People's Education Edition Senior High School, Volume 3, Lesson 4, three poems of Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties, and the selected poem "Nineteen Ancient Poems, Up to the Cowherd Star", the whole poem is as follows:
Distant Altair, Jiao Jiao Hehan girl. Skillful hands, make a loom. There is no chapter all day, and tears are pouring down. What's the difference between a clear river and a shallow one? Between water and water, there are no words.
The whole poem uses metaphor to compare the separation of husband and wife in the world with the natural star Altair Vega on both sides of the Milky Way. Among them, the phrase "tears are raining all day" is explained in some teaching reference books:
According to legend, after the marriage of the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, the Queen Mother broke up the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd and separated them on both sides of the Milky Way because the Weaver Girl violated the dogma. After the weaver girl weaves a horse, the two are allowed to meet. However, the evil queen mother put a spell on the weaver girl, so that she could not weave a piece of cloth. The sad weaver girl had to cry to the loom day after day.
According to this statement, "crying like rain all day" has such a logical relationship: "crying like rain" is both a cause and a result. "Don't break the chapter all day" has become the key to the problem and the focus of contradiction. Because the existence of "no chapter all day" will inevitably lead to the result of "crying like rain".
However, no matter from the textual research in the process of the change of the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, or from the emotional changes of the poem itself, "one day without a chapter" cannot be the reason for "crying like rain".
1. Textual research from the evolution of the myth of Cowherd and Weaver Girl
As one of the four myths circulating among the people in China, the myth of Cowherd and Weaving Girl is a household name, and it is well known to all women and children. Although the details are different, the general plot of the myth is the same: it is said that a long time ago, there was a cowherd named Cowherd who fell in love with the daughter of the Emperor of Heaven, Zhinv, got married and gave birth to a pair of children. When the Queen Mother learned about this, she was furious because the Weaver Girl violated the dogma and ordered the Weaver Girl to return to heaven. In desperation, Weaver Girl had to abandon her husband and children and return to heaven. Cowherd, who loves his wife, caught up with the sky with a pair of children. As a result, he was attracted to the Milky Way by the Queen Mother, separating the husband and wife on both sides of the Milky Way, and he could only see them on the seventh day of July every year.
There are many different views on the details of the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, which will not be discussed here, but the differences in the details of myths and legends just show that this story was not formed in one place at a time, but had a long forming process. Perhaps their roots are the same, but the perfunctory in different periods and places makes the details of the story have ever-changing differences. The myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is a "generation accumulation" myth.
Let's discuss the period when Nineteen Ancient Poems came into being, that is, around the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, what the fairy tales of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl looked like.
The earliest record of the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl can be traced back to the Book of Songs. There is a cloud in The Book of Songs Xiaoya Dadong: "There is Han Yu, and there is light in prison. You weaver girl, you keep seven concubines all day, although seven concubines are not a newspaper! Give him a cow instead of a box. " The poem satirizes the vegetarian diet of the Western Zhou nobles in the name of the stars in the sky. Although there have been some important factors in the myth: the Milky Way, the Weaver Girl, the Morning Glory and the Morning Glory of the Weaver Girl "Don't be a newspaper" and "Don't take the box", a careful examination of the poem will reveal that the Cowherd at this time is just a lazy morning glory who doesn't even lift the box. It can be said that in the pre-Qin period, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, two important figures in myths and legends, only the Weaver Girl officially appeared, but the Cowherd did not evolve from the "Petunia".
During the Han and Wei Dynasties, the myth about the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl was no longer as few people as it was in the pre-Qin period, but there were rich records and more materials we could see. There are a lot of chapters in the literature of this period, and the most authoritative one is Sima Qian's Historical Records. "Historical Records Official History" records: "Weaver Girl, Goddess Sun Ye". At least before the historical records, we didn't find any records about cowherd, and some of them were images of cowherd. It was not until the Eastern Han Dynasty that the statues of "Left Petunia, Right Weaving Girl" were found on both sides of Kunming Pool carved by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. At this time, "Petunia" finally evolved from a cow to a human.
Jumping Cowherd Star appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, and it was the first poem to praise the love of Cowherd and Weaver Girl. It is worth noting that both the Eastern Han Dynasty and the later Wei and Jin Dynasties were called "Cowherd" instead of "Cowherd". We can get such a message from poems: at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, people's imagination of morning glory and Vega had developed to a pair of men and women who could not meet each other across the Milky Way.
Later than the Wei-Jin period of Nineteen Ancient Poems, there were more works about the separation of binary stars. However, whether it is Cao Pi's How Can I Limit the River Beam, or Cao Zhi's "There is no horse in the gourd, I praise the morning glory solitary", all of them just tell the current situation of the separation of binary stars, without mentioning the reasons for their separation. The reason for the separation of the Cowherd and the Weaver Maid was first mentioned in the note novels of the Jin Dynasty:
Penny married the Weaver Girl, borrowed money from the Emperor of Heaven as a gift, and after a long period of non-repayment, she was put into the camp.
In the east of Tianhe, there is a weaver girl and the son of a heavenly emperor. Every year, the loom works hard to weave a brocade. God pitied him for being alone and promised to marry a cowherd in Hexi. After getting married, I gave up sewing. The Emperor of Heaven was furious and ordered him to return to Hedong. He only crossed the river for a period of time on the night of July 7th every year. (The Story of Jingchu Times)
Whether it was "borrowing money and not paying it back" or "abandoning the seam after marriage", it was the God who prevented them from meeting, and the Queen Mother did not appear at this time. Naturally, not to mention the ban that they can't see without a chapter. It can be seen that in terms of the development of the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl itself, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, "no chapter all day" could not be the reason for "crying like rain".
Secondly, textual research is carried out from the plot advancement and emotional change of the poem itself.
The poem Farewell to the Altair takes the Weaver Girl as the narrative angle and the separation of the stars in the sky as a metaphor for the separation of husband and wife in the world. The poem begins with "The Altair is in the distance, and the girl of Jiao Jiao River is the girl of China", describing the present situation of the separation of the two stars. Then, it changed a pen and wrote down the situation of Weaver Girl: "I am a delicate hand, and Zhazha is a machine." Weaver stretched out her delicate hand and began to creak and knit. However, a word "get" exposed her heart. Get, have games, and play meaningfully. Obviously, the Weaver Girl is not serious about her work. It is precisely because she is in a trance when knitting that the inevitable result of "no chapter all day" will appear. Exploring the reason why he "got" the loom is naturally because he misses the cowherd. Connecting with the mapping of this poem to the human world, we seem to see a husband wandering outside, taking care of his in-laws and raising his young son at home alone, stretching out his white and slender hands and preparing to start a day's work. However, the irresistible yearning for her distant husband made her feel trance and cry. So, if you have no intention of knitting, you can't even knit a piece of cloth all day. Compared with Liu Lanzhi's skillful hand of "breaking five horses in three days", this young woman is not inferior to others, but she is deeply missed in her heart, which hinders her knitting speed. If this sentence is interpreted as: Weaver girl is sad and crying because she can't knit a piece of cloth all day, what is the difference between her and a clumsy country woman?
To sum up, no matter from the textual research in the changing process of the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, or from the emotional changes of the poem itself, "one day without a chapter" can be the reason for "crying like rain".
Author: Chongqing Qijiang Middle School.