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Shi Jing Introduction Table of content – The Book of Odes

The oldest collection of Chinese poetry, more than three hundred songs, odes and hymns. Tr. Legge (en) and Granet (fr, incomplete).

Section IV — Odes of the temple and the Altar
1 2 3 4 5
Chapter 5 — Sacrificial odes of Shang

301 302 303 304 305

Shijing IV. 5. (303)

Heaven commissioned the swallow,
To descend and give birth to [the father of our] Shang.
[His descendants] dwelt in the land of Yin, and became great.
[Then] long ago God appointed the martial Tang,
To regulate the boundaries throughout the four quarters.
[In those] quarters he appointed the princes,
And grandly possessed the nine regions [of the kingdom].
The first sovereign of Shang,
Received the appointment without any element of instability in it,
And it is [now] held by the descendant of Wu-ding.
The descendant of Wu-ding,
Is a martial king, equal to every emergency.
Ten princes, [who came] with their dragon-emblazoned banners,
Bear the large dishes of millet.
The royal domain of a thousand Li,
Is where the people rest ;
But there commence the boundaries that reach to the four seas.
From the four seas they come [to out sacrifices] ;
They come in multitudes ; –
King has the He for its outer border.
That Yin should have received the apppointment [of Heaven] was entirely right ; –
[Its sovereign] sustains all its dignities.

Legge 303

Shi Jing IV. 5. (303) IntroductionTable of content
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The Book of Odes – Shi Jing IV. 5. (303) – Chinese on/offFrançais/English
Alias Shijing, Shi Jing, Book of Odes, Book of Songs, Classic of Odes, Classic of Poetry, Livre des Odes, Canon des Poèmes.

The Book of Odes, The Analects, Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Three-characters book, The Book of Changes, The Way and its Power, 300 Tang Poems, The Art of War, Thirty-Six Strategies
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