A covetous officer rolls in wealth; A pure officer is poor. Saw you not the premier of Ts'oo, Sun Shuh-gaou, How thrifty and pure he was, not receiving a cash! 43. Two songs on Tsze-ch'un by the people of Ching. From the Tso Chuen, IX. xxx., at the end. We must take our robes and caps, and hide them all away; "Tis Tsze-ch'an who our children trains; Tsze-ch'an was only a little anterior to Confucius, and the pieces which follow relate to the sage himself, to his times, and to subjects of a later date. The pre ceding pieces are different in style from the odes of the She, and hardly one of them is introduced with the formula, which so frequently introduces quotations from the acknowledged Book of Poetry. 貪吏常苦富 廉吏常苦貧, 獨不見楚相孫叔敖 廉潔不受錢 CHAPTER II. THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION; THEIR INTERPRETATION AND AUTHORS; THE PREFACES AND THEIR AUTHORITY. APPENDIXES-THE GREAT AND LITTLE PREFACES; the first place? How is the collection now so incomplete? 2. 1. It has been shown in the first section of last chapter that the Book of Poetry existed as a collection of odes before the time of Confucius. It becomes a question of some interest whether we can ascertain how the collection came to be formed, and account for the gaps that now exist in it,-how there are no poetical memorials at How were the odes collected in) all of several of the reigns of the Chow kings, and how the first Part embraces only a portion of the States of which the kingdom was composed. Sir Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun tells us the opinion of 'a very wise man,' that 'if a man were permitted to make all the ballads of of a nation, he need not care who should make its laws.' The theory of Chinese scholars is that it was the duty of the kings to make themselves acquainted with all the odes and songs current in the different States, and to judge from them of the character of The theory of Chinese scholars) the rule exercised by their several princes, so that they might minister praise or blame, reward or punishment accordingly. about a collection of the odes for governmental purposes. 3. The one classical passage which is referred to in support of this theory is in the Le Ke, V. ii., parr. 13, 14:-'Every fifth year, The classical passage which the son of Heaven made a progress through the kingdom, when the grand music-master was commanded to lay before him the poems collected in the States supports the theory. 1. See Fletcher's account of a Conversation on Governments. Sir John Davis (The Poetry of the Chinese, p. 35) adduces the remark of a writer in the Spectator (No. 502):-I have heard that a minister of State in the reign of Queen Elizabeth had all manner of books and ballads brought to him, of what kind soever, and took great notice how much they took with the people; upon which he would, and certainly might, very well judge of their present dispositions, and of the most proper way of applying them according to his own purposes.' of the several quarters, as an exhibition of the manners of the people. Unfortunately, this Book of the Le Ke, the 'Royal Ordinances,' was only compiled in the reign of the emperor Wan of the Han dynasty (B.c. 179-155). The scholars entrusted with the work did their best, we may suppose, with the materials at their command. They made much use, it is evident, of Mencius, and of the E Le. The Chow Le, or the 'Official Book of Chow,' had not then been recovered. But neither in Mencius, nor in the E Le, do we meet with any authority for the statement before us. The Shoo mentions that Shun every fifth year made a tour of inspection through his empire; but there were then no odes for him to examine, as to him and his minister Kaou-yaou is attributed the first rudimentary attempt at the poetic art.3 Of the progresses of the sovereigns of the Hea and Yin dynasties we have no information; and those of the kings of Chow were made, we know, only once in twelve years. The statement in the Royal Ordinances,' therefore, was probably based only on tradition, and is erroneous in the frequency of the royal progresses which it asserts. Notwithstanding the difficulties which beset the text of the Le Ke, however, I am not disposed to reject it altogether. It derives a certain amount of confirmation from the passage quoted in the last chapter, p. 4, from the 'Official Book of Chow,' showing that in the Chow dynasty there was a collection of poems, under the divisions of the Fung, the Ya, and the Sung, which it was the business of the grand music-master to teach the musicians and the eléves of the royal school. It may be granted then, that the duke of Chow, in legislating for his dynasty, enacted that the poems produced in the different feudal States should be collected on the occasions of the royal progresses, and lodged thereafter among the archives of the bureau of music at the royal court. The same thing, we may presume a fortiori, would be done with those produced within the royal domain itself. 4. But the feudal States were modelled after the pattern of the royal State. They also had their music-masters, their musicians, 2禮記王制:天子五年一巡......命大師陳詩以 觀民風 3 See the Shoo, II. i. 9; iv. 11. 4 Ching Kang-shing says on the text:— 天子以海內為家時一巡省之五年者虞夏之制也周 2歲一巡守: ; on which the imperial editors observe, EST Z 守之 書無考鄭氏不知何據而孔氏又從而為之辭 would get the odes of each State from its music-master. and their historiographers. The kings in their progresses did not The music-master of the king) visit each particular State, so that their music-masters could have an opportunity to collect the odes in it for themselves. They met, at well-known points, the marquises, earls, barons, &c., of the different quarters of the kingdom; there gave them audience; adjudicated upon their merits; and issued to them their orders. We are obliged to suppose that the princes would be attended to the places of rendezvous by their music-masters, carrying with them the poetical compositions collected in their several regions, to present them to their superior of the royal court. 5. By means of the above arrangement, we can understand how the poems of the whole kingdom were accumulated and arranged among the archives of the capital. Was there any provision for disseminating thence the poems of one State among all the others? How the collected poems) There is sufficient evidence that this disseminawere disseminated throughout the States. tion was in some way effected. Throughout the 'Narratives of the States' and the details of Tso K'ew-ming on the history of the Ch'un Ts'ëw, the officers of the States generally are presented to us as familiar not only with the odes of their particular States, but with those of other States as well. They appear equally well acquainted with all the Parts and Books of our present collection; and we saw in chapter I., p. 5, how the whole of the present She was sung over to Ke-chah of Woo when he visited the court of Loo. My opinion is that there was a regular communication from the royal court to the courts of the various States of the poetical pieces, which for one reason or another were thought worthy of preservation. This is nowhere expressly stated; but it may be argued by analogy from the account which we have in the 'Official Book of Chow' of the duties of the historiographers, or recorders, of the Exterior. They had charge of the Histories of all the States; of the Books of the three August [rulers] and of the five emperors. They communicated to all parts of the kingdom the writings [in their charge]. For want of fuller information it is not easy to give a ,周官義疏卷二十六春官宗伯第三之十-外史掌四 (Acc to these Che related to everything about the feudal States, and the outlying barbarous tribes, the history of their princes and chiefs, their origin and boundaries, their tributes, their ceremonies, music, customs, &c.); = We try in vain to discover what the Books of those three August ones were); 掌達書名於四方 (This sentence is the most important for my argument. I cannot accept the interpretation of thoroughly satisfactory account of the Histories and the Books referred to in these brief sentences; but I quote them merely to establish the fact that, according to the constitution of the kingdom under the dynasty of Chow, not only were the literary monuments of the feudal States collected for the satisfaction of the kings, but they were again sent forth to the courts of the different princes, and became the common possession of the cultivated classes throughout the whole country. The documentary evidence of the fact is scanty, owing to the imperfect condition in which the Books of Chow were recovered during the Han dynasty, and so we have no special mention made of the odes in the passages of the 'Official Book,' which I have adduced; but that they, as well as the other writings which are vaguely specified, were made known to Loo, Ts'e, Tsin, and all the other States seems to have the evidence of analogy in its favour, and to be necessary to account for the general familiarity with them which, we know, prevailed. 6. But if the poems produced in the several States were thus collected in the capital, and thence again disseminated throughout the kingdom, we might conclude that the collection would have been far more extensive and complete than we have it now. The How the collection is smallness of it is to be accounted for by the disorder so small and incomplete. and confusion into which the kingdom fell after the lapse of a few reigns from king Woo. Royal progresses ceased when royal government fell into decay, and then the odes were no longer collected. We have no account of any progress of the kings during the period of the Ch'un Ts'ëw. But, before that period, there is a long gap of 143 years between kings Ching and E, covering the reigns of K'ang, Ch'aou, Muh, and Kung, of which we have no poetic memorials, if we except two doubtful pieces among the sacrificial odes of Chow. The reign of Heaou who succeeded to E is similarly uncommemorated, and the latest odes are of the time of Ting, when a hundred years of the Ch'un Ts'ew had still to run their course. I cannot suppose but that many odes were made and collected during the 143 years after king Ching. The probability is that they perished during the feeble and disturbed reigns of E,7 Heaou, E, and Le. Of the reign of the first of these we have 2, in which many acquiesce, as simply = the names of the written characters. for the whole:-'Ils sont chargés de propager les noms ecrits, ou les signes de quatre parties de l'empire.' I believe that I have given the sense correctly.) IV. ii. XXI. 7. 懿王 8. 夷王 Biot gives l'ecriture, dans les 6 See Mencius, |