is true and false in the Chuen, '13 On this I shall have to give an opinion in the next section, and only remark now that if we find the statements of the text and the Chuen in regard to matters of history irreconcileable, the most natural course would seen to be to decide in favour of the latter. The K'ang-he editors defer in general to the authority of Tso; but even they do not scruple to suppress his narratives occasionally, or to elide portions of them. They suppress, for instance, the account of the conference between the marquises of Loo and Ts'e at Këah-kuh, given under XI. x. 2, considering the part which Confucius is made to play at it to be derogatory to him. were. Wang Gan-shih14 of the Sung dynasty published a treatise under the title of Explanations of the Ch'un Ts'ëw,' in which he undertook to prove from eleven instances that the Chuen was not composed by Tso Kew-ming of the Chow dynasty, but by some one of a later date, under the dynasty, probably, of Ts'in.14 Wang's treatise is unfortunately lost, and we know not what all the eleven instances One of them was the use of the term lah15 in the Chuen on V. v. 9, to denominate a sacrifice after the winter solstice, which, it is contended, was first appointed under the dynasty of Ts'in. It may have been another where in IX. xi. 10 and xii. 5 we find mention made of military commanders of Ts'in with the title of shoo chang, 16 which, again it is contended, was of later date than the Chow dynasty. Ch'ing E-ch'uen at any rate adduces these two as cases in the Chuen of purely Ts'in phraseology.17 Apart from any discussion of these instances, I venture to state my own opinion, that interpolations were made in the Chuen after Tso had put his finishing touch to it, and probably during the dynasty of the former Han; and there are two classes of passages which seem to bear on them and in them the evidence of having been so dealt with. [i] There are the moralizings which conclude many narratives and are interjected in others, generally with the formula-'The superior man will say,' and sometimes as if quoted from Confucius. They have often nothing or next to nothing to do with the subject of the narrative to which they are attached, and the manner in which they occasionally bring in quotations from the odes reminds 13 王安石 14 See the 欽定四庫全書總目,卷二十六, upon the 春秋左傳正義 15 虞不臘矣在此行 16 庶長 17虞不臘矣并庶長皆秦官秦語 us of Han Ying's Illustrations of the She, of which I have given specimens in the proleg. to vol. IV. Choo He well asks what connexion the concluding portion of the Chuen after I. vi. 2 has to do with what precedes, and points out many reflections in other parts which cannot be considered as the utterances of a superior man but the speculations of a mere scholar. 18 Lin Leuh of the Sung dynasty and a multitude of other scholars attribute all these passages to Lew Hin.19 They certainly seem to me to bear upon them the Han stamp. [ii.] There is a host of passages which contain predictions of the future, or allusions to such predictions, grounded on divination, meteorological and astrological considerations, and something in the manner or deportment of the parties concerned;-predictions which turn out to be true. We may be sure that none of these were made at the time assigned to them in the Chuen. Some of them which had their fulfilment before the end of the Ch'un Ts'ëw period may have been current in Tso's days, and incorporated by him with his narrative. Others, like the ending of the Chow dynasty after an existence of so many hundred years, the fulfilment of which was at a later date, were, no doubt, fabricated subsequently to that fulfilment, and interpolated during the time of the first Han. But after deducting all these suspicious portions from Tso's Chuen, there remains the mass of it, which we may safely receive as having been compiled by him from records made contemporaneously with the events, and transmitted by him with the graces of his own style. It is, in my opinion, the most precious literary treasure which has come down to posterity from the Chow dynasty. 18 左傳君子日最無意思因舉芟夷蘊崇一段 是關上文甚事左傅是一箇審利害之幾善避就底人, 所以其書有貶死等事其間議論有極不是處 如周鄭交質之類是何議論其日宋宣公可謂知人矣 立穆公其子饗之命以義夫只知有利害不知有義理 此段不如公羊說君子大居正却是儒者議論;see the Critical Introduction to the K'ang-he Ch'un Ts'ëw, pp. 28, 29. 19 林栗日左傳 凡言君子曰是劉歆之辭 20 The following is a list of passages of the character spoken of :-on I. iii. 5; vii. after 4: II. ii. 4; ix. 4: III. i. at the beginning; xi. 3; xx. at the beg.; xxi. 2; xxii. 3; xxxii. after 1: IV. i. at the end; ii. after 3: V. ii. after 3; xi. after 1; xii. 3d after 1; xiv. 4; xv. 13; xxii. at the end; xxxi. 9: VI. i. 3; v. after 3; ix. 12; x. 3; xiv. 5; xv. 12: VII. iii. 4, 8; iv. last but one; xiv. 6; xv. last but one: VIII. xiv. 1; xv. 7; xvi. at the end: IX. xxi. 8; xxiv. 5, and at the end; xxvii. 5; xxix. 2d and 4th after 1, 8; xxx. 7, and after 7; xxxi. at the beg., 2, 5, and after 7: X. 2, and 2d after 2, 4; vii. 4; ix. 3; x. at the beg.; xi. 2, 3, and after 3; xii. 3; xv. 2, and after 6; xviii. at the beg.; xx. at the beg.; xxi. at the beg., 1 ; xxv. 1; xxxi. 7; xxxii. 2, 4: XI. ix. 3; xv. 1: XII. ix. after 4. In the H yang and Kuh-lëang. 7. On the other two early commentaries, those of Kung-yang and Kuh-leang, it is not necessary that I should write at so much The commentaries of Kung-) length. There is really nothing in them to S entitle them to serious attention. Down to the present day, indeed, there are scholars in China who publish their lucubrations in favour of the one or of the other; but I think that my readers will all agree with me in the opinion which I have expressed about them, when they have examined the specimens of them which are appended to this chapter. The commentaries themselves and various Works upon them are mentioned in Lew Hin's catalogue;-as stated above on page 17. With regard to the Work of Kung-yang, Tae Hwang, of the second Kung-yang. Han dynasty, tells us that Kung-yang Kaou received the Ch'un Ts'ew and explanations of it from Confucius' disciple Puh Shang or Tsze-hea, and handed it down to his son Kung-yang Ping; that P'ing handed it down again to his son Te; Te to his son Kan; Kan to his son Show; and that, in the reign of the emperor King (B.C. 155-140), Show, with his disciple Hoo-woo Tsze-too, committed it to bamboo and silk. According to this account, the Work was not committed to writing till about the middle of the second century before Christ. If it were really transmitted, from mouth to mouth, down to that time from the era of Confucius, we can hardly suppose that it did not suffer very considerably, now receiving additions and now losing portions, in its onward course." The fact, moreover, of its having been confined for more than 300 years to one 證卷六下, this set of passages is touched on. It is said:一八世之後莫之 與京(on III. xxii.3),其田氏簒齊之後之言乎,公侯子孫必 復其始(TV. i. at the end), 其三卿分晉之後之言乎其處者為 劉氏(VI. xiii. at the beg.),其漢儒欲立左氏者所附益乎皆非 左氏之舊也新都之篡以沙鹿崩爲祥(V.xiv.3),釋氏之 熾以恆星不見為證 (III. vii. 2),蓋有作俑者矣. Choo He often speaks very doubtfully about Tso's Chuen. E. g. * 氏乃楚左史倚相之後, but this last insinuation is mere surmise. 1 戴宏曰子夏傳與公羊高高傳與其子平平傳與其 子地地傳與其子敢咬傳與其子壽至漢景帝時籌方 共弟子齊人胡母子都著於竹帛; quoted in the preface to Ho Höw's edition of Kung-yang. 2 According to Ho Hew, this transmission of the Classic from mouth to mouth was commanded by Confucius, from his foreknowledge of the attempt of the tyrant of Ts'in to burn all the monuments of ancient literature!-孔子知秦將燔詩書其 說口授相傳至公羊氏及弟子胡母生等乃記於竹帛 family takes away from the confidence which we might otherwise be inclined to repose in it. There can be no doubt, however, that it was made public in the reign of King, and was acknowledged and admitted by his successor Woo (B.C. 139-86) into the imperial college. Hoo-woo was a contemporary and friend of the scholar Tung Chung-shoo; and in the biography of the scholar Keang Kung, an adherent of Kuh-lëang's commentary, we are told that the emperor Woo made Keang and Tung dispute before him on the comparative merits of their two Masters, when Tung was held to be the victor. The emperor on this gave in his adhesion to Kung-yang, and his eldest son became a student of his Work. Kuh-lëang. It is not important to trace the history of Kung-yang's commentary farther on. The names of various writers on it and of their Works are preserved, but the Works are lost till we arrive at Ho Hew (A.D. 129-183), who published his 'Explanations of Kung-yang on the Ch'un Ts'ew. This still remains. Ho Hew did for Kung-yang what, as we have seen, Too Yu did at a later period for Tso K'ëw-ming. The commentary of Kuh-lëang is, like that of Kung-yang, carried back to Tsze-hëa; but the line of transmission down to the Han dynasty is imperfectly given. The general opinion is that Kuh-leang's name was Ch'ih, but Yen Sze-koo says it was He.7 The next naine mentioned as intrusted with the text which Ch'ih or He had received, and the commentary which he had made upon it, is Sun King, the same who appears on p. 27, as the 6th in the list of those who handed on the Work of Tso. From Sun K'ing it is said to have passed to a Shin Kung of Loo. Këang Kung, mentioned above, received it from Shin;7 and though it did not win the favour, as advocated by him, of the emperor Woo, yet it gained a place in the imperial college in the reign of Seuen (A.D. 72—48), and for some time was held generally in great estimation. It has been preserved to us in the Work of Fan Ning, a famous scholar and statesman of the Tsin dynasty in the second half of the 4th century; the title of which is, 'A Collection of the Explanations of the Chuen of Kuh-lëang on the Ch'un Ts'ëw.'8 3董仲舒 4江公. See the 漢書八十八儒林傅第五十八 5何氏休春秋公羊解詁 6赤 7喜顏師古日 穀梁子名喜受經於子夏為經作傅傳孫(a).荀卿 卿傳魯申公公傳瑕邱江县 8春秋穀梁傳集解 For the biography of Fan Ning, see the 晉書七十五·列傳第四十五 Speculation as to a connexion between the) commentaries of Kung and Kuh; and that these were only one person. 7. One cannot compare carefully even the specimens of the two commentaries which I have given without seeing that there is often a great similarity between them, and having the conclusion suggested to the mind that the one was not made without reference to the other. It is not to be wondered at that some scholars, like Lin Hwang-chung of the Sung dynasty, should have supposed the two to be the production of the same writer.1 But the differences between them, and occasionally the style of composition, forbid us entertaining such a view. That they were one man has been maintained on another ground. The surnames of Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang ceased with the publication of the commentaries. No Kung-yang nor Kuh-lëang appears after that in Chinese history.2 This is certainly strange, especially when we consider that there were five Kung-yangs concerned, according to the received account, in the transmission of the commentary from Tszehea to the Han dynasty. I must leave this matter, however, in its own mist. Ch'ing Ts'ing-che,3 Lo Peih, and other Sung scholars held that the author of the two commentaries had been a Këang, and that Kung-yang and Kuh-leang were merely two ways of spelling it; but the method of spelling by finals and initials was, there is reason to believe, unknown in the Han dynasty. 1 The K'ang-he editors in their Critical Introduction, p. 7, quote on this point from Choo He: 一間公穀傅大概皆同日所以林黃中說只是一人只 看他文字疑若非一手者 2 See the 氏姓譜, chh. 147, 156. 3 鄭清之 4羅璧 5萬見春謂皆姜字切韻脚疑 爲姜姓假託 1. I come now to what must be considered as the most important subject in this chapter,-to endeavour to estimate the value of the Object of this section. Ch'un Ts'ëw as a document of history; and this will involve a judgment, first, on the character of Confucius as its author, or as having made himself responsible for it by copying it from the tablets of his native State and giving it to the world with |