30. 鷹口傳 Taka kuden

The first page shows five library seals including Yenching Library's (the smallest rectangular seal on the bottom). The four other libraries are affiliated with Matsudaira Sadanobu (1759-1829), a grandson of the eighth shogun Tokukawa Yoshimune (1684-1751) who had revived falconry. Sadanobu, a well known political reformer as a chief senior councilor of the Tokugawa shogunate, was a prominent intellectual who authored over one hundred books in wide range of subjects. It is likely that Sadanobu sent his copier to the Jimyoins hereditary house of Falconry, and copied there texts that had been preserved for generations within the family.

The text ends with the following message. “Do not share this content with even your own child who does not love falconry, but you may share it with a stranger who loves it.” The copyist of this text faithfully copied contents including the dates when the text had been copied previously (in 1328, and in 1516 by the lord Jimyoin Motoharu), while including neither his own name nor the date when he copied this volume. Yenching Library holds five falconry manuscripts that once belonged to Sadanobu’s libraries.