The Odes is an anthology of over three hundred songs traditionally dated to the first three to four centuries of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BCE), including paeans to kings and lords and folk songs reflecting daily life and courtship. Some songs include narratives of warfare waged against foreign peoples and frontier states by the Zhou kings and their subordinate lords; these have been corroborated by excavated bronze inscriptions from the Western Zhou period (see three examples here). The songs quoted below glorify real or imagined military victories against various enemies in the north, east, and south, but do not speak generically of these enemies as a single category of “others”, unlike later Chinese texts. Nonetheless, because the Odes was eventually canonized as one of the “Confucian” classics, with Confucius traditionally identified as their compiler, it became common for later writers to quote these texts as evidence of a perpetual state of conflict between the Chinese and “the barbarians” since ancient times.

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Excerpt from the ode “Caiqi” (Gathering Millet)

… Fang Shu came to take command
Of three thousand chariots
And a host of well-trained warriors.
Fang Shu led them on
With a band of drummers,
Assembled them in formation and issued his orders.
Brilliant and faithful is Fang Shu,
Deep the rolling of his drums,
And grand the sound of his army as it returns victorious.
These stupid and ignorant Man of Jing
Set themselves against our great state.
Fang Shu is an old veteran
But still vigorous in battle.
Fang Shu led his army on
And captured and interrogated the enemy.
Numerous were his war chariots,
Numerous and grand,
Sounding like rolling thunder.
Brilliant and faithful is Fang Shu
Who attacked the Xianyun
And awed the Man of Jing into coming to pay tribute.

Excerpts from the ode “Liuyue” (The Sixth Month)⁴

In the sixth month, all was hustle and bustle
As war chariots were made ready,
Each with four strong steeds,
And their crews put on military gear.
The Xianyun were fiery in their aggression,
Hence the emergency;
The king ordered us to go on campaign
To save the kingdom....
The Xianyun overestimated their strength
When they occupied Jiaohuo
And invaded Hao and Fang,
Advancing to Jingyang.
We flew our bird-emblazoned banners,
Their white streamers fluttering brightly.
Our ten large chariots 
Went in front, leading the charge.
Our chariots were sturdily built,
Nicely balanced in the front and rear.
The four steeds on each were hardy and strong,
Hardy and strong and well-trained.
We smote the Xianyun 
As far as Dayuan.....

Excerpts from the ode “Bigong” (The Closed Temple)

… The present descendant of the Duke of Zhou,
The son of Lord Zhuang [of Lu] (r. 693-662 BCE),
Attends the sacrifices with a dragon-emblazoned banner,
Tightly holding the six reins of his chariot….
Our lord’s chariots number a thousand,
Each armed with two spears and two bows,
The spears vermillion-tasseled, the bows green-corded.
With masses of warriors,
He shall smite the Rong and Di,
He shall punish Jing and Shu,
And none will dare stand before him….
He shall guard Mount Fu and Mount Yi,
And extend his dominion to the land of Xu
And as far as the states by the sea,
The Yi of the Huai River, the Man, and the Mo.
Even the Yi to the south
Will all pledge their allegiance,
Not one daring not to agree
To show obedience to the Lord of Lu….

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1. Fang Shu was a minister of King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827-782 BCE) who defeated the Xianyun people in battle in 823 BCE and led a successful military expedition against the southern state of Chu in the same year. ↩︎
2. “Man of Jing” (i.e., southern barbarians of Jing province) is a derogatory reference to the state of Chu, which at this time was based in southwestern Henan and had rebelled against King Xuan’s suzerainty. The Chu capital later moved south to Hubei in the Middle Yangzi region. Chu began as a colony on the Zhou kingdom’s southern frontier and retained many aspects of Zhou elite culture, but its ambitious military expansionism and insubordination to the Zhou king led the Zhou court and the northern states to denigrate it as a state of Man barbarians. See Yuri Pines, “Chu Identity as Seen from Its Manuscripts: A Reevaluation,” Journal of Chinese History 2 (2018), 1-26. ↩︎
3. The Xianyun were a chariot-riding people who lived to the north of the Zhou homeland and attacked the Zhou capital, Haojing, several times in the ninth century BCE. Bronze inscriptions from the Western Zhou period show that the Zhou also called them Rong. Some historians have therefore identified the Xianyun with the Quanrong (Dog Rong) people who sacked Haojing in 771 BCE, forcing the Zhou court to move east to Chengzhou (Luoyang). ↩︎
4. This ode was composed in praise of Jifu (also known as Yin Jifu), a Zhou minister who participated in the successful military expedition against the Xianyun in 823 BCE. ↩︎
5. Jiaohuo was an area of marshland near Jingyang, Shaanxi. ↩︎
6. The locations of “Hao and Fang” in this ode have been debated among scholars. Hao may refer to the Zhou capital Haojing, but it could also be another location with the same name. ↩︎
7. The original text reads Dayuan 大原 (the Great Plain), but commentators in later periods tended to interpret this as Taiyuan 太原 in Shanxi. “Smiting the Xianyun as far as Taiyuan” then became a stock phrase for repelling raiders and pursuing them to one’s borders, but no further. However, some modern historians believe that the Dayuan of the ode was actually Guyuan, Ningxia, and that it was located within Xianyun territory at the time. ↩︎
8. This would be either Lord Min of Lu (r. 661-660 BCE) or, more likely, his brother Lord Xi (r. 659-627 BCE). ↩︎
9. Rong and Di were labels for peoples living to the west and north of the Zhou heartland. For more on this, see the introduction to Source 1.2. ↩︎
10. As with the ode “Caiqi,” Jing is used here as a denigrating synonym for the state of Chu. Shu was a collection of Yi statelets in the Huai River basin that became vassals of Chu in the seventh century BCE. By the time the ode “Bigong” was composed, Chu had become a major military power and was expanding northwards aggressively. ↩︎
11. Xu was a Yi state that dominated the Huai River basin at this time. ↩︎
12. The label Mo was applied to peoples who lived in the modern northeastern provinces of China (“Manchuria”). ↩︎