Odd Tablet

Odd Tablet (as David Hawkes translates his penname), or more literally, Elderly Maimed Tablet (畸笏叟), was a mysterious commentator of the 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. He sometimes signed himself as merely 畸笏 ("Maimed Tablet"). He and Zhiyanzhai were the two foremost commentator of the Red Chamber manuscript, although his comments were fewer than those from Zhiyanzhai. He was apparently quite old and an elder as he signed himself as 叟, meaning "Elderly Man" (or he wished to be seen as such). His comments, like Zhiyanzhai's, were in red ink, so there are sometimes difficulties separating the two commentators' annotations.

His penname was 畸笏叟. 叟 means "Elderly Man", which reveals he should be an old man. 畸 can mean "maimed", "unevenly shaped", "abnormal" or "leftover". 笏 was a long, rectangular tablet that court officials used to record matters when seeing the Chinese Emperor. These emblematic tablets were made of jade, ivory, wood or bamboo.^[1]

Odd Tablet was as mysterious a commentator as Zhiyanzhai, and some experts see them possibly as the same person (albeit writing under a different penname). But noted Redologist Cai Yijiang (蔡义江) wrote an essay speculating that Odd Tablet should be Cao Xueqin's father.^[2] What is known for certain now is that Odd Tablet was a person of some authority over Cao Xueqin. He ordered Cao Xueqin to remove a passage detailing the incestuous adultery between Qin Keqing and her father-in-law from Xueqin's original text. Instead, Cao Xueqin resorted to using very oblique references when writing the sensitive passage.^[3] The incident appeared to be based on a household scandal which occurred when Cao Yin (曹寅), Cao Xueqin's grandfather, was alive.^[4]

Odd Tablet outlived Cao Xueqin, becoming the guardian of Cao's working manuscripts. He commented that some pages of the original manuscript were lost because someone had borrowed and mislaid them. Cao Xueqin died without putting together a cohesive, final version of his book for publication.^[5] What we do have is Cao Xueqin's extant first eighty chapters.

Odd Tablet appears to be some melancholic elder who had suffered through the catastrophe of the Cao family's downfall. He used frequent phrases like 嘆嘆! ("Alas!"), 哭 ("weep"), 傷哉！(an expression of deep grief) in Classical Chinese, and seemed especially troubled by any references to the Cao family's sacking decades before.^[6] Cai concluded that Odd Tablet should be Cao Fu (曹頫), adopted son and paternal nephew of Cao Yin (曹寅). Cai supports the idea that Yin was Cao Xueqin's paternal grandfather (or, in terms of blood relations, paternal granduncle) through Cai Fu, Xueqin's father. Cao Fu was imprisoned for years by the Yongzheng Emperor^[7] because he was the person in charge of the Cao Clan when the catastrophe began. Cai also speculates Fu was maimed during his imprisonment, hence his frequent use of the phrase 废人 ("useless/maimed person") and 畸 ("abnormal" or "maimed").^[8]

References

1. Cai Yijiang, Elderly Maimed Tablet should be Cao Xueqin's father, Lijiang Publishing House, 2005.《畸笏叟应是曹雪芹的父亲》， 蔡义江。《蔡义江解读红楼梦》，漓江出版社, 2005. The full essay is on pp. 197-221. On the significance of the penname 畸笏叟, see p. 221.
2. Cai, pp. 197-221.
3. Cai, pp. 206-208.
4. Cai, p 211.
5. 书未成，芹为泪尽而逝。Red ink comments, Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本), Chapter One.
6. Odd Tablet once commented in Chapter Two: “后”字何不用“西”字？"Why don't you simply used the character for 'West' instead of 'behind' here?" in an episode concerning Leng Zixing. Someone (anonymous) answered (also in red ink) “恐先生坠泪，故不敢用‘西’字” ("I'm afraid that you would shed tears, sir, hence no one dares to reference that character")。“西” (West) is one of Cao Yin's favorite characters. See Cai, p 211-2.
7. Cai, pp. 197-203.
8. Cai, pp. 197-203.