PIH CHAU
1 It floats about, that boat of cypress wood
Yea, it floats about on the current
Disturbed am I, and sleepless,
As if suffering from a painful wound.
It is not because I have no wine,
And that I might not wander and saunter about.
2 My mind is not a mirror;—
It cannot [equally] receive [all impressions].
I, indeed, have brothers,
But I cannot depend on them.
If I go and complain to them,
I meet with their anger.
TITLE OF THE BOOK—邶, 一之三 'P'ei, Book III. of Part I'. Of P'ei which gives its name to this Book, and of Yung which gives its name to the next,we scarcely know anything. Long before the time of Confucius, perhaps before the date of any of the pieces in them, they had become incorporated with the State of Wei, and it is universally acknowledged that the odes of Book III., IV., and V. are odes of Wei.Why they should be divided into three portions, and two of them assigned to P'ei and Yung is a mystery,which Choo declares it is impossible to understand. It would be a waste of time to enter on a consideration of the various attempts which have been made to elucidate it. In the long narrative which is given by Tso-she under p.8 of the 29th year of duke Seang,they sing to Ke-chah, their visitor from Woo at the court of Loo, the odes of P'ei, Yung, and Wei, and that nobleman exclaims, 'I hear and I know:—it was the virtue of K'ang-shuh and of duke Woo, which made these odes what they are,—the odes of Wei.' This was in B. C. 543, when Confucius was 8 years old.Then there existed the division of these odes into 3 Books with the names of different States, all, however,acknowledged to be odes of Wei.
When king Woo overthrew the dynasty of Shang,the domain of its kings was divided by him into three portions.
3 My mind is not a stone;—
It cannot be rolled about.
My mind is not a mat;—
It cannot be rolled up.
My deportment has been dignified and good
With nothing wrong which can be pointed out.
That north of their capital was P'ei; that south of it was Yung; and that east of it was Wei. These were constituted into three principalities; but who among his adherents were invested with P'ei and Yung has not been clearly ascertained. Most probably they were assigned to Woo-kăng, the son of the last king of Shang, and the 3 brothers of king Woo, who were appointed to oversee him. What was done with them,after the rebellion of Woo-kăng and his overseers, is not known; but in process of time the marquises of Wei managed to add them to their own territory.
The first marquis of Wei was K'ang-shuh, a brother of king Woo, of whose investiture we have an account in the Shoo, V. ix., though whether he received it from Woo, or in the next reign from the duke of Chow, is a moot point. The first capital of Wei was on the north of the Ho, to the east of Ch'aou-ko, the old capital of Shang. There it continued till B.C. 659, when the State was nearly extinguished by some northern hordes, and duke Tae (戴公) removed across the river to Ts'aou (漕邑); but in a couple of years, his successor, duke Wăn(文公), removed again to Ts'oo-k'ëw (楚邱),—in the pres dis. of Shing-woo (城武) dep. Ts'aou-chow, Shan-tung. The State of Wei embraced the territory occupied by Hwae k'ing, Wei-hwuy, Chang-the,—all in Ho-nan,and portions of the depp. of K'ae-fung in the same province, of Ta-ming in Chih-le, and of Tung-chang in Shan-tung.
Ode 1. Mostly narrative. AN OFFICER OF WORTH BEWAILS THE NEGLECT AND CONTEMPT WITH WHICH HE WAS TREATED. Such is the view taken of the piece by Maou, who refers it to the time of duke K'ing (頃公: B.C. 866—854); of the difft. view of Choo I will speak in a concluding note.
St. 1. L1.1,2. 汎 denotes 'the app. of floating about'.柏 is the cypress, whose wood is said to be good for building boats. The two lines are, by the school of Maou, understood to be allusive, representing the'state of the officer unemployed, like a boat floating uselessly about with the current'. Yen Ts'an thinks the allusion is to the sad condition of the State left to go to ruin, as a boat must do with no competent person in it to guide it. Choo takes the lines as metaphorical.L1. 3, 4. Maou takes 耿耿 as=儆儆, meaning 'restless','disturbed'. 隱=痛, 'a pain'. L1. 5, 6, 微=非, 'not', 'it is not that'. The two lines are construed together,—as Choo explains them, 非為無酒可以遨遊而解之也,'It is not because I have no spirits, or that I could not dissipate my grief by wandering about.' To the same effect Yen Ts'an:—'This sorrow is not such as can be relieved by drinking or by rambling.' Lacharme quite mistakes the meaning:—ego deambulo, ego iter facio,non quia vino carso.
St. 2. L1. 2. The difficulty in these lines is with茹,which both Maou and Choo explain here by 度, 'to estimate', 'to measure', as if the meaning were, 'A glass can only shew the outward forms of things; but there is more than what appears externally in my case, and the causes of my treatment are too deep to be examined by a glass.' I must adopt another meaning of 茹, which is also found in the dict.—that of 受 or 容, 'to receive','to admit'. A glass reflects all forms submitted to it,with indifference; but the speaker acknowledged only the virtuous. Bad men he rejected, and would have nothing to do with them.
L1. 3—6. Here, and in st. 1, we can allow some connective force to 亦.
4 My anxious heart is full of trouble;
I am hated by the herd of mean creatures;
I meet with many distresses;
I receive insults not a few.
Silently I think of my case,
And, starting as from sleep, I beat my breast.
5 There are the sun and the moon,—
How is it that the former has became small, and not the latter?
The sorrow cleaves to my heart,
Like an unwashed dress.
Silently I think of my case,
But I cannot spread my wings and fly away
By 'brothers' we must understand 'officers of the same surname with the speaker (同姓臣)'. Choo's view of the ode enables him to take 兄弟 in its natural meaning. 據=依, 'to rely, or be relied on'. 薄言,—as in i. VIII.
St. 3. In the first 4 lines, the speaker says his mind was firmer than a stone, and more even and level than a mat. 威儀 denotes his whole manner of conducting himself. 棣棣 (read tae)= 'the app. of complete correctness and long practice'. 選= 'to select'. The meaning is that nothing in the speaker's deportment could be picked out, and made the subject of remark.
St. 4. 悄悄 denotes 'the app. of sorrow'. The 於 after慍 gives to that term the force of the passive voice. 羣小, 'the herd of small people', denotes all the unworthy officers who enjoyed the ruler's favour. 閔=病,'distress'; here probably meaning blame or slander. In l.5, 言 is the particle, so frequent in the She. L .4, 辟 is explained by 拊心, 'to lay the hand on the heart', or 'to bent the breast', and 摽, as 'the app of doing so'. In this acceptation the 有 may have its meaning of 'having'; but it rather has a descriptive power, making the word that follows very vivid, as if it were repeated.
St. 5. L1. 1,2. 居 and 諸 are used as particles which we cannot translate, unless we take them as=乎, and render,—'O sun', 'O moon'. So, Choo on ode 4, where he says, 日居月諸, 呼而訴之也, 迭=更, 'to change', 'inaltered fashion'. The meaning seems to be:—The sun is always bright and full, while the moon goes through regular changes, now full, and now absent from the heavens. In Wei the ruler was at this time obscured by the unworthy officers who abused his confidence an directed the govt. The sun had become small, and the moon had taken its place.
The rhymes are—in st. 1, 舟, 流, 憂, 游, cat. 3, t. 1; in 2, 茹, 據, 愬, 怒, cat. 5. t. 2; in 3, 石*, 席*, ib.,t.3; 轉,卷, 選, cat. 14: in 4, 悄, 小, 少, 摽, cat. 2: in 5, 微, 衣,飛, cat. 15, t. 1.
