Classic of Poetry

A poem from the Classic of Poetry, handwritten by the Qianlong Emperor, 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 dating from a 10th to the 7th century BC time range. It forms part of the Five Classics. 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. The word shi is the same word that later became a generic term for poetry. The Shijing is an anthology compiled from the works of various anonymous authorship. The various collected works are generally associated with specific chronological periods, such as the Zhou Dynasty, and/or associated with the specific states of that time period; however, many uncertainties exist, especially as to dates of the earliest poems. According to tradition, the method of collection of the various Shijing poems involved the appointment of officials, whose duties included documenting verses current from the various states which constituting the empire. Out of these many collected pieces, also according to tradition, Confucius made a final editorial round of decisions for elimination or inclusion in the received version of the Shijing. As with all great literary works of ancient China, the Shi have been annotated and commented on numerous times throughout history, as well as in this case providing a model to inspire future poetic works.

Chronology

The Classic of Poetry contains the oldest chronologically authenticated Chinese poems. As written literature, the majority of the Odes date to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BC), however one of the sections included in the Shijing purports to be ritual songs of the Shang Dynasty court (approximately dated 1600 BC to 1046 BC). There are five of these. The latest material in the Shijing (said by scholar Zheng Xuan to be the song "Tree-stump Grove" (Chinese: 株林) in the Odes of Chen) dates to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period (c. 700 BC). The odes themselves tend to be arranged in reverse chronological order, with the earliest, the "Sacrificial Odes of Shang", appearing at the end.

Poetic qualities

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).

Topics

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, and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets.

Style

The poems of Classic of Poetry tend to have certain typical patterns in both rhyme and rhythm, to make much use of imagery, often derived from nature. The various individual verses also tend to be short: the style of these lyric poems contributed to the development of 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.

Authorship

Although the Shijing does not specify the names of authors in association with the contained works, both traditional commentaries and modern scholarship have put forth hypotheses on authorship. The Classic of History says that the poem "Owl" (Chinese: 鴟鴞) in the Odes of Bin was written by the Duke of Zhou. Many of the songs appear to be folk songs and other compositions used in the court ceremonies of the aristocracy. Furthermore many of the songs, based on internal evidence, appear to be written either by women, or from the perspective of a female persona. The repeated emphasis on female authorship of poetry in the Shijing was made much of in the process of attempting to give the poems of the women poets of the Ming-Qing period canonical status. Despite the impersonality of the poetic voice characteristic of the Songs many of the poems are written from the perspective of various generic personalities.

Origins and editing

Map of states during Western Zhou period

Various traditions concern the gathering of the compiled songs and the editorial selection from these make up the classic text of the Odes: "Royal Officials' Collecting Songs" (Chinese: 王官采詩) is recorded in the Book of Han, and "Master Confucius Deletes Songs" (Chinese: 孔子刪詩) refers to Confucius and his mention in the Records of the Grand Historian, where it says from originally some 3,000 songs and poems in a previously extant "Odes" that Confucius personally selected the "300" which he felt best conformed to traditional ritual propriety, thus producing the Classic of Poetry.

Collecting

The Confucian school eventually came to consider the verses of the "Guofeng", or "Airs of the State" section to have been collected in the course of activities of officers dispatched by the Zhou Dynasty court, whose duties included the field collection of the songs local to the territorial states of Zhou. This territory was roughly the Yellow River Plain, Shandong, southwestern Hebei, eastern Gansu, and the Han River region. Perhaps during the harvest. After the officials returned from their missions, the king was said to have observed them himself in an effort to understand the current condition of the common people. The well-being of the people was of special concern to the Zhou because of their ideological position that the right to rule was based on the benignity of the rulers to the people in accordance with the will of Heaven, and that this Heavenly Mandate would be withdrawn upon the failure of the ruling dynasty to ensure the prosperity of their subjects. The people's folksongs were deemed to be the best gauge of their feelings and conditions, and thus indicative of whether the nobility was ruling according to the mandate of Heaven or not, accordingly the songs were collected from the various regions, converted from their diverse regional dialects into standard literary language, and presented accompanied with music at the royal courts.

Confucius

Image of a bronze figure of Confucius

The Confucian tradition since the time of the Han Dynasty holds that the Shijing collection, which is one of the Wu Jing, or Five Classics, came to be what we have today after the editing of Confucius, although the Zuo Zhuan records that the Shijing already existed in a definitive form when Confucius was just a young child. The argument for canonicity (as a Jing, or classic) included the traditional claim that Confucius selected and edited the Shijing poems from significantly larger body of prexisting material. In his own works, Confucius comments upon the Classic of Poetry in such a way as to indicate that he holds it in great esteem. The Analects records: "The Master said: The three hundred Odes, summarizing them in one phrase, say: 'Speak only of going straight.'" 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.'"

Influence and legacy

The Odes provided founding principles in composition and rhyme that were patterned by Chinese writers for well over two thousand years, and are thus a seminal influence on Chinese Classical poetry.

Confucian allegory

Strip no. 22 of Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn (孔子詩論), an early discussion of the Classic of Poetry. Ink brushed on bamboo strips, dating back to the Warring States period (475–221 BC), collection of the Shanghai Museum.

The Shijing has been a revered Confucian classic since the Han Dynasty, and has been studied and memorized by centuries of scholars in China. 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.

Canonicity

The Confucian contention that the Shijing collection formed one part of the Five Classics was officially acknowledged during the Han Dynasty. These five books, or parts of them, were either commented, compiled, or edited by Confucius himself.

Confucian schools

The Classic of Poetry received an early endorsement as part of the Confucian canon. In regard to this, four schools of commentary existed, namely the Qi (齊), the Lu (魯), the Han (韓), and the Mao (毛) schools. The first two schools did not survive, and the Han school only survived partly. The Mao school's commentaries on the Book of Songs such as the Mao school annotations by Han Dynasty scholar Mao Heng (Chinese: 毛亨; pinyin: Máo​ Hēng​) and his nephew Mao Chang (Chinese: 毛萇; pinyin: Máo​ Cháng​) became referred to as "Mao Shi" (毛詩). The collection is also derivatively became canonical. Zheng Xuan's elucidation on the Mao commentary also reached canonical status.

Historical evidence

Additionally, the Odes preserve the descriptions of daily life among the ancient Chinese culture of the Yellow River watershed.

Political influence

The Odes became an important and controversial force, influencing political, social and educational phenomena. During the struggle between Confucian, Legalist, and other schools of thought, the Confucians used the Shijing to bolster their viewpoint. On the Confucian side, the Shijing became a foundational text which informed and validated literature, education, and political affairs. The Legalists, on their side, attempted to suppress the Shijing by violence, after the Legalist philosophy was endorsed by the Qin Dynasty, prior to their final triumph over the neighboring states: the suppression of Confucian and other thought and literature after the Qin victories and the start of Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars era, starting in 213 BC, extended to attempt to prohibit the Shijing.

As the idea of allegorical expression grew, when kingdoms or feudal leaders wished to express or validate their own positions, they would sometimes couch the message within a poem, or by allusion. This practice became common among educated Chinese in their personal correspondences and spread to Japan and Korea as well.

Modern scholarship

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. Although preserving more Old Chinese syllable endings than Mandarin, Modern Cantonese and Min Nan are also quite different from the Old Chinese language represented in the Odes.

Contents overview

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)
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.

Contents list

Summary of groupings of poems from the Classic of Poetry

---

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

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

References

• de Bary, William Theodore, ed. (1960) Sources of Chinese Tradition: Volume I (New York: Columbia University Press). ISBN 978-0-231-10939-0
• Chang, Kang-i Sun (2001). "Gender and Canonicity", in Hsiang Lectures on Chinese Poetry, Volume 1, Grace S. Fong, editor. (Montreal: Center for East Asian Research, McGill University).
• Davis, A. R. (Albert Richard), Editor and Introduction,(1970), The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse. (Baltimore: Penguin Books).
• Frankel, Hans H. (1978). The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) ISBN 0-300-02242-5
• Hinton, David (2008). Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. ISBN 0374105367 / ISBN 9780374105365.
• Yip, Wai-lim (1997). Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres . (Durham and London: Duke University Press). ISBN 0-8223-1946-2

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.