Classic of Poetry

The first song of The Odes, handwritten by Emperor Qianlong, along with a painting.

Classic of Poetry
Traditional Chinese	詩經
Simplified Chinese	诗经
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Shī jīng Min - Hokkien POJ Si-keng Wu - Romanization sy cin Cantonese (Yue) - Jyutping Si1 ging1

The Classic of Poetry (traditional Chinese: 詩經; simplified Chinese: 诗经; pinyin: Shī Jīng; Wade-Giles: Shih Ching), translated variously as the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes, and often known simply as its original name The Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems and songs. It comprises 305 poems and songs, with many range from the 10th to the 7th centuries BC.^[1][2] It forms part of the Five Classics.

Over half of the poems are said to have originally been popular songs. They concern basic human problems such as love, marriage, work, and war. Others include court poems, and legendary accounts praising the founders of the Zhou Dynasty. Included are also hymns used in sacrificial rites,^[3] and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets.^[4] The Odes first became known as a Jīng, or a "Classic", in the canonical sense, as part of the Han Dynasty official adoption of Confucianism as the guiding principles of Chinese society around the 1st century AD. As with all great literary works of ancient China, the Shi have been annotated and commented on numerous times throughout history. The annotations by Han Dynasty scholar Mao Heng (Chinese: 毛亨; pinyin: Máo​ Hēng​) and his nephew Mao Chang (Chinese: 毛萇; pinyin: Máo​ Cháng​) are most well known and are considered authoritative.

The poems of Classic of Poetry have strict patterns in both rhyme and rhythm, make much use of imagery, and tend to be short: the style of these lyric poems help to set certain patterns for later Chinese poetry (especially for the shi as opposed to ci or fu formal categories); although the four-character line which is typical for them was largely replaced by either the five or the seven-character line. It is regarded as a revered Confucian classic, and has been studied and memorized by centuries of scholars in China.^[3] The popular songs were seen as good keys to understanding the troubles of the common people, and were often read as allegories; complaints against lovers were seen as complaints against faithless rulers, for example.^[3]

Confucius was supposed to have selected and edited the poems from a much larger body of material.^[4]

Compilation

The earliest items in the Odes are believed to date to the Western Zhou period. The Classic of History says that the poem "Owl" (Chinese: 鴟鴞) in the Odes of Bin (Chinese: 豳風) was written by the Duke of Zhou. The latest material in the Shi Jing (said by scholar Zheng Xuan to be the song "Tree-stump Grove" (Chinese: 株林) in the Odes of Chen)^[5] dates to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period.

There are two traditional stories regarding the gathering and compilation of the songs that make up the Odes: the "Royal Officials' Collecting Songs" (Chinese: 王官采詩) and "Master Confucius Deletes Songs" (Chinese: 孔子刪詩). The former is recorded in the Book of Han,^[6] where the Zhou Dynasty court was said to have dispatched officials to each area of what was then Han Chinese territory (roughly the Yellow River Plain, Shandong, southwestern Hebei, eastern Gansu, and the Han River region) during the harvest to record local songs. After the project was completed, the Emperor was said to have read them in an effort to understand the hearts and minds of the common people.

The second story involves Confucius, and is mentioned in the Records of the Grand Historian. It says that there were originally 3,000 songs and poems in the Odes, and that Confucius selected the 300 that he felt best conformed to traditional ritual propriety, producing what would become the classic Shi Jing. However, the Zuo Zhuan records that the Shi Jing already existed in a definitive form when Confucius was just a young child.

The collection

The collection is divided into three parts according to their genre, namely feng, ya and song, with the ya genre further divided into "small" and "large":

Part	Number and meaning	Date (BC)[7]
風/风 fēng	160 folk songs (or airs)	8th to 7th cent.
小雅 xiǎoyǎ	74 minor festal songs (or odes traditionally sung at court festivities)	9th to 8th cent.
大雅 dàyǎ	31 major festal songs, sung at more solemn court ceremonies	10th to 9th cent.
頌/颂 sòng	40 hymns and eulogies, sung at sacrifices to gods and ancestral spirits of the royal house	11th to 10th cent.

The Confucian tradition holds that the collection, one of the Wu Jing, or Five Classics, came to what we have today after the editing of Confucius. The collection was officially acknowledged as one of "Five Classics" during the Han Dynasty, and previously in Zhou Dynasty Shi (詩) was one of "Six Classics". Four schools of commentary existed then, namely the Qi (齊), the Lu (魯), the Han (韓), and the Mao (毛) schools. The first two schools did not survive. The Han school only survived partly. The Mao school became the canonical school of Book of Songs commentary after the Han Dynasty. As a result, the collection is also sometimes referred to as "Mao Shi" (毛詩).

Zheng Xuan's elucidation on the Mao commentary is also canonical. Many of the 305 poems had to be reconstructed from memory by scholars since the previous Qin Dynasty had burned the collection along with other classical texts.

The poems are written in four-character lines. The airs are in the style of folk songs, although the extent to which they are real folk songs or literary imitations is debated. The odes deal with matters of court and historical subjects, while the hymns blend history, myth and religious material.

The three major literary figures or styles employed in the poems are straightforward narrative (賦 fù), explicit comparisons (比 bǐ) and implied comparisons (興 xìng).

Contents

Summary of groupings of poems from the Classic of Poetry

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Guo Feng

Guo Feng (simplified Chinese: 国风; traditional Chinese: 國風; pinyin: Guófēng)
"Airs of the States" poems 001-160; 160 total folk songs (or airs)

group	char	group name	poem #s
01	周南	Odes of Zhou & South	001-011
02	召南	Odes of Shao & South	012-025
03	邶風	Odes of Bei	026-044
04	鄘風	Odes of Yong	045-054
05	衛風	Odes of Wei	055-064
06	王風	Odes of Wang	065-074
07	鄭風	Odes of Zheng	075-095
08	齊風	Odes of Qi	096-106
09	魏風	Odes of Wei	107-113
10	唐風	Odes of Tang	114-125
11	秦風	Odes of Qin	126-135
12	陳風	Odes of Chen	136-145
13	檜風	Odes of Kuai	146-149
14	曹風	Odes of Cao	150-153
15	豳風	Odes of Bin	154-160

Xiao Ya

Xiao Ya (Chinese: 小雅; pinyin: xiǎoyǎ)
"Minor Odes of the Kingdom" poems 161-234; 74 total minor festal songs (or odes) for court

group	char	group name	poem #s
01	鹿鳴 之什	Decade of Lu Ming	161-170
02	白華 之什	Decade of Baihua	170-175
03	彤弓 之什	Decade of Tong Gong	175-185
04	祈父 之什	Decade of Qi Fu	185-195
05	小旻 之什	Decade of Xiao Min	195-205
06	北山 之什	Decade of Bei Shan	205-215
07	桑扈 之什	Decade of Sang Hu	215-225
08	都人士 之什	Decade of Du Ren Shi	225-234

Da Ya

Da Ya (Chinese: 大雅; pinyin: dàyǎ)
"Major Odes of the Kingdom" poems 235-265;
31 total major festal songs (Chinese: 湮捇) for solemn court ceremonies

group	char	group name	poem #s
01	文王之什	Decade of Wen Wang	235-244
02	生民之什	Decade of Sheng Min	245-254
03	蕩之什	Decade of Dang	255-265

Song

Song (simplified Chinese: 颂; traditional Chinese: 頌; pinyin: sòng)
"Odes of the Temple & Altar" poems 266-305;
40 total praises, hymns, or eulogies sung at spirit sacrifices

group	char	group name	poem #s
01	周頌	Sacrificial Odes of Zhou1	266-296
01a	清廟之什	Decade of Qing Miao	266-275
01b	臣工之什	Decade of Chen Gong	276-285
01c	閔予小子之什	Decade of Min You Xiao Zi	286-296
02	魯頌	Praise Odes of Lu3	297-300
03	商頌	Sacrificial Odes of Shang1	301-305

note: alternative divisions may be topical or chronological (Legges): Song, Daya, Xiaoya, Guofeng

Influence and legacy

The Classic of Poetry is the oldest known purely literary work in Chinese history, providing the first extant examples of narrative and emotion-expressing verse and rhyme in Han Chinese history. The Odes provided founding principles in composition and rhyme that were patterned by Chinese writers for well over two thousand years. Additionally, the Odes preserve the earliest known descriptions of daily life among the ancient Han Chinese culture that occupied the Yellow River watershed, a culture that gradually spread out and assimilated or conquered non-Chinese tribes.

Confucius held the Classic of Poetry in highest esteem. The Analects records: "The Master said: The three hundred Odes, summarizing them in one phrase, say: 'Speak only of going straight.'"^[8] Another story in the Analects recounts that Confucius' son Kong Li told the story: "The Master once stood by himself, and I hurried to seek teaching from him. He asked me, 'You've studied the Odes?' I answered, 'Not yet.' He replied, 'If you study the Odes not, then I have nothing to speak.'"^[9]

The Odes even influenced political dealings in ancient China. When kingdoms or feudal leaders wished to express delicate or difficult positions, they would sometimes couch the message within a poem. This practice became common among educated Chinese in their personal correspondences and spread to Japan and Korea as well.

Modern scholarship on the Classic of Poetry often focuses on doing linguistic reconstruction and research in Old Chinese by analyzing the rhyme schemes in the Odes, which show vast differences when read in modern Mandarin Chinese.^[10] Even Cantonese and Min Nan, which preserve more Old Chinese syllable endings than Mandarin, are believed to be very different from the original language of the Odes.^[11]

Translations

• Classic of Poetry, in The Sacred Books of China, translated by James Legge, 1879.
• The Book of Songs, translated by Arthur Waley, edited with additional translations by Joseph R. Allen, New York: Grove Press, 1996.
• Book of Poetry, translated by Xu Yuanchong (許淵沖), edited by Jiang Shengzhang (姜勝章), Hunan, China: Hunan chubanshe, 1993.
• The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius, translated by Ezra Pound, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954.
• The Book of Odes, translated by Bernhard Karlgren, Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950.

See also

• Chinese classics
• Classical Chinese poetry
• Guan ju
• Chengyu
• Chinese art

Notes and references

1. ^ Voorst, Robert E. Van (2007). Anthology of World Scriptures. Cengage Learning. p. 140. ISBN 0495503878. 
2. ^ Idema, Wilt L. and Lloyd Haft (1997). A guide to Chinese literature: Issue 74. Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. p. 94. ISBN 089264099. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} Ebrey, Patricia (1993). Chinese Civilisation: A Sourcebook (2nd ed.). The Free Press. pp. 11–13. ISBN 978-0-02-908752-7. 
4. ^ ^{a b} de Bary, William Theodore; Chan, Wing-Tsit (1960). Sources of Chinese Tradition: Volume I. Columbia University Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-231-10939-0. 
5. ^ Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (AD 127–200), Shi Pu Xu 詩譜序.
6. ^ In the Shi Huo Zhi 食貨志.
7. ^ Dobson, W. A. C. H. (1964). "Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of the Book of Songs". T'oung Pao 51 (4–5): 322–334. JSTOR 4527607. 
8. ^ Analects 2.2, Chinese: "子曰：詩三百，一言以蔽之，曰：'思不邪'.", 《論語·為政篇二》. The phrase "Speak only of going straight" (Chinese: 思不邪) itself comes from a poem in the Odes, specifically the Sacrificial Odes of Lu (Chinese: 魯頌; pinyin: Lu song), in a song about driving a horse, thinking and speaking only of going straight: Chinese: 以車祛祛，思不邪，思馬斯徂.
9. ^ In Analects 16.13. 《論語·李氏》.
10. ^ Pulleyblank, Edwin (1973). "Some further evidence regarding Old Chinese '-s' and its time of disappearance". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 36: 368–373. 
11. ^ Baxter, William H. (1992). A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 1–12. ISBN 978-3-11-012324-1. 

External links

• Bilingual Chinese-English searchable edition at Chinese Text Project
• Legge's translation of the Book of Odes at Chinese text initiative
• The Book of Odes in Chinese arrayed with James Legge translation.
• Shijing with Mao prefaces and Zhu Xi commentary by Harrison Huang
• Legge's translation of the Book of Odes at the Internet Sacred Text Archive.