On the Significance of the Poetry of Talking About Celestial Beings in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties for Researching Daoist (Taoist) History

Abstract

There were poems of talking about celestial beings in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589 A. D.). These poems formed an important part of the poetic culture in that time. This kind of poetry originated before Han dynasty, such as Qu Yuan’s Li Sao, Travel and other works which described the life and environment of celestial beings. In Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the poetry had the well development and was rich in content, which contained a lot of historical material about Daoism. However, in the past academic research, scholars have not fully used the poetry of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties to research Daoism. As historical material of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, these poems show the “worship trend for Daoism”, “Daoist rituals”, “Daoist meditation” and “Daoist metaphors”, and provide material for relevant special research. However, at the same time, due to the special art form of the poetry, these poems may be obscure, difficult to understand, exaggerated and falsely describing things. All of these disadvantages led scholars restrict the use of these poems in the historical study of Daoism.