Sacred Books of the East/Volume 3/The Shih/Odes of the Temple and the Altar/The Sacrificial Odes of Kâu/Decade 2/Ode 6

 

Ode 6. The Khien.

 

Sung in the last month of winter, and in spring, when the king presented a fish in the ancestral temple.

Such is the argument of this piece given in the Preface, and in which the critics generally concur. In the Lî Kî, IV, vi, 49, it is recorded that the king, in the third month of winter, gave orders to his chief fisher to commence his duties, and went himself to see his operations. He partook of the fish first captured, but previously presented some as an offering in the back apartment of the ancestral temple. In the third month of spring, again, when the sturgeons began to make their appearance (Lî Kî, IV, i, 25), the king presented one in the same place. On these passages, the prefatory notice was, no doubt, constructed. Choice specimens of the earliest-caught fish were presented by the sovereign to his ancestors, as an act of duty, and an acknowledgment that it was to their favour that he and the people were indebted for the supplies of food, which they received from the waters.

Oh! in the Khî and the Khü,
There are many fish in the warrens;—
Sturgeons, large and snouted,
Thryssas, yellow-jaws, mud-fish, and carp;—
For offerings, for sacrifice,
That our bright happiness may be increased.