Character introduction
"Nine Songs" is a collection of poems, with 11 poems in total:
"Donghuang Taiyi": God of Heaven
"Yunzhongjun": God of Clouds
"Mr. Xiang" "Mrs. Xiang": God of Xiangshui
"Da Si Ming": Supervisor God of Longevity
"Shao Siming": God in charge of children
"Dong Jun": God of the Sun
"He Bo": God of the Yellow River
"Mountain Ghost": Mountain God
"National Memorial": Sacrifice to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country
"Soul of the Ritual" is a divine song
"Nine Songs" includes 11 chapters. In order to make them conform to the number of "nine", predecessors have made various improvisations. For example, Jiang Ji in the Qing Dynasty advocated that "Xiang Jun" and "Xiang Madam" should be combined into one chapter, and "Da Siming" and "Shao Siming" should be combined into one chapter in "Shandai Pavilion Notes on Chu Ci". Wen Yiduo's "What Are Nine Songs" advocates using "Donghuang Taiyi" as the welcoming song, "Lihun" as the farewell song, and the nine chapters in the middle as the main text of "Nine Songs". However, most people take "nine" as an imaginary number and agree with Wang Yuan's "Annotation of the Songs of Chu" and Wang Fuzhi's "General Interpretation of the Songs of Chu". They believe that the first ten chapters are sacrifices to ten kinds of gods; Looking at the origins of ancient human religious thoughts, they are closely related to the struggle for production and the competition for survival. The ten kinds of gods can be divided into three types: ① The gods - Donghuang Taiyi (the noble one of the gods), Yunzhongjun (the god of clouds), Da Siming (the god of longevity), Shao Siming (the god of children and heirs) God), Dongjun (Sun God); ② Earth God──Xiangjun and Mrs. Xiang (god of Xiang River), Hebo (river god), Shangui (mountain god); ③Human ghost──National mourning (the death of soldiers killed in battle) soul). Some people believe that among the ten kinds of gods mentioned above, "Donghuang Taiyi" at the beginning of the chapter and "Guoshang" at the end of the chapter are martyrs, all of whom are male; the rest are yin and yang, that is, Dongjun (male) and Yunzhongjun (female), Da Siming (male) and Shao Siming (female), Xiang Jun (male) and Mrs. Xiang (female), He Bo (male) and Shan Gui (female). The original chapters of "Nine Songs" were basically arranged according to the above-mentioned relationship, but the current version of "Dongjun" was mistakenly listed (Wen Yiduo's "Chu Ci Collation").
Creative process
"Nine Songs" was created by Qu Yuan based on folk sacrificial songs in the south of the Yangtze River. The title is based on an ancient title. According to "Li Sao": "Introduction to "Nine Bian" and "Nine Songs", Xia Kangyu indulges himself." "Tianwen": "Qiji Binshang, "Jiu Bian" and "Nine Songs"" all say that there was "Nine Songs" in the Xia Dynasty.
Time of Creation
Judging from the mood of "National Memorial", it should be a song to commemorate the soldiers who died in the Battle of Danxi. The specific time was in the seventeenth year of King Huai's reign ( 312 BC), after the Battle of Danxi and before the Battle of Lantian. "Nine Songs" is different from the indignant style of Qu Yuan's other works, but it is written in a fresh, sad and sentimental style. Obviously it is because he uses folk materials and incorporates the mood of folk songs, which makes the style somewhat unique compared to his other works.
Origin of the name
Regarding the origin of the name "Nine Songs", Wang Yi believes that Qu Yuan imitated the folk sacrificial songs of Southern Chu. Zhu Xi believes that Qu Yuan modified and processed the Southern Chu sacrifice song and "changed its lyrics" ("Annotations to the Songs of Chu"). Hu Shi believes that "Nine Songs" are ancient "religious songs and dances of the Xiangjiang people" and "have absolutely nothing to do with the legend of Qu Yuan" ("Reading Songs of Chu"). Nowadays, many people take Zhu's theory.
The name "Nine Songs" has a very ancient origin. In addition to those mentioned in "Shang Shu", "Zuo Zhuan", and "Shan Hai Jing", "Li Sao" has "Qiu Bian and Jiu Ge Xi, Xia Kang entertained himself with self-indulgence", "Played Jiu Ge and danced Shao Xi" , chatting about holidays for fun." "Tian Wen" contains sayings such as "Qi Ji Bin Shang, nine debates and nine songs." Although the content of "Nine Songs" mentioned in various books has evolved in various ways, it can be proved that "Nine Songs" is a very ancient piece of music in the legend. As for Qu Yuan's use of it as the title of his chapter, it does not seem to be related to the number of chapters in the ancient "Nine Songs", nor is it necessarily the same as the tune of the ancient "Nine Songs". It may be based on the concept of "entertaining the gods", combined with the meaning of "recreation" and "pleasure" mentioned in "Li Sao", which basically belongs to the type of new songs inheriting the old names.
Religious legend
According to legend, the Nine Songs are originally Tianle. When Zhao Jianzi ascended to heaven in his dream, he heard "Nine Guangle Music and Ten Thousand Dances", namely "Nine Songs" and the Shao Dance accompanying "Nine Songs". ("Li Sao" "plays nine songs and dances with Shaoxi".) "Nine Songs" was stolen into the world by Xia Houqi. A banquet actually caused a rebellion among the five sons and finally caused the Xia people to perish. The historical background of this myth is roughly as follows.
"Nine Songs" Shao dance is a popular music of Xia people, and it may only be used when worshiping God in the suburbs. Qi once played this music to enjoy God, which is the so-called enjoyment of Juntai. Like the music of primitive societies in general, the content of this music and dance is quite obscene. Just because in primitive life, religion and sex were not easy to separate, so although it was obscene, it was still possible to enjoy the pleasure of God. Perhaps during that big banquet in the suburbs, a conflict arose between Qi and Taikang's father and son because of their two daughters (the "mother of the five sons"). The situation escalated to such an extent that Taikang actually led his brothers to rebel. As a result, the enemy Yi Yi took advantage of the situation and destroyed Youxia. (There is another research on this matter.) Qi Xiang, the god of heaven, was originally to invite guests. Legend has it that the invitation to invite guests was changed to the invitation to invite guests, so there is a story about the invitation to the heaven as a guest.
This is probably because of the word "bin" in the so-called "Qi Bin Tian" ("Qi Ji Bin Shang" in "Tianwen" is Bin Tian, ??and "the three concubines are in heaven" in "Dahuang Xi Jing", the concubines and bins are the same.) There are two meanings of "treating" and "being a guest", which is the result. Since entertaining guests has become a guest, the joy of enjoying heaven has become the joy of heaven, and playing music and enjoying guests has become a guest stealing joy. The legend is probably only confused at this point. The rest of the story says that Qi's country perished because of "Nine Songs", which is quite true.
These points are specially mentioned here to point out the ancient role of "Nine Songs" and its obscene content, because this is quite helpful in explaining "Chu Ci·Nine Songs". Shao Si Mingyi is said to be the god who controls the misfortunes and blessings of man.
Source textual research
Because "Nine Songs" is based on folk sacrificial songs, it has many characteristics of Chu people's folk sacrificial witch songs. "Hanshu Geography" says: " (Chu region) believes in witches and ghosts, and attaches great importance to *sacrifice. ""Lu Shi Chunqiu·Xiyue" also said: "The decline of Chu is also called witch music." The so-called "Wu Yin" is the music and songs of witches and gods. The difference between "Nine Songs" and Qu Yuan's other poems. However, the poems in the works such as "The flags carrying clouds are winding", "Nine Yis are coming together to greet you", "My road is in the Dongting", and idioms such as "Lao Ranran" and "Fan Zongzong" are similar to Qu Yuan's other poems. The poems are connected. Therefore, it should be an organic part of the overall art of Qu Yuan's poetry.