The title of ‘The Lament for the South’ is taken from the last line of ‘The Summons of the Soul’ (‘Chao hun’): ‘O soul, come back! Alas for the Southern Land!’ Both the authorship and the purpose of the original ‘Summons’ were disputed. For our purposes the most appropriate theory is that of the Ch'u tz'u compiler Wang Yi (second century A.D.), that ‘the Ch'u poet Sung Yü wrote Chao Hun in order to summon back the wandering soul of Ch'ü Yüan after he had been banished and was suffering from shock’. By this choice of title, Yü Hsin, a native of Chiang-ling (the ancient capital of Ch'u), can thus suggest the twin themes of his work: his own exile and the fall of a state. With this title he also locates his work firmly in the sao tradition.

The year wu-ch'en was 548. It was traditionally believed that the direction indicated by the handle of the Dipper (Ursa Major) at a fixed time at the beginning of each lunation served as a natural calendar. The twelve directions, each an arc of thirty degrees, were named for the terrestrial branches. In the supposed calendar of the Hsia dynasty, which was prescribed by Confucius and used by the Han and most later dynasties, the year began when the Dipper pointed to yin (045°–075°). Therefore, in line 2, hai (315°–345°) indicates the tenth month; northwest is an approximation.