Born of a toe-print
The ode in which the Zhou told their own beginning does not begin with him. It begins with the people. 厥初生民, the first birth of the people, is its opening line, and its first question is how that birth came about. The answer is a woman and a rite: Jiang Yuan 姜嫄 performed the pure offering and the sacrifice, 克禋克祀, 以弗無子 — so that she should not be without a son.
厥初生民，時維姜嫄。生民如何？克禋克祀，以弗無子。履帝武敏歆，攸介攸止。載震載夙，載生載育。時維后稷。誕彌厥月，先生如達。不坼不副，無菑無害。以赫厥靈
“The first birth of (our) people Was from Kiang Yüan. How did she give birth to (our) people? She had presented a pure offering and sacrificed, That her childlessness might be taken away. She then trod on a toe-print made by God, and was moved, In the large place where she rested. She became pregnant; she dwelt retired; She gave birth to, and nourished (a son), Who was Hâu-kî. When she had fulfilled her months, Her firstborn son (came forth) like a lamb. There was no bursting, nor rending, No injury, no hurt; Showing how wonderful he would be.” — Shijing, “Shengmin” 生民; The Shih King, Major Odes of the Kingdom, Decade II, Ode 1, tr. James Legge (1879), Sacred Books of the East vol. III
No father appears in it. The child comes of a single act, 履帝武敏歆: she trod in a toe-print of 帝, God, and was moved. Pregnancy and birth follow in two lines, and the stanza closes on a plain identification, 時維后稷, this was Houji — so that the people of the opening line and the boy of the last are, for the purposes of the poem, one birth. Then the ode goes back and lingers on the delivery, which is where its wonder actually lies. 先生如達 — the firstborn came out like a lamb — and 不坼不副, nothing burst and nothing tore. The painless birth is the first sign of what he is.
Sima Qian, writing the “Annals of Zhou” in the first century BC, keeps the footprint and fills in what the ode leaves empty. He gives the mother a clan — 有邰氏女, a daughter of the Tai clan — and a husband: 姜原為帝嚳元妃, Jiang Yuan was the principal consort of Diku. He writes her name 姜原, where the ode writes 姜嫄 with the woman radical; it is the same woman.
姜原出野，見巨人跡，心忻然說，欲踐之，踐之而身動如孕者。居期而生子
“Jiang Yuan went out into the open country and saw the footprint of a giant. Her heart was glad and delighted, and she wanted to step in it. She stepped in it, and her body stirred like that of a woman with child. When her time was full, she bore a son.” — Sima Qian, Shiji, “Annals of Zhou” 周本紀; tr. Mythos Atlas
Two things have moved. The print is no longer 帝武, God’s, but 巨人跡, a giant’s; and the woman is no longer at the altar asking for a son but out in the open country, where she sees the print and wants it — 欲踐之, she wished to tread in it. The husband the historian has just supplied plays no part in the scene. The ode’s verb 履 has become the historian’s 踐, and he will need that verb again within two sentences.
The lane, the forest and the ice
The wonder of the birth is followed at once by its opposite. The ode sets the child out three times, and it never says who does it or why. Each placing opens on the same words, 誕寘之, he was laid down, and each is answered.
誕寘之隘巷，牛羊腓字之。誕寘之平林，會伐平林。誕寘之寒冰，鳥覆翼之。鳥乃去矣，后稷呱矣。實覃實訏，厥聲載路。誕實匍匐，克岐克嶷，以就口食。蓺之荏菽，荏菽斾斾，禾役穟穟。麻麥幪幪， 瓜瓞唪唪
“He was placed in a narrow lane, But the sheep and oxen protected him with loving care. He was placed in a wide forest, Where he was met with by the wood-cutters. He was placed on the cold ice, And a bird screened and supported him with its wings. When the bird went away, Hâu-kî began to wail. His cry was long and loud, So that his voice filled the whole way. When he was able to crawl, He looked majestic and intelligent. When he was able to feed himself, He fell to planting beans. The beans grew luxuriantly; His rows of paddy shot up beautifully; His hemp and wheat grew strong and close; His gourds yielded abundantly.” — Shijing, “Shengmin” 生民; The Shih King, Major Odes of the Kingdom, Decade II, Ode 1, tr. James Legge (1879), Sacred Books of the East vol. III
The three answers come from three kinds of being. In the lane it is the animals, 牛羊腓字之, the sheep and oxen. In the forest it is people, 會伐平林, the men who happened to be felling it. On the ice it is a bird, 鳥覆翼之, and Legge’s screened and supported catches both halves of what the wings do, one over the child and one beneath him. Only when the bird leaves does he make a sound — 鳥乃去矣，后稷呱矣 — and the sound fills the road. Then, with no transition, he is crawling, and as soon as he can put food into his own mouth, 以就口食, he is putting seed into the ground: 蓺之荏菽, he planted beans. The first thing the ode shows him doing with his hands is sowing, and the stanza ends in a field of beans, grain, hemp, wheat and gourds.
Sima Qian answers the two questions the ode never asks. It was his mother who laid him out, and the reason is 以為不祥: she took him for an ill omen. And he rewrites each of the three rescues so that it explains itself. In the lane, 馬牛過者皆辟不踐 — the horses and oxen that went by all stepped aside and would not tread on him. The ode’s sheep and oxen have become horses and oxen, and their care has become a refusal to step, in the story of a boy conceived by a step. In the forest, 適會山林多人: it happened that there were many people in the woods, so she moved him again, and the ode’s woodcutters have become a crowd that spoils the exposure. On the ice, now the ice of a channel, it is 飛鳥以其翼覆薦之, the flying birds covered him with their wings and spread them beneath him — the same two motions Legge found in the ode’s one line. That is enough for her. 姜原以為神: Jiang Yuan took it for something divine, gathered him up and raised him.
Then the history adds the one thing the ode does not have, a personal name, and makes it out of the deed. 初欲棄之，因名曰棄 — because at first she had meant to abandon him, he was named 棄, Abandoned. The verb the historian has used for the exposures, 棄之隘巷 in the lane and 棄渠中冰上 on the ice, becomes the boy. It is the name Shun will call him by.
Minister of Agriculture
The Shiji turns the ode’s field into a career. As a child, 其游戲，好種樹麻、菽 — in his games he liked to plant hemp and beans, and his hemp and beans did well. As a grown man he took to farming, and he farmed by looking: 相地之宜, he studied what each piece of ground was suited to, sowed grain where grain would take, and 民皆法則之, the people all took him for their model. Then the sovereigns notice. 帝堯聞之，舉棄為農師 — Yao heard of him and raised him to be master of husbandry, and the whole world had the benefit of it. The next sentence belongs to Shun, and Sima Qian has taken it almost word for word from the Book of Documents.
禹拜稽首，讓于稷、契暨皋陶。帝曰：「俞，汝往哉！」帝曰：「棄，黎民阻飢，汝后稷，播時百穀
“Yü did obeisance with his head to the ground, and wished to decline in favour of the Minister of Agriculture, or Hsieh, or Kâo-yâo. The Tî said, ‘Yes, but do you go (and undertake the duties).’ The Tî said, ‘Khî, the black-haired people are (still) suffering from famine. Do you, O prince, as Minister of Agriculture, (continue to) sow (for them) the various kinds of grain.’” — Shangshu, “Canon of Shun” 舜典; The Shû King, Part II, Book I, tr. James Legge (1879), Sacred Books of the East vol. III
Legge’s Minister of Agriculture stands for two different strings. In Yu’s deference it renders 稷 alone — 讓于稷、契暨皋陶, Yu wished to decline in favour of 稷, of Xie or of Gaoyao — and there the man is named by his office and nothing else. In Shun’s command it renders 后稷, and the command first calls him by his own name, 棄, and only then confers the title: 汝后稷, you, as Houji. Houji is what he is made, not what he was born. Legge’s supplied (continue to) reads the charge as the confirmation of work already under way, and the Shiji, in which Yao has appointed him first, agrees. Even the famine is restated. The Book of Documents has the black-haired people 阻飢, suffering from hunger; Sima Qian has 黎民始饑, the people beginning to starve.
The appointment ends in land and a surname. 封棄於邰，號曰后稷，別姓姬氏: he was enfeoffed at Tai, styled Houji, and given a separate surname, Ji 姬. Tai is the name of his mother’s clan — she was 有邰氏女 — so the child she exposed is settled under her own people’s name. Ji is the surname of the Zhou kings, and the Shanhaijing gives it, independently, to the country of Western Zhou. Sima Qian goes on to record that when Houji died, his son Buzhu succeeded him.
Brought down with the hundred grains
The Shanhaijing’s lines on him have no lane and no ice in them, and no sovereign appoints him. Its Houji does not grow up into farming. He arrives with it.
有西周之國，姬姓，食榖。有人方耕，名曰叔均。帝俊生后稷，稷降以百榖。稷之弟曰台璽，生叔均。叔均是代其父及稷播百榖，始作耕
“There is the country of Western Zhou, of the surname Ji; its people eat grain. There is a man in the act of ploughing, named Shujun. Dijun begot Houji, and Houji came down bringing the hundred grains. Houji’s younger brother was called Taixi, and Taixi begot Shujun. It was Shujun who sowed the hundred grains in place of his father and of Houji, and he was the first to plough.” — Shanhaijing, “Classic of the Great Wilderness: West” 大荒西經; tr. Mythos Atlas
稷降以百榖 is the whole of his deed here. The clause shortens him to the second character of his title, and its verb is 降, to come down: the hundred grains are not found or bred but brought down, and he is the one who brings them. The rest is a family’s division of labour, and the tilling belongs to someone else. 始作耕, the first ploughing, is said of Shujun, his younger brother’s son, who sowed in his father’s place and his uncle’s; the passage opens on that nephew at work, 有人方耕. In this book Houji supplies the grain, and the plough is his nephew’s.
The same book buries him in a country of the same kind. 有都廣之野，后稷葬焉 — there is the plain of Duguang, and Houji is buried there — and a few lines on, the “Classic of Regions Within the Seas” says what grows on it: rich beans, rich rice, rich millet and, last, 膏稷, the grain whose character his title carries, and 百榖自生, the hundred grains grow there of themselves. The man who brought the grain down is buried where it grows of itself.
In their own temple hymns the Zhou addressed him directly, and set him at Heaven’s side.
思文后稷，克配彼天。立我烝民，莫匪爾極。貽我來牟，帝命率育，無此疆爾界，陳常于時夏
“O accomplished Hâu-kî, Thou didst prove thyself the correlate of Heaven. Thou didst give grain-food to our multitudes:— The immense gift of thy goodness. Thou didst confer on us the wheat and the barley, Which God appointed for the nourishment of all. And without distinction of territory or boundary, The rules of social duty were diffused throughout these great regions.” — Shijing, “Siwen” 思文; The Shih King, Sacrificial Odes of Kâu, Decade I, Ode 10, tr. James Legge (1879), Sacred Books of the East vol. III
克配彼天 — Legge’s correlate of Heaven — puts him beside Heaven as the one who receives sacrifice with it. What he gives in this hymn is not beans but 來牟, wheat and barley, and the gift is not his alone: 帝命率育, God appointed it for the nourishment of all. The last line carries the gift past food. 陳常于時夏, the rules of social duty went out through the land, and the line before it has already set aside the borders of territory. The grain and the norms of living together travel as one thing.
The Book of Rites puts the same honour in the language of the state cult. In its chapter on the law of sacrifices it names first Nong, son of the lord of Lishan, who could grow the hundred grains, and then: 夏之衰也，周棄繼之，故祀以為稷 — when the Xia declined, 周棄, Qi of Zhou, carried on his work, and so he was sacrificed to as 稷. The word that was an office in the Book of Documents has become an altar. One character serves these texts for the grain, the post, the man and the sacrifice, and Houji, the lord of it, holds all four.