This paper investigates the shifting definitions of the term gāthā (Ch. ji) over an 800-year period, from the earliest sūtra translations into Chinese until the mid-tenth century. Although the term originally referred to the verse sections of scriptures, gāthās soon began to circulate separately, used in ritual, contemplative, and pedagogical practices. By the late sixth century, it began to mean something like “Buddhist verse.” Over the course of the Tang, gāthās came to take on the formal features of poetry, eventually becoming all but indistinguishable from elite verse. However, the word gāthā was always seen as something inferior to real poetry, and, by the late Tang, we find poet-monks belittling other monks’ didactic verses so as to distinguish their own work and avoid the taint of the word gāthā. Cet article explore l’évolution du sens du terme gāthā (ch. ji) sur une période s’étendant sur plus de huit cent ans, depuis les premières traductions des sūtra en chinois jusqu’au milieu du dixième siècle. Bien que ce terme désignât à l’origine les parties rimées des textes sacrés bouddhiques, les gāthās très tôt commencèrent à circuler indépendamment et à être employées dans les pratiques rituelles, contemplatives et pédagogiques. Vers la fin du sixième siècle, il devint synonyme de « poésie bouddhique ». Au cours de la dynastie des Tang, les gāthās adoptèrent les règles formelles de la poésie, si bien qu’ils devinrent quasiment identiques aux autres formes d’expression poétique des élites. Le mot gāthā cependant continua à évoquer un style inférieur à celui de la « vraie » poésie, et à la fin des Tang des moines-poètes moquèrent les vers didactiques composés par d’autres moines dans le but de distinguer leur propres compositions et de se démarquer des connotations peu flatteuses du terme gāthā.
This article combines qualitative and quantitative methods to rethink the literary history of late medieval China (830-960 CE). It begins with an overview of exchange poetry in the Tang dynasty and its role in the construction of the poetic subject, namely, the poetic subject's distributed textual body. A total of 10,869 poems exchanged between 2,413 individuals are cataloged to seek the structure of the collectively imagined literary relations of the time. This catalog is subjected to social-network analysis to reveal patterns and peculiarities in the extant corpus of late medieval poetry, which in turn prompt close readings of the sources. These readings lead to four conclusions about the history of late medieval poetry: (a) Buddhist monks were hubs of literary activity, (b) the poet Jia Dao became an increasingly important site of connection over time, (c) the concept of "poetic schools" is not a useful lens through which to view the Late Tang, and (d) poets at the center of the network are increasingly characterized by their mobility. This combination of network analysis and close reading highlights the dynamic nature of Chinese literary history, providing insight into the ever-shifting conjunctures of forms, genres, expectations, and relations in the late medieval literary world.
Digital tools provide instrumental services to the study of Chinese poetry in an era of big, open data. The authors employed nine representative collections of Chinese poetry, covering the years 1046 BCE to 1644 CE, in their demonstrations. They demonstrate sophisticated software that allows researchers to extract source material that meets multiple search criteria, which may consider words, poets, collections, and time of authoring, paving the way for new explorations of Chinese poetry from linguistic, literary, artistic, and historical viewpoints. Analytic tools help researchers uncover information concealed in poetic works that are related to aesthetic expressions, personal styles, social networks, societal influences, and temporal changes in Chinese poetry. The increasing accessibility of digitized texts, along with sophisticated digital tools, such as the ones these authors developed and demonstrate here, can thereby enhance the efficiency and effectiveness for exploring and studying classical Chinese poetry.
This article uses data to analyze the geographic distribution and transformation of the poetic world in the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). There are two ways we can examine spatial distribution and movement in Tang poetry. The first is a static examination of poets' hometowns (jiguan 籍貫). This method looks at the distribution of poets during a specific period to understand where greater or lesser numbers of poets were born, which places could be considered the center of Tang poetry, and what kinds of geographical changes occurred over time in the Tang literary world. The second is a dynamic examination of poets' activities. When we compare various Tang poets, what differences and changes can we find in the places they lived and traveled? Are the poets' spatial distribution patterns even, or do they favor certain regions? Where were the centers of poetic activity in this period? Were they the same as the political center (the two capitals), or were they located farther out in the provinces? Were they in culturally or politically developed areas or in more remote, less developed ones? In which areas was poetic activity most frequent and intense? This article attempts to answer these questions with data.
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