Classic of Poetry

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English-language translations of
詩經 (Classic of Poetry)
Various, traditionally credited to the Duke of Zhou with later editing by Confucius

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Shi Jing (traditional Chinese: 詩經; simplified Chinese: 诗经; pinyin: Shī Jīng; Wade-Giles: Shih Ching), translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems. It comprises 305 poems, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC. The Confucian tradition holds that the collection, one of the Wu Jing, or Five Classics, came to what we have today after the editing of Confucius. The poems are written in four-character lines. The airs are in the style of folk songs, although the extent to which they are real folk songs or literary imitations is debated. The odes deal with matters of court and historical subjects, while the hymns blend history, myth and religious material.

194977詩經 (Classic of Poetry) — Various, traditionally credited to the Duke of Zhou with later editing by Confucius

English-language translations of 詩經 include:

The She King or Book of Poetry (1871), Vol. IV of The Chinese Classics by James Legge (external scans (multiple parts): 1, 2)
The Religious Portions of the Shih King, a section of The Sacred Books of China, Pt. I (1879), by James Legge
Shi King, trans. by William Jennings (1891)
The Book of Songs, by Arthur Waley, edited with additional translations by Joseph R. Allen, New York: Grove Press, 1996.
Book of Poetry, by Xu Yuanchong (許淵沖), edited by Jiang Shengzhang (姜勝章), Hunan, China: Hunan chubanshe, 1993.
The Book of Odes. The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius, by Ezra Pound, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954.
The Book of Odes, by Bernhard Karlgren, Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950.
The Odes of Confucius, trans. by L. C. Byng

Classic of Poetry

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