odes seemed to be made from them as so many themes. Scholars handed down
a faith in them from one to another, and no one ventured to express a
doubt of their authority. The text was twisted and chiseled to bring it
into accordance with them, and no one would undertake to say plainly
that they were the work of the scholars of the Han dynasty.'

There is no western sinologist, I apprehend, who will not cordially
concur with me in the principle of Ku Hsi that we must find the meaning
of the poems in the poems themselves, instead of accepting the
interpretation of them given by we know not whom, and to follow which
would reduce many of them to absurd enigmas.


THE SHIH KING.


I. ODES OF THE TEMPLE AND THE ALTAR.

IT was stated in the Introduction, p. 278, that the poems in the fourth
Part of the Shih are the only ones that are professedly religious; and
there are some even of them, it will be seen, which have little claim on
internal grounds to be so considered.

I commence with them my selections from the Shih for the Sacred Books of
the Religions of the East. I will give them all, excepting the first two
of the Praise Odes of Lu, the reason for omitting which will be found.
when I come to that division of the Part.

The ancestral worship of the common people.