Literary Study To The "Ritual Songs" From Tangut

Firstly,‘Ritual Songs’,which was a collection of works of the poets who were from the Tangut Dynasty,whose composers were mostly consisted of royal poets and senior monks.It could be divided in two versions,A and B,and there seemly be not found that some direct connection between the two,.In the other hand,there were a difference in both of them about their situation of selecting poems which they maybe incompletely familiar with its authors.There ares some new titles of the emperor Ren Xiao appeared in this anthology: Bright King,Eternal sage-King and The Seventh Emperor,which were only recorded in this collection of poems.In addition,More than half of the poems in this collection were written during the reign of Emperor Ren Xiao,and most of them should be created in the late period of his reign.What’s more,there are several internal rules and standards existed in its arrangement of the A edition of this Anthology,what shows a relatively rough trace of being compiled by series.And B is put up the feature that is more optional.Secondly,there are 33 poems are collected in two editions of ‘Ritual Songs’ of the Tangut Dynasty,all of them are belong to the category of imperial poems.According to their content,it could be divided into four types: praising the emperor,praising the sages and generals,praising the palace and the royal temple,and praising the education function.The ‘praising the emperor’ type recorded the emperors and empresses of the Tangut dynasty and their life about banquets,trips,diplomacy and other events.The‘praising the sages and generals’ type express poet’s praises to these famous officials of the Tangut dynasty,and describe their outstanding contribution which bring to them reputation out of respect by the Tangut people.The ‘praising the palace and the royal temple’ type preserve the precious materials of the Imperial architecture of the Tangut Dynasty;The ‘praising the education function’ type hope provide some enlightenment about life guidance for Tangut people.This collection of poems shows the high level of literary creation of Tangut writers,and is the literary crystallization of vigorously developing cultural undertakings and carrying out Confucian education during The emperor Ren Xiao period.admittedly,the royal banquets,trips and sacrificial rites recorded in these poems provided us with precious information about its history,military affairs,architecture and official posts,and also enable us to further understand the literary activities and artistic interests of the scholars during the Ren Xiao period.In the end,’Ritual Songs’ contained the unique value which is obviously different from the court poetry of Qi and Liang dynasty,and has a big difference..Comparatively speaking,there is a unlike discrepancy between it and respectively the early Tang Dynasty,the Northern Song Dynasty,the Liao Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty.Its literary achievements reflect into the three factors: literary genre,documentary writing habit and spiritual pursue of the aristocratic scholars who from Tangut nation.As a part of the entire history of ancient Chinese literature,its unique value consisted of its character of region,nation,epochal and cultural diversity.