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278
THE SHIH KING.
a difference between the pieces of La and the other two collections in this part, to which I will call attention in giving the translation of them. From the above account of the contents of the Shih,
it will be seen that only the pieces in the Only the pieces of the fourth last of its four Parts are professedly of a
Part have professedly a
a religious character. Many of those, however, religious in the other Parts, especially the second and character.
third, describe religious services, and give expression to religious ideas in the minds of their authors.
3. Some of the pieces in the Shih are ballads, some are songs, some are hymns, and of others the nature can hardly
be indicated by any English denomination. Classification of the pieces They have often been spoken of by the from their form general name of odes, understanding by that and style.
* term lyric poems that were set to music. My reason for touching here on this point is the earliest account of the Shih, as a collection either already formed or in the process of formation, that we find in Chinese literature. In the Official Book of Kâu, generally supposed to be a work of the twelfth or eleventh century B.C., among the duties of the Grand Music-Master there is the teaching,' (that is, to the musical performers,) 'the six classes of poems :--the Făng; the FQ; the Pi; the Hsing; the Ya; and the Sung.' That the collection of the Shih, as it now is, existed so early as the date assigned to the Official Book could not be; but we find the same account of it given in the so-called Confucian Preface. The Făng, the Yå, and the Sung are the four Parts of the classic described in the preceding paragraph, the Yå embracing both the Minor and Major Odes of the Kingdom. But what were the Fû, the Pi, and the Hsing? We might suppose that they were the names of three other distinct Parts or Books. But they were not so. Pieces so discri. minated are found in all the four Parts, though there are more of them in the first two than in the others.
The FQ may be described as Narrative pieces, in which the writers tell what they have to say in a simple, straightforward manner, without any hidden meaning reserved in
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