Description
The book
The Shih King is the oldest anthology of Chinese poetry: odes sung at the Zhou court and in the feudal states, some of them older than Confucius by five centuries. There are hymns of sacrifice, complaints about taxes, love songs, and poems that curse a bad ruler to his face. Confucius is said to have selected the collection himself, and it stayed part of the classical curriculum for as long as that curriculum lasted.
It matters beyond literature. For anyone reading Chinese history, the odes are the reference library that every later writer assumes you know — quoted in memorials, in examination essays, in the letters of officials arguing with the throne.
What you get
- A 158-page A5 PDF, typeset from the original translation — not a scan.
- Legge’s full apparatus: introduction, the arrangement into books and parts, and his notes on the meaning and occasion of each ode.
- Running heads, a title page, and an edition note naming the source and date.
- Instant download after payment, in your account and by email.
About this edition
The translation is James Legge’s, published in The Sacred Books of the East, Volume III, in 1879. Legge set out to give English readers not only the poems but the scholarship that explains them, and this volume keeps both: the verse, and the commentary without which much of the verse is opaque.
We have re-typeset the text from the Project Gutenberg transcription. Legge’s wording, book and part divisions, and notes are unchanged; the layout, cover and edition note are ours.
Rights
The translation is in the public domain. Our typesetting and cover are our own work. You may read, print and quote this edition for your own study; you may not resell it or redistribute the file.
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