The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl

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The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
Niulang and Zhinv (Long Corridor).JPG
The reunion of the couple on the bridge of magpies. Artwork in the Long Corridor of the Summer Palace, Beijing
Traditional Chinese 牛郎織女
Simplified Chinese 牛郎织女
Literal meaning Cowherd [and] Weaver Girl
File:The Magpie Bridge.jpg
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meeting on the magpie bridge.

The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are characters found in Chinese mythology and appear eponymously in a romantic Chinese folk tale. The story tells of the romance between Zhinü (織女; the weaver girl, symbolized by the star Vega) and Niulang (牛郎; the cowherd, symbolized by the star Altair).[1] Despite their love for each other, their romance was forbidden, and thus they were banished to opposite sides of the heavenly river (symbolizing the Milky Way).[1][2] Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, a flock of magpies would form a bridge to reunite the lovers for a single day. Though there are many variations of the story,[1] the earliest-known reference to this famous myth dates back to a poem from the Classic of Poetry from over 2600 years ago:[3]


詩經·小雅·大東


維天有漢,
監亦有光。
跂彼織女,
終日七襄。

雖則七襄,
不成報章。
睆彼牽牛,
不以服箱。

Classic of Poetry, Lesser Court Hymns, Poem 203


In Heavens there is the Milky Way,
It looks down and is bright;
slanting is the Weaving Lady,
during one day she is seven times removed.

Although she is seven times removed,
she does not achieve any interwoven pattern;
brilliant is the Draught Ox,
But one does not yoke into any carriage.
[4]

The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl originated from people’s worship of natural celestial phenomena, and later developed into the Qiqiao or Qixi Festival since the Han Dynasty.[5][better source needed] It has also been celebrated as the Tanabata festival in Japan and the Chilseok festival in Korea.[6] In ancient times, women would make wishes to the stars of Vega and Altair in the sky during the festival, hoping to have a wise mind, a dexterous hand (in embroidery and other household tasks), and a good marriage.[7]

The story was selected as one of China's Four Great Folktales by the "Folklore Movement" in the 1920s—the others being the Legend of the White Snake, Lady Meng Jiang, and Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai—but Idema (2012) also notes that this term neglects the variations and therefore diversity of the tales, as only a single version was taken as the true version.[8][9]

The story of The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl and its two main characters are popular in various parts of Asia and elsewhere, with different places adopting different variations. Some historical and cross cultural similarities to other stories have also been observed. The story is referenced in various literary and popular cultural sources.

Literature

The tale has been alluded to in many literary works. One of the most famous was the poem by Qin Guan (秦观; 1049–1100) during the Song dynasty:

鵲橋仙

纖雲弄巧,
飛星傳恨,
銀漢迢迢暗渡。
金風玉露一相逢,
便勝卻人間無數。
柔情似水,
佳期如夢,
忍顧鵲橋歸路。
兩情若是久長時,
又豈在朝朝暮暮。

Meeting across the Milky way

Through the varying shapes of the delicate clouds,
the sad message of the shooting stars,
a silent journey across the Milky Way.
One meeting of the Cowherd and Weaver amidst the golden autumn wind and jade-glistening dew,
eclipses the countless meetings in the mundane world.
The feelings soft as water,
the ecstatic moment unreal as a dream,
how can one have the heart to go back on the bridge made of magpies?
If the two hearts are united forever,
why do the two persons need to stay together—day after day, night after night?[10]

Du Fu(杜甫) (712–770) of the Tang dynasty wrote a poem about the heavenly river:

天河

常時任顯晦,
秋至輒分明。
縱被微雲掩,
終能永夜清。
含星動雙闕,
伴月落邊城。
牛女年年渡,
何曾風浪生。

The Heavenly River

Most of the time it may be hidden or fully visible,
but when autumn comes, it gets immediately bright.
Even if covered over by faint clouds,
in the long run it can be clear through the long night.
Full of stars, it stirs by paired palace gates,
moon’s companion, it sinks by a frontier fort.
Oxherd and Weaver cross it every year,
and when have storms ever arisen thereon?[11]

Analysis

Influence and variations

The story of the cowherd and weaver girl spread across Asia, with different variations appearing in various languages and regions over the course of time. In Southeast Asia, the story has been conflated into a Jataka tale detailing the story of Manohara,[12] the youngest of seven daughters of the Kinnara King, who lives on Mount Kailash and falls in love with Prince Sudhana.[13]

In Korea, the story focuses on Jicknyeo, a weaver girl who falls in love with Gyeonwoo, a herder. In Japan, the story revolves around the romance between the deities, Orihime and Hikoboshi. In Vietnam, the story is known as Ngưu Lang Chức Nữ and revolves around the story of Chức Nữ, the weaver, and Ngưu Lang, the herder of buffalos.[context?][14] The Vietnamese version is also titled The Weaver Fairy and the Buffalo Boy.[15]

Tale type

In the first catalogue of Chinese folktales (devised in 1937), Wolfram Eberhard abstracted a Chinese folktype indexed as number 34, Schwanenjungfrau ("The Swan Maiden"): a poor human youth is directed to the place where supernatural women bathe by a cow or a deer; the women may be Swan Maidens, a celestial weaver, one of the Pleiades, one of the "9 Celestial Maidens", or a fairy; he steals the garments of one of them and makes her his wife; she finds the garments and flies back to Heaven; the youth goes after her, and meets her in the Heavenly realm; the Heavenly king decrees that the couple shall meet only once a year.[16] Based on some of the variants available then, Eberhard dated the story to the 5th century, although the tale seems much older, with references to it in the Huainanzi (2th century BC).[17] Eberhard also supposed that the fairy tale preceded the astral myth.[18]

Chinese folklorist and scholar Ting Nai-tung (zh) classified the versions of The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl under the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index ATU 400, "The Quest for the Lost Wife".[19] The tale also holds similarities with widespread tales of the swan maiden (bird maiden or bird princess).[20]

Cultural references

Similar to the Chang'e space program being named after the Chinese goddess of the moon, the Queqiao relay satellite of Chang'e 4 is named after the "bridge of magpies" from the Chinese tale of the cowherd and weaver girl.[23] The Chang'e 4 landing site is known as Statio Tianhe, which refers to the heavenly river in the tale.[24] The nearby far-side lunar craters Zhinyu and Hegu are named after Chinese constellations associated with the weaver girl and the cowherd.[24]

In Japan, the Engineering Test Satellite VII mission was an automated rendezvous and docking test of two satellites nicknamed "Orihime" and "Hikoboshi."

Gallery

See also

References

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  11. Owen, Stephen [translator & editor], Warner, Ding Xiang [editor], Kroll, Paul [editor] (2016). The Poetry of Du Fu open access publication - free to read, Volume 2. De Gruyter Mouton. Pages 168–169. ISBN 978-1-5015-0189-0
  12. Cornell University (2013). Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University: Fall Bulletin 2013. Page 9. "It is generally accepted that the tale of Manora (Manohara) told in Southeast Asia has become conflated with the story of the cowherd and the celestial Weaver girl, popular in China, Korea, and Japan. This conflation of tales, in which Indian and Chinese concepts of sky nymphs cohere, suggests a consummate example of what historian Oliver Wolters refers to as “localization” in Southeast Asia.
  13. Jaini, Padmanabh S. (ed.) (2001). Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies Page 297-330. ISBN 81-208-1776-1.
  14. Landes, A. Contes et légendes annamites. Saigon: Imprimerie Coloniale. 1886. p. 125 (footnote nr. 1).
  15. Vuong, Lynette Dyer. Sky legends of Vietnam. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 1993. pp. 54-80.ISBN 0-06-023000-2
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  19. Nai-tung TING. A Type Index of Chinese Folktales in the Oral Tradition and Major Works of Non-religious Classical Literature. (FF Communications, no. 223) Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1978. p. 65.
  20. Haase, Donald. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales: A-F. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2007. p. 198.
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  24. 24.0 24.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Archived 15 February 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Further reading

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External links

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