Text of Confucianism Part 01

SR No.: 007675
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1879
Total Pages: 2829
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 50 MB

Page 481

444
THE SHIH KING.
BOOK XV.
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 1.
Book XV. THE ODES OF PIN.
Duke Lill, an ancestor of the Kâu family, made a settlement, ac- .
cording to its traditions, in B. c. 1797, in Pin, the site of which is pointed out, go li 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-fa, celebrated in the first decade of the Major Odes of the Kingdom, ode 3. The duke of Kâu, during the minority of king Khăng, 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.'
ODE 1, STANZA 8. THE Kui YÜEH.
DESCRIBING LIFE IN PIN IN THE OLDEN TIME; THE PROVIDENT ARRANGE
MENTS THERE TO SECURE THE CONSTANT SUPPLY OF FOOD AND RAIMENT,—WHATEVER WAS NECESSARY FOR THE SUPPORT AND CONFORT OF THE PEOPLE.
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
1 This appeal to Heaven is like what we met with in the first of the Odes of the Royal Domain, and the eighth of those of Thang.
Digitized by Google