Dead emperors haunt the recut

Claim (verbatim)

Dead emperors haunt the recut. Taboo observance is a writing-time behavior, but block recutting is a tracing-time behavior — a Yuan workshop recutting a Song edition pastes the old print face-down and cuts what it sees, so the dead dynasty's omitted strokes ride through untouched, while a Yuan scribe copying the same text by eye and ear silently restores the full graphs. Taboo in the print tradition is heritable in a way manuscript taboo is not; dating by taboo should therefore systematically over-age recut editions by exactly one recutting generation, a decidable artifact with a known mechanism.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Take Yuan-Ming recuttings of Song editions identified as recuts on independent grounds (colophons, carver names, paper). Primary clause (verdict follows it): at least 80 percent of Song-taboo loci observed in the Song original remain observed in the recut, versus under 30 percent observance of the same taboos in contemporaneous Yuan-Ming manuscript copies of the same works. Secondary: replacement leaves cut during later repairs within the same recut editions drop the taboos, dating the repair stints.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the Zhonghua zaizao shanben facsimile series, which reproduces Song originals and identified Yuan-Ming recuts leaf by leaf with taboo strokes visible, plus the taboo inventories in standard bihui reference works.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

The underlying caution is standard versionology (banben xue): taboo (bihui) avoidance peaked in the Song, and facsimile recuts (fuke) faithfully reproduce their exemplar's features -- including its taboo stroke-omissions -- which is exactly why taboo-based dating can mislead for recut editions. Not located as an executed measurement: the item's specific manuscript-versus-recut behavioral dissociation -- >=80% of Song-taboo loci retained in Yuan-Ming recuts (tracing-time inheritance) against under 30% observance in contemporaneous Yuan-Ming manuscript copies (writing-time restoration), with later repair leaves dropping the taboos to date the repair stints -- over the Zhonghua zaizao shanben facsimiles. The recut-inherits-taboo principle is known to bibliographers; the quantified contrast and the 'over-ages by one recutting generation' framing are an unrun operationalization.

• Name-taboo (bihui) scholarship: taboo observance peaked in the Song; facsimile recuts (fuke) preserve the exemplar's features in Chinese versionology — Taboo peaking in Song and its use/pitfalls in edition dating; the manuscript-vs-recut retention contrast is unrun
• Zhonghua zaizao shanben facsimile series (Song originals and identified Yuan-Ming recuts, taboo strokes visible) with standard bihui reference works — The kill dataset for the recut-vs-manuscript taboo-retention comparison

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.