Messenger of spring and morality: cuckoo lore in Chinese sources.

• Author: Lai, C.M.

The common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) has long intrigued poets and philosophers as a study in contradictions.(1) Myth and biological reality merge and diverge, forging cuckoo lore that is intriguing, mystifying, and powerful. The cuckoo is the harbinger of spring, its call beckoning the start of the ploughing season, its arrival heralding summer rains. Yet, conversely, in the Old Testament the "cuckow" is unclean, held in "abomination among fowls," alongside vultures and ravens.(2) Topsell (ca. 17th c.) claimed that the "cuckoe" signified "a Coward and fearefull man." In French vernacular it signals deceit; the British say "faithless(ness)." Yet the cuckoo also projected phallic prowess, for an amorous Zeus ravished Hera by assuming the shape of the cuckoo. Along these lines, it is a Danish symbol for fertility and longevity.(3)

Chinese tradition encompasses many of the properties associated with such cuckoo lore. The cuckoo emerged as a natural symbol through hybrids of literary conceit and interpretation of biological truth. In this paper, discussion of cuckoo lore in Chinese sources will focus on two universal hybrids of conceit and fact, the cuckoo as harbinger of spring - in this, resembling the lore of other cultures - and as "brood parasite," the latter term referring to the behavior of relegating incubation and rearing of offspring to other "foster-parent" birds. Interpretations of such behavior, by contrast, set Chinese cuckoo lore apart, and often reveal ideological biasses. In traditional Chinese sources the main characteristics of the cuckoo evolve from philological debate over nomenclature, in which textual, and not ornithological, classifications have been explicated and debated in confusing detail. And since it is Confucian texts that figure prominently in these debates, the study of cuckoo lore offers insights into Confucian principles of classification, which take the cuckoo as a natural symbol.

The cuckoo is consistently designated by four appellations in Chinese sources, the shijiu, bugu, dujuan, and daisheng. As scientific classification was applied relatively late to the study of Chinese birds, accounts of these terms must be understood and classified as "literary species" of the cuckoo.

The locus classicus for shijiu is the Confucian canonical anthology of poetry, the Shijing (ca. 6th c. B.C.E.), where it appears once only in reference to poem 152, a piece traditionally interpreted as a tribute to the virtues of a model sovereign. Although jiu refers to several different birds, most commonly a dove or pigeon, the use of the graph jiu by itself is interpreted in some cases to refer to the shijiu.(4) This interpretation originated with an early gloss to Shijing poem 12 that entered the canonical commentary.(5) As in the case of many Shijing flora and fauna references, here it is impossible to ascertain the actual identity of the bird. Sources, however, gloss the bird as bugu and with other binomes that suggest the cuckoo call. These glosses established the shijiu as the "cuckoo" in literary history, regardless of ornithological accuracy.

Generally, in Chinese avian terminology, a bird with distinct vocalization has a literary name and a colloquial tag that imitates in some fashion its call.(6) Consistent with this, while the use of the term shijiu remains esoteric, bugu has survived to present day as a colloquial appellation. The archaic term shijiu is consistently glossed as "present-day bugu," designating a common vernacular and not a literary usage. This expression is found in sources ranging from Hah to modern times, indicating that, like variants of "cuckoo" in English, the onomatopoeic bugu has been in common use for a long time. Variants have sporadically emerged and faded, but employment of the bisyllabic bugu (Old Chinese: *pwo-kuk) has been graphically and phonetically consistent. Although the prominent Qing scholar, Wang Xianqian (1842-1918), attributed bugu specifically to the southern Chu dialect, its widespread use would seem to characterize the term as non-regional vernacular.(7)

Etymological tradition associates dujuan, another term that has survived to the present day, with a tragic tale in Shu folklore. The term is said to refer to Du Yu, who ruled Shu as Emperor Wang (Wang di). With Zeus-like prowess, he seduced his prime minister's wife, but was later forced to abdicate. Local belief tells of the sorrowful transformation of the ruler's soul into a cuckoo, with the bird being designated the duyu or dujuan.(8) Although the dujuan does not appear in the Confucian classics, didactic overtones of Confucian persuasion permeate later accounts of the folktale.

The final term to be discussed, daisheng, actually refers to the hoopoe (Upupa epops). Confusion of cuckoo with hoopoe has not been entirely eliminated from modern non-ornithological sources. Debate surrounding the daisheng includes description of physiology and behavior that clearly peg it as the boopoe. However, since the term is embedded in debates regarding the shijiu and bugu, the daisheng deserves attention as a pretender in the lineage of cuckoo lore. The close relationship of cuckoo and hoopoe is not unique to China; folklore elsewhere suggests similar ties.

Although the four literary species noted above are distinct, the lore associated with each shares common ground. While all are acknowledged as the "cuckoo," the terms have not been consistently cross-referenced. In the history of cuckoo nomenclature, the term bugu has been listed with shijiu and daisheng as glosses, but shijiu is glossed only as bugu; daisheng is not cross-referenced with shijiu, but occasionally with bugu. The term dujuan conspicuously does not cross paths with any of the other three textual traditions.(9) In fact, although the term has been adopted in contemporary scientific classification, taxonomy does not cast a long shadow over previously staked literary claims. This is evident in that the term dujuan is not generally cross-referenced with the other terms in modern sources.(10)

Etymological and lexical discussion of the varied nomenclature of the cuckoo must be understood in the historical context of Chinese sources on birds. Etymology of bird nomenclature preceded ornithology in importance as well as in practice, thereby establishing a tradition of text over avian life-history. This is particularly true when the locus classicus for the nomenclature is in a Confucian canonized text, as is the case with one of the names for the cuckoo. Physical evidence of description and contradictory textual records do not easily dislodge sacred Confucian interpretation.

The organized science of field observation of Chinese birds emerged only after the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century, a century later than comparable studies in the West.(11) Western systematic studies of birds date back to Aristotle's works on natural history, Historia Animalium (ca. 4th c. B.C.E.), etc., which established a foundation for scientific classification and study.(12)

Not surprisingly, pioneering efforts in Chinese ornithological research were spearheaded by Westerners, notably Robert Swinhoe (b. 1836), a Chinese-born and London-educated Englishman. Swinhoe compiled the first checklist of Chinese birds (1863), recording 454 species; his revised list (1871) recorded 675.(13) The fact that many of the species recorded were unknown to European ornithologists stimulated Chinese ornithological studies. The majority of the work continued to be done by non-Chinese, for the modus operandi of modern ornithology remained a fairly inaccessible and foreign concept to Chinese scholars.

The work by Dr. Tso-Hsin Cheng (Zheng Zuoxin) of the Academia Sinica in the 1940s first brought the study of Chinese birds to a more useful level worldwide. Cheng's comprehensive checklists provided not only Chinese names with Latin and English equivalents, but also maps of distributional ranges for many of the birds. Cheng's first list in 1947 was revised in 1976, recording 1166 species and 909 subspecies. The current distribution list (1987) comprises 1186 species and 953 subspecies.(14) The increase in recorded species is noteworthy but, more significantly, a study of these distributional lists shows that Chinese ornithology hit its stride as a science only in the latter half of this century.(15)

Modern ornithology, as in the organized study of avian life histories and populations coordinated with field observation, is in process of altering the landscape of Chinese avian lore. Prior to this, most avian records were found in literary and artistic representations. Early textual sources relate to literature and mythology, some with avian descriptions that turn out to be biologically based, and some with descriptions transmitted down from both oral and written tradition. These early texts are fragmentary, commonly of questionable provenance, and, due to the involvement of a variety of editors, often inconsistently organized.

The Qinjing (Avian Classic) is a collection of literary passages containing avian metaphors and imagery, encompassing everything from the mythological phoenix (feng) to non-specific "water fowl" (shui niao). The text is attributed to Shi Kuang (6th c. B.C.E.), with an attached commentary offering information ranging from physical description to etymological and mythological provenance. Authorship remains in doubt; the Qinjing was most probably compiled in the Tang-Song period, with the commentary largely lifted from the third-century Bowu zhi (Encyclopedic Monograph) compiled by Zhang Hua (232-300).(16) The Bowu zhi is a medley of mythology, apocryphal history, and what might be termed proto-natural history; it attempts to trace the origins of things, including flora and fauna. Unfortunately, in extant editions (which are actually compilations of fragments) of both Qinjing and Bowu zhi, references to the same subject may appear in several different places, rather than...