Shi Jing, The Book of Odes: Greater Odes of the Kingdom, Decade of Sheng Min

[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 31.** 

Comments

247. 既醉 - Ji Jui

[x_los]

既醉以酒、既飽以德。
君子萬年、介爾景福。

You have made us drink to the full of your spirits;
You have satiated us with your kindness,
May you enjoy, O our lord, myriads of years!
May your bright happiness [ever] be increased!

既醉以酒、爾殽既將。
君子萬年、介爾昭明。

You have made us drink to the full of your spirits;
Your viands were all set out before us.
May you enjoy, O our lord, myriads of years!
May your bright intelligence [ever] be increased!

昭明有融、高朗令終。
令終有俶、公尸嘉告。

May your bright intelligence become perfect,
High and brilliant, leading to a good end!
That good end has [now] its beginning:
The personator of your ancestors announced it in his blessing.

其告維何、籩豆靜嘉。
朋友攸攝、攝以威儀。

What was his announcement?
' [ The offerings in] your dishes of bamboo and wood are clean and fine.
Your friends asisting at the service,
Have done their part with reverent demeanour.

威儀孔時、君子有孝子。
孝子不匱、永錫爾類。

' Your reverent demeanour was altogether what the occasion required,
And not yours only, but that also of your filial son.
For such filial piety, without ceasing,
There will ever be conferred blessing on you.

其類維何、室家之壼。
君子萬年、永錫祚胤。

' What will the blessings be?
That along the passages of your palace,
You shall move for ten thousand years;
And there will be granted to you for ever dignity and posterity.

其胤維何、天被爾祿。
君子萬年、景命有僕。

' How as to your posterity?
Heaven invests you with your dignity,
Yea for ten thousand years,
The bright appointment is attached to your person.

其僕維何、釐爾女士。
釐爾女士、從以孫子。

' How will it be attached?
There is given you a heroic wife.
There is given you a heroic wife,
And from her shall come [the line of] descendants. '

Re: 247. 既醉 - Ji Jui

[x_los]

So I'm very much getting the impression that for these rituals someone dresses up as your ancestor and receives the honours and is soft-'possessed' by the ancestor.

Heroic and intelligence are both kind of unexpected word choices here.

Re: 247. 既醉 - Ji Jui

[superborb]

Yeah, Baike says in the gloss for "The personator of your ancestors", in ancient times, during sacrifices, someone would dress as the ancestor to receive the sacrifice. This would be called 'shi' [dictionary: person representing the dead during funeral; corpse]; if the ancestor was a prince, it would be called 'gong shi'.

I am unsure where Legge gets heroic or intelligence from?? Not in the original text or mentioned in the Baike gloss AFAICT.