AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN, WHO HAD BEEN SEDUCED INTO AN IMPROPER CONNEXION, NOW CAST OFF, RELATES AND BEMOANS HER SAD CASE.
An extract is given from the pathetic history here related, because it shows how divination was used among the common people, and entered generally into the ordinary affairs of life.
A simple-looking lad you were, Carrying cloth
[1. Thang was the name of a town, evidently not far from Khu.
2. We have seen before how divination was resorted to on occasion of new undertakings, especially in proceeding to rear a city.]
to exchange it for silk. (But) you came not so to purchase silk;-You came to make proposals to me. I convoyed you through the Khi [1], As far as Tun-khiu [2], ‘It is not I,’ (I said), ‘who would protract the time; But you have had no good go-between. I pray you be not angry, And let autumn be the time.’
I ascended that ruinous wall, To look towards Fu-kwan [3]; And when I saw (you) not (coming from) it, My tears flowed in streams. When I did see (you coming from) Fu-kwan, I laughed and I spoke. You had consulted, (you said), the tortoiseshell and the divining stalks, And there was nothing unfavourable in their response [4]. ‘Then come,’ (I said), ‘with your carriage, And I will remove with my goods.’
BOOK VI. THE ODES OF THE ROYAL DOMAIN.
KING Wan, it has been seen, had for his capital the city of Fang, from which his son, king Wu, moved the seat of government to Hao. In the time of king Khang, a city was built by the duke
[1. The Khi was a famous river of Wei.
2. Tun-khiu was a well-known place–‘the mound or height of Tun’-south of the Wei.
‘Fu-kwan must have been the place where the man lived, according to Ku. Rather, it must have been a pass (Fu-kwan may mean ‘the gate or pass of Fu’), through which he would come, and was visible from near the residence of the woman.
4 Ying ta observes that the man had never divined about the matter, and said that he had done so only to complete the process of seduction. The critics dwell on the inconsistency of divination being resorted to in such a case:–‘Divination is proper only if used in reference to what is right and moral.’]
of Kau, near the present Lo-yang, and called ‘the eastern capital.’ Meetings of the princes of the states assembled there; but the court continued to be held at Hao till the accession of king Phing in B.C. 770. From that time, the kings of Kau sank nearly to the level of the princes of the states, and the poems collected in their domain were classed among the ‘Lessons of Manners from the States,’ though still distinguished by the epithet ‘royal’ prefixed to them.
ODE 1, STANZA 1. THE SHU-LI.
AN OFFICER DESCRIBES HIS MELANCHOLY AND REFLECTIONS ON SEEING THE DESOLATION OF THE OLD CAPITAL OF KAU, MAKING HIS MOAN TO HEAVEN BECAUSE OF IT.
There is no specific mention of the old. capital of Kau in the piece, but the schools of Mao and Ku are agreed in this interpretation, which is much more likely than any of the others that have been proposed.
There was the millet with its drooping heads; There was the sacrificial millet coming into blade[1]. Slowly I moved about, In my heart all-agitated. Those who knew me said I was sad at heart. Those who did not know me, Said I was seeking for something. O thou distant and azure Heaven[2]! By what man was this (brought about)[3]?
[1. That is, there where the ancestral temple and other grand buildings of Hao had once stood.
2. ‘He cried out to Heaven,’ says Yen Zhan, ‘and told (his distress), but he calls it distant in its azure brightness, lamenting that his complaint was not heard.’ This is, probably, the correct explanation of the language. The speaker would by it express his grief that the dynasty of Kau and its people were abandoned and uncared for by Heaven.
3. Referring to king Yu, whose reckless course had led to the destruction of Hao by the Zung, and in a minor degree to his son, king Phing, who had subsequently removed to the eastern capital.]
ODE 9, STANZAS 1 AND 3. THE TA KUe.
A LADY EXCUSES HERSELF FOR NOT FLYING TO HER LOVER BY HER FEAR OF A SEVERE AND VIRTUOUS MAGISTRATE, AND SWEARS TO HIS THAT SHE IS SINCERE IN HER ATTACHMENT TO HIM.
His great carriage rolls along, And his robes of rank glitter like the young sedge. Do I not think of you? But I am afraid of this officer, and dare not (fly to you).
While living we may have to occupy different apartments; But, when dead, we shall share the same grave. If you say that I am not sincere, By the bright sun I swear that I am[1].
BOOK X. THE, ODES OF THANG.
THE odes of Thang were really the odes of Zin, the greatest of the fiefs of Kau until the rise of Khin. King Khang, in B.C. 1107, invested his younger brother, called Shu-yue, with the territory where Yao was supposed to have ruled anciently as the marquis of Thang, in the present department of Thai-yuean, Shan-hsi, the fief retaining that ancient name. Subsequently the name of the state was changed to Zin, from the river Zin in the southern part of it.
ODE, 8, STANZA 1. THE PAO YUe.
THE MEN OF ZIN, CALLED OUT TO WARFARE BY THE KING’S ORDER, MOURN OVER THE CONSEQUENT SUFFERING OF THEIR PARENTS, AND LONG FOR THEIR RETURN TO THEIR ORDINARY AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS, MAKING THEIR APPEAL TO HEAVEN.
Su-su go the feathers of the wild geese, As
[1. In the ‘Complete Digest’ this oath is expanded in the following way:–‘These words are from my heart. If you think that they are not sincere, there is (a Power) above, like the bright sun, observing me;–how should my words not be sincere?’]
they settle on the bushy oaks[1]. The king’s affairs must not be slackly discharged, And (so) we cannot plant our millets;–What will our parents have to rely on? O thou distant and azure Heaven [2]! When shall we be in our places again?
ODE 11. THE KO SHANG.
A WIFE MOURNS THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND, REFUSING TO BE COMFORTED, AND DECLARES THAT SHE WILL CHERISH HIS MEMORY TILL HER OWN DEATH.
It is supposed that the husband whose death is bewailed in this piece had died in one of the military expeditions of which duke Hsien (B.C. 676-651) was fond. It may have been so, but there is nothing in the piece to make us think of duke Hsien. I give it a place in the volume, not because of the religious sentiment in it, but because of the absence of that sentiment, Where we might expect it. The lady shows the grand virtue of a Chinese widow, in that she will never marry again. And her grief would not be assuaged. The days would all seem long summer days, and the nights all long winter nights; so that a hundred long years would seem to drag their slow course, But there is not any hope expressed of a re-union with her husband in another state. The ‘abode’ and the ‘chamber’ of which she speaks are to be understood of his grave; and her thoughts do not appear to go beyond it.
The dolichos grows, covering the thorn trees; The convolvulus spreads all over the waste [3]. The
[1. Trees are not the proper. place for geese to rest on; and the attempt to do so is productive of much noise and trouble to the birds. The lines would seem to allude to the hardships of the soldiers’ lot, called from their homes to go on a distant expedition.
2. See note 2 on ode I of Book vi, where Heaven is appealed to in the same language.
3. These two lines are taken as allusive, the speaker being led by the sight of the weak plants supported by the trees, shrubs, and tombs, to think of her own desolate, unsupported condition. But they may also be taken as narrative, and descriptive of the battleground, where her husband had met his death.]
man of my admiration is no more here;–With whom can I dwell? I abide alone.
The dolichos grows, covering the jujube trees; The convolvulus spreads all over the tombs. The man of my admiration is no more here;–With whom can I dwell? I rest alone.
How beautiful was the pillow of horn! How splendid was the embroidered coverlet[1]! The man of my admiration is no more here;–With whom can I dwell? Alone (I wait for) the morning.
Through the (long) days of summer, Through the (long) nights of winter (shall I be alone), Till the lapse of a hundred years, When I shall go home to his abode.
Through the (long) nights of winter, Through the (long) days of summer(shall I be alone), Till the lapse of a hundred years, When I shall go home to his chamber.
BOOK XI. THE ODES OF KHIN.
THE state of Khin took its name from its earliest principal city, in the present district of Khing-shui, in Khin Kau, Kan-su. Its chiefs claimed to be descended from Yi, who appears in the Shu as the forester of Shun, and the assistant of the great Yue in his labours on the flood of Yao. The history of his descendants is very imperfectly related till we come to a Fei-Dze, who had charge of the herds of horses belonging to king Hsiao (B.C. 90989.5), and in consequence of his good services. was invested with
[1. These things had been ornaments of the bridal chamber; and as the widow thinks of them, her grief becomes more intense.]
the small territory of Khin, as an attached state. A descendant of his, known as duke Hsiang, in consequence of his loyal services, when the capital was moved to the cast in B.C. 770, was raised to the dignity of an earl, and took his place among the great feudal princes of the kingdom, receiving also a large portion of territory, which included the ancient capital of the House of Kau. In course of time Khin, as is well known, superseded the dynasty of Kau, having gradually moved its capital more and more to the east. The people of Khin were, no doubt, mainly composed of the wild tribes of the west.
ODE 6, STANZA 1. THE HWANG NIAO.
LAMENT FOR THREE WORTHIES OF KHIN, WHO WERE BURIED IN THE SAME GRAVE WITH DUKE MU.
There is no difficulty or difference in the interpretation of this piece; and it brings us down to B.C. 621. Then died duke Mu, after playing an important part in the north-west of China for thirty-nine years. The Zo Kwan, under the sixth year of duke Wan, makes mention of Mu’s requiring that the three brothers here celebrated should be buried with him, and of the composition of this piece in consequence. Sze-ma Khien says that this barbarous practice began with Mu’s predecessor, with whom sixty-six persons were buried alive, and that one hundred and seventy-seven in all were buried with Mu. The death of the last distinguished man of the House of Khin, the emperor [1], was subsequently celebrated by the entombment with him of all the inmates of his harem.
They flit about, the yellow birds, And rest upon the jujube trees [1]. Who followed duke Mu in the grave? Dze-kue Yen-hsi. And this Yen-hsi Was a man above a hundred. When he came to the
[1. It is difficult to see the relation between these two allusive lines and the rest of the stanza. Some say that it is this,-that the people loved the three victims as they liked the birds; others that the birds among the trees were in their proper place,–very different from the brothers in the grave of duke Mu.]
grave, He looked terrified and trembled. Thou azure Heaven there! Could he have been redeemed, We would have given a hundred (ordinary) men for him[1].
BOOK XV. THE ODES OF PIN.
DUKE Liu, an ancestor of the Kau family, made a settlement, according to its traditions, in B.C. 1797, in Pin, the site of which is pointed out, 90 li to the west of the present district city of San-shui, in Pin Kau, Shen-hsi, where the tribe remained till the movement eastwards of Than-fu, celebrated in the first decade of the Major Odes of the Kingdom, ode 3. The duke of Kau, during the minority of king Khang, made, it is supposed, the first of the pieces in this Book, describing for the instruction of the young monarch, the ancient ways of their fathers in Pin; and subsequently sonic one compiled other, odes made by the duke, and others also about him, and brought them together under the common name of ‘the Odes of Pin.’
ODE 1, STANZA 8. THE KHI YUeEH.
DESCRIBING LIFE IN PIN IN THE OLDEN TIME; THE PROVIDENT ARRANGEMENTS THERE TO SECURE THE CONSTANT SUPPLY OF FOOD AND RAIMENT,–WHATEVER WAS NECESSARY FOR THE SUPPORT AND COMFORT OF THE PEOPLE.
If the piece was made, as the Chinese critics all suppose, by the duke of Kau, we must still suppose that he writes in the person of an old farmer or yeoman of Pin. The picture which it gives of the manners of the Chinese people, their thrifty, provident ways, their agriculture and weaving, nearly 3,700 years ago, is
[1. This appeal to Heaven is like what we met with in the first of the Odes of the Royal Domain, and the eighth of those of Thang.]
full of interest; but it is not till we come to the concluding stanza that we find anything bearing on their religious practices.
In the days of (our) second month, they hew out the ice with harmonious blows [1]; And in those of (our) third month, they convey it to the ice-houses, (Which they open) in those of (our) fourth, early in the morning A lamb having been offered in sacrifice with scallions[2]. In the ninth month, it is cold, with frost. In the tenth month, they sweep clean their stack-sites. (Taking) the two bottles of spirits to be offered to their ruler, And having killed their lambs and sheep, They go to his hall, And raising
[1. They went for the ice to the deep recesses of the hills, and wherever it was to be found in the best condition.
2.. It is said in the last chapter of ‘the Great Learning,’ that ‘the family which keeps its stores of ice does not rear cattle or sheep,’ meaning that the possessor of an ice-house must be supposed to be very wealthy, and above the necessity of increasing his means in the way described. Probably, the having ice-houses by high ministers and heads of clans was an innovation on the earlier custom, according to which such a distinction was proper only to the king, or the princes of states, on whom it devolved as I the fathers of the people,’ to impart from their stores in the hot season as might be necessary. The third and fourth lines of this stanza are to be understood of what was done by the orders of the ruler of the tribe of Kau in Pin. In the Official Book of Kau, Part 1, ch. 5, we have a description of the duties of ‘the Providers of Ice,’ and the same subject is treated in the sixth Book of ‘the Record of Rites,’ sections 2 and 6. The ice having been collected and stored in winter, the ice-houses were solemnly opened in the spring. A sacrifice was offered to ‘the Ruler of Cold, the Spirit of the Ice’ and of the first ice brought forth an offering was set out in the apartment behind the principal hall of the ancestral temple. A sacrifice to the same Ruler of Cold, it is said, had also been offered when the ice began to be collected. The ceremony may be taken as an illustration of the manner in which religious services entered into the life of the ancient Chinese.]
the cup of rhinoceros horn, Wish him long life,–that he may live for ever[1].
[1. The custom described in the five concluding lines is mentioned to show the good and loyal feeling of the people of Pin towards their chief Having finished all the agricultural labours of the year, and being now prepared to enjoy the results of their industry, the first thing they do is to hasten to the hall of their ruler, and ask him to share in their joy, and express their loyal wishes for his happiness.]