The Shih King | Page 2

Royaumes,' and, which I prefer, by Lessons from the States.
The Hsiao Ya, or Lesser Ya, in eight Books, contains seventy-four pieces and the titles of six others, sung at gatherings of the feudal princes, and their appearances at the royal court. They were produced in the royal territory, and are descriptive of the manners and ways of the government in successive reigns. It is difficult to find an English word that shall fitly represent the Chinese Ya as here used. In his Latin translation of the Shih, p. Lacharme translated Hsiao Ya by 'Quod rectum est, sed inferiore ordine,' adding in a note:--'Siao Ya, latine Parvum Rectum, quia in hac Parte mores describuntur, recti illi quidem, qui tamen nonnihil a recto deflectunt.' But the manners described are not less correct or incorrect, as the case may be, than those of the states in the former Part or of the kingdom in the next. I prefer to call this Part 'Minor Odes of the Kingdom,' without attempting to translate the term Ya.
The Ta Ya or Greater Ya, in three Books, contains thirty-one pieces, sung on great occasions at the royal court and in the presence of the king. p. Lacharme called it 'Magnum Rectum (Quod rectum est superiore ordine).' But there is the same objection here to the use of the word 'correct' as in the case of the pieces of the previous Part. I use the name 'Major Odes of the Kingdom.' The greater length and dignity of most of the pieces justify the distinction of the two Parts into Minor and Major.
The Sung, also in three Books, contains forty pieces, thirty-one of which belong to the sacrificial services at the royal court of Kau; four, to those of the marquises of L?; and five to the corresponding sacrifices of the kings of Shang. p. Lacharme denominated them correctly 'Parentales Cantus.' In the Preface to the Shih, to which I have made reference above, it is said, 'The Sung are pieces in admiration of the embodied manifestation of complete virtue, announcing to the spiritual Intelligences their achievement thereof.' K? Hs?'s account of the Sung was--'Songs for the Music of the Ancestral Temple;' and that of Kiang Yung of the present dynasty--'Songs for the Music at Sacrifices.' I have united these two definitions, and call the Part--'Odes of the Temple and the Altar.' There 'is a difference between the pieces of L? and the other two collections in this Part, to which I will call attention in giving the translation of them.
Only the pieces of the fourth Part have professedly a religious character.
From the above account of the contents of the Shih, it will be seen that only the pieces in the last of its four Parts are professedly of a religious character. Many of those, however, in the other Parts, especially the second and third, describe religious services, and give expression to religious ideas in the minds of their authors.
Classification of the pieces from their form and style.
3. Some of the pieces in the Shih are ballads, some are songs, some are hymns, and of others the nature can hardly be indicated by any English denomination They have often been spoken of by the 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 Kau, 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 F?; the P?; 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 Ya embracing both the Minor and Major Odes of the Kingdom. But what were the F?, the P?, 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 F? 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 the mind. The metaphor and other figures of speech enter into their composition as freely