DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷九
天寧節
A month of rehearsal.
The Tianning festival as a schedule: a month of music rehearsal, then two staggered days on which the military and civil ranks go to the Xiangguo Temple and on to a banquet at the Secretariat.
READ THE SCHEDULE ↓1. Rehearsal, temple and hall.
初十日，天寧節。前一月，教坊集諸妓閱樂。初八日，樞密院率修武郎以上；初十日，尚書省宰執率宣教郎以上，並詣相國寺。罷散祝聖齋筵，次赴尚書省都廳賜宴。
The tenth day is the Tianning festival. A month before, the Music Bureau gathers its entertainers and reviews the music. On the eighth day the Bureau of Military Affairs leads those of the rank of Xiuwu Lang and above; on the tenth day the chief ministers of the Secretariat lead those of the rank of Xuanjiao Lang and above, and together they go to the Xiangguo Temple. When the vegetarian feast held in prayer for the emperor is dismissed, they go next to the main hall of the Secretariat, where a banquet is bestowed.
The passage is a timetable. It begins a month early, with the Music Bureau, so the festival is prepared before it is observed; the next entry shows the Music Bureau at work on the palace floor. Then it splits the officials by branch: the military are led by the Bureau of Military Affairs, the civil by the Secretariat, each with its own rank threshold and its own day. Meng’s text assigns the two a separate date but does not say why, or whether the lower ranks took part at all. The festival is generally identified as the emperor’s birthday, which would explain the “prayer for the emperor” at the temple; the entry itself does not say so. The route is temple first, then the banquet hall, so the religious act is completed before the meal that rewards it. What the entry leaves out is the content of the banquet and the number of guests, which the next entry gives in detail for a court banquet two days later.
Ranks and a dispersal.
The Siku scan prints the variant 寜. The page standardizes to 天寧節, the name of the festival, without comment in the text.
Two grades of official rank, military and civil. The page keeps the titles untranslated and takes them as the thresholds the text states.
The Siku scan prints a rare variant of 散 here; the page reads it as 散. The clause is taken as the dismissal of the prayer feast, after which the officials move on to the banquet.
The festival of the tenth day of the tenth month; generally identified as the emperor’s birthday.
The imperial entertainers’ office that supplied the court’s music.
The body that led the military ranks on the eighth day.
The administrative body whose chief ministers led the civil ranks on the tenth.
A vegetarian meal held in prayer for the emperor.
The Secretariat’s main hall, where the banquet was bestowed.
Entry 72 is a schedule with almost no description, a lean structure that leaves the performances to the entry that follows, which describes a banquet two days later. Here the officials are sorted by branch and rank, sent to the temple, and finally fed. The next entry follows the court to the palace floor.
罷散祝聖齋筵，次赴尚書省都廳賜宴。The sequence is Meng’s. The punctuation is editorial.
The primary text is read from the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111, 卷九); punctuation and the standardization of Siku variant glyphs are editorial. The variants 天寜 and the rare form of 散 are standardized; the rank titles are not translated.