Ode 6. The Liang Sze

ODE 6. THE LIANG SZE.

PRESUMABLY, AN ODE OF THANKSGIVING IN THE AUTUMN TO THE SPIRITS OF THE LAND AND GRAIN.

Very sharp are the excellent shares, With which they set to work on the south-lying, acres.

They sow their various kinds of grain, Each seed containing in it a germ of life.

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There are those who come to see them, With their baskets round and square, Containing the provisions of millet.

With their light splint hats on their heads, They ply their hoes on the ground, Clearing away the smartweed on the dry land and wet.

The weeds being decayed, The millets grow luxuriantly.

They fall rustling before the reapers. The gathered crop is piled up solidly, High as a wall, United together like the teeth of a comb; And the hundred houses are opened (to receive the grain) ¹.

Those hundred houses being full, The wives and children have a feeling of repose.

(Now) we kill this black-muzzled tawny bull ², with his crooked horns, To imitate and hand down, To hand down (the observances of) our ancestors.

Footnotes

333:1 'The hundred houses,' or chambers in a hundred family residences, are those of the hundred families, cultivating the space which was bounded by a brook;--see note on the second ode of the preceding decade. They formed a society, whose members helped one another in their field work, so that their harvest might be said to be carried home at the same time. Then would come the threshing or treading, and winnowing, after which the groin would be brought into the houses.

333:2 It has been observed that under the Kâu dynasty, red was the p. 334 colour of the sacrificial victims. So it was for the ancestral temple but in sacrificing to the spirits of the land and grain, the victim was a 'yellow' bull with black lips.