Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1a difference between the pieces of La and the other two collections in this Part, to which I will call attention in giving the translation of them. From the above account of the contents of the Shih, Only the pieces it will be seen that only the pieces in the ofthe fourth last of its four Parts are professedly of a Part have se professedly a 'eligious character. Many of those, however, religious in the other Parts, especially the second and character. : . es . . third, describe religious services, and give expression to religious ideas in the minds of their authors. 3. Some of the pieces in the Shih are ballads, some are songs, some are hymns, and of others the nature can hardly Classification be indicated by any English denomination. of the pieces They have often been spoken of by the dale general name of odes, understanding by that term lyric poems that were set to music. My reason for touching here on this point is the earliest account of the Shih, as a collection either already formed or in the process of formation, that we find in Chinese literature. In the Official Book of K4u, generally supposed to be a work of the twelfth or eleventh century B.C., among the duties of the Grand Music-Master there is ‘the teaching,’ (that is, to the musical performers,) ‘the six classes of poems :—the Fang; the Fa; the Pt; the Hsing; the Ya; and the Sung.’ That the collection of the Shih, as it now is, existed so early as the date assigned to the Official Book could not be; but we find the same account of it given in the so-called Confucian Preface. The Fang, the YA, and the Sung are the four Parts of the classic described in the preceding paragraph, the Y4 embracing both the Minor and Major Odes of the Kingdom. But what were the FG, the Pi, and the Hsing? We might suppose that they were the names of three other distinct Parts or Books. But they were not so. Pieces so discriminated are found in all the four Parts, though there are more of them in the first two than in the others. The FQ may be described as Narrative pieces, in which the writers tell what they have to say in a simple, straightforward manner, without any hidden meaning reserved in INTRODUCTION. 279 the mind. The metaphor and other figures of speech enter into their composition as freely as in descriptive poems in any other language. The Pi are Metaphorical pieces, in which the poet has under his language a different meaning from what it expresses,—a meaning which there should be nothing in that language to indicate. Such a piece may be compared to the AEsopic fable; but, while it is the object of the fable to inculcate the virtues of morality and prudence, an historical interpretation has to be sought for the metaphorical pieces of the Shih. Generally, moreover, the moral of the fable is subjoined to it, which is never done in the case of these pieces.
2Generally, moreover, the moral of the fable is subjoined to it, which is never done in the case of these pieces. The Hsing have been called Allusive pieces. They are very remarkable, and more numerous than the metaphorical. They often commence with a couple of lines which are repeated without change, or with slight rhythmical changes, in allthe stanzas, In other pieces different stanzas have allusive lines peculiar to themselves. Those lines are descriptive, for the most part, of some object or circumstance in the animal or vegetable world, and aftér them the poet proceeds to his proper subject. Generally, the allusive lines convey a meaning harmonizing with those which follow, where an English poet would begin the verses with Like or As. They are really metaphorical, but the difference between an allusive and a metaphorical piece is this,—that in the former the writer proceeds to state the theme which his mind is occupied with, while no such intimation is given in the latter. Occasionally, it is difficult, not to say impossible, to discover the metaphorical idea in the allusive lines, and then we can only deal with them as a sort of refrain. In leaving this subject, it is only necessary to say further that the allusive, the metaphorical, and the narrative elements sometimes all occur in the same piece. 280 THE SHIH KING. CHAPTER II. THE SHIH BEFORE CONFUCIUS, AND WHAT, IF ANY, WERE HIS LABOURS UPON IT. 1. Sze-ma Xéhien, in his memoir of Confucius, says :— ‘The old poems amounted to more than 3000, Confucius removed those which were only repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for the inculca- Statement of tion of propriety and righteousness. Ascend- Sze-mi Khien. ing as high as Hsieh and H4au-Ai, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Ku to the times of decadence under kings YQ and Li, he selected in all 305 pieces, which he sang over to his lute, to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the Shao, the Wd, the Y4, and the Fang.’ In the History of the Classical Books in the Records of the Sui Dynasty (A. D. 589 to 618), it is said :—‘ When royal The writer of benign rule ceased, and poems were no more the Records of collected, Kih, the Grand Music-Master of the Sui Dynasty. 7 4 arranged in order those that were existing, and made a copy of them. Then Confucius expurgated them; and going up to the Shang dynasty, and coming down to the state of La, he compiled altogether 300 pieces.’ *‘ Hsi, whose own standard work on the Shih appeared in A.D. 1178, declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes, but summed up his view of what Confucius did for them in the following words :— Opinion of ‘Royal methods had ceased, and poems were
31178, declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes, but summed up his view of what Confucius did for them in the following words :— Opinion of ‘Royal methods had ceased, and poems were Hst- no more collected. Those which were extant were full of errors, and wanting in arrangement. When Confucius returned from Wei to Ld, he brought with him the odes that he had gotten in other states, and digested them, along with those that were to be found in L4, into a collection of 300 pieces.’ I have not been able to find evidence sustaining these INTRODUCTION. 281 representations, and must adopt the view that, before the View of the birth of Confucius, the Book of Poetry existed, author. substantially the same as it was at his death, and that while he may have somewhat altered the arrangement of its Books and pieces, the service which he rendered to it was not that of compilation, but the impulse to study it which he communicated to his disciples. 2. If we place Kkien’s composition of the memoir of Confucius in B.C. 100, nearly four hundred years will have Groundlessness Clapsed between the death of the sage and of Khien’s any statement to the effect that he expurgated statement. . og: : previously existing poems, or compiled the collection that we now have; and no writer in the interval affirmed or implied any such things. The further statement in the Sui Records about the Music-Master of La _ is also without any earlier confirmation. But independently of these considerations, there is ample evidence to prove, first, that the poems current before Confucius were not by any means so numerous as X‘ien says, and, secondly, that the collection of 300 pieces or thereabouts, digested under the same divisions as in the present classic, existed before the sage’s time. 3. i. It would not be surprising, if, floating about and current among the people of China in the sixth century before our era, there had been more than 3000 pieces of poetry. The marvel is that such was not the case. But in the Narratives of the States, a work of the Kau dynasty, and ascribed by many to 30 Xhid-ming, there occur quotations from thirty-one poems, made by statesmen and others, all anterior to Confucius; and of those poems there are not more than two which are not in the present classic. Even of those two, one is an ode of it quoted under another name. Further, in the 30 Awan, certainly the work of Khid-ming, we have quotations from not fewer than 219 poems, of which only thirteen are not found in the classic. Thus of 250 poems current in China before the supposed compilation of the Shih, 236 are found in it, and only fourteen. are absent. To use the words of K4éo Yi, a scholar of the present dynasty, ‘If the poems existing in 282 THE SHIH KING.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1a difference between the pieces of La and the other two collections in this Part, to which I will call attention in giving the translation of them. From the above account of the contents of the Shih, Only the pieces it will be seen that only the pieces in the ofthe fourth last of its four Parts are professedly of a Part have se professedly a 'eligious character. Many of those, however, religious in the other Parts, especially the second and character. : . es . . third, describe religious services, and give expression to religious ideas in the minds of their authors. 3. Some of the pieces in the Shih are ballads, some are songs, some are hymns, and of others the nature can hardly Classification be indicated by any English denomination. of the pieces They have often been spoken of by the dale general name of odes, understanding by that term lyric poems that were set to music. My reason for touching here on this point is the earliest account of the Shih, as a collection either already formed or in the process of formation, that we find in Chinese literature. In the Official Book of K4u, generally supposed to be a work of the twelfth or eleventh century B.C., among the duties of the Grand Music-Master there is ‘the teaching,’ (that is, to the musical performers,) ‘the six classes of poems :—the Fang; the Fa; the Pt; the Hsing; the Ya; and the Sung.’ That the collection of the Shih, as it now is, existed so early as the date assigned to the Official Book could not be; but we find the same account of it given in the so-called Confucian Preface. The Fang, the YA, and the Sung are the four Parts of the classic described in the preceding paragraph, the Y4 embracing both the Minor and Major Odes of the Kingdom. But what were the FG, the Pi, and the Hsing? We might suppose that they were the names of three other distinct Parts or Books. But they were not so. Pieces so discriminated are found in all the four Parts, though there are more of them in the first two than in the others. The FQ may be described as Narrative pieces, in which the writers tell what they have to say in a simple, straightforward manner, without any hidden meaning reserved in INTRODUCTION. 279 the mind. The metaphor and other figures of speech enter into their composition as freely as in descriptive poems in any other language. The Pi are Metaphorical pieces, in which the poet has under his language a different meaning from what it expresses,—a meaning which there should be nothing in that language to indicate. Such a piece may be compared to the AEsopic fable; but, while it is the object of the fable to inculcate the virtues of morality and prudence, an historical interpretation has to be sought for the metaphorical pieces of the Shih. Generally, moreover, the moral of the fable is subjoined to it, which is never done in the case of these pieces.
2Generally, moreover, the moral of the fable is subjoined to it, which is never done in the case of these pieces. The Hsing have been called Allusive pieces. They are very remarkable, and more numerous than the metaphorical. They often commence with a couple of lines which are repeated without change, or with slight rhythmical changes, in allthe stanzas, In other pieces different stanzas have allusive lines peculiar to themselves. Those lines are descriptive, for the most part, of some object or circumstance in the animal or vegetable world, and aftér them the poet proceeds to his proper subject. Generally, the allusive lines convey a meaning harmonizing with those which follow, where an English poet would begin the verses with Like or As. They are really metaphorical, but the difference between an allusive and a metaphorical piece is this,—that in the former the writer proceeds to state the theme which his mind is occupied with, while no such intimation is given in the latter. Occasionally, it is difficult, not to say impossible, to discover the metaphorical idea in the allusive lines, and then we can only deal with them as a sort of refrain. In leaving this subject, it is only necessary to say further that the allusive, the metaphorical, and the narrative elements sometimes all occur in the same piece. 280 THE SHIH KING. CHAPTER II. THE SHIH BEFORE CONFUCIUS, AND WHAT, IF ANY, WERE HIS LABOURS UPON IT. 1. Sze-ma Xéhien, in his memoir of Confucius, says :— ‘The old poems amounted to more than 3000, Confucius removed those which were only repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for the inculca- Statement of tion of propriety and righteousness. Ascend- Sze-mi Khien. ing as high as Hsieh and H4au-Ai, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Ku to the times of decadence under kings YQ and Li, he selected in all 305 pieces, which he sang over to his lute, to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the Shao, the Wd, the Y4, and the Fang.’ In the History of the Classical Books in the Records of the Sui Dynasty (A. D. 589 to 618), it is said :—‘ When royal The writer of benign rule ceased, and poems were no more the Records of collected, Kih, the Grand Music-Master of the Sui Dynasty. 7 4 arranged in order those that were existing, and made a copy of them. Then Confucius expurgated them; and going up to the Shang dynasty, and coming down to the state of La, he compiled altogether 300 pieces.’ *‘ Hsi, whose own standard work on the Shih appeared in A.D. 1178, declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes, but summed up his view of what Confucius did for them in the following words :— Opinion of ‘Royal methods had ceased, and poems were
31178, declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes, but summed up his view of what Confucius did for them in the following words :— Opinion of ‘Royal methods had ceased, and poems were Hst- no more collected. Those which were extant were full of errors, and wanting in arrangement. When Confucius returned from Wei to Ld, he brought with him the odes that he had gotten in other states, and digested them, along with those that were to be found in L4, into a collection of 300 pieces.’ I have not been able to find evidence sustaining these INTRODUCTION. 281 representations, and must adopt the view that, before the View of the birth of Confucius, the Book of Poetry existed, author. substantially the same as it was at his death, and that while he may have somewhat altered the arrangement of its Books and pieces, the service which he rendered to it was not that of compilation, but the impulse to study it which he communicated to his disciples. 2. If we place Kkien’s composition of the memoir of Confucius in B.C. 100, nearly four hundred years will have Groundlessness Clapsed between the death of the sage and of Khien’s any statement to the effect that he expurgated statement. . og: : previously existing poems, or compiled the collection that we now have; and no writer in the interval affirmed or implied any such things. The further statement in the Sui Records about the Music-Master of La _ is also without any earlier confirmation. But independently of these considerations, there is ample evidence to prove, first, that the poems current before Confucius were not by any means so numerous as X‘ien says, and, secondly, that the collection of 300 pieces or thereabouts, digested under the same divisions as in the present classic, existed before the sage’s time. 3. i. It would not be surprising, if, floating about and current among the people of China in the sixth century before our era, there had been more than 3000 pieces of poetry. The marvel is that such was not the case. But in the Narratives of the States, a work of the Kau dynasty, and ascribed by many to 30 Xhid-ming, there occur quotations from thirty-one poems, made by statesmen and others, all anterior to Confucius; and of those poems there are not more than two which are not in the present classic. Even of those two, one is an ode of it quoted under another name. Further, in the 30 Awan, certainly the work of Khid-ming, we have quotations from not fewer than 219 poems, of which only thirteen are not found in the classic. Thus of 250 poems current in China before the supposed compilation of the Shih, 236 are found in it, and only fourteen. are absent. To use the words of K4éo Yi, a scholar of the present dynasty, ‘If the poems existing in 282 THE SHIH KING.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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