IV. LESSONS FROM THE STATES.

p. 430

ODES AND STANZAS ILLUSTRATING THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND PRACTICES OF THE WRITERS AND THEIR TIMES.

IT has been stated in the Introduction, p. 276, that the first Part of the Shih, called the Kwo Făng, or 'Lessons from the States,' consists of 160 pieces, descriptive of manners and events in several of the feudal states into which the kingdom of Kâu was divided. Nearly all of them are short; and the passages illustrating the religious views and practices of their times are comparatively few. What passages there are, however, of this nature will all be found below. The pieces are not arranged in decades, as in the Odes of the Kingdom, but in Books, under the names of the states in which they were produced.

Although the Kwo Făng form, as usually published, the first Part of the Shih, nearly all of them are more recent in their origin than the pieces of the other Parts. They bring us face to face with the states of the kingdom, and the ways of their officers and people for several centuries of the dynasty of Kâu.