Zhang Wanmin: A Cultural Study of the Book of Poetry in Western Sinology in the 20th Century

Author: Zhang Wanmin

Source: Fudan Journal" WeChat public account

The original article was published in Fudan Journal, No. 3, 2021

The Book of Poetry (Source: Xueyuan Jigu)

The Book of Poetry is not an ordinary collection of poems, but a musical text mainly used for the ceremonial ceremonies of the Zhou Dynasty, which carries the cultural system and cultural customs of the pre-Qin Dynasty. The study of the Book of Poetry from a cultural point of view is an important topic in the study of the Book of Poetry. The works of the Book of Poetry reflect not only the ritual culture of the nobles of the Zhou Dynasty, but also the early material culture and the agricultural civilization of the Central Plains, as well as the folk culture of the ancient era. This article will sort out the progress of Western sinology in the study of the Book of Poetry in the 20th century from the three perspectives of liturgical music culture, material culture and folk culture.

I. Study on the Liturgical Culture of the Book of Poetry

Since Zheng Xuan of the Eastern Han Dynasty said "Poetry", ancient Chinese scholars have accumulated profound accumulation in the discussion of the background of the "Book of Poetry" liturgical music. Modern scholars have also made further decisions from different perspectives. They may interpret the specific chapters of the Book of Poetry according to the background of Li Le, such as Wang Guowei's belief that the "Hao Tian has a destiny", "Wu", "Discretion", "Huan", "Zhao", and "Ban" in the "Zhou Song" are the songs of "Dawu" when Zhou Chengwang was king, or use the description of the "Book of Poetry" to confirm the etiquette system in the "Zhou Li" and "Li Ji", such as Shen Wenwei's use of "Daya Dry Foot", "Daya Tangpu", "Xiaoya Xinnan mountain", "Xiaoya Chutz" and other works to illustrate the procedural details such as "Chaojian" and "Irrigation Sacrifice" in the sacrifices of the Princes of Tianzi.

The study of the liturgical culture of the Book of Poetry in Western Sinology is not its forte, but in recent studies, it has shown a distinctive feature, that is, it pays special attention to the correspondence between the liturgical form and the textual form.

Edward L. Shaughnessy's essay "From Hymns to Literature: The Ritual Background of the Early Works of the Book of Poetry", combined with the textual form of the Zhou Song, the performance form of the ceremony, and the institutional form of bronze, demonstrates the consistency between the development of the form of ritual performance and the development of the form of poetic expression.

Xia Hanyi believes that the earliest works in the Book of Poetry, such as the "Wu", "Zhao", and "Huan" group poems of "Zhou Song", the "Min Yu Boy", "Visiting The Fall", and "Jingzhi" group poems, as well as the "Qing Temple", "The Destiny of Wei Tian", "Wei Qing", "Liewen", "Tianzuo", "Hao Tian you have a destiny", "I will", "Shi Mai", "Si Wen" and other poems, are all hymns and greetings sung by the participants of the ceremony and performed in dance. At the formal level, the word count and rhyming format of each line of these works are inconsistent; at the syntactic level, they use "its" as a modal verb to indicate "hope", which is very different from the situation after the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty when "its" is used as a third-person all-person pronoun; in wording, they use verbs such as "hui", "xi", "yi", "qiu" and other verbs to pray to the ancestors, and also use "I" to represent the plural of first-person pronouns. These textual features illustrate that such poems are performed together by ritual participants, in direct dialogue with ancestors.

By the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty (about the mid-to-late 10th century BC), another type of Zhou Song work emerged, reflecting a different form: performed by a specific representative, others no longer participating in the performance, but only as spectators of the ceremony. Such works include "Competition", "Youyan", "Zaimi", "Yan" and so on. In terms of textual form, these works have a relatively unified four-sentence pattern, have a unified rhyme, and the prayers that directly dialogue with the ancestors have completely disappeared, and the first and second person pronouns used to describe the ritual participants and ancestors have completely disappeared and become the third-person pronoun "厥". These works depict the rituals underway from a spectator perspective.

In the process of argumentation, Xia Hanyi cited the British sinologist and art historian Jessica Rawson's study of the changes in the shape of bronzes in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Lawson found that in the mid-to-late 10th century BC, there were major changes in the design of western Zhou bronzes: before that, in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, bronzes were small and delicate, requiring close observation by participants in ceremonial ceremonies, which showed that the ceremony at that time was held by a small group of people close to the bronzes; after this, that is, in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the bronzes were very large in scale and without exquisite decorations, which seemed to indicate that more people stood at a distance with respect to witness the ceremony, rather than personally participating in the ceremony. The change in the form of the western Zhou bronze system corresponded to a major change in the way ceremonial performances were performed at that time.

Xia Hanyi combined the changes in the text of the Book of Poetry with the changes in the shape of bronzes, and believed that the transformation of the formal characteristics of the above two types of poetry represented the transformation of the ceremonial system of the Western Zhou Dynasty. He points out that the early Western Zhou works of the Book of Poetry were performative poems, while the works after King Mu of Zhou (reigned 956-918 BC) were descriptive poems; this transformation, which coincides with archaeological evidence, reflects the great change in ritual ceremonies in the era of King Mu of Zhou.

Martin Kern's paper "The Book of Poetry as a Performing Text: A Case Study of Chutz" also advances the study of the text form and ritual context of the Book of Poetry through the formal characteristics of the verses, especially the use of rhymes and personal pronouns.

Ke Martin believes that the Book of Poetry was a repository of "cultural memory" in the Zhou Dynasty, and that the Book of Poetry had no fixed written text in the Zhou Dynasty, but only existed in oral performances. So, how is the "cultural memory" of the Zhou Dynasty, such as the Book of Poetry, understood and disseminated? Comartin believes that this relies mainly on a poetic form that reinforces the aesthetic effect. To prove this view, he analyzed in detail the formal characteristics of the Little Ya Chutz. He pointed out that the most prominent formal features of Chutz are twofold: one is the dense rhyme foot, and the other is the personal pronouns that appear suddenly and are not clearly referred to. The combination of these two points, that is, the combination of different rhymes and different personal pronouns, represents different sounds. That is to say, the changes in the rhyme of each chapter hint at the voices of different participants. The first three chapters of Chutz have the same rhymes, and they are all the voices of prayers. The fourth chapter is the most complex and has multiple voices, first the master of the offering speaks, then the officiant speaks, then the prayer speaker speaks on behalf of the gods to the descendants of the sacrifice, and the "er" in "Buerbuk" represents the tone of the prayer person speaking to the descendants. The last two chapters are farewells to the participants from all sides. For the fifth chapter of "the god is drunk, the imperial corpse is carried", Zhu Xi interpreted it as "the god is drunk and the corpse rises, and the corpse is sent and the god returns", Ke Martin put forward a different view: since the "imperial corpse" is an honorific, these two sentences should be to wish the prayer to speak to the corpse on behalf of his descendants, admitting that he has completed the task and can leave the throne. Finally, the words at the end of each chapter of the Chutz represent a guarantee of the success of the sacrifice.

Zhou Dynasty poetry, music and dance are one, and the Book of Poetry is an organic part of music and dance performances. However, Komartin further proposed that the works of the Book of Verses were not only used in the performance, describing the performance, but also stipulating the performance ceremony from the outside. That is to say, these poems have both descriptive and prescriptive functions. "Chutz" is the best example. The "Preface to Mao's Poems" thought that "Chutz" was "Thorny King" and "Gentleman Sigu", while most scholars after the Song Dynasty thought that "Chutz" only described the procedure of sacrifice. Comartin points out that these two seemingly different interpretations are not contradictory, and that Chutz is both part of a ritual performance and a normative description of the ideal order.

Looking at The Whole Ofcomartin, there is actually a fundamental belief that the formal characteristics of the text are very important. He argues that it is precisely the formal features and aesthetic structures that distinguish the performative text from everyday language. Specifically, the ritual language of the Performing Text, the Book of Verses, is always self-referential in form, indicating that rituals will ultimately be self-fulfilling and unquestionable. This textual form, reproducing and ensuring the hierarchical system of society, can ultimately strengthen the stability and continuity of religious and social traditions.

Xia Hanyi and Ke Martin's papers are based on the meticulous analysis of the text characteristics and language forms of the Book of Poetry, including the changes in rhymes, the changes in personal pronouns, and the corresponding role changes, which reflects the more representative perspectives and methods of Western sinologists in the study of the Book of Poetry. In fact, Chinese scholars have not ignored the relationship between the ritual music system and the textual form of the Book of Poetry, such as Wang Guowei's "Saying of the Zhou Song" with "the complexity of the liturgical text" and "the sound slowness" to explain the phenomenon that the Zhou Song does not rhyme and does not divide chapters. In particular, recent scholars' research has paid more attention to the relationship between the rhythmic form of the Book of Poetry and the cultural background of liturgical music.

Western sinologists are also good at studying the Book of Poetry from the perspective of anthropology and comparative culture, such as exploring the musical form of the Book of Poetry from the comparison of the musical traditions of different nationalities and cultures.

Although Song Ru (such as Cheng Dachang and others) and Qing Ru (such as Ma Ruichen and others) paid attention to distinguishing between "Wind", "Ya", and "Ode" from the nature of music, modern scholars Gu Jiegang, Wei Jiangong and others have debated the relationship between the "Book of Poetry" and the song, and Yang Yinliu summarized the ten different styles of songs of the two types of songs, "Guofeng" and "Ya", but due to the limitations of the form of musical notation, ancient music is difficult to record and preserve, which limits the development of in-depth research. Therefore, it is more difficult to study the musical form of the Book of Verses than to study the context of the liturgical music of the Book of Verses.

The scholar who contributed the most to the study of the musical form of the Book of Poetry in the 20th century was the British sinologist Laurence Ernest Rowland Picken (1909-2007). Bi Haoben is a biologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and has shown great musical talent since childhood. In 1944, as a member of the British Scientific Mission, he was sent to China by the British government. During his stay in China, he was instructed by the Dutchman Robert Hans van Gulik (1910-1967) and became popular with the famous Chinese guqinists Cha Fuxi (1895-1976), Pei Tiexia (1884-1950) and others, thus beginning his study of ancient Chinese music and establishing his special status in the field of sinology. Bi Hao's achievements in the study of ancient Chinese music mainly focus on Tang Dynasty music. At the same time, he also made in-depth research on the lyrical texts and tunes of the Book of Poetry from a musical point of view. Feng Depei (1907-1995), a native of Zhejiang who later became a famous neurophysiologist, used his Chinese to read the Book of Poetry to him while he was a classmate at Cambridge University with Bi Heng. This may be the beginning of Bi Hao's association with the Book of Poetry.

Bi Hao studied the musical form of the Book of Poetry, mainly based on the results of two scholars. The first was Zhu Xi, a Song dynasty. In the "General Interpretation of the Rites and Rites", Zhu Xi reconstructed the melody score for the twelve works of the Book of Poetry, that is, the "Twelve Poetry Notations of Fengya", based on the gaga music seen at that time. These twelve poems are "Lu Ming", "Four Oysters", "Emperor Erhua", "Yuli", "Nan Youjiayu", "Nanshan Youtai" in the "Xiaoya" part, and "Guan Ju", "Ge Qin", "Curly Ear", "Que Nest", "Cai Xuan", and "Cai" in the "Guofeng" part. In a 1956 paper, Bi Heng reconstructed the musical form of these twelve poems in the form of modern musical notation. The second was the North American sinologist W. Yusheng .D. A.C. H. Dobson, 1913-1982). Du Yusheng's monograph "The Language of the Book of Poetry" and his thesis "The Origin and Development of Ancient Chinese Poetic Rhythmology" published in 1968 summarized the language and prosody forms of the Book of Poetry, and deduced the development process from "Zhou Song" to "Daya" to "Xiaoya" to "National Style", believing that the transition from prose to poetry was presented.

Zhu Xi's reconstructed poetry score provided basic materials for Bi Hao; Du Yusheng's study of the language of the Book of Poetry provided bi Hao with basic angles and methods. Du Yusheng's study of the phenomenon of the repetition of verses in the Book of Poetry gave Bi Hao the greatest inspiration. The so-called verse re-seeing not only refers to the overlapping chapters within the same poem, but also refers to the phenomenon of overlapping verses between different poems, which is different from the idiom and idiom phenomenon in the "Book of Poetry" summarized by Wang Guowei, Qu Wanli and others. For the phenomenon of the revival of verses in the Book of Poetry, except for Du Yusheng, almost no one has done systematic research before the 1970s. In 1974, the Taiwanese scholar Pei Puyan conducted a relatively comprehensive study of this; in the same year, Wang Jingxian (C.H.Wang, 1940-2020), who taught at the University of Washington in the United States, officially published his doctoral dissertation under the title of "Bells and Drums: The Phrases of the Book of Poetry and Their Creation Methods". In contrast, Wang Jingxian used the theory of "oral poetics" of american scholars Milman Parry (1902-1935) and Albert B. Lord (1912-1991) to study the phenomenon of verse re-seeing in the Book of Poetry from the perspective of oral clichés, overturning the view of Du Yusheng and others that verse re-seeing is only a borrowed verse, which had a greater impact.

However, the phenomenon of the repetition of verses in the Book of Poetry is only the starting point of Bi Hao, whose purpose is different from that of Du Yusheng, Wang Jingxian and others, and what he wants to study is the musical form of the Book of Poetry. Unfortunately, when Bi Hao studied the Book of Poetry, he had not yet seen Wang Jingxian's works, and he completely relied on Du Yusheng's views, which brought certain limitations to his research.

In 1969, Bi Heng published "The Musical Meaning of the Phenomenon of Verse Re-seeing in the Book of Poetry", rethinking the phenomenon of verse re-seeing in the Book of Poetry from a musical point of view. He pointed out that the musical sentences in the Book of Verses can be divided into three positions, according to their musical function in the whole chapter, into the beginning, middle, and end, and those that are rediscovered are only occasionally the same in notes, but always the same in the position of appearance. He argues that this phenomenon has "no apparent semantic justification" but merely reflects the nature of the verses of the Book of Verses. At the same time, Bi argues that due to the limited number of phrases composed of quarter notes, this "facilitates the borrowing between the phrases", and the borrowing of the phrases "in turn promotes the borrowing of verses".

In 1977, Bi Heng published a more detailed research article entitled "The Morphology of the Lyric Text of the Book of Poetry and Its Musical Meaning". He made a statistical table based on the length of verses and the frequency of verses, and pointed out that the lyrical text of the Book of Poetry has four forms: the first is a miscellaneous form that is not divided into verses and rhymes, represented by the Zhou Song, including some of the Shang Song; the second is divided into chapters but each chapter has a different rhythm; the third is the form of few verses and many verses; and the fourth is the third kind of simplified form. There is not much novelty about this observation. However, based on the erroneous guidance of Du Yusheng and the Australian sinologist Noel Barnard (1922-2016), Bi Heng believed that Daya and Xiaoya were "the true earliest Zhou Dynasty texts", and that "Ode" was a work of the late Zhou Dynasty. However, the formal characteristics of the text prompted Bi Hao to revise this view in a subtle way, arguing that the Zhou Song actually embodied "a real song style belonging to the early Western Zhou Dynasty", "reflecting an ancient tradition", and "could not be a new literary style created out of thin air in the late Zhou Dynasty". Thus, he argues that the first form represented by the Zhou Song "reproduces the true memory of an ode in the form of a prayer", that the Shang Ode is an "imaginary play" of the Zhou Ode, and that the Zhou Ode, the Shang Song, and the Lu Song differ in form, reflecting the different traditions of three different cultures, even ethnic groups.

The greatest value of Bi Hao's article lies in the analogy between the musical form of the Book of Poetry and music from all over the world. He examines the tempo and rhythmic forms of the lyrical text of the Book of Poetry from the two factors of verse length and verse frequency. He proposed several principles, such as the four-syllable verses that dominate the Book of Verses, representing four equal units of musical measure, or four beats, which are sung according to a strict length of time. He went on to point out that the melodic pattern reconstructed according to Zhu Xi's "Twelve Poetic Notations of Fengya" is consistent with the ritual tune reconstructed by the Ming Dynasty Zhu Zaiyu. This ritual tune also exists in the Taoist red-headed mantras and Teochew folk songs that can be seen today, as well as in folk songs and ritual songs in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and throughout Eurasia and North Africa. At the same time, judging from the Chu Shuai unearthed at that time, the beat of the eight syllables is also very common, which is the superposition of two four-syllables, becoming a "functional unit". This form of rhythm is common in Sanskrit poetry, the Avestan Hymns to Mithra of the Avestan Sutra (the Zoroastrian classics of ancient Persia), ancient Christian hymns, and Folk songs of the Arab Bedouin tribes. The superposition of two four-syllables became a common form of borrowing verses from the Book of Verses, forming a "patchwork" style similar to the form of Byzantine chant.

Bi Heng mentioned the relationship between the musical form of the Book of Poetry and the cultures of different ethnic groups, but he did not discuss it more. More than twenty years later, Chen Zhi's "The Formation of the Book of Poetry: From Ceremonialization to Secularization" has made a more comprehensive and in-depth examination and elaboration of this issue with rich archaeological data. The book was originally the author's doctoral dissertation in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, USA, and was completed in 1999. After revision, it was officially published in 2007 at the Chinese Academic Journal Publishing House in Germany. It was subsequently translated into Chinese in 2009 and published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House.

From the perspective of musical culture, Chen Zhi examines the history of the formation of the Book of Poetry and its corresponding historical background. He reinterpreted the principles of the classification of "South", "Wind", "Elegance" and "Ode" in the Book of Poetry, the musical background behind this classification, and the political and cultural background of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. He pointed out that the original meaning of "nan" is the nascent bamboo, and the descendants guide the music bell of the party, and then refer to the musical style with southern colors; "wind" was originally a synonym for ordinary orchestral instruments, and then referred to the musical asanas with local colors; "Ya" is "Xia", which is a cultural concept created by the Zhou people in the process of confrontation with Yin Shang, the Zhou people call their own culture "Ya" or "Xia", and the music and musical instruments of the Zhou people are also called "Ya" or "Xia", such as the Yong Bell or Button Clock dedicated to the Zhou Dynasty nobles; "Ode" The original meaning of the Shang Dynasty is the Shang Dynasty's music bell "Yong", is the Yin Shang nobles in the sacrifice, feast special instruments, but also refers to the sacrifice of music, dance, music and dance forms accompanied by music, dance, music and dance, this kind of Music and Dance later through the Transformation of the Zhou people, evolved into the "Three Odes".

In fact, the classification theory of musical styles of the Song dynasty Zheng Qiao, Wang Qian, and Cheng Dachang has long pointed out that the classification of the Book of Poetry corresponds to different musical instruments and musical styles. However, Chen Zhi further proposed on the basis of the Song people's theory of musical styles: the arrangement and classification of the Book of Poetry is not only based on different musical styles, but also has regional factors. The distinction between "Ya" and "Ode" has a major geopolitical background behind it, which reflects how the Shang and Zhou peoples culturally confronted, integrated and developed in the regime change at the time of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Centered on the Zhou Dynasty ritual music system reflected in the Book of Poetry, Chen Zhi proposed the "Three Changes of Yale". The first change occurred around the time of King Wu of Zhou's destruction of the Shang, and the Zhou people were influenced by the musical culture of the Yin Shang, learning from the advanced musical culture of the Yin people while transforming it to highlight the independence of their own culture. In the process, the Zhou people created their own musical instruments (such as the Yong Bell), as well as their own musical works and asanas (Daya, Xiaoya). After the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the once highly developed late Shang music culture showed signs of stagnation and decline. The second change occurred after the eastward migration of The Ping King, "Ya" and "Xia" expanded from the Zhou Dynasty to the Central Plains, various music influenced each other, instruments and music systems became diversified, and from ceremonial to secular. The third change occurred in the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period, the Zhou Chamber declined, and the folk music of various countries gradually replaced the "Ya" music, and a "new sound" appeared, and this "new sound" was actually a reproduction of some of the late Shang music culture.

The biggest feature of Chen Zhi's book is the breakthrough in research methods. He adopts a multi-perspective and interdisciplinary research method, combining music archaeology, ethnomusicology with traditional paleography, exegesis and philology, revealing the different classifications of the Book of Poetry corresponding to different instruments and musical styles from different cultures from the perspective of music archaeology, and revealing the cultural background and political background behind the classification of musical styles of the Book of Poetry from the perspective of ethnomusicology.

Although the Western sinology community has recently shown a new look of development in the study of the musical culture of the Book of Poetry, Bi Hao's work of the Blue Wisp of the Yanlu Road is of great significance and has always had a far-reaching impact. The American sinologist Kenneth J. DeWoskin's monograph "Music and China's Early Artistic Concepts" is based on the Jizha Guan Le contained in the Zuo Zhuan and outlines the performance of the Book of Poetry. Du Zhihao pointed out that there is very little information about the actual performance of the Book of Poetry, so his discussion is completely based on Bi Heng's research. However, he also quoted a chime unearthed from the tomb of Marquis Zeng Yi in Suixian County, Hubei Province in 1978, which Bi Hao had not seen before, to supplement Bi Hao's research.

II. Study on the Material Culture of the Book of Poetry

In addition to reflecting the cultural tradition of lilly culture, which belongs to the spiritual level, the Book of Poetry also reflects the material culture of the ancient period and the agricultural civilization at that time. Chinese scholars have done a lot of research in this regard. For example, Guo Moruo used the crops, field tools, and especially iron tools described in the Book of Poetry to argue the progress of the Zhou people in agricultural civilization. Yang Zhishui's study of the famous objects of the Book of Poetry represents a new achievement in the recent study of the material culture of the Book of Poetry.

Perhaps because the study of famous objects in the Book of Poetry requires extremely deep and extensive knowledge of Chinese culture, there are few specialized research works in western sinology circles.

Due to the importance of the Book of Poetry as a singing text, some Western scholars have preliminarily sorted out the knowledge of musical instruments in the Book of Poetry. The American musicologist Walter Kaufmann (1907-1984), in his compilation of "Musical Literature in Chinese Classics", collected and translated the musical literature in the "Four Books" and "Five Classics", and systematically explained various ancient Chinese instruments and musical terms. The title page of the book has three Chinese characters for "Treatise on the Book of Music", or the title of the book Chinese the author has set for the book. Kaufmann compiled poems or verses involving various instruments and musical performances from the Book of Verses, and specifically divided the interpretation of musical instrument terminology in the book to further explain the shape, origin and use of various instruments. The poems collected in the book are selected from the twenty-nine poems of the Book of Poetry, and are arranged basically according to the order of the Mao Poems, including Guan Ju, Lin Zhi Toe, Drumming, Jian Xi, Ding Zhi Fang Zhong, Junzi Yangyang, Female Yue Chicken Ming, Shan Youfu Su, Xuan Xi, Shan You Shu Shu, Che Lin, Wanqiu from Xiao Ya, Lu Ming, Chang Di, Logging, Tong Bow, Cai Shu, He Ren Si, Drum Bell, Che Hu, Bing Chu Feast, Lingtai from Daya, XingWei, and XingWei from Daya. Volume A", "Board", there are "Youyi", "Zhijing", "Youfeng", "That" from the "Three Odes".

In the material culture of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, those who had a direct relationship with daily life, in addition to musical instruments, were food utensils. At that time, all kinds of wine utensils and eating utensils occupied a very important position, and even became the core element of the Zhou people's ritual music system, which is vividly described in the Book of Poetry.

The Long-time American scholar Kwang-chih Chang (1931-2001), a chinese scholar who has been teaching in the United States, has an article titled "Diet and Eating Utensils in Ancient China", quoting the descriptions in the Book of Poetry and Chu Ci to discuss food and feasting in the pre-Qin era. Originally published in 1973, it was included in the 1976 collection of essays, Early Chinese Civilization: An Anthropological Perspective, and Chinese edition in The Bronze Age of China. In this article, Zhang Guangzhi quotes verses from "Xiaoya 頍弁" and "Xiaoya Logging" to prove the emotion of giving and sharing during feasts and drinks in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The Book of Poetry became the most important source for anthropologist Zhang Guangzhi. In his discussion of the origin of sacrifice and the relationship between food, he quotes daya shengmin as the whole poem, arguing that the sacrifice depicted in the poem is centered on cereal food, in contrast to the book of Rites and Fortunes, which depicts cooked meat as the center, which he points out is a mixture of the traditions of two different classes or peoples.

In addition to eating utensils and musical instruments, agricultural utensils in the ancient period and the material conditions for agricultural development are also important topics in the study of ancient history and culture. Chinese scholars of the Book of Poetry often use poems such as "Feng Feng And July" to explore various details of agricultural life in the pre-Qin era. Western sinologists also often used these poems to explore early agricultural civilizations. However, it is worth mentioning that the agricultural civilization and natural environment in the Central Plains of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties reflected in the Book of Poetry once aroused controversy between He Bingdi and Zhang Guangzhi and others.

Ping-ti Ho (1917-2012), a Chinese historian who taught in the United States, published the book "Cradle of the Orient" in 1975 to refute the popularity of Chinese civilization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which deeply studied the paleo-natural environment in northern China and took the distribution of vegetation recorded in the Book of Poetry as direct evidence, combined with the latest scientific discoveries of the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, it was found that the artemisia spore pollen preserved in the loess layer of North China was far more than the pollen of trees, and the species of mugwort plants recorded in the Book of Poetry were far more than other plants, and their occurrence was only slightly inferior to that of mulberry plants. He Bingdi believes that this evidence proves that the loess area in the era of the Book of Poetry has always been a semi-arid grassland. Prior to the publication of Cradle of the Orient, He Bingdi had come to the same conclusion in his 1969 Chinese book, The Origin of Loess Soil and Chinese Agriculture, classifying all the natural plants recorded in the Book of Poetry. In fact, Cradle of the East is a further elaboration of the relevant arguments in Loess and the Origin of Chinese Agriculture.

He Bingdi's reliance on the Book of Poetry to prove that ancient North China had a semi-arid plateau climate has been criticized by some scholars, including Richard Person, an anthropologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and Li Huilin (1911-2002), a professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. However, the main criticism of He Bingdi may come from Zhang Guangzhi. Zhang Guangzhi believes that although mugwort plants are very important for judging the climate, relying on the plant information in the Book of Poetry does not explain the problem, and from the thirty-nine poems describing the Anyang area, they actually reflect a climate with green trees, lush green bamboo, and abundant water sources, such as "Wei Feng Qi'ao", "Wei Feng Bamboo Pole", "Wei Feng Shuoren", "Shao Feng Drum" and other works.

Zhang Guangzhi's controversy with He Bingdi stems from their different positions in judging the ancient natural environment and farming methods of Northern China. In Zhang Guangzhi's articles in the last stages of his life, as well as in the memoirs written by He Bingdi in his later years, he still remembers the controversy between them about the ancient natural environment in North China.

In addition to directly studying the famous objects and material culture in the Book of Poetry, western scholars have tried to sort out the history of the study of famous objects in the Ancient Chinese Book of Poetry. Achim Mittag, a professor in the Department of Sinology at the University of Tübinge in Germany, has published a paper entitled "Familiarity with the Natural World in Poetry: A Study of Birds, Animals, Plants and Trees in the Song Dynasty Poetry Classics", which discusses the study of famous objects in the Poetry Classics of the Song Dynasty. Min Dao'an regarded Wang Anshi and Zheng Qiao as representatives of two opposing theories of Song Dynasty poetic classics, arguing that the former inherited Ouyang Xiu's views and emphasized the principle of "one morality" in the interpretation of the Book of Poetry, while the latter opposed the principle of "righteousness" in the interpretation of the Book of Poetry and emphasized the study of the "situation" of the Book of Poetry itself. Under the impetus of these two theories of the interpretation of the Book of Poetry, the study of birds, animals, plants and trees in the Book of Poetry gradually developed into a specialized study in the Song Dynasty. The principle of "one morality" represented by Wang Anshi is orthodox, and Zheng Qiao tries to use the principle of "situation" to liberate birds, beasts, grasses, and trees from the traditions of Mao, Zheng, and Erya, emphasizing the interpretation of the birds, beasts, plants, and trees in the Book of Poetry from the perspective of a farmer or hermit. Min Dao'an believes that these two perspectives represent the opposition between the learning of scholars in the dynasty and the learning of scholars in the opposition. In conclusion, however, he pointed out that these two opposing views, both revolving around similar problems, failed to develop the scientific spirit of the West that studied birds, animals, plants and trees.

III. Research on folk culture of the Book of Poetry

In addition to reflecting the liturgical and material culture of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the Book of Poetry also reflects the early folk culture. Myths and legends from ancient times are an important part of folk culture. Sarah Allan, an American scholar who has long taught in Britain, once quoted "Shang Song Xuan Bird" to discuss the myth of the origin of Yin Shang. Chen Zhi also quoted "Shang Song Xuan Bird" to discuss Yin Shang's Xuan Bird worship. The British scholar Anne Birrell used "Daya Shengmin" to study the legends of Houji and the myth of sentimentality.

However, for the study of the folk culture of the Book of Poetry in western sinology circles, Chinese readers may be most familiar with the works of the French scholar Marcel Granet (1884-1940). Glen Yan studied the cultural customs of the Book of Poetry from a sociological and anthropological point of view, and influenced the research of the Japanese scholar Shirakawa Shizumi and others, as well as the English translation of the Book of Poetry by the British scholar Arthur Waley (1889-1966).

In fact, long before Glen Yan, the 19th-century French sinologist M. Edouard Biot, 1803 ~ 1850), who has studied the social customs of the "Book of Poetry" era, believes that to examine the civilization and customs of a nation, it is difficult to find a clear description from the regular history books, it is better to study folk tales and folk songs, which may be more rewarding. In his 1919 French book Festivals and Ballads of Ancient China, Glen Yan further applied the emerging methods of cultural anthropology to the study of love songs in the Book of Poetry and ancient Chinese customs and culture.

Ge Lanyan regards the love songs in "National Style" as the product of competition and singing at the gathering of rural men and women in ancient China, and he pays special attention to the value of the folk marriage ceremony itself reflected in these love songs, and the transition from folk ceremony to official sacrifice celebration. In search of the ritual details hidden in the Book of Verses, he objected to any method of interpretation of symbols. "We can go beyond simple literary and symbolist interpretations to discover the original meaning of these poems," he said. He made several rules for reading The National Style, one of which was to "discard all those interpretations that symbolize or imply the poet's 'subtle righteousness.'" The "symbolic interpretation" and "small-tongued interpretation" mentioned by Glen Yan are mainly aimed at traditional Confucian interpretations since Mao Chuan and Zheng Ji. Although Glen Yan also uses terms such as "symbol" and "metaphor" in his specific discussion, because he emphasizes that the mountains and trees in the "National Wind" are the actual reflection of the scenes of folk festivals and ritual forms, he does abandon the symbolic interpretation of the Book of Poetry. He even goes so far as to say that the "technique of the Book of Verses is entirely spontaneous", that "there are almost no metaphors and metaphors", and that "poetry merely reproduces the correspondence between things". For Glen Yan, the importance of the imagery of the Book of Verses does not lie in its symbolic significance, but only in that it "inscribes the correspondence between natural phenomena and the actual existence of human habits."

The chinese scholar Wen Yiduo's study of the folk culture of the Book of Poetry has had a very far-reaching influence on Chinese scholars, and he is extremely close to Glen Yan in terms of methods and approaches. However, there is no evidence of a direct academic relationship between Wen Yiduo and Glen Yan. Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between Wen Yiduo and Glenn Yan, that is, Wen Yi Duo attaches great importance to the various metaphors and symbolisms of the imagery of the Book of Poetry, while Glen Yan rejects any symbolic interpretation.

When we turn our attention to the Western Sinology community, we will find that the research paradigm of Glen Yan has a far-reaching influence in Europe, but in recent years, the American Sinology community has been criticized and questioned. When some American sinologists study the folk culture of the Book of Poetry, they are more willing to accept Wen Yiduo's method of focusing on the symbolism of the Book of Poetry.

Chow Tse-tsung (1916-2007), a Chinese scholar at the University of Wisconsin, published a 1978 paper titled "Fertility Myths and Ancient Chinese Medicine: A Study of witch traditions", which studied fertility and marriage rituals in ancient times, which was originally collected in David. In the Collected Essays on Ancient China edited by T. Roy) and Qian Cunxun, which was later expanded by the author and rewritten in Chinese, it was included in the author's Chinese monograph "Ancient Witch Doctors and the Examination of the "Six Poems": Exploring the Sources of Chinese Romantic Literature", which constituted the first and middle parts of the book.

In his 1968 article "Poetry Character Ancient Yi kao", Zhou Cezhong had pointed out that the ancient toe word "stop" was often mixed with the root of the words "grass" and "sheng", a phenomenon related to the birth myth believed by the ancient Zhou people, that is, the belief that trampling on footprints could bring birth. The article "Fertility Myths and Ancient Chinese Medicine" actually developed from this argument. Half of the text (i.e., the part on fertility myths) revolves mainly around the Book of Verses. Through the relevant verses of the Book of Poetry and various pre-Qin materials, Zhou Cezhong hopes to further prove that the symbolic trampling of the soil with his feet, and the resulting dance, the purpose of which is to seek fertility, which is the ancient suburban ritual and gaozheng ceremony.

Zhou Cezhong's argument first began with "Qi Feng Nanshan". Zhou Cezhong retranslated the poem after referring to the English translations of Li James, Wei Li, Gao Benhan, Pound, and others, because he believed that these translators had misunderstood the poem. The Preface to the Poem considers the poem to be a satire on the "bird and beast trip" of Qi Xianggong and his sister Wen Jiang's adultery, and neither Wei Li nor Gao Benhan accepted this moralized explanation. Willy translated the last two sentences of each chapter into affirmations, which became general admonitions. Gao Benhan believes that this poem is only about a woman from the State of Qi going to the Country of Lu to get married, and her lover is sad because of the loss of her, and the last two sentences of each chapter are talking about the man's thoughts and sorrows.

Zhou Cezhong believes that the last two sentences of the chapters of Qi Feng Nanshan are not so much "missing and sad" as they are closer to the affair between Qi Xianggong and Wen Jiang, because he sees the symbol of sex in it. Zhou Cezhong's interpretation of the symbolic meaning of this poem is very reasonable, but it seems slightly far-fetched to sit on the fact that this poem is written by Qi Xianggong and Wen Jiang.

Of course, what is more important is the word "Ge Di" in the poem, which is the real entry point of Zhou Cezhong. He believes that "Ge Yan Wu Two" is a physical object used in the pro-qin wedding ceremony, which may be one of the attires when Wen Jiang and Lu Huangong were married. However, Ge Tu grass shoes are only worn in the summer, and they are not valuable, why should we use Ge Di instead of leather in the wedding? Zhou Ce further examined that Ge's role stemmed from its symbolic significance. Ge Di was sent from the man's house to the woman's house, and then let the bride trample on it. Because kudzu is a vine-like plant that can spread, it is often used in the Book of Verses to symbolize marriage, reproduction, and reproduction. Trampling on Ge Di in the greeting ceremony symbolizes marriage or childbirth, which is in line with the psychology of the ancestors to pray for the continuation of heirs and the reproduction of the population. Therefore, the "entanglement of Ge Jie, can be frosted" in "Wei Feng Ge Jie", as well as other related verses, are related to marriage and childbirth. Starting from "walking frost", Zhou Cezhong then examined the relationship between the ancient marriage date and frost and dew, and believed that frost was related to marriage.

It can be seen that the focus of Zhou Ce's article is to prove the symbolic significance of trampling on Ge Di and its relationship with marriage. Zhou Cezhong then quotes the poem "Emperor Wumin" in the Daya Shengmin, believing that this is also a related trampling ceremony, a sacrifice for fertility. This kind of divine corpse practice of martial arts may be the dance of "Dawu" mentioned in the "Li ji Suburb special animals", symbolizing fertility. This kind of ritual involves the ancient "suburban 禖", and related poems include "Shang Song Xuan Bird". Zhou Cezhong ultimately hoped to prove that the rituals in the pro-greeting ceremony were the same as those recorded in the Daya Shengmin, and that their symbolic significance was related to the expectation of reproduction. However, the records of these ancient rituals have undergone the moralization and idealized interpretation of Confucianism in the early Han Dynasty, which requires modern researchers to carefully distinguish and examine.

Zhou Cezhong's "Fertility Myths and Ancient Chinese Medicine", quoted by the side, combines literature research and glyph meaning analysis. However, the research idea of this article is not so much influenced by Glen Yan as it is influenced by Wen Yiduo. Because Zhou Cezhong is similar to Wen Yiduo, he pays more attention to the symbolism of the imagery of the Book of Poetry, and reveals the ancient concept of marriage and love from the perspective of symbolism rather than the actual scene.

In Xia Hanyi's article "Why Female Poets Eventually Burned the Royal Family", it is possible to see more clearly the choice between some American sinologists between Glen Yan and Wen Yiduo. Xia Hanyi points out that the ethnographic analysis of the Book of Poetry is important, but the Gramste rejects any symbolism, which is an excessive literalism. In contrast, Wen Yiduo's research has seen ubiquitous symbolism in the Book of Poetry, which is more enlightening. In particular, Wen Yiduo's revelation of the relationship between fish and sex in the Book of Poetry was completely accepted by Xia Hanyi.

From this point of view, Xia Hanyi began to reinterpret "Zhou Nan Ru Tomb". Mao Xu interpreted this poem as follows: "The transformation of King Wen is the kingdom of Ru Tomb, and the woman can be a gentleman, and she can be encouraged to be righteous." Modern scholars have been inspired by Wen Yiduo to interpret this poem as a woman's longing for her lover, especially the sentence "Sorrow is like hunger" has a clear sexual meaning. These modern interpretations, Xia Hanyi completely agreed. But the problem is that the final chapter, "The Bream Tail, the Royal Family Like the Flame, although it is like the Flame, the Parents Kong Xuan", has provoked a variety of different interpretations.

As for why the bream is red-tailed, the explanation of the "Mao Biography" is "fish labor is tail red", Zheng Xuan further explained: "Gentlemen are in a chaotic world, and their color is thin and sick, such as fish labor is tail red". The British sinologist Welley also gave a political explanation for this when translating the Book of Verses in English, saying that the fish with a bleeding tail was a symbol of the decline of the dynasty. Wen Yiduo's student Sun Zuoyun, based on Wen Yiduo's revelation, proposed that some fish will turn red in the spring to attract the opposite sex. Wen Yiduo and Sun Zuoyun's explanation, Xia Hanyi basically accepted. But why is there a sentence next: "The royal family is like a fire"? Wen Yiduo didn't explain much about this, just mentioning that "royal family" may refer to members of the royal family. Scholars such as Sun Zuoyun and Chen Bingliang made more specific explanations. They believe that the "royal family" represents the ancestral temples, because these temples are only inhabited when the ancestors are worshipped, and they are usually empty, so they become an ideal place for secret parties. Chen Bingliang also pointed out that these temples are in the family residence annex, that is, "parents Kong Xuan", so even if the enthusiasm is "like a fire", it is necessary to be vigilant against parents who are not far away.

Xia Hanyi questioned this: while the whole poem had maintained the tone of the folk love song, the final chapter suddenly appeared with the royal family, which seemed very contradictory. A better explanation is needed for the royal imagery to enter the poem, so as to remove the last obstacle to our acceptance of Wen Yiduo's interpretation. To remove this last obstacle, Xia Hanyi pointed out that the word "Wang" here was written close to the word "jade" from the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, while in the same period, the word "jade" was written instead as "wang". He further proposed that at least since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, "jade" has been used to euphemistically express the genitals, "jade stem" actually refers to the penis, and "jade door" or "jade household" in the Su Nü Jing actually refers to the vulva. Although no information has been found to use "jade chamber" to denote female genitalia, the Su Nü Jing once used "Zhu Chamber" to refer to the vagina. Xia Hanyi speculated that when the Book of Poetry was not yet finalized, "royal family" actually referred to "jade room", which was later interpreted as "royal family" intentionally or unintentionally. Xia Hanyi thus came to a bold conclusion: the "bream" of Akao refers to the bulging penis, representing the returning gentleman; the "jade chamber" of "Ru Zhen" refers to the "jade gate", symbolizing the fiery sexual desire of the female poet. In this interpretation, the last chapter, like the first two chapters, has both the image of a gentleman and the image of the female poet back to the center of the poem. The Confucians, who were responsible for copying the poem, realized that the image of the "Jade Chamber" was dangerous, and wanted to inject political and moral meaning into the poem, so they achieved their goal by changing the method of teaching without changing the glyph shape, they did not change the ancient glyph of the word "jade", but directly read it as "king", and the passionate female poet was replaced by a member of the royal family.

It can be seen that Xia Hanyi mainly borrowed Wen Yiduo's method of explaining the symbolism of fish from the perspective of sex. His explanation of the last chapter of Zhou Nan Ru Tomb is more vivid and bold than that of Wen Yiduo and Sun Zuoyun. Such an explanation may not be acceptable to everyone. Perhaps for this reason, this article was not officially published in any journal, but was directly included in the collection of papers entitled "Before Confucius: A Study on the Birth of Chinese Classics". Xia Hanyi himself said: "This interpretation may be wrong (which is why this article is the only article in the collection that has not been officially published before). But he further said: "But this interpretation makes this poem seem more interesting to me, and I hope it will make the reader find the poem interesting." ”

Building on Xia's research, Paul R. Goldin further examines the imagery and metaphors of sexuality in the Book of Poetry, and the religious and cultural context behind them. Jin Pengcheng's study of the sexual culture of the Book of Poetry emphasizes the religious and even political allegory in it, so it also relies more on the symbolic interpretation method of Wen Yiduo, completely abandoning The practice of Ge Lanyan's literal interpretation of the folk rituals of the Book of Poetry.

Jin Pengcheng's related research can be found in his 1999 article "The Image of Friendship in Early Chinese Poetry". He points out at the beginning of the article that modern scholars often ignore or underestimate the symbolism of the sexual imagery of the Book of Poetry, which is actually a very important aspect of early Chinese texts. He used Wen Yiduo's article "Talking fish" as a basis for his argument, and understood fishing and food seeking in the Book of Poetry as symbols of courtship or sexual behavior. From this point of view, the "hunger", "food" and "meal" in "Cao Feng Waiting", "Chen Feng Hengmen" and "Zheng Feng Cunning Boy" are all symbols of sexual behavior. However, Jin Pengcheng then asked the question: Why did the ancient commentators interpret these poems with obvious sexual connotations as symbols of politics, and interpret the relationship between the sexes in the poems as the relationship between the monarch and the courtiers? In fact, he believes that from the beginning of the statements of "thinking innocently" and "Guan Ju is happy but not obscene, mournful and not hurtful", Confucius has emphasized that the symbols in the Book of Poetry contain deep meanings that transcend literal meanings. Ancient readers shared this spirit of interpretation, knowing that in many of the early sacrificial poems, the devotees used sexual imagery to express their relationship with the gods. Jin Pengcheng reinterpreted "Xiaoya Luming" from the perspective of sexual symbolism, believing that the "food" in "Eating Wild Apple" is a symbol of sexual behavior, and the "guest" of "I have a guest" shows that the heroine is presiding over the sacrifice, so this poem shows the intercourse of gods and men in the sacrifice.

Jin Pengcheng also reinterpreted the relevant chapters of poems such as "Xiaoya Tonggong", "Xiaoya Chutz", and "Xiaoya Xinnanshan" from the perspective of the intersection of gods and men. He even believes that the relationship between a gentleman and a lady in Zhou Nan Guan Ju is also a metaphor for the relationship between the chief priest and the goddess of prayer. Jin Pengcheng further pointed out that Guan Ju's model of linking religious and political implications also appears in many other poems. In these poems, the sexual imagery of the intercourse of gods and men encompasses the relationship between the female priests and the gods, in which the gods are often replaced by human sovereigns. Such poems include "Tang Feng Shan Youshu" and "Qin Feng Huang Bird". The "yellow bird" in "The Yellow Bird" is an obvious sexual imagery, and the poem establishes a meaningful sexual symbol between the relationship between the monarch and the courtier. Therefore, Jin Pengcheng believes that the seemingly simple imagery in the Book of Poetry is actually full of multi-layered meaning for readers who have rich reading experience.

The various arguments provided by "The Image of Friendship in Early Chinese Poetry" actually find a reasonable source for the tradition of interpreting the Book of Poetry since Mao Chuan and Zheng Zhi, that is, using the sexual imagery in the Book of Poetry to symbolize the actual relationship in politics, which has a long tradition and religious foundation. Mao Chuan and Zheng Ji interpreted the relationship between men and women in the Poetry Sutra love song as the relationship between the monarch and his courtiers, so it seems that it is not entirely far-fetched. However, Jin Pengcheng's purpose in writing this article is not to sort out the history of the interpretation of the Book of Poetry, but to introduce Western readers to the ancient Chinese concept of sex through the Book of Poetry and other early Chinese documents, especially how the ancient Chinese people symbolically expressed religious and political concepts through sexual imagery.

For this purpose, Jin Pengcheng expanded the article "The Image of Intercourse in Early Chinese Poetry" and included it in his monograph "Sexual Culture in Ancient China". In the introduction to the book, Jin Pengcheng emphasizes that the main thrust of the first chapter of the book (an expanded edition of The Image of Symphony in Early Chinese Poetry) is to "examine the pre-Qin sources that use the image of intercourse as a metaphor for various human relations—such as the metaphor of the relationship between the worshipper and the gods, or the relationship between the monarch and the courtier." He pointed out that the comprehensive examination of the imagery of intercourse in the Book of Poetry, Zuo Zhuan, and Chu Ci is to prove: "First, the number of sexual images and symbols in ancient Chinese literature far exceeds what we currently know; second, only by more sensitively capturing the existence of these images and symbols and their literary functions can we fully understand the core factors of ancient texts." ”

In contrast, the european sinologists' study of the customs and culture of the Book of Poetry have more recognition of the research methods and achievements of Glen Yan. For example, the German-Norwegian scholar Christopher Harbsmeier, who explored the issue of sexuality in early Chinese poetry, was very close to Jin Pengcheng. He proposed that it is more important to recognize a culture's sexual concepts than to recognize those specific sexual behaviors. However, He Moxian fully accepted Glen Yan's conclusion and directly quoted Glen Yan's point of view, believing that the sexual depictions and related imagery in the Book of Poetry were direct reflections of the customs of marriage and love festivals for men and women, and had no symbolic significance. He believed that these songs, which reflected the customs and rituals of marriage and love, had once been very popular in the banquets between the ancient nobles and the court, so they entered the classics of the Book of Poetry directly.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that the cultural research of the "Book of Poetry" in the Western Sinology circles has made certain progress in the aspects of liturgical music culture, material culture, and folk culture. In terms of specific research methods and perspectives, Western sinologists often show distinct characteristics, such as the emphasis on the correspondence between the textual form and the liturgical form of the Book of Poetry, and the emphasis on comparative cultural studies. However, the folk culture research of the Book of Poetry by some North American sinologists has alienated the research paradigm of the French scholar Glen Yan and is more inclined to accept the methods and views of Chinese scholars Wen Yiduo, which also witnesses the two-way exchange between Chinese and foreign scholars in the study of the Book of Poetry.

Author Affilications: Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong

Comments from omitted, the full version please refer to the original text.

Editor: Xiang Yu

Proofreader: Water Life

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