dankodes | General Resources and Reading Suggestions

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This is a post to drop titles of and links to relevant reading material, be it nonfiction, poetry we might want to collectively hit up in future or read on our own time, or fiction (including trying to hustle up fresh blood for your latest reading/watching obsessions, and information as to where one can find such titles).

We'll talk about poetry and nonfiction as a group before adding it to the Great Plan.

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Wen Wang:

Songs of King Wen
http://www.silkqin.com/02qnpu/10tgyy/tg09wwq.htm

The Homeric Epicsand the ChineseBook of Songs:Foundational Texts Compared
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mkern/files/the_formation_of_the_classic_of_poetry_0.pdf

The “Major Court Hymns” display a particular focus on King Wen,with two hymns, “King Wen” (Mao 235 “Wen wang”) and “King WenHas Fame” (Mao 244 “Wen wang you sheng”), entirely devoted to hispraise. In addition, another five hymns have been read as a set recallingthe story of King Wen.29 Here again, we may be witnessing less a setof discrete poems than a large repertoire of verse from which to recallthe origin of the Zhou.“King Wen,” the first of the “Major Court Hymns,” unfolds as follows, including shared lines with five other poems, among them “ClearTemple,” the first of the “Eulogies of Zhou”:King Wen is on high, / oh, shining in Heaven. / Though Zhou is an oldstate, / its mandate, it is new. / With Zhou, he was greatly illustrious, /God’s mandate was greatly timely. / King Wen ascends and descends /to God’s left side and right.Vigorous, vigorous was King Wen, / his good fame never ceases. / Arrayed are the bestowals on Zhou, / extending to King Wen’s line of descendants. / King Wen’s line of descendants / grows as root andbranches for a hundred generations. / All the officers of Zhou / shall begreatly illustrious in each generation.Across generations greatly illustrious / reverently, reverently are theyin their plans. / Admirable are the many officers, / they are born in thisland of the king. / The king’s land is able to give birth to them, / andthey are the supporters of Zhou. / Dignified, dignified are the many officers, / King Wen, by them, is at ease.Solemn, solemn was King Wen, / continuously bright and reverent. /Great indeed is Heaven’s mandate, / from Shang’s line of descendants./ Shang’s line of descendants / were in number a hundred thousand. /[But] God on high gave the mandate, / making them subjects of Zhou.They were made subjects of Zhou / [but] Heaven’s mandate is not constant. / The officers of Yin are eagerly serving, / now conducting libations in the capital [of Zhou]. / When rising to conduct the libations, / they don the customary robes and axe-patterned caps. / Chosen subjects of the king, / never forget your ancestors!Never forget your ancestors, / display and cultivate their virtue! / Forever strive to conjoin with the mandate, / bringing manifold blessingsupon yourself. / When Yin had not yet lost the multitudes, / they wereable to conjoin with God on high. / Take [the fate of] Yin as your mirror, / the lofty appointment is not easy [to keep]!The mandate is not easy [to keep], / may it not cease with you! /Spread and make bright your good fame, / take your measure from andrely on Heaven! / [Yet] the doings of Heaven above / are withoutsound, without smell— / model yourself on King Wen, / and the myriad states will submit in trust.According to the sequence of the poems in the Mao Poetry and thecomments in their prefaces, the first eighteen hymns praise Kings Wen,Wu, and Cheng (r. 1042/35-1006 BCE); the next five reprehend KingLi (r. 857/53-842/28 BCE); the next six praise King Xuan (r. 827/25-782 BCE); and the final two reprehend King You (r. 781-771 BCE).The hymns are thus believed to reflect significant moments in the development of the Western Zhou dynasty, beginning with an initial“golden age” and ending with the dynastic collapse under King You,the prototypical “bad last ruler” (and mirror image of the last ruler ofShang).

Traditionally, the hymns, mostly attributed to anonymous court officials, have been regarded as witnesses to, and compositions of, theseinflection points; yet they may just as well be products of retrospectiveimagination. None of the more than ten thousand Western Zhou inscribed bronze vessels, bells, weapons, and other artifacts shares asingle couplet with any of the hymns. In the Zuo Tradition, one line offour characters from “King Wen” is first quoted in an entry nominallydated to 706 BCE,30 and another line from the same song appears in anentry dated to 688 BCE.31 The next recitations of, or short quotationsfrom, “Major Court Hymns” appear only from 655 BCE onward, andeven then only very sparingly until about the mid-sixth century BCE,when they begin to occur in somewhat higher frequency.32 Altogether, only twenty of these thirty-one poems are either mentioned by title orquoted. None is quoted in full, and the only quotation of a full stanzaof forty-eight characters appears in the entry for the year 514 BCE.33Moreover, quotations or recitations mentioned under particular years inthe Zuo Tradition did not necessarily take place during these times butmay have been inserted when the text was compiled some time in thelate fourth century BCE; the same may be true of the eleven “MajorCourt Hymns” quoted in the Conversations of the States.34 Even if allthese references were made on the historical occasions attributed tothem, the traces of “Major Court Hymns” in texts from before or during Kongzi’s lifetime would still be scant. Aside from a single stanzalength quotation, the textual record contains no more than a few dozenwords, beginning in 706 BCE and, hence, post-dating the reigns of theearly Zhou kings by more than three centuries.

God through the Book of Poetry: The Ancient Chinese and Their Loss of Theistic Faith
https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2104/10239/Thesis.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

The being of Tian 天 (Heaven) is the same as that of God discussed in Chapter 1.When the Zhou dynasty came into power, they conflated Shangdi with Heaven, theirhighest god; centuries later, the Romans would do the same thing after their capture ofGreece. As with Jupiter and Zeus, Shangdi and Heaven were essentially the same beingin ancient Chinese religion; hence, He is the same being as God. For identificationpurposes, however, Tian will be translated as “Heaven” within the poem but referred toas God without.

His virtue was also passed down to his descendants, as seen in Wei Tian Zhi Ming維天之命:維天之命 “The Commandments of Heaven”維天之命 The commandments of Heaven10於穆不已 Are profound and unceasing.於乎不顯 Oh, how luminous 文王之德之純 Is King Wen’s virtue and purity!假以溢我 His virtue overflows to us;我其收之 We humbly receive it.駿惠我文王 Submit to our wise King Wen;曾孫篤之May his farthest descendants be whole-heartedly likehim.11This poem, along with the following Wo Jiang 我將, speaks of one of the great rulers ofthe Zhou: Ji Chang 姬昌, more commonly known as Zhou Wen Wang 周文王 (KingWen of Zhou), born in 1152 BC. Although a king of the Zhou people, King Wen did notrule during the Zhou dynasty, as the Western Zhou began in 1046 BC and King Wen diedin 1056 BC. However, he was instrumental in the downfall of the previous Shang dynastyby forming alliances with the neighboring Shi 士, or chiefs, during his tenure as Xi Bai西伯 (Lord of the West). This helped to build up the military strength necessary tooverthrow the Shang dynasty, an act accomplished by King Wen’s son.

Chinese Imperial City Planning
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=in68DmD8YVoC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Wen+Wang+poem+shi+jing&source=bl&ots=50tvqRHtKJ&sig=ACfU3U1IahFn1v3V44BujtzqBDW3ZxhO5Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEm_-c0tPwAhWONcAKHVxODR8Q6AEwCXoECAsQAw#v=onepage&q=Wen%20Wang%20poem%20shi%20jing&f=false

Da Ming:

Couldn't find anything good.

Mian:

Couldn't find anything good.

Yu Pu:

mentioned in The Halberd at Red Cliff: Jian'an and the Three Kingdoms
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QfgFEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA438&lpg=PA438&dq=Yu+Pu+poem+shi+jing&source=bl&ots=IBcgdlvdi1&sig=ACfU3U2X9cEhtWDYsj9gn43-6wJFZWdGyA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2_u2W19PwAhWwgVwKHY_iD2QQ6AEwEnoECBIQAw#v=onepage&q=Yu%20Pu%20poem%20shi%20jing&f=false

Han Lu:

Couldn't find anything good.

Si Zhai:

Poetic Transformations: Eighteenth-Century Cultural Projects on the Mekong Plains
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TfcFEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=Si+Zhai+poem+shi+jing&source=bl&ots=qSkIT5XD_a&sig=ACfU3U2Bw3GavnS9NSBo0fSo9Kr3e4sRRA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB3OWR2NPwAhUMZMAKHV3jDr8Q6AEwE3oECCAQAw#v=onepage&q=Si%20Zhai%20poem%20shi%20jing&f=false

Huang Yi:

The Homeric Epicsand the ChineseBook of Songs:Foundational Texts Compared
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mkern/files/the_formation_of_the_classic_of_poetry_0.pdf

"Yet, the heavy burden placed on the cultural and historical meaning
of the Poetry reveals an acute problem: while, in general, the Poetry is
believed to contain earlier and later layers of text, with the earliest
poems possibly dating from the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE, the
textual record up to the Han anthology is extremely fragmentary. In the
Mao Poetry, the longest poem, “The Closed Temple” (Mao 300 “Bi
gong”), contains 492 characters, and several others are nearly as extensive. However, the longest quotation of any poem in any early text outside the anthology itself contains merely forty-eight characters: one
of eight stanzas of “Great indeed!” (Mao 241 “Huang yi”) as quoted in
the Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan), the grand pre-imperial work of historiography probably dating from the fourth century BCE.9
The only quotation of an entire poem is of “Grand Heaven Had Its Accomplished
Mandate” (Mao 271 “Haotian you cheng ming”), a text of merely 30
characters quoted in The Conversations of the States (Guoyu), another
work of early historiography possibly contemporaneous with the Zuo
Tradition."

Ling Tai:

I can't quite work out of this pertains: The Sinitic Civilization Book I: A Factual History Through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m5F2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT398&lpg=PT398&dq=Ling+Tai+poem+shi+jing&source=bl&ots=yjIp3DkxSt&sig=ACfU3U3zkSRNCoxzdMouAac-jwZHyF1cog&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjMi_fW2dPwAhWNYsAKHWbKBA8Q6AEwEnoECB0QAw#v=onepage&q=Ling%20Tai%20poem%20shi%20jing&f=false

Xia Wu:

Repetition, Rhyme, and Exchange in The Book of Odes
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2719486?seq=1

Writing and Rewriting the Poetry
http://cccp.uchicago.edu/archive/2009BookOfOdesSymposium/2009_BookOfOdesSymposium_EdShaughnessy.pdf

propose instead to
examine one other poem of the Da Ya section of the Poetry that has never attracted the
sort of attention that “Jiang Han” has, but which, I believe, is best understood only in
comparison with certain bronze inscriptions of the mid to late Western Zhou period.
According to the Mao Preface, the poem “Xia Wu” 下武 (Mao 243) is an encomium to
Zhou Wu Wang (r. 1049/45-1043 B.C.), the son of the nominal founder of the Zhou
dynasty, Zhou Wen Wang (d. 1050 B.C.), though there has also long been a suggestion
that the poem should pertain to Wu Wang’s son Cheng Wang (r. 1042/35-1006 B.C.) or
even a later king.18 The poem includes six stanzas of four phrases each. I present it here
with the translation of Arthur Waley following below it:19
“Xia Wu” 下武 (Mao 243)
下武維周，世有哲王。三后在天，王配于京。
王配于京，世德作求。永言配命，成王之孚。
成王之孚，下土之式。永言孝思，孝思維則。
媚茲一人，應侯順德。永言孝思，昭哉嗣服。
昭茲來許，繩其祖武。於萬斯年，受天之祜。
受天之祜，四方來賀。於萬斯年，不遐有佐。

Zhou it is that continues the footsteps here below.
From generation to generation it has had wise kings.
Three rulers are in Heaven,
And the king is their counterpart in his capital.
He is their counterpart in his capital,
The power of generations he has matched;
Long has he been mated to Heaven’s command
And fulfilled what is entrusted to a king.
Has fulfilled what is entrusted to a king,
A model to all on earth below;
Forever pious toward the dead,
A very pattern of piety.
Loved is this One Man,
Meeting only with docile powers;
Forever pious toward the dead,
Gloriously continuing their tasks.
Yes, gloriously he steps forward
Continuing in the footsteps of his ancestors.
“For myriads of years
May you receive Heaven’s blessing!
Receive Heaven’s blessing!”
So from all sides they come to wish him well.
“For myriads of years
May your luck never fail.”
As have most commentators, Waley understands this poem as a praise of one or another
Zhou king. He focuses on the line San hou zai tian 三后在天 (“Three rulers are in
Heaven,” in his translation) to suggest that it may pertain to Zhou Kang Wang (r.
1005/03-978 B.C.), though he suspects it is later than his time. Others have seen in the
last line of the second stanza and first line of the third stanza, Cheng wang zhi fu 成王之
孚, the title of Zhou Cheng Wang 成王, whereas Waley’s translation, “And fulfilled what
is entrusted to a king,” which, it should be noted, accords with the traditional reading of
the line, takes the word cheng 成 as a verb meaning “to complete, to fulfill,” with wang
王 “king” as part of its direct object. I think the proper noun (i.e., Cheng Wang)
interpretation is by far the easier reading of this line, but it is not, I think, the key to
understanding the poem. For that we need to look to its fourth stanza, and especially the
second line of it: ying hou shun de 應侯順德, which Waley has translated, more or less in
accord with the traditional interpretation, as “Meeting only with docile powers.” Here
too, it is easy (indeed, far easier, I would suggest) to read the two two graphs ying hou 應侯 as a proper noun, “the lord of Ying,” than as two verbs, as the traditional interpretation
does. 20 According to the Mao zhuan 毛傳, ying 應, which usually means “to respond,”
here means dang 當 “to match; to serve as; to be,” while hou 侯, which is almost always
a noun indicating a social rank (traditionally translated as “marquis,” though now more
commonly rendered as simply “lord”) here is to be understood as wei 維 “to be.” As far
as I know, there is no support anywhere else in the early Chinese literary tradition for this
latter reading, but even if there were the clause as a whole would still not make any sense,
either grammatically (the king cannot “be” virtue) or conceptually (it is very strange to
describe the king as being “compliant” or “docile” [i.e., shun 順]). It is only when we
realize that there was a state called Ying 應 that was ruled by “lords” (hou 侯), and which
had a close and very special relationship with the Zhou royal family, that we can begin to
understand this line and, indeed, the entire poem.

(There's a fair amount of further analysis of this poem herein.)