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KING; 

OE, 

THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY, 

TKANSLATED IN ENGLISH VEESE, 

WITH ESSAYS AND NOTES 

JAMES LEGGE, D.D., LLD., 

PROFESSOR OP CHINESE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
FORMERLY OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 

LONDON: 
TBÜBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL. 

1876. 
[AU Sights reserved.] 

Ì 

 PEEFACE. 

JOHN CHILC8 AND BON, FEINTEES. 

IN the third chapter of the Prolegomena the author has endeavoured to 
state clearly the principles on which the metrical version of the Book of 
China's ancient poetiy, published in the present volume, has been made, 
and will only repeat here that his readers will find in it, in an English 
dress, the Chinese poems themselves, and not others composed by para 
phrase from them. It remains for him to relate how he came to undertake 
the work, and the assistance that he has received in completing it. 

While preparing his larger and critical work on the She, published at 
Hong-Kong in 1871, though, as he has stated in the chapter referred to, he 
did not think that the collection as a whole was worth the trouble of 
versifying, it often occurred to him that not a few of the pieces were well 
worth that trouble ; and if he had had the time to spare, he would then 
have undertaken it. Occupied with other Chinese classics, the subject of 
versifying any portion of the She passed from his mind until he received 
in the spring of 1874, from his nephew, the Eev. John Legge, M.A., of 
Brighton in Victoria, Australia, a suggestion that he should bring out a 
metrical version of the whole Book. To encourage him to do so, his 
nephew promised his own assistance, and that of his brother, the Eev. 
James Legge, M.A., of Hanley, Staffordshire, while another helper might 
be found in the Eev. Alexander Cran, M.A.. of Fairfield, near Manchester. 

A plan for the versification of all the pieces was drawn out in harmony 
with this suggestion, and the principles on which the versions should be 
made were laid down. Various causes, however, operated to prevent each 
of his helpers from doing all the portion that had been assigned to him, 
and many of the versions which were sent had to be altogether set aside. 
Fully three-fourths of the volume are the author's own, while he had much 
to do in revising the other fourth. To all his three associates he tenders his 
most cordial thanks. Many of the pieces have a beauty which they 
would not have possessed but. for them ; and several of them—of those 
especially from Australia—as they came to him, glowed with more of the 
fire of poetry than they now show. 

 IV 

PREFACE. 

To another gentleman he has also to acknowledge his great obligation. 
When he was beginning to see the end of his task, he asked his old Hong- 
Kong friend, W. T. Mercer, Esq., M.A. Oxford, to read and revise his 
manuscript before it went to the press. He knew he could not have a kinder 
critic, nor an abler,—as all will say who are acquainted with Mr Mercer's 
own volume of " Under the Peak ; or, Jottings in Verse, during a length 
ened residence in the Colony of Hong-Kong," published in 1869. 

Mr Mercer kindly acceded to the request, and went over every one of 
the pieces, pruning, correcting, and smoothing the versification, and 
making otherwise various suggestions. He recast some of the pieces in 
the first Part. The author has appended two of his recastings to his own 
versions, and I. ii. V. should have been mentioned as entirely his. In 
other cases it was found advisable to remake the pieces. To Mr Mercer 
also the Work is indebted, as the reader will perceive, for Latin versions 
of some of the pieces. 

Two metrical versions in German of the old Chinese poems have existed 
for a good many years. The one was published at Altona, in 1833, with 
the title :—" Schi-King, Chinesisches Liederbuch, gesammelt ron Confu 
cius, dem Deutschen angeeignet von Friedrich Eückert ; " the other at 
Crefeld, in 1844. with the title :—" Schi-King, oder Chinesische Lieder, 
gesammelt von Confucius. Neu und frei nach P. La Charme's lateinischer 
Uebertragung bearbeitet. Für's deutsche Volk herausgegeben von Johann 
Cramer." Of these the former by Eiickert has much the greater merit, 
and the second translator had it constantly before him. The present 
version, however, is under no obligation to either, nor can a comparison 
be instituted between it and them. Cramer says that his version was 
" freely " made from Lacharme's Latin translation ; nor had Eiickert any 
other original. Of the character of Lacharme's translation the author has 
spoken in the preface to his larger Work. 

122, King Henry's Road, London, 
April, 1876. 

CONTENTS. 

Oo 

PEOLEGOMENA. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE EARLY HISTORY AND THE PRESENT TEXT OF THE BOOK OF POETRY. 

SECTION PAGE 
I. THE BOOK BEFORE CONFUCIUS ; AND WHAT, IF ANY, WERE 

HIS LABOURS UPON IT .. .. .. .. .. 1 

II. THE BOOK FROM THE TIME OF CONFUCIUS TILL THE GENERAL 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE PRESENT TEXT .. .. 8 

CHAPTER II. 

THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION ; THEIR INTER 
PRETATION AND AUTHORS ; THE PREFACES AND THEIR AU 
THORITY .. . . .. .. · · · · · · 13 

APPENDIX. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE PIECES .. .. 25 

CHAPTER III. 

THE RHYME AND METRE OF THE PIECES ; THEIR POETICAL 
VALUE ; PRINCIPLE ON WHICH THE PRESENT VERSION OF 
THEM HAS BEEN MADE ; CERTAIN PECULIARITIES IN THEIR 
STRUCTURE .. .. .. .. .. .. ,. SI 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETRY, CONSIDERED IN RELA 
TION TO THE EXTENT OF ITS TERRITORY, ITS POLITICAL 
STATE, ITS RELIGION, AND ITS SOCIAL CONDITION .. .. 41 

THE POEMS. 
PART I.—LESSONS FROM THE STATES. 

OOK 

I. THU ODES OF CHOW AND THE SOUTH .. .. 11 58 
JI· ·· .. SHAOU AND THE SOl'TH . .. 14 67 

 CONTENTS. 

BOOK 

III. 

IT. 

V. 

VI. 

vu. 

Till. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

xiii. 

XIV. 

XT. 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IT. 

T. 

VI. 

Til. 

Till. 

I. 

II. 

III. 

THE ODES OP P'EI 

YUNG 

. . WEI 

.. THE ROYAL DOMAIN 

CH'lNO 

TS'E 

WEI 

T'AKO . . 

TB'IN .. 

CH'IN . . 

KWEI 

TS'AOU 

PIN 

PART II.— MINOR ODES OF THE KINGDOM. 

DECADE OP LUH MIKO 

.. PIH HWA 

.. T'UNG KUNG 

. . K'E-FOO 

.. SEAOU MIN 

.. PIH SHAN 

.. SAUG HOO 

.. TOO JIN 8ZE .. 

PART III.— GREATER ODES OF THE KINGDOM 

DECADE OP KING WAN 

.. SHANO MIN 

.. TANG 

19 

10 

10 

10 

21 

11 

7 

12 

10 

10 

4 

4 

7 

. , 

. . 

. , 

. . 

. . 

, , 

11 

PACE 

76 

93 

102 

111 

1]9 

132 

140 

147 

157 

167 

173 

176 

180 

189 

203 

208 

219 

232 

247 

261 

274 

284 

302 

321 

PART IV.— ODES OF THE TEMPLE ANO THE ALTAR. 

I. 

II. 

III. 

I. 

II. 

SACRIFICIAL· ODES OF CHOW 

SECTION I. DECADE OP TS'lNO MEAOU 

II. .. .. SHIN KUNG 

III. .. .. MIN YU SEAOU TSZE 

PRAISE-ODES OP LOO .. .. .. · 

SACRIFICIAL ODES OP SHANO 

INDEXES. 

INDEX OP SUBJECTS 

.. PROPER NAMES 

, β 

.. 

11 

4 

5 

.. 

350 

350 

357 

364 

373 

384 

392 

428 

PBOLEGOMEM. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE EAELY HISTORY AND THE PRESENT TEXT OF THE 
BOOK OF POETRY. 

SECTION I. 

THE BOOK BEFORE CONFUCIUS ; AND WHAT, IF ANT, WEEK 
HIS LABOURS UPON IT. 

1. SZE-MA Ts'ëen, in his memoir of Confucius, says :— 
" The old poems amounted to more than 3000. Confu 
cius removed those which were only repetitions of others, 
and selected those which would be serviceable statements oí 
for the inculcation of propriety and righteous- chínese scholars. 
ness. Ascending as high as Sëeh and How-tseih, and 
descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Chow 
to the times of decadence under kings Yew and Le, he 
selected in all 305 pieces, which he sang over to his lute, 
to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the 
Shaou, the Woo, the Ya, and the Sung." This is the first 
notice which we have of any compilation of the ancient 
poems by Confucius, and from it mainly are derived all 
the subsequent statements on the subject. 

In the History of the Classical Books in the Records 
of the Suy dynasty (A.D. 589—618), it is said :—" When 
odes ceased to be made and collected, Che, the Grand 
music-master of Loo, arranged in order those which 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 Loo, he compiled alto 
gether 300 pieces." 

VOL. III. 1 

 THE EAELY HISTORY OF THE SHE. 

Gpw-yang Sew (A.D. 1006 — 1071) endeavours to state 
particularly what the work of expurgation performed by 
Confucius was. "Not only/' says he, "did the sage 
reject whole poems, but from others he rejected one or 
more stanzas ; from stanzas he rejected one or more lines ; 
and from lines he rejected one or more characters/' 

Choo He (A.D. 1130 — 1200), whose own classical Work 
on the Book of Poetry appeared in A.D. 11 78, declined to 
express himself positively on the question of the expurg 
ation of the odes, but summed up his view of what Con 
fucius did for them in the following words : — " Poems had 
ceased to be made and collected, and those which were 
extant were full of errors and wanting in arrangement. 
When Confucius returned from Wei to Loo, he brought 
with him the odes which he had gotten in other States, 
and digested them, along with those which were to be 
found in Loo, into a collection of 300 pieces." 

I have not been able to find evidence sustaining these 
representations, and propose uow to submit to the reader 
These state- ^G considerations" which prevent me from 
ments not sup- concurring in them, and have brought me 
deice. The-rìew to the conclusions that, before the birth of 
of the author. Confucius, the Book of Poetry existed sub 
stantially the same as it was at his death, and that, while 
he may have somewhat altered the arrangement of its 
Books and odes, the principal service which he rendered 
to it was not that of compilation, but the impulse to the 
study of it which he communicated to his disciples. The 
discrepancy in the number of the odes as given in the 
above statements will be touched on in a note. 

2. If we place Ts'een's composition of the memoir of 
Confucius in B.c. 100, nearly four hundred years will thus 
have elapsed between the death of the sage and any 
The ground- statement to the effect that he expurgated a 
Ìi»vereprés™te- previous collection of poems, or compiled 
ations. that which we now have, consisting of a few 
over 300 pieces ; and no writer in the interval, so far as we 
know, had affirmed or implied any such facts. But inde 
pendently of this consideration, there is ample evidence to 
prove, first, that the poems current before Confucius were 
not by any means so numerous as Sze-ma Ts'ëen says, and, 
secondly, that the collection of 300 pieces or thereabouts, 

THE SHE BEFORE CONFUCIUS. O 

digested under the same divisions as in the present Classic, 
existed before the sage's time. 

3 Π 1 It would not be surprising, if, floating about and 
current among the people of China, in the 6th century 
before Christ, there had been even more than J^n°£p-™ 
3000 pieces of poetry. The marvel is that cms. 
such was not the case. But in the "Narratives of the 
States," a Work attributed by some to Tso K'ew-ming,1 
there occur quotations from 31 poems, made by statesmen 
and others, all anterior to Confucius ; and of those poems 
it cannot be pleaded that more than two are not in the 
present Classic, while of those two one is an ode of it 
quoted under another name. Further, in the Tso Chuen, 
certainly the work of Tso Kfew-ming, and a most valuable 
supplement to Confucius' own Work of the Ch'un Ts'ew, 
we have quotations from not fewer than 219 poems ; and of 
these only thirteen are not found in the Classic. Thus of 
250 poems current in China before the supposed compila 
tion of the Book of Poetry, 286 are found in it, and only 
14 are absent. To use the words of Chaou Yih, a scholar 
of the present dynasty, of the period K'een-lung (A.D. 
1736—1795), "If the poems existing in Confucius' time 
had been more than 3000, the quotations found in these 
two Books of poems now lost 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 be 
tween a twenty-first and twenty-second part of those from 
the existing pieces. This is sufficient to show that Ts'ëon's 
statement i s not worthy of credit." I have made the widest 
possible induction from all existing Records in which there 
are quotations of poems made anterior to Confucius, and 
the conclusion to which I have been brought is altogether 
confirmatory of that deduced from the Works of Tso 
K'ëw-ming. If Confucius did make any compilation of 
poems, he had no such work of rejection and expurgation 
to do as is commonly imagined. 

[ii.] But I believe myself that he did no work at all 
to which the name of compilation can properly be applied, 
but simply adopted an existing collection of poems con 
sisting of 305, or at most of 311 pieces. Of the ex- 

1 Wylie's Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 6. Tso K'evv-ming was not 
far removed from the era of Confucius. 

1* 

 4 

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE SHE. 

Proofs of the istence of the She, or Book of Poetry, before 
Bod^oFpoetr16 Confucius, digested under four divisions, and 
before the time much in the same order as at present, there 
may be advanced the following· proofs :— 

First, in the " Official Book of Chow," we are told that 
it belonged to the .grand-master " to teach the six classes 
of poems,—the Fung, with their descriptive, metaphorical, 
and allusive pieces, the Ya, and the Sung." Mr Wylie 
Bays that the question of the genuineness of the Official 
Book may be considered as set at rest since the inquiry 
into it by Choo He, and that it is to be accepted as a work 
of the duke of Chow, or some other sage of the Chow 
dynasty.1 Without committing myself to any opinion on 
this point, as I find the passage just quoted in the Preface 
to the She (of which I shall treat in the next chapter), I 
cannot but accept it as having been current before Con 
fucius ; and thus we have a distinct reference to a collec 
tion of poems, earlier than his time, with the same 
division into Parts, and the same classification of the 
pieces in those Parts. 

Second, in Part II. of the She, Book vi., Ode IX.,—an 
ode assigned to the time of king Yew, B.C. 780—770, we 
have the words, 

" They sing the Ta and the Nan, 
Dancing to their flutes without error." 

So early then as the 8th century before our era, there was 
a collection of poems, of which some bore the name of 
the Nan, which there is nothing to forbid our supposing 
to have been the Chow-nan and the Shaou-uan, forming 
the first two Books of the first Part of the present 
classic, often spoken of together as the Nan; and of 
which others bore the name of the Ya, being probably 
the earlier pieces which now compose a large portion of 
the second and third Parts. 

Third, in the narratives of Tso K'ew-ming, under tlie 
29th year of duke Sëang, B.C. 543, when Confucius was 
only 8 or 9 years old, we have an account of a visit to the 
court of Loo by an envoy from Woo, an eminent states 
man of the time, and of great learning. We are told 

1 Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 4. 

THE SHE BEFORE CONFUCIUS. 5 

that as he wished to hear the music of Chow, which he 
could do better in Loo than in any other State, they sang 
to him the odes of the Chow-nan and the Shaou-nan ; those 
of P'ei, Yung, and Wei ; of the Eoyal domain ; of Ch'ing ; 
of Ts'e ; of Pin ; of Ts'in ; of Wei ; of T'ang ; of Ch'in ; 
of Kwei ; and of Ts'aou. They sang to him also the odes 
of the Minor Ya and the Greater Ya ; and they sang 
finally the pieces of the Sung. We have here existing in 
the boyhood of Confucius, before he had set his mind on 
learning,1 what we may call the present Book of Poetry, 
with its Fung, its Ya, and its Sung. The odes of the Fung 
were in 15 Books as now, with merely some slight differ 
ences in the order of their arrangement;—the odes of 
Pin forming the 9th Book instead of the 15th, those of 
Ts'in the 10th instead of the llth, those of Wei the llth 
instead of the 9th, and those of T'ang the 12th instead of 
the 10th. In other respects the She, existing in Loo when 
Confucius was a mere boy, appears to have been the same 
as that of which the compilation has been ascribed to him. 
Fourth, in this matter we may appeal to the words of 
Confucius himself. Twice in the Analects he speaks of 
the odes as a collection consisting of 300 pieces.3 'That 
Work not being made on any principle of chronological 
order, we cannot positively assign those sayings to any 
particular periods of Confucius' life ; but it is, I may say, 
the unanimous opinion of the critics that they were spoken 
before the time to which Sze-ma Ts'èen and Choo He refer 
his special labour on the Book of Poetry. The reader 
may be left, with the evidence which has been set before 
him, to form his own opinion on the questions discussed. 
To my own mind that evidence is decisive on the points. 
—The Book of Poetry, arranged very much as we now 
have it, was current in China long before the sage ; 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, or admitted any which had not pre 
viously found a place in the collection. 

1 Confucian Analects, II. iv. 1. 2 Confucian Analects, II. ii. ; XIII. v. 

Λ 

 6 

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE SHE. 

4. Having come to the above conclusions, it seems 
Further errors superfluous to make any further observations 
ìnente^ in**the on *ne statements adduced in the first para- 
first paragraph, graph. If Confucius expurgated no previous 
Book, it is vain to try and specify the nature of his ex 
purgation as Gow-yang Sew did.1 From Sze-ma Ts'een 
wo should suppose that there were no odes in the She later 
than the time of king Le, whereas there are 12 of the 
time of king Hwuy, 13 of that of king Seang, and 2 of 
the time of king Ting. Even the Sung of Loo which are 
referred to by the Buy writer and Choo He are not the 
latest pieces in the Book. The statement of the former 
that the odes were arranged in order and copied by Che, 
the music-master of Loo,2 rests on no authority but his 
own ;—more than a thousand years after the time of Con 
fucius. I shall refer to it again, however, in the next 
chapter. 

5. The question arises now of what Confucius really did 
for the Book of Poetry, if, indeed, he did anything at all. 
The only thing from which we can hazard the slightest 
Did Confucius opinion on the point we have from his own lips. 
ΑΓέΑ? In the Analects, IX. xiv., he tells us :—" I 
Poetry? returned from Wei to Loo, and theii the music 
was reformed, and the pieces in the Ya and the Sung all 
found their proper places." The return from Wei to Loo 
took place when the sage was in his 69th year, only five 
years before his death. He ceased from that time to take 
au active part in political affairs, and solaced himself with 
music, the study of the Classics, the writing of the 
Chcun Ts'ew, and familiar intercourse with those of his 
disciples who still kept about him. He reformed the 
music,—that to which the poems were sung ; but wherein 
the reformation consisted we cannot tell. And he gave 
to the pieces of the Ya and the Sung their proper places. 
The present order of the Books in the Fung, slightly 
differing, we have seen, from that which was common in 
his boyhood, may also have now been determined by him. 

1 Every instance pleaded by Sew in support of his expurgation of 
stanzas, lines, and characters has been disposed of by various scholars. 

2 When this Che lived is much disputed. From tbe references to him 
in Ana. VIII. xv., XVIII. ix., we naturally suppose him to have been a 
contemporary of Confucius. 

THE ' SHE BEFORE CONFUCIUS. 

As to the arrangement of the odes in the other Parts of 
the Work, we cannot say of what extent it was. What 
are now called the correct Ya precede the pieces called the 
Ya of a changed character or of a degenerate age ; but 
there is no chronological order in their following one an 
other, and it will be seen, from the notes on the separate 
odes, that there are not a few of the latter class, which 
are illustrations of a good reign and of the observance 
of propriety, as much as any of the former. In the 
Books of the Sung again, the occurrence of the Praise- 
songs of Loo between the sacrificial odes of Chow and 
Shang is an anomaly for which we try in vain to discover 
a reasonable explanation. 

6. While we cannot discover, therefore, any peculiar 
labours of Confucius on the Book of Poetry, and we have 
it now, as will be shown in the next section, substantially 
as he found it already compiled to his hand, the subse 
quent preservation of it may reasonably be Confucius· ser- 

, , -ι 7 -ι , ,1 τ · ,· π · ι -ι vice to the She 

attributed to the admiration which he ex- was in the im 

pressed for it, and the enthusiasm for it with 
which he sought to inspire his disciples. It of it- 
was one of the themes on which he delighted to converse 
with them.1 He taught that it is from the odes that the 
mind receives its best stimulus.2 A man ignorant of them 
was, in his opinion, like one who stands with his face to 
wards a wall, limited in his views, and unable to advance.3 
Of the two things which his son could specify as particular 
ly enjoined on him by the sage, the first was that he should 
learn the odes.4 In this way Confucius, probably, contri 
buted krgely to the subsequent preservation of the Book of 
Poetry; — the preservation of the tablets on which the 
odes were inscribed, and the preservation of it in the 
memories of all who venerated his authority, and looked 
up to him as their master. 

Analects, VII. xvii. 
3 Ana., XVII. x. 

Ana., VIII. viii.; XVII. ix. 
* Ana., XVI. xiii. 

 THE SHE AFTER CONFUCIUS. 

SECTION II. 

THE BOOK OF POETRY FROM THE TIME OF CONFUCIUS TILL 
THE GENERAL-ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE PRESENT TEXT. 

' From coníu- ^ ®T the attention paid to the study of the 
cms to the ay- Book of Poetry from the death of Confucius 

nasty of Ts'in. , ,1 · rj ,·, m ,. , , , 

to tue rise ol the is in dynasty, we have 
abundant evidence in the writings of his graudson Tsze- 
sze, of Mencius, and of Seun K'ing. One of the acknow 
ledged distinctions of Mencius is his acquaintance with 
the odes, of which his canon for the study of them pre 
fixed to 'my larger volumes is a proof ; and Seun K'ing 
survived the extinction of the Chow dynasty, and lived on 
into the times of Ts'in. 

2. The Poems shared in the calamity which all the 
other classical Works, excepting the Yih, suffered, when 
the tyrant of Ts'in issued his edict for their destraction. 
But I have shown, in the prolegomena to vol. I., that only 
The Poems a few years elapsed between the execution of 
™3terthe°fire¡ 1™ decree and the establishment of the Han 
of Ts'in. dynasty, which distinguished itself by its 
labours to restore the monuments of ancient literature. 
The odes were all, or very nearly all, recovered ;1 and the 
reason assigned for this is, that their preservation de 
pended on the memory of scholars more than on their 
inscription upon tablets and silk. We shall find reason 
to accept this statement. 

3. Three different texts of the odes made their appear- 
differ- anee early in the Han dynasty, known as the 
She of Loo, of Ts'e, and of Han ; that is, the 

ent texts. 

In the last section reference was made to the number of the odes, 
given by Confucius himself as 300. He might mention the round number, 
not thinking it worth while to say that they were 305 or 311. The 
Classic now contains the text of 305 pieces, and the titles of other 6. It 
is contended by Choo and many other scholars, that in Confucius' time 
the text of those six was already lost, or rather that the titles were names 
of tunes only. More likely is the view that the text of these pieces was 
lost after Confucius' death. 

THEEE DIFFERENT TEXTS. J 

Book of Poetry was recovered from three different 
quarters. 

[i.] Lew Hin's cataloguex of the Works in the imperial 
library of the earlier Han dynasty commences, on the She 
King, with a Collection of the three Texts in 28 chapters, 
which is followed by two Works of commentary on the 
Text of Loo. The former of them was by a The Text of 
Shin P'ei, of whom we have some account in ^0· 
the Literary Biographies of Han. He was a native of 
Loo, and had received his own knowledge of the odes from 
a scholar of Ts'e, called Fow K'ëw-pih. He was resorted 
to by many disciples, whom he taught to repeat the odes, 
bnt withont entering into discussion with them on their 
interpretation. When the first emperor of the Han 
dynasty was passing through Loo, Shin followed him to 
the capital of that State, and had an interview with him. 
The emperor Woo, in the beginning of his reign (B.C. 139), 
sent for him to court when he was more than 80 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 men of eminence, and 
among them K'ung Gan-kwoh. A little later, the most 
noted adherent of the school of Loo was a Wei Keen, who 
arrived at the dignity of prime minister, and published 
" the She of Loo in Stanzas and Lines." Up and down in 
the Books of Han and Wei are to be found quotations of 
the odes, which must have been taken from the professors 
of the Loo recension ; but neither the text nor the 
writings on it long survived. They are said to have 
perished during the Tsin dynasty (A.D. 265—419). When 
the catalogue of the Suy library was made, none of them 
were existing. 

[ii.] The Han catalogue mentions five different works on 
the She of Ts'e. This text was from a Yuen Koo, a 
native of Ts'e, about whom we learn, from the The Text of 
same chapter of Literary Biographies, that he Ts'e· 
was one of the Great scholars of the conrt in the time of 
the emperor King (B.C. 155—142), a favourite with him, 
and specially distinguished for his knowledge of the odes 
and his advocacy of orthodox Confucian doctrine. He 
died in the next reign of Woo, more than 90 years old ; 

1 Proleg., Toi. I. p. 4. 

 10 

THE SHE AFTEE CONFUCIUS. 

and we are told that all the scholars of Tsfe who got a 
name in those days for their acquaintance with the She 
sprang from his school. Among his disciples is the well- 
known name of Hëa-how Ch'e-ch'ang, who communicated 
his acquisitions to How Ts'ang, a native of the present 
Shan-tung province, and author of two of the Works in 
the Han catalogue. How had three disciples of eminence, 
—Yih Fung, Sëaou Wang-che, and K'wang Häng. From 
them the Text of Ts'e was transmitted to others, whose 
names, with quotations from their writings, are scattered 
through the Books of Han. Neither text nor comment 
aries, however, had a better fate than the She of Loo. 
There is no mention of them in the catalogue of Suy. 
They are said to have perished even before the rise of the 
Tsin dynasty. 

[iii.] The Text of Han was somewhat more fortunate. 
The Han catalogue contains the titles of four works, all 

The Text of ^>J -Han Yinn> wh°se surname is thus perpetu- 
Han Ying. ated in the text of the She which emanated 
from him. His biography follows that of How Ts'ang. 
He was a native, we are told, of the province of Yen, and 
a " Great scholar " in the time of the emperor Wan (B.C. 
178—156), and on into the reigns of King and Woo. 
" He laboured/' it is said, " to unfold the meaning of the 
odes, and published an ' Explanation of the Text,' and 
' Illustrations of the She/ containing several myriads of 
characters. His text was somewhat different from the 
texts of the She of Loo and Ts'e, 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 Suy catalogue 
contains the titles of his text and two Works on it ; the 
T'ang those of his text and his Illustrations ; but when 
we come to the catalogue of Sung, published in the time 
of the Yuen dynasty, we find only the Illustrations, in 10 
Books or chapters ; and Gow-yang Sew tells us that in his 
time this was all of Han that remained. It continues, 
entire or nearly so, to the present day. 

4. But while these three different recensions of the 
She all disappeared, with the exception of a single frag 
ment, their unhappy fate was owing not more to the 

THE TEXT OP MAOCT. 

11 

convulsions by which the empire was often rent, and the 
consequent destruction of literary monuments, such as 
we have witnessed in our own day in China, than to the 
appearance of a fourth Text which displaced them by its 
superior correctuess, and the ability with AfourthText· 
which it was advocated and commented on. that of Maou. 
This was what is called the " Text of Maou." It came 
into the field later than the others; but the Han cata 
logue contains the She of Maou in 29 chapters, and a 
commentary on the text in 30. According to Ch'ing 
K'aug-shing, the author of this commentary was a native 
of Loo, known as Maou Häng or the Greater Maou, who 
was a disciple, we are told by Luh Tih-ming, of Seun 
K'ing. The Work is lost. He had communicated his 
knowledge of the She, however, to another Maou,—Maou 
Chang, or the Lesser Maou,—who was " a Great scholar" 
at the court of king Heen of Ho-keen.1 This king Heen 
was one of the most diligent labourers in the recovery of 
the ancient Books, and presented Maou's text and the 
Work of Häng at the court of the emperor King,—pro 
bably in B.C. 129. Chang himself published his "Ex 
planations of the She," in 29 chapters, which still re 
main ; but it was not till the reign of the emperor P'ing 
(A.D. 1—5) that Maou's recension was received into the 
imperial college, and took its place along with those of 
Loo, Ts'e, and Han. 

The Chinese critics have carefully traced the line of 
scholars who had charge of Maou's text and explanations 
down to the reign of P'ing ;—K wan Ch'ang-k'ing, Hëae 
Yen-nëen, and Seu Gaou. To Seu Gaou succeeded Ch'in 
Këah, who was in office at the court of the usurper Wang 
Mang (Α.Π. 9—22). He transmitted his treasures to 
Sëay Man-k'ing, who himself commented on the She; 
and from him they passed to the well-known Wei King- 
chung or Wei Hwang, of whom I shall have to speak in 
the next chapter. From this time the most famous 
scholars addicted themselves to Maou's text. Këa Kwei 
(A.D. 25—101) published a Work on the " Meaning and 
Difficulties of Maou's She," having previously compiled a 

The petty kingdom of Ho-këen embraced three of the districts in 
the present department of the same name in Chih-le, and one of the two 
districts of Shin Chow. King He'en's name was Tih. 

 •ί 

12 

THE SHE AFTEK CONFUCIUS. 

digest of the differences between its text and those of the 
other three recensions, at the command of the emperor 
Ming (A.D. 58—75). Ma Yung (A.D. 69—165) followed 
with another commentary ;—and we arrive at Ch'ing 
Heuen, or Ch'ing K'ang-shing, who wrote his " Supple 
mentary Commentary to the She of Maou," and his 
"Chronological Introduction to the She." The former 
of these two Works complete, and portions of the latter, 
are still extant. That the former has great defects as 
well as great merits, there can be no question ; but it 
took possession of the literary world of China, and after 
the time of Ch'ing the other three texts were little heard 
of, while the names of the commentators on Maou's text 
and his explanations of it speedily become very numerous. 
Maou's grave is still shown near the village of Tsun-fuh, 
in the departmental district of Ho-këen. 

5. Returning now to what I said in the 2nd paragraph, 
it will be granted that the appearance of three different 
and independent texts, immediately after the rise of the 
Han dynasty, affords the most satisfactory evidence of 
The différait *^e recovery of the Book of Poetry, as it had 
texts guarantee continued from the time of Confucius. Un- 

tho integrity of /·..·, Ί /. , η , ι 

the recovered lortuiiately only fragments of them remain 
Blle' now ; but we have seen that they were dili 
gently compared by competent scholars with one another, 
and with the fourth text of Maou, which subsequently 
got the field to itself. In the body of the larger Work 
attention is called to many of their peculiar readings; 
Thetextswere and it is clear to me that their variations 
^fi'S'trom™ from one another and from Maou's text arose 
citation. from the alleged fact that the preservation 
of the odes was owing to their being transmitted by re 
citation. The rhyme helped the memory to retain them, 
and while wood, bamboo, and silk were all consumed by 
the flames of Ts'in, when the time of repression ceased 
scholars would be eager to rehearse their stores. It 
was inevitable that the same sounds, when taken down by 
different writers, should in many cases be represented by 
different characters. Accepting the text as it exists, we 
have no reason to doubt that it is a near approximation 
to that which was current in the time of Confucius. 

THE SOUECES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. Ϊ3 

CHAPTER II. 

THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION; THEIR 

INTERPRETATION AND AUTHORS; THE PREFACES 

AND THEIR AUTHORITY. 

APPENDIX—A CH-EOKOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

1. IT has been shown in the first section of last chapter 
that the Book of Poetry existed as a collection of odes 
before the time of Confucius. It becomes a question of 
some interest whether we can ascertain how the collection 
came to be formed, and account for {he gaps that now 
exist in it,—how there are no poetical memorials at 
all of several of the reigns of the Chow kings, How wore the 
and how the first Part embraces only a por- tii^flr 
tion of the States of which the kingdom was g™^ 

Composed. incomplete? 

2. Sir Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun tells us the opinion 
of " a very wise man," that " if a man were permitted to 
make all the ballads of a nation, he need not care who 
should make its laws/'1 The theory of Chinese scholars 
is, that it was the duty of the kings to make themselves 
acquainted with all the odes and songs current in the 
different States, and to judge from them of The theory of 
the character of the rule exercised by their a^r^coiec- 
several princes, so that they might minister fO^govenTment- 
praise or blame, reward or punishment, ac- ai purposes. 
cordingly. 

1 See Fletcher's account of " a Conversation on Governments." Sir 
John Davis (The Poetry of the Chinese, p. 30) adduces the remark of a 
writer in the Spectator (No. 502) :—" I have heard that a minister of 
State in the reign of Queen Elizabeth had all manner of hooks and 
ballads brought to him, of what kind soever, and took great notice how 
much they took with the people ; upon which he would, and certainly 
might, very well judge of their present dispositions, and of the most 
proper way of applying them according to his own purposes." 

\ 
Ν 

 THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. 

3. The one classical passage which is referred to in 
support of this theory is in the Le Ke, V. ii., parr. 13, 
The ' classical 14 :—" Every fifth year, the son of Heaven 
fuppOTtatto tiS made a progress through the kingdom, when 
«y- the Grand music-master was commanded to 
lay before him the poems collected in the States of the 
several quarters, as au exhibition of the manners of the 
people." Unfortunately, this Book of the Le Ke, the 
" Eoyal Ordinances," was only compiled in the reign of 
the emperor Wan of the Han dynasty (B.C. 179—155). 
The scholars entrusted with the work did their best, we 
may suppose, with the materials at their command. They 
made much use, it is evident, of Mencins, and of the E 
Le. The Chow Le, or the " Official Book of Chow," had 
not then been recovered. But neither in Mencius, nor 
in the E Le, do we meet with any authority for the state 
ment before us. The Shoo mentions that Shun every fifth 
vear made a tour of inspection through his empire ; but 
there were then no odes for him to examine, as to him 
and his minister Kaou-yaou is attributed the first rudi 
mentary attempt at the poetic art. Of the progresses of 
the sovereigns of the Hëa and Tin dynasties we have no 
information ; and those of the kings of Chow were made, 
we know, only Once in twelve years. The above state 
ment in the Le Ke, therefore, was probably based only 
on tradition, and is erroneous in the frequency of the 
royal progresses which it asserts. 

Notwithstanding the difficulties which beset the text 
of the Le Ke, however, I am not disposed to reject it al 
together. It derives a certain amount of confirmation 
from the passage quoted in the last chapter, p. 4, from the 
" Official Book of Chow/' showing that in the Cho\v dy 
nasty there was a collection of poems, under the divisions 
of the Fuiig, the Ya, and the Sung, which it was the busi 
ness of the Grand music-master to teach the musicians 
aud the élèves of the royal school. It may be granted 
then, that the duke of Chow, in legislating for his dynasty, 
enacted that the poems produced in the different feudal 
States should be collected on the occasions of the royal 
progresses, and lodged thereafter among the archives of 
the bureau of music at the royal court. The same thing, 

THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. 

15 

we may presnrne a fortiori, would be done with those 
produced within the royal domain itself. 

4. But the feudal States were modelled after the pattern 
of the royal State. They also had their music-masters, 
their musicians, and their historiographers. The kings 
in their progresses did not visit each particu- The music- 
lar State, so that their music-masters could £ngtewouîd *? 
have an opportunity to collect the odes in it *'« odesof each 

t· , ι ι mi , ,, , State from its 

for themselves, ihey met, at well-known music-master. 
points, the marquises, earls, barons, &c., of the different 
quarters of the kingdom ; there gave them audience ; ad 
judicated upon their merits; aud issued to them their 
orders. We are obliged to suppose that the princes 
. would be attended to the places of rendezvous by their 
music-masters, carrying with them the poetical composi 
tions collected in their several regions, to present them 
to their superior of the royal court. 

5. By means of the above arrangement, we can under 
stand how the poems of the whole kingdom were accumu 
lated and arranged among the archives of the capital. 
Was there any provision for disseminating thence the 
poems of one State among all the others ? There is suf 
ficient evidence that this dissemination was TTn„ tl . 

" 11 · Π r til -HOW tile COI- 

in some way effected. Throughout the lected poems 
"Narratives of the States" and the details Stta^Si 
of Tso K'ew-ming on the history of the Ch'un the stotcs· 
Ts'ew, the officers of the States generally are presented 
to us as familiar not only with the odes of their particular 
States, but with those of other States as well. They ap 
pear equally well acquainted with all the Parts and Books 
of our present collection ; and we saw in Chapter I., p. 5, 
how the whole of the present She was sung over to Ke- 
chah of Woo when he visited the court of Loo. My 
opinion is that there was a regular communication from 
the royal court to the courts of the various States of the 
poetical pieces, which for one reason or another were 
thought worthy of preservation. This is nowhere ex 
pressly stated ·, but it may be argued by analogy from 
the account which we have in the " Official Book of Chow " 
of the duties of the historiographers, or recorders, of the 
Exterior.—» They had charge of the Histories of all the 

 16 

THE SOUECES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. 

THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. 

17 

States ; of the Books of the three August [rulers] and of 
the five emperors. They communicated to all parts of 
the kingdom the writings [in their charge] ,"1 For want 
of fuller information it is not easy to give a thoroughly 
satisfactory account of the Histories and the Books refer 
red to in these brief sentences ; but I quote them merely 
to establish the fact that, according to the constitution of 
the kingdom under the dynasty of Chow, not only were 
the literary monuments of the feudal States collected for 
the satisfaction of the kings, but they were again sent 
forth to the courts of the different princes, and became 
the common possession of the cultivated classes through 
out the whole country. The documentary evidence of 
the fact is scanty, owing to the imperfect condition in 
which the Books of Chow were recovered during the Han 
dynasty, and so we have no special mention made of the 
odes in the passages of the " Official Book/' which I have 
adduced; but that they, as well as the other writings 
which are vaguely specified, were made known to Loo, 
Tsfe, Tsin, and all the other States, seems to have the 
evidence of analogy in its favour, and to be necessary to 
account for the general familiarity with them which, we 
know, prevailed. 

G. But if the poems produced in the several States 
were thus collected in the capital, and thence again dis 
seminated throughout the kingdom, we might conclude 
that the collection would have been far more extensive 
and complete than we have it now. The smallness of it 
HOW the col- is to be accounted for by the disorder and 
email" aid to- confusion into which the kingdom fell after 
complete. t}ie lapse of a few reigns from king Woo. 
lloyal progresses ceased when royal government fell into 

1 These Histories, it is held, related to everything about the feudal 
States, and the outlying barbarous tribes, the history of their princes and 
chiefs, their origin and boundaries, their tributes», their ceremonies, music, 
customs, &c. We try in vain to discover what the Books of the three 
August ones were. The second sentence is the most important for my 
argument. I cannot accept the interpretation of " the writings,' ' in which 
many acquiesce, as simply = the names of the written characters. Biot 
gives fcr the whole :—" Ils sont charges (le propager les noms écrits, ou 
IPS signes de l'écriture, dans les quatre parties de l'empire." I believe 
that I have given the sense correctly. 

decay, and then the odes were no longer collected.1 We 
have no account of any progress of the kings during the 
period of the Ch'un Ts'e'w. But, before that period, 
there is a long gap of 143 years between kings Ch'ing 
and E, covering the reigns of K'ang, Ch'aou, Muh, and 
Kung, of which we have no poetic memorials, if we ex 
cept two doubtful pieces among the sacrificial odes of 
Chow. The reign of Hëaou who succeeded to B is simi 
larly uncommemorated, and the latest odes are of the time 
of Tiug, when a hundred years of the Ch'uii Tsce\v had 
still to run their course. I cannot suppose but that many 
odes were made and collected during the 143 years after 
king Ch'ing. The probability is that they perished 
during the feeble and disturbed reigns of B, Hëaou, B, 
and Le. Of the reign of the first of these we have only 
five pieces, of all of which Choo considers the dato to be 
uncertain ; of that of the second, as has been observed 
above, we have no memorials at all ; of that of the third 
we have only one piece, which Choo, for apparently good 
reasons, would assign to a considerably later date. Then 
follow four pieces, the date of which is quite uncertain, 
and eleven, assigned to the reign of Le,—some of them 
with evident error. To Le's succeeded the long and 
vigorous reign of Seuen (B.C. 828—781), when we may 
suppose that the ancient custom of collecting the poems 
was revived. Subsequently to him, all was in the main 
decadence and disorder. It was probably in the latter 
part of his reign that Ch'ing-k'aou-foo, an ancestor of 
Confucius, obtained from the Grand music-master of the 
conrt of Chow twelve of the sacrificial odes of the previous 
dynasty, with which he returned to Sung which was held 
by representatives of the House of Shang. They were 
used there in sacrificing to the old kings of Shang, and 
were probably taken with them to Loo when the Kfung 
family subsequently sought refuge in that State. Yet of 
the twelve odes seven were lost by the time of Confucius. 
The general conclusion to which we come is, that the 
existing Book of Poetry is the fragment of various col 
lections made during the early reigns of the kings of 
'-'how, and added to at intervals, especially on the oc- 

TOL. ΠΙ. 

See Mencius, IV. ii. XXI. 
2 

\ 

 18 

THE SOUKCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. 

THE AUTHORS OF THE ODES. 

19 

currence of a prosperous rule, in accordance with the 
regulation which has been preserved in the Le Ke. How 
it is that we have in Part I. odes of not more than a 
dozen of the States into which the kingdom was divided,1 
and that the odes of those States extend only over a 
short period of their history :—for these things we can 
not account further than by saying that such were the 
ravages of time and the results of disorder. We can 
only accept the collection as it is, and be thankful for it. 
It was well that Confucius was a native of Loo, for such 
was the position of that State among the others, and so 
close its relations with the royal court, that tlie odes 
preserved in it were probably more numerous and com 
plete than anywhere else. Yet we cannot accept the 
statement of the editor of the Suy catalogue adduced on 
page 2, that the existing pieces had been copied out 
and arranged by Che, the music-master of Loo, unless, 
indeed, Che had been in office during the boyhood of 
Confucius, when, as we have seen, the collection was to 
be found there, substantially the same as it is now. 

7. The conclusions which I have sought to establish in 
the above paragraphs, concerning the sources of the She 
as a collection, have an important bearing on the inter 
pretation of many of the odes. The remark of Sze-ma 
Bearing of the Ts'ëen, that " Confucius selected those 
above paia- pieces which would be serviceable for the 

graphs on the I: . 

interpretation of illustration ot propriety and righteousness, 

particularpieces. jg ^ emmeous as tlie οΛβ^ ^ tte sage 

selected 80S pieces out of 3000. Confucius merely 
studied and taught the pieces which he found existing, 
and the collection necessarily contained odes illustrative 
of bad government as well as of good, of licentiousness 
as well as of a pure morality. Nothing has been such a 
stumbling-block in the way of the reception of Choo He's 
interpretation of the pieces as the readiness with which he 
attributes a licentious meaning to those of Book vii., Part 
I. But the reason why the kings in their progresses had 
the odes of the different States collected and presented 
to them, was " that they might judge from them of the 

1 I might say not quite a dozen, for Books iii., iv., and v., all belong to 
Wei, and probably also xiii., as well as x., to Tsin. 

.manners of the people," and so come to a decision re 
garding the government and morals of their rulers. A 
student and translator of the odes has simply to allow 
them to speak for themselves, and has no more reason 
to be surprised at the language of vice in some of them 
than at the language of virtue in many others. The 
enigmatic saying of Confucius himself, that the whole of 
" the three hundred odes may be summed up in one sen 
tence,—Thought without depravity," l must be understood 
in the meaning which I have given to it in the translation 
of the Analects. It may very well be said, in harmony 
with all that I have here advanced, that the odes were 
collected and preserved for the promotion of good 
government and virtuous manners. The merit attaching 
to them is that they give us faithful pictures of what was 
good and what was bad in the political State of the 
country, and in the social habits of the people. 

8. The pieces in the collection were of course made by in 
dividuals who possessed the gift, or thought that they pos 
sessed the gift, of poetical composition. Who ite writers of 
they were we could tell only on the authority the odes· 
of the odes themselves, or of credible historical accounts 
contemporaneous with them or nearly so. They would 
in general be individuals of some literary culture, for the 
arts of reading and writing even could not be widely 
diffused during the Chow dynasty. It is not worth our 
while to question the opinion of the Chinese critics, who 
attribute many pieces to the duke of Chow, though we 
have independent testimony only to his composition of a 
single ode,—the second of Book xv., Part I.2 We may 
assign to him also the 1st and 3rd odes of the same 
Book ; the first 22 of Part IL; the first 18 of Part III.; 
and with two doubtful exceptions, all the sacrificial Songs 
of Chow. 

Of the 160 pieces in Pt I. only the authorship of the 
2nd of Book xv., which lias just been referred to, can be 
assigned with certainty. Some of the others, of which 
the historical interpretation may be considered as suffi 
ciently fixed, as the complaints of Chwang Keang, in Books 
iii., iv.j v., are written in the first person ; but the author 

1 See the Ana. II. ii. 
" See the Shoo, V. vi. 15. 
2* 

 20 

THE PREFACE TO THE SHE. 

may be personating his subject. In Pt II., the 7th 
ode of Book iv. was made by a Këa-foo, a noble of the 
royal State, but we know nothing more about him ; the 
6th of Book vi., by a eunuch styled Mäng-tsze ; and the 
6th of Book vii., from a concurrence of external testi 
monies, may be ascribed to duke Woo of Wei. 

In Pt III., Book iii., the 2nd piece was composed by 
the same duke Woo ; the 3rd by an earl of Juy in the 
royal domain ; the 4th must have been made by one of 
Seuen's ministers, to express the king's feelings under 
the drought which was exhausting the kingdom; and 
the 5th and 6th claim to be the work of Yin Keih-foo, 
one of Seuen's principal officers. 

9. In the preface which appeared along with Maou's 
text of the She, the occasion and authorship of many 
more of the odes are given ; but I am not inclined to 
allow much weight to its testimony. The 
substance of it will be found in the notes pre 
fixed to the pieces of the several Books, where I have 
shown in a multitude of cases the unsatisfactoriness of 
the view which it would oblige us to take of particular 
odes. There are few western Sinologues, I apprehend, 
who will not cordially concur with me in the principle of 
Choo He, that we must find the meaning of the odes in 
the odes themselves, instead of accepting the interpreta 
tion of them given by we know not whom, and to follow 
which would reduce many of them to absurd enigmas. 

From the large space which the discussion of the Pre 
face generally occupies, it is necessary that I should 
attempt a summary of what is said upon it ;—on no sub 
ject are the views of native scholars more divided. 

According to Ch'ing K'ang-shing, what is now called 
'' the Great preface " was made by Confucius' disciple 
Tsze-hëa, and what is called " the Little preface " was 
made also by Tsze-hëa, but afterwards supplemented by 
Maou. In Maou, however, there is no distinction made 
between a Great and a Little preface. As the odes came 
down to him, the Preface was an additional document by 
itself, and when he published his commentary, he divided 
it into portions, prefixing to every ode the portion which 
gave an account of it. In this way, however, the preface 
to the Kwan ts'eu, or the first ode of the collection, was 

THE PEEP ACE TO THE SHE. 

21 

of a disproportionate length ; and very early, this portion 
was separated from the rest, and called the Great Preface, 
But the division of the original preface thus made was 
evidently unnatural and inartistic ; and Choo He showed 
his truer critical ability by detaching only certain por 
tions of the preface to the Kwan ts'en, and dignifying 
them with the same name of the Great Preface. This 
gives us some account of the nature and origin of poetry 
in general, and of the different Parts which compose the 
She. But Choo should have gone farther. In what is 
left of the preface to the Kwan ts'eu, we have not only 
an account of that ode, but also what may be regarded 
as a second introduction to Part L, and especially to the 
first and second Books of it. To maintain the symmetry 
of the prefaces there ought to be corresponding sentences 
at the commencement of the introductory notices to the 
first odes of the other Parts. But there is nothing of the 
sort ; and this want of symmetry in the preface as a whole 
is a sufficient proof to me that it did not all proceed 
from one hand. 

In Section Π. of last chapter I have traced the trans 
mission of Maou's text from its first appearance until it 
got possession of the literary world of China. HOW it is at- 
Scholars try to trace it up to Tsze-hëa, and {^^g^ 
consequently through him to Confucius ; but Tsze-hea. 
the evidence is not of an equally satisfactory character. 
The first witness is Sou Ching, an officer of the State or 
Kingdom of Woo in the period of " the Three Kingdoms 
(A.D. 229—264)," who says, as reported by Luh Tih- 
niing :—" Tsze-hëa handed down the She [which he had 
received from Confucius] to Kaou Häng-tsze ; Hìíng-tsze 
to Sëeh Tsfang-tsze ; Ts'ang-tsze to Mëen Mëaon-tsze ; 
and Mëaon-tsze to the elder Maou." Luh Tih-ming gives 
also another account of the connection between Maou and 
Tsze-hëa :—" Tsze-hëa handed down the She to Tsäng 
Shin ; Tsäng Shin to Le Kcih ; Le K'ih to Mang Chung- 
tsze ; Mfing Chung-tsze to Kin Mow-tsze ; Kin Mo\v-tsze 
to Seun K'ing ; and Seun K'ing to the elder Maou." 
There is no attempt made, so far as I know, on the part 
of Chinese critics, to reconcile these two genealogies of 
of Maou's She ; but there is no doubt that, during the 
Han dynasties, the school of Maou did trace their master's 

 î 

22 

THE PKEFACE TO THE SHE. 

THE PREFACE TO THE SHE. 

23 

text up to Tsze-hëa. Yen Sze-koo states it positively in 
his note appended to Lew Hin's catalogue of the copies 
of the She ; and hence, as the text and the preface came 
to Maou together, there arose the view that the latter 
•was made by that disciple of the sage. It became current, 
indeed, under his name, and was published separately 
from the odes, so that, in the catalogue of the T'ang 
dynasty, we find " The Preface to the She by Puh Shang, 
in two Books," as a distinct Work. 

But there is another account of the origin of the Pre 
face which seems to conflict with this. In par. 4 of the 
2nd section of last chapter I have made mention of Wei 

Different ac- King-chung or Wei Hwang, one of the great 
^f0ft£eep0rt Han scholars who adopted the text of Maou. 
face· He serves as a connecting link between the 
western and eastern dynasties of Han ; and in the account 
of him in the " Literary Biographies " we are told that 
" Hwang became the pupil of Sëay Man-k'ing, who was 
famous for his knowledge of Maou's She ; and he after 
wards made the Preface to it, remarkable for the accuracy 
with which it gives the meaning of the pieces in the Fung 
and the Y a, and which is now current in the world." A 
testimony like this cannot be gainsayed. If we allow 
that, when Maou first made public his text, there were 
prefatory notes accompanying it, yet Hwang must have 
made large additions to these, as Maou himself, in the 
opinion of Ch'ing K'ang-shing, had previously done. 

Since the time of Choo He, many eminent scholars, 
such as Yen Ts'an in the Sung dynasty, and Këang Ping- 
chang in the present, adopt the first sentence in the 
introduction to each ode as what constituted the original 
preface, and which they do not feel at liberty to dispute. 
They think that so much was prefixed to the odes by the 
historiographers of the kingdom or of the States, when 
they were first collected, and they would maintain like 
wise, I suppose, that it bore the stamp of Tsze-hëa. 
Këang calls these brief sentences " the Old preface " 
and " the Great preface," and the fuller explanation which 
is often appended to them, and which he feels at liberty 
to question, he calls " the Appended preface," and " the 
Little preface." 

After long and extensive investigation of the subject, 

I have no hesitation in adopting the freer choo^ He.g 
views of Choo He, with a condensed account -news on the 
of which I conclude this chapter :— re ace" 

" Opinions of scholars are much divided as to the 
authorship of the Preface. Some; ascribe it to Confucius ;' 
some to Tsze-hëa ; and some to the historiographers of 
the States. In the absence of clear testimony it is im 
possible to decide the point ; but the notice about Wei 
Hwang, in the literary Biographies of the Han dynasties,8 
would seem to make it clear that the Preface was his 
work. We must take into account, however, on the other 
hand, the statement of Ch'ing Heuen,3 that the Preface 
existed as a separate document when Maou appeared with 
his text, and that he broke it up, prefixing to each ode 
the portion belonging to it. The natural conclusion is 
that the Preface had come down from a remote period, 
and that Hwang merely added to it and rounded it off. 
In accordance with this, scholars generally hold that the 
first sentences in the introductory notices formed the 
original Preface which Maou distributed, and that the 
following portions were subsequently added. 

" This view may appear reasonable ; but when we ex 
amine those first sentences themselves, we find some of 
them which do not agree with the obvious meaning of 
the odes to which they are prefixed, and give merely the 
rash and baseless expositions of the writers. Evidently, 
from the first, the Preface was made up of private specu 
lations and conjectures as to the subject-matter of the 
odes, and constituted a document by itself, separately ap 
pended to the text. Then on its first appearance there 
were current the explanations of the odes which were 
given in connection with the texts of Ts'e, Loo, and Han, 
so that readers could know that it was the work of later 

1 This is too broadly stated. No one has affirmed that the Preface as 
a whole was from the hand of Confucius. Ch'ing E-ch'uen (A.D. 1033— 
1107) held that the Great preface was made by him. The style, he says, 
is like that of the appendixes to the Yih, and the ideas are beyond what 
Tsze-hëa could have enunciated. Wang Tih-shin (later on in the Sung 
dynasty) ascribed to Confucius the first sentence of all the introductory 
notices, and called them the Great preface. 

2 Adduced above. 3 Also adduced above. 

 THE PEEFACE TO THE SHE. 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

25 

I 

hands, and not give entire credit to it.1 But when Maou 
no longer published the Preface as a separate document, 
but each ode appeared with the introductory notice as a 
portion of the text, this seemed to give to it the authority 
of the text itself. Then after the other texts disappeared 
and Maou's had the field to itself, this means of testing 
the accuracy of its prefatory notices no longer existed. 
They appeared as if they were the production of the 
poets themselves, and the odes spemed to be made from 
them as so many themes. Scholars handed down a faith 
in them from one to another, and no one ventured to 
express a doubt of their authority. The text was twisted 
and chiseled to bring it into accordance with them, and 
nobody would undertake to say plainly that they were 
the work of the scholars of the Han dynasty." 

1 That the other texte, as Maou's, all had their prefaces, often differing 
from the views of the odes given in that, is a very important fact. 

APPENDIX. 
A TABLE 

OF THE PIECES IN THE SHE CHEONOLOGICALLT AREANGED. 

I. BELONGING TO THE SHANG DYNASTY ... B.C. 1765—1122. 

Five pieces ;—the Sacrificial odes of Shang. Of the 
Na (I.), the LeeJi tsoo (II.), and the Ch'angfafi (IV.), 
the date of the composition is uncertain. I think that 
Ode IV. is the oldest, and may have been made any time 
after B.C. 1719. 

The Heuen neamt (III.) and the Tin woo (V.) were 
made after B.C. 1261. Ode V. should be referred, pro 
bably, to the reign of Te-yih, B.C. llyO—1154. 

II. BELONGING TO THE TIME OF KING WAN , 1184—1134. 

Thirty-four or thirty-five pieces. These are com 
monly included in the three hundred and six pieces of 
the Chow dynasty ; but we can only date the commence 
ment of that from the reign of Wän's son, king Woo. 
The composition, or the collection at least, of most of 
the Odes relating to Wan aud his affairs, is attributed 
to his son Tan, the duke of Chow, and must be referred 
to the reigns of kings Woo and Ch'iug ... ... „ 1121—1076. 

These pieces embrace :— 

In Part I., all the 11 pieces of Book i. :—the Kiean, 
ts'eu, the KoJi fan, the Knien iirJi, the Eete muJi, the 
CJmng-sze, the T'ami yaov, the 'J^oo tsen, the Fuiv e, the 
San kieang, the Joo fun, and the Lln, eJie cite ; and 
12, or perhaps 13 pieces, of Book ii. :—the Ts'euii ch'aoii, 
the Ts'ae fan, the Ts'auu cTi'ting, the Ts'ae pin, the 
Häng loo, the Kaou yang, the Yin k'e lity, the P'eanu 
yew mei, the Seaou sing, the Tay yem szc Iteun, the 
Keang yew sze, and the Tsote yu, with perhaps also the 
Kan t-ang (V.) 

In Part II., 8 pieces of Book i. :—the Luh ming, the 
Sze iiwtv, the Hicang-htvaiig chay ftiea, the Fall imtlt, 
the T-een paoti, the Ts'ae me, the Ch'uh Iteu, and the 
Te too. 

In Part III., 3 pieces of Book i -—the Tihp'oh, the 
Ban luh, and the Ling t'ae. 

III. BELONGING TO THE CHOW DYNASTY. 

[i.] Of the time of king Woo 

„ 1121—1115. 

 26 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

In all 8 or 9 pieces, viz.— 

In Part I., Book ii., the Ho pe mtny e, and perhaps 
the Kan t'ang. 

In Part II., the Nan line of Book i. ; the Plh hn-a, 
the Hwa shoo, and the Υυ le, of Book ii., though the 
date of these pieces is not certain. 

In Part III., the Meen, the Sze ehac, and the Hiding e, 
all in Book i. 

[ii.] Of the time of king Ch'ing ... ... B.C. 1114—1076. 

In all 60 pieces, viz.— 

In Part I., all the seven pieces of Book xv., the 
Ts'ih yneh, the Ch'e-heaou, the Tung shan, the POfoo, 
the fah Tin, the Kern yUi, and the Lang jioJt. All these 
are assigned to the duke of Chow iu the reign of Ch'ing. 

In Part II., ten pieces :—the Chang te, of Book i. ; 
the Yew häng, the Nan yen hea-yn, the Sung Jt'eiv, the 
Nan shan yew t'ae, the Yen; e. the Luh seavn, and the 
Chan loo, of Book ii. ; the T"img hung, and the Ts'itig- 
ts'ing duty ngo, of Book iii. Of these ten pieces, 
however, Choo He thinks that the date of all but the 
first is uncertain. 

In Part III., twelve pieces :—the Wan mang, the Ta 
ming. the Hea ΊΚΟΟ, and the Wan n-ang yew shing, of 
Book i. ; the Sang min, the Hung wei, the Ke titmj, the 
Hoc e, the Kea loft, the Knng Lew, the Ilenng choh, 
antl the Reven o, of Book ii. 

In Part IV. thirty-one pieces, viz.—all the pieces of 
Book i. [i.] :—the Ts'ing mean», the Wei T'een che 
ming, the Wei ts'ing, the Lech man, the T'cen tsoh, the 
Haou Teen y em ch'ing ming (assigned by Choo He to the 
time of king K'ang), the Go tseang, the Site mae (as 
signed by Choo to the time of king Woo), the Chili 
king (assigned by Choo to the time of king Ch'aou), and 
the Sze man : all the pieces of Book i. [ii.] :—the Shin 
ktmg, the E he (assigned by Choo to the time of king 
K'ang), the Cliin loo, the Fung iieen. the Yen koo, the 
Tit'een, the Yung (assigned by Choo to the time of king 
Woo), the Tsae iieen, the Yew h'ih, and the Woo; and 
all the pieces of Book i. [iii.] :—the Min yu seaou tsze, 
the Tang loh, the King che, the Seaoti pe, the Tsae 
shoo, the Leanrj sze, the Sze e, the Choit, the Hican, the 
Lae, and the Pan. 

[iv.] Of the time of king B (|j^ ^) ... ... „ 933—909. 

Five pieces, all in Part I. Book viii.:—the Ke ming, 
the Scuen, the Choo, the Tung fang che jih, and the 
Tung fang we ming. All these are supposed to belong 
to duke Gae of Ts'e or his times, but Choo He considers 
their date uncertain. 

[v.] Of the time of king E (ÌÈp| ^H) ... ... „ 893—878. 

One piece, the Pih chow of Part I., Book iii., assigned 

CHEONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

27 

to the time of duke K'ing of Wei ; but Choo He would 
place it later in the time of king P'ing. 

[vi.] Of the time of the above king E, or of king 
Le ... ... ... ... ... ». ... B.C. 893—8«. 

Four pieces, all those of Part I., Book xiii., but Choo 
considers them to be of uncertain date :—the Kaou k'ew, 
the Sao Jíivan, the Slit yew ch'ang ts'oo, and the Fei 
fung. 

[vii.] Of the time of king Le ... ... ... „ 877—841. 

In all, eleven pieces, viz.— 

Two in Part I., Book xii. :—the Ytten If em, and the 
Tung 11111», ehe fun. Choo considers both these as of 
uncertain date. 

Four pieces in Part II. :—the Shih yueh che heaou 
(correctly assigned by Choo to the time of king Yew), 
and the Yu woo citing (Choo would also assign a later 
date to this), in Book iv. ; the Seaou min, and the 
Reaon yt/en, both considered by Choo to be of uncertain 
date, in Book v. 

Five pieces in Part III. :—the Min lamí, and the 
Pan, of Book ii. ; the Tang, the Yih (correctly assigned 
by Choo to the time of king P'ing) ; and the Sang yew 
of Book iii. 

[viii.] Of the period Kung-ho ... ... ... „ 840—827. 

One piece, the Sih tsiiii of Part I., Book x., but 
Choo considers the date to be uncertain. 

[ix.] Of the time of king Seuen ... ... „ 826—781. 

Twenty-five pieces, viz.— 

In Part I., five pieces :—the Pih chow of Book iv. ; 
the Keu, lin of Book xi. (according to Choo uncertain) ; 
and the Häng Mûn, the Tung mun che c7í'e, and the 
Tung m-iin che yang, of Book xii., all according to Clioo 
uncertain. 

In Part II., fourteen pieces, vin.— 

In Book iii,, the lath yueh, the Ts'ae li'e, the Keu 
iimig, the Keih jih, the Hung yen, the 'fing leaou 
(accordingto Choo uncertain), the Meen sñmiy (ace. to 
Choo uncertain), and the Hoh ming (ace. to Choo un 
certain) ; in Book iv., the K'e foo, the Pih Jteu, the 
Hnang neaon, the Go häng k'e yay, the Sze kan, and 
the Woo yang, all according to Choo of uncertain date. 

In Part ΠΙ., six pieces, viz.— 

The Yun han, the Sung hann, the Ching min, the Han 
yih, the Keang han, and the Chang troc, all in Book iii., 
and all admitted by Choo but the Han yih, of which 
he considers the date uncertain. 

[x.] Of the time of king Yew ... ... „ 780—770. 

In all forty-two pieces, viz.— 

Of Part II. 40 pieces :—in Book iv., the Tseeh nan 
shan,, and the Ching yveh (Choo considers the date of 
this uncertain, but there is some internal evidence for 

 28 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

its being of the time of-king Yew) ; in Book v., the 
Seaou piean, the K'eaou yen, the Hojin sze, the Heang 
pill, the Kuli fling, the Luh go, the Ta tung, and the 
Sze yueli, the date of all of which is with Choo uncer 
tain; in Book vi., the Pill shan, the WHO tseang ta lien, 
the Seaou ming, the Euo eliung, the Ts'oo ts'ze, the Sin 
nan shan, the Foo Peen, the Ta t'een, the Clien pe Lvh e, 
and the SJiang-shang chay Ima, of all which Choo 
denies the assigned date, excepting in the case of the Kvu 
chiing ; in Book vii., the Sang hoo. the Yuen yang, the 
Eweipecn, the Keu Tieah, the Ts'ing ying, the Pin che 
t»oo yen, the Tu ts'aou, the Ts'ae shuJi, the Keoll lamg, 
and the Tu7i lew,—hut of these Choo allows only the fin 
che tsoo yen to he capable of determinate reference to the 
time of Yew ; and in Book viii., the Tvojin sze, the Ts-ae 
lull, the Shoo mea.au (referred by Choo to the time of 
king Seuen), the Sill sang, the Pill lima, the 3Ieen man, 
the Hoo yell, the Ts-een tseen eke sliili, the T'eami che 
hwa, and the Ho ts'aou pall Juvang, but Choo only agrees 
in assigning the Pill, hiea and the Ho ts'aou puh Imang 
to Yew's reign. 

In Part III., Book iii., two pieces;—the Chenjang 
and the Shaoti min. 

[xi.] Of the time of king P*ing 

In all 28 pieces, viz.— 

In Part I., 1 in Book iii.,—the Luh e ; 3 in Book v.,— 
the K~e yuli, the K'ami pman, and the Sliili jilt, but 
Choo considers the date of the Raoupnan to be uncer 
tain; 6 in Book vi.,—the Shoo le, the Keun-txze yu 
y'ili, the Eeuii-ts-e yang-yang, the Yang che shivuy, the 
Ciiung laili yen t'uy, and the Eah luy, of which Choo 
agrees in the assignment of one only, the Yang die 
t Amity ; 7 in Book vii.,—the Tsze e, the Tseang chung- 
tsze, the SltuJt yu t'een, the Ta slmli yu t'een, the Kaou 
Wem, the Tsun ta loo, and the Neu, yueli lie tiling, of 
which Choo allows the assignment of the Tsze e, the 
STiuk yu t'een, and the Ta sliuli yu t'een ; 7 in Book x.,— 
the Slum yem cii'oo, the Yang che shnuy, the Tseanw 
leaou, the Chmv mom, the Te too, the Kaou ft'ew, and 
the Paou yu·, of which Choo agrees in the assignment 
only of the Yang die shieuy and the Tscaou leaon í in 
Book xi.,—the Sze t'eeh, the Seaou jung, the Keen Itea, 
and the Clmng nan, Choo allowing only the Seaoujung. 
[xii.] In the reign of king P'iug, or king Hwau 

Seven pieces, all of Part I., Book ix., and all, accord 
ing to Choo, of uncertain date ;—the Eoh keu, the Hicun 
tseu joo, the Yuen yem t'amt, the Cliili hoc, the Shih 
mom che ìteen, the Fall, fan, and the Sliih shoo. 
[xiii.] In the reign of king ΗΛΥ an 

Thirty-two pieces, all of Part 1., viz.— 

17 in Book iii. :—the Yen yen, the Jih yueli, the 
Cliungfung, the Keih Two, the K'aefung, the Heiing die, 

B.C. 769—719. 

769—696. 

718—G96. 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

29 

yero Tt'oo y eh, the Kuhfung, the Shili η·ε, the 
: k'erv, the Keen Tie, the Ts'euen shwuy, the Pih 
mun, the Pihfung, the Tsing neu, the Sin t'ae, and the 
Urh tsie shing dun», of which Choo allows only the 
date assigned to the Yen yen, the Jih yueli, the Clmng · 
fnng, and the Keih Two ; ί in Book iv.,—the Ts'eang 
yew tsze, the Keim-tsze lieae loan, the Sang divng, and 
the Shun die punpun, in regard to all of which hut the 
Sang ciiung Choo coincides ; 5 in Book v.,—the Mang, 
the Cliuli han, the Hman lan, the Pill lie, and the Yew 
Two, all ace. to Choo of uncertain date ; 3 in Book vi., 

—the T'oo yuen, the Ts'ae hill, and the Ta heit, also of 
uncertain date with Choo ; 2 in Book vii.,—the Yem neu 
t'uìig lieu, and the Keen sliang, with him uncertain ; and 

1 in Book xii.,—the Moo mun, whose date Choo in the 
same way does not think can be determined. 

[xiv.] Of the time of king Chwang ... ... B.c. 695—681. 

Fifteen pieces, all in Part I., viü.— 
1 in Book vi.,—the K'em chvng yem ma, with Choo 
uncertain ; 8 in Book vii., all with Choo uncertain,— 
the Shan yemfoo soo, the T'oh he, the Kcami t'lnig, the 
Fung, the Tung mun die shen, the Fling yii, the Tsze 
li'iii, and the Yang die sJiwuy ; and 6 in Book viii., the 
date and occasion of the 2nd and 3rd of which only are 
deemed uncertain by Choo.—the Nan shan, the Foo 
teen, the Loo ling, the Pe Itoto, the Tsae itmeu, aud the 
E tscay. 

[xv.] Of the time of king Le qj|| j£) ... „ 680—676. 

Five pieces, all in Part I., viz.— 
3 in Book vii., all with Choo uncertain,—the CWiili k-e 
tung mun, the Yay yew man ts'aov, and the Tain ivei ; 

2 in Book x., the date assigned to the former of which 
is admitted by Choo, the Woo e, and the Yew te die too . 
[xvi.] Of the time of king Hwuy ... ... „ 676—C31. 

Twelve pieces, all in Part I., viz.— 
5 in Book iv., all admitted by Choo,—the Ting che 
fang diung, the Te tung, the Scang shoo, the Kan titaoii, 
and the Tgae cJi'e ; 1 in Book v., with Choo uncertain, 

—the Muh laea ; 1 in Book vii., admitted by Choo, the 
Ts'ing j-in; 2 in Book x., with Choo uncertain,—the 
Koli sang and the Ts'ae ling ; 2 in Book xii., with Choo 
uncertain,—the Fang yew ts'eoh ch'aou, and the Yueh 
eh'uh ; and 1 in Book xiv., also with Choo uncertain,— 
the Fom yem. 

[xvii.] Of the time of king Seang ... ... „ 650—618. 

In all thirteen pieces, of which 9 are in Part I., viz.— 

1 in Book v., admitted by Choo,—the Ho Itirang ; 5 

in Book xi., of which Choo admits only the first and 

fourth,—the Hmang neaov, the Shin-fung, the Woo e, 

the Wei yang, and the E'euen yu ; 3 in Book xiv., of 

 so 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ODES. 

which Choo accepts only the first,—the Hmv-jin, the 
She-kern, and the Sea ts'euen. 

In Part IV., the 4 pieces of Book ii., in the occasion 
assigned for the first and last of which Choo agrees,— 
the Keutu/, the Yew peih, the P>van-s7i>vuy, and the Pel 
Tiling. 

[xviii.] Of the tune of king Ting 

Two pieces in Part I., viz.— 

the Chou lin, admitted by Choo, and the Tsih p'o in 
Book xii. 

B.c. 605—585. 

The editors of the imperial edition of the present dynasty say : 

" The dates of the composition of the odes it was found difficult to 
examine thoroughly after the fires of Ts'in, and so we find them variously 
assigned by the writers of the Han, T'ang, and other dynasties. 

" But the old Preface made its appearance along with the text of the 
Poems, and Maou, Ch'ing, and K'ung Ying-tah maintained and defended 
the dates assigned in it, to which there belongs what authority may be 
derived -from its antiquity. 

" When Choo He took the She in hand, the text of the poems was 
considered by him to afford the only evidence of their occasion and date, 
and where there was nothing decisive in it, and no evidence afforded by 
other classical Books, he pronounced these points uncertain ;—thus de 
ciding according to the exercise of his own reason on the several pieces. 

" Gow-yang Sew followed the introductory notices of Ch'ing, but dis 
puted and reasoned on the subject at the same time. Heu K'c'en, and 
Lew Kin followed the authority of Choo, now and then slightly differing 
from him. 

" In the Ming dynasty appeared the ' Old meanings of the text of the 
She,' chronologically arranged by Ho K'eae, adducing abundance of 
testimonies, but with many erroneous views. We have in thia work 
collected the old assignments of the Preface, supported by Maou, Ch'ing, 
and K'ung, and given due place to the decisions of Choo. The opinions 
of others we have preserved, but have not entered on any discussion of 
them." 

THE RHYME AND METEE OF THE PIECES. 

81 

CHAPTER III. 

THE RHYME AND METRE OE THE PIECES ; THEIR POET 
ICAL VALUE; PRINCIPLE ON WHICH THE PRESENT 
VERSION OE THEM HAS BEEN MADE; CERTAIN 
PECULIARITIES IN THEIR STRUCTURE. 

1. I HAVE written at length, on tlie Prosody of the 
Book of Poetry in my larger work. In this volume, in 
tended for English readers, it is not necessary to say 
much about it. 

Rhyme has always been a characteristic of verse in 
China ; and all the earliest attempts at poetical composi 
tion were of the same form,—in lines con- Metre and 
sisting of four words, forming, from the Ehvme· 
nature of the language, four syllables. Wherever there 
is any marked deviation from this type, the genuineness 
of the piece as a relic of antiquity becomes liable to sus 
picion. 

This line of four words is the normal measure of the 
She, but it is not invariably adhered to. We have in one 
ode, according to the judgment of many native scholars, 
a line of only one word in each of its stanzas. Lines of 
two, of three, of five, of six, of seven, and even of eight 
characters, occasionally occur. When the poet once de 
parts from the normal law of the metre, he often con 
tinues his innovation for two or three more lines, and 
then relapses into the usual form. He is evidently 
aware of his deviation from that, and the stanzas where it 
takes place are in general found to be symmetrically 
constructed and balanced. 

2. The pieces, as printed, appear divided into stanzas ; 
—and properly so, though the Han scholars say that 
such division was first made by Maou. Chang. 
He did his work well, guided mainly by the anzas' 
rhyme, and by the character of the piece as narrative, 
allusive, or metaphorical. 

In most pieces the stanzas are of uniform length, and 

 \ I 

32 

THE RHYME AND METRE OF THE PIECES. 

frequently quatrains ; but the authors allowed themselves 
as much liberty in the length of the stanza as in that of 
the line. Stanzas of two lines are very rare ; and those 
of three lines, or triplets, are only less so. One ode 
occurs, made up of stanzas of two lines, and in another 
three such stanzas follow three quatrains. We have three 
odes made up of triplets, and this stanza is occasionally 
introduced among others of greater length. Stanzas of 
five lines occur, but not often. They sometimes form the 
structure of whole pieces, and are sometimes intermixed 
with others. Stanzas of six lines, of eight, of ten, and of 
twelve are frequently met with. Some are found extend 
ing to fourteen lines, and even to sixteen and seventeen. 
Those of seven lines, of nine, and of eleven, are all un 
usual. Generally speaking, stanzas with an even num 
ber of lines greatly outnumber those with an odd. 

In the present metrical version, wherever I could con 
veniently attain to it, I have made the stanzas of the 
same length as in the original Chinese. Some expansion, 
however, has frequently seemed to be necessary ; con 
densation has seldom been possible. 

3. The manner in which the rhymes are disposed has 
Disposition of received much attention from the Chinese 
tiie Rhymes. critics ; and the following cases, among 
others, have been pointed out :— 

[i.] Where lines rhyme in succession ; two, three, four 
lines, &c., occasionally up to twelve. 

[ii.] Where the rhyming lines are interrupted by one οι· 
more lines intervening, which do not rhyme with them ; 
those intervening lines rhyming differently together, or 
not rhyming at all. 

[iii.] Where the stanza contains only one rhyme, 
[iv.] Where the stanza contains two or more rhymes, 
[v.] Where the different rhymes alternate, with more 
or less of regularity. Some pieces are made up of 
quatrains proper, the first and third lines rhyming to 
gether, and the second and fourth. In. stauzas of five 
lines, the first and third will sometimes rhyme, and then 
the second, fourth, and fifth. In others of six lines, the 
first and third will rhyme, and then the second, fourth, 
fifth, and sixth. The regularities, or rather irregularities, 
of this kind are very numerous. 

THE RHYME AND METEE OF THE PIECES. 

33 

[vi.] Where one or more lines at the commencement 
of the different stanzas of a piece, or their concluding 
lines, rhyme with one another. In all the instances 
adduced to illustrate this case, however, we have not 
merely a concord of the rhymes, but the repetition of the 
whole lines. 

[vii.] What we call medial rhymes occur occasionally ; 
and in a few instances the members of different lines 
rhyme in this way at the csesural pause. 

Without specifying other characteristics, I may say 
that there are throughout the pieces multitudes of lines, 
sometimes one, and sometimes more, which do not rhyme 
with any others in the same stanza. The pieces of Part 
IV. have several peculiarities. Many of them do not 
admit of a stanzaic arrangement ; and there are at least 
eight in which there is no attempt at rhyme. We may 
consider such disregard of rhyme as an approach to the 
structure of blank verse; but while every other irregu 
larity in the ancient odes has found imitators, I am not 
aware that this has received any favour. So far from the 
Chinese having any contempt for rhyming, such as 
Milton expressed when he called it "a jingling sound of 
like endings," " a troublesome bondage," they consider 
it essential to poetry. 

In the present version, as in the prose one of my larger 
work, I have made no attempt to adhere to the length of 
the original lines, or to adopt their rhymes. The dif 
ferent attributes of the Chinese and English languages 
made it impossible to do so. In passing from this sub 
ject, I will venture to say that the nature of Chinese is 
at the best but ill adapted for the purpose of agreeable 
rhyme. It does not admit the variety that is found in an 
alphabetical language, and which is to us one of the 
charms of poetical composition. The single rhyming 
endings in English are about 360 ; and if we add to them 
the double and triple rhymes, where the accent falls on 
the penultimate syllables, they cannot come short of 400. 
In Chinese, on the other hand, the rhyming endings are 
very few. Those of the Book of Poetry are under twenty. 
There is, indeed, in Chinese a greater number of words 
or characters to any one ending than in other languages, 
and scholars have produced compositions in which the 

VOL. III. 3 

 THEIR POETICAL VALUE. 

same ending occurs a hundred times and more. Multi 
tudes of the rhymes, however, are to a foreign ear 
merely assonances, and the effect is that of a prolonged 
monotony. 

4. In the Treatise on the antiquity of the Chinese, with 

•which the "Mémoires cmicernant les Chinois" commence, 

it is said, " The poetry of the She King is so beautiful 

The poetical an<^ harmonious, the lovely and sublime tone 

value of the of antiquity rules in it so continually, its pic- 
Book of Poetry. ^ ·> .. S · ¿ 

. tures oí manners are so naive and minute, 
that all these characteristics give sufficient attestation of 
its authenticity. The less can this be held in doubt that 
in the following ages we find nothing, I will not say 
equal to these ancient odes, but nothing worthy to be 
compared with them. We are not sufficient connoisseurs 
to pronounce between the She King on the one side and 
Pindar and Homer on the other; but we are not afraid to 
say that it yields only to the Psalms of David in speaking 
of the Divinity, of Providence, of virtue, &c., with a 
magnificence of expressions and an elevation of ideas 
which make the passions cold with terror, ravish the 
spirit, and draw the soul from the sphere of the senses." 
Such language is extravagant, and the comparison of 
the compositions in the " Book of Poetry " to the Psalms 
of David is peculiarly unfortunate. They are not reli 
gious poems. The " Praise Songs," which constitute a 
small part of them, and may be described as " religious," 
have for their principal themes the heroic founders of the 
House of Chow and the worship which was paid to them. 
In these, arid in many of the other pieces, God often ap 
pears as the righteous and sovereign Lord of Providence ; 
but the writers never make Him their theme for what He 
is in Himself, and do not rise to the conception of Him 
as " over all," China and other nations, " blessed for 

ever. 

But it wouid be wrong to deny to the Chinese odes 
a very considerable amount of poetical merit. It is true 
that many of them, as Sir John Davis has said in his 
"Treatise on the Poetry of the Chinese,"1 do not rise above 

1 The Poetry of the Chinese, p. 35 (London, 1870). This interesting 
Treatise was first published nearly fifty years ago. It had the merit of 
introducing the subject of Chinese poetry to the English public ; and may 

PRINCIPLE ON WHICH PRESENT VERSION IS MADE. 35 

the most primitive simplicity, and that the principal 
interest which the collection possesses arises from its 
pictures of manners ; but there are not a few pieces which 
may be read with pleasure from the pathos of their de 
scriptions, their expressions of natural feeling, and the 
boldness and frequency of their figures. 

I expressed myself to the above effect in writing about 
the poetical value of the She in 1871, and I have now 
to re-affirm the judgment with a greater emphasis, and a 
wider application to the pieces. The critical labour neces 
sary to secure accuracy of translation in ray larger work 
kept me from being sufficiently alive to their beauty. The 
renewed study which every poem has received, and flio 
endeavour to give an adequate rendering of it in English 
verse, have resulted in the perception of many beauties 
which I did not previously appreciate. I shall be dis 
appointed if my readers do not agree with me in think 
ing that in China's ancient Odes, Ballads, Songs, and 
Bardic Effusions there is much poetry of a high order. 

5. Sir John Davis contends, in the Treatise referred to 
above, that " verse must be the shape into which Chinese, 
as well as other poetry, must be converted, in order to do 
it mere justice," adding that he himself, while giving 
now a pruse translation, now a faithful metrical üvrsion, 
and now an avoiced paraphrase, has deferred more thau 
his judgment and inclinations approved to the prejudices 
of those who are partial to the literal side of the ques 
tion. When I had resolved to publish ihe present 
volume, I had no hesitation in deciding that Principie ou 
the rendering of every piece should be a ^r^rS'oiuLS 
faithful metrical version of the original. I becn raad6 
thought at first of re-publishing, side by side with each 
piece, the prose translation in my larger work ; but this 
plan was abandoned, as it would have made the book 
larger than was desirable, and would only have distracted 
the attention of the majority of the readers for whom it 
was intended. They may rest assured, however, that 
they have here no paraphrase, but the poems ut' the 

well stand side by side with the author's two volumes on " The Chinese," 
published in the " Library of Kntertainmg Knowledge " in 18.'!C. Fuller 
descriptions of China and the Chinese have since appeared, but none with, 
the sume literary finish which we find in these volumes. 

 36 PEINCIPLE ON WHICH PKESENT VEESION IS MADE. 

Chinese writers presented to them faithfully, with as 
little introduction of ideas of my own or of my helpers as 
it was possible to attain to. Rhyme is often a hard 
master, and as it was our endeavour to give the pieces 
in as good English verse as the nature of the case would 
permit, it was necessary to employ occasionally epithets 
which are not found in the Chinese text, but this has 
been done sparingly. While much amplification would 
have been a misrepresentation of the original, a bad 
translation would often have been mere doggerel. And 
not only so ; it would also have been unfaithful. There 
is more in the words of the text than meets the ear ; 
it might be more correct to say, from the peculiar nature 
of the Chinese characters, than meets the eye. Apart 
even from the satirical pieces, and the allusive pieces on 
which I shall presently touch, in translating Chinese 
poetry one has constantly to regard what was in the 
mind of the writer. It was my object to bring this out 
in the notes in my larger work ; and what was brought 
out there had to be transferred to the stanzas of the 
present version. But this also has been done only so 
far as seemed indispensable. 

I had some difficulty in getting rny nephews, of whose 
valuable assistance I have spoken in the Preface, to 
enter fully into my views of what their versions should 
be ; and occasionally I had to re-cast their versions, the 
result being pieces inferior in poetical merit to what 
they had produced, but which I thought better repre 
sented the original Chinese. A correspondent in Hong- 
Kong, having himself no little of the poetical faculty, 
and condemning the adherence to the letter of the text 
even to the extent for which I contend, referred to the 
words of Horace in his De Arte Poética, 

Et qnœ 
Desperat Iractata nitescere posse, relinqidt. 

Horace, howover, is giving his view of the course 
which an. original poet should pursue, and I agree in the 
counsel which he suggests. But I was intending to 
come before the public not as an original poet, but as a 
translator in English verse of what Chinese poets wrote 
between two and three thousand years ago. If they 

PECULIAEITIES IN THEIE STEUCTUKE. 

37 

dealt with themes which they could not make to shine, 
it was still my duty to show how they liad treated them. 
Nor did it appear to me that there was anything in the 
She, which might make me take warning from that other 
advice of Horace, touching me more nearly, 

Nee destiles imitator in arctmn, 
Unacjjcdem prvferrc piidor tetet, ant operls lex. 

There are, indeed, pieces in it which no treatment 
could make to " shine," and others which might be 
described as narrow and cramping, entrance into which 
is difficult and graceful exit from them all but impos 
sible. My friend and others, seeing this, advised that 
I should publish a selection of the pieces, and not the 
whole of them. But this was forbidden by "the law 
of the work," as a reproduction in English verse of the 
translation of the Book of Poetry. And as I pursued 
my task, even the poorer odes became clothed with an 
attractiveness which I did not previously perceive. I 
would not now say,as I did in 1871, that "the collection 
as a whole is not worth the trouble of versifying." The 
versification, no doubt, might have been executed better 
than I and my coadjutors have succeeded in doing ; but 
our labours, such as they are, will, I hope, satisfy my 
readers, that these ancient Chinese poems have, as a 
whole, not a little poetical merit. At any rate they have 
those poems, and not others made by paraphrase from 
them. If the dress be English, the voice is always 
Chinese ; while much may be learned from them of the 
mind and manners of feudal China. 

6. Nothing could be more simple than the structure of 
the bulk of the odes in the first Part of the She. The 
different stanzas of a piece often convey substantially the 
same idea, which is repeated again and again „ ,. ... 

.,, ,.' . · ii -, 6 9m Peculiarities 

with little change in the language, ihe in the structure 
writer wishes to prolong his ditty, and he oi the pleces· 
effects his purpose by the substitution of a fresh rhyme, 
the preceding stanza re-appearing with no other alter 
ation but what is rendered necessary by the new term. 
There is an amusing instance in the third ode of Book 
xiv., where the poet is compelled by the necessities of 
his rhyme to say that the young of the turtle-dove are 

 38 

PECULIARITIES IN THEIK STRUCTURE. 

seven in number. Some of the pieces in the other Parts 
are marked by the same characteristic. In those Parts, 
however, there are many others which afford the best ex 
amples of Chinese poetry. The first piece of Part III. 
is remarkable as being constructed, in Chinese, in the 
same way as the 121st and other step Psalms, as they 
have been called, the concluding line of one stanza form 
ing the commencing one of the next. " In other pieces 
there is an approximation to the same form. 

Throughout the book the pieces are distinguished 
among themselves as narrative, metaphorical, or alhisive. 
In a narrative piece the poet says what he has to say 
right out, writing it down in a simple, straightforward 
manner, without any hidden meaning reserved in his 
mind. It is not to be supposed, however, because such 
pieces are distinguished from the other two classes, that 
the anther does not, at his pleasure, use the metaphor 
and other figures of speech in their composition. He uses 
them as freely as descriptive poets in any other language. 
In a metaphorical piece the poet has under his lan- 
o-uage a meaning dînèrent from what it expresses,—a 
meaning which there should be nothing in the language 
to indicate. Such a piece may be compared to the 
^sopic 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 meta 
phorical pieces of the She. Often, moreover, the moral 
of the fable is subjoined to it, which never is done in the 
case of these pieces. The best specimen of such a com 
position is the second ode of Book xv., Part I., where 
we hear only the plaint of a bird, whose young, reared 
by her with toil, have been destroyed by an owl, and who 
is afraid that her nest will also be destroyed. We know, 
however, from the Book of History, that the writer, the 
duke of Chow, intended himself by the bird, and that he 
wished in the piece to vindicate the stern course which 
he had adopted to put down the rebellion of some of 
his brothers. 

The allusive pieces are more numerous than the me 
taphorical. 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 

PECULIARITIES IN THEIR STEUCTUEE. 

G9 

each, stanza has allusive lines peculiar to itself. These are 
for the most part descriptive of some objector 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 the lines which 
follow, as in I. i. IV., where an English poet would begin 
the verses with Like or As. They are in reality meta 
phorical, but the difference between an allusive and a 
metaphorical piece is this,—that in the former the poet 
proceeds to state the theme which he is occupied with, 
while no such intimation is given in the latter. Some 
times, however, it is difficult to discover the metaphorical 
element in the allusive lines, and we can only deal with 
them as a sort of refrain, strangely placed at the begin 
ning of the verses. Chinese critics do not scruple to say that 
there are many cases in which it is impossible to find any 
meaning in the allusive lines akin to what is subsequently 
said. I cannot persuade myself, however, that the poets 
ever wrote in such a random style ; and the fresh and 
careful study of each piece, required in preparing the 
present volume, enabled me to see a good and suitable 
meaning in many .lines, of whose force I had previously 
enjoyed but a dim and vague perception, and even in some 
lines where the meaning had eluded all the critics. My 
rule has been to bring out in the English verse the con 
nexion between the allusive lines and those that follow ; 
and this is the principal reason why my stanzas are 
frequently longer than those of the Chinese text. Occa 
sionally, where the connexion was sufficiently evident, I 
have made no addition to show it. More rarely, I have 
been obliged to leave the connexion in obscurity, as being 
myself unable to perceive it. 

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

Chinese critics make a further distinctiou of the pieces, 
especially in the first three Parts, into correct and changed, 
or pieces of an age of good government, and pieces of a 
degenerate age. Such a distinction was made at a very 
early time ; but it is of little importance. Many pieces 
ranked in the second and inferior class are in their spirit 
and style equal, and more than equal, to any in the other. 

 Ί! 

40 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF FOETEY. 

41 

CHAPTER TV. 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETRY, CONSIDERED IN 

RELATION TO THE EXTENT OF ITS TERRITORY, AND 

ITS POLITICAL STATE; ITS RELIGION; AND 

SOCIAL CONDITION. 

1. A GLANCE at the map prefixed to this chapter will 
give the reader an idea of the extent of the kingdom of 
Chow,—of China as it was during the period to which 
the Book of Poetry belongs. The China of The terrltory 
the present day, what we call China proper, of the kingdom 

, " - υ · ι i · rr,o£ Chow. 

embracing the eighteen provinces, may be 
described in general terms as lying between the 20th and 
40th degrees of north latitude, and the 100th and 121st 
degrees of east longitude, and containing an area of about 
1,300,000 square miles. The China of the Chow dynasty 
lay between the 33rd and 38th parallels of latitude, and 
the 106th and 119th of longitude. The degrees of longi 
tude included in it were thus about two-thirds of the 
present ; and of the 20 degrees of latitude the territory 
of Chow embraced no more than five. It extended nearly 
to the limit of the present boundaries on the north and 
west, because it was from the north, along the course of 
the Yellow river, that the first Chinese settlers had come 
into the country, and it was again from the west of the 
Yellow river that the chiefs of the Chow family and their 
followers pushed their way to the east, and took posses 
sion of the tracts on both sides of that river, which had 
been occupied, nearly to the sea, by the dynasties of Hëa 
and Shang. The position of the present departmental 
city of Pin-chow,in which neighbourhood we find duke Lew 
with his people emerging into notice, in the beginning of 
the 18th century before our era, is given as in lat. 35° 
4', and long. 105° 46'. 

The She says nothing of the division of the country 
under the Chow dynasty into the nine Chow or provinces, 
of which we read so much in the third Part of the Shoo, 
in connection with the labours of Yu. Four times in the 

 42 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OP POETET. 

Books of Chow in the She that famous personage is men 
tioned with honour,1 but the sphere in which his action is 
referred to does not extend beyond the country in the 
neighbourhood of the Ho before it turns to flow to the 
east, and there is reason to believe that he did here ac 
complish a most meritorious work. Twice he is men 
tioned in the sacrificial odes of Shang, and there the 
predicates of him are on a larger scale, but without dis 
tinct specification ; but T'ang, the founder of the dynasty, 
is represented as receiving from God the " nine regions,'"2 
and appointed to be a model to the " nine circles "3 of 
the land. These nine regions and nine circles were 
probably the nine Cliow of the Shoo ; and though no 
similar language is found in the She respecting the first 
kings of Chow, their dominion, according to the Official 
book of the dynasty,4 was divided into nine provinces, 
seven of which bear the same names as those in the Shoo. 
We have no Seu-chow, which extended along the sea on 
the east from IVing-chow to the Këang river, and Chinese 
scholars tell us, contrary to the evidence of the She and 
of the Tso-chuen, that it was absorbed in the Ts'ing pro 
vince of Chow. In the same way they say that Yu's 
Lëang-chow on the west, extending to his Yung-chow, 
was absorbed in Chow's Yung. The number of nine 
provinces was kept up by dividing Yu's K'e-chow in the 
north into three ;—Kfe to the east, Ping in the west, and 
Yew in the north and centre. The disappearance of Seu 
and Lëang suíBciently shows that the kings of Chow had 
no real sway over the country embraced in them ; and 
though the names of Yang and King, extending south 
from the Këang, were retained, it was merely a retention 
of the names, as indeed the dominion of China south of 
the Këang in earlier times had never been anything but 
nominal. The last ode of the She, which is also the last 
of the Sacrificial odes of the Shang dynasty, makes men 
tion of the subjugation of the tribes of King, or King- 
ts'oo, by king Woo-ting (B.C. 1323—1263) ; but, as I 
have shown on that ode, its genuineness is open to sus- 

1 See II. vi. VI. 1 : III. i. X. 5 ; iii. VII. 1 : IV. ii. IV. 1. 

* IV. iii. IV. 1 ; V. 3. 3 IV. iii. III. 1. 7 and IV. 3 

4 Ch. XXXIII. 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 

43 

picion. The 9th ode of Book iii., Part TH., relates, in a 
manner full of military ardour, an expedition conducted 
by king Seuen in person to reduce the States of the south 
to order ; but it was all confined to the region of Seu, and 
in that to operations against the barbarous hordes north 
of the Hwae. The 8th ode of the same Book gives an 
account of an expedition, sent by the saine king Seueu 
under an earl of Shaou, to start from the point where the 
Këang and Han unite, to act against the tribes south of 
the Hwae, between it and the Këang, and to open up the 
country and establish States in it after the model of the 
king's own State. All this was done " as far as the 
southern Sea," which did not extend therefore beyond 
the mouth of the Këang. Ode 5th, still of the same 
Book, describes the appointment of an uncle of king 
Seuen to be marquis of Shin, and the measures taken to 
establish him there, with his chief town in what is now 
the department of Nan-yang, Ho-nan, as a bulwark 
against the encroachments of the wild tribes of the south. 
Now Seuen was a sovereign of extraordinary vigour and 
merit, and is celebrated as having restored the kingdom 
to its widest limits under Woo and Ch'ing ; and after his 
death the process of decay went on more rapidly and 
disastrously even than it had done during several reigns 
that preceded his. During the period of the Ch'un Ts'ëw, 
the princes of Ts'oo, Woo, and Yueh, to whom belonged 
Yu's provinces of Yang, King, and Lëang, all claimed 
the title of king, and aimed at the sovereignty of the 
States of the north,—to wrest the sceptre from the kings 
of Chow. The China of Chow did not extend beyond 
the limits which I have assigned it, and which are indi 
cated by the imperfect oval marked on the map, hardly 
reaching half way from the Yellow river to what is now 
called the Yang-tsze Këang. The country held by the 
kings themselves, often styled the royal State, lay along the 
Wei and the Ho for about five degrees of longitude, but 
it was not of so great extent from north to south. It was, 
moreover, being continually encroached upon by the 
growing States of Ts'oo on the south, Ts'in on the west, 
and Tsin on the north, till it was finally extinguished by 
Ts'in, which subdued also all the feudal States, changed 
the feudal kingdom into a despotic empire, and extended 

 44 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETRY. 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 

45 

II 
¡I 

; \ 

its boundaries to the soutli far beyond tliose of any 
former period. 

2. In the prolegomena to the Shoo I have mentioned 
the extravagant statements of Chinese writers, that at 
a great durhar held by Yu the feudal princes amounted 
to 10,000 ; that, when the Shang dynasty superseded the 
house of Yu, the princes were reduced to about 3000 ; 
and that, when Shang was superseded in its turn by 
Chow, they were only 1773. The absurdity of the 
lowest of these numbers cannot be exposed better than 
by the fact that the districts into which the empire of 
the present day, in all its eighteen provinces, is divided 
are not quite 1300. But in the Book of Poetry, as has 
been pointed out already, we have odes of only about a 
dozen States ; and all the States or territorial divisions, 
mentioned in the Chcun Ts'ew and Tso-chnen, including 
the outlying regions of Ts'oo, Woo, and Yueh, with 
appanages in the royal domain, attached territories in 
the larger States, and the barbarous tribes on the east, 
west, north, and south, are only 198. In the " Anna- 
listic Tables of the successive dynasties," published in 
1803, the occurrences in the kingdom of Chow, from its 
commencement in B.C. 1121 clown to 403, are arranged 
under thirteen States, and from 402 down to its extinc 
tion in B.C. 225, under seven States. 

The principal States which come before us in the She 
states mention- are Ts'in, lying west from the royal domain, 
ed in the she. & considerable part of which was granted to 
it in B.C. 759 ; Tsin, having the Ho on the west, and 
lying to the north of the royal domain ; then to the east, 
Wei, on the north of the Ho, and Ch'ing on the south 
of it, with Heu and Ch'in extending south from Ch'ing. 
East from Ch'ing, and south of the Ho, was Sung, a 
dukedom held by descendants of the royal family of the 
Shang dynasty. North from Sung was the marquisate 
of Ts'aou ; and north from it again was Loo, held by 
the descendants of Tan, the famous duke of Chow, to 
whose political wisdom, as much as to the warlike enter 
prise of his brother king Woo, was due the establishment 
of the dynasty. Conterminous with the northern border 
of Loo, and extending to the waters of what is now 
called the gulf of Pih-chih-le, was the powerful State of 

Tsre. Yen, mentioned in III. iii. VII. 6, lay north and 
east from Ts'e. The subject of that ode is a marquis of 
Han, who appears to have played a more noticeable part 
in the time of king Seuen, than any of his family who 
went before or came after him did. His principality was 
on the west of the Ho, covering the present department 
of T'ung-chow, Shen-se, and perhaps some adjacent 
territory. The ode commences with a reference to the 
labours of Yu which made the country capable of cultiva 
tion, but much of it must still have been marsh and 
forest in the time of king Seuen, for mention is made of 
its large streams and meres, and of the multitudes of its 
deer, wild-cats, bears, and tigers. 

The princes of these States, distinguished among them 
selves by the titles of Kung, How, Pih, Tsze, and Nan, 
which may most conveniently be expressed by duke, 
marquis, earl, count or viscount, and baron, were mostly 
Kes, offshoots from the royal stem of Chow. So it was 
with those of Loo, Ts'aou, Wei, Ch'ing, Tsiu, Yen, and 
Han. Sung, it has been stated, was held by descendants 
of the kings of Shang, who were therefore Tszes. The 
first marquis of Ts'e, was Shaug-foo, a chief counsellor 
and military leader under kings Wan and Woo. He 
was a Këang, and would trace his liueage up to the chief 
minister of Yaou, as did also the barons of Heu. The 
marquises of Ch'in were Kweis, claiming to be descended 
from the ancient Shun. The earls of Ts'in were Yings, 
and boasted for their ancestor LJih-yih, who appears in 
the Shoo, II. i. 22, as forester to Shun. The sacrifices 
to Yu, and his descendants, the sovereigns of the Hëa 
dynasty, were maintained by the lords of Ke, who were 
consequently Szes, but that State is not mentioned in the 
She. 

All these princes held their lands by royal grant at the 
commencement of the dynasty, or subsequently. I have 
touched slightly on the duties which they owed to the 
king of Chow as their suzerain in the prolegomena to 
the Shoo, and I do not enter further on them here. A 
more appropriate place for exhibiting them, and the re 
lations which the States maintained with one another, 
will be in the prolegomena to the Chun Ts'ew and the 
-Iso-chuen. 

\ 

 46 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETEY. 

Religious views. 

3. The Book of Poetry abundantly confirms the con 
clusion drawn from the Shoo-king that the ancient 
Chinese had some considerable knowledge of God. The 
names given to Him are Te, which we commonly trans 
late emperor or rider, and Shauy Te, the 
Supreme Ruler. My own opinion, as I have 
expressed and endeavoured to vindicate it in various pub 
lications on the term to be employed in translating in 
Chinese the Hebrew Elohim and Greek Theo«, is that Te 
corresponds exactly to them, and should be rendered in 
English by God. He is also called in the She " the 
great and sovereign God/'1 and " the bright and glorious 
God ; " 2 but, as in the Shoo, the personal appellation is 
interchanged with T'ëen, Heaven ; Shang T'ëen, Supreme 
Heaven; Haou T'ëen, Great Heaven ; Hivamj T'ëen, Great 
or August Heaven; καά Η in Teen, Compassionate IL'acen. 
The two styles are sometimes combined, as in III. iii. 
TV., where we have the forms of Shany Te, Ηαοιι T'ëen, 
and Haou T'ëen Shanij Te, which last seems to me to 
mean—God dwelling in the great heaven. 

God appears especially as the ruler of men and this 
lower world.3 He appointed grain for the nourishment 
of all.4 He watches especially over the conduct of kings, 
whose most honourable designation is that of "Son of 
Heaven." 5 While they reverence Him, and administer 
their high duties in His fear, and with reference to His 
will, taking His ways as their pattern, He maintains them, 
smells the sweet savour of their offerings, and blesses them 
and their people with abundance and general prosperity." 
When they become impious and negligent of their duties, 
He punishes them, takes from them the throne, and 
appoints others in their place.' His appointments come 
from His fore-knowledge and fore-ordination.7 

Sometimes he appears to array Himself in terrors, and 
the course of His providence is altered.8 The evil in the 
State is ascribed to Him.8 Heaven is called uiipitying.8 
But this is His strange work ; in judgment ; and to call 

1 IV. ii. IV. 3. 2 rv. i. [ii.] I. 
3 E.g., III. i. VII. 1 ; iii. I. I. 4 IV. i. [i.] X 

5 Er/., II. i. VIII. 1, 3 ; IV. i. [i.] VIII. 

6 EJJ., II. i. VI.; III. i. I.; VII. 7 ; IV. ii. IV. 

7 III. i. VII. 1, a. " III. \\. X.; iii. I. 1 ; II. iv. VII.: und often. 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 

47 

men to repentance.1 He hates no one ; and it is not He 
who really causes the evil time :—that is a consequence of 
forsaking the old and right ways of government.2 In 
giving birth to the multitudes of the people, He gives to 
them a good nature, but few are able to keep it, and hold 
out good to the end.3 In one ode, II. vii. X., a fickle 
and oppressive king is called Shang Te in bitter irony. 

While the ancient Chinese thus believed in God, and 
thns conceived of Him, they believed in other Spirits 
under Him, some presiding over hills and rivers, and 
others dwelling in the heavenly bodies. In fact there 
was no object to which a tutelary Spirit might not at 
times be ascribed, and no place where the approaches of 
spiritual Beings might not be expected, and ought not to 
be provided for by the careful keeping of the heart and 
ordering of the conduct.4 In the legend of How-tseih 
(III. ii. I.), we have a strange story of his mother's preg 
nancy being caused by her treading on a toe-print made 
by God. In III. iii. V. a Spirit is said to have been sent 
down from the great mountains, and to have given birth 
to the princes of Foo and Shin. In IV. i. [i.] VIII. 
king Woo is celebrated as having attracted and given re 
pose to all spiritual Beings, even to the Spirits of the Ho 
and the highest mountains. In II. v. IX., the writer, 
when deploring the sufferings caused to the States of the 
east by misgovernment and oppression, suddenly raises a 
complaint of the host of heaven;—the Milky way, the 
Weaving sisters (three stars in Lyra), the Draught oxen 
(some stars in Aquila), Lucifer, Hesperus, the Hyades, 
the Sieve (part of Sagittarius), and the Ladle (also in 
Sagittarius) :—all idly occupying their places, and giving 
no help to the afflicted country. In no other ode do we 
have a similar exhibition of Sabían views. Mention is 
made in HI. iii. IV. 5 of the demon of drought ; and we 
find sacrifices offered to the Spirits of the ground and of 
the four quarters of the sky/ to the Father of hus 
bandry," the Father of war/ and the Spirit of the p.ith.8 

These last three, however, were probably the Spirits of 

HI. ii. X. 8 ; and often. 

3 III. iii. I. 1. 
5 II. vi. VII. 2 ; et al. 
7 III. i. VII. 8. 

II. iv. VIII. 4 ; III. iii. I. 5. Χ. δ. 
' III. iii. II. 7. 
6 If. vi. VIII. 2: et al. 
* III. ii. 1. 7, et al. 

 48 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETEY. 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETEY. 

49 

departed men. A belief in the continued existence of the 
dead in a spirit-state, and in the duty of their descendants 
to maintain by religious worship a connection with them, 
have been characteristics of the Chinese people from their 
first appearance in history. The first and third Books of 
the last Part of the She profess to consist of sacrificial 
odes used in the temple services of the kings of Chow and 
Shang. Some of them are songs of praise and thanks 
giving ; some are songs of supplication ; and others relate 
to the circumstances of the service, describing the occasion 
of it, or the parties present and engaging in it. The 
ancestors worshipped are invited to come and accept the 
homage and offerings presented ; and in one (IV. i. [i.] 
VII.) it is said that "king Wan, the Blesser," has 
descended, and accepted the offerings. 

The first stanza of III. i. I. describes king Wan after 
his death as being " on high, bright in heaven, ascending 
and descending on the left and the right of God," and 
the 9th ode of the same Book affirms that Wan, his father, 
and grandfather, were associated in heaven. The early 
Chinese, as I have just said, did not suppose that man 
ceased all to be, when his mortal life terminated. We 
know, indeed, from the Tso-cliuen, that scepticism on this 
point had begun to spread among the higher classes 
before the time of Confucius, and we know that the sage 
himself would neither affirm nor deny it ; but that their 
dead lived on in another state was certainly the belief of 
the early ages with which we have now to do, as it is still 
the belief of the great majority of the Chinese people. 
But the She is as silent as the Shoo-king as to any puni 
tive retribution hereafter. There are rewards and dignity 
for the good after death, but nothing is said of any 
punishment for the bad. In one ode, indeed (II. v. VI. 
6), a vague feeling betrays itself in the writer, that after 
every other method to deal with proud slanderers had 
failed, Heaven might execute justice upon them ;—but it 
may be that he had only their temporal punishment in 
view. The system of ancestral worship prevented the 
development of a different view on this subject. The 
tyrant-oppressor took his place in the temple, there to be 
feasted, and worshipped, and prayed to, in his proper order, 
as much as the greatest benefactor of his people. I have 

pointed out, on III. iii. IV. 5, how king Seuen, in his 
distress in consequence of the long-continued drought, 
prays to his parents, though his father king Le had been 
notoriously wicked and worthless; and how endeavours 
have been made to explain away the simple text, from a 
wish, probably, to escape from the honour which it would 
seem to give to one so undeserving of it. 

4. The odes do not speak of the worship which was paid 
to God, unless it be incidentally. There were two grand 
occasions on which it was rendered by the Beiigious cere- 
sovereign,—the summer and winter solstices. monies· 
The winter sacrifice is often described as offered to Heaven, 
and the summer one to earth ; but we have the testimony 
of Confucius, in the Doctrine of the Mean, ch. XIX., that 
the object of them both was to serve Shang Te. Of the 
ceremonies used on those occasions I do not here speak, 
as there is nothing said about them in the She. Whether 
besides these two there were other sacrifices to God, at 
stated periods in the course of the year, is a point on which 
the opinions of the Chinese scholars themselves are very 
much divided. I think that there were, and that we have 
some intimation of two of them. IV. i. [i.] X. is addressed 
to How-tseih, as having proved himself the correlate to 
Heaven, in teaching men to cultivate the grain which God 
appointed for the nourishment of all. This was appro 
priate to a sacrifice in spring, which was offered to God, 
to seek His blessing on the agricultural labours of the 
year, How-tseih, as the ancestor of the House of Chow, 
and the great improver of agriculture, being associated 
with Him in it. IV. i. [i.] VII-, again, was appropriate 
to a sacrifice to God in autumn, in the Hall of Light, at 
a great audience to the feudal princes, when king Wan 
was associated with Him, as being the founder of the 
dynasty of Chow. 

Of the ceremonies at the sacrifices in the royal temple 
of ancestors, in the first months of the four seasons of 
the year, we have much information in several odes. 
They were preceded by fasting and various purifications 
on the part of the king and the parties who were to 
assist in the performance of them.1 There was a great 
concourse of the feudal princes,2 and much importance 

1 HI. ii. I. 7. 

VOL. III. 

2 IV. i. [i.] I., IV.; et al. 

 50 THE CHINA OP THE BOOK OP POETRY. 

was attached to the presence among them of the repre 
sentatives of the former dynasties ; * but the duties of 
the Occasion devolved mainly on the princes of the same 
surname as the royal House. Libations of fragrant 
spirits were made to attract the Spirits, and their pre 
sence was invoked by a functionary who took his place 
inside the principal gate.2 The principal victim, a red 
bull, was killed by the king himself, using for the pur 
pose a knife to the handle of which were attached small 
bells.3 "With this he laid bare the hair, to show that the 
animal was of the required colour, inflicted the wound 
of death, and cut away the fat, which was burned 
along with southernwood, to increase the inceuse and 
fragrance.3 Other victims were numerous, and II. vi. V. 
describes all engaged in the service as greatly exhausted 
with what they had to do, flaying the carcases, boiling 
the flesh, roasting it, broiling it, arranging it on trays 
and stands, and setting it forth.4 Ladies from the harem 
are present, presiding and assisting ; music peals ; the 
cup goes round.4 The description is as much that of a 
feast as of a sacrifice ; and in fact, those great seasonal 
Occasions were what we might call grand family reunions, 
where the dead and the living met, eating aud drinking 
together, where the living worshipped the dead, and the 
dead blessed the living. 

This characteristic of these ceremonies appeared most 
strikingly in the custom which required that the de 
parted ancestors should be represented by living indi 
viduals of the same surname, chosen according to certain, 
rules which the odes do not mention. They took for the 
time the place of the dead, received the honours which 
were due to them, and were supposed to be possessed by 
their Spirits. They ate and drank as those whom they 
personated would have done ; accepted for them the 
homage rendered by their descendants ; communicated 
their will to the principal in the sacrifice or feast, and 
pronounced on him and his line their benediction, being- 
assisted in this point by a mediating priest, as we must 
call him for want of a better term. On the next day. 

THE CHINA OP THE BOOK OP POETET. 

51 

1 III. i. I. 4, 5 ; IV. i [ii.] III. 
3 II. ii. VI. 5. 

2 II. vi. V. 2. 
4 II. vi. V. 

after a summary repetition of the ceremonies of the 
sacrifice, these personators of the dead were specially 
feasted, and so, as it is expressed in III. ii. IV., "their 
happiness and dignity were made complete." We have 
an allusion to this strange custom in Mencius (VI. Pt i. 
V.), showing how a junior member of a family, when 
chosen to represent at the sacrifice one of his ancestors, 
was for the time exalted above his elders, and received 
the demonstrations of reverence due to the ancestor. 
This custom probably originated under the Chow dynasty, 

—one of the regulations made by the duke of Chow ; 
and subsequently to it, it fell into disuse. 

When the sacrifice to ancestors was finished, the king 
feasted his uncles and younger brothers or cousins, that 
is, all the princes and nobles of the same surname with 
himself, in another apartment. The musicians who hud 
discoursed with instrument and voice during the worship 
and entertainment of the ancestors, followed the con 
vivial party, " to give their soothing aid at the second 
blessing." * The viands, which had been provided, we 
have seen, in great abundance, aud on which little im 
pression could thus far have been made, were brought in 
from the temple, and set forth anew. The guests ate to 
the full and drank to the full ; and at the conclusion they 
all bowed their heads, while one of them declared the 
satisfaction of the Spirits with the services rendered to 
them, and assured the king of their favour to him and 
his posterity, so long as they did not neglect those 
observances.1 During the feast the king showed parti 
cular respect to those amoug his relatives who were aged, 
filled their cups again and again, and desired that'"their 
old age might be blessed, and their bright happiness 
ever increased." 2 

The above sketch of the seasonal sacrifices to ancestors 
shows that they were mainly designed to maintain the 
unity of the family connection, and intimately related to 
the duty of filial piety. Yet by means of them the 
ancestors Of the kings were raised to the position of the 

•Îutelary Spirits of the dynasty ; aud the ancestors of 
each family became its Tutelary Spirits. Several of the 
Pieces in Part IV., it is to be observed, are appropriate 

1 II. TÍ. V. 6. 

III. ii. II. 4. 

 52 

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to sacrifices offered to some one monarch. They 
would be celebrated on particular occasions connected 
with his achievements in the past, or when it was sup 
posed that his help would be specially valuable in con 
templated enterprises. 

There were also other services performed in the temple 
of ancestors which were of less frequent occurrence, and 
all known by the name of te. That term was applied in 
a restricted sense to the annual sacrifice of the summer 
season ; but there were also " the fortunate te," when 
the Spirit-tablet of a deceased monarch was solemnly 
set up in its proper place in the temple, 25 months after 
his death ; and " the great te," called also Jieah, cele 
brated once in five years, when all the ancestors of the 
royal House were sacrificed to, beginning with the 
mythical emperor Kuh, to whom their lineage was traced. 
There is no description in the She of the ceremonies used 
on those occasions. 

With regard to all the ceremonies of the ancestral 
temple, Confucius gives the following account of them 
and the purposes they were intended to serve in the 
Doctrine of the Mean, ch. XIX. 4 :—" By means of them 
they distinguished the royal kindred according to their 
order of descent. By arranging those present according 
to their rank, they distinguished the more noble and the 
less. By the apportioning of duties at them, they made 
a distinction of talents and worth. In the ceremony of 
general pledging, the inferiors presente'd the cup to their 
superiors, and thus something was given to the lowest to 
do. At the [concluding] feast, places were given ac 
cording to the hair, and thus was marked the distinction 
of years." 

5. The habits and manners of the ancient Chinese 
Manners and generally, as they may be learned from the 
cune™ teñe?- She, will be found set forth in a variety of 
al'y- particulars in an essay by M. Edouard Biot, 
whose early death was a great calamity to the cause of 
Chinese study. It appeared in the Journal Asiatique 
for November and December, 1843. It was not possible 
for him in his circumstances, and depending so much as 
he did on Lacharme's translation of the odes, to avoid 
falling into some mistakes. The pioneers in a field of 

THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 

53 

literature so extensive as the Chinese could not but fall 
into many devious tracks. It is only by degrees that 
Sinologues are attaining to the proper accuracy in their 
representations of the subjects which they take in hand. 
On two or three points I subjoin some additional observ 
ations. 

i. That filial piety or duty is the first of all virtues is 
a well-known principle of Chinese moralists ; and at the 
foundation of a well-ordered social State they place the 
right regulation of the relation between husband and 
wife. Pages might be filled with admirable sentiments 
from them on this subject ; but nowhere does a funda 
mental vice of the family and social constitution of the 
nation appear more strikingly than in the She. In the 
earliest pieces of it, as well as in the latest, The low status 
we have abundant evidence of the low status of woman, and 
which was theoretically accorded to woman, poygamy· 
and of the practice of polygamy. Biot has referred to 
the evidence furnished by the last two stanzas of II. iv. 
VI. of the different way in which the birth of sons and 
that of daughters was received in a family. The family 
there, indeed, is the royal family, but the king to whom 
the ode is believed to refer was one of excellent 
character ; and the theory of China is that the lower 
classes are always conformed to the example of those 
above them. The sentiments expressed in that ode are 
those of every class of the Chinese, ancient and modem. 
\Vhile the young princes would be splendidly dressed 
and put to sleep on couches, the ground to sleep on and 
coarse wrappers suffice for the princesses. The former 
would have sceptres to play with ; the latter only tiles. 
The former would be-—one of them the future king, the 
others the princes of the land; the latter would go 
beyond their province if they did wrong or if they did 
right, all their work being confined to the kitchen and 
tlie temple, and to causing no sorrow to their parents. 
The line which says that it was for daughters neither to 
do wrong nor to do good was translated by Dr Morrison 
as if it said that "woman was incapable of good or 
evil ; " but he subjoins from a commentary the correct 
meaning,—that " a slavish submission is woman's duty 
and her highest praise." She onght not to originate 

 54 THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 

anything, but to be satisfied with doing in all loyal sub 
jection what is prescribed to her to do. In I. i. I a 
bride is compared to a dove, but the point of comparison 
lies in the stupidity of the bird, whose nest consists of a 
few sticks brought inartistically together. It is no un 
desirable thing for a wife to be stupid, whereas a wise 
woman is more likely to be a curse in a family than a 
blessing. As it is expressed in III. iii. X. 8, 

" A wise man builds up the wall [of a city], 
But a wise woman overthrows it. 
Admirable may be the wise woman, 
But she is no better than an owl. 
A woman with a long tongue 
Is [like] a stepping-stone to disorder. 
Disorder does not come down from heaven ;— 
It is produced by the woman. 
Those from whom come no lessons, no instruction, 
Are women and eunuchs." 

The marquis D' Hervey Saint-Denys, in the introduc 
tion to his Poetry of the T'ang dynasty, p. 19, gives a 
different account of the status of the woman anciently in 
China. He says :— 

" The wife of the ancient poems is the companion of a spouse who 
takes her counsels, and never speaks to her as a master. She chooses 
freely the man with whose life she will associate her own. Kothing 
shows us as yet polygamy in the Songs of the JĹicnh Futtg, composed be 
tween the 12th and tile 8th century before our era.1 If tradition will 
have it that Yaou gave bis two daughters to Shun in choosing him to 
succeed to the throne