critics we have the most conflicting utterances regarding it. I have quoted a few words on p. 9, from Sze-ma Ts'ëen's account of the Ch'un Ts'ëw, but I now give the whole of it:-'The master said, "No! No! The superior man is distressed lest his name should not be honourably mentioned after death. My principles do not make way in the world;-how shall I make myself known to future ages?" On this, from the records of the historians he made the Ch'un Ts'ëw, commencing with duke Yin, coming down to the 14th year of duke Gae, and thus embracing the times of twelve marquises. He kept close in it to [the annals of] Loo, showed his affection for Chow, and purposely made the three dynasties move before the reader.1 His style was condensed, but his scope was extensive. Thus the rulers of Woo and Ts'oo assumed to themselves the title of king; but in the Ch'un Ts'ew they are censured by being only styled viscounts. Thus also the son of Heaven was really summoned [by the marquis of Tsin] to attend the meeting at Tsëen-t'oo (V. xxviii. 8), but the Ch'un Ts'ew conceals the fact, and says (par. 16) that "the king by Heaven's grace held a court of inspection in Ho-yang." Such instances serve to illustrate the idea of the master in the censures and elisions which he employed to rectify the ways of those times, his aim being that, when future kings should study the work, its meaning should be appreciated, and all rebellious ministers and villainous sons under the sky become afraid.2 When Confucius was in office, his language in listening to litigations was what others would have employed, and not peculiar to him; but in making the Ch'un Ts'ëw, he wrote what he wrote, and he retrenched what he retrenched, so that the disciples of Tsze-hea could not improve it in a single character. When his disciples received from him the Ch'un Ts'ëw, he said, "It is by the Ch'un Ts'ëw that after ages will know me, and also by it that they will condemn me." "3

1據魯親周故殷運之三代 I shall be glad if any Sinologue can make out the meaning of this passage more clearly than I have done. Chang Show-tseeh (CT),

the glossarist of Sze-ma Ts'ëen under the T'ang dynasty (His preface is dated in the 8th month

of a.D. 736), says on the last clause一段中也又中運夏殷周之事也 2 Here again Sze-ma's style is involved, and far from clear: EHHE 損之義後有王者舉而開之春秋之義行則天下亂臣 賊子懼焉 3 Lew He (Proleg. to vol. III., p. 205) has a strange note on this utterance of Confucius :-: :一知者行堯舜之道者罪者在王公之位見

The knowers would be those who practised the principles of Yaou and Shun; the condemners would be kings and dukes in office who were censured and condemned [by the sage's righteous decisions].' This is ingenious, but far-fetched.

A thousand expressions of opinion, modelled upon that of Sze-ma Ts'een, might easily be adduced, all, it seems to me, as I have said already, prompted by an endeavour to reconcile the existing Work with the accounts of the Ch'un Ts'ëw given in Mencius. As we come down the course of time, we find the scholars of China less positive in the view that Confucius made any change in the text of the Ch'un Ts'ëw of Loo. Choo He says, "The entries in the Ch'un Ts'ëw, that, for instance, "Such a man did such a thing" are according to the old text of the historiographers of Loo, come down to us from the stylus of the sage, transcribing or retrenching. Now-a-days, people, when they see the Ch'un Ts'ëw, are sure to say, "Such and such a character has its stigma for such and such a man," so that Confucius thus took it on him, according to his private views, to dispense without authority his praise or blame. But Confucius simply wrote the thing correctly as it was, and the good or evil of it was manifest of itself. If people feel that they must express themselves as I have said, we must get into our hands the old text of the historiographers of Loo, so that, comparing it with what we now have, the difference and agreement between them would be apparent. But this is now impossible.'4

'6

Chaou Yih adduces two paragraphs from the 'Annals of the Bamboo Books,' which, he thinks, may be the original form of two in the Ch'un Ts'ëw. The one is 'Duke Yin of Loo and duke Chwang of Choo made a covenant at Koo-mech, corresponding to I. i. 2, 'In the third month, the duke and E-foo of Choo made a covenant in Mëeh.' The other is 'Duke Heen of Tsin united with the army of Yu, and, attacking Kwoh, extinguished Heayang, corresponding to V. ii. 3, 'An army of Yu and an army of Tsin extinguished Hea-yang.' 'These two cases,' observes Chaou, 'show that the style of the historiographers of the States was, we may say, similar to that of the Ch'un Ts'ëw, and that Confucius on deliberation only altered a few characters to lodge in others of his own his praise or censure'. But to make these two instances exactly to the point, it would be necessary that they should occur in the annals of the State of Loo, somehow preserved to us. Besides,

4 See the K'ang-he Ch'un Ts'ew,, p. 18 :— :一春秋所書如某人為某 事云云: 5 See the proleg. to vol. III., p. 160. 6 lb., p. 163. 7據此可見 當時國史其文法大槪本與春秋相似孔子特酌易數 字以寓褒貶耳; i-see the 陔餘叢考卷二, the chapter 春秋底本

the expressions 'duke Chwang' and 'duke Heen' are retrospective, and not after the manner of the Ch'un Ts'ëw.

With regard to the entry in III. vii. 2, that 'at midnight there was a fall of stars like rain,' referring, we must believe, to a grand appearance of meteors, Kung-yang tells us that the old text of the historiographers was-'It rained stars to within a foot of the earth, when they re-ascended'? Certainly the text was not altered here by Confucius to express either praise or censure. And if Kung-yang was able thus to quote the old text, it is strange he should only have done it in this solitary instance. If it had been so different from the present, with his propensities he would not have been slow to adduce it frequently. I must doubt his correctness in this case.

After the first entry under the 14th year of duke Gae, with which according to all Chinese critics the labours of Confucius terminated, Tso she gives no fewer than 27 paragraphs, bringing the history down to the death of the sage in Gae's 16th year. Those paragraphs were added, it is said, from the Ch'un Ts'ëw of Loo by Confucius' disciples; and I can see no difference between the style in them, and in the more than a thousand which passed under the revision of the

master.

Is it a sign of my having imbibed something of the prejudice of native scholars, of which I spoke in the end of last section, that I do not like to express my opinion that Confucius did not alter a character in his authorities? Certainly he made no alterations to convey his sentiments of praise or blame;-the variations of style where there could be no change of sentiment or feeling underlying them. forbid our supposing this.

SECTION III.

RECOVERY OF THE CH'UN TS'ËW DURING THE HAN DYNASTY. WAS
THIS INDEED THE CH'UN TSEW OF CONFUCIUS?

1. Lew Hin's catalogue of the Works in the imperial library of the early Han dynasty, prepared, as I have shown in the proleg. to vol. I., p. 4, about the commencement of our Christian era, begins, Evidence of Lew Hin's Catalogue) on the Ch'un Ts'ëw, with two collections of the Han imperial library S of the text of the Classic:-'The old text of the Ch'un Ts'ëw in twelve p'ëen'; and 'The text of the Ch'un

Ts'ew in eleven keuen or Books." This is followed by a list of the Chuen, or Commentaries, of Tso, Kung-yang, Kuh-leang, Tsow, and Keah; so that at this early time the text of the Classic was known, and there were writings of five different masters in illustration of it, the greater portion of which, the Chuen namely of Tso, Kung-yang, and Kuh-lëang, remain to the present day. A dozen other Works follow, mostly by Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang or their followers, showing how the Classic and the commentators on it had already engaged the attention of scholars.

2. Were the texts mentioned in the Han catalogue derived from the commentaries of Tso, Kung-yang, and Kuh-lëang, or from some other independent source? In a note to the entry about them, Yen The texts in the Han Catalogue. Sze-koo of the Tang dynasty says that they were taken from Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang. Many scholars confine his remark to the second collection, and it gives some countenance to this view that the commentaries of those two masters. were then in eleven Books; but it is to be observed on the other hand that with the differences which exist in their texts they could hardly have been formed into one collection.

With regard to the first entry-'the old text in twelve p'ëen'—it is the general opinion that this was the text as taken from the Work of Tso. And there can be no doubt that during the Han dynasty the text and the commentary were kept separate in that Work, for Too Yu tells us that in his edition of it, early in the Tsin dynasty, he 'took the years of the text and arranged them along with the corresponding years of the commentary.'1 Moreover, in the Han dynasty, Tso's school and that of Kung-yang were distinguished as the old or ancient and the new or modern.2 To myself, however, the more natural interpretation of 'the old text' in the entry appears to be the text in the ancient character; and if there were evidence to show that there was an edition of the text in Lew Hin's time, independent of that derived from the three commentaries, the result would be satisfactory. Yuen3 Yuen was the first, so far as I know, to

春秋古經十二篇經十一卷。左氏傳三十卷:公 羊傳十一卷穀梁傳十一卷鄒氏傳十一卷夾氏傳 十一卷

1分經之年與傳之年相附左氏先著竹帛故漢時 謂之古學公羊漢時乃興故謂之今學;-see the十三經策 , at the beginning. 3 阮元- ;-see the proleg. to vol. I., p. 133.

do this, in the present century. In the preface to his 'Examination of the text of Tso's Commentary and K'ung Ying-tah's Annotations on it,' he calls attention to the fact that among the discoveries of old tablets in the wall of Confucius' house there were those of the Ch'un Ts'ew. Pan Koo indeed omits to mention them in his appendix to Lew Hin's catalogue of the Shoo and Works on it, where he speaks of the Shoo, the Le Ke, the Lun Yu, and the Heaou King as having been thus found; but Heu Shin, in the preface to his dictionary, the Shwoh Wan, published A.D. 100, adds to the tablets of these Works those of the Ch'un Ts'ëw. I am willing therefore to believe that it was this copy of the text of the Ch'un Ts'ew in the ancient character which headed the catalogue of Lew Hin; and if it were so, all question as to the genuineness of our present Classic may be considered as at an end.

3. There are many of the scholars of China, who would hesitate to concur with me in this view, and prefer to abide by the opinion of which very full expression has been given by Ma Twan-lin. He View on the subject of Ma Twan-lin. says, 'Although there appears in the catalogue of the Han dynasty "The old Text of the Ch'un Tsëw," yet the original text, as corrected by the master, was never discovered; and the old texts compiled in the Han dynasty and subsequently have all been taken from the three commentaries, and called by the name of "The correct text." But there are many differences in the texts which appear in those commentaries, and it is impossible for the student to decide between them. For instance:-in I. i. 2 Tso gives the meeting between the marquis of Loo and E-foo of Choo as having taken place in Meeh (), while Kung and Kuh give the name as , so that we cannot tell which of these characters the master wrote. So Mei (), in III. xxviii. 4, appears in Kung and Kuh as, and Keueh-yin (), in X. xi. 7, appears in Kung and Kuh as. Instances of this kind are innumerable, but they are generally in the names of places and unimportant. In I. iii. 3, however, we have in Tso-she the entry, which would be the notice of the death of Shing Tsze, the mother of duke Yin, whereas in Kung and Kuh we read, referring to the death of a high minister of Chow; so that we cannot tell whose death it was that the master chronicled as having taken place on

4春秋左傳注疏校勘記

5 See proleg. voi. I., pp. 12, 13 6壁中 書者魯共王壤孔子宅而得禮記尙書春秋論語孝經