Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Minor Odes of the Kingdom, Decade of Qi Fu

[x_los]

* 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.

* 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.

* One of our members is doing posts on the foundations and development of wuxia. Worth checking out!

**NEXT BATCH APRIL 19.**

Comments

190. 無羊 - Wu Yang

[x_los]

誰謂爾無羊、三百維群。
誰謂爾無牛、九十其犉。
爾羊來思、其角濈濈。
爾牛來思、其耳濕濕。

Who can say that you have no sheep?
There are three hundred in [each] herd.
Who says that you have no cattle?
There are ninety, which are black-lipped.
Your sheep come,
Horned, but all agreeing.
Your cattle come,
Flapping their ears.

或降于阿、或飲于池、或寢或訛。
爾牧來思、何蓑何笠、或負其餱。
三十維物、爾牲則具。

Some are descending among the mounds;
Some are drinking at the pools;
Some are lying down, some are moving about.
Your herdsmen come,
Bearing their rain-coats and bamboo-hats,
Or carrying on their backs their provisions.
In thirties are the creatures arranged according to their colour;
For your victims there is abundant provision.

爾牧來思、以薪以蒸、以雌以雄。
爾羊來思、矜矜兢兢、不騫不崩。
麾之以肱、畢來既升。

Your herdsmen come,
With their large faggots, and smaller branches,
And with their prey of birds and beasts.
Your sheep come,
Vigorous and strong,
None injured, no infection in the herd.
At the wave of the [herdsman's] arm,
All come, all go up [into the fold].

牧人乃夢、眾維魚矣、旐維旟矣。
大人占之、眾維魚矣、實維豐年。
旐維旟矣、室家溱溱。

Your herdsmen shall dream, -
Of multitudes and then of fishes;
Of the tortoise-and-serpent; and then of the falcon banners.
The chief diviner will divine the dreams,
How the multitudes dissolving into fishes,
Betoken plentiful years;
How the tortoise-and-serpent dissolving into the falcon banners,
Betoken the increasing population of the kingdom.

Re: 190. 無羊 - Wu Yang

[x_los]

'For your victims there is abundant provision.' wtf

Re: 190. 無羊 - Wu Yang

[ann712]

Are the victims the animals? We fed before slaughter?

Re: 190. 無羊 - Wu Yang

[superborb]

Baike: In the first stanza, the person herding the sheep is a slave and thus does not own the large number of cattle/sheep he is herding [Baike calls the herdsman a slave, I'm not sure where that comes from?]

"victims": sacrificial animals
"abundant provision": prepare [tools]. I am really not sure where Legge gets that line from lol

"With their large faggots, and smaller branches,": 'with' is 'take', 'large faggots' is 'coarse firewood', 'smaller branches' is 'thin firewood'

"And with their prey of birds and beasts.": this is literally 'male and female', which baike glosses with "flying is called male/female", meaning hunting birds

"Vigorous and strong,": very carefully and prudent in appearance, indicating the sheep are afraid of separating from their flock

"Of multitudes": locusts. Ancient people believed locusts turned to fish. During droughts they'd become locusts and in favorable weather, fishes

The tortoise-and-serpent flags are for the outskirts with few people; the falcon flags for provinces with many people