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| An Evidential Study of the “Cui” of Cui’s Villa in Lantian: ReconsideringTomb Inscriptions and the Clan of Du Fu’s Mother |
| Zha Pingqiu |
| The Research Center for Chinese Ancient Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China |
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Abstract Du Fu’s poems “At Cui’s Villa in Lantian on the Double Ninth” and “Cui’s Thatched Cottage on Eastern Mountain” were both composed in the first year of the Qianyuan period when Du Fu was appointed to Huazhou. The Cuis were relatives from the clan of Du Fu’s mother (the second household of the Cui clan of Anping, Boling). Through his maternal grandmother Du Fu established a close relationship with the imperial household. Relatives on his mother’s side were always those who he depended on.The host of Cui’s Villa in Lantian was Cui Xingzong, the son of the imperial son-in-law, Cui Gongli. The “Cuis” in Du Fu’s poems were the descendants of Cui Xingzong. According to the newly excavated “Tomb Inscriptions of the Cuis and the Wangs,” the Cui clan owned a graveyard near the Lantian County. The “thousand mountain streams,” “Lan River,” “Jade Mountain,” “White Crow Valley,” and “Green Mud Enclosure” in Du Fu’s poems enable us to locate the Thatched Cottage on Eastern Mountain. The poem refers to Wang Wei’s residence as the Western Villa — this is the same as the Thatched Cottage on Eastern Mountain in that they both allude to Xie An rather than signifying the actual locations of the estates.The relatives on his mother’s side that Du Fu mentioned the earliest, i.e., “Magistrate of Baishui” and “Sherriff of Baishui,” appear in the “Form of the Genealogies of Chancellors” of The New History of the Tang and the tomb inscription that Quan Deyu wrote for the Cuis. These two sources provide different records of the official titles of Cui Xu and Cui Ding. The information in the newly discovered tomb inscriptions of Cui Hongli, Cui Gaozhi, and Cui Sui was also erroneous. On the other hand, the tomb inscriptions of Cui Gongbo and Cui Shen were composed respectively by their son and son-in-law, thus are more accurate. Du Fu’s maternal uncles in Baishui should be Cui Xu (Lieutenant of Baishui) and Cui Ding (Magistrate of Baishui). Like Cui Xingzong, neither of them was immediately related to Du Fu. The family of Du Fu’s maternal grandfather could descend from Cui Mingan. They shared the same ancestors with Du Fu’s uncles in Baishui five generations before, and with Cui Xingzong eight generations before. The maternal uncles mentioned by Du Fu basically were all from this scope. Du Fu did not have any immediate maternal uncles. Since his maternal grandfather’s clan had entered the Pass long before and had been related to the imperial household through marriage, they had considerable prestige. As a nephew, Du Fu was able to obtain support from the clan of his maternal uncles. His visit to Wang Wei in Wangchuan was also an action of visiting seniors of his mother’s clan.The event of “taking the cornel” in Du Fu’s poem shows that in that year Du Fu had a reunion with his family in Cui’s villa in Lantian. Just like he entrusted his family to his uncles in Baishui before the Rebellion, Du Fu also entrusted his wife and children to the Cuis in Lantian during his term of office in Huazhou. Since he had been trapped in dire straits in the capital, his family certainly were unable to survive in the capital after Du Fu left there. Turning to his maternal uncles’ clan turned out to be a special life mode of Du Fu in that chaotic time. Several poems presented to the Cuis are collected in his collection. They demonstrate a strong consciousness of identifying himself with his family background and convey his complex of depending on his maternal uncles’ clan. Meanwhile, many members of the Cui clan moved to the south during the chaotic time. Maintaining a huge clan, they had a strong consciousness of genealogy. This also made it possible for Du Fu to depend on them. His poems “My Younger Brother Guan Is Going Back to Lantian to Fetch a Wife; I Show Him These Two Pieces When Sending Him Off” and “My Brother Guan, Who Went to Lantian to Retrieve the Bride, Has Reached Jiangling; Happy, I Send These Three Poems” verify that the Cuis in Lantian indeed had taken care of his family. This fact provides a new explanation of why Du Fu abandoned his position in Huazhou: The chaos limited the ability of the Cuis, making life of Du Fu’s wife and children harder; Du Fu had no choices but to resign and move his family to Qinzhou to survive.Concerning Du Fu’s line “Count Dan, whose brush never stops” from “Poem on Qiaoling in Thirty Couplets, to Be Shown to the Officials of the County,” many commentators took the Dan as Dan Zhu, who had the same reputation as Zhao Kuang and Lu Zhi as the founders of the hermeneutic school of Spring and Autumn. However, there was no external evidence to verify this. Now the relationship between Dan and Zhao can be verified by the event that as a son-in-law of the Cuis, Zhao Zan, who was Zhao Kuang’s younger brother, composed tomb inscriptions for the Cuis. It can be further conjectured that Du Fu’s line should concern their commentating the classics.
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Received: 28 December 2020
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2021, Vol. 51 
