Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/327

 probably, a regular communication from the royal court to the courts of the various states of the poetical pieces that for one reason or another were thought worthy of preservation. This is nowhere expressly stated, but it may be contended for by analogy from the accounts which I have given, in the Introduction to the Shû, pp. 4, 5, of the duties of the royal historiographers or recorders.

But if the poems produced in the different 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 smallness of it is to be accounted for by the disorder into which the kingdom fell after the lapse of a few reigns from king Wû. Royal progresses ceased when royal government fell into decay, and then the odes were no more collected. We have no account of any progress of the kings during the Khun Khiû period. But before that period there is a long gap of nearly 150 years between kings Khǎng and Î, covering the reigns of Khang, Kâo, Mû, and Kung, if we except two doubtful pieces among the Sacrificial Odes of Kâu. The reign of Hsiâo, who succeeded to Î, is similarly uncommemorated; and the latest odes are of the time of Ting, when 100 years of the Khun Khiû period had still to run their course. Many odes must have been made and collected during the 140 and more years after king Khǎng. The probability is that they perished during the feeble reigns of Î and the three monarchs who followed him. Then came the long and vigorous reign of Hsüan ( 827 to 782), when we may suppose that the ancient custom of collecting the poems was revived. After him all was in the main decadence and confusion. It was probably in the latter part of his reign that Kǎng-khâo, an ancestor of Confucius, obtained from the Grand Music-Master at the court of Kâu twelve of the sacrificial odes of the previous dynasty, as will be related under the Sacrificial Odes of Shang, with which he returned to Sung,