Broken bamboo, continued bamboo, flying soil, chasing far away. This is a primitive labor ballad. In Selected Poems of Pre-Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties edited by Kai, it is listed as the opening, which shows that it is one of the brilliant sources of China's poems and the pride and glory of the Chinese nation.
This ballad is taken from Zhao Ye's historical novel Wu Yue Chun Qiu in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The king of Yue wanted to attack Wu and was chosen as a good general. Sound, Truman also. The king of yue invited the voice to ask,' I heard that I am good at shooting. Where did the Tao come from?' The voice said:' I heard that crossbows are born with bows, and bows are born with bullets. The filial sons who bounced up in ancient times could not bear to see their parents being eaten by animals, so they pretended to play. The song says: "Break the bamboo, continue the bamboo, fly the soil and drive away evil spirits." "The dutiful son wants to keep the corpse after the emergence of the dual family, that is, from the prosperous stage of the matriarchal clan commune to the patriarchal clan commune, the marriage changed from the original long-short pairing marriage to monogamy, about 5,000 years ago.
In Ming Dynasty, Feng Weiner compiled the Book of Poetry to preserve the ancient poetry materials, which laid the foundation for the compilation of Hui Qin Li. The cloud said, "This is still listed in the poetry anthology", which is the first song in the book. Feng Zeng added in "Playing Qu": "Liu:' Yellow Pavilion folded bamboo, its quality is the highest. "He also said that' Broken Bamboo Yellow Song' is the beginning of two words." "Note:" Yellow, Yellow Emperor also. Therefore, the author of Wen Xin Diao Long regards this ballad as the originator of two-character poetry.
Judging from the content of "Playing Songs" itself, it should describe hunting labor, because the rhythm of short step is obviously different from the four words and two steps of "Three Hundred Poems" popular from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. This urgent rhythm of "one word at a time" coincides with the tense and fast pace, sound and action when ejecting wild animals. Therefore, Liu Xie had a good eye and broke it into a ballad in the period of the Yellow Emperor.
As we all know, Yan Di and Huangdi are not concrete human entities, but incarnations or representatives of famous clans and tribes. Legend has it that after Shennong, he entered the period of the Yellow Emperor. Shennong is the inventor of agriculture, which is about equivalent to the early and middle Neolithic Age in archaeology. Historians believe that the Yellow Emperor era was in the late Neolithic period and was in a transitional period to a class society. In any case, although there were agriculture and animal husbandry in the Yellow Emperor period, fishing and hunting was still an indispensable production project in the whole source of means of subsistence. The hunting tools they use are marbles, stones, stone arrows and Shi Mao. "Playing songs" should be a reflection of hunting labor and life at that time.
The phrase "break the bamboo and continue the bamboo" is quite puzzling. Zhang Yugu, a disciple of Shen Deqian, a great scholar in the Qing Dynasty, said in Appreciation of Ancient Poetry: "Broken bamboo is the bow back, and continued bamboo is the bow string." Accordingly, the two sentences seem to refer to the process of making this kind of labor tool. This is credible. Archaeologists tell us that in the middle of the Stone Age or the early Neolithic Age, ancestors had invented the bow, which combined the elasticity of objects with human physical strength, shot far, flew fast and hit accurately, became a new powerful weapon in people's hands, and enhanced human's ability to conquer nature. Engels said in The Origin of Family, Private Ownership and State: "Bows and arrows are decisive weapons in the age of ignorance, just as iron swords are weapons in the age of barbarism and firearms are weapons in the age of civilization." Hunting activities in the Yellow Emperor era were mainly organized by adult men, chasing hunting and shooting with slingshots and bows and arrows. "Flying soil", soil, refers to particles made of soil, which are dried in the shade. There are many records about shooting projectiles with slingshots in ancient books. For example, in the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Xiang said "On the Garden Mountain": "The shape of the bomb is like a bow, and bamboo is a string. Then Zhihu? " "Mao", the word for meat in ancient times, refers to animals here. Accordingly, this ancient ballad can be translated into: cut bamboo to make a bow back, and tie the two ends to make a bow string; Shoot hard soil particles and hunt wild animals for a good meal.
This ballad praises collective strength, bravely pursues wild animals and new labor tools, and is filled with a joyful atmosphere of overcoming nature and intense labor. It has great vitality. It is estimated that it was spread by word of mouth in ancient times, and it spread everywhere. After the invention of writing, it was recorded by people in writing. The ancestors only used eight words to summarize the hunting labor and describe the scene of impacting the encirclement. Poetry is the most concise style. This ballad from labor has made a good start for the establishment of our poetic country. Four verbs and four objects, the action is crisp and neat, the objects are clear and clear, the rhythm is short, the sentences rhyme, the syllables are loud, and the language is clear and plain. It has been handed down from generation to generation by Chinese descendants and has continued to this day. This tenacious artistic vitality is amazing and full of praise!