This book has had a relatively long time of gestation. I first became interested in Daoist storytelling and the legend of Master Zhuang’s encounter with the skeleton more than twenty years ago when I was doing some research on Li Song’s 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 Zhuang’s 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 Zhuang’s Butterfly Dream and Skeleton, which is available only in a single manuscript copy in the institute’s library. Professor Oki Yasushi of the University of Tokyo kindly provided me with photographs of the edition of Wang Yinglin’s 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 Song’s painting of the skeleton marionetteer for the cover illustration. My student Sun Xiaosu alerted me to the popularity of Guo Degang’s 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.