On The Relation Of The Bronze Culture And The Producing Of The Book Of Songs

The Book of Songs is the first poems collection and the earliest literary works of our country, which is also the source of Chinese literature and has a lofty position in the Chinese literature history as well as in the world literature history. The Book of Songs has rich cultrual contents and important historical material value, which is also the classic works of the Confucian School culture, so poeple pay much attention to it all the time, the treatises on it are overabundant, but on the study of the occurrence of the Book of Songs is still weak, many problems need to solve or further research. The producing of the Book of Songs is a very important problem among the studying of the Book of Songs. It has close connection with the correct understanding and explaining of the Book of Songs, so there is great significance to work out the problem. But the traditional study on it is confronted with a lot of difficulties because of the short of document data. Although there are some works studying on it, the width and depth of the research are still worsly restricted and some disputed questions can't be resolved ultimately because most of them mainly utilize the traditional literature, so the reseaech of the producing of the Book of Songs is limited as a whole. But with the development of Chinese archaeology cause over the past century the archaeology of Qin Dynasty and before has made great progress, large amount of cultural relic and inscriptions on ancient bronze objects being excavated, which promotes the study of the history and culture of Xian Qin and also provide new turning point on the research of the happening of the Book of Songs. Many scholars made use of the archaeology to study the products, words, the prodcing time of some poems and so on and got great achievements, as to the research of the occurrence of the Book of Songs there are some valuable results too. This thesis will utilize the rich archaeoloical exploitation achievements of Xian Qin to study the producing of the Book of Songs on the basis of other people's research from the bronze culture point of view.Broadingly speaking, bronze culture mainly refers to the matter culture and spirit culture created by the people of the Bronze Age. In the narrow sense, Bronze culture points only to the culture represented by the bronze. This thesis mainly adopts the narrow sense of the concept of the bronze culture, but sometimes may also extend to the meaning of the broad meaning. In ancient times the bronze products not only standed for the developing level of economy and technology of that time, but also represented the politics authority. It blended with a lot of culture phenomena such as politics, economy, religion, science, technology, music, characters, signing the time's culture in miniature and the civilization level. Therefore, it is easy to comply with intrinsic characteristics of the Bronze Age. It also has important significance to the study of the occurrence of the Book of Songs.The first chapter mainly deals with the forming of the four-character sentence of the Book of Songs from the bronze chime point of view. The four-character sentence is the main form of the Book of Songs. The sentences of the poems in it adopt the form in a great measure, and there is a distinct characteristic of a two-character rhythm in the four-character sentences, sometimes the meaning of a whole semanteme may be destroyed and a syntax rule violated only to apply the demand of the four-character poem form. So is certain that the forming of the four-character poem form.of the Book of Songs must be effected by some powerful rhythm beyond the content of the sentences. According to the study of the scholars, the Book of Songs is a collection of music songs. All the poems in it is music songs. Therefore the rhythm which affects the poem form of the Book of Songs is surely the music rhythm. The Book of Songs is the outcome of the ceremonial music culture, and the occurence of the book must have a close connection with Ya Music of that time. According to the literature recordation and archaeological exploitation the Ya Music of the Zhou Dynasty is mainly beating music, and the bronze chime is the core musical instrument of the Ya Music in the Zhou Dynasty. The bronze chime plays a leading role of the rhythm in the Ya Music. According to the study and testing most of the bronze chimes of the Zhou Dynasty had double sounds with the musical scale of Gong-Shang-Zhi-Yu and a slow rhythm. The bronze chimes had undergone different development stages, which couldn't change the note tuning or play complex melody and only as rhythmical percussion instruments in the Xi Zhou Dynasty. The rhythm features of the bronze chimes and the triune artistic form of poems, dancing and music blended together led to the rhythm form of two tacts with a brief pause and four tacts as a unit, so turned out the poem form of four-character sentences of two words a pause and four words a sentence in the Book of Songs. And there was some differentiae in the poem style between the Song Poems which produced earlier and the Ya Poems because of the difference in the rhythm of the bronze chime which is slower in early Xi Zhou and some faster since the middle of Xi Zhou Dynasty. The second chapter mainly concerns the occurrence of the poems on sacrifice to ancestors in the Shang Dynasty. Both fete and war were the most important affairs in the Shang and Zhou Dynasty. Poeple of that time thought much of the fete among which the cults to their ancestors were the most prevalent. Archaeological studies show that the music and dancing for fete were extremely prosperous in the Shang Dynasty, and its music and dancing art was at a high level. According to the traditinal documents and archaeological exploitation we can know that musicians and the special music education organization already appeared in Shang Dynasty, and the written words made great progress. All these offered chances for the occurence of the poems on sacrifice to ancestors in Shang Dynasty. Dancing accompanied by music's which were acted to sacrifice to ancestors prosperous in Shang Dynasty and the praying to the ancestors in the ceremony by Zhu Guan were the sources of production of the poems which were offered to the sacrifice to ancestors. The poems offered to ancestors then came into being with the activities such as dancing, singing and praying in Shang Dynasty. By archaeological exploitation we kown that there were special officials who administered the Ode in Shang Dynasty. The Shang Ode and the poem Da Huo are all the poems produced in Shang Dynasty.The third chapter mainly dicusses the producing of the poems for drinking and ancestors in Zhou Dynasty. The thought of sacrificing to ancestors were heavy in the Xi Zhou Dynasty and to amuse the souls of their forefathers by music and dancing was an important manner to hold sacred ritual to ancestors from the inscripts on the bronze artifacts. The poems for ancestors were then produced with the activities of dancing and singing to amuse the souls of their forefathers. Beside this, dinkings was also an important activity to hold close feeling of blood relationship together, to strengthen patriarch system, to display the morals of gentleman and to rule the ceremonial standard in the Xi Zhou Dynasty. Drinkings were prevalent in the Zhou Dynasty from the inscripts on the ancient bronze artifacts, and there must be singing and dancing in the course of drinking from the literature and archaeological exploitation. Music and dancing were important contents and organic component elements in the drinkings of the Zhou Dynasty. The drinking poems came into being right in the activities of singing and dancing in the drinkings. The features that the civilities were payed much attention to and the brotherliness was treasured in the drinkings from the inscripts on ancient bronze artifacts fayed with that in the drinking poems in the Book of Songs. It was the unique culture of drinking that led to the drinking poems in the Zhou Dynasty. The final chapter approaches the relationship between the historian officials and the producing of the Book of Songs. This part first reveals the large number of historian officials by searching the scripts on the turtlebacks and bronze artifacts in the Shang and Zhou Dynasty and discusses the social class and the functions of them. The historian officials were the most learned and the best at writing and basically dominating the edbiz and cultural activities at that time by taking charge of the task of noting and old scriptures, familiarizing with the history, executing armomancy, psalming, knowing the dispensation and engaging for the writing of all kinds of the articles. So the historian officials must have participated in the inditing of the poems of the Book of Songs which was the outcome of the ritual culture of the Zhou Dynasty with high cultural accomplishment, stood for the ritual culture of the Zhou Dynasty and reflected the concepts such as stressing etiquette, music and morality, etc. The historian officials were the participators and authors of some poems of the Book of Songs no matter according to the written words or high culture and the emphases on the ceremony, morality and theocracy, and some epic poetry were perhaps written by them. Besides taking charge of noting and the old scriptures, the historian officials were also responsible for praying and admonishing. The historian officials were important writers of the psalters, and it had close connection with the producing of the odes of the Book of Songs. The admonishing responsibility to prevent the ill deeds and to promote well-doing lead to the producing of the satiric poems of the Book of Songs. The historian officials were also the important writers of the scripts on the bronze artifacts, the four-character sentences in the scripts were similiar to that in the Book of Songs. It shows the close connection between the writing style of historian officials and the forming of four-character-sentence poems of the Book of Songs.