THE SHE KING; OR, THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY

16 THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION.
States; of the Books of the three August [rulers] and of
the five emperors. They communicated to all parts of
the kingdom the writings [in their charge] "l For want
of fuller information it is not easy to give a thoroughly
satisfactory account of the Histories and the Books refer
red to in these brief sentences; but I quote them merely
to establish the fact that, according to the constitution of
the kingdom under the dynasty of Chow, not only were
the literary monuments of the feudal States collected for
the satisfaction of the kings, but they were again sent
forth to the courts of the different princes, and became
the common possession of the cultivated classes through
out the whole country. The documentary evidence of
the fact is scanty, owing to the imperfect condition in
which the Books of Chow were recovered during the Ilan
dynasty, and so we have no special mention made of the
odes in the passages of the " Official Book/' which I have
adduced; but that they, as well as the other writings
which are vaguely specified, were made known to Loo,
Tsfe, Tsin, and all the other States, seems to have the
evidence of analogy in its favour, and to be necessary to
account for the general familiarity witli them which, we
know, prevailed.
G. But if the poems produced in the several States
were thus collected in the capital, and thence again dis
seminated 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
now the coi- is to be accounted for by the disorder and
Email" aid to- confusion into which the kingdom fell after
complete. t}ie lapse of a few reigns from king Woo.
lloyal progresses ceased when royal government fell into
1 These Histories, it is held, related to everything about the feudal
States, and the outlying barbarous tribes, the history of their princes and
chiefs, their origin and boundaries, their tributes*, their ceremonies, music,
customs, &c. We try in vain to discover what the Books of the three
August ones were. The second sentence is the most important for my
argument. I cannot accept the interpretation of " the writings," in which
many acquiesce, as simply = the names of the written characters. Biot
gives fcr the whole : " Us sont charges (le propafter les noms ecrits, o il,
IPS signes de 1'ccriture, dans les quatre parties de 1'empire." I believe
that I have given the sense correctly.
THE SOURCES OF THE ODES AS A COLLECTION. 17
decay, and then the odes were no longer collected.1 We
Lave no account of any progress of the kings during the
period of the Ch'un Ts'ew. But, before that period,
there is a long gap of 143 years between kings Ch'ing
and E, covering the reigns of K'ang, Ch'aou, Muh, and
Kung, of which we have no poetic memorials, if we ex
cept two doubtful pieces among the sacrificial odes of
Chow. The reign of He'aou who succeeded to B is simi
larly uncommemorated, and the latest odes are of the time
of Tiug, when a hundred years of the Ch'un Tsfe\v had
still to run their course. I cannot suppose but that many
odes were made and collected during the 143 years after
king Ch'ing. The probability is that they perished
during the feeble and disturbed reigns of B, Heaou, B,
and Le. Of the reign of the first of these we have only
five pieces, of all of whioh Choo considers the date to be
uncertain ; of that of the second, as has been observed '
above, we have no memorials at all ; of that of the third
we have only one piece, which Choo, for apparently good
reasons, would assign to a considerably later date. Then
follow four pieces, the date of which is quite uncertain,
I and eleven, assigned to the reign of Le, some of them
with evident error. To Le's succeeded the long and
vigorous reign of Seuen (B.C. 828 781), when we may
suppose that the ancient custom of collecting the poems
was revived. Subsequently to him, all was in the main
decadence and disorder. It was probably in the latter
part of his reign that Ch'ing-k caou-foO, an ancestor of
Confucius, obtained from the Grand music-master of the
conrt of Chow twelve of the sacrificial odes of the previous
dynasty, with which he returned to Sung which was held
by representatives of the House of Shang. They were
used there in sacrificing to the old kings of Shang, and
were probably taken with them to Loo when the Kfung
family subsequently sought refuge in that State. Yet of
the twelve odes seven were lost by the time of Confucius.
The general conclusion to which we come is, that the
existing Book of Poetry is the fragment of various col
lections made during the early reigns of the kings of
Chow, and added to at intervals, especially on the oc-
TOL. m.
See Mencius, IV. ii. XXI.
2