards (ABCD) round and full, rotating or spinning There is also a special category of two-syllable suffixes that attach to adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, which emphasize or enhance their meaning in some way: dan'bula jjii^P P] "bland"; dai'dahai %L ^ %& "expressionless"; hun'laca Ij 4 $3t ^ "dark, dim"; gan'cila .ffc SfL l i t "openly, bluntly"; and hei'linqin ,f£ $» ^ "pitch-black ." This feature is so unique and so prevalent that I include here an extensive list of the variant forms: This category of suffix, while distinctive, can sometimes be confused with other constructions, and there is debate about its origins and the exact sense these endings convey. In the first instance, the expression jing'jili % ^ j £ is a variant of jing'jilie % t %^1} "alarmed, panicked, flustered. " Here the suffix 'jili attaches to the root word jing, making it identical to the eighty-seven examples displayed above. However, this same expression and another set of variants also belong to another common type of entry, in which the preposition // j £ is affixed to an ordinary binome, as in: jiqie'li dagu'li ming'z'li^ $fl 3lL, Introduction In short, a degree of caution is warranted in identifying these different usages. I have supplied " see references" throughout the glossary to cue the reader to alternative constructions for a given expression.
There is debate about the two-syllable suffix 'linqin Sj| £f| in the entry si'linqin Wang Ying JL $ and Zeng Mingde | f $ | ^, in their Shi ci qu yucijishi i$ i$} $ % i*\ (YCJS), point to its possible origins in a residual word in the Shandong dialect originally written or >fj$ -$Jf, meaning "to hang the head." They maintain that si £6 in si'linqin does not mean "death," but rather that it functions as an intensifier modifying 'linqin. I agree that the si in si'linqin does not literally mean death but would argue that it signifies something analogous.
In several examples where this word appears in the Yuanqu xuan, it describes a person in a state of shock, someone frozen or paralyzed with fear, anxiety, or depression to the point where in appearance they seem "motionless, lifeless" or even "dumbfounded." Likewise there are problems with the suffix in the expression dai'dahai j%» ^ ^.
According to the Guan Hanqing quanji jiaozhu $H }H Pf -& % $t }3L (GHQ 126), 'dahai, written variously a s^-3 l £ , < J x^, or «£j* Ijj, is a phonetic variant oftaihai %fe |J|, which means "the chin raised in a reflective or solemn manner," and by extension, "an expressionless face ." In the Xixiang ji (WANG XIXIANG 146 n.4), the author notes that 'dahai might be an erroneous variant of taini j^ $ 1 , but he appends this almost as an afterthought. If this data in Guan Hanqing quanji jiaozhu is valid, does it also apply to 'dahai in men'dahai $f f §* %£, ~ ^T ~» ~ $T ^H " depressed, bored" ? To my knowledge there is no evidence to suggest that 'dahai in men'dahai is a variant of $& ^ or that 'linqin has its origins in 'JH ^ in the Shandong dialect. These are intriguing ideas but unsubstantiated. Are these suffixes vestigial links to a linguistic feature from some regional dialect in an earlier era? Might they result from influence of one of the many nonsinitic languages of Central Asia? Questions as to the origins of these fascinating two-syllable suffixes remain unresolved and await the attention of future scholars.
I hope that this glossary will be broadly useful, not only for students of this literature, but for scholars researching Jin and Yuan language and its usage. In the Yuanqu xuan alone there are over 7,000 arias whose rhyme schemes are known. Bolstered with this information, a scholar should be able to determine much about Yuan pronunciation. The enormous quantity of colloquial speech preserved in the Yuan music dramas should be sufficient to facilitate a fairly definitive study of grammar and usage of the period. The textual locations for the entries in this work could aid such studies, but this is just one source among many for locating good examples of how the language was used.
Finally, this glossary is unfinished. The entry-gathering process could be continued, but there is something to be said for sharing my findings with others in a timely manner. I foresee a time when the contents will continue to be expanded and refined, in which case I will consider my efforts to have been successful. Over the years I have benefited from the advice and suggestions of others, but errors and omissions in this work remain my responsibility.

Santa Cruz, California
May 2000 XV USER' S GUIDE

The Pinyin Romanization System
Main entries are listed alphabetically in the pinyin romanization system, but they also include symbols, explained below, that indicate syllable breaks, bound forms, onomatopoetic expressions, and optional syllables.To indicate pronunciation I have refined pinyin in modest ways to adjust for tonal spelling as follows: first tone pinyin spelling unaltered second tone "1" is added as a final, but it precedes "n" in syllables ending in "n" or "ng": maol diel liulfeln melng xilng xualn third tone the dominant vowel is doubled: jiuu diaan xuaan suoo rii ruii fourth tone "h" is added as a final, but it precedes "n" in syllables ending in "n" and "ng": mih ruoh gaih behnfehng xihng er er %>, when used as a noun suffix, is reduced to 'r

Signs and Symbols
The hyphen -Hyphens are used, as needed, to preserve the integrity of syllables: dan-an, because it can be confused with da-nan a-nahu, because it can be confused with an-ahu The exclamation point !
The exclamation point indicates interjections: aiya!
Some bound forms precede the word to which they are attached, and in this case they are meaningless: The period .
A period preceding an entry marks onomatopoetic words and phrases: .aque .bibo The period also marks a host of descriptive words and phrases whose meanings are not related to the characters used to write them: .qiliu elan £ , @ H Jji Slumped in a heap &,#,*S,fe#(fe Island not 3

. Arrangement of Entries
Entries are arranged according to the double-sort system wherein the order is determined by the alphabetical sequence of the head character. This system maintains the integrity of the full syllable.
danwei precedes dangwei (the syllables are dan, dang, and wei) ma'er precedes manlang (the syllables are ma and 'er; man and lang) Main entries appear in bold face followed by the pronunciation enclosed in parentheses:

babing (baabiing)
For entries with identical romanization spellings, the Chinese character with the fewest number of strokes takes precedence: ben ^ precedes ben Ŵ hen the number of strokes in the two characters are identical, the character whose radical appears first in the Kangxi Radical Table takes precedence : ba & precedes ba | & xix User's Guide All verbs are presented in infinitive form with "to." Nouns, adjectives, and adverbs are self-evident.

Orthography
Words and phrases of two and three syllables are written as a single word with hyphens added where confusion might arise about the integrity of the syllables (see Signs and Symbols: The hyphen).
Words and phrases of four syllables in length are usually divided into segments of two syllables each: .qidiuketa € , -l r^T he four-syllable entries that contain bound forms are handled in various ways, depending on the position of the bound form: qi'de weipie qian yan'li zuo bali'zhiqu Entries longer than four syllables have been divided according to the meaning in the phrase: qima yishi lubei'shang shi'le yijiao 5. Abbreviations

Text Citation
Budd. Dao. Jur. Kitan. Mong XX CRUMP 6 indicates that information can be found on page six in Songs from Zanadu: Studies in Mongol-Dynasty Song-Poetry (san-ch'U) by James Crump. A Note on Columns In counting columns, those bearing titles or act numbers are not counted, nor are those with reading notes or glosses or other extraneous information unless the page begins with drama text. When a page begins with drama text followed by titles, act numbers or reading notes that are followed by more drama text on the same page, then all columns should be counted. However, on pages where the first nine columns consist of reading notes, play titles, or act numbers, the column count should begin with the first column that contains drama text, and should be designated column number one.  20. 3. I, we (= # ) an # (aan) To wipe dry: YQX 1535.5 an-an zanzan J}|j-$frf$^ $ f (an-an zanzan) See aza a n b a n "jft" $ i , $ t ~ (ahnbaan) 1. Kitchen cutting board: YQSCI 19. 2. Fat: WB 902.17. 3. Confident;also,confidently: YQX 203.18 anbo 4t >S (anbol) To secure lodging for the night ("to    ba'tou | A IK (batoul) Prostitute, sing-song girl: YQX 1008.19 batu 01%,-%.