shijing

Shi jing or Book of Songs

General Information

Mark Laurent Asselin

Origins. The Shi jing (earliest records give it as Shi or Shi sanbai) is composed of three hundred and five songs dating from approximately the eleventh century (at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty) to the sixth century BCE (in the so-called "Spring-and-Autumn" period). In the Records of the Historiographer (Shi ji, 47.1936), Sima Qian (ca. 145-86 BCE) credits Confucius (ca. sixth century BCE) with the task of having selected and edited these songs from among a collection of three thousand. This attribution has few adherents today, but the importance of this collection--which in the Western Han dynasty (202 BCE-9 CE) was canonized as one the Five Classics--to the Confucian tradition is undisputed. The anthology also serves as arguably the most important source of literary ideas and allusions in traditional Chinese literature. Insofar as the Shi jing is taught in Chinese schools today, it is still a living text. In English, the Shi jing is referred to as the Book of Songs, Classic of Poetry, Book of Odes, etc. The most widely read English translations are those by Arthur Waley (1937), James Legge (1871), and Ezra Pound (1954).

Composition. There are four sections to the Shi jing: the "Guo feng" or "Airs of the States" (Mao shi 1-160), "Xiao ya" or "Lesser Elegantiae" (Mao shi
161-234), "Da ya" or "Greater Elegantiae" (Mao shi
235-265), and "Song" or "Eulogia" or "Lauds" (Mao shi
266-305). The first two sections, though, are not denoted "Feng" in the Shi jing but "Nan": these twenty-five songs comprise the "Zhou nan" and the "Shao nan." Scholars have not definitively determined the reason for this discrepancy, nor even to what the term "Nan" refers. "Nan" may be a geographical reference ("South") or a musical term (the name of a type of music or of a musical instrument) or both. Since, as pointed out by Gao Heng in Shi jing jinzhu (1980), the
Zuo zhuan (Yin 3) refers to two of the "Shao nan" songs (Mao shi 13, 15) as "Feng," one may conclude that the "Er nan" or "Two Nan" are part of the "Feng" and do not comprise a separate division of the Shi jing.

The "Guo feng" is a collection of songs written and/or sung in the various states. The meaning of feng has long been debated. The "Greater Preface" (see below) defines it as jiao, "teaching," and specifically the moral instruction of superiors to inferiors and the admonitions of inferiors to superiors. It also refers to feng in the context of feng su or "customs," hence the "customs of the states." Zhu Xi ( 1130-1200) felt that term meant "popular songs," and later scholars likewise regarded it as a musical term, hence, "airs." Most of these songs have features of the folk song.

The "Ya" are songs of the Zhou royal domain. The two "Ya" sections are often treated as one; it is difficult to ascertain what by way of content distinguishes the

"Xiao ya" from the "Da ya." The former seems to include more folk songs, while the latter is primarily comprised of the banquet, sacrificial and ritual songs, prayers, and poems of political protest that characterize both sections. There are also poems that remember early mythology. The meaning of ya is by no means clear. In the Zhou period it was used as a synonym for
xia to refer to things "Chinese," as opposed to things foreign or barbarian. Ya also has the meanings of "correct" and "orthodox," and "elegant" and "dignified." All or any of these may have some bearing on the significance of this division of the Shi jing.

The "Song" section is comprised of praise poems, hymns, and perhaps songs to accompany court ritual dances. The meaning of song is "eulogy" or "hymn of praise." The word is also defined by rong, "demeanor," "countenance," and "gesture," which might connect the name of this section to the ritual dance. There is a solemn, ritualistic quality to these songs.

Dating. Of the songs in the Shi jing, the earliest are probably the "Zhou song" (Mao shi 266-296), which may date to as early as the eleventh century BCE.

The latest may be those of the "Chen feng," circa sixth century BCE. These songs are from the southernmost state of Chen, located in the area of modern southern Henan and northern Anhui. It was later conquered by Chu some of the imagery of these songs are reflected in the much later poetry of the Chu ci.

Authorship. The authorship of the songs of the Shi jing is mostly anonymous. Jifu identifies himself as the author of a couple of "Da ya" poems (Mao shi 259, 260). Likewise, in Mao shi 200, Mengzi (a eunuch, not the philosopher), a more murky figure, gives himself as its author. Mao shi 204 and 252 refer to their composers as junzi, but exactly what this means in this context is unknown. On the basis of external evidence from the
Zuo zhuan (Min 2), Mao shi 54 is attributed to the wife of Duke Mu of Xu and to circa 671 BCE. Traditionally, the Duke of Zhou is credited with a number of Shi jing
songs, but only his authorship of one (Mao shi 155) has independent corroboration in an early work, the Book of Documents (Shu jing).

Early Hermeneutical Traditions. Chinese scholarship on the Shi jing traditionally recognizes four so-called schools (jia) of Han dynasty Shi jing
hermeneutics: Lu, Qi, Han, and Mao. Each of these schools is said to have had its own version of the Shi text as well as its own particular interpretation of the songs in the collection. The reason each had its own version of the collection is that the Shi purportedly survived the Qin bibliocaust of 213 by virtue of its having been memorized; these schools reflect, in part, the adherence to a certain reconstituted version. If this is true, it is remarkable that the four versions--at least as far as the available testimonies indicate--were as similar as they were. Evidence about the extent to which the first three schools (known as the "Three Schools") were influential, or even whether Han-era scholars viewed themselves as strictly following a particular tradition, is sketchy; see the treatment of this matter in James Robert Hightower, "The Han-shih wai-chuan and the San Chia Shih," HJAS 11 (1948): 251-290, and in particular, 252-253, n. 26.

The four schools each claimed a patriarch and pedigree: the founder of the Lu School was Shen Pei, a
Shi erudite under Emperor Wen (reg. 179-158 B.C.)

and who had studied with Fuqiu Bo, a student of the Ruist thinker Xunzi, prior to the bibliocaust; the early Qi School was identified with Yuan Gu, a Shi erudite under Emperor Jing (reg. 156-140 B.C.), but the early history of this school is unknown; the Han School founder was Han Ying, a Shi erudite under Emperor Wen; the founder of the Mao School was reputedly Mao Heng (3rd-2nd century B.C.), a disciple of Xunzi. The Lu School seems to have been widely followed throughout the Han, and continued until 317 CE. Qi School scholars had an interest in the Shi wei or Shi jing Apocrypha; they applied Yin-Yang theory, pitch-pipes, and the calendar to the Shi jing. This school had already disappeared by the end of the Han. The Han School lasted to the Eastern Han, too, but a single work from this school, the Han shi wai zhuan, is still extant. It is a collection of anecdotal material that serves to illustrate moral points. All of these schools interpreted the Shi jing songs to contain moral and political meanings. The Three Schools of the Shi jing are traditionally regarded as "New Text" even though there was no actual New Text-Old Text distinction in Shi jing textual history.

Mao School. The Mao School became the officially recognized version of the Shi jing in the reign of the Western Han emperor Ping (reg. 1-5 CE). Scholars have associated it with the Old Text tradition though there is no Old Text version of the Shi jing. On account of its establishment at the court, the Mao School survived the Three Schools (and is likely responsible for their demise) and its text is the version we study today. The number of a song according to its placement in the Mao version is used by scholars in the West to denote that song (e.g., "Guan ju" is Mao shi 1). The Mao School maintained that there were 311 poems in this collection originally, but that only the titles to the six missing poems remain; these titles are placed between Mao shi 169 and 173, and are not numbered. The Mao Commentary, traditionally attributed to Mao Heng, gives word glosses, moral and political interpretations of the songs, and a general, often allegorical, interpretation. It is now dated to the middle of the second century BCE.

Prefaces to the Mao Version. There are two prefaces that accompany the Mao School version of the Shi jing: the "Da xu" or "Great Preface" and the "Xiao xu" or "Minor Preface."

The text of the "Great Preface" precedes that of the first song, "Guan ju." It was probably compiled at the beginning of the Common Era. The Great Preface begins and ends with a discussion of "Guan ju," but the greater portion of it is devoted to a general introduction to the whole anthology, including a discussion of the meanings of the titles of the sections ("Feng," "Ya," and "Song"). It also lists three somewhat recondite literary terms: fu ("display," "exposition," "narration"), bi
("direct metaphor," "comparison"), and xing ("evocative image," "stimulus," "motif") that play an important role in later Shi jing scholarship and in Chinese literary criticism in general.

The "Minor Preface" has two strata: the "Upper Preface" and the "Lower Preface." The Upper Preface is dated to the mid-second century BCE. It is the first

sentences of the Minor Preface (and of the Great Preface as well) as it is found today: though it may once have been an integrated whole, the Minor Preface as it has been transmitted is found in sections that head and pertain to individual songs. The Upper Preface is a pithy statement of the poem's meaning. The Lower Preface dates to the beginning of our era, and is an apparent elaboration on the Upper Preface. For a discussion of these Prefaces, and their dating, see Stephen Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China (Stanford: Stanford University, 1991), 90-95.

Zheng Xuan, Kong Yingda, and Zhu Xi.
Zheng Xuan (127-200) was a late Eastern Han scholar who edited the Mao shi, probably bringing together the Mao Commentary with the Prefaces. He was not a slave to the Mao tradition, though, as is evidenced by the legacy of his explanatory notes (jian) to Mao shi in

which he sometimes borrows from the traditions of the Three Schools. His work was regarded as the orthodox Confucian exegesis of the Shi jing. Emperor Taizong (r 627-649) of the Tang dynasty resolved to establish a definitive version of the Classics, and the "correct meaning" (zhengyi) of their contents. Thus,

Kong Yingda (574-648) directed a committee that produced a subcommentary to the Mao shi. This version is considered the standard edition. Zhu Xi's (1130-1200)
Shi ji zhuan (completed ca. 1177) is the most important post-Han commentary; it is still widely influential. Zhu Xi rejected the Minor Preface and in many cases the older Mao Commentary's moral and political interpretations of the songs. He recognized, against the Preface, that the Shi jing contained erotic poems, the yin shi or "depraved songs," that he regarded as products of an age in decline. Zhu Xi felt that the Shi jing did not contain only normative songs; Confucius had included "depraved songs" as examples of what not to do.



	Shi jing or Book of Songs General Information Mark Laurent Asselin Origins. The Shi jing (earliest records give it as Shi or Shi sanbai) is composed of three hundred and five songs dating from approximately the eleventh century (at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty) to the sixth century BCE (in the so-called "Spring-and-Autumn" period). In the Records of the Historiographer (Shi ji, 47.1936), Sima Qian (ca. 145-86 BCE) credits Confucius (ca. sixth century BCE) with the task of having selected and edited these songs from among a collection of three thousand. This attribution has few adherents today, but the importance of this collection--which in the Western Han dynasty (202 BCE-9 CE) was canonized as one the Five Classics--to the Confucian tradition is undisputed. The anthology also serves as arguably the most important source of literary ideas and allusions in traditional Chinese literature. Insofar as the Shi jing is taught in Chinese schools today, it is still a living text. In English, the Shi jing is referred to as the Book of Songs, Classic of Poetry, Book of Odes, etc. The most widely read English translations are those by Arthur Waley (1937), James Legge (1871), and Ezra Pound (1954). Composition. There are four sections to the Shi jing: the "Guo feng" or "Airs of the States" (Mao shi 1-160), "Xiao ya" or "Lesser Elegantiae" (Mao shi 161-234), "Da ya" or "Greater Elegantiae" (Mao shi 235-265), and "Song" or "Eulogia" or "Lauds" (Mao shi 266-305). The first two sections, though, are not denoted "Feng" in the Shi jing but "Nan": these twenty-five songs comprise the "Zhou nan" and the "Shao nan." Scholars have not definitively determined the reason for this discrepancy, nor even to what the term "Nan" refers. "Nan" may be a geographical reference ("South") or a musical term (the name of a type of music or of a musical instrument) or both. Since, as pointed out by Gao Heng in Shi jing jinzhu (1980), the Zuo zhuan (Yin 3) refers to two of the "Shao nan" songs (Mao shi 13, 15) as "Feng," one may conclude that the "Er nan" or "Two Nan" are part of the "Feng" and do not comprise a separate division of the Shi jing. The "Guo feng" is a collection of songs written and/or sung in the various states. The meaning of feng has long been debated. The "Greater Preface" (see below) defines it as jiao, "teaching," and specifically the moral instruction of superiors to inferiors and the admonitions of inferiors to superiors. It also refers to feng in the context of feng su or "customs," hence the "customs of the states." Zhu Xi ( 1130-1200) felt that term meant "popular songs," and later scholars likewise regarded it as a musical term, hence, "airs." Most of these songs have features of the folk song. The "Ya" are songs of the Zhou royal domain. The two "Ya" sections are often treated as one; it is difficult to ascertain what by way of content distinguishes the "Xiao ya" from the "Da ya." The former seems to include more folk songs, while the latter is primarily comprised of the banquet, sacrificial and ritual songs, prayers, and poems of political protest that characterize both sections. There are also poems that remember early mythology. The meaning of ya is by no means clear. In the Zhou period it was used as a synonym for xia to refer to things "Chinese," as opposed to things foreign or barbarian. Ya also has the meanings of "correct" and "orthodox," and "elegant" and "dignified." All or any of these may have some bearing on the significance of this division of the Shi jing. The "Song" section is comprised of praise poems, hymns, and perhaps songs to accompany court ritual dances. The meaning of song is "eulogy" or "hymn of praise." The word is also defined by rong, "demeanor," "countenance," and "gesture," which might connect the name of this section to the ritual dance. There is a solemn, ritualistic quality to these songs. Dating. Of the songs in the Shi jing, the earliest are probably the "Zhou song" (Mao shi 266-296), which may date to as early as the eleventh century BCE. The latest may be those of the "Chen feng," circa sixth century BCE. These songs are from the southernmost state of Chen, located in the area of modern southern Henan and northern Anhui. It was later conquered by Chu some of the imagery of these songs are reflected in the much later poetry of the Chu ci. Authorship. The authorship of the songs of the Shi jing is mostly anonymous. Jifu identifies himself as the author of a couple of "Da ya" poems (Mao shi 259, 260). Likewise, in Mao shi 200, Mengzi (a eunuch, not the philosopher), a more murky figure, gives himself as its author. Mao shi 204 and 252 refer to their composers as junzi, but exactly what this means in this context is unknown. On the basis of external evidence from the Zuo zhuan (Min 2), Mao shi 54 is attributed to the wife of Duke Mu of Xu and to circa 671 BCE. Traditionally, the Duke of Zhou is credited with a number of Shi jing songs, but only his authorship of one (Mao shi 155) has independent corroboration in an early work, the Book of Documents (Shu jing). Early Hermeneutical Traditions. Chinese scholarship on the Shi jing traditionally recognizes four so-called schools (jia) of Han dynasty Shi jing hermeneutics: Lu, Qi, Han, and Mao. Each of these schools is said to have had its own version of the Shi text as well as its own particular interpretation of the songs in the collection. The reason each had its own version of the collection is that the Shi purportedly survived the Qin bibliocaust of 213 by virtue of its having been memorized; these schools reflect, in part, the adherence to a certain reconstituted version. If this is true, it is remarkable that the four versions--at least as far as the available testimonies indicate--were as similar as they were. Evidence about the extent to which the first three schools (known as the "Three Schools") were influential, or even whether Han-era scholars viewed themselves as strictly following a particular tradition, is sketchy; see the treatment of this matter in James Robert Hightower, "The Han-shih wai-chuan and the San Chia Shih," HJAS 11 (1948): 251-290, and in particular, 252-253, n. 26. The four schools each claimed a patriarch and pedigree: the founder of the Lu School was Shen Pei, a Shi erudite under Emperor Wen (reg. 179-158 B.C.) and who had studied with Fuqiu Bo, a student of the Ruist thinker Xunzi, prior to the bibliocaust; the early Qi School was identified with Yuan Gu, a Shi erudite under Emperor Jing (reg. 156-140 B.C.), but the early history of this school is unknown; the Han School founder was Han Ying, a Shi erudite under Emperor Wen; the founder of the Mao School was reputedly Mao Heng (3rd-2nd century B.C.), a disciple of Xunzi. The Lu School seems to have been widely followed throughout the Han, and continued until 317 CE. Qi School scholars had an interest in the Shi wei or Shi jing Apocrypha; they applied Yin-Yang theory, pitch-pipes, and the calendar to the Shi jing. This school had already disappeared by the end of the Han. The Han School lasted to the Eastern Han, too, but a single work from this school, the Han shi wai zhuan, is still extant. It is a collection of anecdotal material that serves to illustrate moral points. All of these schools interpreted the Shi jing songs to contain moral and political meanings. The Three Schools of the Shi jing are traditionally regarded as "New Text" even though there was no actual New Text-Old Text distinction in Shi jing textual history. Mao School. The Mao School became the officially recognized version of the Shi jing in the reign of the Western Han emperor Ping (reg. 1-5 CE). Scholars have associated it with the Old Text tradition though there is no Old Text version of the Shi jing. On account of its establishment at the court, the Mao School survived the Three Schools (and is likely responsible for their demise) and its text is the version we study today. The number of a song according to its placement in the Mao version is used by scholars in the West to denote that song (e.g., "Guan ju" is Mao shi 1). The Mao School maintained that there were 311 poems in this collection originally, but that only the titles to the six missing poems remain; these titles are placed between Mao shi 169 and 173, and are not numbered. The Mao Commentary, traditionally attributed to Mao Heng, gives word glosses, moral and political interpretations of the songs, and a general, often allegorical, interpretation. It is now dated to the middle of the second century BCE. Prefaces to the Mao Version. There are two prefaces that accompany the Mao School version of the Shi jing: the "Da xu" or "Great Preface" and the "Xiao xu" or "Minor Preface." The text of the "Great Preface" precedes that of the first song, "Guan ju." It was probably compiled at the beginning of the Common Era. The Great Preface begins and ends with a discussion of "Guan ju," but the greater portion of it is devoted to a general introduction to the whole anthology, including a discussion of the meanings of the titles of the sections ("Feng," "Ya," and "Song"). It also lists three somewhat recondite literary terms: fu ("display," "exposition," "narration"), bi ("direct metaphor," "comparison"), and xing ("evocative image," "stimulus," "motif") that play an important role in later Shi jing scholarship and in Chinese literary criticism in general. The "Minor Preface" has two strata: the "Upper Preface" and the "Lower Preface." The Upper Preface is dated to the mid-second century BCE. It is the first sentences of the Minor Preface (and of the Great Preface as well) as it is found today: though it may once have been an integrated whole, the Minor Preface as it has been transmitted is found in sections that head and pertain to individual songs. The Upper Preface is a pithy statement of the poem's meaning. The Lower Preface dates to the beginning of our era, and is an apparent elaboration on the Upper Preface. For a discussion of these Prefaces, and their dating, see Stephen Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China (Stanford: Stanford University, 1991), 90-95. Zheng Xuan, Kong Yingda, and Zhu Xi. Zheng Xuan (127-200) was a late Eastern Han scholar who edited the Mao shi, probably bringing together the Mao Commentary with the Prefaces. He was not a slave to the Mao tradition, though, as is evidenced by the legacy of his explanatory notes (jian) to Mao shi in which he sometimes borrows from the traditions of the Three Schools. His work was regarded as the orthodox Confucian exegesis of the Shi jing. Emperor Taizong (r 627-649) of the Tang dynasty resolved to establish a definitive version of the Classics, and the "correct meaning" (zhengyi) of their contents. Thus, Kong Yingda (574-648) directed a committee that produced a subcommentary to the Mao shi. This version is considered the standard edition. Zhu Xi's (1130-1200) Shi ji zhuan (completed ca. 1177) is the most important post-Han commentary; it is still widely influential. Zhu Xi rejected the Minor Preface and in many cases the older Mao Commentary's moral and political interpretations of the songs. He recognized, against the Preface, that the Shi jing contained erotic poems, the yin shi or "depraved songs," that he regarded as products of an age in decline. Zhu Xi felt that the Shi jing did not contain only normative songs; Confucius had included "depraved songs" as examples of what not to do.