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Resources on augury or bird omens in ancient China?

D

deflatormouse

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Hey,
This is a longshot, but does anyone know of English language material on bird omens in ancient China? I first heard about this from Liu Ming, re: the oriole of hexagram 30. His source was Rutt, who cites CH Wang and the Book of Odes. He cites the Book of Documents as well, in his notes on hexagram 36's pheasant.

I don't know whether or to what extent others have interpreted references to birds in these early documents as augury. Has anyone written on this subject more extensively? Regardless of any direct relevance to the Zhouyi or Yijing...

Thanks for any leads :)
 
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bradford

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Forget what the academics say about the oriole in 30. If you want to see the connection to Li, all you need to do is see one perched on a bare branch on a winter day.
 
D

deflatormouse

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I would say that personal experience is too often undervalued in these matters, yeah.

I'm interested in the history of augury just because.
 

hilary

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Me, too. Do let me know what sources you find. I have never got far beyond 'birds are messengers' but there must surely be a lot of detailed lore. There are certainly plenty of birds in Yi.

About the oriole and its connection to li - the Chinese species is the black-naped oriole. What do the markings on its head look like to you?
 
D

deflatormouse

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About the oriole and its connection to li - the Chinese species is the black-naped oriole. What do the markings on its head look like to you?

WOW.

I don't know. Ming used to talk about "birdsong divination" in a way that suggested everyone knows it was practiced by the Zhou, but as far as I can tell, this is just a theory of Rutt's.

In this case, though, I'm reading up on the Zhouyi to find out about augury, not the other way around :)
 
S

svenrus

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Oriolus chinensis

220px-Black-naped_Oriole_eyeing_on_Lannea_coromandelica_fruits_W_IMG_7449.jpg

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-naped_oriole

John Minford has for hexagram 30, in the second part of his book 'The essential translation of the ancient chinese oracle and book of wisdom I Ching' an interesting description of the correlation between the translation of the tag for this hexagram as being both Net (for trapping birds) and Oriole etc.
..... but as to the answer: the markings around this birds eyes is the trigram Li

About symbolism of birds: http://www.chinasage.info/symbols/birds.htm

Among others: Bird divination of the Tibetans: https://www.scribd.com/document/201365346/Berthold-Laufer-s-Bird-Divination-Among-the-Tibetans
 
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D

deflatormouse

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Thanks so much for these resources!
The chinesesage.info link is great, the kind of material I was looking for, but I'm also interested in the origins and evolution of these associations.
On that site, under oriole, what they suggest is quite different to Rutt's idea.
I feel Rutt's theories here are pretty compelling, the thing is-
I think of the nursery rhyme "four and twenty blackbirds" and its similarities in imagery to the Zhouyi text: It wouldn't be too difficult to interpret it as oracular. I'm not completely convinced that I'm going to find the material I'm looking for, or that it exists. But any material on birds in ancient China is likely to touch upon human interaction with birds, so seems like the obvious place to start...
 

Liselle

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Finally figured out what you're all talking about - the markings look like the character Li, as in Clarity's logo, not |:| as we'd write the trigram. (Right?)
 
D

diamanda

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I had a look but didn't find what you're looking for... In any case here are some more pages which might be of some use:


Do you happen to have a link of what Rutt said on the issue?
 
D

deflatormouse

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Lisa,
That would be the trigram |:| but it's hard to see from the photo svenrus posted, you need a top view of the Oriolus Chinesus's head.
The character in Clarity's logo is the oracle bone script form of Yi as in Yijing. (For a life-affirming take on this character, see Steve Marshall's book.)
Diamanda, thank you, I haven't looked at these links yet will do shortly.

These are the relevant excerpts from Rutt:
p. 322-323
"The oriole is a commonplace image in the Book of Odes, though it is called there by two other names, of which li is an equivalent (Z youji 159). These names are discussed in detail in C H Wang The bell and the drum (1974) pp 114-118. In the Odes the oriole's mellow song is often associated with tragedy, sadness and sorrow. This suggests that orioles, for all their charm and bright yellow plumage, with which no other bird in China can compare, could be birds of sad omen as well as of springtime joy. Sometimes the contrast seems to emphasize the sadness, as in Ode 131, quoted above at Hexagrams 29 and 30.

The spring days are lengthening,
plants and trees burgeoning.
Orioles sing together,
People are gathering mountain herbs.
We have many prisoners for the question,
and we are returning home . . .


(The question was put before ritual beheading.) 168.6

--

Orioles, orioles,
do not congregate in the oaks,
do not eat our millet.
Oh! the people here,
I cannot stay among them!
I must go back, go home,
to see the elders of my clan.


---
And compliant about military service:

Petty are the orioles
that settle on the hillside.
The road is so long -
we cannot go on.
Give us drink, give us food,
urge us, encourage us -
order those bag wagons:
tell them to carry us.
"

p 329:
"(Base)The image or omen of a pheasant slowly flapping its wings and crying occurs in Ode 33.1 and 2, where the singer is a broken-hearted lover:

The cock pheasant in flight
Slowly flaps his wings . . .

The cock pheasant in flight
Lifts and lowers his voice . . .


Other ominous pheasant cries occur in Ode 197.5:

A pheasant calls at dawn
Still seeking its mate . . .


More pertinently, in the Book of Documents (section 'Gaozong rongri'), a pheasant appearing and calling at a royal sacrifice is taken as an indication that the sacrifice has been incorrectly performed. See also 61:top."

p. 354 (61:top)
"The sound of pinions could refer to a story in the Book of Documents (Gaozong rongri section) about a pheasant appearing at a royal sacrifice - a bad omen."

And here is Ming's interpolation of the above:
"In an early form of birdsong divination the voice of the pheasant meant "no response" or "do not respond". It is, however, not a negative omen."

I could probably dig up some of my notes from his lectures for his take on the oriole (it's not in his book), but the basic idea he suggested was that orioles were seen as an omen of death. Again, I wouldn't count on the historical accuracy of anything Ming said on the matter as I believe he was merely interpolating from Rutt's translation notes. (Edit: however, I love Ming and those are still, to this day, among the most potent associations I have for hexagrams 30 and 36 in divination)
 
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Liselle

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Lisa,
That would be the trigram |:| but it's hard to see from the photo svenrus posted, you need a top view of the Oriolus Chinesus's head.

30620279053_71d5a45765.jpg


Well...I'm not really seeing a broken line between two solid lines in that. Am I lacking imagination?

The character in Clarity's logo is the oracle bone script form of Yi as in Yijing.
:duh: Argh. I was told that once upon a time...
 
D

diamanda

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@lisa, the way I see it, the head of the oriole shows:
yellow-black-yellow = light-darkness-light = full line-broken line-full line
black-naped-oriole-china-beidaihe-2012.jpg

@deflatormouse thanks so much for typing out all this amazing info.

PS - unrelated to the subject, but I find this cute black-naped oriole chick completely irresistible!
 
D

diamanda

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Svenrus, great piece of information! I had never thought of looking up the etymology of auspice.

I also checked the Ancient Greek word for omen/augury/auspice, οιωνός (pronounced eeonos).
I'm copy/typing a summary from Liddell-Scott (Ancient Greek to English Lexicon, 1843 Oxford University Press):

οιωνός
a) a large bird, bird of prey, such as a vulture or eagle
b) a bird of omen or augury, because it was from the flight or screams of the greater birds of prey that omens and revelations were sought (...) the flight to (not from) the right, i.e. towards the East, was fortunate
c) an omen, token, presage, drawn from these birds, Lat. auspicium or augurium, according as taken from seeing their flight or hearing their cry
 

Liselle

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Lisa,
That would be the trigram |:| but it's hard to see from the photo svenrus posted, you need a top view of the Oriolus Chinesus's head.

@lisa, the way I see it, the head of the oriole shows:
yellow-black-yellow = light-darkness-light = full line-broken line-full line
View attachment 1692

Forgive my cynicism, but Andy says it's the top of the head, Diamanda says the side of the head...to me neither one looks like |:|...

But yes, the little fuzzy chick - :hug:
 

hilary

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Well... to me, that eye-stripe looks exactly like the trigram li. (Yang is bright; yin is dark.) So :freak:. But then it has been suggested that I have an over-active imagination.
 

Liselle

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Oh, okay, I forgot yang is bright and yin is dark. (Which...is what you were saying, Diamanda. :duh: Sometimes I need things spelled out v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.)
 
D

deflatormouse

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Svenrus, you're a genius. Hadn't even thought of that.

More from Liu Ming:
"An oriole flying towards the sunset is an omen of death. It indicates the loss of a loved one far away (on a battlefield)."

The way he explained this in person was very memorable, so I can paraphrase quite closely without digging: that in ancient China, if you saw an oriole, you would have experienced this fleeting moment of ":) :) :) look at that beautiful- OH! :eek: Oh no!! :weep:"

There is quite a lot of information on augury in ancient Greece and Rome; that it is much harder to find such information on ancient China where there is lots written about early divination in China overall is precisely the reason for my skepticism.

I have reserved a few titles on birds from the NYPL system. Will update if I find anything.

I thought the top of its head looked like two lines with a space in the middle, and that this is what Hilary was referring to, seems I didn't 'get it' either: I'm more inclined to distinguish between line and light/color than to read one as a shorthand for the other. (If you want to know why, look at a painting by Monet and consider how it might be represented using only outlines.)
 
D

deflatormouse

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How did I miss this???? From 'The Cambridge History of Ancient China', p. 336-338:

"In "Fa mu" (Chopping wood: Mao 165), the poet dwells at some length on the chirping of a bird, surmising that it must be calling to its mate, before coming finally to the conclusion (more explicitly than is usual with "evocations") that humans should seek a mate in order to be happy:

Chopping wood, ding-ding,
A bird chirps, ying-ying,
Coming out of that dark valley,
Moving to that high tree,
Ying, its chirp,
Seeing the sound of its friend,
How much more so should people
Seek the sound of a friend.
Take spirit from it; listen to it;
In the end it will be harmonious and peaceful.


By the time the technique of of evocation reached its mature form in the Guo Feng section of the Shi jing, poets seem to have recognized that drawing explicit associations limited the possible range of evocations. No longer was it necessary to tell the listener to "examine the bird"; simply imitating its sound would suffice to stir him or her. Thus, the first and most famous poem in the collection, "Guan ju" (Guan cries the osprey; Mao 1), begins with an evocation pregnant with correlations:

Guan, guan cries the osprey
On the river's isle.
Delicate is the young girl:
A fine match for the lord.


Strange though it may seem that the crying of an osprey could evoke the image of a nubile girl, we can begin to see in it something of the intellectual consciousness of the time. Elsewhere in the Shi jing, as in later Chinese culture and in many other cultures as well, the image of the fish signifies sexual fertility. Knowing that the osprey is a fish-eating bird, it is not hard to see that this is a poem concerned with the hunt for a sexual partner. Indeed, the sound of the osprey's cry, as written onomatopoeically by the poet, confirms this: guan means "to join; to bring together." The poet heard the osprey calling out: "Join, join."
When Confucius later advised his students to study the Shi jing because it can be used "to recognize the names of birds and animals, plants and trees" this was for him no pedantic exercise. Some animals are crafty, where others can be tamed; some plants are bitter, while others can bring about a smile and even more. Because Confucius, like the poets of the time, regarded these actions of nature as partaking of the same world order as did the affairs of men, he saw them as invaluable signs for understanding the human society as well. Confucius knew that the better able his students were to understand the natures and effects of these things, the better able they would be to divine their own circumstances.

Poetic Evocations and the Origin of the Zhou Yi

Using "birds, animals, plants and trees" to divine one's own circumstances lies at the heart of the third of the great literary legacies usually dated to the Western Zhou: The Zhou yi (Zhou changes); better known in the West as the Yi jing [Classic of changes]. Tradition has it that the Zhou yi was composed by King Wen while he was imprisoned at Youli, and perhaps was completed by Zhou Gong. In fact, formal and linguistic comparisons between the text and both the Shi jing and bronze inscriptions shows the Zhou yi to have achieved its present form no earlier than the late Western Zhou.
Many individual lines of the Zhou yi resemble the evocation form of the Shi jing, relating an image in the natural world (though the Zhou yi also uses in this regard historical vignettes and aspects of human society) to one in the human realm. An almost perfect comparison is found in the second line statement of "Zhong fu" (Centered sincerity; no. 61) hexagram:

A calling crane in the shadows;
Its young harmonize with it.
We have a fine chalice;
I will share it with you.
"

From Shaughnessy, 'Arousing Images: The Poetry of Divination and The Divination of Poetry', Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, p. 67-68:

"Before examining the Classic of Poetry itself, I would like to begin with a "children's oracle" (tong yao) recorded in the Zuo zhuan. This is an example of a more or less extensive genre of folk-song that was regarded as prophetic. This particular song is said to have been occasioned by two events that took place in 517 B.C. in the state of Lu, the homeland of the Spring and Autumn Annals. In the autumn of that year, the lord of the state, Duke Zhao (resigned 541-510 B.C.) fled into exile after unsuccessfully challenging the great families that wielded real power in the state. Earlier in the year, a type of mynah bird or grackle (quyu) theretofore unknown in ancient China was spotted nesting in the state. The music master regarded it as fabulous, but is said to have recalled the following folk song from about a century earlier than his own time. I present it in the inimitable translation of James Legge (1815-1897), the Scottish missionary who contributed so much to our own understanding of ancient China through his translations of the Confucian classics.

Here are grackles apace! The duke flies in disgrace.
Look at the grackles' wings! To the wilds the duke flings, A horse one to him brings.
Look how the grackes go! In Kan-how he is low, Wants coat and trousers now.
Behold the grackles' nest! Far off the duke doth rest.
Chow-fu has lost his state, Sung-foo comes proud and great.
O the grackles so strange! The songs to weeping change.


I have preserved even Legge's Victorian translations of Chinese words, but I have rearranged his line breaks so as to better show the rhyme scheme. I think it is easy to see how stanzas such as quyu zhi yu (*ju), gong zai wai ye (*jia), wang kui zhi ma (*ma) translated by Legge as "Look at the grackles' wings! To the wilds the duke flings, A horse one to him brings" or quyu zhuzhu (*tju), gong zai Ganhou (*yeu), zheng qian yu ru (*nzju) "Look how the grackes go! In Kan-how he is low, Wants coat and trousers now" (a more literal translation would be "The grackle goes hopping, The duke is in Ganhou, Seeking gown and jacket") are similar to line statements of the Zhou Changes, beginning with a description of a natural omen and then correlating it - by way of a rhyming couplet - with a situation in the human realm. Whether this poem should be viewed as prophecy, as it has been in the Chinese literary tradition, or as historical comment (written after the event) as a more cynical reading might suggest, is perhaps irrelevant. Whether the human event comes after or before the omen, in ancient China at least it was felt there was a necessary connection between them.
When we look at the images of still more traditional ancient Chinese poems, I think we will see the same connection between natural omen and human society. The most striking feature of the poems in the Classic of Poetry, poems generally contemporary with the oracles of the Zhou Changes, is known in Chinese as their xing, a word that means "to raise up," "to cause to arise," which I translate nominally as "arousal." The arousal routinely comes at the beginning of a stanza, which is often as short as four lines (of four characters each, or two lines of eight-character couplets ). It takes the form of an opening couplet describing some nature image, usually drawn from the animal or botanical world (although astral and geomantic images also occur), and is then followed by another couplet, always rhyming, that describes an event in the human world. Although some readers have dismissed these arousals as essentially meaningless, designed simply so set the rhyme scheme, I think a more sympathetic reading can readily see connections between the natural and human worlds, and - perhaps more important - can also see how the people of the time could have percieved connections between them. A few other poems, chosen almost at random from the opening poems of the collection, will illustrate how these arousals work.
The first takes up again the nesting of a bird (or, in this case, two different types of birds): the magpie (que) and the dove (jiu). Arthur Waley (1889-1966), in his translation of the Classic of Poetry, points out that the dove, or cuckoo, as he calls it, is known for settling in the nests of other birds, which the Chinese tradition asserts those other birds regard as an honor (Waley 1996: 13-14). Here, the association between the dove's arrival in the magpie's nest and the marriage of the "girl" does not seem to have any of the pejorative connotations that are common in the European tradition; it simply portended a woman from another family, as all brides needed to be, coming to take up residence in her husband's home.

"The Magpie's Nest" (Que chao; Mao 12)

The magpie had a nest,
A dove settles in it (ju/*kjwo).
This girl goes to marry,
A hundred carts drive her (yu/*njwo).

The magpie had a nest,
A dove takes it over (fang/*pjwang).
This girl goes to marry,
A hundred carts lead her (jiang/*tsjang).

The magpie had a nest,
A dove fills it up (ying/*jiang).
This girl goes to marry,
A hundred carts place her (cheng/zjang).
"

So it's a theory, but not just of Rutt's. Could be that the old texts tell us more about augury than I thought, rather than less?

And some natural history and cosmology from Keightley, 'Ancestral Landscape' p. 107-108

"The religious quality of the landscape would have been enhanced, as it must have been significantly engendered by, the teeming animal population whose movements and cries, frequently threatening, would have continually attracted the eye and fear of the king and his diviners once they left the confines of the area. Birds alone would have been present in abundance.32 There were undoubtedly more medium- and large-sized animals than people living on the North China plain at this time so that the rural landscape would inevitably have been regarded as the animals' domain.33 The damage that wild pigs, monkeys, deer, tigers, birds, locusts and so on might inflict upon the crops and livestock that supported life would in itself have conferred upon them a religious role analogous to the ancestral harm, or the acts of Di and other Powers, that interfered with the seasonable rains and blighted the harvest.34"

"32. As late as the 1970s, numerous species of birds were still residing year-round, migrating through, or wintering in the Anyang region. Allowing for the rather warmer climate that would have obtained at Anyang in the Late Shang, especially during the summer months (chapter 11), I have compiled a rough and incomplete list of some two hundred types (based Zheng Zuoxin 1979) that the Shang were likely to have known. I provide a partial list (in which I limit myself to one type of each species; Zheng's book contains a good index) to suggest the richness of Late Shang avian life: Little Grebe, Grey Heron, Schrenck's Bittern, Black Kite, Cattle Egret, Whooper Swan (winter), Spotbill Duck (winter), Water Rail (winter), Horned Grebe, Spotted-billed Pelican, Cormorant, White Stork, Crested Ibis, Spoonbill, Greylag Goose, Ruddy Shadduck, Common Teal (winter), Wigeon (winter), Red-crested Pochard, Goshawk, Upland Buzzard, Golden Eagle, Marsh Harrier, Peregrine Falcon, Merlin, Red-legged Falcon, Kestrel, Chukor Partridge, Common Quail, White-Crowned Long-tailed pheasant, Common Crane, Ruddy Crake, Moor Hen, Coot, Great Bustard, Painted Snipe, Lapwing, Grey Plover, Curlew, Dusky Redshank, Green Sandpiper (winter), Solitary Snipe, Black-winged Whiskered Tern, Black Hill Pigeon, Rufous Turtle Dove, Indian Cuckoo, Collard Owl, Swift, Pied Kingfisher, Black-naped Oriole, Jay, Red-billed Blue Magpie, Rook, Jackdaw, Wren, Siberian Rubythroat (migratory), Stonechat (migratory), Blue Rock Thrush, Red-throated flycatcher (migratory), Great Tit, Nuthatch, Pine Bunting (winter), and so on. The artistic use that the workers in jade and bronze may have made of such birds is not likely to provide grounds for identifying their presence in the Anyang region at the end of the second millenium; it provides, rather, a further instance of the tendency of the Shang to impose order on the environment. According to Waterbury (1952:83), the birds on The Shang bronzes "are so stylized that the species can only be conjectured . . . ; the birds, in fact, are more conventionalized than any other animal on the bronzes."
33. Crude estimates-based on inscriptional, archaeological, and traditional evidence (frequently problematic)-have suggested to Song Zhenhao (1991:105) a Shang population, in the Xiaotun area, by Period V, of approximately 230,000
34.On the ravages, for example, of pigs and on the ability of Bird Powers to affect the crops, see Akatsuka 1977:279-80. On the animal remains found at Anyang and the animals recorded in the bone inscriptions, see Fiskejo 1994:44-62, 118-27"

Feeling a bit less skeptical. It seems like assuming the distinction between experience, allegory and divination in ancient China might be a mistake, but I'm equally uncertain of delineations between augury and geomancy here: "The wind, which was a deity, is pictured on the oracle inscriptions as a bird" (Creel, 'Birth of China' 117)

In any case - Bradford, I think you might be onto something ;)

The most promising lead I have so far is a title called 'The Reading of Imagery in Chinese Poetic Tradition' by Pauline Yu.

Also looking into Tamara Chin's 'Orienting Mimesis: Marriage and the Book of Songs'.

Will keep others posted.
 
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C

cjgait

Guest
There are a fair amount of references to birds in early China in Roel Sterckx's The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (ISBN 0791452700).

There are many bird omens in the Forest of Changes (Jiao Shi Yi Lin). Mentions of the oriole:

1 - 21 (and 9 - 12, 40 - 43, 42 - 28, 52 - 33, 54, 54)

The oriole trapped by ice,
Distressed.
No seeds in sight, only the brambles and the wormwood,
Frightened by birds of prey,
Our heart breaks for it.

20 - 28 (and 27 - 63)

The bright sun is like a yellow oriole,
It illuminates our nation’s four quarters.
Brilliant is the emperor,
The people benefit from his good fortune.

3 - 55

The oriole’s mournful cry,
A sadness without respite.
Surrounded by birds of prey,
We are startled by a falcon.

47 - 34

On the mountain’s ridge climbing a tree,
Falling through to the valley below.
Zi Che’s labor lost,[1]
The orioles mourn for him.

[1] Zi Che was one of three officials killed and placed in the tomb of Duke Mu of Qin’s tomb after his death. The barbaric practice of sacrificing the living wives, servants and even ministers of state to accompany a noble in the tomb was maintained in the kingdom of Qin after it faded in other states, giving them the reputation of being barbarians with a thin veneer of civilization. This is referred to in the Book of Songs, Mao 131.

49 - 9

Zi Che Qian Hu[1], a good man in peril.
The oriole’s mournful cry,
The country damaged,
The state rudderless.

[1] Ji Che was one of three officials killed and placed in the tomb of Duke Mu of Qin’s tomb after his death. The barbaric practice of sacrificing the living wives, servants and even ministers of state to accompany a noble in the tomb was maintained in the kingdom of Qin after it faded in other states, giving them the reputation of being barbarians with a thin veneer of civilization.

There are many references to magpies. Here is an ominous one:

51 - 39

When the ants hurry to seal the opening of their hill,
A great rain is soon to come.
When the magpies call out incessantly,
And the hens murmur in their houses,
The rooster will die in the middle of the road,
The old lord will never reach home.

Regards,

Chris Gait
 
D

deflatormouse

Guest
C.M. Lai - 'Avian Identification of jiu in the Shijing' and 'Messenger of Spring and Morality: Cuckoo Lore in Chinese Sources'
Very informative and relevant.
 
V

veavea

Guest
"The first takes up again the nesting of a bird (or, in this case, two different types of birds): the magpie (que) and the dove (jiu). Arthur Waley (1889-1966), in his translation of the Classic of Poetry, points out that the dove, or cuckoo, as he calls it, is known for settling in the nests of other birds, which the Chinese tradition asserts those other birds regard as an honor (Waley 1996: 13-14)."

This is probably a silly question, but why is the dove being confused with a cuckoo? Some pigeons/doves have a cuckoo-like cry and while cuckoos lay an egg in the nests of other birds, they don't (as far as I know) settle in the nests themselves. A quick google search has found the existence of Chinese cuckoo-doves, but I wonder whether they are associated with cuckoos because of their call, or because of their nesting behaviour?

Magpies and cuckoos in the UK are both associated with opportunistic behaviour. The dove, though, not so much.

This may not be a very useful tangent, but I was just curious... :)

Also, great thread :bows:
 
D

deflatormouse

Guest
This is probably a silly question, but why is the dove being confused with a cuckoo?

Not a silly question at all. The reason is that jiu, the character Waley has taken to mean "cuckoo", refers to several different species of birds, most commonly the dove and pigeon. Both of C.M. Lai's articles investigate this in more detail.
 
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