The morality of the Shu King, for a pagan work, is extremely good; the principles of administration laid down in it, founded on a regard to the welfare of the people, would, if carried out, insure universal prosperity. The answer of Kaoyao to the monarch Yu is expressive of a mild spirit: “Your virtue, O Emperor, is faultless. You condescend to your ministers with a liberal ease; you rule the multitude with a generous forbearance. Your punishments do not extend to the criminal’s heirs, but your rewards reach to after-generations. You pardon inadvertent faults, however great, and punish deliberate crime, however small. In cases of doubtful crimes you deal with them lightly; of doubtful merit, you prefer the highest estimate. Rather than put to death the guiltless, you will run the risk of irregularity and laxity. This life-loving virtue has penetrated the minds of the people, and this is why they do not render themselves liable to be punished by your officers.”[305]
In the counsels of Yu to Shun are many of the best maxims of good government, both for rulers and ruled, which antiquity has handed down in any country. The following are among them: “Yih said, Alas! Be cautious. Admonish yourself to caution when there seems to be no reason for anxiety. Do not fail in due attention to laws and ordinances. Do not find enjoyment in indulgent ease. Do not go to excess in pleasure. Employ men of worth without intermediaries. Put away evil advisers, nor try to carry out doubtful plans. Study that all your purposes may be according to reason. Do not seek the people’s praises by going against reason, nor oppose the people to follow your own desires. Be neither idle nor wayward, and even foreign tribes will come under your sway.”
The Shu King contains the seeds of all things that are valuable in the estimation of the Chinese; it is at once the foundation of their political system, their history, and their religious rites, the basis of their tactics, music, and astronomy. Some have thought that the knowledge of the true God under the appellation of Shangtí is not obscurely intimated in it, and the precepts for governing a country, scattered through its dialogues and proclamations, do their writers credit, however little they may have been followed in practice. Its astronomy has attracted much investigation, but whether the remarks of the commentators are to be ascribed to the times in which they themselves flourished, or to the knowledge they had of the ancient state of the science, is doubtful. The careful and candid discussions by Legge in the introduction to his translation furnish most satisfactory conclusions as to the origin, value, and condition of this venerable relic of ancient China. For his scholarly edition of the Classics he has already earned the hearty thanks of every student of Chinese literature.[306]
THE SHÍ KING, OR BOOK OF ODES.
The third of the classics, the Shí King, or ‘Book of Odes,’ is ranked together with the two preceding, while its influence upon the national mind has been equally great; a list of commentators upon this work fills the third section of the Catalogue. These poetical relics are arranged into four parts: The Kwoh Fung, or ‘National Airs,’ numbering one hundred and fifty-nine, from fifteen feudal States; the Siao Ya, or ‘Lesser Eulogiums,’ numbering eighty, and arranged under eight decades; the Ta Ya, or ‘Greater Eulogiums,’ numbering thirty-one, under three decades (both of these were designed to be sung on solemn occasions at the royal court); and the Sung, or ‘Sacrificial Odes,’ numbering forty-one chants connected with the ancestral worship of the rulers of Chau, Lu, and Shang. Out of a total number of three hundred and eleven now extant, six have only their titles preserved, while to a major part of the others native scholars give many various readings.
In the preface to his careful translation Dr. Legge has collected all the important information concerning the age, origin, and purpose of these odes, as furnished by native commentators, whose theory is that “it was the duty of the kings to make themselves acquainted with all the odes and songs current in the different States, and to judge from them of the character of the rule exercised by their several princes, so that they might minister praise or blame, reward or punishment accordingly.” These odes and songs seem to have been gathered by Wăn Wang and Duke Chau at the beginning of the Chau dynasty (B.C. 1120), some of them at the capital, others from the feudal rulers in the course of royal progresses through the land, the royal music-master getting copies from the music-masters of the princes. The whole were then arranged, set to music, too, it may be, and deposited for use and reference in the national archives, as well as distributed among the feudatories. Their ages are uncertain, but probably do not antedate B.C. 1719 nor come after 585, or about thirty years before Confucius. Their number was not improbably at first fully up to the three thousand mentioned by the biographers of Confucius, but long before the sage appeared disasters of one kind and another had reduced them to nearly their present condition. What we have is, therefore, but a fragment of various collections made in the early reigns of the Chau sovereigns, which received, perhaps, larger subsequent additions than were preserved to the time of Confucius. He probably took them as they existed in his day, and feeling, possibly, like George Herbert, that
“A verse may finde him, who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice,”
did everything he could to extend their adoption among his countrymen. It is difficult to estimate the power they have exerted over the subsequent generations of Chinese scholars—nor has their influence ever tended to debase their morals, if it has not exalted their imagination. They have escaped the looseness of Moschus, Ovid, or Juvenal, if they have not attained the grandeur of Homer or the sweetness of Virgil and Pindar. There is nothing of an epic character in them—nor even a lengthened narrative—and little of human passions in their strong development. The metaphors and illustrations are often quaint, sometimes puerile, and occasionally ridiculous. Their acknowledged antiquity, their religious character, and their illustration of early Chinese customs and feelings form their principal claims to our notice and appreciative study. M. Ed. Biot, of Paris, was the first European scholar who studied them carefully in this aspect, and his articles in the Journal Asiatique for 1843 are models of analytic criticism and synthetic compilation, enabling one, as he says, “to contemplate at his ease the spectacle of the primitive manners of society in the early age of China, so different from what was then found in Europe and Western Asia.”
EXAMPLES OF ITS LYRIC POETRY.