by Gopal Sukhu
THE SONGS OF CHU
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
EDITORIAL BOARD
Wm. Theodore de Bary, Chair
Paul Anderer
Donald Keene
George A. Saliba
Haruo Shirane
Burton Watson
Wei Shang
The Songs of Chu
An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poetry by Qu Yuan and Others
Edited and translated by Gopal Sukhu
Columbia University Press New York
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support to this book provided by Publisher's Circle members John J. S. Balcom and Yingtsih Balcom.
Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and Council for Cultural Affairs in the publication of this book.
Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Pushkin Fund in the publication of this book.
Columbia University Press
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E-ISBN 978-0-231-54465-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Qu, Yuan, approximately 343 B.C.-approximately 277 B.C. | Sukhu, Gopal, editor, translator.
Title: The songs of Chu : an ancient anthology of works by Qu Yuan and others / edited and translated by Gopal Sukhu. Other titles: Chu ci. English
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2017. | Series: Translations from the asian classics | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016045048 (print) | LCCN 2017004499 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231166065 (cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780231166072 (pbk.)
Classification: LCC PL2661 .C4613 2017 (print) | LCC PL2661 (ebook) | DDC 895.1/11—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045048
A Columbia University Press E-book.
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Cover design: Noah Arlow
To the memory of
Seth Bernard Adams
Merchant Mariner
and jazz aficionado
who gave me my first books on Asia
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Nine Songs 九歌 Jiuge
CHAPTER TWO
“Leaving My Troubles” 離騷 “Li sao”
CHAPTER THREE
“Ask the Sky” 天問 “Tian wen”
CHAPTER FOUR
Nine Cantos 九章 Jiuzhang
CHAPTER FIVE
“Wandering Far Away” 遠遊 “Yuan you”
CHAPTER SIX
“The Diviner” 卜居 “Bu ju” and “The Fisherman” 漁夫 “Yufu”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nine Variations 九辯 Jiubian
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Summoning the Soul” 招魂 “Zhao hun”
CHAPTER NINE
“The Great Summoning” 大招 “Da zhao”
CHAPTER TEN
“Regretting the Vows” 惜誓 “Xi shi”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Mourning Qu Yuan” 弔屈原 “Diao Qu Yuan” and “The Owl Rhapsody” 服賦 “Fu fu,” by Jia Yi
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I Lament It Was Not My Destiny” 哀時命 “Ai shiming”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Calling the Hermit Back” 招隱士 “Zhao yinshi,” attributed to Huainan Xiaoshan
Appendix: Dating the Works in the Chuci
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the two anonymous readers for Columbia University Press; its freelance copyeditor Mike Ashby and in-house editor Leslie Kriesel; as well as Mick Stern, Cary Plotkin, John Major, Kim Dramer, Mary Beth Maher, Ammiel Alcalay, Constance A. Cook, Galal Walker, and Li Minru for their valuable comments on the manuscript. I hereby express my appreciation to the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. Material in this work was presented to the University Seminar on Early China. Thanks to Li Feng, Guo Jue, and the other members of the Early China Seminar at Columbia University for their critiques, encouragement, and support. I am indebted to Robert Hymes, Haruo Shirane, and Shang Wei for giving me the opportunity to test my ideas on Columbia University graduate students; and to Ari Borrell for providing me with unexpected research tools. My heartfelt gratitude also to my wife, Hanna Kim; my daughter, Uma; and my sisters, Radha and Kushelia Sukhu, for helping me stay on course, and to Mr. and Mrs. S. Y. Kim for kindly providing me a peaceful and beautiful place to work.
Introduction
The first man ever to be known for his poetry in China was Qu Yuan 屈原 (340?–278? B.C.E.). His work is the core of the Chuci 楚辭, or Songs of Chu, the second-oldest anthology of Chinese verse. He was a high minister in the southern state of Chu, serving both King Huai (r. 328–299 B.C.E.) and his successor, King Qing Xiang (r. 298–263 B.C.E.). So distinctive and influential is his work, which includes some of the most beautiful liturgical poetry in the world, that literary historians think of it as the “second beginning” of Chinese poetry, the first being the ancient and quasi-scriptural Shijing 詩經, or Book of Songs. Yet the Dragon Boat Festival, held in his honor every year, is less a celebration of his poetry than a commemoration of his suicide.
What drove him to suicide was frustration and despair that began when his feckless king believed the slander of his enemies and demoted him. The king later died a hostage in another state, having been misled by royal officers, among them his own son. The same son, when his brother succeeded his father as king, made sure that Qu Yuan was sent into exile, where in protest and grief he drowned himself. The poem that won him the most fame, “Li sao” 離騷, or “Leaving My Sorrow” (also known as “Encountering Sorrow”), was supposedly written shortly after his demotion. Yet there is much in the poem that was obscure even to those reading it only a century later. Part of the reason for this is that it makes reference to some of the more esoteric aspects of the culture of Chu.
According to the ancient Chinese historical records, the ancestor of the Chu royal family, Yu Xiong 鬻熊, was originally a minister of the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 B.C.E.) who, horrified by the excesses of its last king, fled to the state of Zhou and served King Wen as general. King Wen, with his help, overthrew the evil Shang king and established the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 B.C.E.). King Wen’s successor, King Cheng, rewarded Xiong Yi 熊繹, the descendant of the defector Yu Xiong, with the title of viscount and a parcel of land in the south—a barbarian region, in the eyes of the north, known as Chu. It was wild and uncultivated, requiring a great deal of work, often with the forced labor of local tribes, to make it habitable. Eventually Xiong Yi built his capital at Danyang in Hubei. The viscounty gradually expanded, and, by the reign of Xiong Qu 熊渠, in the mid-ninth century, it was strong enough to declare its independence from the Zhou dynasty, which had for a long time treated it as mere wilderness to be raided periodically for metal ore and slaves. Xiong Qu made it a kingdom, but not for long; pressure from King Li (877–841 B.C.E.) of the Zhou brought Xiong Qu back into the fold.
Around the year 771 B.C.E., a combination of internal conflict and barbarian invasion from the north resulted in the flight of the Zhou royal family to the eastern city of Luoyang, the reduction of the king�
��s status to mere figurehead, and the eventual disintegration of the dynasty into powerful independent and contentious states. Thus began what is known as the Spring and Autumn period (772–476 B.C.E.), during which Chu grew both in power and territory, expanded east and north into the Yellow River region, and vied with the larger states. By the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.E.) it was the largest, both in terms of land and population, of the six main states contending for supremacy.
As it rose, Chu not only increased its wealth by absorbing both southern and eastern regions but also created an eclectic culture whose glories rivaled anything in the north. The extent to which that was true was gradually forgotten when Chu fell to Qin, its main rival, in 223 B.C.E. After that, the old clichés about its barbarism gradually replaced the memories of its historical realities.
Cliché has been challenged in recent decades, however, by archaeological discoveries that confirm that Chu, far from being barbaric, enjoyed a highly developed artistic and intellectual culture, especially during the Warring States period, the period of the great Chinese philosophers such as Mencius (or Mengzi 孟子) and Zhuangzi 莊子 (both of the fourth century B.C.E.) and the great poet Qu Yuan. Recently discovered artifacts include truly extraordinary bronze ware, lacquer ware, embroidered silk, and jade ornaments. One of the most spectacular examples is a set of sixty-four bronze bells discovered in 1977 in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (曾侯乙 Zeng Hou Yi), the ruler of one of the Chu vassal states, in Suizhou, Hubei province. The tomb is dated to about 433 B.C.E., but even after two thousand five hundred years, its contents, including the wooden bell stands, were in a remarkable state of preservation. The bells ranged from the high pitched, weighing a few pounds, to a bass bell, weighing about three hundred pounds. Each of the bells was made to produce two separate tones depending on where it was struck. The largest bell, a gift from another ruler, was inlaid with gold inscriptions, including musical notation. Besides the bells, other instruments, such as stone chimes, and a variety of plucked strings and woodwinds were found. A passage in the Chuci, from “Summoning the Soul” (招魂 “Zhao hun”), describes one kind of gathering at which such instruments were played:
Sixteen women dressed alike
Rise to dance to the music of Zheng,
Their overlong sleeves fly up and cross like staves in a fight,
Then fall together on cue,
While the yu pipes and se strings wail,
And the drums thunder,
And the palace shakes,
As the chorus sings, “Rousing Chu,”
And the Wu songs and the Cai airs,
And the Great Lü Mode.
Women and men sitting side by side—
Now comes the orgy of no distinctions—
Clothes, sashes, and hat strings fall.
Tombs from the former Chu domains have also yielded material that is beginning to fill in details about Chu conceptions of the sacred, only hinted at in the poems with their gods, goddesses, fabulous creatures, and shamans who travel back and forth between the worlds of spirits and mortals.1
Recently discovered texts written on bamboo slips and silk illustrate to what extent those images represented lived beliefs. The most famous example is the diary of a Chu legal officer, whose duties may have been similar to those of Qu Yuan. It emerged from a tomb at Baoshan in Hubei province. Much of it is a record of divinations that he had shamans perform during his tenure, reflecting the nature of his work, his anxieties about his relationship with his king, and his suffering during a long illness. The records show that his shamans enlisted the aid of some of the same deities that figure in the Nine Songs (九歌 Jiuge) section of the Songs of Chu. The Great Unity, for example, was offered a gelded ram when the officer complained about no appetite and distress in his stomach and chest. It was hoped that the deity would help find the source of the illness. The shamans offered a ewe to the Minister of Life Spans (or Controller of Fate) for the same reason. The divination texts also mention many unknown divinities, such as the Two Children of Heaven, Wei Mountain, High Hill, and Low Hill. The divination records also suggest that the officer feared that his illness could have been caused by the spirits of prisoners he might have had executed unjustly in his capacity as magistrate.2
The Baoshan texts reveal a highly developed legal system while confirming the Chu reputation for belief in spirits and shamans. Texts from another tomb reveal a rather different side of Chu culture. The Guodian texts were discovered in 1993 in a Chu tomb near the village of Guodian in the vicinity of Jingmen in Hubei. It is one of the only Warring States tombs to yield philosophical manuscripts. These were written on about eight hundred bamboo slips. Their significance in the study of Chinese philosophy has been compared to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the study of Western religion. The tomb is dated at approximately 300 B.C.E., possibly within the lifetime of Qu Yuan. The fine artifacts made of bronze, jade, and lacquer found in the tomb suggest its occupant was a member of the nobility, a highly educated one, who died in old age. The texts buried with him include known Confucian and Daoist texts—for example, a chapter of the Book of Rites (禮記 Liji) and even a version of the Daodejing 道德經. They also include previously unknown works such as The Great Unity Gives Birth to Water (太一生水 Taiyi sheng shui), a cosmogonic text. The presence of such a variety of manuscripts, and a blurred inscription on one of the drinking vessels found with them, has led some scholars to speculate that the tomb occupant must have been a teacher, possibly a tutor to the crown prince, but there is as yet no conclusive proof.3
The central theme in the Chuci is the hardship encountered by the moral person born in a corrupt age, specifically one who serves a benighted king. The “Li sao,” like a number of other Warring States texts, cites counterexamples to illustrate the ideal, kings who had the wisdom to recognize and benefit from talent, even in the socially lowly. For example,
Though Yue labored pounding earth walls at Fuyan,4
Wu Ding made him his minister and had no doubts.
Though Lu Wang swung a butcher’s knife at Zhaoge,5
When he met Wen of Zhou he managed to rise high.
A text from Guodian, Qiongda yi shi 窮達以時 (Poverty or success is a matter of timing), has a passage with a longer list, mentioning some of the same examples, which concludes with the following statement:
Whether or not [all the aforementioned men] encountered [an appreciative lord] was [a matter controlled by] Heaven. Their actions were not motivated by the prospect of success, and thus, while impoverished, they were not [distressed(?)]; [their learning(?)] was not for the sake of fame, and thus, while no one appreciated them, they had no grudges. [Irises and orchids grow in secluded forests]; they do not fail to be fragrant [just because there is no one there] to smell them … Poverty or success is a matter of timing, and whether in obscurity or prominence, one should not act twice [i.e., differently].6
The passage is striking because it uses flora as metaphors for virtue that persists despite being unrecognized. Similar floral metaphors occur in other Warring States texts, such as the Xunzi, whose author lived for a while in the state of Chu.7 Whether or not flora in the “Li sao” have a similar metaphorical function has long been disputed in the world of Chuci scholarship. Here, finally, is a Chu text contemporary with “Li sao” that offers support for the claim that they do.
Another text that helps us understand the “Li sao” better is the Cheng zhi 成之 (Bringing things to completion), of which the first line is (in my translation based on Cook’s reconstruction), “Heaven sends down the great norms, so as to bring order to human relations.” The first few words in Chinese are tian jiang da chang 天降大常. Now the spirit in “Li sao” descends (jiang) from Heaven and his name is Zhengze 正則, which I translate as True Norm. The ze 則 in Zhengze is synonymous with chang 常 in this case. One can see here how Qu Yuan seems to have taken the idea of Heaven sending down abstract norms and transformed it into the image of a spirit named True Norm desc
ending from the sky. A similar personification or deification occurred in the case of the Daoist concept of Taiyi 太一, or the Great Unity, which in the Daodejing is another name for the impersonal Dao and in the Nine Songs is the name of a deity to whom sacrifices can be offered.
Another Guodian manuscript, The Great Unity Gives Birth to Water, mentioned above, seemingly features the Great Unity in a phase somewhere between abstraction and deity. The Great Unity, Taiyi in the original, instead of giving birth to yin and yang before everything else (as in the Daodejing), gives birth first to water and, after a few stages, gives birth to yin and yang: “The Great Unity gives birth to water, and water returns to join with (/assist) the Great Unity, thereby forming Heaven. Heaven returns to join with the Great Unity, thereby forming Earth. Heaven and Earth [further join with each other], thereby forming the spiritual and luminous. The spiritual and luminous further join with each other, thereby joining yin and yang (345), etc.”8 This seems to be very much an outlier cosmogony, for it does not survive in any other text, not even in “Tian wen” 天問 (usually translated as “Heavenly Questions” but here translated as “Ask the Sky”).
“Tian wen” is one of the strangest of the Chuci texts in that it is a poem consisting mainly of a long list of questions about subjects such as the origin of the cosmos, the formation of the heavens, ancient myths, and ancient history. No one has as yet offered a convincing explanation as to why such a poem might have been written. It was thought unique in the history of Chinese literature until the recent discovery of a similar text from Warring States Chu, titled Fan wu liu xing 凡物流形, or All Things Are Flowing Forms. This text is among the Chu bamboo manuscripts of the Warring States period housed in the Shanghai Museum. Those texts, totaling twelve hundred bamboo slips on which were written about a hundred texts, were discovered in 1994 in the antiques markets of Hong Kong. They were purchased by the Shanghai Museum, where they were organized, edited, and studied. The results have been published in a multivolume set. Fan wu liu xing is included in volume seven.9
