SHÛ KING THE SHÛ OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. * . INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. THE NATURE AND HISTORY OF THE SHû. I. The Shû is the most ancient of the Chinese classical books, and contains historical documents of various kinds, relating to the period from about B. C. 2357-627. The Meaning of character Shû shows us by its composition that it denotes the pencil speaking,' and Shû King. hence it is often used as a designation of the written characters of the language. This, indeed, was the earliest meaning of it, but from this the transition was easy to its employment in the sense of writings or books, applicable to any consecutive compositions; and we find it further specially employed by Confucius and others to designate the historical remains of antiquity, in distinction from the poems, the accounts of rites, and other monuments of former times. Not that those other monuments might not also be called by the general name of Shû. The peculiar significancy of the term, however, was well established, and is retained to the present day. The book has come down to us in a mutilated condition; but even as it is said to have existed in the time of Confucius, it did not profess to contain a history of China, and much less, to give the annals of that history. It was simply a collection of historical memorials, extending over a space of about 1700 years, but on no connected method, and with frequent and great gaps between them. The name King (now in Pekinese King) was not added to Shû till the time of the Han dynasty (began B. C. 202). If Confucius applied it to any of the classical works, it was to the classic of Filial Piety, as will be seen in the Introduction to the translation of that work. The Han scholars, however, when engaged in collecting and digesting the ancient literary monuments of their country, found it convenient to distinguish the most valuable of them, that had been acknowledged by Confucius, as King, meaning what was canonical and of unchallengeable authority. The Shû was an existing collection of 2. In the Confucian Analects, the sage and one of his disciples quote from the Shû by the simple formula'The Shû says.' In the Great Learning, four different books or chapters of the classic, all in it as we have it now, are mentioned, each by its proper name. Mencius sometimes uses the same formula as Confucius, and at other times designates particular books. It is most natural for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the Shû, had in his mind's eye a collection of documents bearing that title. documents before Confucius. One passage in Mencius seems to put it beyond a doubt that the Shû existed as such a collection in his time. Having said that it would be better to be without the Shû than to give entire credit to it,' he makes immediate reference to one of the books of our classic by name, and adds, 'In the Completion of the War I select two or three passages only, and believe them'.' In Mo-zze, Hsünzze, and other writers of the last two centuries of the Kâu dynasty, the Shû is quoted in the same way, and also frequently with the specification of its parts or larger divisions,'The Books of Yü,'' of Hsiâ,' ' of Shang,' ' of Kâu.' And, in fine, in many of the narratives of 30 Khiû-ming's commentary on the Spring and Autumn, the Shû is quoted in the same way, even when the narratives are about men and events long anterior to the sage2. All these consi 1 Mencius, VII, ii, ch. 3. 2 The first quotation of the Shû in 30 is under the sixth year of duke Yin, B. C. 717. derations establish the thesis of this paragraph, that the Shû was an existing collection of historical documents before Confucius. Confucius did number of documents in it in his time. The Preface ascribed to him. 3. From the above paragraph it follows that Confucius did not compile the collection of documents that form the Shû. The earliest assertion that he did so we not compile have from Khung An-kwo, his descendant in the Shu. The the eleventh generation, in the second century, B. C. Recounting the labours of his ancestor, An-kwo says, in the Preface to his edition of the Shû, that he examined and arranged the old literary monuments and records, deciding to commence with Yâo and Shun, and to come down to the times of Kâu. Of those deserving to be handed down to other ages and to supply permanent lessons, he made in all one hundred books, consisting of canons, counsels, instructions, announcements, speeches, and charges.' The same thing is stated by Sze-mâ Klien in his Historical Records, completed about B. C. 100, but Khien's information was derived from An-kwo. Such a compilation would have been in harmony with the character which Confucius gave of himself, as 'a transmitter and not a maker, believing and loving the ancients',' and with what his grandson says of him in the Doctrine of the Mean, that he handed down (the lessons of) Yâo and Shun, as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed those of Wăn and Wû, whom he took for his model 2.' We have seen, however, that the collection existed in his time and before it. Did it then, as An-kwo says, consist of a hundred books? His authority for saying so was a Preface, which was found along with the old tablets of the Shû that were discovered in his time and deciphered by him, as will be related farther on. He does not say, however, that it was the work of Confucius, though Khien does. It still exists, a list of eighty-one documents in a hundred books. The prevailing opinion of scholars in China is now, that it was not written by the sage. I entirely 1 Analects, VII, i. 2 The Doctrine of the Mean, XXX, 1. |