point school version of the Twenty-Four Histories Revised Edition of "Book of Northern Qi"
1. The Appearance of King Lanling in "Book of Northern Qi"
On May 25, 2024, the Shaanxi Provincial Library held a conference on "Yu" edited by Li Hao, President of the Chinese Tang Dynasty Literature Society. A sharing session on two new books of important Tang Dynasty documents, "Collected Chronicles of Yang District Ancient Stele Art Museum" and "Ancient Wall Paintings: Zhaoling Tang Tomb Mural Collection". The former includes the epitaph of Li Baiyao, one of the authors of "Book of Northern Qi" - " The epitaph of Anping Gong Li Fujun (Baiyao), the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, is an epitaph with exquisite calligraphy. It is precisely because of this master who inherited family history that the turbulent years of the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577) in less than thirty years can be presented to today's people across nearly fifteen hundred years. The protagonist of this article - Lanling King Gao Changgong, his first appearance in "Book of Northern Qi" is as follows:
In the third month of Jiayin, all military and state affairs were ordered to Jinyang, and reported to the Prime Minister Changshan King for planning. In Renshen, Wenxiang's second son Xiaoheng was granted the title of King of Guangning, and his third son Changgong was granted the title of King of Lanling. (Book of the Northern Qi, Volume 5, "The Chronicles of the Deposed Emperor")
This year was the first year of Qianming (560) of the deposed Emperor Gao Yin of the Northern Qi Dynasty.
As we all know, the Northern Qi Dynasty was founded on the support of the nobles of the six towns. Therefore, Gao Yin's father, Emperor Wenxuan Gao Yang, focused mainly on the military, while entrusting the civil affairs of the Northern Qi Dynasty to the Han nobles Yang Min and others. . Yang Min is a noble son of the Han nationality who "started with reputation early and judged his talent by style" ("Book of Northern Qi·Yang Min Biography"). His literary talent won the trust of Gao Huan, Gao Cheng, and Gao Yang, and he married Gao Huan's daughter, the eldest princess of Taiyuan. , this eldest princess was originally the queen of Emperor Xiaojing of the Eastern Wei Dynasty. However, in the eyes of Xianbei people, the second marriage of a princess is not unusual. Yang Min served as the governor of the Northern Qi Dynasty for twenty years, taking it as his own duty to reward and select talents, forming a unique situation in the Northern Qi Dynasty where "the ruler is faint at the top, and the government is clear at the bottom" ("Sui Shu·Criminal Law Chronicles").
Northern Qi Shenwu Emperor Gao Huanyi Ping Ling (photo by Tong Ling)
The historical data of the "Book of Northern Qi" where King Lanling appears, the background is that Gao Huan's sixth son, Changshan King Gao Yan, launched a coup and deposed his nephew Gao Yinzhi Imperial power, known as the "Qianming coup" in history. Historiographers Miao Yue and Huang Yongnian have different views on this coup. Miao Yue believes that "in the Northern Qi generation, Xianbei was in great power. Although the Han people fought with each other several times, (omitted) they were unable to defeat Xianbei and ended up in defeat" ("Reading") "Historical Manuscript", Sanlian Bookstore, 1963). Huang Yongnian believes that there are also Han people in the group of Gao Yan and Gao Zhan, and it cannot simply be regarded as a dispute between Hu and Han ("Chinese Political History from the Sixth to the Ninth Century", Shanxi People's Publishing House, 2024).
Judging from the incident itself, Gao Yan got rid of the Yang Min Group. The key to the success of the coup was the defection of Gao Guiyan, who originally belonged to the Yang Min Group and controlled the imperial army (Zhang Jinlong, "Research on the Imperial Guard System in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties", Zhonghua Book Company, 2020). In March of this year, he had controlled the situation in the center of Yecheng and returned to Jinyang, the base camp of Xianbei nobles in the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi Dynasties to take charge. Gao Yan proclaimed himself emperor in August of this year, namely Emperor Xiaozhao of the Northern Qi Dynasty. He was also the uncle of King Lanling in terms of seniority. Gao Changgong, who was knighted as the "King of Lanling" amidst the chaos and conspiracy, was now a handsome boy of about nineteen years old. His meteoric fate almost happened amidst similar chaos and conspiracy.
This beautiful boy is well-known in East Asia. The "Book of Northern Qi" volume of the "Introduction to Chinese History Books" series published by Muncheng in Japan (supervised by Yasuki Igasawa) has a stele of King Lanling on the upper cover and a cartoon Lanling on the lower cover. Wang can be said to be "one person represents an era." Before discussing the issue of "travel to East Asia", let's first take a look at the real King Lanling in the history of Northern Qi.
Cover of "Introduction to Chinese History: Book of the Northern Qi Dynasty" supervised by Qi Heze Baogui, published by Miancheng, 2020
2. The reality of King Lanling's breaking of the formation
King Lanling's father, Gao Cheng, would have been "a food slave" on the eve of the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi's abdication "If Lan Jing is assassinated, then King Lanling is likely to become one of the princes. In the "Book of Northern Qi·Biography of the Six Kings of Wenxiang", it is introduced that King Lanling had six brothers:
Wenxiang's six sons: Queen Wen Jingyuan was born to Wang Xiaowan of Hejian, Song was born to Wang Xiaoyu of Henan, Wang was born to Wang Xiaoheng of Guangning, and Lan Prince Changgong of the Ling family did not have his mother's surname. The Chen family gave birth to King Yanzong of Ande, and the Yan family gave birth to King Shaoxin of Yuyang.
As the fourth son of Gao Cheng, who was posthumously named Emperor Wenxiang of the Northern Qi Dynasty, compared with his five brothers, his mother was probably an ordinary woman who was favored by Gao Cheng because of her beauty (Hu It is also unknown whether her ethnic group is Han or Han), so the "Book of Northern Qi" did not leave her surname. However, judging from Gao Cheng's extreme "lust", King Lanling's mother should be a peerless beauty. The grandfather of King Lanling, Gao Huan, came from Huaishuo Town, one of the six towns in the Northern Wei Dynasty. I once inspected the Huaishuo Town ruins, which are about three times the size of the Wuchuan Town ruins (Tong Ling's "Descendants of Shanyu", published in "Shudu" Issue 11, 2023). Gao Huan, this highly civilized Han Chinese, possesses the martial heroic temperament of the Northern tribe. For example, Wei Bin used a wonderful metaphor:
Those men who "wanted to be healthy" together after the Six Towns Rebellion were like kites flying through the sky, unstoppable, and the larger flocks of birds evaded one after another. . ("Seeing King Gao", "Reading" Issue 4, 2020)
In the summer of 2023, when I stood on the site of Huaishuo Town and looked at the ever-changing Gobi grassland that Gao Huan had seen, at that moment it seemed Understand, the self-identity of Gao Huan and his descendants is undoubtedly more inclined to the Xianbei men on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Especially for King Lanling, his grandfather Gao Huan died when he was about seven years old. His grandfather's bravery must have been fixed in King Lanling's childhood memory. Based on this, we can boldly speculate that King Lanling must have inherited the martial spirit of his father's line and the exquisite beauty of his mother's line.
Huaishuo Town Ruins (photo by Shen Lihua)
Gao Yan fell from his horse and died one year after he ascended the throne in a coup (561). Another uncle of King Lanling, Gao Zhan, ascended the throne as Emperor Wucheng. King Lanling was appointed as the governor of Bingzhou. At this time, King Lanling was twenty years old and in his prime. However, the ups and downs of the situation in the center of Yecheng also caused Northern Qi's rival Northern Zhou to look covetously. The crisis of the Northern Qi regime coincided with the highlight moment of King Lanling.
In the third year of the Heqing Dynasty (564), the third year of Emperor Wucheng of the Northern Qi Dynasty, the Northern Zhou Dynasty united with the Turks and besieged Luoyang, an important town in the Northern Qi Dynasty, with an army of 100,000. The situation is critical. Emperor Wu Cheng's troops were divided into three armies on the left, center and right for rescue: Duan Shao, Hu Luguang, and King Lanling. Among them, King Lanling led the central army. The most detailed description of this war process is not "Book of Northern Qi" but "Zi Zhi Tong Jian". This ancient text is not difficult to understand. I have re-divided it into sections and quoted it as follows:
[The Battle of Zuo Army] to When he encountered the Zhou army in the Taihe Valley, (Duan) Shao immediately informed the camps, pursued the knights, and formed formations to wait for them. Shao was the left army, Lanling King Changgong was the middle army, and Hu Luguang was the right army. The people of the Zhou Dynasty did not expect it to come, and they were all afraid. (Middle outline) The Zhou people led the infantry and went up the mountain to fight against the enemy. Shao fights and then lures him; wait until his strength is weakened, then dismount and attack him. The Zhou army was defeated and disintegrated. Many people fell into the valley and died.
[Chinese Army Battle Situation] Lanling King Changgong broke into the Zhou army with 500 cavalry and reached the gate of Jinyong City. The people on the city didn't recognize him, so he lowered his head to show his respect, so he lowered his crossbow to rescue him. The Zhou divisions who were under the city also broke the siege and fled, abandoning the camp. From Mang Mountain to Gushui, for thirty miles, military supplies and equipment filled the Sichuan River. Only Qi Gongxian, Da Xiwu and Yongzhong Gong Wangxiong were behind, and they restrained their troops and refused to fight.
[Battle situation of the right army] Wang Xiong galloped his horse towards Hu Luguang Chen, the light retreated, and Xiong pursued him. The light scattered to the left and right, leaving only one slave and one arrow. The male's head was less than ten feet taller than Guang's, and he said to Guang, "I'm sorry that I won't kill you, but I will give you a general to see the emperor." The light shot the male in the middle of the forehead, and the male carried the horse away and died at the camp. The army is increasingly afraid. (Volume 169 of "Zi Zhi Tong Jian" "Chen Ji San")
The fierce battle between the left, center and right armies is as vivid as before. For example, Hu Luguang, the right-wing soldier who shot to death the famous Northern Zhou general Wang Xiong, was known as the "Loud Condor Governor" and was one of the prototype characters in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes". As for the protagonist of this article, King Lanling, as the commander-in-chief of the Chinese army, he broke into the enemy's formation. It can be imagined that on the side of Mang Mountain outside Luoyang City, a general wearing heavy armor and a "devil mask" led five hundred cavalry and rushed into the Northern Zhou army. He shot left and right, and struck back and forth several times. , which greatly boosted the morale of the Northern Qi army. However, the Northern Qi soldiers guarding the city did not know who this "devil" was under the city, and they dared not lower the suspension bridge and open the door.So the "devil" took off his mask - it turned out to be the Prince of Northern Qi, King Lanling! Everyone cheered and defeated the Northern Zhou and Turkic coalition forces in one fell swoop...
Why did King Lanling wear a mask and go into battle? It turned out that he was a handsome man, with a "soft appearance and a strong heart, and a beautiful voice and appearance" ("Book of Northern Qi"), or he was "looking like a woman" ("Jiaofang Ji"), and he thought he was so handsome. His appearance is not enough to intimidate the enemy, so he wears a demon mask with a dragon on it and fights into the enemy. In order to commemorate the "Great Victory at Mangshan", the Xianbei warriors of the Northern Qi Dynasty sang a ballad together. People at that time "imitated their commanding and attacking appearance" and compiled this ballad into a dance song called "Lanling King". "Entering the Battle Song".
After the war, Emperor Wu Cheng went to Luoyang in person to award rewards. Duan Shao was appointed as Taizai, Hu Luguang was appointed as Taiwei, and King Lanling was appointed as Shangshu Ling. However, at the celebration banquet, King Lanling had the following conversation with the nine-year-old Empress of the Northern Qi Dynasty:
At the victory of Mangshan, the Empress said to Chang Gong: "If you go deep into the battle, you will regret the failure." He said: "The family affairs are so intimate that I didn't realize it happened." The emperor disliked it for calling it a family affair, so he tabooed it.
In the year after the victory at Mangshan, Emperor Wu Cheng established himself as the Supreme Emperor at the age of twenty-nine, and made Gao Wei the emperor. Gao Wei is one of the protagonists in the dialogue in the historical data in the previous paragraph, "the Empress of the Northern Qi Dynasty". Emperor Wucheng's approach was to prevent the usurpation of the throne among brothers since Emperor Wenxuan, in order to stabilize the succession of the throne (Daisuke Aida, "Era of the Southern and Northern Dynasties: The Unification of the Five Hus and Sixteen Kingdoms", Nakagoshi Shinshu, 2021). The most taboo thing for Emperor Wu Cheng and his queen was that the royal clan regarded military and state affairs as "family affairs" for all members of the Gao family. Therefore, King Lanling's answer also set the stage for his own death.
In the year after the famous Northern Qi general "Luodiao Governor" Hu Luguang was framed and died by slander, in May of the fourth year of Wuping (573), the emperor of the Northern Qi Dynasty, the emperor sent an envoy to kill Lanling King Gao Changgong. Before his death, King Lanling burned all the bonds owed to him. At this time, it was exactly ten years since "King Lanling broke the formation and won the victory".
In the subsequent historical process of the Northern Qi Dynasty, while the imperial power was consolidated, the national power became increasingly weaker (Lu Chunsheng, "Research on the Political History of the Northern Qi Dynasty: An Investigation into the Causes of the Decline and Fall of the Northern Qi Dynasty", National Taiwan University Literature and History Series, 1987), four years after the death of King Lanling In 577, the country was destroyed by the Northern Zhou Dynasty.
1920, the tomb of Lanling King Gao Changgong in Ci County, Hebei Province was discovered during the construction of a road, and a "Stele of Lanling King Gao Su" was unearthed. There are also six dragons coiled around the head of this monument. The dragon's tail is slender and curled down, like the dragon on the "devil" mask. On Gui's forehead are engraved four lines of Yang script and sixteen seal characters: "The stele of King Zhongwu in Lanling, the former emperor of Qi Dynasty." There is a five-character poem in the shadow of the stele, two of which are:
Looking at the stele in the distance, I shed tears, caressing the tomb to relieve my sorrow. This pavilion was finally destroyed, and its name was built in vain for thousands of years.
This handsome man, Gao Su, King of Lanling, did not die in the battle in the end, but died in the suspicion between the clans of the Northern Qi Dynasty. Shi Zhecun's "Beishan Collection of Ancient Records" has a chant: "The spirit of King Lanling is not exhausted, and the big characters The monument comes out of the Zhen palace. The tiger leaps and the dragon rides on the true pen, and the long song breaks the formation and wants to be heroic. "At that time, there were three strongest men in northern China, who were actually their contemporaries:
Gao Changgong, King of Lanling in the Northern Qi Dynasty (541?-573).
Northern Zhou · Emperor Wu Yu Wenyong (543-578)
Sui Dynasty · Emperor Wen Yang Jian (541-604)
I was lucky enough to visit both the mausoleum of King Lanling and the Xiaoling Mausoleum of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (August 2017 History of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties in China The Yecheng annual meeting of the society inspected the tomb of King Lanling; in May 2024, under the guidance of Director Li Xiaoyong of the Shunling Cultural Management Institute, the Xiaoling Tomb of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was inspected). It's just that history cannot be assumed - but "assuming" is one of the common hobbies of all readers who love history. Let's assume for a moment that King Lanling did not commit suicide, Zhou Sui surrendered in 581 (the first year of the founding of the emperor), and Yang Jian was forty years old. If King Lanling was roughly forty years old when he was alive. When Sui Ping and Chen unified the world in 589 (the ninth year of the founding of the Emperor), Yang Jian was forty-eight years old. If King Lanling were alive, he would be close to the age of "knowing the destiny of destiny".
The forehead of the stele of King Lanling (photo by Tong Ling)
In front of the stele pavilion of King Lanling (some scholars from the China Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties History Society in 2017)
Gao Huan’s direct grandson’s lineage retains the “heroic emperor” (Turkic language) King Lanling is not the only one with temperament.For example, Gao Yanzong, the biological brother of King Lanling, and Gao Shaoyi (son of Gao Yang), the cousin of King Lanling. The former finally defended Yecheng, while the latter persisted in resisting until the founding of the Sui Dynasty in 581 AD. However, most of these people only remain in the memory of the Northern Qi generation. Only "King Lanling" traveled across the ocean and exerted immeasurable influence. The reason is precisely the "Song of King Lanling Entering the Battle" during the great victory at Mangshan.
3. Tuoba inheritance from the Northern Qi Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty: "The Entering Song of King Lanling"
In the family temperament of the Gao family in the Northern Qi Dynasty, in addition to the two major traits of martial spirit and hysteria, "good literature" and "good music" Undoubtedly, it is also a significant aspect. The Northern Qi emperor who forced King Lanling to death, although his military strategy was completely unable to intimidate the Xianbei nobles in Jinyang, he was "quite good at literature" under the influence of the Han aristocratic scholar-bureaucrats. He appointed Zu Jue to set up the "Wenlin Pavilion" in 573 AD, and introduced Han scholars to enrich it, calling it "to be recruited". Zu Jue also ordered Boling Li Delin, the minister of calligraphy, and Lang Yayan, the minister of Huangmen, to compile the "Yu Lan of Xiuwen Palace". This type of book was later lost in China, but according to the research of Japanese scholar Takada Sohei, there are lost texts of "Xiubundian Gokan" in Japanese "Era Kanbun" and other documents, which shows its wide influence. And this Li Delin was Li Baiyao's father, and "Book of Northern Qi" was the result of their father-son cooperation. Naito Hunan is a representative of what "father and son inherit the history of governance" (Appendix to "History of Chinese Historiography" translated by Ma Biao, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2008).
Li Baiyao's epitaph (provided by Li Hao and Fan Wenjun)
Although the queen was licentious, she still had some aristocratic qualities of the Six Dynasties. For example, she composed "Wuchou Song" and was known as the "Wuchou Emperor". "Books of the Sui Dynasty·Music Chronicles" says:
(the late master) specially adopted a new voice as "Wuchou Song". The music is graceful and graceful, and it is extremely sad, making Hu'er's eunuchs and eunuchs sing in unison. Tears of death.
At least in terms of musical accomplishment, the two last emperors of the "Later Three Kingdoms", Northern Qi and Chen, both achieved very high attainments. It's just that the "Wuchou Song" composed by the "Wuchou Emperor" is the same as the "Lanling King Entering the Battle Song" (hereinafter referred to as "Lanling King"), and it is most likely that it was performed in Xianbei language instead of Chinese.
The formation trajectory of the Sui and Tang empires mainly developed along the genealogy of the Five Hus and Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern Dynasties. In fact, in terms of music, Mr. Chen Yinke's "A Brief Essay on the Origin of Institutions in the Sui and Tang Dynasties" said: "The Hu music of the Tang Dynasty was mostly due to the Sui Dynasty, and the Hu music of the Sui Dynasty was mostly transmitted from the Northern Qi Dynasty." This is a very accurate inference. Although the Sui and Tang Dynasties succeeded the Northern Zhou Dynasty in terms of the orthodox succession of political power, the musical genealogy should be "Northern Qi - Sui - Tang". For example, after Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty destroyed the Chen Dynasty, there were the so-called "Seven Music Parts": "Guo Ji", "Qing Shang Ji", "Koryeo Ji" (including "Baekje Ji"), "Tianzhu Ji", "Anguo Ji" and "Qiuci Ji" "Wenkang Opera" was later added to "Nine Parts of Music" during the reign of Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty. The "Translation and Annotation of Sui Shu Music Records" (Izumi Shoten, 2016) compiled by Japan's "Six Dynasty Yuefu Society" believes that the "gi" here specifically refers to the music accompanying the dance.
The Tang Empire inherited the Sui Dynasty's grand momentum of "enjoying the world". As for the heroic Hu soldiers, they are especially praised. The spirit of King Lanling, who bravely championed the three armies at that time, was exactly what the Tang Empire desperately needed during its founding period. Therefore, "Lanling King", a powerful formation-breaking dance music, was still popular all over the country after entering the Tang Dynasty.
"The King of Lanling" was originally a ballad to inspire military ambitions, then became a song and dance, and then co-starred with "big face dance" (Mu Weisheng and Zhang Weishen, "National Music and Dance in Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty", Shaanxi Xinhua Publishing Media Group, 2016). And I think that "The King of Lanling" already possessed the important characteristics of its "travel" in the Tang Dynasty: it gradually broke away from the historical nature of the Northern Qi Dynasty and emphasized its music and dance. For example, Duan Anjie's "Yuefu Miscellaneous Records" of the Tang Dynasty states:
Operas with different aspects began in the Northern Qi Dynasty. Brother Shenwu is brave and good at fighting. Because of his unassuming appearance, he puts on a mask every time he enters the battle, and he is victorious in every battle. The actor's clothes are purple, his waist is gold, and he holds a whip.
's description of the dance of "King Lanling" here is very accurate, but it is completely wrong to say that King Lanling was the "Shenwu's younger brother". However, the historical common sense errors about King Lanling in the Tang Dynasty did not hinder the popularity of dance.
When Empress Zetian was in power, her grandson, King Wei, who was only five years old, danced and performed "King of Lanling" in front of Empress Zetian. Before the performance, he murmured:
King Wei is entering, The curse is holy. Long live the God-Emperor, may your grandson be on your way! ("The Monument of Princess Dai")
I wonder if there is any hint of Li Tang's "restoration"? It should be noted that the majesty of this classic dance music was slowly changed after the early Tang Dynasty. By the Kaiyuan period of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, it had been classified as "soft dance". Therefore, Ouyang Yuqian's "Dances of the Tang Dynasty" (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1980) speculated that during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, "The King of Lanling" had evolved into another form?
This military formation dance, which was inherited successively from the Northern Qi, Sui and Tang Dynasties, was completely lost in China after about the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty. Today, the only one who can still get a glimpse of this piece of music from that time is "Lanling King" which was brought to Japan by a monk studying abroad.
4. King Lanling's "Travel to East Asia"
Cui Zhiyuan, a scholar of Silla in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem called "Da Mian":
His golden complexion is his person, holding beads in his hands and whipping to fight ghosts and gods.
The quick steps move slowly in an elegant dance, just like the Danfeng dancing in Yaochun.
According to the path of the eastward spread of Tang Dynasty culture, it is conceivable that "The King of Lanling" was first spread eastward to the Korean Peninsula. Japanese music researcher Shigeo Kishibe believes that the Japanese music and dance "Lan Ling Wang" is essentially the same as the Tang Dynasty loose music "Da Mian" and Cui Zhiyuan's folk music "Da Mian". It's just that the historical data about "King Lanling" on the Korean Peninsula are incomplete. We mainly look at the situation in the Japanese archipelago.
During the era of Emperor Shomu of Japan (reigned 724-749), a Buddhist monk studying abroad from the Linyi Kingdom of Annan saw a strange music and dance in the Tang Empire. He was highly cultivated in music and immediately wrote it down. Later, he sent an envoy from the Tang Dynasty back to Japan and brought this piece to Fuso. This is "King of Lanling". This dance music was introduced to Japan about ten years before Jianzhen's eastward journey, but it was once preserved in the Tangzhaoti Temple built by Jianzhen in Nara, Japan.
At that time, the Japanese government and the public, who were defeated in the Battle of Baijiangkou, wanted to see what the dance music that this Linyi monk brought to the Tang Empire looked like, which seemed to have something to do with battle formations. It is not known whether we can learn some of Li Jing's and Li Ji's enemy-defeating formations. Therefore, the government and the public chose an auspicious day to watch this dance at Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara. The performer of "Lanling King" wears a hideous and terrifying mask that resembles a "devil" with a sharp nose and angry eyes. He wears purple clothes and a golden belt. He holds a whip (or "stick") and starts dancing, accompanied by Powerful music, piercing left and right. The faster the rhythm, the more vigorous the dance, like a powerful mysterious general... After watching this tragic, mellow, desolate and simple music and dance, the emperor was overjoyed and immediately designated it as the most upright "gagaku" in Japan. And every spring, it is performed at the Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara for worship until today in the 21st century.
The music of medieval Japan can be roughly divided into ancient music and new music. The ancient music before the Tang Dynasty in China is called "ancient music"; the music spread to Japan from Silla and Bohai is called "new music". If we use dance classification again, those that came to Japan from the Tang Empire and Tianzhu are called "left dances"; those that came to Japan from the original Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla are called "right dances". "Lanling King" undoubtedly belongs to the "ancient music" and "Zuo Wu" categories.
wrote in his humble work "Yan Feng Shuo Long Ji: The Tang Empire and the Middle Ages in East Asia" (The Commercial Press, 2014) that when I was studying abroad at Kyoto University in 2008, I went to Inagaki Yushi's home to attend a music gathering and performed " Kenji Yagi of "Ranling King" Ryūdi showed us the Kasuga Taisha Shrine's paper version of the "Ranling King" ancient score. Among the flutes used in Japan's "Lanling King" and other elegant music, they are divided into "dragon flute" and "goryeo flute". As the name suggests, the "Korean Flute" comes from the Korean Peninsula in the Middle Ages and has six small holes and one large hole; the "Dragon Flute" specifically refers to the instrument from the Tang Empire, which has seven small holes and one large hole.
In the spring of 2008, I took a train from Kyoto to Nara. According to the map, I quickly found Kasuga Taisha Shrine and watched the music and dance of "Ranling King" in its entirety.It's a pity that I couldn't take pictures or take pictures at that time. I can only use words to recall the extremely exciting mood at that time based on my diary:
"Little Chaos": The dragon flute solo, with the beat, Lan wearing the dragon "devil mask" The mausoleum king stepped into the arena in full attire.
"Ling Wang Chaos": The dragon flute and other instruments such as sheng and 筚篥 play in harmony at the same time, and the Lanling King dancers start to dance like thorns on the left and right.
"啭": The music stops and King Lanling dances alone.
"Shatuo Tuning and Acquisition": King Lanling's dance stopped and various musical instruments were played.
"Dangqu (Ling Wangpo) Er Tie": It should be the main melody part of this song, and it seems to go back and forth twice.
"An Mo Chaosheng": King Lanling slowly exits, the dragon flute solo ends.
and above record the content of each part according to the track. However, according to Mr. Yagi's explanation to me later, this piece of music, which was introduced to Japan in the Tang Dynasty, is divided into three parts: "preface", "breaking" and "urgent". In the second part "Broken", there should have been "Dance" and "Wrong", but today only "Dance" remains. Indeed, in the performance at Kasuga Taisha Shrine, the music stopped abruptly during the "wart" part. Some people say that "啭" is sung in Tangyin, but I secretly think that "啭" was originally sung in the Xianbei dialect of the Northern Qi Dynasty. It is a pity that thousands of years later, we have no chance to listen to how the Tang Empire used "Tang sounds" to "sing" "Lanling King".
Japanese Lanling King Music and Dance
In the late Qing Dynasty, Huang Zunxian traveled east to Fusang. A certain wealthy family in Japan summoned actors to his house and invited Huang Zunxian to watch a dance of "Lanling King". Huang Zunxian wrote a poem about it:
Goldfish Purple Bag When it comes to the stage, the sound of drums stops and the flute is played.
Music is played in the Taiping Tang ceremony, and the clothes are decorated with the official ceremonials of the Han Dynasty.
The "Tang ceremony" and "Han official ceremony" here are Huang Zunxian's high praise for this song "Original from the Tang Dynasty" and "Lanling King". Huang Zunxian, a diplomat who was in the midst of great changes in the times, was also a first-class poet and scholar. There is a self-note at the end of this poem, saying with emotion: "Thousands of years of happiness cannot be seen from the east of the sea. "The Book of the Later Han Dynasty" says that etiquette is a wasteland, isn't it?" While watching the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty, The dance music, while thinking about the turbulent late Qing Dynasty, his feelings and thoughts are hard for Huang Zunxian.
In his early years, Guo Moruo translated Lin Qiansan's "Research on Yan Music Dialogue of the Sui and Tang Dynasties" (The Commercial Press, 1936). The appendix included the flute score of "Shatuo Diao Luoling Wang Po", but it was not the complete score. In the past few years, the famous Shanghai dancer Mr. Huang Doudou has been working hard to restore the original appearance of "The King of Lanling". On the basis of absorbing Japanese music and dance, there have been new developments. I am very much looking forward to this.
Mr. Huang Doudou's "Lanling King" music and dance team
Lanling King's East Asian travels are not only about music and dance, but also about literature. In the 18th year of the Republic of China (1929), Yangu Wen's "An Introduction to Chinese Literature" translated by Sun Ligong was published in Kaiming Bookstore. The Japanese version of this book was previously used by Chen Xiying to attack Lu Xun's "A Brief History of Chinese Novels", believing that Lu Xun "plagiarized" Shiotani On. In addition to this koan, in fact, it may be the earliest Chinese literary history written by Japanese scholars to introduce King Lanling to Chinese readers, because there is an exquisite color painting of "The Music and Dance of King Lanling" attached to the front of the book. Insert.
Illustrations of King Lanling in On Shiotani's "Lectures on an Introduction to Chinese Literature" in 1919
Another example is Mishima Yukio, who failed to compete with Kawabata Yasunari for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote a book called "Prince of Lanling", which was written by Mishima Yukio. Norio's last collection of short stories written one year before committing seppuku, although it has nothing to do with Prince Lanling himself, I once picked up a copy of it at a very low price from a dark corner of a used bookstore in Kyoto. As for Yoshiki Tanaka, who is known as the "Jin Yong of Japan", in addition to "The Legend of the Galactic Heroes" and "The Battle of Arslan", which are loved by Asian college and middle school students, he also has a Chinese historical novel "The King of Lanling", which is based on The "beautiful boy" military general of the Northern Qi Dynasty is the protagonist, fully displaying the poignancy and beauty under the "mask". The most admirable thing about this book is that Tanaka Yoshiki only based it on the short sentence "Wucheng rewarded his merits and ordered Jia Hu to buy twenty concubines, but he only accepted one" in the biography of King Lanling in "Book of Northern Qi" He successfully "created" Xu Yueqin, Prince Lanling's confidante.Such writing skills are quite similar to Ma Boyong's creation of the male protagonist in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" based on the sentence "The knight Zhang Xiaojing first shot the loyalist of the country and fell the horse" from the Tang Dynasty's "The Deeds of Anlu Mountain".
Mishima Yukio "Lanling King"
Tanaka Yoshiki "Lanling King"
5. Epilogue: Lanling King's unfinished "travel"
Last spring, the G7 summit was held in Hiroshima, Japan. According to Japanese media reports, the wife of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida officially hosted the spouses of leaders from various countries at the Itsukushima (Miyajima) Shrine, a world cultural heritage site. The public performance was Japanese Gagaku "Ranling King". Readers may attribute this phenomenon to "the influence of Tang Dynasty culture" or "the eastward spread of medieval Chinese culture." However, if you stand outside the East Asian civilization circle, this phenomenon is worthy of further exploration. At the end of June this year, the School of Liberal Arts of Nanjing University and the Oriental Studies of St. Petersburg University jointly held an international academic symposium on "Research on Far Eastern Literature". The group I was in was called "new tasks in the study of classical chinese literature in the age of globalization and informatization" and new tasks for the study of Chinese classical literature in the information age.” The moderator, Professor Natia Zakharova from the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, asked me a direct but profound question: "Why do Japanese people like "The King of Lanling"?" The remaining discussion time at that time did not allow me to develop a narrative like this article. I can only say simply that perhaps in the cultural temperament from the Northern Qi Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, there is a spiritual core that Japanese people at that time and now loved very much.
Statue of King Lanling in Miyajima, Japan
French scholar Léon vandermeersch once said in his book "New Han Cultural Circle" (Jiangxi People's Publishing House, 1993): "The differences in languages between China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea, Far more so than the Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Slavic countries. However, the different cultural characteristics of the Chinese cultural countries are deeply embedded in a common mental cornerstone. "I think there is no doubt that King Lanling. is part of this huge "common mental cornerstone" and therefore his "journey" will continue.
