"Rituals and music" are the core content of the dance culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty. "Li" stipulates the various forms and contents of "music", and "music" must cooperate with the hierarchy of "li". These are especially reflected in the objects of music and dance sacrifices and the number of people in the bands used in the Zhou Dynasty.

For example, according to the ancient book "Liu Xiao Wu" in the Zhou Dynasty, the object of sacrifice is as follows:

The dancer teaches the military dance, and the dance is handsome The worship of mountains and rivers; the teaching of the Pei dance, the handsome dance of the sacrifice of the country; the handsome dance of the teaching feather, the handsome dance of the sacrifices of the four directions; the handsome dance of the Pope, the handsome dance of drought and drought. All wild dances will be taught; all small sacrifices will not be performed.

In fact, the number of people involved in the sacrificial dances of the court of the Zhou Dynasty had a clear imprint of the hierarchy.

For example, people in the Zhou Dynasty stipulated that the emperor use a four-sided band, called "Gongxuan"; the princes used a three-sided band, called "Xuanxuan"; the scholar-bureaucrats used a two-sided band called "Fanxuan" "; Soldiers and civilians can only use one band called "Texuan".

Also, in the Zhou Dynasty, in terms of dance teams, it was stipulated that the emperor should use "eight yi", the princes should use "six yi", the officials should use "four yi", and the soldiers should use "two yi". Generally speaking, each "佾" is a dance team, and a dance team has a total of 8 people, so the Emperor Dance Team has 64 people.

The "Six Major Dances" and "Six Small Dances" of the Zhou Dynasty are like a complete music and dance system. They opened a chapter of inheritance and development in the history of ancient dance. In terms of inheritance, the Zhou Dynasty was the master of the music and dance of its predecessors; in terms of development, the Zhou Dynasty was the inventor of the music and dance system.

In addition, since the Zhou Dynasty, the two major music and dance classifications of "Wen Yi Zhao De" and "Wu Yi Xiang Gong" in the history of dance have also been completed. In particular, meritorious music and dance are used to complete the task of offering sacrifices to gods and humans.

In the Zhou Dynasty, people used music and dance to symbolize, embody, explain and commend the achievements of the rulers. The etiquette was coordinated with music, music assisted the etiquette, and the etiquette and music were combined. All of this had a great influence on later dance, especially the elegant music dance system. The impact is very far-reaching.

People in the Zhou Dynasty performed a lot of sacrificial music and dance. During the two-week period, people had not yet formed a complete religious concept, but the original totem belief was still very active. Sacrificial activities flourished and were favored by emperors and ordinary people. People attach great importance to it and it has been fully ritualized.

The characteristics of "singing and dancing to worship the gods" of the original witchcraft activities of the Zhou Dynasty became more obvious in the Zhou Dynasty, and the dances of the Zhou Dynasty formed a fixed program in the process of ritualization, and were performed in specific places and Within a short period of time, the whole country was mobilized

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

Also, wax sacrifice is one of the very ancient sacrificial rituals in the Zhou Dynasty. The ancients made a living by hunting in the fields and worshiped gods. Therefore, at the end of each year in the Zhou Dynasty, people sacrificed captured prey to worship their ancestors. This is called "wax sacrifice".

Since wax sacrifices are performed with animals, most of them use the word "wax" with the word "worm" in them, but sometimes they are also written as the word "wax" in the twelfth lunar month, and the word "meat" in the shape can also be vivid. Explain the form of sacrifice.

Later, people called the activities held at the end of the year "Wax Festival", so people also called the last month of the year the "Wax Moon". In the Zhou Dynasty, it had developed into a grand ceremony to worship hundreds of gods. The ceremony was over.

It is recorded in the ancient book "Zhou Li Chunguan":

The state sacrifice wax rules and bin chants, and beat earth drums to calm the old things.

The Zhou Dynasty’s national sacrifice “wax” mentioned here is a sacrificial ceremony to celebrate the harvest and thank the gods. There are eight types of sacrifice objects in the wax sacrifice:

The first is Xiansi, also known as Shennong, who is the ancestor god who created our country’s farming civilization; the second is Sisi, also known as Houji , he is the god who manages farming; the third category is Nong, who is the god of farmers; the fourth category is You, also known as Biao and Chu, which is the god of huts, land gods and wells; the fifth category is cats and tigers, That is, cat gods and tiger gods, because cats can hunt field mice and tigers can hunt wild boars, so they also obtain the status of beast gods; the sixth category of objects is Fang, which is the god of water embankments; the seventh category is Shuiyong, also known as Shuiyong. He is the god of rivers; the eighth category is the god of hundreds of species, which is the god of hundreds of grains.

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

These eight kinds of gods show that wax sacrifices originated in the early farming society of the Zhou Dynasty. At that time, people could not exactly know the principles of nature, so they endowed all things with spirituality, prayed to the gods for help, and also used sacrifices to People express their desired results, and even fantasize about transforming nature through their own actions. This is how the wax festival dance came into being.

The wax festival dance of the Zhou Dynasty was held every year in the twelfth month of the lunar calendar. Because there are mainly eight gods in the wax festival, and it is an event that is participated in by people all over the country, it is also called "Big Wax Eight".

The form of wax sacrifice dance in the Zhou Dynasty has the flavor of primitive sacrifices, because the band has few musical instruments, probably mainly using piccolo and drums, and some perform "Bing Dance" and "Pu Dance". It is recorded in the ancient book "Book of Rites·Jiao Te Sheng":

In Dababa, the Yiqi family became wax. The wax is also the rope. In the twelfth month of the year, all things are gathered together for a feast. In the sacrifice of wax, the Lord is generous first and the priest is generous, and hundreds of kinds of sacrifices are made to repay the greed.

Therefore, when people danced sacrificial dances in the Zhou Dynasty, they needed to wear plain clothes, wave sticks made of hazel wood, and sing:

The soil turns against its home. , the water returns to its gully; insects do not thrive, and the vegetation returns to its marsh!

The main idea of ??the lyrics is: "Earth, stay where you are; water, return to your river

Insects, don't make waves; weeds Weeds, grow into the depressions!" This is obviously the call issued by farmers in the Zhou Dynasty when faced with the most important soil and water conservation and unpredictable natural disasters in the natural growth process of crops. It is obviously full of primitive witchcraft. nature. It vividly conveys the psychological worries caused by natural disasters in the agricultural social life at that time.

The wax festival dance has been spread in traditional culture for more than 2,000 years since its establishment in the Zhou Dynasty. Even Confucius later took his student Zigong to watch the wax festival dance. Zigong did not understand the inner impulse of people's complete devotion during the wax festival. As a bystander, he raised questions. As a result, Confucius said:

A hundred days of wax and a day of luster are beyond your comprehension. When one is relaxed but not relaxed, civil and military officials are incompetent. One piece and one piece of relaxation, the way of civility and martial arts.

Confucius summed up a profound truth from the hard work and recuperation of the people throughout the year, which is the way of civil and military affairs in traditional culture. Of course, in addition to the Wax Sacrifice, there are many other sacrificial music and dances during the two-week period, such as the famous sacrificial dance "Yu Sacrifice". There are many records about "Yu" in ancient literature. Whenever there was a drought and no rain, people in the Zhou Dynasty would hold sacrificial ceremonies, through which people prayed to heaven for rain. Later, Zuo Qiuming, a famous historian in the Spring and Autumn Period, recorded in his "Zuo Zhuan: The Fifth Year of Duke Huan" that "the dragon was killed by the dragon."

According to documentary records, the ancient "Yu Sacrifice" dance has developed into a more extensive sacrificial activity within a two-week period. It is mainly a dance ceremony to ward off floods and droughts. It is recorded in the ancient book "Book of Rites·Sacrifice":

Yuzong offered sacrifices to floods and droughts. Zheng Xuan commented: "Zong" should all be mistaken for "萗". ...Chen Xuan is also called the flood and drought altar. Yu's words are like sighing.

These words illustrate that the two-week Usagi Festival not only means praying for rain, but also means ascending the altar and making grand sacrifices to drive away floods and droughts. If sacrifices always fail to yield results, there are even measures to "violate witches" and "burn witches."

For example, in the summer of the 21st year of Duke Xi of Lu in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, there was a drought. The monarch of Lu wanted to burn witches, but was dissuaded by minister Wen Zhong. During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Qin Mugong also had the intention of "violating witchcraft" during drought sacrificial activities, but he was also dissuaded. It can be seen that witch violence and witch burning still occurred from time to time during the two-week period.

The "Gao Xi" dance during the two-week period is also very popular. "Gao Xi" is also called "Jiao Xi". It is a sacrificial dance performed by Zhou people to pray for the prosperity of their children. Later, Dade, a famous scholar in the Western Han Dynasty, recorded in his "Book of Rites·Yue Ling":

In the middle of the spring month,... the black bird arrives, and on the day when it arrives, the ether is sacrificed in Gaozi. The emperor went there in person, and the concubines were in charge of the nine concubines.

This shows that people in the Zhou Dynasty allowed men and women to meet freely in the mid-spring month. This was the legacy of the group marriage system in primitive society. ” and magical legends such as “Swallowing Eggs to Make Soup”.

In the Zhou Dynasty, the custom of men and women dating in the traditional spring suburbs gradually transformed into a sacred dance ceremony to worship female ancestors. At that time, there were grand singing and dancing scenes, delicious food, and a clear object of sacrifice, namely Jiang Yuan, the female ancestor of the Zhou people. These all show that sacrificial dances in the Zhou Dynasty were very popular.

There was also a "Witch Dance" in the Zhou Dynasty, which was a famous sacrificial music and dance besides the "Wax Sacrifice Dance", "Nuo Dance", "Yu Dance" and "Gaohe Dance".

According to textual research, the witchcraft dances of the two-week period were widely spread in the lives of various ethnic groups in the north and south, with various forms, and their origins are probably the original witchcraft dance activities of the Zhou Dynasty.

In the witchcraft and dance at the end of the Zhou Dynasty, Chu's god-sacrifice songs and dances are very famous. For example, it is recorded in the collection of pre-Qin poems "The Book of Songs·Guoyu·Chuyu": "The wife works for enjoyment, and the family is a witch." history.

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