西周颂赞性铭文的结构及生成

The Structure and Generation of Praise Inscriptions in Western Zhou Dynasty

颂体是中国古代文体中一种重要的类型,其发展演变源远流长。关于颂体文学的源头,刘勰认为是《诗经》中的“三颂”。事实上,西周颂赞性铭文才是颂体的早期形态,分非独立成篇和独立成篇两种结构类型。前者文本特征是以食器为主对在世之人的被动性颂赞,后者则是主动对祖先进行的非模式化颂赞。西周颂赞性铭文有两种生成方式,以记事为主的铭文是史官对相关事件要素的记录及第三人称的润色,以记言为主的铭文则可能是预先写好的发言稿。作为颂赞性文本早期发展的重要一环,独立成篇类颂赞性铭文与《诗经》“周颂”关系密切,后者在前者基础上予以继承和发展,并逐渐演变出后世的颂体文学。

Praise literature is an important type of Chinese ancient literary style,which has a long history of development and evo⁃lution.As for the origin of praise style literature,Liu Xie thought it was from“San Song”in The Book of Songs.In fact,as early as in the Western Zhou Dynasty,bronze inscriptions already expressed the content of praise,which can be classified into two structural types:non-independent praise inscriptions and independent praise inscriptions.The textual characteristics of the former is a passive praise to the living people based on food utensils,and the latter is a schema-less praise to the ancestors.There were two generation methods of praise inscriptions in the Western Zhou Dynasty.The chronicle inscriptions were the records of relevant event elements by historians and the third person touch up,and the inscriptions based on people’s speeches were likely to be pre-written.As an impor⁃tant part of the early development of praising texts,the independent praise inscriptions were closely related to the“Zhou Song”in The Book of Songs.The latter inherited and developed on the basis of the former,and gradually evolved into the later praising literature.