The content of "Ode" in "The Book of Songs" is about offering sacrifices and praising ancestors.
Most of the sacrificial poems in "The Book of Songs" are preserved in "Ode", which is an integral part of "The Book of Songs". There are four sacrificial poems in "Xiaoya" and "Daya" "There are three sacrificial poems.
There are 40 chapters in "Ode". The interpretation of "Ode" was first seen in "Poetry·Preface": "The eulogist is a description of beauty and virtue, and he is the one who tells the gods about his success." Kong Yingda's "Mao Shi Zhengyi" said: "The eulogist" is under "Ode" The word "Rong Ye" is omitted. Zhu Xi's "Collected Poems" says: "Song" and "Rong" are the same ancient characters.
According to the explanation in Ruan Yuan's "Ji Jing Shi Ji Shi Ode", "rong" means dance appearance, and "the description of beauty and virtue" is the dance movement that praises "sheng virtue". For example, "Song of Zhou·Weiqing" is a song dedicated to King Wen, and the "Small Preface" says: "The elephant dance is also played."
Zheng Xuan's "Biography of Mao's Poems" said: "The elephant dances when the elephant uses troops. "The Dance of the Conquest" is to express the plot and movements of King Wen of Zhou in the form of dance when he used troops to conquer the Conqueror. This can prove that there are not only songs but also dances when offering sacrifices to the ancestral temple. "Singing and dancing" can be said to be the ancestral temple music. Features. Modern scholars also mostly believe that "Song" is the music of ancestral temple sacrifices, and part of it is dance music. The famous poems mainly include "Qing Temple", "Wei Tian's Destiny", "Ai Xi", etc.
Related Notes
The Book of Songs as a whole is an image reflection of the social life of China during the five hundred years of the Zhou Dynasty’s rise and decline. It includes odes to ancestors’ entrepreneurship, There are music for worshiping gods and ghosts; there are also banquets and interactions between nobles, and resentments about uneven work and rest; there are also moving chapters reflecting labor, hunting, and a large number of love affairs, marriages, and social customs.
The "Book of Songs" has 305 existing chapters (in addition to 6 chapters with no poems and 311 chapters), it is divided into three parts: "Wind", "Ya" and "Song".
"Wind" comes from folk songs from various places and is the essence of the "Book of Songs". There are songs about love, labor and other beautiful things, as well as nostalgia for homeland, longing for people, and resentment and anger against oppression and bullying. They are often chanted repeatedly using the technique of repetition. There are often only a few chapters in a poem. The different words reflect the characteristics of folk songs.
"Ya" is divided into "Daya" and "Xiaoya". Most of them are poems for nobles to pray for good harvests and praise their ancestors' virtues. The author of "Daya" was an aristocratic scholar, but he was dissatisfied with the real politics. In addition to banquet songs, sacrificial songs and epic poems, he also wrote some satirical poems that reflected the people's wishes. There are also some folk songs in "Xiaoya".
"Ode" is a poem for worship in the ancestral temple. The poems in "Ya" and "Song" are of great value for examining early history, religion and society. Among the above three parts, there are 40 chapters in "Ode" and 105 chapters in "Ya" (6 chapters in "Xiaoya" have no poems and are not included). "Wind" has the largest number, with 160 chapters. The total is 305 articles. The ancients took the integer and often said "three hundred poems".