| The Shi King is a cyclopedia of social life in Zhou Destiny. In a poetic way, it has recorded the history of five hundred years from the beginning of Xi Zhou destiny to the middle of Chun Qiu period. Every aspects of the social life are described and presented in the Shi King, including national sacrifice ceremony, military affairs, wars, court banquets, common people's farm work, military service, marriages and funerals, entertainments and travels etc. Therefore, poetic themes such as farming, hunting, military service, marriage, love, political praise and irony, war, banquet, sacrifice ceremony are initially proposed by Shi King. These concepts are contained in different poetic themes which reflect different aspects of social life. As a mirror of literature, Shi King reflects the scenes of colorful life of people living in that period so that we have an insight into their spiritual world and have a clear knowledge of their concepts of life, love affair, family, ethic, political and religion.According to the themes, this paper is divided into seven parts.The firth part:Introduction.This part includs basis of topic choosing, approach to studying discourse and literatural review.The second part:"the concepts of life", through farming poem, hunting poem, military serving poem in the Shi King, explores the concepts people hold in their daily life, including the priority of agriculture, the unity of man and nature, the concept of time and opportunity, the virtue of diligence, the praise for braveness and encouragement of martial spirit, the advocacy for a optimistic attitude for life, the love of one's homeland and not wishing to leave it, and the value of peace etc.The third part:"concepts of love and marriage", examines the concepts of love and the concepts of marriage contained in the love poem of the Shi King. The concepts of love include the free and bold pursuit of love, persistence and concentration in love, the priority of moral rules over love. The concepts of marriage include the obedience to the moral rules and customs, the two concepts of marriage existing side by side: first, the command of parents and the good offices of a go-between and second, the free choice of partners of one's own, no marriage between two persons with the same family names and the concept of status.The fourth part:"the concepts of family ethic", the concepts of family ethic contained in various poems in the Shi King are examined. They express the highly advocated ideas that parents should be kind and amiable while children should be filial; brothers should be friendly and respectful to each other; and couples should be affectionate.The fifth part:"the political concepts". Poems of political praise and irony, poems of war, poems of banquet in the Shi King have implicated the political concepts held by people at that time. These concepts include that the ruler should keep oneself with ethic in order to gain the bless of the god; the ruler should respect and protect common people, respect virtuous and able men and put them in important positions; people should be loyal to the rule and love his country; weariness of war; and to achieve harmony through courtesy.The sixth part. Concepts of religion . The poems of pray, poems of agricultural sacrifice and the other types in the Shi King contains the religion and moral concepts prevailing at that time. They include the worship of gods and ancients, to restrain oneself with ethic to gain bless from gods; worship the nature; to complain gods; to doubt gods; and swear gods etc.The seventh part:conclusion.This part reveals the culture entailed in the concepts of the Shi King and the implicatures to modern time.
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