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LAST WEEK OF SHI JING!!

Get your comments in on what we do next here, and I'll put up the poll on Saturday!

* I found the best option for the weekly reminder emails, via Gmail. The external service options are more involved than our purposes require. Does anyone know anything about how to arrange an 
Apps Script? Basically all it has to do is tell ten people, on Saturdays, to come and get their juice/poems.

Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.

* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in 
How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo. 

* Remember you can also look at 
How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context.

* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on 
this post.

* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.
Date: 2021-07-04 04:19 pm (UTC)

Re: 魯頌 - Praise-Odes Of Lu: 297. 駉 - Jiong

douqi: (Default)
From: [personal profile] douqi
On the green horses: I looked up 騏 and it apparently means 青黑色的马, literally a green-black horse. But 青, the word that's translated as green, can also mean blue and/or black.
Date: 2021-07-05 05:01 pm (UTC)

Re: 魯頌 - Praise-Odes Of Lu: 297. 駉 - Jiong

superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Baike says this poem is praising Lu Xi, monarch of Lu (a vassal state of the Zhou, near modern day Shandong) + the prosperity of the country of Lu.

Fascinating that the word 驈 ('black and white-breeched' per Legge) does just mean "black horse with white legs" in a modern dictionary, that is so specific? Also interesting that per Baike gloss and Legge tl, in this poem it means a black horse with white hind, so there was still language drift in such a specific word. (Baike gives a pronunciation, so this is probably not a common knowledge word)

Baike glosses the 皇 light yellow horse as 'yellow-white varicolored', and the 驪 pure black as ...'pure black', so agrees for those.

Interesting that Legge translates 黄 'yellow' (Baike glosses as golden / yellow red) to bay?

"His thoughts are without limit; -" This is an interpretation difference by Legge. Baike glosses the word "thoughts" to 'auxiliary word for the start of the sentence', and so its vernacular tl is "the road run is far and long".

Huh, Baike's gloss on the 骓 'piebald, green and white' is 'dark blue / deep green / ash gray - white varicolored'. 骓 means piebald generally though.

駓 'others, yellow and white' is not glossed at all, but Baike's separate article on the character indicates it originally meant a yellow and white horse.

骍 'yellowish red' is glossed as red yellow, but 骐 'dapple gray' is 青黑色相间的马 -- which would literally be alternating green black, but I suspect 青 is not meant to invoke green here.

驒 'flecked as with scales' is glossed as 青色而有鳞状斑纹的马 which has the qing blue/green/black color again and then a 'with an appearance of scaly streaks'. Internet searching gave me the impression that the scales lent a kind of "shimmering" "light spots on dark" feeling?

There are so many hyperspecific words for horses... 骆 'white and black-maned' is just in the dictionary as that (as the archaic meaning; it means camel now)

駰 'cream-coloured' is iron-gray in the dictionary; baike glosses as gray with mixed white. Baike does agree for 騢 'red and white'

However, it disagrees with Legge for 驔 'white hairy legs', which the dictionary says is a black horse, and which Baike glosses as a black horse with a yellow back.

The fishes' eyes refers to a particular kind of marking where there are circles of white hair around the horses' eyes.

Baike says this poem uses Fu and not Xing.
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Per Baike:

Does Legge know words other than fat, or does that just Sound Nice? Baike glosses to stout and strong anyway.

This poem praises Lu Xi gong, thought to be either when he, Qi Huan gong, and Song Huan gong attacked Chu, or in 657 BC (the third year of his rule) when there was a long drought that had broken. When Lu Xi inherited the throne, the country as in a precarious state, so after he made efforts to overcome the natural and man-made calamities, the country was finally having a good harvest.

Baike's gloss for the egrets points out that their feathers are used as dance equipment and later the article describes the poem as set during a banquet and the dancers as using the egret feathers.
Edited Date: 2021-07-05 05:26 pm (UTC)
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Baike glosses the 'semi-circular water' as the name of a body of water.

IDK where blandly comes from though. The gloss and tl say something about an amiable expression.

Have no idea where college comes from either?? The words just say at Pan (the semi-circular water place). Baike's vernacular tl adds some words to say the palace at Pan.

Nooo, "So subduing to himself all the people!" is more like, (Baike vernacular tl) large numbers of the Huaiyi captives kowtow towards him. The poem itself calls them 'evil' in that phrase too, yikes.

OK in the second Legge use of college, that line in the Chinese specifically is saying 'the palace at Pan' or 'Pan palace'

He's trying to conquer the Huai

The gloss on Gao-yao says 'tradition has it that Yao is the official responsible for punishment and prisons"

'Without having appealed to the judges' yeah, I think this bit is generally about how the subordinates aren't fighting for merits or vying for fame.

Southern metals are glossed as either copper or gold
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Baike:

Huaiyi are an ethnic group not controlled by the Zhou in the Huai river basin. So in the 13th year and 16th year of Lu Xi (647, 644 BC) a bunch of the vassal states of Zhou attacked. I think this says that they weren't very successful, but it was still rallying for the people?

The first three stanzas are about the marquis of Lu attending the ceremony of offering prisoners, stanzas four and five are about his virtues with emphasis on martial arts, six and seven praising the character of his subordinates, and eight on the surrender of the Huaiyi.

Evil owls again.
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
"minute completeness!": Baike glosses as fine texture / meticulous / detailed appearance; the vernacular tl uses dense / close spaced

"undeflected": Baike's gloss is not abnormal / improper; vernacular tl is not demonic / evil and not low

"clipping": Baike's gloss is extinguishing, some say cut off, weaken. Weird word choice by Legge

"plain of Mu": Baike says this is Muye (ye means plain), which is a place name in modern day Yindu, Henan

"He offers the victims, red and pure." Yes cows

"have had their horns capped." Baike says this is a wooden crossbar attached to the horns to prevent them from fighting. Animals for sacrifice couldn't have any damage, so in preparation for fall ceremonies, the ox get this attached in the summer.

"the bull-figured goblet" is shaped like a bull per Baike. Also that line ends in some onomatopoeia of the clinking of the goblets
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
The sonorous gem is an instrument made of stone or jade pieces hung in a row and struck as a xylophone according to my dictionary
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Baike says that some believe the Shang Odes originated during the Shang dynasty, others by Weizi of Song; the author of the Baike article thinks it was during the Shang and then polished until the Song. (To clarify, this is Song, the state during the Zhou dynasty, and not the later Song dynasty.)
Edited Date: 2021-07-05 07:42 pm (UTC)
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Isn't it a bit weird if you're a vassal state who descended from the previous dynasty to write all these poems praising the time when you were the ruling dynasty? Gotta be some weird dynamics there, right?
douqi: (Default)
From: [personal profile] douqi
The dark king is Qi, ancestor of the Shang Dynasty kings. 'Dark King' translates into 'King Xuan'. His title derives from the story of the Xuan Niao (extracted in comment to the previous poem). Xiang Tu is his grandson.

In the Shi Jing continuing to sound like weird porn, the rank-tokens bit literally translates to (on a contemporary reading anyway) 'received small balls and big balls'.

The other guy was apparently a major minister: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Yin
In dynastic founding stories there seems to be often a lot of focus on the officials/generals who did the founding alongside the actual emperor. So for e.g. Han Dynasty founding stories don't just focus on Liu Bang, but also on Zhang Liang, Han Xin and Xiao He, etc.
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Baike's gloss and vernacular tl makes the omens seem more like, of their good fortune

Tang is the founder of the Shang dynasty. From the vernacular tl, the implication is more that he was born at the right time

The rank-tokens are glossed as some say jade artifacts, small ones two chi, big three chi, some say a homonym for 'law'. The vernacular tl uses jade tablet (ceremonial badge of rank)
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
The way Baike describes the rhyme scheme here is like, incomprehensible to me -- it just lists the characters in each stanza that rhyme. -.-

Baike says this was written by the grandson of Tang, Yin Gaozong, after attacking the Jing Chu and gaining the allegiance of feudal princes. Then it talked a lot about the various historical commentaries and I couldn't follow it...
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