Xianji of the A’xi People

Xianji of the A’xi People or Songs of the A’xi People (A Xi De Xian Ji in Chinese) is a creation epic of the Yi ethnic group.(https://www.daowen.com)

A’xi people is a subgroup of the Yi ethnic group.Xianji is the transliteration of“sei ji”from the language of A’xi people which means“song”.Xianji is a generic name for the oral poems and tunes of A’xi people which is spread in Mile County,Yunnan Province.In the form of Xianji,the poems are developed as antiphonal singings,in which questions and answers are criss-cross.It generally adopts the fivecharacter lines.However,when it comes to the passionate paragraphs as in courtship,the six-character lines or lines of different characters will be intermingled to express emotions with more ease.Xianji of the A’xi People has more than 5,500 lines in total.The main idea of the poem is as follows.In the remote times,there was neither sky nor earth but later the light clouds flied up to become the sky and the heavy clouds fell down to become the earth.The god A’re and the goddess A’mi created human kind and other creatures in the world and divided them into male and female.