Where is the "ritual music" of Zhou Dynasty dance?

"Rites and music" is the core content of dance culture in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Book of Rites stipulates various forms and contents of "music", and "music" must conform to the hierarchical system of "ceremony", which is especially reflected in the sacrificial objects of music and dance and the number of bands used in Zhou Dynasty.

For example, the ancient book Li Zhou Di Guan recorded the "six small dances" of the Zhou Dynasty:

Dancers teach soldiers to dance and dance mountains and rivers to sacrifice; Teach dancing and serve the country handsomely; Teach feather dance, handsome dance square sacrifice; Pope dances, handsome dances in the drought. All wild dancing is taught; Where there is a small sacrifice, there is no dance.

In fact, the number of sacrificial dances in the court of the Zhou Dynasty had an obvious hierarchical system.

For example, in the Zhou Dynasty, the emperor was required to use the four-sided belt, which was called "Gong Hang"; The warlord used a trilateral belt called "Xuan Gua"; Scholar-officials take two-sided belts as "hanging"; The military and civilians can only use a band called "Tediao".

Also, the Zhou Dynasty stipulated that emperors used eight, governors used six, doctors used four and soldiers used two. Generally speaking, each "Shu" is a dance team, eight people are a dance team, and the dance team is 64 people.

The "Six Great Dances" and "Six Small Dances" in the Zhou Dynasty are like a complete music and dance system, which created a chapter of inheritance and development in the history of ancient dance. In terms of inheritance, the Zhou Dynasty was a master of music and dance of the previous generation. As far as development is concerned, the Zhou Dynasty was the inventor of the music and dance system.

In addition, since the Zhou Dynasty, two categories of music and dance, "Wen Yi Zhaode" and "Martial Arts Xianggong", have been completed in the history of dance. In particular, music and dance are used to complete the task of sacrificing gods.

Zhou people used music and dance to symbolize, embody, explain and praise the contributions of rulers. The combination of ceremony and music, music assisting ceremony and the combination of ceremony and music have had a far-reaching influence on the dance system of later generations, especially the elegant music.

There were many festivals and sacrificial dances in the Zhou Dynasty. During the two-week period, people had not yet formed a complete religious concept, but the primitive totem belief was still very active, and sacrificial activities flourished, which was highly valued by the emperor and ordinary people and fully ritualized.

The characteristics of primitive witchcraft activities in the Zhou dynasty were more obvious in the two-week period. The dance in the Zhou dynasty formed a fixed procedure in the process of ritualization, and achieved national unity at a specific place and time.

Degree. Most of its dance images are solemn and solemn, and also reveal the power of a sacred ceremony.

Wax sacrifice is also one of the very ancient sacrificial ceremonies in the Zhou Dynasty. The ancients hunted for a living and worshipped gods. Therefore, at the end of the Zhou Dynasty, people sacrificed their captured prey to their ancestors, which was called "wax sacrifice".

Because wax sacrifice is an animal sacrifice, most of them use the word "wax" with "insect", but sometimes "wax" is written in the twelfth lunar month, and the word "meat" in the glyph can also vividly explain the form of sacrifice.

Later, people called the activities held at the end of the year "wax festival", so people called the last month of the year "wax month", which has developed into a grand ceremony to worship the gods in the Zhou Dynasty.

Zhou Li Chun Guan's ancient book records:

The country sacrifices wax and praises, and beats drums to rest the old things.

The national sacrifice "wax" in the Zhou Dynasty mentioned here is a sacrificial ceremony to celebrate the harvest and thank the gods. There are eight kinds of wax sacrifice objects:

The first is the first increase, that is, Shennong, who is the ancestor of agricultural civilization in China; The second is the secretary, that is, Hou Ji, who is the god in charge of farming; The third object is the farmer, who is the god of farmers; The fourth is the post, also called watching and drinking, that is, the god of hut, the god of land and the god of well; The fifth category is cats and tigers, that is, cat gods and tiger gods. Because cats can prey on voles and tigers can prey on wild boars, they have also gained the status of animal gods. The sixth object is Fang, the god of water dike; The seventh category is water courage, that is, river god; The eighth category is a hundred kinds, that is, the god of a hundred valleys.

About the object of the eighth sacrificial dance in the Zhou Dynasty, there is another saying that it refers to the insect god, because this god managed hundreds of insects and gained a high position.

These eight gods show that there were wax sacrifices in the early farming society of Zhou Dynasty. At that time, people could not know the truth of nature exactly, so they endowed everything with spirituality, prayed for the help of the gods, and expressed their desired results through sacrifices. Some people even fantasize about transforming nature through their own actions, and wax dance came into being.

The wax sacrifice dance of the Zhou Dynasty was held in December of the lunar calendar every year. It is also called "Big Wax Eight", because the Wax Festival has eight gods and is an activity that the whole country participates in.

The form of wax sacrificial dance in the Zhou Dynasty has the flavor of primitive sacrifice, because the band has few musical instruments, mainly piccolo and drum music, and some people perform "ice dance" and "Su dance". This is recorded in the ancient book "Book of Rites, Suburb Sacrifice":

Big wax eight, Yi Shi began to be waxed. Wax also, cable also. /kloc-in October/February, I collected all the things and looked for them. The sacrifices of wax were also increased by the Lord and priests, and hundreds of sacrifices were offered in return for the increase.

Therefore, when Zhou people dance sacrificial dances, they need to wear plain clothes, sing and wave sticks made of hazel wood:

The earth goes against its house, and the water returns to its valley; If insects don't do it, plants will return to nature!

The theme of this lyric poem is: "earth, settle in your place;" Water, go back to your river.

Go; Insects, don't make waves; Weeds and miscellaneous trees have grown into depressions! "This is obviously the call of Zhou farmers for the most important soil and water conservation and unpredictable natural disasters in the face of the natural growth of crops, which obviously has the nature of strong primitive witchcraft spells. It vividly conveyed the psychological anxiety caused by natural disasters in agricultural social life at that time.

Since the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, the wax sacrificial dance has spread in traditional culture for more than 2000 years. Later, Confucius also took his student Zi Gong to see the dance in the wax museum. Zi Gong doesn't understand the inner impulse of people who are completely devoted to wax sacrifice. As a bystander, he raised questions. Results Confucius said:

A hundred days of wax and a day of light are unknown to you. Zhang is not relaxed, but civil and military can be both; Relaxation, both civil and military. A relaxed, civil and military way.

Confucius summed up a profound truth from the hard work and rest of the people all the year round, that is, the way of civil and military affairs in traditional culture. Of course, in addition to wax sacrifice, there were many other sacrificial dances during the two weeks, such as the famous sacrificial dance "Yu Sacrifice". There are many records about "Yong" in ancient literature. When there is no rain in the drought, people in the Zhou Dynasty will hold sacrificial ceremonies, and people pray for rain through sacrifices. Later, Zuo Qiuming, a famous historian in the Spring and Autumn Period, recorded in his book "Zuo Zhuan Huan Gong Five Years" that "the dragon sees it and turns it".

According to documents, the ancient dance "Yi Sacrifice" developed into a more extensive sacrificial activity within two weeks, mainly a dance ceremony to drive away floods and droughts. The ancient book "Sacrifice" records:

Zong Yi, offering sacrifices for floods and droughts. Zheng Xuan commented: Zong, it should be Wei Xiao's fault. ..... Wei Kui, also known as the altar of floods and droughts. Wei's words are also urging.

These words show that the two-week sacrifice not only means praying for rain, but also means climbing the altar and using grand sacrifices to drive away floods and droughts. If sacrifices are always fruitless, there are even measures to "storm witches" and "burn witches".

For example, the summer of the twenty-first year of Xi Gong in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty coincided with the drought. The monarch of Lu tried to burn the witch, but was stopped by Wen Zhong, the minister. At the end of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Qin Mugong had a plan to carry out the ritual activities of "Storm Witch" in the drought, but it was also discouraged. It can be seen that during these two weeks, witch violence and burning witches still occur from time to time.

The dance "Gaoqing" in the two-week period was also very popular. Gaoqing, also known as "Jiaoqing", was a sacrificial dance for Zhou people to pray for the prosperity of their descendants. Later, Dade, a famous scholar in the Western Han Dynasty, recorded in the Book of Rites and the Moon Order:

The moon in mid-spring, ... The mysterious bird arrived, and on the day of arrival, it sacrificed too much jail time to Gao Qi. The son of heaven is close, the empress is handsome and has nine arms.

This shows that the Zhou people allowed men and women to meet freely in the mid-spring moon, which is a legacy of the group marriage system in primitive society, and there are also magical legends such as "Hou Ji was born in the footsteps of great men" and "swallowing eggs to make soup".

In the Zhou Dynasty, the traditional custom of dating and dancing between men and women in the spring suburbs gradually evolved into a sacred dance ceremony to sacrifice female ancestors. At that time, there were grand song and dance scenes, delicious food and a clear object of sacrifice, namely Jiang Yuan, the female ancestor of the Zhou Dynasty, which shows that the sacrificial dance of the Zhou Dynasty was very popular.

There is also a witch dance in the Zhou Dynasty, which is a famous sacrifice dance besides wax sacrifice dance, Nuo dance, Yi dance and dance.

According to textual research, the witch dance in the two-week period was widely spread in the lives of all ethnic groups in the north and south, with various forms, which probably originated from the original witch dance activities in the Zhou Dynasty.

In the witch dance in the late Zhou Dynasty, the songs and dances of offering sacrifices to the gods in Chu were very famous. For example, the pre-Qin poetry collection "The Book of Songs, Guoyu and Chu Yu" records: "The wife enjoys it, and the family is a witch history."