by Gopal Sukhu
The king unfortunately died of his illness.
The state of Chu began to offer sacrifices to the Yellow River during the Warring States period after annexing territory through which it flowed. Around that time, too, the name He Bo 河伯, or Earl of the Yellow River, appears as the name of the river god. One of the earliest and most famous appearances of He Bo is in the “Autumn Floods” (秋水 “Qiu shui”) section of the Zhuangzi.
We do not know whether the state of Chu ever offered human sacrifices to the Yellow River. In the north, however, according to the Shiji, young virgins, in at least one locality, were still being offered as “brides” to the river god as late as the end of the fifth century B.C.E.34 The custom may have continued unofficially into the Han dynasty in certain remote regions. The victim was dressed in the richest bridal finery and then floated on the river on a raft designed to fall apart once it achieved fatal distance from the shore. Few women knew how to swim in those days.
Shamans may have continued to serve the river god after human sacrifice ceased to be practiced. In the same way that dolls buried in the tombs of important people took the place of human sacrificial victims in later funerary rituals, it appears that a female shaman, safely acting the part, took the place of the victim sacrificed to the river, at least in the rites of Chu as reflected in this hymn.
The Earl of the Yellow River
With you I will roam the Nine Streams,35
Whirlwinds will raise waves across the flow,
We will ride a water chariot with lotus canopy,
Four dragons in harness, the outside bald, the inside horned,
And we’ll climb the Kunlun Mountains and gaze in all directions,36
And my heart will fly unbound.
Despair will come with sunset, but never a thought of home,
For longing arrives with the thought of far shores
And the fish-scale rooftops and the dragon hall,
And towers of purple cowry shells on palaces of cinnabar.
What do you do, spirit, in the water?
You ride the white tortoise and chase the patterned fish.
With you I will roam the islets of the river,
As ice shards swarm downstream.
Taking my hand you travel eastward,
Squiring your beauty to the southern shores.
Billow on billow waves come to greet me,
And fish are my bridesmaids, shoal after shoal.
9
“MOUNTAIN SPIRIT”
鬼
“SHAN GUI”
In ancient China, important mountains were inhabited by a main spirit and a number of subsidiary spirits, some of them monstrous and malevolent.37 Shrines, mostly at the foot of the mountains, were dedicated to them. The beautiful, amorous Mountain Spirit in this particular hymn has never been conclusively identified, nor has the lover she yearns for.
Mountain Spirit
There seems to be someone in the mountain hollow
Draped in creeping fig with pine-gauze sash,
Peering through narrowed eyes, and sweetly smiling too.
“You desire me, for you love my lithe beauty.”
Drawn by red panthers, followed by striped wild cats,
Her magnolia wagon flies a flag of woven cinnamon bark.
Cloaked in orchids, asarum sash around her waist,
She picks the sweetest flowers and herbs to give her love.
“I live deep in a bamboo grove and never see the sky.
The road was hard and dangerous—I was the late one.
“I stand on the mountain exposed and alone,
The clouds a land of shifting shapes beneath my feet.
Vast is the darkness, yes, daylight benighted—
A breeze from the east, the spirits bring rain.
Stay with me, Spirit Adorned, and find such ease you’ll forget your home.38
Once I am late in years, who will make me flower again?
“I pick the spirit mushrooms in the mountains
Amid rock piles and spreading kudzu.
I am angry, Lord’s son, so hurt I forget I have a home.
You long for me, but find no time.
“We in the mountains love the fragrance of galangal,
We find drink in stone springs and shade beneath cypress and pine.
Afraid to act you long for me.
“Thunder rolls through rain’s dark veils,
Hear the gray gibbon weep and the black gibbon’s night cry
Against the soughing wind and the whistling trees.
Longing for you, Lord’s son, I suffer in vain.”
10
“THOSE WHO DIED FOR THE KINGDOM”
國殤
“GUOSHANG”
This is a hymn dedicated to soldiers who died in battle. The military equipment mentioned (e.g., Wu halberds, Qin bows) was the best of its kind. Chu was a wealthy and warlike state. The line “But you trammeled the horse teams / and planted the cartwheels” refers to a technique mentioned in Sunzi’s Art of Warfare, where a general orders “tying up the legs of the horses and rendering the chariots inoperable to show his troops there is no retreat, and to make plain his resolve to fight to the death.”39 I have melded explanation with translation for the sake of clarity.
Those Who Died for the Kingdom
Armor of rhino hide
swinging halberds of Wu,
Wheel hub scrapes on wheel hub,
short swords clash.
Banners block sunlight,
enemy like a cloud,
Warriors pushing to be first
in the crisscross rain of arrows.
They trampled our positions,
broke through our ranks,
Horse dead in the left harness
while another bleeds in the right.
But you trammeled the horse teams,
and planted the cartwheels
To block your own retreat,
and when the jade mallets struck the echoing drums,
You charged.
But even stars fall,
and the daunting gods grow angry.
Brutally slaughtered, all of you,
abandoned on the wild plain,
You who went out will not come in,
you who departed will not return,
For the plain is too far
and the road, too long.
Bows of Qin at your sides,
long swords on your belts,
Heads severed
but hearts unshaken,
You are the truly brave—
the finest warriors,
Steadfast to the last breath
in your invincible honor.
When your bodies died,
your spirits found their power.
Your souls are now heroes
in another world.
11
“SERVING THE SPIRITS”
禮魂
“LI HUN”
We complete the rite beating all the drums,40
Banana leaf passes hand to hand as dancer follows dancer,
And elegant women sing their slow song.
Thoroughwort in spring, chrysanthemum in fall—
May it go on unbroken forever.
NOTES
1. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893–1894; repr., Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 3:55–56.
2. Ibid., 5:249–50.
3. Yuan Ke 袁珂, Shanhaijing jiaoyi 山海經校譯 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 273.
4. Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), juan 28, 1378.
5. For an interesting study of factional strife during the reign of Emperor Wu, see Liang Cai, Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire (Albany: SUNY Press 2015).
6. For a summary of Aoki Masaru’s interpretation of the Nine Songs as dialogues, see Arthur Waley, The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancien
t China (London: Allen and Unwin, 1955). For evidence that belief in spirit possession was a part of the ancient Chu worldview, see Sarah Allan, “ ‘When Red Pigeons Gathered on Tang’s House’: A Warring States Period Tale of Shamanic Possession and Building Construction Set at the Turn of the Xia and Shang Dynasties,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25, no. 3 (July 2015): 419–38.
7. Taiyi 太一 is also a star name (indicating the deity’s celestial residence) in the Han Feizi, in a critique of the belief in divination and astrology. See Han Feizi jijie 韓非子集解, vol. 5 of Zhuzi jicheng 諸子集成 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1987), 88.
8. See Constance A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey, China Studies 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 118, 254, 256, 259, 263 for the Wangshan texts, 65–66 for the Baoshan texts.
9. Hanshu 漢書, comp. Ban Gu 班固 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 25a, 1218. See also Michael Loewe, Crisis and Conflict in Han China (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), 169 and 174.
10. For a discussion of Taiyi sheng shui, see Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams, eds., The Guodian “Laozi”: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998, Early China Special Monograph Series 5 (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2000), 162–72. For a translation, see Robert G. Henricks, Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching”: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 123–29. A good discussion of pre–Wangshan and Guodian scholarship on Taiyi can be found in Li Ling, “An Archaeological Study of Taiyi (Grand One) Worship,” trans. Donald Harper, Early Medieval China 2 (1995–1996): 1–39.
6. Hong Xingzu believes linlang 琳琅 is an abbreviation of qiulin langgan 璆琳琅玕. The two gems, he says (quoting the Erya), come from the Kunlun Mountains (Hong Xingzu 洪興祖, Chuci buzhu 楚辭補注 [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986], 55–56). The gems are presumably hanging from the belts of the shamans.
7. Yao 瑶 I read as a variant of yaohua 瑶華 in the “Great Minister of Life Spans” in the Nine Songs. There it refers to the color and the texture of the flowers; here it refers to the color and texture of the straw.
8. The yu 竽 looks like a cup with thirty-six reed pipes sticking up out of it. It is related to the sheng 苼, and its sound is somewhere between that of a harmonica and the high registers of a pipe organ. The se 瑟 has twenty-five strings, each with its own movable bridge, strung over a rectangular sound box.
9. See “Jiangling Tianxingguan yihao Chumu” 江陵天星觀一號楚墓, Kaogu xuebao, no. 1 (1982): 71–115.
10. Sima Qian, Shiji, juan 28, 1378–79.
11. David Hawkes, Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1985), 103.
12. Rémi Mathieu, trans., Le Mu tianzi zhuan: Traduction annotée, étude critique, Mémoires de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises (Paris: Collège de France, 1978), 29.
13. Reading ruo ying 若英 as an abbreviation of duruo ying 杜若英.
14. Hong, Chuci buzhu, 58, reminds us that Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty sacrificed to the Lord of the Temple of Longevity, which was built next to the imperial palace. Shamanist ceremonies were performed there. Perhaps his model was a palace (referred to in this song?) built by the King of Chu.
20. Wang Yi says that the Di, or “Sky Lords,” referred to here are the Lords of the Five Directions (Wu Fang Zhi Di 五方之帝). Each wears the color that corresponds to the direction over which he rules.
15. Jizhou 冀州 means the heartland of China, the Yellow River basin. By synecdoche it means all of China.
16. See Anne Behnke Kinney, Exemplary Women of Early China: The “Lienü zhuan” of Liu Xiang (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), chapter 1.
17. For a summary of the theories, see Zhou Xunchu 周勛初, Jiuge xin kao 九歌新考 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), 87–104.
18. See Yuan, Shanhaijing jiaoyi, 145. For a discussion of the Guo Pu commentary, see Zhou, Jiuge xin kao, 88.
19. See Ma Maoyuan 馬茂元, Chuci zhushi 楚辭註釋 (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1985), 140 and 146–47 for the gender associations of the objects.
20. See Cook, Death in Ancient China, 82, 97, 100, 174, 175.
21. Sprinkling the ground with water was a ritual to welcome important personages in ancient China. It reduced flying dust.
22. Hollow Mulberry, or Kong Sang, according to Wang Yi is the name of a mountain. The mountain is thought by some to be legendary and in Lu, or by others to be real and in Chu. There was a place in Kaifeng in Henan called Kongsang Cheng. The “Benwei” section of the Lüshi chunqiu claims that Yi Yin, the famous minister of Great Tang, was born in a hollow mulberry tree after his mother was transformed into one. Zhuan Xu and a number of other mythological figures are also associated with hollow mulberry trees. I take cong 從 in this line as a causative verb.
23. The Nine Mounts is another way of saying the Nine Regions, which is another way of saying China.
30. Taking yi 一 as “all” or “whole” and the yin and yang as the two dimensions, spirit and human.
24. The original is shuma 疏麻, or “sparse hemp,” which also known as shenma 神麻, “spirit hemp,” Cannabis sativa. Taking it as a medicine is said to bring long life.
25. No one is sure why this god is referred to as “lesser”; the prevalent explanation is that he (or she) is in charge of children’s lives, while the Great Master of Fate is in charge of adult lives.
26. The Sky Wolf (Tian Lang 天狼) is the star Sirius, part of Canis Major. It is a star of ill omen.
27. See the story of how a wise official put an end to the practice in Sima Qian, Shiji, juan 126, 3211–13.
28. A general term for the Yellow River, which myth tells us Yu had divided into nine streams to prevent disastrous flooding.
29. The Yellow River springs from the Kunlun Mountains.
30. No one is sure who the Mountain Spirit is. This hymn is viewed by some as forming a complement to “The Earl of the Yellow River.” He is a male (yang) inhabiting the water, a yin element; the Mountain Spirit is female (yin) inhabiting a mountain, a yang aspect of the terrain.
31. The is possibly the shaman’s cry for the spirit to possess her.
39. See Roger Ames, Sun-Tzu: The Art of Warfare (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 159 and note 202. See also Tang Bingzheng 湯炳正, Li Daming 李大明, Li Cheng 李誠, and Xiong Liangzhi 熊良知, Chuci jinzhu 楚辭今注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1997), 76–77.
40. Most scholars take li 禮 as a verb, “to serve,” as I have translated here. Li hun 禮魂 could also mean “the spirit of the rites,” perhaps suggesting that this last song is making a statement about preserving the nature or spirit (hun 魂) of the rites.
CHAPTER TWO
“Leaving My Troubles”
離騷
“Li sao”
“Li sao” has been called the most innovative and influential work in the history of Chinese poetry. It is the longest of the ancient Chinese poems. It is the first to begin with a genealogical introduction of a first-person poetic persona. It is the first to use extensive dialogue with multiple characters as a poetic device. And, while earlier poetry used herbs and flowers as simple metaphors and symbols, “Li sao” is the first to weave a complex allegory involving a long list of flora.
There are few more difficult poems in the Chinese language, and few more controversial. Complicating its unprecedented use of imagery is an almost perversely playful use of language. It is full of puns and double meanings, most of which are impossible to translate. Even its title, previously translated as “Encountering Sorrow,” can be read in at least four different ways. “Li sao” can have two opposite meanings, “leaving trouble” or “encountering trouble.” Moreover, the character 騷 sao of t
he title is interchangeable with another character, 臊 sao, meaning “stench.” Thus, the title can also be understood as meaning “encountering the stench” or “leaving the stench.” All these readings are appropriate to the content of the poem and seem to have been intended.
The earliest beneficiary of the “Li sao” was the Han fu, or “rhapsody,” which utilized many of its innovations. Later, shorter poetry and other forms drew upon it as well. Echoes of the “Li sao” are still audible even in the poetry of the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties and the musical drama of the Yuan (1271–1368), Ming (1368–1644), and Qing (1644–1911).
The irony of its centrality in the mainstream poetic tradition is the fact that it is the product of what was originally thought of as an alien, if not barbarian, culture. The “Li sao,” moreover, represents an esoteric corner of that forgotten culture—the ritual practices of aristocratic Chu. Some of the poem was hopelessly obscure even to the Han royal family, whose commoner founder and his clan came from Chu.
The aristocratic culture of Chu, though partly of northern origin, ran parallel with the northern, Zhou dynasty–centered tradition for over seven hundred years. It was an amalgam of influences from the many places Chu had conquered on its way to becoming a powerful state. The wars out of which the Han dynasty emerged destroyed much of the elite literary heritage of both north and south. The losses in the south were particularly acute, and the Chu commoners who became the Han imperial family were not at first particularly eager to recover them.
The northerners were far more assiduous in reassembling the remaining fragments of their own high literary culture, and they impressed upon the interlopers from Chu that the Han imperial image depended on their assistance in the effort. By the time the Han imperial family was ready to recover the remaining fragments of Chu aristocratic culture, they had already mostly reshaped themselves as aristocrats along northern lines.
The “Li sao” was one of those cultural fragments. When it arrived in the court of the Han emperor Wu, he was struck by its beauty, the glimpse it afforded of a supernatural world, and its air of longing. Many of the gods in the poem were still objects of worship in the Han court—and the emperor was particularly interested in gods, mainly as a means to enhance his power and to prolong his life span. He, like most of the upper class of his day, believed that there existed beings called xian 仙, who were once human, but through methods both pharmacological and occult had transformed themselves into immortals. The poem seemed to promise information about them.