373 verses containing 2490 characters, The Lament is a long Chinese poem. Also, among the other Chu ci works sometimes attributed to Qu Yuan, the Jiu Ge ("Nine Songs") exemplify shamanic literature in China. (See Arthur Waley, The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China.) Authorship The traditional view of the Chu ci, which went largely unchallenged until the 20th century, was that Qu Yuan wrote about half of the pieces in the Chu ci, with the other half being ascribed to other poets associated with him or writing in his style. Modern scholars have devoted long studies to the question of the Chu ci pieces' authorship, but there is no consensus on which may actually be by Qu Yuan himself. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian mentions five of Qu Yuan's works: The Lament (or "Encountering Sorrow"), Tian Wen, Zhao Hun ("Summoning of the Soul"), Ai Ying ("Lament for Ying"), Huai Sha. According to Wang Yi of the Eastern Han dynasty, a total of 25 works can be attributed to Qu Yuan: The Lament, Jiu Ge (consisting of 11 pieces), Heavenly Questions (Tian Wen), Jiu Zhang (all 9 pieces), Yuan You, Pu Ju, and Yu Fu. Wang Yi chose to attribute Zhao Hun to another contemporary of Qu Yuan, Song Yu; most modern scholars, however, consider Zhao Hun to be Qu Yuan's original work, whereas Yuan You, Pu Ju, and Yu Fu are believed to have been composed by others. Similarly, Wang's attribution of the Qijian to Dongfang Shuo is suspect. Anthology There are questions or uncertainties as to how the Chu ci came to be collected into its present form; however, at least some outlines of this historical process have been presented in scholarly literature. Another important aspect of Chu ci studies is the editorial history. One regard is the order in which the various titles appear. There are also reasons to believe that some of the sections (juan) were subject to editing for various reasons, including to suit the verses to theatrical performance and due to the nature of the textual process of ancient China, involving writing lines of text on individual bamboo strips which were bound together, but when the bindings broke were subject to editorial decisions as to what their original order was. Wang Yi's selections of certain specific verses to anthologize in the modern Chu ci has remained standard since its