Chinese poem illustration: 大雅 卷阿/ Daya – Zigzag Mountain by Anonymous
Full video also available at Bilibili：大雅 卷阿 PART1 PART2
Few Songs might be coincided with a mysterious Bamboo Annals(竹书纪年) digged out by a tomb raider 1700 years ago. Through this song, the peaceful, happy and self-disciplined lords reflected a powerful and prosprous country in its early stage.
伴奂, 矢, 休 are further analysed.
Part2 is about paragraph 6 to 10. In 7th paragraph, the flying phoenix(凤凰) shows up, which was believed to be the messenger from heaven. The appearance of phoenix is the recall to a folk story that King Wen(文王), the founder of Zhou saw phoenix, which implied he was favored by god. Seeing the phoenix again by King Cheng(成王), the third king, echoed the glory of King Wen’s. All in all, the poem is all about recall, salute and making oath to King Wen.
The unusal structure of 10 paragraphs might indicate the highest dignity. 3 and 5 is with the highest dignity for Zhou people, while in Shijing 3 paragraphs is the most relavent, which makes the very few poems with 5 paragraphs extremly special. Few other poems is of 5 paragraphs shows its very high dignity while this poem doubled it. Normal stucture is of even number paragraphs, while some very serious balmaing poem got 7 paragraphs. It should be a very interesting topic: how the paragraph counts related with the content and its subject in Book of Songs.
圭璋, 凤凰, 多 are further analysed.
大雅 卷阿
佚名
有卷者阿，飘风自南。
岂弟君子，来游来歌，以矢其音。
伴奂尔游矣，优游尔休矣。
岂弟君子，俾尔弥尔性，似先公酋矣。
尔土宇昄章，亦孔之厚矣。
岂弟君子，俾尔弥尔性，百神尔主矣。
尔受命长矣，茀禄尔康矣。
岂弟君子，俾尔弥尔性，纯嘏尔常矣。
有冯有翼，有孝有德，以引以翼。
岂弟君子，四方为则。
颙颙卬卬，如圭如璋，令闻令望。
岂弟君子，四方为纲。
凤凰于飞，翙翙其羽，亦集爰止。
蔼蔼王多吉士，维君子使，媚于天子。
凤凰于飞，翙翙其羽，亦傅于天。
蔼蔼王多吉人，维君子命，媚于庶人。
凤凰鸣矣，于彼高冈。
梧桐生矣，于彼朝阳。
菶菶萋萋，雍雍喈喈。
君子之车，既庶且多。
君子之马，既闲且驰。
矢诗不多，维以遂歌。
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.