The Songs of Chu

by Gopal Sukhu

  Longing for you, Lord’s son, I suffer in vain.”

  In the Nine Songs the landscape is made magical by the presence of the spirit, although the shape-shifting clouds, the threat of rain, thunder, and gibbon call seem there to repel whomever the yearning spirit is beckoning to. In the Song Yu poem the landscape becomes numinous by the immanence of the spirit. Whereas the Nine Songs mountain spirit is an elusive presence in cloudy and rainy weather, the Shaman Mountain spirit becomes cloudy and rainy weather and announces the fact. The numinousness of the old shamanic spirits, as Chinese literature develops, becomes more and more immanent in the landscapes and weather. We see this happening even in the youxian poetry of Guo Pu—for example, number 3, which I quoted above:

  When the kingfisher plays among the flowering thoroughwort,

  Its color is even brighter.

  When the pine gauze forms in the high forests,

  It envelopes the whole mountain.

  Here the kingfisher plays amid the plants that are sacred to the various spirits in the Nine Songs. The pine gauze in fact is one of the plants out of which the Nine Songs Mountain Spirit makes a sash. Here it covers the whole mountain, which is to say that the mountain, by donning the clothes of the spirit, shows that it and the spirit are one. The evocation of numinous immanence becomes more and more subtle in the great Chinese landscape poets, reaching its pinnacle in the poetry of Wang Wei. Even without knowledge of the allusion when we read the phrase that Wang Wei has taken from “Gaotang fu,” the mountain mist on Wang Wei’s mountain takes on a human aspect, at the very least. Knowledge of the allusion, however, allows us to see in the mist a form of the mountain spirit.

  This translation, based on Zhu Xi’s Song-dynasty edition, is meant for students, general readers, and scholars, in that order. In China the Chuci is considered one of the most difficult texts to read, and few people, even experts in classical Chinese, can read it without constantly consulting explanatory notes. That necessity is only slightly diminished when one is reading it in translation—even into modern Chinese. For most of the poems I have opted to place the notes on separate pages rather than use footnotes. Philological notes are interspersed among the general notes only where I anticipate questions from specialists.

  NOTES

    1. For a fine introduction to the study of Chu, see Constance A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey, China Studies 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

    2. Ibid., 198.

    3. Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012).

    4. Yue is Fu Yue 傅說, who was a convict laborer building earthen walls when the Shang king Wuding 武丁 discovered him and made him his minister. Wuding recognized him because he had once had a premonitory dream about him. In the pre-Qin sources the dream part of the story is found in the Guoyu 國語, “Chu yu shang,” 199–200, and the earthen wall building part is referenced in, e.g., Mozi; see Mozi xiangu, “Shang xian zhong,” 35, and “Shang xian xia,” 40–41. In the Guodian text, Qiongda yi shi 窮達以時, he is called Shao Yao 邵謠 (see chapter 7). See also Jiang Liangfu, 姜亮夫Chuci tonggu 楚辭通故 (Shandong: Qi Lu shushe, 1985), 2:90–110.

    5. Lü Wang 呂望worked as a butcher and fisherman just before the rise of the Zhou dynasty. He is also known as Jiang Taigong 姜太公, Taigong Wang太公望, Jiang Shang 姜尚, etc. Legends about him are scattered and varied. According to the Shiji (Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992], “Qi Taigong shijia,” 32:1477–79), the future King Wen, founder of the Zhou dynasty, divined before going hunting, and the oracle predicted that he would meet someone who would be worthy of becoming his adviser. During the hunt he met Lü Wang (under the name Lü Shang 呂尚) fishing on the banks of the Wei River. The Shiji cites an alternative story, according to which Lü Wang once was a learned minister of Djou, the bad last king of the Shang dynasty, whom he left to eventually ally himself with the future King Wen. Wang Yi gives a slightly different account, according to which Lü Wang, after leaving Djou to seek out Wen, found himself in dire straights in Zhaoge 朝歌, where he became a butcher to earn a living, and only after that did he become a fisherman. Later King Wen had a dream in which he was introduced to him by none other than the Lord of Heaven. Having seen his face in the dream, he had no trouble recognizing him on the banks of the Wei River (Hong Xingzu洪興祖, Chuci buzhu 楚辭補注 [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986], 38). The Guodian text Qiongda yi shi (Dirk Meyer, Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China [Leiden: Brill, 2011], 86–88) refers to a variant of this story (see chapter 7) where Lu Wang was a slave before his rise. See also Jiang Liangfu, Chuci tonggu, 2:119–30, and Jin Kaicheng 金開誠, Dong Hongli 董洪利, and Gao Luming 高路明, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu 屈原集校注, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), 1:143–44. See also Sarah Allan, “The Identities of Taigong Wang in Zhou and Han Literature,” in The Heir and the Sage: Dynastic Legend in Early China, rev. ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015), 149.

    6. Cook, Bamboo Texts of Guodian, 463–64.

    7. Xunzi jijie 荀子集解, vol. 2 of Zhuzi jicheng 諸子集成 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1987), 3–4. See also Burton Watson, trans., Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu, Translations from the Asian Classics, Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies, no. 74 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 17.

    8. Cook, Bamboo Texts of Guodian, 345.

    9. Shanghai Bowuguan cang Zhanguo zhushu, volume 7 上海博物館藏戰國竹書 (七), ed. Ma Chengyuan 馬承源 et al. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2008).

  10. Qinghua daxue chutu wenxian yanjiu yu baohu zhongxin 清華大學出土文獻研究與保護中心, ed., chief ed., Li Xueqin 李學勤, Qinghua daxue can Zhanguo zhujian (san) 清華大學藏戰國竹簡 (叁) (Shanghai: Zhongxi shuju. 2010), 53.

  11. For a translation of the Sima Qian biography, see David Hawkes, trans., The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin 1985), 54–60. For a detailed analysis of the text of the biography, see Galal Walker, “Toward a Formal History of the ‘Chuci’ ” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1982).

  12. Hong, Chuci buzhu, 2. Wang Yi seems to have taken shu 疏, “estrange,” to mean zhu 逐, “exiled.”

  13. Ibid., 47.

  14. Shiji, 40:1725.

  15. Shiji, 70:2292

  16. Hawkes, Songs of the South, 58.

  17. He Tianxing 何天行, Chuci zuo yu Handai kao 楚辭作於漢代考 (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1948). Hu Shi 胡適, “Du Chuci” 讀楚辭, in Hu Shi wencun di er ji 胡適文存第二集 (Taipei: Yuandong tushu gongsi, 1953), 91–97.

  18. Walker, “Toward a Formal History,” 77.

  19. Gopal Sukhu, “Yao, Shun, and Prefiguration: The Origins and Ideology of the Han Imperial Genealogy,” Early China 30 (2005–2006): 91–153.

  20. Hong, Chuci buzhu, 49–50.

  21. For an account of Wang Yi’s role in Deng Sui’s project, see Gopal Sukhu, The Shaman and the Heresiarch: A New Interpretation of the “Li sao.” Albany: SUNY Press, 2012, 55–71.

  22. Hong, Chuci buzhu, 47.

  23. This is possibly the shaman’s cry for the spirit to possess her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nine Songs

  九歌

  Jiuge

  The Nine Songs consist of shaman hymns to various divinities, a threnody for fallen soldiers, and a finale. There are in fact eleven pieces in the Nine Songs, and no one is entirely sure why this is so. In the opinion of certain scholars, enumeration is the problem. The Ming scholar Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692), for example, thought that the first and last hymns are prelude and finale and therefore do not count. Another example is the Qing scholar Jiang Ji 蔣驥 (ca. 1678–1745), who proposed treating “The Ruler of the Xiang” and “The Lady of the Xiang” as one p
iece and “The Great Minister of Life Spans” and “The Lesser Minister of Life Spans” as one piece, giving a total of nine. There are several other numbering proposals besides.

  Other scholars believe that the title is not to be taken literally. “Nine songs” is a phrase that occurs in more than one Chinese myth. In the “Da Yumo” 大禹謨 section of the Shujing 書經, Yu, the first ruler of the Xia dynasty, offers a plan for good government that is divided into nine categories, the successful accomplishment of which he thought should be praised in nine songs to “stimulate” the people.1 According to the Zuozhuan the recommendation to stimulate the people with nine songs is to be found in “one of the Books of Xia.”2

  The “Li sao” and the “Tian wen” (Ask the sky) also mention a series called Nine Songs. These Nine Songs, however, were stolen from Heaven by Qi, second ruler of the Xia dynasty, brought back to earth, and performed over and over at state-sponsored revels, bringing about the decline of the royal family and Qi’s early death. The main source of information on the celestial Nine Songs is the Shanhaijing 山海經 (The classic of mountains and seas). Qi, traditionally thought to be a historical ruler, is described there as a supernatural man who resides “beyond the southwest sea, south of the Red Waters, west of the Flowing Sands” and who wears green snakes as earrings. Riding in a two-dragon chariot, he went to heaven three times to be the guest of the Sky Lord. On one of his visits he obtained (some say through theft) the Nine Songs.3

  Given its mythological associations, the title Nine Songs was chosen for allusive purposes, some scholars believe, rather than as a description of the number of pieces.

  Moreover, Galal Walker has offered convincing evidence that the last two pieces, “Those Who Died for the Kingdom” and “Serving the Spirits” were added to the series later. They are not directly addressed to any particular divinity, which leaves nine hymns that are. His findings may finally put the controversy to rest.

  The Chuci Nine Songs are ascribed to Qu Yuan for the first time in Wang Yi’s edition of the anthology. If they were known before that, they were not associated with Qu Yuan, at least according to the extant sources. Wang Yi believed that Qu Yuan composed the Nine Songs after he heard the crude hymns sung by southern peoples during his banishment. His purpose in revising them, according to Wang Yi, was to improve the tone of rural worship and offer veiled complaint to the king who had unjustly punished him. There is no trace of this story anywhere before the writings of Wang Yi, yet his explications of the Nine Songs, which largely present the hymns as the first-person musings of Qu Yuan, are almost entirely based on it.

  Wang Yi’s readings of the Nine Songs are often laughably forced, and while generations of traditional scholars have tried, no one has managed to find a path through the hymns that satisfactorily leads to their remonstrative content. Most modern scholars have given up trying to find it, but many still see them as folk productions. This is of course a desperate clinging to the last thread of Wang Yi’s theory about the Nine Songs. Once that thread is let go, one must admit that the elegant classical Chinese in which they are composed and the mention of objects such as bronze bells, associated exclusively with royalty, suggest that the hymns were meant for performance at a royal court.

  Wang Yi no doubt recognized this. After all, shamanic performance had been included in Han state cult during the first half of the dynasty. An account from the Shiji tells us that sponsorship of shamanic ritual started with the founder of the dynasty, Liu Bang:

  In Chang’an he [Liu Bang] installed officers for invocation and sacrifices. He also introduced female shamans. The shamans from Liang sacrificed to such forces as Heaven, Earth, the Sky Alter, the Celestial Waters, the Bedroom Occupant, and the Upper Hall. The shamans from Jin sacrificed to such forces as the Five Lords, the Lord of the East, the Lord in the Clouds, the Controller of Life, the Shaman Altar, the Shaman Temple, the Members of the Clan, and the First Cook. The shamans of Qin sacrificed to the Master of Altars, the Shaman Guards, and the two gods Zu and Lei. The shamans of Jing [Chu] sacrificed to such powers as the Lower Hall, the Shaman Ancestors, the Controller of Lives, and the Shimi Gruel God. The Nine Skies shamans sacrificed to the Nine Skies. All the above sacrificed in the imperial palace at regular times. The Yellow River shamans sacrificed to the Yellow River and Linjin; the Southern Mountain shamans sacrificed to the Southern Mountain and to the Middle One of Qin. The Middle One of Qin is the second emperor of Qin.4

  Imperial favor granted such practices reached its apex under Emperor Wu (140–87 B.C.E.). During his reign, however, shamans came to be involved in factional strife, inspiring fear and loathing for their supposed ability to kill or cause illness by casting spells.5 While interest in shamans never disappeared, by the time of Wang Yi they constituted a reviled class, subject to legal restrictions. His claim that the Nine Songs were originally rural productions that were given aristocratic polish and a remonstrative subtext by a scholar banished from the capital reflects the prejudices of his time. What is intentionally missing from his account is the possibility that the Nine Songs are products of royally sponsored shamanism, an institution that even historical records available during Wang Yi’s time suggest existed in Chu. But to bring to mind such a phenomenon would signal the possibility that Qu Yuan had practiced shamanism, a possibility that was incongruent with the Confucian image of Qu Yuan Wang Yi and his sponsor, Dowager Empress Deng Sui, were attempting to create.

  The Nine Songs series is one of our only sources of information about the shamanistic practices of Chu. The songs describe the herbs that shamans used to purify themselves, how the sacrificial foods were offered, the musical instruments that accompanied their hymns, their dancing, their clothes, and how they envisioned the spirits. Most importantly, they tell us who some of the deities worshipped were and their relationship to the worshippers.

  A fair portion of the meaning of the songs remains mysterious, however. Even during the Han dynasty there was much difference of opinion as to what they actually said. Wang Yi found them so confusing that he wondered whether the bamboo strips on which they were recorded had gotten mixed up. We do not know whether they were simply sung or staged, with different singers acting out different stanzas or lines. Nor do we know enough about the mythology connected with the individual deities to always discern what about them some of the lines allude to. Some of the hymns draw no clear distinction between the mortal and the spirit worlds. Some scholars think that many of the songs are in dialogue form, where different shamans impersonate (or are possessed by) various spirits.6

  My translation of some of the hymns has been influenced by the “dialogue” theory, but any translation of the Nine Songs must remain tentative until anthropologists and archaeologists can teach us more.

  What is clear is that some of the pieces are love songs addressed to one or another deity. In those songs the shaman appears to seduce the deity out of the sky for a brief rendezvous only to grieve as the fickle deity ascends again with no promise of return. The jilted shaman sometimes pursues the deity through the sky, riding in a variety of magical vehicles or flying on his or her own power. The only hymn where the love affair leads to marriage describes a courtship on and under water. That hymn, “The Earl of the Yellow River,” may well be a remnant of the ancient custom of sacrificing a virgin to the Yellow River.

  1

  “AUGUST OF THE EAST, THE GREAT UNITY”

  東皇太一

  “DONG HUANG TAIYI”

  The Great Unity (Taiyi) as a philosophical concept and alternative name for the Dao is well represented in Warring States period texts.7 Until relatively recently, however, this hymn was the only evidence that a divinity named Taiyi was worshipped during that era as well. Additional evidence emerged from three ancient tombs, one at Wangshan, one at Baoshan in Hubei, and one at Guodian. The Wangshan tomb, discovered in 1965 and dated circa 332 B.C.E., is famous for yielding in nearly pristine condition one of the swords owned by Gou Jian, king of Yue (ca. 470 B.C.E.).
It also contained texts, one of which listed objects considered appropriate to offer as sacrifices to Taiyi. A text offering similar information was discovered at Baoshan during the 1980s.8 Taiyi was evidently a divinity worshipped in Chu, yet it did not immediately go north with the Chu founders of the Han dynasty, nor is Taiyi mentioned on the list of state cults inherited by the Han from the Qin.

  A certain Miu Ji, an expert in ritual and possibly a shaman, convinced the fifth Han ruler, Emperor Wu, to institute state sacrifices to Taiyi in 113 B.C.E. According to Miu Ji, “Taiyi is the most honored of the celestial gods. The assistants of Taiyi are the Five Sovereigns. The Sons of Heaven in ancient times sacrificed a tailao 太牢 [an ox, a ram, and a pig] a day for seven days to Taiyi in the southeastern suburban rites. They built an altar for that purpose with spirit paths leading from it in the eight directions.”9

  A number of scholars are of the opinion that the Taiyi cult originated in the state of Qi, the great center of philosophical learning, during late Warring States times. It seems more likely that Taiyi’s transformation from philosophical concept to god took place in Chu. Taiyi sheng shui (The Great Unity Gives Birth to Water), a text representing Taiyi in an intermediate stage between concept and divinity, was discovered in the Chu tomb at Guodian. There Taiyi is a force that acts cosmogonically—first producing water, with the help of which it then produces the sky, with the help of which it then produces the earth; thenceforth come the spirits, yin and yang, the four seasons, cold and hot, wet and dry, and finally the year or harvest.10

  The title “Dong Huang Taiyi” remains a mystery. Wang Yi, on what basis is unclear, tells us that Taiyi is called August of the East here because he was worshipped in eastern Chu.

  August of the East, the Great Unity

  On this auspicious day, this best of times,

  Reverently we bring delight to the August on High,

  We hold long swords with jade-headed hilts,