识字习礼:明清杂字中的礼仪知识与礼下庶人

Literacy and Ritual:Ritual Knowledge and Transmitting Rites to Ordinary People Through Zazi of Ming and Qing

从明清地方性的杂字读物出发,可以勾勒出有别于通过王朝礼制或经学注疏考察“礼下庶人”的知识图景。乡里小儒在编纂杂字时,把庙堂礼典、儒家礼仪与神鬼、佛道、风水杂糅,礼俗互动交融。为使礼仪文字浅白直露以易于民众接受,杂字编纂大都分门别类,并将日用类书中的礼仪格套简化,原先礼仪的段落篇章转换为日用字书中的字词短语。从长时段的知识史历程看,宋元以来的礼仪典制是礼仪下乡的制度保障,士大夫编纂的各类礼仪文本推进了礼仪通俗化,而明清社会变迁促成礼仪下沉到日常的识字读写。礼仪杂字既是明清识字领域发展的新产物,也是涵育明清乡里礼秩的新文类,文字下乡和礼仪下渗相互因应,合力刻画明清时期的中国社会与礼仪。

Through local readings of Zazi from the Ming and Qing dynasties, we can outline a different picture from the ones formed according to the dynastic ritual system or commentaries on the Confucian classics.When compiling the characters of Zazi, rural Confucian scholars mingled dynastic and Confucian rituals with rituals related to gods and ghosts, Buddhism and Taoism, and Chinese Geomancy(Feng Shui),thereby blending rites with customs.To make the ritual texts straightforward and easily accessible to the public, the miscellaneous characters were compiled by category, ritual formulae from handbooks were simplified, and the original ritual passages and chapters were converted into popular texts.In terms of history of knowledge, since the Song and Yuan dynasties the imperial ritual system was the institutional guarantee for the application of rituals in the countryside;various ritual texts compiled by scholars facilitated the popularization of rituals, while the social changes of the Ming and Qing dynasties contributed to the incorporation of rituals into daily literacy.Ritual characters of Zazi were not only a new product in the promotion of literacy in the Ming and Qing dynasties, but also emerged as a new literary category that nurtured the ritual culture of this period.In the countryside, the spread of literacy interacted with the spread of rituals, which jointly shaped ritual culture and Chinese society in the Ming and Qing dynasties.