Book of Songs (China)

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The Book of Songs ( Chinese  詩經  /  诗经 , Pinyin Shījīng ) is one of the five classics . It is the oldest collection of Chinese poems and the largest from pre-Christian times. According to tradition, Confucius is said to have selected the songs from a pool of 3,000 poems and brought them into their present state, but this is more of a legend than a fact. Shijing originated between the 10th and 7th centuries BC. Chr.

construction

character Pinyin annotation
風 风 fēng 160 folk songs
小雅 小雅 xiǎoyǎ 74 smaller festival songs or odes
大雅 大雅 dàyǎ 31 major festival songs
頌 颂 song 40 hymns

The book of songs contains a collection of 305 songs divided into 160 folk songs (風 feng); 74 smaller festival songs or odes (小雅 xiaoya); 31 larger festival songs (大雅 daya) and 40 hymns (頌 sòng) is divided. In Confucianism , these poems are interpreted morally. Other, especially Western sinologists, however, emphasize the folk song quality of the songs.

The folk songs are arranged according to vassal states, the art songs (xiaoya and daya) are texts for ceremonial and sacrificial purposes. The Xiaoya are about the subjects, the Daya about the kings. The Song, the oldest part of the songs, are festival and award songs that celebrate the ancestors of the Shang Dynasty , the Zhou Dynasty and the Land of Lu.

The celebratory and award songs were sung either in the ancestral temples of the respective rulers or on the occasion of imperial sacrificial festivals (for earth and sky) in the open air and accompanied by music and dancing. It was eaten and drunk with many invited guests. At such festivals one sang from time immemorial the "highest Lord" or "Tiān" (heaven) and gave him music. This leads Western researchers to suspect that there is a religious background.

Marcel Granet sees the origin of folk songs in alternate songs between a man and a woman, which probably have a ritual background, the origin of which can be found in ritual dance . They were sung on the occasion of seasonal festivals to celebrate fertility, rain and the like. to be requested.

The songs mainly consist of texts with four characters per verse and three to four stanzas of six lines each. The verses form rhymes and are designed through symmetry , juxtaposition , repetition and variation. A striking element of the songs are the so-called formulas, which probably go back to an oral tradition. A formula is a group of words as a semantic unit that is repeated to emphasize an important idea, either within a song or in different songs. It is possible that natural motifs of growing and becoming with a formulaic character in the book of songs can be traced back to fertility cults .

Older research particularly emphasized the following literary stylistic devices of the songs: the direct description ( fù賦), explicit comparisons ( bǐ比) and implicit comparisons ( xìng興).

meaning

The Shijing has a great importance as one of the oldest language monuments of ancient Chinese . It is therefore particularly important for research into the grammar and semantics and, to a certain extent, also the phonetics of Old Chinese.

Poem No. 66

  My husband is on labor service,
  I don't know how long.
  When will he return home?
  The chickens sleep in the wall holes.
  In the evening the sheep and cows return.
  My husband is on the labor service,
  how should I not think of him?

  My husband is on the labor service,
  not just for days or months.
  When will i see him again?
  The chickens sleep on the post.
  In the evening the sheep and cows come back.
  My husband is on the labor service,
  I hope he doesn't have to go hungry or thirsty.

The poem is between 1100 and 800 BC. BC originated. The juxtaposition of human and social conditions on the one hand and the natural order on the other has been a popular stylistic device in Chinese poetry since Shijing until today. In a comment from the end of the 19th century it says: "Here, too, one sees how the purely human remains the same under all zones and at all times."

literature

notes

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Bauer : History of Chinese Philosophy. Munich 2009, pp. 41–43. - Also Shi-king: The canonical songbook of the Chinese . Translated from the Chinese and explained by Victor von Strauss. Heidelberg 1880, pp. 6-9.
  2. ↑ See Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer : History of Chinese Literature: from the beginnings to the present . Munich 1999, pp. 28-35.
  3. ↑ Source: Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer: History of Chinese Literature: From the Beginnings to the Present . Munich 1999, p. 35.
  4. ↑ Victor von Strauss (ed.): Shi-king. The canonical songbook of the Chinese . Translated and explained by Viktor von Strauss. Heidelberg 1880, p. 4.
  5. ↑ contains from the Shi-king: Emperor's messenger; The servant; The junker; To the prince; Legal action; Oppression; Lament of the poor son; Heaven and hell; March; Homesickness; Song on the home march; Homecoming; The soldier provides his general. Pp. 11-28
  6. ↑ detailed book review , accessed on April 4, 2020.

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