First Tang Agricultural Ritual Poetry Study

This paper mainly studies the poems of agricultural worshipping before Tang dynasty. Agriculture is accompanied by offering sacrifice ceremony of agriculture.You can say that they are accompaniments of agriculture worshipping. Agriculture worshipping ceremonies have a long history and have a high degree of attention. According to different worshipping objects, it can be divided into several kinds, which contains SheJi Worshipping, which worships the god of land and the god of grains; JieTian ritual, which borrowing the power of people to plough; XianCan ritual, which borrows the power of people to keep silkworms; Worshipping wind,rain,thunder and flash lightning and Worshipping of the harvest year and so on.The first chapter introduces the SheJi Worshipping poetry. The two poems "Book of Songs·Today they·Zai Shan" and "Book of Songs·Today they·Liang Si" vividly show the spring and autumn activities worshipping the god of land and the god of grain. At the same time, I verified the gods and the places of SheJi worshipping.The second chapter introduces JieTian poetry and XianCan poetry. In fact, JieTian ritual is the symbol of the emperors borrowing the physical strength of farmers to plow the fields, in order to promote the agriculture. The ceremony of JieTian must be held by strict rituals. Similar to JieTian ritual, there is XianCan ritual. But emperors are in charge of the former and queens are in charge of the Latter.The third chapter mainly examines the poetry of praying for rain. "Book of Songs·lesser·Xin Nanshan" is a faithful record of it. It reflects that facing drought, people long for rain. At the same time, I examine the worshipping of wind,thunder,cloud and rainbow.The forth chapter introduces Zha Worshipping poetry, mainly taking "Book of Songs·Today they·Harvest year" and "Book of Songs·Today they·YiXi" for example. Zha worshipping is a great ceremony at the end of the bumper year in order to express gratitude to the gods and ancestors and pray for a bumper harvest for the coming year.The fifth chapter summed up the characteristics of agriculture worshipping poetry. First, it has a high historical value for preserving agriculture worshipping rituals. Second, it has primitive features. Third, it reflects the cross-cutting feature of the timing worshipping and the events worshipping. Forth, it reflects the ancients' religious feelings: loyalty,reverence,pray and gratitude.