DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷八
四月八日
Bath water and new wine.
The Buddha’s birthday as a courtesy between monasteries, followed by the first cooked wine of summer, a tavern for hot weather, and the earliest eggplants priced by the pair.
READ THE ENTRY ↓1. Water for the Buddha, then the weather.
四月八日，佛生日，十大禪院，各有浴佛齋會，煎香藥糖水相遺，名曰「浴佛水」。迤邐時光晝永，氣序清和。榴花院落，時聞求友之鶯；細柳亭軒，乍見引雛之燕。
On the eighth of the fourth month, the Buddha’s birthday, each of the ten great Chan monasteries holds a Bathing-the-Buddha vegetarian assembly, and they send one another water boiled with fragrant herbs and sugar, called “Buddha-bathing water.” Little by little the days grow long and the season turns mild and clear. In courtyards of pomegranate blossom one hears, from time to time, the orioles calling for a mate; by willow-fringed pavilions one suddenly sees the swallows leading out their young.
The entry begins with a religious date and ends its first sentence on a gift: the monasteries exchange sweetened herbal water, so the Buddha’s birthday appears first as a courtesy between institutions, not as a public spectacle. Then the register changes. The festival is dropped and the text turns to season, rendered through sound and sight, orioles and swallows. Meng does not describe the bathing itself, and the text does not say how the water is used.
2. New wine, first fruit, first to the palace.
在京七十二戶諸正店，初賣煮酒，市井一新。唯州南清風樓，最宜夏飲。初嘗青杏，乍薦櫻桃，時得佳賓，觥酬交作。是月，茄瓠初出上市，東華門爭先供進，一對可直三五十千者。時果則御桃、李子、金杏、林檎之類。
Of the seventy-two main taverns in the capital, all begin now to sell cooked wine, and the markets feel made new. Only the Qingfeng Tower south of the prefectural city is best suited to summer drinking. One tastes the first green apricots, the cherries just presented; from time to time a fine guest arrives, and goblets and toasts cross the table. This month eggplants and gourds first come to market, and at the Donghua Gate they vie to be first to supply them to the palace, a single pair worth as much as thirty or fifty strings of cash. The seasonal fruits are imperial peaches, plums, golden apricots, crabapples and the like.
Where the first unit gave the season by ear and eye, this one gives it by price and by who is served first. The wine is institutional, counted in seventy-two houses with one singled out; the early vegetables travel upward to the palace through a named gate. The only sum in the entry is attached to a “pair,” and the text does not name what the pair is. What the passage prices is earliness: the text spends its one number on goods that have only just come to market.
Three places where the sentence could bend.
The text locates the tower only as 州南, “south of the prefectural city.” The page does not name a street or an owner; the sentence says only that the tower is the best place for summer drinking.
The price clause follows 供進 without naming the pair. The page takes it to mean the early eggplants and gourds, the only goods named just before, but the unpunctuated Siku text does not settle it.
Siku variants were normalized silently: 鸎 to 鶯, 栁 to 柳, 戸 to 戶, 酧 to 酬, 争 to 爭, 菓 to 果. The reference edition agrees with the Siku scan throughout; no lacuna occurs in this entry.
Herbal, sweetened water boiled for the festival and sent between monasteries; the text does not say how it is used.
Usually understood as the larger houses with their own brewing, as against smaller outlets; the text counts seventy-two in the capital.
Wine heated for keeping, as the name is usually understood. The text says only that its first sale of the year renews the markets.
The one tavern the entry singles out, placed 州南 and judged best for summer drinking.
Early vegetables supplied to the palace through the Donghua Gate; the first goods in the entry to carry a price.
A small apple-like fruit, usually rendered crabapple; one of four seasonal fruits the entry lists.
Entry 61 is brief, yet it already carries the pattern of the volume: a religious date, a turn to the weather, then the market that the weather opens. The Buddha’s birthday supplies one gift of water between monasteries; everything after it is wine, fruit and early vegetables, ranked by who receives them first. The next entry keeps the sequence but moves it to the doorway.
初嘗青杏，乍薦櫻桃，時得佳賓，觥酬交作。The sequence is Meng’s. The punctuation is editorial.
The primary text is read from the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111, 卷八); punctuation and the standardization of Siku variant glyphs are editorial. No lacuna occurs in this entry.