The Songs of Chu

by Gopal Sukhu

  66. Duke Huan of Qi 齊桓公 was one of the Five Hegemons. His prime minister was the famous Guan Zhong 管仲. Guan Zhong advised Duke Huan to banish from the palace four men whom he considered dangerous. Duke Huan at first resisted, for they were some of his favorites, but in the end he complied. After Guan Zhong’s death, he invited them back and gave them official positions, but they indeed turned out to be scoundrels. They staged a coup, had his residence walled in, and starved him to death; see Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, 383–84; Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 401; and the Sibu congkan edition of Guanzi, “Xiaocheng,” 124–26, at the Chinese Text Project (http://ctext.org).

  67. The dissolute Djou, the evil last king of the Shang dynasty, was misled by the proverbial femme fatale Daji 妲己 and deceived by bad ministers, such as the flattering Fei Lian 飛廉 (also known as 費中 Fei Zhong) and the slandering Wu Lai 惡來; see Shiji, “Yin benji,” 3:105–9.

  68. Bi Gan 比干 was the minister and uncle of Djou. He was so loyal that he risked his life to advise Djou to reform. Djou eventually killed him and had his heart cut out to see if, as some used to say, the heart of the sage has seven apertures; see Shiji, “Yin benji,” 3:105–9. Lei Kai 雷開 was a corrupt minister who won Djou’s favor through flattery.

  69. Mei Bo was a marquis under the reign of Djou. When he criticized Djou, Djou had him chopped up and his flesh pickled in brine; see Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, 532. Ji Zi 箕子 offered criticism but feigned insanity as he did so and thus avoided anything crueler than being reduced to slavery by order of Djou. He secretly played the qin 琴 to vent his sorrow; Shiji, “Yin benji,” 3:108.

  70. Ji 稷 or Hou Ji后稷 (Lord Millet) is honored as the progenitor of the Zhou royal house; see Shijing 245 (生民 “Shengmin”). Jiang Yuan 姜嫄, his mother, is supposed to have gotten pregnant by stepping on the footprint of the Lord of the Sky (identified in this case as 帝嚳 Di Ku), though she was thought barren. The poem tells us that Hou Ji was abandoned soon after his birth and was even thrown on the icy ground. Certain birds, however, used their wings to keep him warm. Here I read 竺 as 毒 (du, “to hate”), a common substitution; see discussion of this in Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 405.

  71. Ji 稷, the progenitor of the Zhou royal house, is usually thought of as an agricultural culture hero, but in this passage there seems to be a trace of another talent. His military prowess is alluded to in the Sibu congkan edition of Wang Chong’s Lunheng 論衡, “Chu bing” 初稟, 118, available at the Chinese Text Project (http://ctext.org), where it says that Qi 棄 (another name for Hou Ji) served Yao (who may once have been thought of as the Sky Lord) in the capacity of sima 司馬, which is equivalent to something like minister of war. If this passage is about Hou Ji, then it may reflect a tradition outside the mainstream; see Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 406–7. What the Sky Lord found shocking in this case is probably the way Hou Ji was conceived.

  72. Bo Chang 伯昌 is one of the titles of King Wen of Zhou, whose name is Ji Chang 姬昌. He originally received his title Earl (伯 Bo) of Yongzhou under the rulership of the Shang dynasty. In that capacity he was also known as Earl of the West (西伯 Xi Bo). After carefully building alliances among the people suffering under the reign of King Djou of Shang, he was able to stage a successful revolution. The earth altar at Qi 岐 (northeast of Qi Mountain in Shaanxi province) was the original place where the Zhou ruling family sacrificed to the spirits of the earth, thus affirming their power. As their power grew, however, they had to move their earth altar to Feng 豐 (northeast of Chang’an county in Shaanxi) and destroy the old one at Qi; see Shiji, “Zhou benji,” 4:117–18.

  73. This appears to allude to the story of King Tai (who was also known as Gu Gong and Tan Fu), the grandfather of King Wen, who was so loved by his subjects that they followed him even when he decided to avoid fighting invading barbarians and flee to establish another kingdom at Qi; see ibid., 113–14. King Wen’s reputation for treating prospective retainers well was also such that many went to live with him. Yin is another name for the Shang dynasty and here stands for Djou, its last king. He was led astray by Daji, one of the Chinese archetypes of the femme fatale. Equivalence is apparently being suggested here between King Wen and his grandfather and King Djou and the barbarians.

  74. According to the Lüshi chunqiu, “Xing lun” (see Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, 532), Djou killed the Earl of Mei 梅伯 and the Marquis of Gui 鬼侯 and served their flesh to various lords, including Wen, future king of the Zhou dynasty, at a ceremony in the ancestral temple. According to the Shiji, “Yin benji,” 3:106–7, Djou killed King Wen’s son and made a soup of his flesh, which he served to the unwitting King Wen.

  75. Master Wang (師望 Shi Wang) is Lü Wang 呂望 or Jiang Taigong 姜太公. He was King Wen’s greatest adviser and commander in chief. Legend has it that he was discovered in the Shang capital, Chaoge 朝歌, working in a butcher shop by the future King Wen. Chang 昌 is one of King Wen’s names. Master Wang’s singing seems to have first caught the king’s attention. It is also said that the king’s diviner predicted that such a person would appear to ensure the success of the king’s reign. “Li sao” also alludes to this story; see Wang Yi’s commentary in Hong, Chuci buzhu, 114. For more on the scattered and fragmentary sources about this figure, see Yuan, Zhongguo shenhua chuanshuo cidian, 157, 290–91; and Birrell, Chinese Mythology, 260–61.

  76. Fa 發 was the name of King Wu of Zhou, who was one of the sons of King Wen. Most of the sources that deal with this event say that when King Wu attacked Djou, he carried the corpse of his father into battle; see, e.g., Huainanzi, “Integrating Customs,” Major et al., Huainanzi, 412; see also Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu 409–10. Other sources prefer, without much justification, to think that the “corpse” in this case is a spirit tablet, to which one sacrifices in the ancestral temple.

  77. No one is entirely sure what this stanza is about. Xu Wenjing, among others, believes that Bo Lin 伯林 is another way of writing Bei Lin 北林 “North Forest,” which was in Henan and is mentioned in Zuozhuan, Xuangong, 1st year. This is part of the place where Guan Shu 管叔 (also known as 管叔鮮 Guan Shuxian), the younger brother of King Wu, was enfeoffed. After the death of King Wu and during the regency of the Duke of Zhou 周公, Guan Shu, Cai Shu (Du) 蔡叔(度), and Huo Shu (Chu) 霍叔(處) allied themselves with remnants of the defeated Shang royalty and staged a rebellion. After the Duke of Zhou put down the rebellion, according to The Lost Book of Zhou, Guan Shu hanged himself; see Yi zhoushu 逸周書, juan 48 (作雒解 “Zuo Luo jie”), 119–20, available at the Chinese Text Project (http://ctext.org). Other sources say simply that he was killed. One of the pretexts for their rebellion was the unfounded claim that the Duke of Zhou intended to usurp the throne. After the rebellion, King Cheng, the initially underaged heir to the throne, grew suspicious of the duke. The sky, in response, sent forth thunder, lightning, and wind, making the grain lie flat and tearing up the trees. Then a metal-bound coffer came to light in which a prayer offered by the duke when King Cheng was gravely ill indicated that he had requested that the spirits cause him to die rather than the king. This cleared up all doubt about the duke, whereupon the grain and trees were made by Heaven to stand up again. I have followed Xu Wenjing; see You, Tian wen zuanyi, 422–23.

  78. For an interesting study of Yi Yin, see Roel Sterckx, Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 65–76; see also Birrell, Chinese Mythology, 129. The claim that Yi Yin was offered sacrifices along with the Shang royal house is borne out in the oracle bone inscriptions. For Yi Yin in oracle bone inscriptions, see Mayvis Marubbio, “Yi Yin, Pious Rebel: A Study of the Founding Minister of the Shang Dynasty in Early Chinese Texts” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2000).

  79. He Lü 闔閭 (r. 514–496 B.C.E.) was King of Wu during the late Spring and Autumn period. Wu prospered under his rule.
He appointed Wu Zixu 伍子胥 as his general and declared war on the state of Chu. He once attacked the Chu capital of Ying and destroyed it. His grandfather was King Shou Meng 壽夢, who had four sons: Zhu Fan 諸樊, Yu Ji 餘祭, Yu Mei 餘昧, and Ji Zha 季札. After the death of Shou Meng, Zhu Fan became king. Later Zhu Fan passed the throne to Yu Ji. Yu Ji passed the throne to Yu Mei. Yu Mei should have passed the throne to Ji Zha, but Ji Zha was not interested in becoming a king. So Yu Mei passed the throne to his own son, Liao 僚. He Lü was Zhu Fan’s oldest son. Since Yu Mei had broken the tradition of fraternal succession, He Lü thought that retrospectively he had the right to be king, so he had King Liao assassinated. He Lü retrospectively, here, thinks of himself as having been ostracized and banished (Shiji, “Wu Taibo shijia,” 31:1445–77).

  80. Peng Keng 彭鏗 is Peng Zu 彭祖, who is supposed to have lived some eight hundred years. According to the Zhuangzi, it was even longer; see Watson, Chuang Tzu, 82n12. The “Chushi jia” of the Shiji tells us that he was one of the six sons of Lu Zhong. The Liexian zhuan 列仙傳 of Liu Xiang 劉向 tells us that he was an important officer in the Yin (Shang) court and that he was the grandson of Zhuan Xu 顓頊. Wang Yi tells us that despite the fact that he lived over eight hundred years, he still regretted the shortness of life. According to juan 1 of the Shenxian zhuan 神仙傳, Peng Zu felt sorrow that in his unusually long life he had seen his many wives and children die and that he had learned so little that he had nothing to teach; see Yuan, Zhongguo shenhua chuanshuo cidian, 378. He is also supposed to have been a good cook, but that reputation seems based mostly on this TW passage. It is clear from Wang Yi’s comment that his text had 悵 instead of 長. I have translated accordingly.

  81. These lines appear to refer to the uprising against King Li 厲王 of the Western Zhou, thus the reference to the strength of bees and ants, a metaphor for a peasant uprising. According to the Shiji, after the rebellion the Duke of Zhao and the Duke of Zhou jointly took the reins of power, thus “guiding the herd” (metaphor for ruling) together from the center. King Li fled to the state of Zhi 彘 after the uprising and died there. According to other sources, a long period of drought ensued. Diviners were consulted, and it was concluded that the problem was caused by the spirit of King Li. Dukes Zhou and Zhao decided to appease the angry spirit of the king by setting up his son, Crown Prince Jing 靖, as King Xuan 宣王. See Legge, The Chinese Classics, 3:153–54.

  82. These lines appear to be about Bo Yi 伯夷 and Shu Qi 叔齊, who lived under the Shang dynasty. After the Shang was overthrown by King Wu, who established the Zhou dynasty, the two brothers refused to eat crops grown under his rule, and they fled to Shouyang 首陽 Mountain, which is located in the north of Shanxi in a place called Hequ 河曲, which means River Bend. The Yellow River meanders in circles around this county, thus the name. (The huishui 回水 in the text, therefore, would seem to mean not “whirlpool” but “[re]turning waters” [or “river”]; see Watson, Chuang Tzu, 322–23.) There their diet consisted of ferns. One day, however, a woman pointed out to them that the ferns were in effect crops grown under the rule of the Zhou. They therefore stopped eating even ferns and died of hunger. The story alluded to here appears to be the same as that alluded to in a “Five Ministers” commentary on Wen xuan 文選, juan 54 (辨命論 “Bianming lun”), which has it that when they stopped eating even ferns, a compassionate white doe came along and suckled them. See Zhou Gongchen’s 周拱辰 comments on these lines in You, Tian wen zuanyi, 449, and the discussion in Jin, Dong, and Gao, Qu Yuan ji jiaozhu, 417.

  83. There several very different explanations of this passage. I am adopting the one offered by Wang Yi; see Hong, Chuci buzhu, 117. According to it, the older brother in question here is the Earl of Qin. His younger brother was Prince Qian 鍼. Zuozhuan, Zhaogong, 1st year, says that Qian was favored by his father, Duke Huan. Later he fled to Jin because he somehow displeased his mother (see Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5:578–79). According to Wang Yi’s comment on this passage, Qian coveted his brother’s dog and offered one hundred cash for it, but the brother would not give it up. The brothers began feuding, and Qian ended up fleeing to Jin, losing his title and income. No one knows the basis of Wang Yi’s comment. There is no account of a conflict between the brothers over a dog in the Zuozhuan.

  84. (Refers also to next three stanzas.) There are many theories about these lines. Many scholars think that Qu Yuan wrote them to bewail the fate of Chu and bemoan the ineffectuality of one or another of the kings of Chu.

  85. Wu Guang 吳光, Prince Guang of the state of Wu, as King of Wu was known as He Lü, as previously noted.

  86. 環閭穿社, 以及丘陵, 是淫是蕩, 爰出子文 is the text that both Wang Yi and Hong Xingzu saw. The text that is in the standard editions is unreadable, so I emend it, as do most others, according to Wang and Hong. Zi Wen 子文was the name of an incorruptible minister who served King Cheng 成of Chu (r. 671–676). According to Zuozhuan, Xuangong, 4th year, Ruo Ao 若敖married a woman from Yun. She gave birth to Dou Bobi 鬬伯比. When Ruo Ao died, he went with his mother to be raised in Yun. Dou Bobi was a member of the Chu royal family. He was raised in the domain of the Viscount of Yun. As a youth he had illicit relations with his cousin, the daughter of the Viscount of Yun, who then gave birth to Zi Wen. The woman abandoned the child in Meng Marsh, where he was raised by a tiger. The Viscount of Yun was hunting when he saw the child and, fearing for him, brought him home. Discovering that the child was in fact his grandson, he then married his daughter formally to the father, Dou Bobi, and the child was accepted into the family; see Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5:297.

  87. Du Ao 堵敖 is one of the names of Xiong Jian 熊囏, also known as Zhuang Ao 莊敖, third king of Chu (r. 676–672 B.C.E.). In the fifth year of his reign he decided to do away with his younger brother, Xiong Yun 熊惲. Xiong Yun, learning of this, fled but eventually returned, assassinated Du Ao, and usurped the throne. Xiong Yun, who came to be known as King Cheng of Chu, gradually developed a reputation for generosity and loyalty.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nine Cantos

  九章

  Jiuzhang

  The word zhang 章 in the title means, among other things, a section of a suite of songs, music, poetry, or other writing. I therefore translate it as “canto.” Zhu Xi noticed that Sima Qian never mentions the Nine Cantos but listed one of its sections, the “Ai Ying” 哀郢 (Mourning Ying), as one of the works of Qu Yuan. Even the Han scholar-poet Yang Xiong (53 B.C.E.–18 C.E.), who lived into the Later Han dynasty, mentions the first poem, “Xi song” (I deplore pleading), and the fifth poem, “Huai sha” (Bosom full of sand), of the series but never Nine Cantos. These and other pieces in the Nine Cantos seem to have appeared later than “Mourning Ying” and were grouped into a series by some later editor, believed by many to be the Han scholar Liu Xiang, for it is in his writings that the title first appears. His purpose may have been to use them as lyrics for musical performance.

  The Nine Cantos, with the exception of “Hymn to a Mandarin Orange Tree,” are remarkably similar in content. They describe the strained relationship between a minister and a ruler in terms very reminiscent of the “Li sao.” The minister and the ruler are therefore almost unanimously taken to be Qu Yuan and a Chu king, either Huai or Qing Xiang. Some of the poems describe or allude to exile and suicide. Because all the poems were traditionally ascribed to Qu Yuan, scholars for centuries have looked to them for biographical material not supplied by the Shiji biography or poems like the “Li sao” or the Nine Songs.

  1

  “I DEPLORE PLEADING”

  惜訟

  “XI SONG”

  This work begins as courtroom testimony in verse. The plaintiff addressed appears to be the king, who has accused the speaker, Qu Yuan or a Qu Yuan–like person, of disloyalty. Early Chinese writings suggest that the state of Chu had a highly developed legal system, but details were not forthcoming until the discovery of tomb no. 2 at Baoshan in 1
987. The tomb occupant, who was a legal officer named Shao Tuo, was buried in 316 B.C.E. with over two hundred bamboo slips containing among other things records of court cases. They reveal that Chu courts required witnesses to take an oath before the spirits to tell the truth, which functioned somewhat like swearing on the Bible in the West. As Susan Weld, a specialist in ancient Chinese law, has put it,

  A possibly distinctive aspect of Chu justice may be related to the region’s reputation for religious excess and eccentricity. While the legal documents now available from both Qin and early Han emphasize the use of careful interrogation—backed by torture if necessary—as the way to secure truth in judicial proceedings, torture is not apparent in Shao Tuo’s documents. Instead judges and officials seem to have resorted to the judicial oath, relying, perhaps, on their subject’s deep belief in the existence of, and the court’s access to, a complex pantheon of ancestors, ghosts, and spirits.1

  The persona in the poem appears to lose his case and in the end resigns himself to exile.

  I Deplore Pleading

  I deplore pleading my own case to draw your sympathy,2

  Unleashing my outrage as I reveal my heart.

  But, I swear, to speak thus is to do my all for you.

  Raising my hand I call the Blue Skies to be my witnesses.

  Let the Five Lords arbitrate,

  Let the Six Spirits verify the evidence,

  Let the mountains and rivers be the jury,

  And let Gao Yao pass the final verdict!3

  I served you, My Lord, with complete loyalty and sincerity.

  Yet, once I left the herd, you treated me like a wart.