I sang the nine songs (of Yü), and danced the dance (of Shun);

Borrowing a day for enjoyment and pleasure.”

The second book of Ch'ü P'ing's poems has the title of "The Nine Songs"; but those could not be the songs which he chanted now. What is intended are the "Nine Songs" of Yü, mentioned in stanza 38; and the dance of Shun, often called his "Music," was divided into nine pantomimic performances, and Chwang-tsze (Book xix, 44) calls it "The Nine Performances of the Shao."

We have come to the end of our author's quest. He has told us that his spirit was borne aloft; and, unable to repress his excitement, he ascended to the glorious brightness of the great sky. How he accomplished the ascent we are not told. From amidst the supernal light, however, he looked down askance, and there beneath him lay outspread his old neighbourhood or home in Ch'û. The Hwang in 1. 1 is interpreted as Hwang Tien (F), "Great or August Heaven," for which Giles gives "Almighty God"; but I am loath to adopt that rendering. In 1. 3 there is to me an echo of the third Ode in the first Book of the Shih; and hence we understand how the poet transforms his "dragons " into horses, which

have not been mentioned before in connection with his marvellous journeyings to the summit of the K'wăn-lun range. The horses, however, partake of his emotion, and long for the cherished Ch'û.

is a difficult phrase. Wang Yi explains it by "the appearance of a snake stiff and motionless," and this definition of it is adopted in the K'ang-hsî Dictionary. So would Ch'ü Yüan tell us that he was arrested in his course, and his game lost and ended.

XIV. The fourteenth and last Section of the poem, at which we have now arrived, consists of only one stanza, which contains five lines, being different from the ninetythree stanzas that precede, all of which are made up of four lines, with the single exception of the twelfth, which is manifestly defective.

The Marquis d'Hervey prefixes to it the name "Epilogue," as a translation of the first two characters (Lican Yueh), and I was inclined to follow him; but the yüch seems to require that the stanza should be taken as the utterance of the poet himself. Lwan occurs in the Confucian Analects (xiii-xv), as "the name of the concluding part of a musical service," and I believe the meaning of the phrase is fully expressed by "In conclusion I say," and making the first line to end with tsai, the fifth character. It is singular that of our three chief Chinese-English dictionaries, Morrison's, Medhurst's, and Giles's, which may all be pronounced to be great Works, not one of them mentions this usage of lian. The substance of the whole stanza is this, the fruitlessness of the discarded minister's search for a good sovereign who would adopt him as his counsellor, and for loyal ministers who would co-operate with him in his loyal service; and, failing this, his resolution to commit suicide as Păng Hsien had done. Twice before in the poem had he given expression to that purpose, and now he concludes with the more positive affirmation of it. At the same time there is nothing in his language to necessitate our supposing that the tragedy of his death followed immediately on the conclusion of the poem. Stanza sixty-five seems to indicate that king Hwâi was still alive when it was composed. In stanza seventy-six the sorcerer, Wû Hsien, speaks of its not yet being too late in the years of Ch'ü's life for him to think of resuming his service at Court.

The writer has thus gone over the poem of the Li São, and endeavoured to set forth the connection of its parts and the unity of object which appears in it from beginning to end. It is not a great poem, but it possesses considerable interest, and awakens in the mind no small amount of sympathy with its author. We start with him in it at his birth; go back with him to the long distant time to which he traced his lineage; and only part with him when almost in sight of the deep pool in which he was to end his life. We admire his self-culture, his devoted

service, and his inflexible conviction of his own honesty and honour; we pity him as the object of jealousy and envy, slandered, disgraced, and banished. The view which we have taken of the ninth and longest Section of the composition, as symbolical of his own course and character, redeems it from being regarded as a mere tissue of absurdities and foolish superstitions. We rather like the man without admiring his poetry, and are sorry for his adverse fortune and melancholy fate.

601

ART. XVII.-Ssuma Ch'ien's Historical Records.
HERBERT J. ALLEN, M.R.A.S.

(Continued from page 110, January number.)

CHAPTER III. The Yin Dynasty.

1

By

Hsieh of Yin's mother was Chien Ti, who was one of the daughters of Yusung and the secondary wife of Emperor Ku. She was going with her two sisters to bathe, when she saw a dark bird2 drop its egg. Chien Ti picked it up, and swallowed it, and thus being with child gave birth to Hsieh. When Hsieh grew up, he was successful in assisting Yü to control the flood, and the Emperor Shun, directing Hsieh, said: "The people are wanting in affection for one another, and do not observe the five orders of relationship. You, as Minister of Instruction, should reverently inculcate the lessons of duty belonging to those five orders, but do so with gentleness." He held in fief the principality of Shang, and was given the surname of Tzu (son). Hsieh flourished in the reigns of Yao, Shun,

The term Yusung is doubtless a variant of Yu-hsiung, one of the names of the Yellow Emperor' of the first chapter of the Records. The second of the two characters may also be read Jung, for it is the same as the ordinary one for Jung,' with the addition of the determinative woman' (), as M. Lacouperie has already pointed out. Ssuma Ch'ien, in his history of the Hsiungnu (Huns), also calls the tribe Mountain Jung, so that if there were any truth in the history it might be shown that we have here a tradition of the descent of the Chinese nation from the Huns. The name Chien Ti means 'impetuous barbarian of the North.'

2 The dark bird is a swallow.

In the third sacrificial ode of Shang ('Sacred Books of the East,' iii, p. 307) we are told that Heaven commissioned the swallow to descend and give birth to the Shangs.'

3 Quoting the passage from the Canon of Shun, also in the first chapter of the Records.

J.R.A.S. 1895.

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