Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/478

 grave, He looked terrified and trembled. Thou azure Heaven there!

Could he have been redeemed, We would have given a hundred (ordinary) men for him.

Liû, an ancestor of the Kâu family, made a settlement, according to its traditions, in 1797, in Pin, the site of which is pointed out, 90 lî to the west of the present district city of San-shui, in Pin Kâu, Shen-hsî, where the tribe remained till the movement eastwards of Than-fû, celebrated in the first decade of the Major Odes of the Kingdom, ode 3. The duke of Kâu, during the minority of king Khang, made, it is supposed, the first of the pieces in this Book, describing for the instruction of the young monarch, the ancient ways of their fathers in Pin; and subsequently some one compiled other odes made by the duke, and others also about him, and brought them together under the common name of 'the Odes of Pin.'

If the piece was made, as the Chinese critics all suppose, by the duke of Kâu, we must still suppose that he writes in the person of an old farmer or yeoman of Pin. The picture which it gives of the manners of the Chinese people, their thrifty, provident ways, their agriculture and weaving, nearly 3,700 years ago, is