Kitay_i_okrestnosti_Mifologia_folklor_literatura

Anne E. McLaren

Asia Institute University of Melbourne

The Origin of Bridal Laments in China:

History and Ethnicity

Before the socialist revolution, Chinese women commonly performed bridal laments at the time of departure from their natal home. These are generally known as kujia ^Ш or "weeping on being married off. For most of the twentieth century, Chinese scholars have believed that the origin of bridal laments in China lay in practices of marriage by capture that are believed to have taken place in remote antiquity at the point of transition between a supposed matriarchal society and a patriarchal one. This view was established in the early twentieth century and is still very prevalent today. Received wisdom has it that bridal laments derived from the earliest inception of universal patriarchal society, when the protesting bride, weeping and wailing, was borne away by the abducting groom. The content of the laments, particularly the protest at forcible marriage, are thus construed by Chinese scholars as incipient female resistance to patriarchal oppression. In this study I intend to challenge the conventional view for the origin of Chinese bridal laments. When one examines the historical sources it is possible to put forward a different view for the origin and early history of bridal laments, one that traces them to deeply-rooted traditions of weeping and wailing in formulaic style.

Another controversial issue concerns the ethnic origin of bridal laments. Chinese scholars have invariably assumed that kujia type practices derive from the ancestors of the Han Chinese people who moved southwards from the Yellow River. However, as Wolfram Eberhard has argued in The Local Cultures ofSouth and East China (1968), Chinese high culture is the product of the fusion and adaptation of elements of pre-existing local cultures, some of which were subsequently pushed back to marginal or border areas. Although Eberhard does not discuss bridal laments in his important study, he does mention "alternating songs, including those performed at weddings", which he regards as a feature of anunderlying Yao culture in south China (1968:120). In other words, bridal laments appear to be amongst the elements belonging to local cultures of the south as distinct from the northern cultures that are associated with China's earliest dynasties. Today bridal laments are common amongst many non-Han peoples within Chinese territory, particularly in south and southwest China. During the last millen-

him, laments associated with Han Chinese have been prevalent in areas more or less contiguous with these same border regions, that is, bordering on or south of the Yangzi River. In the Chinese heartland around the Yellow River (the modern day provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Shandong), one finds little evidence of bridal laments in imperial times. These places were the homeland of China's most ancient dynasties. If bridal laments did indeed originate in Han Chinese indigenous culture, then one would expect to find some trace of it in this major originary site of the Hua Xia people, ancestors of the people now known as the Han Chinese. This raises the issue of whether kujia is indeed an indigenous practice of the ancestral Han Chinese as argued by contemporary Chinese scholars. An alternative viewpoint is put forward here, specifically, that kujia derived fromthe blending of northern customs of wailing, particularly mourning the deceased, with the dialogic song cycles of southern peoples with whom the Hua Xia intermarried, as they expanded ever southward in the course of Chinese imperial history.

Western scholars have not yet examined the origins of Chinese bridal laments, but it has been the subject of investigation by a number of Chinese scholars (eg. Tan 1990). Wolfram Eberhard does not mention laments in his classic, The Local Culturesof South and East China (1968). Since his study of historical Chinese customs draws on an impressive range of written sources, this is an indication of the relative dearth of reports about laments in the records of Chinese literati in the pre-modern period. The received view amongst Chinese scholars is that the earliest evidence for the existence of bridal laments can be found in the Book of Changes (Yijing) (see, for example, Jiang 1982:240). The same source is also used to 'prove' the existence of marriage by capture in antiquity. For this reason, in the minds of many Chinese scholars, marriage by capture is inextricably linked with bridal laments, and the latter are thus regarded as a function of the evolving marriage system not of the performance arts in general. In this way, Chinese scholars are able to argue that kujia is an indigenous Chinese custom, one practiced since time immemorial in the Chinese heartland. As I will argue here, both these propositions are open to debate.

I will first discuss the evidence for the view that bridal laments are associated with ancient forms of marriage by capture. An obscure passage in the Book of Changes is repeatedly cited in this connection.

Chun "Difficulty at the Beginning"

6—2 Difficulties pile up

Horse and wagon part,

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Не is not a robber;

Не wants to woo when the time comes. The maiden is chaste

She does not pledge herself

Ten yearsthen she pledges herself 6—6 Horse and wagon part,

Bloody tears flow. (Wilhelm, 1977:18).

This translation comes from Baynes' English rendition of the German original by Richard Wilhelm. Wilhelm's translation derives from the later edition of the Yijing with annotations by Zhu Xi (1130—1200), which was widely consulted in the late imperial and modern period, and would have served as the basis for the analysis of Chinese scholars researching the history of Chinese marriage. James Legge translates the final couplet in similar fashion: "6.The topmost SIX, divided, shows [its subject] with the horses of his chariot obliged to retreat, and weeping tears of blood in streams" (repr. 1964:63). Similar lines are found in the earlier edition of Wang Bi (226—249), as translated by Richard Lynn: "As one's yoked horses pulled at odds/So one weeps profuse tears of blood" (Lynn 1994:156).

The final line "qi xue HanтШШШШ" is here interpreted as the copious tears of the bride (tears of blood) as the "robber groom" bears her away on his horse. The groom is seen to enact a charade abduction ("he is not a robber"), a mock abduction believed to derive from an ancient practice of actual marriage by capture. Influential Chinese thinker, Liang Qichao (1873—1929) and the left-wing author, Guo Moruo (1892—1978), have argued that the above lines points to the existence of marriage by capture in Chinese antiquity and concludes, "This is obviously a case of women being valued more highly then men. This is the first proof of vestigial remains of the matrilineal system [in China] (Guo 1930, repr.l964:41—2). The existence of marriage by capture was further elaborated in Chen Guyuan's influential history of Chinese marriage systems (1936, repr. 1998:50) and has been constantly repeated in Chinese language scholarship. Chen was clearly influenced by the general consensus of the time that all mankind had undergone a form of matrilineal society before the establishment of patriarchal systems. The foundational study was Johann J.Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht (1861), followed by John McLennan's 1865 study, Primitive Marriage:AnInquiry into the Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies. Lewis Henry Morgan developed McLennan's ideas further into a fifteen stage development leading to "civilized" marriage {Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family9l817). Morgan's theory influenced Friedrich Engels and became entrenched in Marxist social science paradigms during the twentieth cen-

tury. John McLennan, for example, argued that marriage by capture arose with the need to procure wives from outside one's existing tribal grouping, thus giving rise to exogamous marriage (McLellan, 1970:xxiii-xxiv). Under the influence of this paradigm, Chinese scholars sought to place the origins of bridal laments in the posited stage of marriage by capture, using this cryptic line in the Yijing, "bloody tears flow". In the contemporary period, Chen Guyuan's argument has been echoed by Liao Zheng (1985:85), Cai Limin (1993:80), Guo Xingwen (1994 : 240 ) and Wang Qingshu (1995:91—2), Dong Jiazun (1995:219) and Sha Yuan (2000:89—90). The authoritative Zhongguo fengsu cidian [Chinese Dictionary of Folk Customs] also offers the standard interpretation (1990:172). Ye Tao and Wu Cunhao, in their recent monographic study on the phenomenon, Qianghun [Marriage by Capture], repeat the received wisdom that kujia is a vestige of the ancient custom of marriage by capture (2000:123—4, 151—5). Christian de Pee, in his study of how this paradigm influenced Chinese scholars, observes: "In order to be modern, China too, must have progressed from matrilineality to patrilineality, from polygamy to monogamy, from mercenary marriage to romantic love", (2001:561).

Sheng Yi disputes the association between marriage by capture and bridal laments but argues too that kujia date from the transition between the hypothetical matrilineal society to a patrilineal one. In this interpretation, women wept at the loss of their natal homes when forced to leave for the home of the groom. At a later stage words were added and it became a ritual performance involving both weeping and chants (Sheng 1994:144—148). Jiang Bin also argues that elaborate kujiaperformances developed after the transition to a patrilineal system but retains within it notions of the earlier stage of marriage by capture (1982). Some scholars also argue that contemporary bridal laments refer obliquely to the supposed derivation of kujia in capture by marriage. For example, Ye and Wu cite laments from the Yizu of Yunnan referring to the bride as a chicken (xiaoji) seized by an old hawk (lao ying), Mongol laments where the bride refers to the privileges of the male in remaining in his natal home on marriage, and Tujia laments of south China where the bride expressly refers to the groom as a "wild man" or "robber" who is "snatching [her] away" (Ye & Wu 2000:153). They conclude that: "One could say that from the time when marriage by capture became prevalent, bridal laments become a sorrowful custom where women bewailed their historical defeat. This is of universal significance". Once the stage of marriage by capture was replaced by the dowry-bride price system of the imperial era, women continued to weep because they were leaving their next of kin, Mends, and the familiar surroundings of their childhood (Ye & Wu 2000:154). From this point of view, contemporary practices of bridal laments expose a sub-

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liminal memory of the point of transition from matrilineal to patrilineal society, a kind of "primitivity" in the collective subconscious of Chinese women.

In the West, the nineteenth century paradigm that argued for the existence of a universal chronology of human development, beginning with a matrilineal stage and followed by a transition to patrilineal society, has collapsed beneath the weight of counter evidence. Chinese scholars continue to claim that China, at any rate, underwent a stage of matrilineality (or matriarchy, the two being synonym mous in the Chinese language). However, once this paradigm of universal matrilineality falls away, the concomitant claim that Chinese bridal laments derive from specific marriage forms that must have prevailed in remote antiquity is less convincing. In other words, specific evidence must be brought to bear to argue the case for both marriage by capture and its association with bridal laments. The discovery in 1973 of an even earlier edition of the Book of Changes, the Mawangdui silk text from the second century ВСЕ, does not corroborate the earlier theory. In the Mawangdui text, the relevant word turns out to bey/ "dipping" rather than qi "weeping" and apparently refers to the horses not the woman (see the translation of Shaugnessy 1996:83). There is no reference to a robber groom.

The final piece of 'evidence' for the antiquity of kujia, and its derivation in marriage by capture, is the content of some contemporary laments that are perceived to reflect a nostalgia for a dimly remembered era of equality between the sexes. The argument that rural Chinese women have preserved in their collective subconscious a vague memory of a time when they were the equal of men, which in turn compels them to protest against male oppression in the form of bridal laments, reminds one of the association between Chinese rural women and primitivism that is found in Chinese avant-garde novels and films of the contemporary period (Chow 1995:19—23, 44—48). Both appear to be the product of (male) fantasy.

The motif of "tears of blood", with its association with violence and grief, is common in the Chinese classics and later literature. The ku performer in ancient times was often said to have wept "tears of blood". The association between "tears of blood" and marriage by capture, seemingly established in the Book of Changes, continued to excite the Chinese imagination, as witnessed in the constant retellings of the life of Cai Yan 1 Ш (176? — early 3rd cent CE). The historical Cai Yan, during the declining years of the Han dynasty, was captured by the Xiongnu 'barbarians' and married to a chieftain. She bore him two sons and was later ransomed and returned to the central plain. A series of poems are attributed to her, "Eighteen Songs of the Nomad Flute" (transi, by Dore J. Levy in Sun & Saussy, 1999:22—30). In Song 16, she mourns the loss of her children in these words: "Weeping in blood, I lift up my head and rage at the high heavens/Why

was I born to suffer such unheard of disaster?" (Sun & Saussy 1999:28). The theme of the groom as 'barbarian invader', come to seize a Chinese bride, who resists with violent cries, continued as a motif in many lament traditions.

Once one puts to one side the much quoted but spurious reference to bridal abductions and laments in the Book of Changes, one finds only fragmentary evidence for anything resembling kujia practices in ancient China. The earliest text on Chinese ritual practices, The Book of Rites (Liji), dating from around the first century ВСЕ, does not refer to bridal laments but hints at the family's sorrow at the departure of the bride for the home of the groom. The relevant section is translated by James Legge as follows:

Confucius said, "The family that has marrieda daughteraway, does not extinguish its candles for three nights, thinking of the separation that has taken place. The family that has received the [new] wife for three days has no music; thinking her bridegroom is now in the place of his parents (Legge,

LiCÄi,Bk5,Sectl:20,p.322).

These lines have been interpreted in Chinese scholarship as referring implicitly to a practice of marriage by capture, in that the groom and his family do not want to draw attention to the location of the abducted bride by boisterous celebration (Chen 1936,1998:51). Chen Guyuan's view has become the consensus view in Chinese marriage scholarship. However, one can also interpret this section as referring to the natural sorrow the natal family feels at the departure of the daughter, and the painful transition for the new bride as the groom takes authority over her person. Marriage here appears to be solemn, even sorrowful, but there is no hint here of any particular performance involving weeping.

A folk song dating from the first and second centuries CE contained in the famous collection, New Songs from a Jade Terrace (Yutai xin yong), refers to a bride weeping on the point of marriage.

Bleak, bleak, ever bleak, bleak.

A bride at her wedding must not weep;

She longs for a man of one heart,

Till white-haired time he would not leave her (trans. By Birrell 1986:36—7).

This song is traditionally ascribed to a famous woman called Zhuo Wenjun, who eloped with Sima Xiangru (179-c.l 17 ВСЕ),a man who emerged from poverty to become a famous writer. According to Liu Xin (c.lst cent.BCE), Zhuo wrote this song, known as "Song of White Hair" to win back her husband's heart when he became infatuated with his new concubine Xijing zaji (1991:150—151). In this song the bride is comforted on the eve of her marriage with the idea that

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her husband will be faithful to her.This sort of image would work best if it was indeed customary for the bride to weep on being married off and for well wishers to try to consoleher.

The ambiguous nature of marriage as an occasion for both sorrow andjoy became a topos in literati poetry. The poet, scholar and officiai, Zhou Hongzheng JK5AIE (496—574 CE) is attributed with the following poem, "Kan xin hun

ШШШ" [On Looking at the Bride]. In this poem the bride is both tearful and smiling. On the face of a beauty, tears only add to the erotic attraction:

(Quart Han SanguoJin Nan Bei chao shi, Vol. 5, p.1648).

These lines point to the perceived contradictory nature of marriage for the woman. Zhou writes of the bride's copious weeping but hints at the performative nature of the occasion. Her tears merely hide her joyful anticipation. Yang

Shidao^EfᎠ(7th century early Tang official) elaborated the same topos in his poem, "Looking at the Bride in the Early Evening":

In Loyang the patterned candles flicker,

As relatives come to paint the brows [of the bride],

Embarrassed, she hides her face with her fan,

With strong emotion she pours out her grievances,

Her lightest tears run and smear the rouge,

Her slightest sobs turn to mighty waves,

We can now laugh at the song about Wu Mountain,

Whose evening rain does not deserve its fame. (Quan Tang shi, Vol. 1, p. 459).

Line six of this poem in the Quan Tang shi has the word di Щ "to look askance at". In my translation here I have followed Guo Xingwen (1994:242) who has ti Щ "to sob", in order to make sense of the lines. In the celebrated "Gaotang fu" prose-poem attributed to Song Yu (3rd century ВСЕ ), Wu Mountain is the place of a love tryst with a beautiful goddess (transi, in Owen 1996:189—193). The "evening rain" in the final line has a sexual connotation as in the well known collocation, "the clouds and rain" referring to the female and male roles in the act of love. In the above poem, Yang openly pokes fun atthe bride, whose weeping is a histrionic performance outdoing the "rain" at Wu Mountain. This poem is significant in the history of kujia because it refers toa specific context in which the weeping is 'performed', in this case, the early evening when the senior women of the family put on the bride's make-up andcloth-

ing. The putting on of wedding regalia is a specific segment in a typical lamentation cycle. The fourth line, translated here as "With strong emotion she pours out her grievances" (han qing chou yi duo i^iïf^&B^), when considered together with her copious tears, refers to both weeping and the vocal expression of sorrow and grievance. Altogether, this poem points to a more elaborate type of weeping 'performance' than that found in our earlier sources.

Another Tang text refers to an important part of kujia practices in the late imperial period, that is, the words of admonition by the mother to the bride. This text has not yet been discussed in studies of the history of bridal laments in China. The Dunhuang text, "Wife Cui Instructs her Daughter", extant in three slightly variant manuscripts, refers to the bride as weeping and gives her instruction about how to behave in her husband's household in order to win the approval of his family. The instructions are composed entirely in heptasyllabic verse.

The fragrant chariot and decorated horses compete in splendour,

The young girl in the front hall wails {ku) piteously,

Now I urge you not to weep (bu xu ku ^Ш^),

In three days you will return to pay your respects,

I will teach you how to carry out the womanly rites,

But you must do as I say, do not disobey,

You should be indifferent to whether things are good or bad,

Don't behave just as you please, as at home,

At home you are used to being petulant and spoiled,

Now you will become a wife in that home, in line with destiny,

Think thrice before going forth,

At first, be sparing in speech, don't talk too much,

When you meet people on the way, cup your hands in greeting,

Be wary of loitering with your seniors or juniors,

Do not speak of scandal from outside to those at home

Do not spread gossip from home to those outside,

Respond softly to your parents-in-law,

And behave the same way with your husband,

Early in the morning go up to the main hall,

Next pay your respect to all the uncles,

Regard the senior women as fish in water,

With both men and women, behave kindly to each,

Ranks both high and low must respect each other.

Do not be devious and partial.

If your husband returns drunk, enquire with a smile,

Lead him along and send him off to sleep.

Don't scold or abuse him in front of others,

Once he awakens he will lose face.

If you are able to follow all my instructions,

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What need to fear your parents-in-law will not love you!

What I impart to you has come down from of old,

From a thousand ages it has been passed down,

This poem {zari) [below] is by Bai Shilang,

Wife Cui instructs her daughter,

Famous from ancient times,

When you look at it carefully, it truly is complete and perfect.

The method of nurturing a child,

Lies in [teaching it to] serve others.

If there are deficiencies [in training] in the rites and ceremonies,

The error lies with the parents.

Two poems follow the above:

Slender of figure, a single step like a flower,

It is no exaggeration [to speak of her] glowing face and dark moth [brows],

She makes her happy face into a doleful one,

Unused to leaving her own home for the home of the groom.

Another poem:

As you bow in the hall, the sun is setting,

With a red kerchief wipe your tears, precious like a flower. In future you will be a guest in the place of your birth,

Today you follow your husband to begin [life] at your new home (MS P2633 in Tan Chunxue, 1993:18—19).

According to the noted Dunhuang scholar, Gao Guofan, this text belongs to the category of instructional texts for women (Gao 1989:462—468). Femaleinstructional texts (nüxuri) appeared as early as the Han dynasty (Raphals 1998:20—22, 235—246, 249—254). By the Tang period quite a number were in circulation (Gao 1989:469, Tung 2000:92^4). Jowen R.Tung notes that these handbooks for women were designed primarily for daughters and "served the purpose of preparing women for the trying role of Confucian wives" (Tung 2000:92). As for the practice of the mother admonishing her daughter when she gets married, this dates back to at least the time of Mencius (372—289 ВСЕ) (trans. Lau 1970:107):

The father teaches sons the way of good men; the mother teaches daughters about marriage. [When the mother] sends her daughter to the wedding, she would say 'After getting married, you must be respectful and diligent, and do not go against your husband's will. Women's way is to obey (shun Jlljf).' (Mencius 3B.2).