Jade cicadas

#Cicadas carved in #Jade originally used as tokens of immortality to be buried with the dead but also used for jewellery in China.

Au Co and Seal Script.

#AUCO #Vietnamesemyth #kanzi #sealscript

(updated with minor errors corrected June 24 - 2020)

The Vietnamese culture has a story of a bird spirit who came from the mountains and was trapped while in bird form and rescued by a dragon prince who became her husband. Their children hatched from 100 eggs and became the ancestors of the Viet people.

Her name is Au Co in Vietnamese and is written like this in modern Chinese though the characters do have other simplified forms.

Literally in modern Chinese this is something like old woman concubine but take another look at the older seal script form of the first element in her name. It shows a woman facing an enclosure with round objects probably mouths representing people? 

Maybe the original concept was woman who protects like royalty?

In Chinese Au is Yu4 

I wonder if an entity similar to Au Co was once honored in Southern China or the Yue realms adjacent to North Vietnam?

While people think of the Chinese writing system as spreading from central china outwards and most modern characters have been standardized odd rare characters like this make me wonder if regional variants have been absorbed into the greater body of characters?

As I've written before while North and South have a yin yang relationship in Chinese culture and while the culture of the central Plains is usually dominant sometimes the South is stronger? 

Dong Son Birds

Some more Dong Son Birds. #dongson #vietnam

Note that I had to do some edits on the images to emphasize details.
The original bronze artifacts have slightly different colors and tones.

The Dongson culture seems to have be fascinated by birds and other animals.

Next another look at the Ao Co myth and what that may tell us about that culture and its interactions with Ancient China?

Scroll back to the Red Bird of the South post if you missed it ! 

Please note I have not seen the originals as the largest holdings of Dongson artifacts seem to be in French museums I have not visited. 

Red Bird of the South

#redbirdofthesouth #asianculture #symbols #dongson #vietnam

Tradtional Chiense culture and other neary cultures influenced by China allot the four directions the following as symbols:

White Tiger of the West. Black Warrior/ Turtle of the North, Dragon of the Eastern Sea. Imperial Dragon of the Centre and Red bird of the South.

Now we know White Tigers exist in the wild but are currently rare and endangered but in the past were more common and I'm not going to discuss what the basis of dragons and the other symbols in this post but this year since its the Year of the Rooster I have been running avian theme post series.

I explored the Red Bird and I thought if the White Tiger may be inspired by tigers with (partial) albinism what about the Red Bird?

Now the ancient Dong Son culture of SE Asia used bird symbols and depicted birds.

Images included hornbills and other birds that may be storks cranes or egrets or even peacocks.

Chinese culture has the Red Bird of the south.

Could there be a link?

 We know there was cultural interchange between Southern China, the CHU state, the Yue realms and further south.

Here's a couple of images.

Here's a closeup of a Dongson artifact which I edited to emphasize the bird pattern.

Other Dongson culture bird images.

I think a clue here is not the long bird but the pattern of bars and speckles.

Now take a look at this.

This is Elliotts Pheasant a species who's current habitat is the far south of China and which could have had a far wider habitat area in the past. Its a warm red color has a long barred pattern tail and a crest and jungle fowl peacock and storks are not red.

Could the Red bird of the South been a folk memory of this or some other pheasant species that had a far wider range up toward Central China and down to Vietnam.

Finally consider this: the Vietnamese origin myth of a bird immortal/ goddess Au Lac from the mountains who mated with a (chinese) dragon prince from the sea founding a realm in the river valleys of the north of what is now Vietnam.

Red Bird of the South? Bird Goddess of the past? Folk symbol now.

Cicadas Harunobu print

#cicadas #harunobu #ukiyo-e

Yes I know the cicada is barely visible perched up on the tree trunk but its a charming "slice of life" print showing us that small boys in the Edo period chased and hunted cicadas. 

In Sydney its usually birds hunting cicadas as fretful modern parents fear children will fall out of trees and children are also encouraged not to hunt and collect as generations of enthusiastic collection have made the treasured Black Prince variety a rarity. 

Cicadas - a Waka

This poem about #cicadas is from a sequence of #waka written by #MinamotoNoAkinaka (1064-1135)

Yamakawa no 
Iwa kosu nami ni 
Uchisoete 
Tani hibiku nari 
Semi no morogoe 

mountain yama river kawa  of no

reef  iwa as jagged peaks of rocks sticking up thru waves nami  in a rapid kosu straining or crossing over ni - locative

uchi intensifier prefix "VERY" little / great soete sou following accompanying running along

tani valley hibiku  echo sound nari verb to be archaic

semi - cicada no - of morogoe compound noun moro together goe voice  voices sounds in unison

My notes I hope show why learning even just a little bungo deepens one's appreciation of waka.

Translated directly one loses most of the assonance  ?

I will try though to give you something not too prosaic !

in a mountain valley
waves break over rapids 
following so closely 
 the valley fills with echos of both 
the chorus of cicadas 

Cicadas - a Ming dynasty Chinese painting

#xuesusu #cicadas #chinesemingdynasty painting #ming #chinese

So I' m still doing random search combining different parameters and I find this lovely little known masterpiece though perhaps I should say "Mistress" piece. When you finish enjoying this go into Wikipedia and look up Xue SuSu . Painter Archeress Courtesan Nun and More.

Cicadas - Three A Lesser Known Japanese Print

#cicadas #japanese #print

Unfortunately not much information is available about this print. The creator is unknown.

Its Japanese but the composition and the use of Chinese characters with NO kana suggests to me that maybe some one was looking at a Chinese illustrated book.

Its certainly not a great masterpiece but it has a certain charm and elegance though the artist seems to have done a better job of depicting the cicada than the kingfisher or whatever bird this is?

I also wonder if this is a print from Osaka or Kyoto rather than a Edo publishing house?

Next post I'll show you how a famous Ukiyo-e master depicted a cicada.