Yìshī · Jiāojiāo Míng Niǎo 逸詩・交交鳴鳥
Lost Ode — “The Twittering Birds” (modern editorial title; 逸詩 = “lost ode”, i.e., a poem in the Shī 詩 style that was not incorporated into the received canon of 305 poems)
(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)
About the work
Jiāojiāo Míng Niǎo 交交鳴鳥 is one of two lost odes (yìshī 逸詩) in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 4, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2004, comprising approximately 4 bamboo strips bearing two stanzas of a previously unknown poem. The editorial title is taken from the poem’s opening phrase. The poem celebrates the jūnzǐ 君子 (exemplary gentleman) using bird imagery and simile (bǐ 比) — a standard rhetorical device of the Shī — and was not included in the received 305-ode Mǎo canon.
Abstract
The poem consists of two parallel stanzas. Each opens with birds (jiāojiāo 交交 — a reduplicative describing bird calls) gathering at a named location (zhōng liáng 中梁 — “mid-beam/bridge” in stanza 1; zhōng zhǔ 中渚 — “mid-islet” in stanza 2), and proceeds to a simile comparing the jūnzǐ to precious objects: “like jade, like jade-crystal” (ruò yù ruò yíng 若玉若瑛) in stanza 1; “like a panther, like a tiger” (ruò bào ruò hǔ 若豹若虎) in stanza 2. Each stanza then attributes to the jūnzǐ a social virtue: in stanza 1, “the gentleman befriends [others], to make himself grow old” (jūnzǐ xiāng hǎo, yǐ zì wéi zhǎng 君子相好，以自為長); in stanza 2, “to defend himself” (yǐ zì wéi yù 以自為禦). Each stanza closes with a paired praise formula: “harmonious in splendour, harmonious in elegance” (xié huá xié yīng 諧華諧英 / xié shàng xié xià 諧上諧下 — “harmonious above, harmonious below”).
Genre. The poem belongs to the bǐ 比 style of the Guófēng 國風 section of the Odes (animal image → human comparison), and its stanzaic structure (repeated refrain with varying key words) is typical of the received Guófēng. The presence of this and the companion ode (Duō Xīn 多薪, KR2p0045) among the Shanghai Museum texts is evidence that the received 305-ode canon represents a selection from a larger body of circulating Odes-style poems in the Warring States period.
Significance. Before the Shanghai Museum acquisition, only a handful of quotations from “lost odes” were known (from citations in the Mòzǐ 墨子, Zuǒzhuàn 左傳, and the Guōdiàn Kǒngzǐ Shī Lùn). The two lost odes in Shangbo vol. 4 are among the very few complete pre-Hàn odes not in the received Shī canon to have survived.
Translations and research
- 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 4, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2004 — editio princeps.
- Kern, Martin, and Dirk Meyer, eds. Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy: Studies in the Composition and Thought of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents). Brill, 2017 — broad contextual study for classical literary/political texts; provides framework for thinking about the lost odes.
- Zhōu Fèngwǔ 周鳳五, philological notes on the 上博四 lost odes — scattered in the Jianbo online network (bsm.org.cn) 2004.
Links
- Wikipedia (Shanghai Museum bamboo texts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum_bamboo_texts