MUZI MUZIChinese Matrix

Xuanjuan: Precious-Scroll Recitation

A scroll in hand, to ask for blessing and teach goodness

Introduction

Telling and singing precious scrolls from the written text at gods' birthdays, blessings, birthdays and memorial rites, one lead voice with helpers joining in

Xuanjuan is ritual storytelling and singing from the written text of a precious scroll (baojuan), performed at gods' birthdays, birthday celebrations, memorial rites and blessing ceremonies. One lead performer sings while several helpers join in; early on only a wooden fish kept time, and from the 1920s and 1930s erhu, sanxian and other strings were added. The national items are Shaoxing xuanjuan (V-83) and Pudong xuanjuan (V-118), while the scroll texts themselves are listed as folk literature under the Hexi, Jingjiang, Wu and Minxian baojuan (I-13). Precious scrolls grew out of Buddhist popular preaching, when monks of the Song and Yuan expounded sutras in the form of penitential rites; the Ming writer Xu Xianzhong records villagers mixing sutras into moral verses and 'singing them back and forth, which is called xuanjuan', and by the late Ming and early Qing the practice had spread north and south.

Timeline

Mid-Ming to present
1300 · EvolutionIn the Song and Yuan, precious scrolls grew out of Buddhist popular preaching: monks expounded the sutras in the form of penitential rites and sang them at the religious gatherings of lay believers, and singing a scroll was called xuanjuan (after the scholar Che Xilun).1550 · OriginIn the mid-Ming, Xu Xianzhong's Wuxing zhanggu ji records that 'lately it has become a village custom to insert sutras into moral exhortations and common sayings, to gather in groups and sing them back and forth, which is called xuanjuan', the earliest reliable record of xuanjuan as a village practice.1770 · EvolutionIn the Qianlong reign, xuanjuan from the Suzhou area reached Pudong, Shanghai, where local performers adapted it to the Pudong dialect and tunes, and by the late Qing it had become Pudong xuanjuan; Shaoxing xuanjuan also took shape in the late Qing and spread to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Ningbo around 1911.2008 · ImpactIn 2008 Shaoxing xuanjuan entered the second national ICH list (V-83), and in 2014 Pudong xuanjuan entered the fourth (V-118); between 2006 and 2021 the scroll texts were listed as folk literature under the Hexi, Jingjiang, Wu and Minxian baojuan (I-13).
  1. 1300EvolutionIn the Song and Yuan, precious scrolls grew out of Buddhist popular preaching: monks expounded the sutras in the form of penitential rites and sang them at the religious gatherings of lay believers, and singing a scroll was called xuanjuan (after the scholar Che Xilun).
  2. 1550OriginIn the mid-Ming, Xu Xianzhong's Wuxing zhanggu ji records that 'lately it has become a village custom to insert sutras into moral exhortations and common sayings, to gather in groups and sing them back and forth, which is called xuanjuan', the earliest reliable record of xuanjuan as a village practice.
  3. 1770EvolutionIn the Qianlong reign, xuanjuan from the Suzhou area reached Pudong, Shanghai, where local performers adapted it to the Pudong dialect and tunes, and by the late Qing it had become Pudong xuanjuan; Shaoxing xuanjuan also took shape in the late Qing and spread to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Ningbo around 1911.
  4. 2008ImpactIn 2008 Shaoxing xuanjuan entered the second national ICH list (V-83), and in 2014 Pudong xuanjuan entered the fourth (V-118); between 2006 and 2021 the scroll texts were listed as folk literature under the Hexi, Jingjiang, Wu and Minxian baojuan (I-13).

Heritage Listings

  1. 2008National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage2nd batch · V-83 Shaoxing xuanjuan · no. 776 · Shaoxing county [now Keqiao district · Shaoxing] · Zhejiang
  2. 2014National List of Representative Items of Intangible Cultural Heritage4th batch · V-118 Pudong xuanjuan · no. 1292 · Pudong New Area · Shanghai