Shuishu Customs
01 · Historical Records
The origins of the Shui script cannot be verified in written records; they can only be inferred backward from the manuscripts and oral explanations circulating in the Shui settlement areas: the ancestors created this set of symbols in order to fix in writing the seasons, taboos and sacrificial words that were inconvenient to pass on by speech; since the character forms are too simple, essential meanings that could not be written down were entrusted to the masters who understood them. Writing and oral transmission complement each other, and this is precisely why the Shui script has been able to survive to the present.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The 'Shui script' is an idiosyncratic proto-script created by the ancestors of the Shui people; in the Shui language it is called 'Le Sui'. It is a comprehensive record and reflection of Shui folk knowledge and folk culture, covering astronomy and calendrics, primitive beliefs, ethics and morality, production and daily life, and many other areas; it is mainly current in the Shui settlement areas of the southwest. The Shui script's system of written symbols is unique: it contains Chinese-style characters similar to oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions, numerous pictographic symbols, and also pictorial writing that expresses meaning in paragraphs. It has few characters (only several hundred) and a unique system of written symbols; its texts cannot express meaning independently, but must rely on the Shui masters who have a master-disciple lineage, that is, the 'sacrificial masters' (all male) who can read, understand and use the Shui script. Only when the relevant entries recorded in the Shui script are combined with the orally transmitted content and given interpretation do they take on meaning. The mode of transmission of the Shui script customs has produced the two major components of the Shui script: one part is the manuscripts compiled in the ancient proto-script of the Shui people; the other part is the oral instruction passed from master to disciple by Shui masters, used to make up for the great quantity of essential meanings, rituals and blessings that could not be recorded because of the script's incomplete development. The Shui script has a great variety of scroll volumes, mainly falling into two major categories: recitation scrolls and application scrolls. The application scrolls mainly include the 'Recitation Scroll', the 'Hours Scroll', the 'Twenty-Eight Lodges Scroll' and several dozen others; the recitation scrolls mainly include the 'Zhengqi Scroll', the 'Haizi Scroll' and more than ten others. The Shui script is praised as an encyclopedia of the Shui people. For funerals, sacrifices, weddings, construction, travel, divination and production, the Shui people have the Shui master look up a basis in the Shui script and then act strictly in accordance with its constraints; in this way the Shui script customs took shape.
Consulting the roll and the priest
Since the script cannot speak for itself, a priest reads the roll and adds inherited explanation.
Recitation rolls and application rolls
Recitation rolls serve daily reading while application rolls handle hours and the twenty-eight mansions.
Transmission by the ritual priest
What the script omits is passed orally from teacher to pupil, as in the cases of the two named priests.
The Sui script and its symbols
Among the few hundred symbols are archaic characters, pictographs and pictures that stand for whole clauses.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The distribution of the Shui script is centered on the Shui settlement areas of southern Guizhou, with the Libo and Sandu areas having the most concentrated transmission; wherever Shui villages are settled and village elders and sacrificial masters are established, there is a need to invite masters and consult the scrolls. In recent years, the state and county levels have established special collection and training institutions, organizing both the manuscripts scattered among the people and the rituals together.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Thus for several thousand years the Shui script has been passed down in the form of oral transmission and hand copying by generations of Shui masters; it is a combination of ancient-script manuscripts and cultural transmission through oral instruction. The Shui script customs are the customs formed, developed and transmitted through the Shui script, which thereby constitute customs related to Shui life. The combination of Shui masters and the Shui script is an important precondition for transmitting the traditional culture of the Shui people. Ou Haijin (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Shui ethnicity, born in July 1943, a native of Libo County, Guizhou Province. He studied the Shui script with his uncle from childhood, and after 1953 began to independently conduct Shui script custom activities. In 1988 he co-translated the Shui script 'Haizi Scroll' with Shui-script expert Yao Fuxiang. In 1996 he translated the Shui script 'Zhengqi Scroll'. He was appointed as a Shui-script researcher of Libo County and a Shui-script expert of the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. He has repeatedly introduced the Shui script or explained the Shui script customs to experts and scholars from various places, given interviews and responded to surveys by many media outlets, and performed Shui script customs demonstrations. He attaches importance to transmission, has run Shui-script training classes, and some of his students have become backbone researchers of the Shui script. He is a representative inheritor of the Shui script customs project of national-level intangible cultural heritage, in the third batch. Pan Laoping (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Shui ethnicity, born in July 1937, a native of Libo County, Guizhou Province. He began to independently conduct Shui script custom activities at the age of twenty. In 2002 he was appointed as a Shui-script researcher of Libo County. He participated in the work of the county Shui-script office to decipher twenty-four symbols on fragments of Xia-dynasty pottery symbols and ten mysterious symbols on an eight-lotus-petal pottery bowl of the early Northern Song. In 2005 he was appointed a Shui-script expert of the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, and participated in various manuscript-review meetings and seminars on Shui script customs held by the prefectural expert group. He participated in annotating, recording and translating the fine items in the Libo collection, including the 'Lejin Jiri Scroll' and the 'Gold and Silver Scroll', as well as more than 160 other Shui-script volumes. He took part nine times as chief sacrificial master or chief officiant in Shui-script sacrificial activities organized by the county Shui-script office, and gave interviews to China Central Television and Guizhou Television introducing the Shui script customs. He values transmission and has taken ten disciples in addition to teaching his own son. He is a representative inheritor of the Shui script customs project of national-level intangible cultural heritage, in the third batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Ou Haijin 03-1472
- Pan Laoping 03-1473
- Yang Shengzhao
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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