Introduction.

In his description of the Miao spirit worship Yang Yung-xin’s treatment of the worship of the Spirit Zu-gi-za and the ancestors was apparently a precis of the second part of Wang Ming-ji’s account, that is of M354. Either he had no knowledge of the first part of Wang Ming-ji’s description, M352 and M353, or he simply chose to ignore it. He does not add any new information about the beliefs or the worship-procedures except the fact that at the zi sacrifice, in addition to the old ox, one further animal for each surviving brother had to be offered.

Yang Yung-xin’s account of spirit worship is preceded in Document F by a miscellaneous collection of material, mostly short incantations, on a variety of different subjects, under the title "Ancient traditions of the Miao old folk". See M339. The last four items in this set, numbers 8 to 11, are in fact incantations which are part of the worship of the Spirit Zu-gi-za and the ancestors. That is where they appear in Wang Ming-ji’s record, and why Yang Yung-xin chose to remove them to his miscellaneous group, is not explained.

Translation
Literal Transcription
Notes

You can see the original documents for this song.

You can also see these pages as Word97 documents

Word97 Introduction
Word97 Translation
Word97 Transcription
Word97 Notes

Return to Index of Songs
Return to First Page of the Archive