exempted as being a work on divination, nor did it extend to the other classics which were in charge of the Board of Great Scholars. There ought to have been no difficulty in finding copies when the Han dynasty superseded that of Ch'in, and probably there would have been none but for the sack of the capital in B. C. 206 by Hsiang Yü, the formidable opponent of the founder of the House of Han. Then, we are told, the fires blazed for three months among the palaces and public buildings, and must have proved as destructive to the copies of the Great Scholars as the edict of the tyrant had been to the copies among the people.

It is to be noted also that the life of Shih Hwang Tî lasted only three years after the promulgation of his edict. He died in B.C. 210, and the reign of his second son who succeeded him lasted only other three years. A brief period of disorder and struggling for the supreme authority between different chiefs ensued; but the reign of the founder of the Han dynasty dates from B. C. 202. Thus, eleven years were all which intervened between the order for the burning of the Books and the rise of that family, which signalized itself by the care which it bestowed for their recovery; and from the edict of the tyrant of Ch'in against private individuals having copies in their keeping, to its express abrogation by the emperor Hsiao Hûi, there were only twenty-two years. We may believe, indeed, that vigorous efforts to carry the edict into effect would not be continued longer than the life of its author,—that is, not for more than about three years. The calamity inflicted on the ancient Books of China by the House of Ch'in could not have approached to anything like a complete destruction of them. There would be no occasion for the scholars of the Han dynasty, in regard to the bulk of their ancient literature, to undertake more than the work of recension and editing.

9. The idea of forgery by them on a large scale is out of the question. The catalogues of Liang Hsin enumerated more than 13,000 volumes of a larger or smaller size, the productions of nearly 600 different writers, and arranged in thirty-eight subdivisions of subjects1. In the third catalogue, the first subdivision contained the orthodox writers 2, to the number of fifty-three, with 836 Works or portions of their Works. Between Mencius and

'凡書六略,三十八種,五百九十六家, 萬三千 二百六十九卷. ·儒家者流

K'ung Chi, the grandson of Confucius, eight different authors have place. The second subdivision contained the Works of the Tâoist school1, amounting to 993 collections, from thirty-seven different authors. The sixth subdivision contained the Mohist writers 2, to the number of six, with their productions in 86 collections. I specify these two subdivisions, because they embrace the Works of schools or sects antagonistic to that of Confucius, and some of them still hold a place in Chinese literature, and contain many references to the five Classics, and to Confucius and his disciples.

10. The inquiry pursued in the above paragraphs conducts us to the conclusion that the materials from which the Classics, as they have come down to us, were compiled and edited in the two centuries preceding our Christian era, were genuine remains, going back to a still more remote period. The injury which they sustained from the dynasty of Ch'in was, I believe, the same in character as that to which they were exposed during all the time of 'the Warring States.' It may have been more intense in degree, but the constant warfare which prevailed for some centuries among the different states which composed the kingdom was eminently unfavourable to the cultivation of literature. Mencius tells us how the princes had made away with many of the records of antiquity, from which their own usurpations and innovations might have been condemned3. Still the times were not unfruitful, either in scholars or statesmen, to whom the ways and monuments of antiquity were dear, and the space from the rise of the Ch'in dynasty to the death of Confucius. was not very great. It only amounted to 258 years. Between these two periods Mencius stands as a connecting link. Born probably in the year B. C. 371, he reached, by the intervention of K ung Chi, back to the sage himself, and as his death happened B. C. 288, we are brought down to within nearly half a century of the Ch'in dynasty. From all these considerations we may proceed with confidence to consider each separate Work, believing that we have in these Classics and Books what the great sage of China and his disciples gave to their country more than 2000 years ago.

2

1

'道家者流. * 墨家者流.

3 See Mencius, V. Pt. II. ii. 2.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE CONFUCIAN ANALECTS.

SECTION I.

FORMATION OF THE TEXT OF THE ANALECTS BY THE SCHOLARS OF THE HAN DYNASTY.

1. When the work of collecting and editing the remains of the Classical Books was undertaken by the scholars of Han, there appeared two different copies of the Analects, one from Lû, the native State of Confucius, and the other from Ch'î, the State adjoining. Between these there were considerable differences. The former consisted of twenty Books or Chapters, the same as those into which the Classic is now divided. The latter contained two Books in addition, and in the twenty Books, which they had in common, the chapters and sentences were somewhat more numerous than in the Lû exemplar.

2. The names of several individuals are given, who devoted themselves to the study of those two copies of the Classic. Among the patrons of the Lû copy are mentioned the names of Hsiâ-hâu Shăng, grand-tutor of the heir-apparent, who died at the age of 90, and in the reign of the emperor Hsüan (B. C. 73-49)1; Hsiao Wang-chih2, a general-officer, who died in the reign of the emperor Yüan (B.C. 48-33); Wei Hsien, who was premier of the empire from B.C. 70-66; and his son Hsuan-ch'ăng3. As patrons of the Ch'i copy, we have Wang Ch'ing, who was a censor in the year B. C. 994; Yung Shăng; and Wang Chi, a statesman who died in the beginning of the reign of the emperor Yüan.

3. But a third copy of the Analects was discovered about B.C. 150. One of the sons of the emperor Ching was appointed king of Lû in the year B. C. 154, and some time after, wishing to enlarge his palace, he proceeded to pull down the house of the K'ung family, known as that where Confucius himself had lived. '太子大傅夏侯勝. 前將軍, 蕭望之 2 前將軍,蕭望之

丞相, 韋賢, 及子,立成. ‘王卿.‘庸生. “中尉王吉

While doing so, there were found in the wall copies of the Shû-ching, the Ch'un Ch'iû, the Hsiâo-ching, and the Lun Yü or Analects, which had been deposited there, when the edict for the burning of the Books was issued. They were all written, however, in the most ancient form of the Chinese character1, which had fallen into disuse, and the king returned them to the K'ung family, the head of which, K'ung Ân-kwo, gave himself to the study of them, and finally, in obedience to an imperial order, published a Work called 'The Lun Yü, with Explanations of the Characters, and Exhibition of the Meaning 3.'

4. The recovery of this copy will be seen to be a most important circumstance in the history of the text of the Analects. It is referred to by Chinese writers, as The old Lun Yü.' In the historical narrative which we have of the affair, a circumstance is added which may appear to some minds to throw suspicion on the whole account. The king was finally arrested, we are told, in his purpose to destroy the house, by hearing the sounds of bells, musical stones, lutes, and citherns, as he was ascending the steps that led to the ancestral hall or temple. This incident was contrived, we may suppose, by the K'ung family, to preserve the house, or it may have been devised by the historian to glorify the sage, but we may not, on account of it, discredit the finding of the ancient copies of the Books. We have K'ung Ân-kwo's own account of their being committed to him, and of the ways which he took to decipher them. The work upon the Analects, mentioned above, has not indeed come down to us, but his labours on the Shû-ching still remain.

5. It has been already stated, that the Lun Yü of Ch'î contained two Books more than that of Lû. In this respect, the old Lun Yü agreed with the Lû exemplar. Those two books were wanting in it as well. The last book of the Lû Lun was divided in it, however, into two, the chapter beginning, 'Yão said,' forming a whole Book by itself, and the remaining two chapters formed another Book beginning 'Tsze-chang.' With this trifling difference, the old and the Lû copies appear to have agreed together.

1

6. Chang Yü, prince of Ân-ch'ang 4, who died B.C. 4, after having

-lit. 'tadpole characters.' They were, it is said, the original forms devised by Ts'ang-chieh, with large heads and fine tails, like the creature from which they were named. See the notes to the preface to the Shû-ching in 'The Thirteen Classics.' . See the preface to the Lun Yü in 'The Thirteen

·孔安國.

3

Ching.' It has been my principal authority in this section.

安昌侯,張禹

sustained several of the highest offices of the empire, instituted a comparison between the exemplars of Lû and Ch'î, with a view to determine the true text. The result of his labours appeared in twenty-one Books, which are mentioned in Liû Hsin's catalogue. They were known as the Lun of prince Chang1, and commanded general approbation. To Chang Yü is commonly ascribed the ejecting from the Classic the two additional books which the Ch'î exemplar contained, but Mâ Twan-lin prefers to rest that circumstance on the authority of the old Lun, which we have seen was without them 2. If we had the two Books, we might find sufficient reason from their contents to discredit them. That may have been sufficient for Chang Yu to condemn them as he did, but we can hardly suppose that he did not have before him the old Lun, which had come to light about a century before he published his Work.

7. In the course of the second century, a new edition of the Analects, with a commentary, was published by one of the greatest scholars which China has ever produced, Chăng Hsüan, known also as Chăng K'ang-ch'ăng 3. He died in the reign of the emperor Hsien (A.D. 190-220) at the age of 74, and the amount of his labours on the ancient classical literature is almost incredible. While he adopted the Lû Lun as the received text of his time, he compared it minutely with those of Ch'i and the old exemplar. In the last section of this chapter will be found a list of the readings in his commentary different from those which are now acknowledged in deference to the authority of Chû Hsî, of the Sung dynasty. They are not many, and their importance is but trifling.

8. On the whole, the above statements will satisfy the reader of the care with which the text of the Lun Yü was fixed during the dynasty of Han.

SECTION II.

AT WHAT TIME, AND BY WHOM, THE ANALECTS WERE WRITTEN; THEIR PLAN; AND AUTHENTICITY.

1. At the commencement of the notes upon the first Book, under the heading, 'The Title of the Work,' I have given the received account of its authorship, which precedes the catalogue

2

'張侯論. 文獻通考, Bk.clxxxiv. p. 3. ·鄭,字康成 *孝獻皇帝.