THE SHE KING; OR, THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY

54 THE CHINA OF THE BOOK OF POETET.
anything, but to be satisfied with doing in all loyal sub
jection what is prescribed to her to do. In I. i. I a
bride is compared to a dove, but the point of comparison
lies in the stupidity of the bird, whose nest consists of a
few sticks brought inartistically together. It is no un
desirable thing for a wife to be stupid, whereas a wise
woman is more likely to be a curse in a family than a
blessing. As it is expressed in III. iii. X. 8,
" A wise man builds up the wall [of a city],
But a wise woman overthrows it.
Admirable may be the wise woman,
But she is no better than an owl.
A woman with a long tongue
Is [like] a stepping-stone to disorder.
Disorder does not come down from heaven ;—
It is produced by the woman.
Those from whom come no lessons, no instruction,
Are women and eunuchs."
The marquis D' Hervey Saint-Denys, in the introduc
tion to his Poetry of the T'ang dynasty, p. 19, gives a
different account of the status of the woman anciently in
China. He says :—
" The wife of the ancient poems is the companion of a spouse who
takes her counsels, and never speaks to her as a master. She chooses
freely the man with whose life she will associate her own. Nothing
shows us as yet polygamy in the Songs of the Kivnh Fuitg, composed be
tween the 12th and tile 8th century before our era. 1 If tradition will
have it that Yaou gave bis two daughters to Shun in choosing him to
succeed to the throne ; if the Chow Le mentions a grand number of im
perial concubines independently of the empress proper ;—we may believe
that these were only royal exceptions, not in accordance with the popular
manners.
That there was often a true affection between husband
and wife in China, in the times of the She-king, as there
is at the present day, is a fact to be acknowledged and
rejoiced in. Notwithstanding the low estimation in which
woman's intellect and character were held, the mind of
the wife often was and is stronger than her husband's,
and her virtue greater. Many wives in Chinese history
have entered into the ambition of their husbands, and
spurred them on in the path of noble enterprise; many
1 Between the 12th century and the 6th.
THE CHIMA OF THE BOOK OF POETET. 55
more have sympathized with them in their trials and
poverty, and helped them to keep their little means to
gether and to make them more. I. ii. III.; v. VIII.; vi.
|1L, III., and V.; vii. VIII. and XVI.; viii. I.; x. V. and
XI., are among the odes of the fcshe which give pleasant
pictures of wifely affection and permanent attachment.
I believe also that in those early days there was more
freedom of movement allowed to young women than there
is now, as there was more possibility of their availing
themselves of it so many centuries before the practice of
cramping their feet and crippling them had been intro
duced. But on the other hand there are odes where the
wife, displaced from her proper place as the mistress of
the family, deplores her hard lot. There is no evidence
to show that honourable marriages ever took place with
out the intervention of the go-between, and merely by
the preference and choice of the principal parties con
cerned ; and there can be no doubt that polygamy pre
vailed from the earliest times, just as it prevails now,
limited only by the means of the family. So far from
there being no intimations of it in the odes of Part I.,
there are many. In ode IV. of Book i., the other ladies
of king Wiin's harem sing the praises of T'ae-sze,his queen,
the paragon and model to all ages of female excellence,
because of her freedom from jealousy. The subject of
ode V. is similar. In ode X., Book ii., we see the ladies
of some prince's harem repairing to his apartment, happy
in their lot, and acquiescing in the difference between it
and that of their mistress. Every feudal prince received
his bride and eight other ladies at once,—a younger sister
of the bride and a cousin, and three ladies from each of
two great Houses of the same surname. The thing is
seen in detail in the narratives of the Tso-chuen. Nothing
could show more the degrading influence of polygamy
than the vaunted freedom from jealousy on the part of
the proper wife, and subordinately in her inferiors.
The consequences of this social State were such as might
be expected. Many of the odes have reference to the
deeds of atrocious licentiousness and horrible bloodshed
to which it gave rise. We wonder that, with such an
element of depravation and disorder working among the
people, the moral condition of the country, bad as it was.