Shi Jing Totally Explained

Everything about Shi Jing totally explained

Shi Jing, translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems. It comprises 305 poems, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC.

The collection

The collection is divided into three parts according to their genre, namely feng, ya and song, with the ya genre further divided into "small" and "large":

Chinese character(s)	Pinyin	Number and Meaning
風(风)	fēng	160 folk songs (or airs)
小雅	xiǎoyǎ	74 minor festal songs (or odes traditionally sung at court festivities)
大雅	dàyǎ	31 major festal songs, sung at more solemn court ceremonies
頌(颂)	sòng	40 hymns and eulogies, sung at sacrifices to gods and ancestral spirits of the royal house

The Confucian tradition holds that the collection, one of the Wu Jing, or Five Classics, came to what we've today after the editing of Confucius. The collection was officially acknowledged as one of "Five Classics" during the Han Dynasty, and previously in Zhou Dynasty Shi (詩) was one of "Six Classics". Four schools of commentary existed then, namely the Qi (齊), the Lu (魯), the Han (韓), and the Mao (毛) schools. The first two schools didn't survive. The Han school only survived partly. The Mao school became the canonical school of Shi Jing commentary after the Han Dynasty. As a result, the collection is also sometimes referred to as "Mao Shi" (毛詩). Zheng Xuan's elucidation on the Mao commentary is also canonical. The 305 poems had to be reconstructed from memory by scholars since the previous Qin Dynasty had burned the collection along with other classical texts. (There are, in fact, a total of 308 poem titles that were reconstructed, but the remaining three poems only have titles without any extant text). The earliest surviving edition of Shi Jing is a fragmentary one of the Han Dynasty, written on bamboo strips, unearthed at Fuyang.
The poems are written in four-character lines. The airs are in the style of folk songs, although the extent to which they're real folk songs or literary imitations is debated. The odes deal with matters of court and historical subjects, while the hymns blend history, myth and religious material.
The three major literary figures or styles employed in the poems are fu, bi and xing:

Chinese character	Pinyin	Meaning
賦(赋)	fù	straightforward narrative
比	bǐ	explicit comparisons
興(兴)	xìng	implied comparisons

Summary of groupings of Shi Jing poems

Guo Feng

Guo Feng
"Airs of the States" poems 001-160; 160 total folk songs (or airs)
group	char	group name	poem #s
01	周南	Odes of Zhou & South	001-011
02	召南	Odes of Shao & South	012-025
03	邶風	Odes of Bei	026-044
04	鄘風	Odes of Yong	045-054
05	衛風	Odes of Wei	055-064
06	王風	Odes of Wang	065-074
07	鄭風	Odes of Zheng	075-095
08	齊風	Odes of Qi	096-106
09	魏風	Odes of Wei	107-113
10	唐風	Odes of Tang	114-125
11	秦風	Odes of Qin	126-135
12	陳風	Odes of Chen	136-145
13	檜風	Odes of Kuai	146-149
14	曹風	Odes of Cao	150-153
15	豳風	Odes of Bin	154-160

Xiao Ya

Xiao Ya
"Minor Odes of the Kingdom" poems 161-234; 74 total minor festal songs (or odes) for court
group	char	group name	poem #s
01	鹿鳴之什	Decade of Lu Ming	161-170
02	白華之什	Decade of Baihua	170-175
03	彤弓之什	Decade of Tong Gong	175-185
04	祈父之什	Decade of Qi Fu	185-195
05	小旻之什	Decade of Xiao Min	195-205
06	北山之什	Decade of Bei Shan	205-215
07	桑扈之什	Decade of Sang Hu	215-225
08	都人士之什	Decade of Du Ren Shi	225-234

Da Ya

Da Ya
"Major Odes of the Kingdom" poems 235-265;
31 total major festal songs for solemn court ceremonies
group	char	group name	poem #s
01	文王之什	Decade of Wen Wang	235-244
02	生民之什	Decade of Sheng Min	245-254
03	蕩之什	Decade of Dang	255-265

Song

Song
"Odes of the Temple & Altar" poems 266-305;
40 total praises, hymns, or eulogies sung at spirit sacrifices
group	char	group name	poem #s
01	周頌	Sacrificial Odes of Zhou1	266-296
01a	-清廟之什	Decade of Qing Miao	266-275
01b	-臣工之什	Decade of Chen Gong	276-285
01c	-閔予小子之什	Decade of Min You Xiao Zi	286-296
02	魯頌	Praise Odes of Lu3	297-300
03	商頌	Sacrificial Odes of Shang1	301-305

note: alternative divisions may be topical or chronological (Legges): Song, DaYa, XiaoYa, GuoFeng

Translations

, in The Sacred Books of China, translated by James Legge, 1879.
The Book of Songs, translated by Arthur Waley, edited with additional translations by Joseph R. Allen, New York: Grove Press, 1996.
Book of Poetry, translated by Xu Yuanchong (許淵沖), edited by Jiang Shengzhang (姜勝章), Hunan, China: Hunan chubanshe, 1993.
The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius, translated by Ezra Pound, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954.
The Book of Odes, translated by Bernhard Karlgren, Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950.

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