Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Minor Odes of the Kingdom, Decade of Bei Shan

[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. 

* 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.

**NEXT BATCH MAY 3.**

Comments

212. 大田 - Da Tian

[x_los]

大田多稼、既種既戒。
既備乃事、以我覃耜、俶載南畝、播厥百穀。
既庭且碩、曾孫是若。

Large are the fields, and various is the work to be done.
Having selected the seed, and looked after the implements,
So that all preparations have been made for our labour,
We take our sharp plough-shares,
And commence on the south-lying acres.
We sow all the kinds of grain,
Which grow up straight and large,
So that the wish of the distant descendant is satisfied.

既方既皁、既堅既好。
不稂不莠、去其螟螣。
及其蟊賊、無害我田樨。
田祖有神、秉畀炎火。

It ears, and the fruit lies soft in its sheath;
It hardens and is of good quality;
There is no wolf's-tail grass, nor darnel.
We remove the insects that eat the heart and the leaf,
And those that eat the roots and the joints.
So that they shall not hurt the young plants of our fields.
May the Spirit, the Father of husbandry,
Lay hold of them, and put them in the blazing fire!

有渰萋萋、興雨祁祁。
雨我公田、遂及我私。
彼有不穫穉、此有不斂穧。
彼有遺秉、此有滯穗、伊寡婦之利。

The clouds form in dense masses,
And the rain comes down slowly.
May it rain first on our public fields,
And then come to our private!
There shall be young grain unreaped,
And here some sheaves ungathered;
There shall be handfuls left on the ground,
And here ears untouched:-
For the benefit of the widow.

曾孫來止、以其婦子。
饁彼南畝、田畯至喜。
來方禋祀、以其騂黑。
與其黍稷、以享以祀。
以介景福。

The distant descendant will come,
When their wives and children,
Are bringing food to those [at work] on the south-lying acres.
The surveyor of the fields [also] will come and be glad.
They will come and offer pure sacrifices to the Spirits of the four quarters,
With their victims red and black,
And their preparations of millet:
Thus offering, thus sacrificing,
Thus increasing our bright happiness.

Re: 212. 大田 - Da Tian

[x_los]

"So that the wish of the distant descendant is satisfied." again, are we in ghost POV?

"There is no wolf's-tail grass, nor darnel." shitty plants, I guess

"There shall be handfuls left on the ground,
And here ears untouched:-
For the benefit of the widow." I believe this refers to a portion left ungathered, for the use of the indigent

Re: 212. 大田 - Da Tian

[superborb]

Baike explains a little more: the distant descendant is translated that way because it's literally great grandson. It's what the king of Zhou would call himself in front of his ancestors and the gods.

The wolf tail's grass makes sense, that is indeed a weed and is a direct translation of the alternate name for that weed (per Baike, it is dog tail grass), but the other is supposed to mean empty and shriveled grain.

The Baike section where they editorialize about the poems says that the harvest being left ungathered so the orphans/widows don't have to be humiliated by begging.

Baike says that this and 211 are important poems for understanding historical agriculture practices in the western Zhou dynasty.