Music was one of the three rites in the Yao and Xun Period, It developed into Musical Ethics,
Musical Language and Musical
Dance in the western Zhou period, becoming a cultural pattern of politics and
cultivation as one and the same.
Musical Language had six forms: starting, talking, chanting, reading, speaking and conversing, which are types of songs. In the Chu of the warring Period, the pattern of politics and cultivation continued. From Qu Yuan's Xi Song, Li Sao and other words, by examining the pattern of Musical Language used in the western Zhou period, we can see that the reason for Qu Yuan's demotion was "speaking, talking and reading". These were meant to give advice, but were considered going too far, too irritating, too slanderous and disloyal, hence his misfortune. This was a true record of Qu Yuan's life story and the content and structural feature of The Songs of Chu. It can be seen from the that The Songs of Chu, Li Sao, Nine Chapters are songs while Jiu Ge is poem. In the past, we tried to look for the answer in The Book of Songs from the perspective of cultivation of Musical Language and failed to understand it. But if we examine the use of Musical Language from the perspective of both politics and cultivation, many problems in The Book of Songs and in The Songs of Chu become much clearer.