Shī Jīng (Chinese: 詩經), translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the first major collection of Chinese poems. It comprises 305 poems divided into 160 folk songs (or airs - feng (風); 74 minor festal songs (or odes - ya 小雅), traditionally sung at court festivities; 31 major festal songs (大頌), sung at more solemn court ceremonies; and 40 hymns and eulogies (sòng - 頌;), sung at sacrifices to gods and ancestral spirits of the royal house. Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong Hand-painted Chinese New Years poetry pasted on the sides of doors leading to peoples homes, Old Town, Lijiang, Yunnan, China. ... Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ... A hymn is a song specifically written as a song of praise, adoration or prayer, typically addressed to a god. ... A eulogy is a funeral oration given in tribute to a person or people who have recently died. ...

The work is one of the Five Classics, canonized by the Han Dynasty, whose scholars framed the 305 poems as having been edited by Confucius from a total corpus of some three-thousand poems. The 305 poems had to be reconstructed from memory by classicists since the previous Qin dynasty had burned the poems 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 Five Classics (五經, Wǔjīng) is a corpus of five ancient Chinese books used by Confucianism as the basis of studies. ... The Han Dynasty (Traditional Chinese: 漢朝; Simplified Chinese: 汉朝; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Han Chau; 206 BC–AD 220) followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. ... The name Confucius is a Jesuit romanization of Kong Fuzi, literally meaning Master Kong. ... The Qin Dynasty (Chinese: 秦朝; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chin Chao) (221 BC - 207 BC) was preceded by the Zhou Dynasty and followed by the Han Dynasty in China. ... To burn the classics and to bury the scholars (焚书坑儒) refers to a policy in the Qin Dynasty. ...

The poems are written in four character lines. The airs are in the style of folk songs, although the extent to which they are 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. Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ... Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ... HIStory: Past, Present And Future - Book 1 was a double-disc album by Michael Jackson released in 1995. ... HIStory: Past, Present And Future - Book 1 was a double-disc album by Michael Jackson released in 1995. ... In the academic fields of mythology, mythography, and folkloristics a myth is a sacred story concerning the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to have their present form. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...

Commentators have also given the Book of Songs a second tripartite division based on their use of literary figures and devices, into fu, bi and xing poems. Roughly, fu poems are those with a straightforward narrative content; bi are those with explicit comparisons; while xing are based on implied comparisons.

Translations

• The Book of Odes, 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.
• ShiJing, translated by YunZhong Xu, edited by ShengZhang Jiang, Hunan, China: Hu Nan Chu Ban She, 1993.
• The Shi King: The Old "Poetry Classic" of the New York: Paragon Book, 1969.
• The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius, translated by Ezra Pound, Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1954.
• The Book of Odes, translated by Bernhard Karlgren, Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950.

James Legge (December 20, 1815 - November 29, 1897) was a noted Scottish sinologist, a Scottish Congregationalist, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong (1840-1873), and first professor of Chinese at Oxford University (1876-1897). ... Arthur David Waley (August 19, 1889 – June 27, 1966) was a noted English Orientalist and Sinologist. ... Ezra Pound in 1913. ... Bernhard Karlgren (1889 - 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and eminent philologist, and the founder of Swedish sinology as a scholarly discipline. ...

External links

• Legge's translation of the Shi Jing at Chinese text initiative
• The Book of Odes in Chinese arrayed with James Legge translation.