The earliest written record of the story of Han Ping and his wife is Biography, which has been lost. The story of Han Ping and his wife only exists in Yiwen Lei Ju 92 Yuanyang Gate. Because Biography records many events since the Han Dynasty, it can be proved that the story of Han Ping and his wife has been widely circulated in the Han Dynasty. The record of this love tragedy is relatively complete in Gan Bao's Searching for God in the Jin Dynasty.
Compared with Biography, the story of Han Ping's husband and wife recorded in Sou adds the details of "keeping secrets by books", "decaying clothes" and turning into acacia trees after death, adds the monument of Han Ping's city, and changes Han Ping's wife from anonymity to fame. According to the last sentence in the article, "Its ballads still exist today", it can be seen that Gan Bao's account of Han Ping and his wife is based on folk ballads. It can be seen that the story of Han Ping and his wife had a universal and lasting influence at that time. Nevertheless, there are still different versions of the story of Han Ping and his wife in the Southern Dynasties. For example, the story of Han Ping and his wife quoted in Ji Shen Yi Yuan is quite different from other books in details: Han Feng's wife was taken away by King Jin Kang, and Han Feng and his wife died of illness and went to the tunnel. This subtle difference in names (such as Han Ping, Han Peng, Han Feng, Jin Kangwang and Song Kangwang) and plots (the way of death) is another evidence that the stories of Han Ping and his wife came from the people. Han Ping is a Warring States person. His story is passed down from mouth to mouth, so it is natural that it changes in the process of circulation. In addition, Han Ping and Song Kangwang in the Han Ping couple's stories are consistent with Han Feng and Song Kangwang in Historical Records in terms of identity and background (1)(PP.656-660), which can be considered as the result of the ancient events attached to the meeting, which is also a common way of story development in folk literature.
To sum up, in the Tang Dynasty, whether in folk literature or literati literature, the theme of Han Ping's stories was sincere and simple, that is, they all praised Han Ping's unswerving love and accused the ruling class represented by Song Kangwang of dominating the situation and profiting from it. Since the Song Dynasty, the stories of Han Ping and his wife recorded in Sou and Han Peng Fu have been widely used by later scholars, but their literariness and fiction have gradually increased. Not only have branches and leaves such as Qinglingtai, Huayang, become a butterfly, Qinglingtai songs and Wuqie songs been added to the main line of the story, but Han Ping's wife image has also changed from thin to full, from an unknown woman obsessed with love to full. This paper tries to examine the evolution process of Han Ping and his wife from the evolution and deformation of three plot units, and simply analyzes the reasons. In the Tang Dynasty, the story of Han Ping and his wife gradually appeared two different endings: turning a tree into a mandarin duck. The ending of changing trees is represented by Beihu Road and a section of highway. In order to explain the origin of acacia, the third volume "Acacia Man" records the tree change after the death of Han Ping and his wife in the form of plant legends. Later, Liu Yao recorded a new bird, Han Peng Bird, attached to the story of Han Ping and his wife in Tang Dynasty.
Birds, like mandarin ducks, perch on trees and moan at dusk. Southerners call this bird the soul of a couple, so it is named after Han. Here, "Han Peng Bird" is regarded as the soul of Han Ping and his wife, indicating that the ending of the story has changed from a tree to a bird. This expression of eternal spirit and life and death has created the mother type of later stories such as butterfly lovers. It is worth mentioning that "Han Peng Fu" goes further in the ending of changing birds, adding the plot of "flying away as a mandarin duck", and directly regards the mandarin duck that once "perched in a tree" as the soul of Han Ping and his wife. In the Tang Dynasty, the story that Han Ping and his wife turned into Yuanyang after their death was very popular. Han Ping even became synonymous with Yuanyang in many poems, such as Li He's Angry Bow, his poem Evening, and his Song of Huichang Bingyin. In the Song Dynasty, Gewen's Trivial Record (Yongle Dadian Volume 14537) and Zeng Yao's Leishuo Volume 23 all felt the same way, and both adopted the ending of "flying away as a mandarin duck". This transformation from a tree to a mandarin duck may further stimulate the imagination of the literati, and gradually merge with the story of Liang Zhu becoming a butterfly, turning it into a butterfly dancing and flying together. Li Shangyin's poems, such as Qinglingtai, Bee, Fly, Butterfly, Chicken, Musk Deer and Couple, mentioned butterflies for the first time. However, due to the limited information provided by the poem itself, we are not sure that it has reached the end of become a butterfly at this time, because it may also be the romantic imagination of the poet when he mourns the historic sites. No matter what the real situation is, since then, the plot of becoming a butterfly has intensified. Volume 14 of Song Yueshi's Taiping Universe records that Han Ping's wife "jumped off the stage, took it from left to right and turned it into a butterfly". Here, Han Ping's wife's clothes broke into butterflies, and the ghosts of Han Ping and his wife turned into mandarin ducks, which are still two things. In Wang Anshi's poem Butterfly, become a butterfly, the wife of Han Ping, said that wings are lighter than powder and thinner than dragonflies, and flowers can't win. If you believe that Zhuang Zhou is not a dream, why did you vote for Han Ping?
From rags like butterflies in the Taiping universe to become a butterfly, the wife of Han Ping in Wang Anshi's poem Butterfly, become a butterfly is neck and neck with Hua Yuanyang, while Song Yang Qixian's comments on Li Bai's "Poem of White Head" integrate become a butterfly's and Hua Yuanyang's two theories: Su Youmu's grave, on which a Yuanyang lives and touches become a butterfly.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Peng Dayi's Feather Collection has a cloud in Volume 34: Big butterflies will be in pairs, which is the soul of harmony. The soul of Han Ping and his wife is unknown. Li Yishan's poem: "The setting sun is near the Qingling Terrace, and the soul of eternal chastity leans on the sunset glow. Don't be surprised, Han is a butterfly waiting to fly to other flowers. "
From the above quotation, we can see that Li Shangyin's poems are actually the origin of the butterfly theory. By the Ming Dynasty, the theory of the butterfly Han Ping and his wife had entered the records of local chronicles as a successful theory. For example, in the Qing Dynasty, Volume 6 of Fengqiu County Records recorded that there were two ducks, each living in a tree and moaning day and night. People call it the essence of Han Ping and his wife. Then it turned into a butterfly and flew away.
There are three possible reasons for this change.
First, in the mode of folk stories, all love tragedies cannot have a happy ending because of various barriers in secular life. Finally, the imagination of turning plants into flowers and trees and Yuanyang into necks is regarded as the result of sincere condensation, which proves that the true feelings are intolerable to heaven and earth, life and death cannot be violated, and ghosts and gods cannot be asked. For example, in Volume 389 of Tai Ping Guang Ji, there are rumors similar to "people are shoulder to shoulder" and "pillow trees". In addition, at the end of the story of Han Ping and his wife, there is also a saying in Outside become a butterfly: Ming naturally lost his mind, "the stone nodded, and the Yu Di woman was reborn in the imperial garden", and there is also a saying that "Han Peng and his wife died as a pair of birds"; The fourth volume of Zhang Guisheng's Collection of Mourning for the Past in Qing Dynasty said that Han Ping and his wife had the language that "people called him a lovebird in the sky, a branch on the ground, a lotus flower in the flower and a flounder in the water". The similarity of the above images is that they appear in pairs, interlocking and inseparable. It can be seen that for folk stories, what matters is the meaning conveyed by the image rather than the image itself. Based on this, we can boldly guess that after the Song Dynasty, with the widespread spread of the story, the butterfly image also has the above meaning, and because of the similarity in theme between Han Ping and the story, the two stories gradually tend to merge.
Second, after the Song Dynasty, the mentality of literati tended to be introverted, lacking the arrogance of Jin people and the boldness of Tang people. In this state of mind, butterflies may be a more logical choice than mandarin ducks. Although Yuanyang is good at flying, she is actually a waterfowl, living by the river. In China's ancient literary works, there are many "mandarin ducks flying in the air, holding down their feathers". As for the description of "traveling to the plateau and staying in the evening" (18 poems given by Wei to brothers to join the army) and "flying to the green shore and returning in the evening" ("Yuanyang Fu" by Liang Xiaogang), as for the description of Yuanyang living in a tree, there are only a few cases such as the story of Han Ping and his wife. Moreover, Yuanyang is not a common animal in the north, so since the Tang Dynasty, people have put forward a more appropriate statement about it. For example, Ling Biao records that "Yuanyang Bird" is "Han Peng Bird". Later books did not use the new term "Han Peng bird" when recording the story of Han Ping and his wife, but they were also very cautious in using words. Most of them say "birds like mandarin ducks". This subtle change from exaggeration to realism reflects the change of literati's mentality.
Third, compared with mandarin ducks, butterflies are more common and common, and the spread of stories is not limited by regions. In addition, the ancients didn't understand the process of butterfly metamorphosis, and they had a very superstitious understanding of butterflies, so they came up with the saying of "become a butterfly". Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty summarized various become a butterfly theories: Gu refers to become a butterfly, Er refers to become a butterfly, Liezi refers to become a butterfly, Cai become a butterfly refers to become a butterfly, Lily, and Beihu refers to become a butterfly, and Yi Ye.
In other words, the ancients believed that butterflies originated from hallucinations. From this perspective, replacing Yuanyang with become a butterfly may be closer to the essence of soul illusion.
Fourthly, the butterfly image has more complicated aesthetic significance in the minds of China literati, and being a butterfly can convey richer connotations than being a mandarin duck. Since Zhuangzi on Wuqi recorded Zhuang Zhou's dream butterfly, there has been "I wonder if Zhou's dream is harmonious?" Hu Die's dream is Zhou Yu? Zhou he, there are still points. After this is called materialization, scholars often express their dreams by chanting butterflies in this canon, such as "Dreaming butterflies is not from Zhuang Zhou" (Yu Xin's "Quasi-chanting"), "Dreaming butterflies in Zhuang Zhou, the king's emperor is in love with cuckoos" (Jin Se by Li Shangyin). Therefore, the ending of become a butterfly, the soul of Han Ping and his wife, can imply that this is actually an impossible and beautiful dream, which reveals the cruelty of reality more profoundly and is more tragic and beautiful than the ending of become a butterfly. In addition, a careful analysis of the significance of Zhuang Zhou's "transformation" of butterflies shows that butterflies are not only the naturalization of human beings, but also the humanization and socialization of nature. In this state, nature is with man, and man's life is natural life, which is the highest aesthetic state achieved by China literati in the realm of harmony between man and nature and man's soul. In this profound aesthetic sense, the soul of Han Ping and his wife turned into a butterfly after their death, which also symbolizes the transcendence of life, which means the continuation of the endless life process and the constancy and beauty of their love will never disappear. The description of the story of Han Ping and his wife before the Song Dynasty focused on the plot development. The common feature of these stories is that the Song Dynasty captured Han Ping by building a memorial platform, and Han Ping committed suicide and died, which highlighted Han Ping's wife's cleverness and unswerving determination in love and did not pay special attention to chastity. For example, there are Na Hanping's Wife and Taking Han Feng as an Example in the chronicles of the Six Dynasties. Starting from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, scholars began to pay attention to the chastity and literary talent of Han Ping's wife when writing about Han Ping and his wife.
The story of Han Ping and his wife in Nine Kingdoms is quite different from the previous work;
Han Feng was the wife of He Shimei, the son of King Kang of Song Dynasty during the Warring States Period. Grasping the shed man to build Qingling Terrace, he wrote "Song of the Black Que" to see his ambition, so he hanged himself: "Nanshan has Wu, and Beishan has a plan; What can I do if I fly high? Black magpies fly in pairs and don't like the phoenix; My concubine is Shu Ren, and I don't like King Song. "
There are two obvious changes here: (1) From the context of "Wang Yuzhi" and "hanging suicide", Han Ping was saved by his wife's innocence. (2) For the first time, there appeared the plot of writing poems and seeing ambitions. These two changes were praised by later scholars. In order to praise Han Ping's wife's loyalty, Yang Qixian found a new way when he wrote Li Bai's "The Song of Bald Head", and adjusted the sequence of plot development as follows: Wang Yuzhi, arresting Han Ping to build a tomb platform → what poem to write → hanging himself → Han Ping died, and Han Ping's wife committed suicide first. Coincidentally, Zhang Zhixiang's "Tongguan New Edition" also adopted this kind of plot order, which shows that scholars began to pay more attention to women's chastity after the Song Dynasty. As a supplement to chastity, Han Ping's wife's literary talent-writing poems to see her ambition-began to be particularly talked about by literati.
Among the records about the stories of Han Ping and his wife before the Tang Dynasty, only the "ballads have been handed down to this day" in Search of Ji Shen shows that there are folk songs that record the stories of Han Ping and his wife. Eight simple and easy-to-remember poems in Han Peng Fu, namely, four sentences in the book and the book, "There is Wu in the south mountain, and nothing in the north mountain", and four sentences in the answer, "Birds flock, I don't like the phoenix, I don't like being a wife, and I don't like it", were crowned by the Records of Nine Kingdoms. Song Wangcun's Records of Nine Domains, Yuan Dynasty's Miscellaneous Notes on Chengzhai, Ming Fengweina's Records of Ancient Poems, Mei Dingzuo's Records of Ancient Music Gardens and Imperial Records, Zhong Xing's Poems of Famous Ladies, Ma Sanheng's Ancient Story Poems, Love History, Ming Tonglu and De Qian's Ancient Poems. Because the last four sentences are particularly relevant, the first four sentences, such as "Nanshan has Wu", have gradually become untitled "single". Yang Shen's "Elegant Style" in Ming Dynasty was named Song of Qing Lingtai at the beginning, and "Rain and Dew" was named Song of a Wife Answering a Husband. It can be seen that the so-called "Song of Qinglingtai", "Song of Wu Que" and "Song of Han Ping's wife answering her husband" all use "new topics" to set up "sentences", which is nothing new. However, after these poems were renamed, scholars in the Song and Yuan Dynasties were happy to quote them, such as Feng Weiner's "Ancient Poems", which took poetry as a matter and recorded Chinese as a solution; Another example is Zhong Xing's Poems of Celebrities, which introduces the life story of Han, an ancient poet and lyricist. In this way, compared with the description of poetry, the story of Han Ping and his wife actually retired to a relatively secondary position, so the literati did not pay much attention to the sequence and final outcome of the story when describing it, and the general appearance of the story became: Kang Wang built a platform to look forward to Han Ping's wife, and her wife hanged herself when writing poetry; Whether it is mentioned or not, Han Ping committed suicide as a prisoner. It can be seen that since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, scholars have attached great importance to the poetic talent of Han Ping's wife, and through the subtle changes in the order of writing poems and hanging, the anti-violence and chastity side of Han Ping's wife's character has been highlighted. In this way, the image of Han Ping's wife has a fierce female quality, just like Feng Menglong's "Love Over Qingling Terrace" said: Han Ping and his wife are a pair of love birds, and their feelings can be hurt since ancient times. Mo Daowei is strong and can seize ambition, and women hold feelings for the king.
Therefore, the records of Han Ping and his wife in Fengqiu County Records are classified as "Man" and "Zhen Lie" in Volume 6, and a monument like "Xi Stone Tomb" in Volume 2 was born. In the Qing Dynasty, Liu Kai's Biography of a Brave Woman also included the story of Han Ping and his wife in Volume 13, and sang: "Vote for Taiwan Province and refuse to be outstanding." God is connected with life, meaning embarrassment. "
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the popularity of Qinglingtai Pavilion and Wuque Pavilion among literati is inseparable from the literati's admiration for Han Ping's wife's chastity, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, when they were very happy to regard Han Ping's wife as an ideal woman with both ability and political integrity. The author believes that this phenomenon is inextricably linked with the concept of chastity and talented women in the Ming and Qing Dynasties:
First, after the Song and Yuan Dynasties, due to the influence of Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism, the concept of chastity gradually took root in people's hearts. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, due to the chastity concept of "one woman does not serve two husbands" and "one woman does not have two husbands" (Du Fan's Du Xianqing's Gong Ji (Volume 17), the world has a new perspective on the story of Han Ping and his wife. In the eyes of Ming and Qing dynasties, Han Ping's wife born to love, who died for love, is undoubtedly the best sample of the martyr's wife. Its significance is just as the comment in Poem The Return of Celebrities under the Song of Answering a Husband says, "The arrogance of the horse makes power flourish in the eternal defeat, and joy in sorrow". Scholars' cognition of the story of Han Ping and his wife still stays at the level of moral and ethical values.
Secondly, the traditional literati in China have always attached importance to learning, and since the Six Dynasties, they have formed a set of talented women's views, thinking that the ideal woman must have a poetic talent in addition to virtue. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, thinkers headed by Li Zhi strongly criticized the traditional moral concept of "women have virtue but no talent", and literary leaders headed by Qian also strongly praised women's talents, and specially set up a class of "Xiang Lian" in poems of past dynasties, which formed a trend of worshipping talented women in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Scholars have compiled a variety of female anthologies, not only collecting contemporary works, but also willing to conduct archaeology on the lost female texts in the past. For example, today we can see a relatively complete collection of Li Qingzhao, which is mostly due to the compilation work of scholars in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Under the influence of this concept of talented women, it is only natural that the literati continue to grow up in the inheritance of the stories of Han Ping and his wife, and the compilation of Han Ping's wife's poems in "Poems of Famous Ladies" is the best evidence.
Third, in the mid-Ming Dynasty, the political affairs of the dynasty became increasingly decadent, and the voice of getting rid of bad politics and rejuvenating the country became louder and louder. Related to this, literature in the middle of Ming Dynasty advocated retro, flaunted ancient prose, in order to get rid of the restriction of Zhu Cheng Neo-Confucianism and officialdom politics on literature and pursue natural and true emotional expression in literature. In terms of poetry, Li Mengyang, He Jingming, Li Panlong and Wang Shizhen, as representatives, spoke highly of the ancient poems of the Han and Wei Dynasties and the modern poems of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. Under the influence of this retro atmosphere, because of the long history, scholars are quite willing to quote these two poems and introduce them into various poetry works for the purpose of collecting ancient poems.
The story of Han Ping and his wife had a great influence in ancient times. In addition to poems and novels, there are also Yuan Zaju "Lienvqing Lingtai" (written by Yu Jifu) and Ming legend "Eleven Stories". The former is now lost, and its content is unknown. According to the summary of Quhai Catalogue, the latter was written out of thin air by Han Ping and his wife. Today, the stories of Han Ping and his wife are not well known, but in local operas, there are Sichuan opera Qinglingtai (also known as Yuanyang), the newly compiled Yue opera Acacia Tree, and the pingju Qinglingtai (also known as Qinglingdie), which are all written and performed according to the stories of Han Ping and his wife. The original book Search Ji Shen has been lost, and the current book Search Ji Shen was compiled by Hu Zhenheng in the late Ming Dynasty. The anecdotes of Han Ping and his wife recorded in this book can be found in the 40th volume of Wenyi Bao, 27th volume of Fayuan Zhu Lin (100), 3rd volume of North, 3rd volume of Lingyi, 559th volume, 925th volume and 22nd volume of Hai Lu Bao Shi.
"Send Yuan" was first recorded by Chao in the Southern Song Dynasty, and was extracted from "Zeng Lei Shuo". It is impossible to verify the authors, such as Jiao Lu in the late Tang Dynasty, Jiao Lu in the southern Qi Dynasty and Chao Shi, who think it is the mistake of Jiao Lu's poor puzzle garden. Mr. Li Jianguo thinks that judging from the notes in the book, it is between Liang and Chen. Twenty-eight lost articles were sorted out from Lei Shuo, Wu Junzhi, Su Shizhu History and Yongle Dadian. What happened to Han Ping and his wife can be found in Yongle Dadian (volume 1453).
The tomb of Han Ping's wife recorded in Hanshu is "What Tomb of Han Ping's Wife", which is different from the "Tomb of Han Feng's Wife" in the previous two chronicles, showing the differences in the names of Han Ping and his wife. According to Han Ping's wife's statement about "Xi Jia", Rong Zhaozu thinks that it originated from Han Peng Fu in Dunhuang in Ming Dynasty, which is suspected to be from Gao Xin's poem about Qing Lingtai. See Dunhuang Bianwen Papers, pages 654-655 for details.
For the publication of women's books in the Ming and Qing Dynasties and the praise of virtuous people, see Dong Jiazun's Research on the Ancient Marriage History of China (Guangdong People's Publishing House, 1995 Edition, 245-25 1 Page) and Yi Sheng's Marriage Custom Culture in China (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1994 Edition, 37/kloc). (1) Rong Zhaozu. Textual research on Han Fu Peng in Dunhuang [A]. Dunhuang Bianwen Paper Record [C].
② Huang Zheng, Zhang Yongquan. Collation of Dunhuang Bianwen [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1977.
③ Zhou Yutong. History of Confucian classics [M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1959.
4 Wang Beiping, Xia. Yang guang's miscellaneous notes [M] Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1985.
(5) First Edition of Series Integration [C]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1985.