Book of Songs (Arabic: Kitab al-Aghani) was also a book written by the 9th century Arab scholar Abu al-Faraj.

Shī Jīng (), 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, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC. It is 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 (大雅), sung at more solemn court ceremonies
• 40 hymns and eulogies (sòng - 頌;), sung at sacrifices to gods and ancestral spirits of the royal house.

The work is one of the 五經 WuJing, or 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 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.

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 (賦/赋) poems are those with a straightforward narrative content

bi (比) are those with explicit comparisons

xing (興/兴) are based on implied comparisons

Contents

Sample

	Part 4: 頌 Song, Odes of the Temple & Altar
	Section 1: 周頌 Sacrificial Odes of Zhou
	Chapter 1: 周頌 清廟之什 Decade of Qing Miao
	266. 清廟 Qing Miao
		於穆清廟、肅雝顯相。
		濟濟多士、秉文之德。
		對越在天、駿奔走在廟。
		不顯不承、無射於人斯。
	Ah ! solemn is the ancestral temple in its pure stillness .
	Reverent and harmonious were the distinguished assistants ;
	Great was the number of the officers : --
	assiduous followers of the virtue of [king Wen .
	In response to him in heaven ,
	Grandly they hurried about in the temple .
	Distinguished is he and honoured ,
	And will never be wearied of among men .

note: see entry for King Wen of Zhou

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.

External links

• Legge's translation of the Shi Jing at Chinese text initiative
• The Book of Odes in Chinese arrayed with James Legge translation.
• Shiijing with Mao prefaces and Zhu Xi commentary by Harrison Huang

Chinese classic texts | Chinese poems

Buch der Lieder | El clásico de la poesía | Classique des vers | 시경 | 詩経 | Ши-кинг | Shijing | Kinh Thi | 诗经