Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/43

Rh it has at once been 'the foundation of their political system, their history, and their religious rites, the basis of their tactics, music and astronomy.'

The Shih Ching, or 'Book of Odes,' is another work which Confucius preserved for posterity. It is a collection of rhymed ballads whose ages run from probably 1719 B.C. to 585 B.C. They are 305 in number though they appear to have been reduced by mishaps and editorial selection from as many as 3,000. Giles thus exhibits their arrangement:

(a) Ballads commonly sung by the people in the various feudal states and forwarded periodically by the nobles to their suzerain, the Son of Heaven. The ballads were then submitted to the Imperial Musicians, who were able to judge from the nature of such compositions what would be the manners and the customs prevailing in each state, and to advise the suzerain accordingly as to the good or evil administration of each of his vassal rulers.

(b) Odes sung at ordinary entertainments given by the suzerain.

(c) Odes sung on grand occasions when the feudal nobles were gathered together.

(d) Panegyrics and sacrificial odes.

Confucius regarded a man unacquainted with the 'Book of Odes' as unfit for intercourse with intellectual men. According to him the design of all may be expressed in the one sentence, 'Have no depraved thoughts.'

Early commentators ignoring the natural beauties of these poems have saddled these ditties with weighty moral and political allegories. This may have served to preserve a work which would otherwise have been deemed too trivial. The native literature, illustrative, critical, and philological dealing with the 'Book of Odes' is not as large as that on the 'Book of Changes,' but Chinese scholars know it by heart, and each separate verse has been so searchingly examined that exegesis can go no further. The fifty-five commentaries mentioned by Legge in his translation increase our opinion of Chinese scholarship when we remember its isolation from the literature of other lands.

A nation's ballads have often been regarded as a more important factor in the life of the people than its laws, and the insight which the 'Book of Odes' gives into the customs and feelings of ancient China is its chief merit. While these poems lack the grandeur of the Greek and Latin productions, they are fortunately free from the looseness that too often detracts from the latter. As the 305 odes are usually committed to memory before coming to the examination hall, all poetical efforts of Chinese scholars have been practically molded by them.

Though in some of the odes women are roughly handled and perhaps the position of women to-day is in part due to their influence, the fairer side also appears, and contrasts in female character like those portrayed by King Solomon in the same age are presented. Witness