Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/316

 destinies and become a world-literature full of philosophic efforts to explain the past, the present, and the future of the human species. But China, like India, had her day of small things, of local distinctions, of feudal states; and from this early period the Shih, or at least some of its odes, would seem to date.

The Shih, consisting of 305 pieces, the most recent of which are assigned to 606–586, the oldest to the period of the Shang dynasty 1766–1123, is divided into four parts. 1. The Kwo Făng, "Manners of the different States,” or, as Dr. Legge prefers to translate, "Lessons from the States," are 160 short pieces descriptive of manners and events in the feudal states of Kâu. 2. The Hsiâo Yâ, or "Minor Odes of the Kingdom," are 74 pieces, "sung at the gatherings of the feudal princes and their appearances at the royal court." 3. The Yâ Yâ, or "Major Odes of the Kingdom," are 31 pieces, "sung on great occasions at the royal court and in the presence of the king." 4. Lastly, the Sung consist of 40 pieces, 31 of which belong to the sacrificial services at the royal court of Kâu, the rest to those of the marquises of Lû and the kings of Shang. Chinese authorities speak of the Sung as "songs for the music of the ancestral temple," and "songs for the music at sacrifices;" and Dr. Legge, uniting these definitions, would call them "odes of the temple and the altar."

It would seem that some at least of these odes were collected in the capital from the music-masters of the various states; and their repetitions or refrains indicate a spirit at once secular and musical, which, like the four-syllabled lines in which they are for the most part composed, contrasts remarkably with the difficult metrical forms and highly religious tone of the Indian hymns. The subordination of the sacrificial to the secular aspect,