The Shih King, or, Book of Poetry Part 2

Notwithstanding the difficulties that beset this pa.s.sage of the Li Ki, I am not disposed to reject it altogether. It derives a certain amount of confirmation from the pa.s.sage quoted from the Official Book of Kau on p.

278, showing that in the Kau dynasty there was a collection of poems, under the divisions of the Fang, the Ya, and the Sung, which it was the business of the Grand, Music-Master to teach the musicians of the court.

It may be accepted then, that the duke of Kau, in legislating for his dynasty, enacted that the poems produced in the different feudal states should be collected on occasion of the royal progresses, and lodged thereafter among the archives of the bureau of music at the royal court.

The same thing, we may presume a fortiori, would be done, at certain other stated times, with those produced within the royal domain itself.

The music-master of the king would get the odes of each state from its music-master.

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 particular state, so that the Grand Music Master could have the opportunity to collect the odes in it for himself. They met, at well-known points, the marquises, earls, barons, &c., of the different quarters of the kingdom; there gave audience to them; adjudicated on their merits, and issued to them their orders. We are obliged to suppose that the princes were attended to the places of rendezvous by their music-masters, carrying with them the poetical compositions gathered in their several regions, to present them to their superior of the royal court. We can understand how, by means of the above arrangement, the poems of the whole kingdom were acc.u.mulated and arranged among the archives of the capital.

How the collected poems were disseminated through the states.

Was there any provision for disseminating thence the poems of one state among all the others? There is sufficient evidence that such dissemination was effected out in some way. Throughout the Narratives of the States, and the details of Zo Khiu-ming on the history of the Spring and Autumn, 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 appear equally well acquainted with all the Parts and Books of our present s.h.i.+h; and we saw how the whole of it was sung over to Ki Ka of Wu, when he visited the court of Lu in the boyhood of Confucius. There was, probably, a regular communication from the royal court to the courts of the various states of the poetical pieces that for one reason or another were thought worthy of preservation. This is nowhere expressly stated, but it may be contended for by a.n.a.logy from the accounts which I have given, in the Introduction to the Shu, pp. 4, 5, of the duties of the royal historiographers or recorders.

How the s.h.i.+h is so small and incomplete.

2. But if the poems produced in the different states were thus collected in the capital, and thence again disseminated 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 is to be accounted for by the disorder into which the kingdom fell after the lapse of a few reigns from king Wu. Royal progresses ceased when royal government fell into decay, and then the odes were no more collected[1]. We have no account of any progress of the kings during the Khun Khiu period. But before that period there is a long gap of nearly 150 years between kings Khang and i, covering the reigns of Khang, Kao, Mu, and Kung, if we except two doubtful pieces among the Sacrificial Odes of Kau. The reign of Hsiao, who succeeded to i, is similarly uncommemorated; and the latest odes are of the time of Ting, when 100 years of the Khun Khiu period had still to run their course. Many odes must have been made and collected during the 140 and more years after king Khang. The probability is that they perished during the feeble reigns of i and the three monarchs who followed him. Then came the long and vigorous reign of Hsuan (B.C. 827 to 782), when we may suppose that the ancient custom of collecting the poems was revived. After him all was in the main decadence and confusion. It was probably in the latter part of his reign that King-khao, an ancestor of Confucius, obtained from the Grand Music-Master at the court of Kau twelve of the sacrificial odes of the previous dynasty, as will be related under the Sacrificial Odes of Shang, with which he returned to Sung,

[1. See Mencius, IV, ii, ch. 21.]

which was held by representatives of the line of Shang. They were used there in sacrificing to the old Shang kings; yet seven of the twelve were lost before the time of the sage.

The general conclusion to which we come is, that the existing s.h.i.+h is the fragment of various collections made during the early reigns of the kings of Kau, and added to at intervals, especially on the occurrence of a prosperous rule, in accordance with the regulation that has been preserved in the Li Ki. How it is that we have in Part I odes of comparatively few of the states into which the kingdom was divided, and that the odes of those states extend only over a short period of their history:--for these things we cannot account further than by saying that such were the ravages of time arid the results of disorder. We can only accept the collection as it is, and be thankful for it. How long before Confucius the collection was closed we cannot tell.

Bearing of these views on the interpretation of particular pieces.

3. The conclusions which I have thus sought to establish concerning the formation of the s.h.i.+h as a collection have an important bearing on the interpretation of many of the pieces. The remark of Sze-ma Khien that Confucius selected those pieces which would be service able for the inculcation of propriety and righteousness' is as erroneous as the other, that be selected 305 pieces out of more than 3000. The sage merely studied and taught the pieces which he found existing, and the collection necessarily contained odes ill.u.s.trative 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 Ku Hsi's interpretation of the pieces as the readiness with which he attributes a licentious meaning to many of those in the seventh Book of Part I. But the reason why the kings had the odes of the different states collected and presented to them was, 'that they might judge from them of the manners of the people,' and so come to a decision regarding 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 by references to vice in some of them than by the language of virtue in many others. Confucius said, indeed, in his own enigmatical way, that the single sentence, 'Thought without depravity,' covered the whole 300 pieces[1]; and it may very well be allowed that they 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, moral, and religious habits of the people.

The writers of the odes.

The pieces were of course made by individuals who possessed the gift, or thought that they possessed the gift, of poetical composition. Who they were we could tell only on the authority of the pieces themselves, or of credible historical accounts, contemporaneous with them or nearly so. It is not worth our while to question the opinion of the Chinese critics who attribute very many of them to the duke of Kau, to whom we owe so much of the fifth Part of the Shu). There is, however, independent testimony only to his composition of a single ode,--the second of the fifteenth Book in Part I [2]. Some of the other pieces in that Part, of which the historical interpretation may be considered as sufficiently fixed, are written in the first person; but the author may be personating his subject.

In Part II, the seventh ode of decade 2 was made by a, Kia-fu, a n.o.ble of the royal court, but we know nothing more about him; the sixth of decade 6, by a eunuch styled Mang-Dze; and the sixth of decade 7, from a concurrence of external testimonies, should be ascribed to duke Wu of Wei, B.C. 812 to 758.

In the third decade of Part III, the second piece was composed by the same duke Wu; the third by an earl of Zui in the royal domain; the fourth must have been made by one of king, Hsuan's ministers, to express the king's

[1. a.n.a.lects, II, ii.

2. See the Shu, V, vi, par. 3.]

feelings under the drought that was exhausting the kingdom; and the fifth and sixth claim to be the work of Yin Ki-fu, one of Hsuan's princ.i.p.al officers.

4. The ninth ode of the fourth Book, Part II, gives us a note of time that enables us to fix the year of its composition in a manner entirely satisfactory, and proves also the correctness, back to that date, of the ordinary Chinese chronology. The piece is one of a group which their contents lead us to refer to the reign of king Yu, the son of Hsuan, B.C. 781 to 771. When we examine the chronology of his period, it is said that in his sixth year, B.C. 776, there was an eclipse of the sun.

Now the ode commences:--

'At the conjunction (of the sun and moon) in the tenth month, on the first day of the moon, which was Hsin-mao, the sun was eclipsed.'

This eclipse is verified by calculation as having taken place in B.C.

776, on August 29th, the very day and month a.s.signed to it in the poem.

The Preface to the s.h.i.+h.

5. In the Preface which appeared along with Mao's text of the s.h.i.+h, the occasion and authors.h.i.+p of many of the odes are given; but I do not allow much weight to its testimony. It is now divided into the Great Preface and the Little Preface; but Mao himself made no such distinction between its parts. It will be sufficient for me to give a condensed account of the views of Ku Hsi on the subject:--

'Opinions of scholars are much divided as to the authors.h.i.+p of the Preface. Some ascribe it to Confucius; some to (his disciple) Dze-hsia, and some to the historiographers of the states. In the absence of clear testimony it is impossible to decide the point, but the notice about Wei Hung (first century) in the Literary Biographies of Han[1] would seem to make it clear that the Preface was

[1. The account is this: 'Hung became the disciple of Hsieh Man-khing, who was famous for his knowledge of Mao's s.h.i.+h; and he afterwards made the Preface to it, remarkable for the accuracy with which it gives the meaning of the pieces in the Fang and the Ya, and which is now current in the world.']

his work. We must take into account, however, on the other hand, the statement of King Khang-khang, that the Preface existed as a separate doc.u.ment when Mao 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 Hung merely added to it, and rounded it off. In accordance with this, scholars generally bold that the first sentences in the introductory notices formed the original Preface, which Mao distributed, and that the following portions were subsequently added.

'This view may appear reasonable; but when we examine those first sentences themselves, we find that some of them do not agree with the obvious meaning of the odes to which they are prefixed, and give only rash and baseless expositions. Evidently, from the first, the Preface was made up of private speculations and conjectures on the subject-matter of the odes, and const.i.tuted a doc.u.ment by itself, separately appended to the text. Then on its first appearance there were current the explanations of the odes that were given in connexion with the texts of Lu, Khi, and Han Ying, so that readers could know that it was the work of later hands, and not give entire credit to it. But when Mao no longer published the Preface as a separate doc.u.ment, but each ode appeared with the introductory notice as a portion of the text, this seemed to give it the authority of the text itself. Then after the other texts disappeared and Mao'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 seemed 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 no one would undertake to say plainly that they were the work of the scholars of the Han dynasty.'

There is no western sinologist, I apprehend, who will not cordially concur with me in the principle of Ku Hsi that we must find the meaning of the poems in the poems themselves, instead of accepting the interpretation of them given by we know not whom, and to follow which would reduce many of them to absurd enigmas.

THE s.h.i.+H KING.

I. ODES OF THE TEMPLE AND THE ALTAR.

IT was stated in the Introduction, p. 278, that the poems in the fourth Part of the s.h.i.+h are the only ones that are professedly religious; and there are some even of them, it will be seen, which have little claim on internal grounds to be so considered.

I commence with them my selections from the s.h.i.+h for the Sacred Books of the Religions of the East. I will give them all, excepting the first two of the Praise Odes of Lu, the reason for omitting which will be found.

when I come to that division of the Part.

The ancestral wors.h.i.+p of the common people.

The Odes of the Temple and the Altar are, most of them, connected with the ancestral wors.h.i.+p of the sovereigns of the Shang and Kau dynasties, and of the marquises of Lu. Of the ancestral wors.h.i.+p of the common people we have almost no information in the s.h.i.+h. It was binding, however, on all, and two utterances of Confucius may be given in ill.u.s.tration of this. In the eighteenth chapter of the Doctrine of the Mean, telling how the duke of Kau, the legislator of the dynasty so called, had 'completed the virtuous course of Wan and Wu, carrying up the t.i.tle of king to Wan's father and grandfather, and sacrificing to the dukes before them with the royal ceremonies,' he adds, And this rule he extended to the feudal princes, the great officers, the other officers, and the common people. In the mourning and other duties rendered to a deceased father or mother, he allowed no difference between the n.o.ble and the mean. Again, his summary in the tenth chapter of the Hsiao King, of the duties of filial piety, is the following:--'A filial son, in serving his parents, in his ordinary intercourse with them, should show the utmost respect; in supplying them with food, the greatest delight; when they are ill, the utmost solicitude; when mourning for their death, the deepest grief; and when sacrificing to them, the profoundest solemnity. When these things are all complete, he is able to serve his parents.'

The royal wors.h.i.+p of ancestors.

Of the ceremonies in the royal wors.h.i.+p of ancestors, and perhaps on some other occasions, we have much information in the pieces of this Part, and in many others in the second and third Parts. They were preceded by fasting and various purifications on the part of the king and the parties who were to a.s.sist in the performance of them. The was a great concourse of the feudal princes, and much importance was attached to the presence among them of the representatives of 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, especially in the Kau period, to attract the Spirits, and their presence was invoked by a functionary who took his place inside the princ.i.p.al gate. The princ.i.p.al victim, a red bull in the temple of Kau, was killed by the king himself, using for the purpose a knife to the handle of which small bells were attached. 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 incense and fragrance. Other victims were numerous, and the fifth ode of the second decade, Part II, 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. Ladies from the palace are present to give their a.s.sistance; music peals; the cup goes round. The description is that of a feast as much 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 and drinking together, where the living wors.h.i.+pped the dead, and the dead blessed the living.

This characteristic of these ceremonies appeared most strikingly in the custom which required that the departed ancestors should be represented by living relatives of the same surname, chosen according to certain rules that are not mentioned in the s.h.i.+h.. These 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 princ.i.p.al in the service, and p.r.o.nounced on him and on his line their benediction, being a.s.sisted in this point by a mediating priest, as we may call him for want of a more exact term. On the next day, after a summary repet.i.tion of the ceremonies of the sacrifice, those personators of the dead were specially feasted, and, as it is expressed in the second decade of Part III, ode 4, 'their happiness and dignity were made complete.' We have an allusion to this strange custom in Mencius (VI, i, ch. 5), showing how a junior member of a family, when chosen to represent one of his ancestors, was for the time exalted above his elders, and received the demonstrations of reverence due to the ancestor.

When the sacrifice to ancestors was finished, the king feasted his uncles and younger brothers or cousins, that is, all the princes and n.o.bles of the same surname with himself, in another apartment. The musicians who had discoursed with instrument and voice during the wors.h.i.+p and entertainment of the ancestors, followed the convivial party 'to give their soothing aid at the second blessing.' The viands that had been provided, we have seen, in great abundance, 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 did obeisance, while one of them declared the satisfaction of the Spirits, and a.s.sured the king of their favour to him and his posterity, so long as they did not neglect those observances. During the feast the king showed particular respect to those among 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.'

The above sketch of the seasonal sacrifices to ancestors shows that they were intimately related to the duty of filial piety, and were designed mainly to maintain the unity of the family connexion. There was implied in them a belief in the continued existence of the spirits of the departed; and by means of them the ancestors of the kings were raised to the position of the Tutelary spirits of the dynasty; and the ancestors of each family became its Tutelary spirits. Several of the pieces in Part IV are appropriate, it will be observed, to sacrifices offered to some one monarch. They would be used on particular occasions connected with his achievements in the past, or when it was supposed that his help would be valuable in contemplated enterprises. With regard to all the ceremonies of the ancestral temple, Confucius gives the following account of the purposes which they were intended to serve, hardly adverting to their religious significance, in the nineteenth chapter of the Doctrine of the Mean:--'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 n.o.ble 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 presented the cup to their superiors, and thus something was given to the lowest to do. At the (concluding) feast places were given according to the hair, and thus was marked the distinction of years.'

The wors.h.i.+p paid to G.o.d.

The s.h.i.+h does not speak of the wors.h.i.+p which was paid to G.o.d, unless it be incidentally. There were two grand occasions on which it was rendered by the sovereign,--the summer and winter solstices. These two sacrifices were offered on different altars, that in winter being often described as offered to Heaven, and that in summer to Earth; but we have the testimony of Confucius, in the nineteenth chapter of the Doctrine of the Mean, that the object of them both was to serve Shang-Ti. Of the ceremonies on these two occasions, however, I do not speak here, as there is nothing said about them in the s.h.i.+h. But there were other sacrifices to G.o.d, at stated periods in the course of the year, of at least two of which we have some intimation in the pieces of this fourth Part. The last in the first decade of the Sacrificial Odes of Kau is addressed to Hau Ki as having proved himself the correlate of Heaven, in teaching men to cultivate the grain which G.o.d had appointed for the nourishment of all. This was appropriate to a sacrifice in spring, offered to G.o.d to seek His blessing on the agricultural labours of the year, Hau Ki, as the ancestor of the House of Kau, being a.s.sociated with Him in it. The seventh piece of the same decade again was appropriate to a sacrifice to G.o.d in autumn, in the Hall of Light, at a great audience to the feudal princes, when king Wan was a.s.sociated with Him as being the founder of the dynasty of Kau.

With these preliminary observations to a.s.sist the reader in understanding the pieces in this Part, I proceed to give--

1. THE SACRIFICIAL ODES OF SHANG.

THESE Odes of Shang const.i.tute the last Book in the ordinary editions of the s.h.i.+h. I put them here in the first place, because they are the oldest pieces in the collection. There are only five of them.