King ARU

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: King ARU

Applicant: Ziyun Miao Buyi Autonomous County, Guizhou Province

Project No.: 1062

Project No.: i-118

Time of publication: 2011 (the third batch)

Category: Folk Literature

Region: Guizhou Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Ziyun Miao Buyi Autonomous County, Guizhou Province

Protection unit: Research Center of King Yalu culture in Ziyun Miao Buyi Autonomous County

About King Aru:

Applicant: Ziyun Miao Buyi Autonomous County, Guizhou Province

The king of Yalu is a heroic epic of the Miao nationality, with a length of more than 26000 lines, involving more than 10000 ancient characters, more than 400 ancient Miao place names, and more than 20 detailed descriptions of ancient battlefields. It has been passed down orally among more than 3000 singers in the Miao nationality area of Mashan. This epic is often used in the funeral ceremony of Miao people in Mashan area. It is a sacred chant of the history of the time when the dead returned to the kingdom of Yalu. The epic is sung in the Miao language of the west, with flexible forms of expression. Sometimes read aloud and sing in the form of narration, sometimes ask and answer in the form of monologue, a large number of repeated overlapping and Bi Xing performance techniques appear. The poems are mainly prose poems, and the singing tune is low and sad.

From 2033 B.C. to 1562 B.C., the Miao epic king of Yalu had its embryonic form. The epic tells the story of the creation, establishment, entrepreneurship and development of the seventeen kings of the kingdom of Yalu. From 221 BC to 202 BC, the king of Yalu led the Miao people of the kingdom to move to Guizhou, and successively developed "Shangdu bu" (Guiyang) and "adaib" (Anshun), and finally established the capital of Mashan. The epic describes the pedigree of the descendants of more than 200 royal families in the kingdom of Yalu and the story of their migration.

King Yalu is a Miao epic newly discovered in the survey of local intangible cultural heritage. Most of the inheritors are old, so it is urgent to continue to inherit and record. Relevant departments in Ziyun county are organizing forces to record, record, video, arrange and translate. First, the international phonetic symbols are used to record the sounds, then the Chinese translation is used, and finally the Chinese written text is sorted out. Majiang is a poverty-stricken county in Guizhou Province, with limited capital investment; the epic is told in Western Miao language, mixed with many ancient Miao languages, so there is a lack of successor talents, which is in urgent need of protection.