A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Shih King

J >> James Legge >> The Shih King



THE SHIH KING


OR


BOOK OF POETRY:


ALL THE PIECES AND STANZAS IN IT ILLUSTRATING THE RELIGIOUS
VIEWS AND PRACTICES OF THE WRITERS AND THEIR TIMES.


Translated by


James Legge


From the Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 3


First Published 1879


Scanned at www.sacred-texts.com August-September 2000


THE SHIH KING


OR


BOOK OF POETRY.


INTRODUCTION.


CHAPTER I.


THE NAME AND CONTENTS OF THE CLASSIC.

1. Among the Chinese classical books next after the Shû in point of
antiquity comes the Shih or Book of Poetry.

The meaning of the character Shih.

The character Shû, as formed by the combination of two others, one of
which signified 'a pencil,' and the other 'to speak,' supplied, we saw
in its structure, an indication of its primary significance, and
furnished a clue to its different applications. The character Shih was
made on a different principle, that of phonetical formation, in the
peculiar sense of these words when applied to a large class of Chinese
terms. The significative portion of it is the character for 'speech,'
but the other half is merely phonetical, enabling us to approximate to
its pronunciation or name. The meaning of the compound has to be learned
from its usage. Its most common significations are 'poetry,' a poem, or
poems,' and a collection of poems! This last is its meaning when we
speak of the Shih or the Shih King.

The earliest Chinese utterance that we have on the subject of poetry is
that in the Shû by the ancient Shun, when he said to his Minister of
Music, 'Poetry is the Expression of earnest thought, and singing, is the
prolonged utterance of that expression.' To the same effect is the
language of a Preface to the Shih, sometimes ascribed to Confucius and
certainly older than our Christian era: 'Poetry is the product of
earnest thought. Thought cherished in the mind becomes earnest; then
expressed in words, it becomes poetry. The feelings move inwardly, and
are embodied in words. When words are insufficient for them, recourse is
had to sighs and exclamations. When sighs and exclamations are
insufficient for them, recourse is had to the prolonged utterance of
song. When this again is insufficient, unconsciously the hands begin to
move and the feet to dance..... To set forth correctly the successes and
failures (of government), to affect Heaven and Earth, and to move
spiritual beings, there is no readier instrument than poetry.'

Rhyme, it may be added here, is a necessary accompaniment of poetry in
the estimation of the Chinese. Only in a very few pieces of the Shih is
it neglected.

The contents of the Shih.

2. The Shih King contains 305 Pieces and the titles of six others. The
most recent of them are assigned to the reign of king Ting of the Kâu
dynasty, B.C. 606 to 586, and the oldest, forming a group of only five,
to the period of the Shang dynasty which preceded that of Kâu, B.C. 1766
to 1123. Of those five, the latest piece should be referred to the
twelfth century B.C., and the most ancient may have been composed five
centuries earlier. All the other pieces in the Shih have to be
distributed over the time between Ting and king Wan, the founder of the
line of Kâu. The distribution, however, is not equal nor continuous.
There were some reigns of which we do not have a single Poetical fragment.

The whole collection is divided into four parts, called the Kwo Fang,
the Hsiâo Yâ, the Tâ Yâ, and the Sung.

The Kwo Fang, in fifteen Books, contains 160 pieces, nearly all of them
short, and descriptive of manners and events in several of the feudal
states of Kâu. The title has been translated by The Manners of the
Different States, 'Les Mœurs des Royaumes,' and, which I prefer, by
Lessons from the States.

The Hsiâo Yâ, or Lesser Yâ, in eight Books, contains seventy-four pieces
and the titles of six others, sung at gatherings of the feudal princes,
and their appearances at the royal court. They were produced in the
royal territory, and are descriptive of the manners and ways of the
government in successive reigns. It is difficult to find an English word
that shall fitly represent the Chinese Yâ as here used. In his Latin
translation of the Shih, p. Lacharme translated Hsiâo Yâ by 'Quod rectum
est, sed inferiore ordine,' adding in a note:--'Siâo Yâ, latine Parvum
Rectum, quia in hac Parte mores describuntur, recti illi quidem, qui
tamen nonnihil a recto deflectunt.' But the manners described are not
less correct or incorrect, as the case may be, than those of the states
in the former Part or of the kingdom in the next. I prefer to call this
Part 'Minor Odes of the Kingdom,' without attempting to translate the
term Yâ.

The Tâ Yâ or Greater Yâ, in three Books, contains thirty-one pieces,
sung on great occasions at the royal court and in the presence of the
king. p. Lacharme called it 'Magnum Rectum (Quod rectum est superiore
ordine).' But there is the same objection here to the use of the word
'correct' as in the case of the pieces of the previous Part. I use the
name 'Major Odes of the Kingdom.' The greater length and dignity of most
of the pieces justify the distinction of the two Parts into Minor and Major.

The Sung, also in three Books, contains forty pieces, thirty-one of
which belong to the sacrificial services at the royal court of Kâu;
four, to those of the marquises of Lû; and five to the corresponding
sacrifices of the kings of Shang. p. Lacharme denominated them correctly
'Parentales Cantus.' In the Preface to the Shih, to which I have made
reference above, it is said, 'The Sung are pieces in admiration of the
embodied manifestation of complete virtue, announcing to the spiritual
Intelligences their achievement thereof.' Kû Hsî's account of the Sung
was--'Songs for the Music of the Ancestral Temple;' and that of Kiang
Yung of the present dynasty--'Songs for the Music at Sacrifices.' I have
united these two definitions, and call the Part--'Odes of the Temple and
the Altar.' There 'is a difference between the pieces of Lû and the
other two collections in this Part, to which I will call attention in
giving the translation of them.

Only the pieces of the fourth Part have professedly a religious character.

From the above account of the contents of the Shih, it will be seen that
only the pieces in the last of its four Parts are professedly of a
religious character. Many of those, however, in the other Parts,
especially the second and third, describe religious services, and give
expression to religious ideas in the minds of their authors.

Classification of the pieces from their form and style.

3. Some of the pieces in the Shih are ballads, some are songs, some are
hymns, and of others the nature can hardly be indicated by any English
denomination They have often been spoken of by the general name of odes,
understanding by that term lyric poems that were set to music.

My reason for touching here on this point is the earliest account of the
Shih, as a collection either already formed or in the process of
formation, that we find in Chinese literature. In the Official Book of
Kâu, generally supposed to be a work of the twelfth or eleventh century
B.C., among the duties of the Grand Music-Master there is 'the
teaching,' (that is, to the musical performers,) 'the, six classes of
poems:--the Fang; the Fû; the Pî; the Hsing; the Yâ; and the Sung.' That
the collection of the Shih, as it now is, existed so early as the date
assigned to the Official Book could not be; but we find the same account
of it given in the so-called Confucian Preface. The Fang, the Yâ, and
the Sung are the four Parts of the classic described in the preceding
paragraph, the Yâ embracing both the Minor and Major Odes of the
Kingdom. But what were the Fû, the Pî, and the Hsing? We might suppose
that they were the names of three other distinct Parts or Books. But
they were not so. Pieces so discriminated are found in all the four
Parts, though there are more of them in the first two than in the others.

The Fû may be described as Narrative pieces, in which the writers tell
what they have to say in a simple, straightforward manner, without any
hidden meaning reserved in the mind. The metaphor and other figures of
speech enter into their composition as freely as in descriptive poems in
any other language.

The Pî are Metaphorical pieces, in which the poet has under his language
a different meaning from what it expresses,--a meaning which there
should be nothing in that language to indicate. Such a piece may be
compared to the Æsopic fable; but, while it is the object of the fable
to inculcate the virtues of morality and prudence, an historical
interpretation has to be sought for the metaphorical pieces of the Shih.
Generally, moreover, the moral of the fable is subjoined to it, which is
never done. in the case of these pieces.

The Hsing have been called Allusive pieces. They are very remarkable,
and more numerous than the metaphorical. They often commence with a
couple of lines which are repeated without change, or with slight
rhythmical changes, in all the stanzas. In other pieces different
stanzas have allusive lines peculiar to themselves. Those lines are
descriptive, for the most part, of some object or circumstance in the
animal or vegetable world, and after them the poet proceeds to his
proper subject. Generally, the allusive lines convey a meaning
harmonizing with those which follow, where an English poet would begin
the verses with Like or As. They are really metaphorical, but the
difference between an allusive and a metaphorical piece is this,--that
in the former the writer proceeds to state the theme which his mind is
occupied with, while no such intimation is given in the latter.
Occasionally, it is difficult,. not to say impossible, to discover the
metaphorical idea in the allusive lines, and then we can only deal with
them as a sort of refrain.

In leaving this subject, it is only necessary to say further that the
allusive, the metaphorical, and the narrative elements sometimes all
occur in the same piece.


CHAPTER II.


THE SHIH BEFORE CONFUCIUS, AND WHAT, IF ANY, WERE HIS LABOURS UPON IT.

Statement of Sze-mâ Khien.

1. Sze-mâ Khien, in his memoir of Confucius, says: 'The old poems
amounted to more than 3000. Confucius removed those which were only
repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for
the inculcation of propriety and righteousness. Ascending as high as
Hsieh and Hâu-kî, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and
Kâu to the times of decadence under kings Yû and Lî, he selected in all
305 pieces, which he' sang over to his lute, to bring them into
accordance with the musical style of the Shâo, the Wû, the Yâ, and the
Fang.'

The writer of the Records of the Sui Dynasty.

In the History of the Classical Books in the Records of the Sui Dynasty
(A.D.589 to 618), it is said:--'When royal benign rule ceased, and poems
were no more collected, Kih, the Grand Music-Master of Lû, arranged in
order those that were existing, and made a copy of them. Then Confucius
expurgated them; and going up to the Shang dynasty, and coming down to
the state of Lû, he compiled altogether 300 Pieces.'

Opinion of Kû Hsî.

Kû Hsî, whose own standard work on the Shih appeared in A.D. 1178,
declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes,
but summed up his view of what Confucius did for them in the following
words:--'Royal methods had ceased, and poems were no more collected.
Those which were extant were full of errors, and wanting in arrangement.
When Confucius returned from Wei to Lû, he brought with him the odes
that he had gotten in other states, and digested them, along with those
that were to be found in Lû, into a collection Of 300 pieces.'

View of the author.

I have not been able to find evidence sustaining these representations,
and must adopt the view that, before the birth of Confucius, the Book of
Poetry existed, substantially the same as it was at his death, and that
while he may have somewhat altered the arrangement of its Books and
pieces, the service which he rendered to it was not that of compilation,
but the impulse to study it which he communicated to his disciples.

Groundlessness of Khien's statement.

2. If we place Khien's composition of the memoir of Confucius in B.C.
100, nearly four hundred years will have elapsed between the death of
the sage and any statement to the effect that he expurgated previously
existing poems, or compiled the. collection that we now have; and no
writer in the interval affirmed or implied any such things. The further
statement in the Sui Records about the Music-Master of Lû is also
without any earlier confirmation. But independently of these
considerations, there is ample evidence to prove, first, that the poems
current before Confucius were not by any means so numerous as Khien
says, and, secondly, that the collection of 300 pieces or thereabouts,
digested under the same divisions as in the present classic, existed
before the sage's time.

3. i. It would not be surprising, if, floating about and current among
the people of China in the sixth century before our era, there had been
more than 3000 pieces of poetry. The marvel is that such was not the
case. But in the Narratives of the States, a work of the Kâu dynasty,
and ascribed by many to Zo Khiû-ming, there occur quotations from
thirty-one poems, made by statesmen and others, all anterior to
Confucius; and of those poems there are not more than two which are not
in the present classic. Even of those two, one is an ode of it quoted
under another name. Further, in the Zo Kwan, certainly the work of
Khiû-ming, we have quotations from not fewer than 219 poems, of which
only thirteen are not found in the classic. Thus of 250 poems current in
China before the supposed compilation of the Shih, 236 are found in it,
and only fourteen are absent. To use the words of Kâo Yî, a scholar of
the present dynasty, 'If the poems existing in Confucius' time had been
more than 3000, the quotations of poems now lost in these two works
should have been ten times as numerous as the quotations from the 305
pieces said to have been preserved by him, whereas they are only between
a twenty-first and twenty-second part of the existing pieces. This is
sufficient to show that Khien's statement is not worthy of credit.'

ii. Of the existence of the Book of Poetry before Confucius, digested in
four Parts, and much in the same order as at present, there may be
advanced the following proofs:--

First. There is the passage in the Official Book of Kâu, quoted and
discussed in the last paragraph of the preceding chapter. We have in it
a distinct reference to poems, many centuries before the sage, arranged
and classified in the same way as those of the existing Shih. Our Shih,
no doubt, was then in the process of formation.

Second. Lî the ninth piece of the sixth decade of the Shih, Part II, an
ode assigned to the time of king Yû, B.C. 78, to 771, we. have the words,

'They sing the Yâ and the Nan,
Dancing to their flutes without error.'

So early, therefore, as the eighth century B.C. there was a collection
of poems, of which some bore the name of the Nan, which there is much
reason to suppose were the Kâu Nan and the Shâo Nan, forming the first
two Books of the first Part of the present Shih; and of which others
bore the name of the Yâ, being, probably, the earlier pieces that now
compose a large portion of the second and third Parts.

Third. In the narratives of Zo Khiû-ming, under the twenty-ninth year of
duke Hsiang, B.C. 544, when Confucius was only seven or eight years old,
we have an account of a visit to the court of Lû by an envoy from Wû, an
eminent statesman of the time, and a man of great learning. We are told
that as he wished to hear the music of Kâu, which he could do better in
Lû than in any other state, they sang to him the odes of the Kâu Nan and
the Shâo Nan; those of Phei, Yung, and Wei; of the Royal Domain; of
Kang; of Khî; of Pin; of Khin; of Wei; of Thang; of Khan; of Kwei; and
of Zhâo. They sang to, him also the odes of the Minor Yâ and the Greater
Yâ; and they sang finally the pieces of the Sung. We have thus, existing
in the boyhood of Confucius, what we may call the present Book of
Poetry, with its Fang, its Yâ, and its Sung. The only difference
discernible is slight,-in the order in which the Books of the Fang
followed one another.

Fourth. We may appeal in this matter to the words of Confucius himself.
Twice in the Analects he speaks of the Shih as a collection consisting
of 300 pieces[1]. That work not being made on any principle of
chronological order, we cannot positively assign those sayings to any
particular years of Confucius' life; but it is, I may say, the unanimous
opinion of Chinese critics that they were spoken before the time to
which Khien and Kû Hsî refer his special labour on the Book of Poetry.

To my own mind the evidence that has been adduced is decisive on the
points which I specified. The Shih, arranged very much as we now have
it, was current in China before the time of Confucius, and its pieces
were in the mouths of statesmen and scholars, constantly quoted by them
on festive and other occasions. Poems not included in it there doubtless
were, but they were comparatively few. Confucius may have made a copy
for the use of himself and his disciples; but it does not appear that he
rejected any pieces which had been previously received into the
collection, or admitted any which had not previously found a place in it.

What Confucius did for the Shih.

4. The question now arises of what Confucius did for the Shih, if,
indeed, he did anything at all. The only thing from which we can hazard
an opinion on the point we have from himself. In the Analects, IX, xiv,
he tells us:--'I returned from Wei to Lû, and then the music was
reformed, and the pieces in

[1. In stating that the odes were 300, Confucius probably preferred to
use the round number. There are, as I said in the 'former chapter,
altogether 305 pieces, which is the number given by Sze-mâ Khien. There
are also the titles of six others. It is contended by Kû Hsî and many
other scholars that these titles were only the names of tunes. More
likely is the view that the text of the pieces so styled was lost after
Confucius' death.]

the Yâ and the Sung received their proper places.' The return from Wei
to Lû took place only five years before the sage's death. He ceased from
that time to take an active part in political affairs, and solaced
himself with music, the study of the ancient literature of his nation,
the writing of 'the Spring and Autumn,' and familiar intercourse with
those of his disciples who still kept around him. He reformed the
music,--that to which the pieces of the Shih were sung; but wherein the
reformation consisted we cannot tell. And he gave to the pieces of the
Yâ and the Sung their proper places. The present order of the Books in
the Fang, slightly differing from what was common in his boyhood, may
have now been determined by him. More than this we cannot say.

While we cannot discover, therefore, any peculiar and important labours
of Confucius on the Shih, and we have it now, as will be shown in the
next chapter, substantially as he found it already compiled to his hand,
the subsequent preservation of it may reasonably be attributed to the
admiration which he expressed for it, and the enthusiasm for it with
which he sought to inspire his disciples. It was one of the themes on
which he delighted to converse with them[1]. He taught that it is from
the poems that the mind receives its best stimulus[2]. A man ignorant of
them was, in his opinion, like one who stands with his face towards a
wall, limited in his view, and unable to advance [3]. Of the two things
that his son could specify as enjoined on him by the sage, the first was
that he should learn the odes[4]. In this way Confucius, probably,
contributed largely to the subsequent preservation of the Shih, the
preservation of the tablets on which the odes were inscribed, and the
preservation of it in the memory of all who venerated his authority, and
looked up to him as their master.

[1. Analects, VII, xvii.

2 Analects, VIII, viii, XVII, ix.

3. Analects, XVII, x.

4. Analects, XVI, xiii.]


CHAPTER III.


THE SHIH FROM THE TIME OF CONFUCIUS TILL THE GENERAL
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE PRESENT TEXT.

From Confucius to rise of the Khin dynasty.

1. Of the attention paid to the study of the Shih from the death of
Confucius to the rise -of the Khin dynasty, we have abundant evidence in
the writings of his the grandson Dze-sze, of Mencius, and of Hsün Khing.
One of the acknowledged distinctions of Mencius is his acquaintance with
the odes, his quotations from which are very numerous; and Hsün Khing
survived the extinction of the Kâu dynasty, and lived on into the times
of Khin.

The Shih was all recovered, after the fires of Khin.

2. The Shih shared in the calamity which all the other classical works,
excepting the Yî, suffered, when the tyrant of Khin issued his edict for
their destruction. But I have shown, in the Introduction to the Shû, p.
7, that that edict was in force for less than a quarter of a century.
The odes were all, or very nearly all[1], recovered; and the reason
assigned for this is, that their preservation depended on the memory of
scholars more than on their inscription on tablets of bamboo and on silk.

Three different texts.

3. Three different texts of the Shih made their appearance early in the
Han dynasty, known as the Shih of Lû, of Khî, and of Han; that is, the
Book of Poetry was recovered from three different quarters. Liû Hin's
Catalogue of the Books in the Imperial Library of Han (B.C. 6 to 1)
commences, on the Shih King, with a collection of the three texts, in
twenty-eight chapters.

[1. All, in fact, unless we except the six pieces of Part II, of which
we have only the titles. It is contended by Kû Hsî and others that the
text of these had been lost before the time of Confucius. It may have
been lost, however, after the sage's death; see note on p. 283.]

The text of Lû.

i. Immediately after the mention of the general collection in the
Catalogue come the titles of two works of commentary on the text of Lû.
The former of them was by a Shan Phei of whom we have some account in
the Literary Biographies of Han. He was a native of Lû, and had received
his own knowledge of the odes from a scholar of Khî, called Fâu Khiû-po.
He was resorted to by many disciples, whom he taught to repeat the odes.
When the first emperor of the Han dynasty was passing through Lû, Shan
followed him to the capital of that state, and had an interview with
him. Subsequently the emperor Wû (B.C. 140 to 87), in the beginning of
his reign, sent for him to court when he was more than eighty years old;
and he appears to have survived a considerable number of years beyond
that advanced age. The names of ten of his disciples are given, all of
them men of eminence, and among them Khung An-kwo. Rather later, the,
most noted adherent of the school of Lû was Wei Hsien, who arrived at
the dignity of prime minister (from B.C. 71 to 67), and published the
Shih of Lû in Stanzas and Lines. Up and down in the Books of Han and Wei
are to be found quotations of the odes, that must have been taken from
the professors of the Lû recension; but neither the text nor the
writings on it long survived. They are said to have perished during the
Kin dynasty (A.D.265 to 419). When the Catalogue of the Sui Library was
made, none of them were existing.

The text of Khî.

ii. The Han Catalogue mentions five different works on the Shih of Khî.
This text was from a Yüan Kû, a native of Khî, about whom we learn, from
the same collection of Literary Biographies, that he was one of the
great scholars of the court in the time of the emperor King (B.C. 156 to
141),--a favourite with him, and specially distinguished for his
knowledge of the odes and his advocacy of orthodox Confucian doctrine.
He died in the succeeding reign of Wû, more than ninety years old; and
we are told that all the scholars of Khî who got a name in those days
for their acquaintance with the Shih sprang from his school. Among his
disciple's was the well-known name of Hsiâ-hâu Shih-khang, who
communicated his acquisitions to Hâu Zhang, a native of the present
Shan-tung province, and author of two of the works in the Han Catalogue.
Hâu had three disciples of note, and by them the Shih of Khî was
transmitted to others, whose names, with quotations from their writings,
are scattered through the Books of Han. Neither text nor commentaries,
however, had a better fate than the Shih of Lû. There is no mention of
them in the Catalogue of Sui. They are said to have perished even before
the rise of the Kin dynasty.

The text of Han Ying.

iii. The text of Han was somewhat more fortunate. Hin's Catalogue
contains the names of four works, all by Han Ying, whose surname is thus
perpetuated in the text of the Shih that emanated from him. He was a
native, we are told, of Yen, and a great scholar in the time of the
emperor Wan (B.C. 179 to 155), and on into the reigns of King, and Wû.
'He laboured,' it is said, 'to unfold the meaning of the odes, and
published an Explanation of the Text., and Illustrations of the Poems,
containing several myriads of characters. His text was somewhat
different from the texts of Lû and Khî, but substantially of the same
meaning.' Of course, Han founded a school; but while almost all the
writings of his followers soon perished, both the works just mentioned
continued on through the various dynasties to the time of Sung. The Sui
Catalogue contains the titles of his Text and two works on it; the
Thang, those of his Text and his Illustrations; but when we come to the
Catalogue of Sung, published under the Yüan dynasty, we find only the
Illustrations, in ten books or chapters; and Âu-yang Hsiû (A.D. 1017 to
1072) tells us that in his time this was all of Han that remained. It
continues entire, or nearly so, to the present day.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.