Tujia Folk Beliefs and Culture — Eight Chiefs Worship
Chapter 6: Eight Chiefs Worship. In most Tujia-populated areas there were once Eight Chiefs Temples enshrining eight great chiefs. The Eight Chiefs, also called the Eight Great Gods, according to legend were the leaders of eight clans or tribes in Tujia history. Eight Chiefs worship is the patrilineal clan ancestor worship that followed Tujia matrilineal clan ancestor worship. I. Eight Chiefs...
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Chapter Six: Worship of the Eight Department Great Kings
In most areas where the Tujia lived in concentrated communities, there were once temples of the Eight Department Great Kings, enshrining eight great kings. The Eight Department Great Kings, also called the Eight Department Great Spirits, according to relevant legends, should have been the leaders of eight clans or tribes in Tujia history. The worship of the Eight Department Great Spirits is the patrilineal clan ancestor worship that followed the Tujia matrilineal clan ancestor worship.
I. Exploring the Origins of the Eight Department Great Spirits
There are many legends about the origins of the Eight Department Great Spirits.
One account says: Lady Yihe once went up the mountain to pick tea, and to quench her thirst, chewed a handful of raw tea leaves; upon returning home she became pregnant. She was pregnant for three years and six months, and then gave birth to eight brothers. Unable to raise them, she had no choice but to abandon them at the foot of the mountain, leaving it to the will of heaven. The eight brothers had a mother tiger in the mountains to suckle them, and they grew as soon as the wind touched them, soon becoming adults. They returned to honor their mother, and by their extraordinary abilities they captured the Thunder God from heaven, steamed him and salted him to give their mother as medicine to cure her heart pain. Later, the eight brothers served as generals under the Tujia king Pochongga, rendered great service, and were enfeoffed with the Longshan and Yongshun areas, being titled the Eight Department Great Kings. After death, they were honored as spirits, called the Eight Department Great Spirits, and sacrificed to by later generations.
Another account says: In very ancient times, a middle-aged couple had no children for many years; they met an immortal who gave them tea leaves, and after taking them the wife became pregnant and gave birth to eight boys. Their father suspected them to be demons and abandoned them in the wilderness. Fortunately, a dragon suckled them, and the wind shaded them. The eight boys grew to adulthood and returned home to honor their parents. Their mother then took the immortal tea again and gave birth to a daughter. This daughter was later summoned by the emperor as a consort, and her eight brothers were also enfeoffed as generals. The eight brothers repeatedly rendered extraordinary service, were enfeoffed as kings, returned home in glory, and were titled the Eight Department Great Kings.
Another account says: The Eight Department Great Kings were the ancestors of the Peng-surnamed Tujia of the Longshan and Yongshun area, and originally had no surname. In the time of Emperor Ming of Tang, foreign enemies invaded, and the eight brothers were conscripted to resist the enemy. On the battlefield, holding the tiger-hunting "penpai" (shield) and tiger forks, they bravely killed the enemy and rendered outstanding service. When Emperor Ming of Tang was enfeoffing them with official ranks, he asked them their surname. The eight brothers originally had no surname, and became anxious; just then they held the "penpai" in their hands, so they stammered: "Pen... pen... pen." Hearing this, Emperor Ming of Tang thought they were surnamed Peng, and said: "So you are surnamed Peng!" The eight brothers quickly replied: "Surnamed Peng, surnamed Peng!" Thereafter the eight brothers took Peng as their surname, and from then on there were people surnamed Peng.
From the above legends it can be seen that the Eight Department Great Spirits worshipped by the Tujia were indeed the leaders of eight clans or tribes in history. From the legends, we can draw the following understanding:
First, the Eight Great Gods are relatively early ancestral deities. The worship of the Eight Great Gods reflected in the legends is closely tied to ancient plant worship and totem worship, and the origins of the Eight Great Gods have not yet shed the traces of plant worship and totem worship.
First of all, the birth of the Eight Great Gods is related to tea: their mother conceived and gave birth after eating tea leaves, which in effect means that tea was the key factor in causing conception. It can thus be seen that the legend contains the notion of humans being born from the plant tea.
The ancient reproductive worship of tea had a far-reaching influence, and its surviving forms are mostly seen in traditional marriage customs. Traditional marriage customs in our country make extensive use of tea. In marriage customs, tea symbolizes the continuation of offspring, and this meaning is precisely the lingering significance of the ancient reproductive worship of tea. When the ancients betrothed, they mostly used tea as betrothal gifts, so much so that presenting betrothal gifts was called "presenting betrothal tea," "sending tea," or "engagement tea." Why was tea used in wedding ceremonies? Xu Cishu of the Ming Dynasty explained it clearly in "A Study of the Origins of Tea": "The tea plant does not move its roots, and once planted it must bear seeds. The ancients used tea as a ritual in marriage, adopting the meaning of not transplanting and bearing seeds." It turns out that the tea plant cannot be transplanted, and its propagation must rely on tea seeds, so tea seeds came to be regarded as reproductive things. The ancients extended the phenomenon of tea seeds propagating tea plants to human reproduction, believing that tea seeds also contained human life, and that the earliest humans were also propagated from tea seeds.
The legend of the birth of the Tujia Eight Great Gods reflects the notion of tea reproduction, showing that the worship of the Eight Great Gods had a bloodline connection with plant worship, which predates ancestor worship. It is an ancestor worship that arose relatively early in Tujia history, and its objects of worship should be the leaders of clans or tribes.
Second, the growth of the Eight Great Gods is related to tigers or dragons: the eight brothers abandoned in the wild were suckled and raised by tigers or dragons. This shows that the worship of the Eight Great Gods preserved cultural elements of the Tujia ancestors' Ba people's tiger totem worship and the even earlier Ba snake totem (dragon totem) worship. It is a relatively early form of ancestor worship, and the Eight Great Gods are clan deities or tribal deities.
Second, the Eight Great Gods possess the attributes of nature deities, and are a refracted reflection of the lives of the Tujia ancestors during the clan and tribal period.
Two of the three myths cited above, when narrating the birth of the Eight Great Gods, both say that as soon as they were born they were abandoned in the wild by their mother or parents. They kept company with animals, grew up in the embrace of nature, and in the end all became people with extraordinary abilities. This kind of experience of the Eight Great Gods is repeatedly seen in the myths and legends of the Han people and other ethnic minorities. Scholars call mythological and legendary figures with such experiences "heroic exposed children." Why the heroes were abandoned makes people feel mysterious.
The "Book of Songs, Major Odes, Birth of the People" narrates how the Zhou ancestor Zhou Qi, or Hou Ji, was abandoned three times and taken back three times:
At the first birth of our people, it was Jiang Yuan. How did she give birth to our people? She could sacrifice and offer worship, to remove the curse of childlessness.
She trod on the footprint of God, and was moved and delighted; she was separated and stayed, she was quickened and bore, she gave birth and nurtured, and this was Hou Ji. When the full
month came, she gave birth as easily as a lamb; there was no tearing, no rupture, no calamity, no harm, thus displaying her divine power. God was not at peace,
and was not pleased with the sacrifices, yet she actually gave birth to a child!
She placed him in a narrow lane, and oxen and sheep sheltered and suckled him; she placed him in a flat forest, and it happened that people were felling the flat forest; she placed him
on cold ice, and birds covered him with their wings. The birds covered him with their wings, and then the birds went away, and Hou Ji cried out! He was long and
great, and his voice filled the road. Then he crawled, and could stand firm and wise, and sought food for his mouth...
Jiang Yuan conceived by treading on a footprint and gave birth to Zhou Qi. Because it was a miraculous conception, the child had no father, so Jiang Yuan abandoned him in a narrow lane, and oxen and sheep came to protect him; later she abandoned him in the mountain forest, and woodcutters saved him while gathering firewood; finally she abandoned him on cold ice, and a great bird wrapped him in its wings to warm him. After he grew to adulthood, he invented the cultivation of the five grains, later became the ancestor of the Zhou clan, and was worshipped as the Millet God, that is, the agricultural god.
Fan Chuo of the Tang Dynasty, in "Records of the Barbarians," narrates the Miao story of Panhu, which also contains the motif of the heroic exposed child:
According to Wang Tongming's "Broad Records of the Strange": "In the time of Emperor Gaoxin, a family gave birth to a dog. At first it was like a small bull, and the master found it strange and abandoned it by the roadside. After seven days it did not die, and birds and beasts suckled it. Its form grew larger day by day, and the master later took it back. When it was first abandoned by the roadside, it was placed on a plate with leaves covering it, and because of this it was considered auspicious, and so it was presented to the emperor, with the name Panhu. Later it achieved merit by biting off the head of the Rong invader General Wu, and the emperor gave him a princess in marriage and enfeoffed Panhu as Marquis of Dingbian.
The princess gave birth to seven pieces of flesh; when cut open, there were seven boys; when they grew up, each recognized a surname. Today in Badong the surnames are Lei, Ran, Bai, Meng, Wen, and Shusun."
Yi myths and legends say that the Yi ancestral deity and giant who created all things, Nizhi Galuo, also experienced being abandoned. His mother was the goddess Pumo Lieri. A divine eagle flew over her head and let fall a drop of blood, which happened to land on her, causing her to conceive and give birth to Nizhi Galuo. The goddess abandoned him in a crack between rocks, but he ate the moss and dew in the rock crevice and grew to adulthood, becoming a divine archer who shot down the extra suns in the sky.
The Yi myth of the Nine Brothers says: In ancient times there was a couple who had no children in old age. The husband was gloomy and joyless, and the old woman was full of resentment. She came to the edge of a pond intending to drown herself, when suddenly she met a white-haired old man who gave her nine pills, saying that taking one pill a year would produce one son. The old woman, eager for children, swallowed all nine pills in one breath, and so conceived and gave birth to nine sons. Both husband and wife worried that they lacked the means to raise them and prepared to abandon them. The white-haired old man came again and said that the nine sons needed no clothing or food and could grow up by themselves. Later, just as the old man said, the nine sons grew to adulthood without needing clothing or food. Each of the nine sons had a kind of miraculous ability. In this myth, the mother of the nine sons wanted to abandon them, but in the end did not carry it out. Then, do the nine sons count as heroic exposed children? The answer is yes: although the nine sons were not abandoned, it was no different from abandonment, because the nine sons grew up entirely by nature and needed no raising by their parents.
Although the above myths or legends belong to different ethnic groups and circulated in different regions, their motif of the exposed child is very similar to the legend of the Tujia Eight Great Gods. By summarizing and analyzing these myths and legends, the mystery of the exposed child can be solved, thereby revealing the mystery of the birth of the Tujia Eight Great Gods.
In the above myths and legends, all the exposed children were born from their mothers' miraculous conception, and the factor causing the mothers' pregnancy was either eating some plant or pill or physical contact with some plant or animal (such as eagle blood). This shows that the exposed children are products of nature and possess natural attributes. Therefore, these exposed children needed no raising and could freely grow to adulthood in the embrace of nature. The motif of the exposed child implicitly contains people's worship of the great power of nature. It is precisely because of nature's nurturing that these exposed children possessed a superhuman divine power, a divine power matching that of nature and even surpassing nature. The exposed children are demigods, half natural and half human, and are products of the transition from nature deity worship to ancestor deity worship, or it may be said that most are the earliest ancestor deities—the founding deities of clans or tribes. For example, Zhou Qi is the founding deity of the Zhou clan or tribe; Panhu is the founding deity of the Miao; Nizhi Galuo is the founding deity of the Yi. The Tujia Eight Great Gods also have the experience of being abandoned, because they are the founding deities in the minds of the Tujia ancestors, full of the vitality of nature.
II. Rituals and Surviving Customs of Sacrificing to the Eight Great Gods
There were once quite a few temples of the Eight Great Kings in Tujia areas, used to enshrine and sacrifice to the Eight Great Gods. Surviving customs related to the sacrifice to the Eight Great Gods were still circulating among the people until recent times.
Longshan County among the Tujia formerly had a Great Hand-Waving Hall, commonly called the Hall of the Eight Sections, enshrining the Eight Great Gods. In the Small Hand-Waving Hall, Duke Peng was enshrined, which shows that the worship of the Eight Great Gods predates the worship of Duke Peng. In the Temple of the Eight Great Kings at Matizhai in Longshan, statues of the Eight Great Gods and their consorts were enshrined. The local people called the Eight Great Gods "Bapu," meaning grandfather, and called the consorts "Baba," meaning grandmother, indicating that the Tujia regarded the Eight Great Gods as founding deities.
The site of "Shoubadong" in Bamao Township, Baojing County, also originally had a temple of the Eight Great Gods, as evidenced by the surviving stele from the Qing Dynasty restoration of the Temple of the Eight Great Kings. The stele says:
Shoubadong, through the Han, Jin, Six Dynasties, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Yuan, and Ming, was the upper reaches of southern Chu...
...therefore the taboo name Eight Sections is because it awed and governed the eight dongs, each dong being one tribe.
Bake Village in Youchou Township in the You River area also once had a Temple of the Eight Great Kings, long since destroyed, with one broken stele still surviving, inscribed with the words "Seat of the Eight Great Kings." The Ethnic Affairs Commission of Youyang County has preserved a photograph of the broken stele.
Tujia ancestor sacrifice rituals include the Great Hand-Waving and the Small Hand-Waving. The Great Hand-Waving is the ritual of sacrificing to the Eight Great Gods. The Great Hand-Waving sacrifice ritual is held in the Temple of the Eight Great Kings, that is, the Hand-Waving Hall, usually at Spring Festival, and often only once every three years. When it is a certain family's turn to hold the hand-waving ancestor sacrifice, the most respected elder among its clan members comes forward to preside over the ancestral sacrifice affairs. He leads the clan members in delivering various offerings, such as pig heads, pork, glutinous rice cakes, sugar fried dough twists, tofu, the five grains, poultry, wild birds, and wild beasts, to the Hand-Waving Hall, with colorful banners fluttering along the way, gongs and drums resounding, and firecrackers exploding, very lively.
The hand-waving sacrifice ground is set up on the flat ground in front of the Temple of the Eight Great Gods. The temple is draped in red and colored decorations, and on the altar table are placed all kinds of offerings, with a pair of incense candles burning high. In the center of the flat ground in front of the temple, a red flagpole is erected, with a lake-blue banner and colorful large lanterns hung at the top. The banner is painted with dragons, phoenixes, and tigers, and can be divided into dragon banners, phoenix banners, and tiger banners. Around it are inserted lamp boards inscribed with auspicious phrases such as "abundant harvest of the five grains," "peace and prosperity for the nation and the people," and "peace under heaven." On both sides in front of the temple are inserted the eighteen kinds of weapons, including sabers, spears, swords, and halberds. Below the flagpole, square tables are joined into a platform, decorated all around with colored flags, and on the platform are placed the commanding gongs and drums.
When entering the ground, the Tujia ritual master in charge of the hall directs. The teams from the various villages participating in the hand-waving enter in order. Generally, the White Dragon Banner team leads, followed by the dragon-phoenix-tiger banner team, the colored banner team, the hand-waving team, the band, the liuzi team, the small flag team, the armored team, and the gunfire team, with the leaders shouting along the way and the crowd responding: "Oh!" "Hey!"
After the various teams enter the hall, the Tujia ritual master in charge of the hall first performs the rituals: sweeping away evil, pacifying the gods, sacrificing to Meichang (that is, the hunting god Meishan), and sacrificing to the Eight Great Gods. After the sacrifice is completed, he mounts the gong and drum platform, raises the drumsticks, and strikes the gongs and drums. After three rounds of gongs and drums, the hand-waving activity begins, and the hand-waving activity is carried out under the leadership of the Tujia ritual master.
Hand-waving, also called hand-waving dance, is a sacrificial dance of grand scale and relatively simple movements. The basic form is that the Tujia ritual master beats gongs and drums on the platform in the center of the flat ground, and the various teams form a circle and dance while turning; in some places they stand in two rows and dance facing each other.
The hand-waving dance is a mass sacrificial dance ritual, and most activities can be participated in by men, women, old and young without special training. The movements of the hand-waving dance also differ from place to place. The hand-waving dance of Suzhuiping in Longshan is the single swing: the feet do not move, the body and knees turn, and the hands swing accordingly. The single swing of Laifeng is different: the knees bend, the two hands are spread flat to both sides, and they swing along with the swaying of the body. In the hand-waving of Duogu in Longshan, the feet must move, and both hands swing along with the steps of the feet. The hand-waving of Shuangfeng in Yongshun also requires stepping, and the two hands swing back and forth to the left and right of the body. The hand-waving of Tubi in Baojing only takes two steps, and the starting step is a stride with a jump. The reunion hand-waving dance of Matizhai is done with the body sideways, the feet crossing in horizontal strides, and the two hands swinging at the sides of the body. Although the hand-waving dances of various places differ, they can be summarized into two basic movements, namely the "single swing" and the "double swing." In most places the single swing requires shifting steps: first walk forward two or three steps, with the hands swinging accordingly, then the body sways, thereby driving both hands to swing; at this time the feet do not move and the knees bend slightly. The double swing is basically the same as the single swing, only repeating once the movement of the body turning to drive both hands to swing.
In coordination with the basic movements of the hand-waving dance, some movements expressing hunting, farming, military, and other activities are also performed, in order to reproduce Tujia life, commemorate the ancestors, and commend the achievements pioneered by the ancestors. It can be seen that this sacrificial dance not only has commemorative significance, but also has the function of educating later generations to love life and love labor, and at the same time also has the function of entertaining themselves and relieving the fatigue of a year's hard work. According to the main content of the hand-waving dance, it can be divided into several main types:
Hunting dance, mainly an imitation of hunting movements. There are "jumping frog," "wood eagle flashing wings," "dragging pheasant tail," "circle dance," and so on. Among them, the "circle dance" is dancing in a circle, reproducing the life of early encircling hunts.
Farming dance. This type of ritual dance is the main part of the hand-waving dance. It reflects the production activities of the Tujia people through the twelve months of the year, with movements such as cutting fire residue, digging soil, burning lime, collecting fertilizer, planting corn, planting cotton, hoeing grass, transplanting rice, harvesting grain, and weaving cloth. For an agricultural people, the founding deity of their clan or tribe is often both a war hero deity and an agricultural deity, and the same is true of the Eight Great Gods. Therefore, there are a large number of farming dances in the hand-waving dance to express commemoration of the ancestor Eight Great Gods.
Military dance. This is a dance that sacrifices to the Eight Great Gods by expressing combat movements. It consists of blood sacrifice movements of killing people and fighting movements. The blood sacrifice is the opening procession before the dance, and after the procession come the fighting movements, mostly performed by two people as a pair. The two each hold a large saber or another weapon, with one playing the enemy soldier and one playing the Tujia soldier. The two perform movements of chasing, fighting, and thrusting at each other, and finally the enemy soldier surrenders, and it comes to an end.
When the Hand-Waving Dance comes to an end, the dancers must conclude the performance and hold a ceremony to send off the gods.
From the above, it can be seen that the Grand Hand-Waving Dance is a sacrificial dance, mostly performed when sacrificing to the Eight Great Gods. The military dance within the Grand Hand-Waving Dance is its most distinctive part—a relatively ancient sacrificial ritual that commemorates the military exploits of the Eight Great Gods, honors ancestors, and boosts morale. According to scholars' research, the Grand Hand-Waving Dance originated from the Bayu Dance, a war dance performed by the Ba people, ancestors of the Tujia, when they took part in King Wu's campaign against the Shang. Of course, as times have changed, the sacrificial function of the Grand Hand-Waving Dance has gradually faded, while its entertainment function has flourished. The Hand-Waving Dance has become a folk activity through which the Tujia people celebrate the Spring Festival, rejoice in a good harvest, and pray for good fortune. The scene of the Tujia people reveling en masse during the Hand-Waving Dance displays a nation's inexhaustible passion and vigorous vitality. Here we record two Zhuzhi Ci poems by Qing-dynasty Tujia poets to offer a glimpse of its grandeur:
Tang Renhui, "Zhuzhi Ci":
Through a thousand autumns the bronze pillar guards the frontier,
Old clans have passed down the Eighteen Departments;
Agreeing to wave hands together in the New Year,
Spring breeze arrives first at the Tuwang Shrine.
Peng Shiduo, "Anzhou Zhuzhi Ci":
In Fushi City, brocade makes the nest,
By the Tuwang Palace the water ripples,
Ten thousand red lanterns, a thousand layers of people,
A single lingering song of the hand-waving dance.
The sacrificial rituals to the Eight Great Gods not only gave rise to mass entertainment folk customs such as the Hand-Waving Dance, but also spawned other folk phenomena, some of which survived into recent times.
A branch of the Peng-surnamed Tujia people in the Youshui area once had a custom called the "Fourth of April," known as "Bai Ba," a festival custom for sacrificing to the eight Peng-surnamed kings. Legend has it that the Peng family's founding ancestor "marched out to battle," and was not home for the New Year. The day of his return happened to be the eighth day of the fourth lunar month. On this day, the Peng family celebrated the ancestor's victorious return and belatedly observed the New Year, and from this the custom took shape. Thus the Peng family celebrates the "Fourth of April" as they would the New Year. On this day, eight wine cups, eight bowls, and eight pairs of chopsticks are set out on the table to sacrifice to the Peng ancestors, the Eight Great Gods, and they must remain until midnight before being removed.
In addition, the Tujia wizard's costume, the "Eight-Panel Skirt," and the ritual implement, the "Eight-Treasure Bronze Bell," are symbols of the Eight Great Gods and byproducts of the sacrificial rituals to them. Legend has it that long, long ago, the Tujia people living in the Wuling Mountains were frequently harassed by government troops. At that time, the Tujia had eight tribes, with eight surnames. Whenever government troops invaded, the eight clans fought back with all their might. But because the eight tribes lacked unified command and each acted on its own, they could not coordinate well in battle, and as a result suffered several defeats in succession.
Having learned from their defeats, one tribal leader proposed that the eight leaders should be ranked in order so that there could be unified command in battle. Everyone agreed. Then someone suggested that all eight leaders go to the coppersmith's shop to have a bronze bell cast, and that their ranking be determined by the order in which they received their bells. Everyone wanted to be the first to get a bell, and they clamored noisily in the coppersmith's shop. The coppersmith was thrown into such confusion that he cast for three days and three nights without producing a single bell. So the coppersmith came up with a plan: he had the eight leaders wait outside the shop while he alone cast bells inside, and then had the eight leaders take turns entering the shop—if a bell happened to be finished, they would take it; if not, they would go out and wait for the next round. Some went through several rounds without getting a bell, while others got one as soon as they entered. In this way, the eight leaders were ranked according to the order in which they received their bells, and the one who got his bell first became the great leader.
Before long, a large force of government troops swarmed toward the mountain stronghold. Everyone lay in ambush in advance, and upon hearing the great leader's ox-horn call and the sound of the bronze bell, they rushed forward together and surrounded the invading troops. They fought for three days and three nights, losing many weapons, yet still no victory was decided. The great leader then summoned his seven brothers to discuss a plan. In the end, they decided to divide their forces into two groups, with four tribes in each, and seize two mountain peaks respectively. As a result, they routed the government troops. The soldiers of the eight tribes pursued their victory and drove the enemy out through 18 passes.
For the long-term peace of the mountain stronghold, the authority of the great leader had to be upheld. So everyone devised a plan: each tribe would contribute a piece of cloth, each of a different color, and the eight pieces of cloth in eight colors would be made into an eight-panel skirt for the great leader to wear, so that he could mobilize the soldiers of the eight tribes. From then on, there was the Eight-Panel Skirt. Later, when sacrificing to the Eight Great Gods, the Tujia ritual master would wear the Eight-Panel Skirt to commemorate the Eight Great Gods, and the Eight-Panel Skirt became the exclusive costume of the Tujia ritual master, a tradition that continues to this day.
The bronze bells of the eight tribes were later called the Eight-Treasure Bronze Bells and became the ritual implements of the Tujia ritual master. Today the Tujia ritual master's bells are actually only six in number; of the other two, it is said that one was given to the Miao ritual master (Miao wizard) and one to the Ke ritual master (Han wizard). This also reflects the historical fact that the Tujia, Miao, and Han peoples lived together in peace for a long time and engaged in cultural exchange.
From the legend of the Eight-Treasure Bronze Bells, which embodies the historical traces of the Tujia ancestors, there also emerged the Eight-Treasure Bronze Bell Dance, a dance performed by the Tujia ritual master when conducting rituals. Its inner meaning still contains a commemoration of the Eight Great Gods, and it can also be regarded as a folk phenomenon derived from the sacrificial rituals to the Eight Great Gods. Among the Tujia, on occasions of marriage, death, childbirth, and the July Half Festival, the Tujia ritual master is invited to conduct rituals. The Eight-Treasure Bronze Bell Dance is a ritual dance presided over by the Tujia ritual master to invite the gods, welcome the spirits, and offer sacrifices to the dead. When dancing, the Tujia ritual master holds the Eight-Treasure Bronze Bells, wears the Eight-Panel Skirt, and sings the Tima sacred songs while dancing.
As mentioned earlier, the so-called Eight-Treasure Bronze Bells actually consist of only six bronze bells. The six bells are tied to a wooden handle about one chi and two cun long, with three at each end. One end of the handle is carved with a horse's head and tied with strips of cloth in five colors; this is the upper end, held up when dancing. The other end is the lower end, held down when dancing, and the two must not be reversed. When the Tujia ritual master performs rituals, he grasps the wooden handle and waves it, and the bronze bells give out a crisp, pleasant sound that is most delightful. The movements of the Eight-Treasure Bronze Bell Dance are not complicated; the main action is the Tujia ritual master, holding a ritual knife in one hand and the bronze bells in the other, dancing around a long bench that symbolizes a mount, performing such movements as feeding the horse, teasing the horse, mounting the horse, galloping on horseback, and dismounting. While making these movements, the Tujia ritual master must keep shaking the bells and chanting sacred songs, interspersed with ox-horn calls to heighten the lively atmosphere. The dance posture is vigorous and powerful, the bells jingle crisply, the horn calls are high and stirring, and the Eight-Panel Skirt flutters with the dance like a peacock spreading its tail—the scene is full of artistic appeal. Although the dance is meant to entertain the gods, it also entertains people, so when the Tujia ritual master performs the Eight-Treasure Bronze Bell Dance, it often draws a large audience, with spectators packed like a wall. The Eight-Treasure Bronze Bell Dance has become a form of entertainment for expressing passion and is deeply loved by the Tujia people.