The Shih King | Page 9

the royal domain itself.
The music-master of the king would get the odes of each state from its music-master.
But the feudal states were modelled after the pattern of the royal state. They also had their music-masters, their musicians, and their historiographers. The kings in their progresses did not visit each particular state, so that the Grand Music Master could have the opportunity to collect the odes in it for himself. They met, at well-known points, the marquises, earls, barons, &c., of the different quarters of the kingdom; there gave audience to them; adjudicated on their merits, and issued to them their orders. We are obliged to suppose that the princes were attended to the places of rendezvous by their music-masters, carrying with them the poetical compositions gathered in their several regions, to present them to their superior of the royal court. We can understand how, by means of the above arrangement, the poems of the whole kingdom were accumulated and arranged among the archives of the capital.
How the collected poems were disseminated through the states.
Was there any provision for disseminating thence the poems of one state among all the others? There is sufficient evidence that such dissemination was effected out in some way. Throughout the Narratives of the States, and the details of Zo Khi?-ming on the history of the Spring and Autumn, the officers of the states generally are presented to us as familiar not only with the odes of their particular states, but with those of other states as well. They appear equally well acquainted with all the Parts and Books of our present Shih; and we saw how the whole of it was sung over to K? Ka of W?, when he visited the court of L? in the boyhood of Confucius. There was, probably, a regular communication from the royal court to the courts of the various states of the poetical pieces that for one reason or another were thought worthy of preservation. This is nowhere expressly stated, but it may be contended for by analogy from the accounts which I have given, in the Introduction to the Sh?, pp. 4, 5, of the duties of the royal historiographers or recorders.
How the Shih is so small and incomplete.
2. But if the poems produced in the different states were thus collected in the capital, and thence again disseminated 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 is to be accounted for by the disorder into which the kingdom fell after the lapse of a few reigns from king W?. Royal progresses ceased when royal government fell into decay, and then the odes were no more collected[1]. We have no account of any progress of the kings during the Khun Khi? period. But before that period there is a long gap of nearly 150 years between kings Khang and ?, covering the reigns of Khang, Kao, M?, and Kung, if we except two doubtful pieces among the Sacrificial Odes of Kau. The reign of Hsiao, who succeeded to ?, is similarly uncommemorated; and the latest odes are of the time of Ting, when 100 years of the Khun Khi? period had still to run their course. Many odes must have been made and collected during the 140 and more years after king Khang. The probability is that they perished during the feeble reigns of ? and the three monarchs who followed him. Then came the long and vigorous reign of Hs��an (B.C. 827 to 782), when we may suppose that the ancient custom of collecting the poems was revived. After him all was in the main decadence and confusion. It was probably in the latter part of his reign that King-khao, an ancestor of Confucius, obtained from the Grand Music-Master at the court of Kau twelve of the sacrificial odes of the previous dynasty, as will be related under the Sacrificial Odes of Shang, with which he returned to Sung,
[1. See Mencius, IV, ii, ch. 21.]
which was held by representatives of the line of Shang. They were used there in sacrificing to the old Shang kings; yet seven of the twelve were lost before the time of the sage.
The general conclusion to which we come is, that the existing Shih is the fragment of various collections made during the early reigns of the kings of Kau, and added to at intervals, especially on the occurrence of a prosperous rule, in accordance with the regulation that has been preserved in the L? K?. How it is that we have in

Part I odes of
comparatively few of the states into which the kingdom was divided, and that the odes of those states extend only over a short period of their history:--for these things we