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世居民迪簣功山大行

王惟保兹○虧九德終
乃生鞋
允一仞為

in great matters;-as when, in raising a mound of nine fathoms the 10 work is unfinished for want of one basket of earth. If you really follow this course, the people will preserve their possessions, and the throne will descend from generation to generation.

a course.

不矜細行一矜 is used here | 居一生民, the living people,' is merely an equivalent of F. The phrase is found

much with the same meaning as in the Con.

Ana. XV, xxi, 君子矜而不爭

Choo He was asked whether the term were not

used in the same way in the two passages, and

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replied, Much about it. The idea is that of pitiful consideration, and firm conservation.'

also in the 孝經 For 保厥居

Medhurst has well-may protect their hearths.'

惟乃世王-王業可

'the imperial inheritance may be perpetuated.'

(相似是個矜惜持守之意 Lappend Lin Che-k'e's observations on this :為山云云,see the Con. Ana,太保旣以是訓王厥後凡 IX, xviii. 仞一八尺, eight cubits. I 四夷所獻中國所受一如 xviii.仞=八尺,‘eight

call it 'a fathom,' as being the nearest approxi-太保之訓觀肅慎氏

mation to it which we have in our designa

tions of measures. The_paraphrase in the 之類可以見矣所謂允

Daily Explanation' is:譬如為山者兹者也周之子孫卜 積累工夫已至九仞所少十16年七百信乎其 簣之土,乃心生玩他不也夫却一獒之獻亦 肯加益九仞之功到底虧耳而世王之兆見於此,則 缺山豈可得而成也哉 知 <君之所以祈

10. 允迪兹comp.允迪厥德 Pt., II., Bk. III., P, 1. 生民保厥

以為社稷無疆之休者

蓋不在大也。

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BOOK VI. THE METAL-BOUND COFFER.

我未○公弗年旣可 先可周王日豫王克 王以公穆我有商 о 戚曰卜。其二二 疾

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1 I. Two years after the conquest of the Shang dynasty, the king 2 fell ill, and was quite disconsolate. The two dukes said, "Let us 3 reverently consult the tortoise concerning the king"; but the duke of Chow said, "You may not so distress our former kings."

The Name of the BOOK.Metal-bound.'

"The

is defined by, to tie or shut up,' 'to seal or fasten.' A certain chest or coffer, which was fastened with bands of metal, plays an important part among the incidents of the Book. It is called, p. 11,

; and from this the name is taken.

The Book is found in both the texts.

CONTENTS. King Woo is very ill, and his death seems imminent. His brother, the duke of Chow, apprehensive of the disasters which such an event would occasion to their infant dynasty, conceives the idea of dying in his stead, and prays to the three kings,' their immediate progenitors, that he might be taken and king Woo left. Having done so, and divined that he was heard, he deposits the prayer in the metal-bound coffer, where important archives were kept. The king gets well, and the duke is also spared; but five years after, Woo really dies, and is succeeded by his son, a boy only thirteen years old. Rumours are spread abroad that the duke has designs upon the throne, and he withdraws for a time from the court. At length in the third year of the young king, Heaven interposes. He has occasion to open the metal-bound coffer, and the prayer

of the duke is found. His devotion to his brother and the interests of his family is brought to light. The boy monarch weeps because of the unjust suspicions he had harboured, and welcomes the duke back to court, amid unmistakeable demonstrations of the approval of Heaven.

The whole narrative is a very pleasing episode in the history of the times, and is more interesting to the foreign reader than most other portions of the Shoo. It divides itself naturally into two chapters:-the first, parr. 1-11, ending with the depositing the prayer in the coffer; and the second, detailing how it was brought to light, and the duke cleared by means of it from the suspicions which had been cherished of him.

Cu. I. Pp. 1—11. THE PRAYER OF THE

DUKE OF CHOW; ITS OCCASION; HIS SUBSEQUENT
DIVINATION, AND DEPOSITING THE PRAYER IN
THE COFFER. 1. The illness of king Woo.

克商二年一the current chronology

refers this to the 14th year of king Woo, the year after the death of Show, B.C. 1,120. Kang-shing thought that the year of the conquest of Shang should not be included in the two years, and the critics of the present dynasty generally concur with him. Ming-shing says that if the historian had meant to say that the year was that succeeding the change of dynasties, as Gan-kwo, Sze-ma Tseen, and Wang Suli

4

告秉焉方壇同為以公司 太珪植公比于墠三為乃 王乃壁立面南為壇功自

He then took the business on himself, and made three altars of

earth, on the same cleared space; and having made another altar

on the south, facing the north, he there took his own position.

The convex symbols were put on their altars and he himself held his

mace, while he addressed the kings T'ae, Ke, and Wăn.

think, he would have used and not LE
and we should have read 惟克商二
4. I cannot undertake to settle this trivial
point.
(so in Sze-ma Ts'een.

Këang Shing, after the 說文 gives 不
愈)=不悅豫

was not happy.' We may suppose that he was distressed, thinking of the troubles that might arise on his death. The other reading, did not

get well,' would give a simpler meaning.
2. Proposal of the two dukes to divine respecting
The 二公
the issue of the king's illness.

‘two dukes,' are understood to be

and

The latter is the duke of Shaou spoken of on p. 1 of the last Book. Tae-kung, -see on Mencius, IV., Pt. I., xiii. He played a very important part in the establishment of the Chow dynasty, as counsellor to Wan and Woo, and was invested by Woo with the principality of Ts'e, which his descendants held for nearly 640 years. He is the in the apocryphal edition of the 'Great Speech.'

!

not have taken root. He was equally mighty

in words and in deeds,—a man of counsel and

of action. Confucius regarded his memory

with reverence, and spoke of it as an evidence of his own failing powers and disappointed hopes, that the duke of Chow no longer appeared

to him in his dreams. He was the 4th son of king Wăn, by his queen T'ae-sze. The eldest

was Pih-yih-k'aou (1); the second

was king Woo; and the third was Seen (E),

the Kwan Shuh(), mentioned in p. 12. There were six other younger brothers, but of all Wan's sons, only king Woo and the duke of Chow were representatives of their father's virtue and wisdom. Chow was the name of the city where king T'ae fixed the central seat of his House; see page 281, on the name of this part of the Shoo. It became the appanage of Wan's 4th son, Tan (B), and hence, he is known as the 'duke of Chow.' 戚-憂 to trouble,' 'to distress.' It would appear that the two dukes proposed to have a solemn service of divination in the ancestral temple of the imperial House, and the duke of Chow negatives their proposal on the ground that there was no necessity for troubling the spirits of the departed kings by so much ado merely to divine

|,- (Ts'een has is defined by the issue of the king's illness. He had himself

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determined what he would do. K'ang-shing

says that he negatived their proposal, because

he knew that the king would not die at this time. This view is grounded in a passage in

the Bk. E, F, Pt. i., p. 2., of the Le Ke, where king Wan is made to interpret a dream of his son so as to assure him of a certain number of years. But there is much in that Book which we cannot receive. If the duke

knew that his brother would recover, the prayer which follows, and his offer to die in his room, lose all their meaning and value.

P. 4. The duke's preparations for his prayer.

公乃自以為功功事

'business or duty.' Gan-kwo paraphrases :

周公乃自以請命為已事 三壇同墠-土日壇除

地壇

'the rearing up of earth is called

the clearing away of the ground is called

之 有三疾遘元日乃王王 責丕王若厲孫惟册○季 于子是爾虐某爾祝·史文

5 The grand historian by his order wrote on tablets his prayer to the following effect:-"A. B., your chief descendant, is suffering from a severe and dangerous sickness;-if you three kings have in heaven the charge of watching over him, Heaven's great son, let me 墠:The duke cleared and levelled a space |此簡書告三王‘The tablet,

of ground, and there he built three altars facing the south, one for each of the kings to whom he intended to pray,—his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, by whose wisdom and virtues the fortunes of their House had culminated in the possession of the empire. On the same area he raised another altar facing the north, where he himself took his place. Kang-shing says that the altars were at Fung (Bk. III., p. 2.), and that the area remained to his day.

壁秉珪-璧 and 珪(一) were two and (-) were two of the five tokens of gem,' mentioned in the Can. of Shun, p. 7, conferred by the emperor upon the various princes in connection with their investitures. There were two peik, belong ing to the taze and the nan respectively, and three kwei, that appropriate to the duke of Chow being the. But we can hardly understand the terms here of the badges of nobility, or tokens of imperial appointment. Gan-kwo says the peih were brought and laid upon the altars of the three kings in reverence to them, and the kwei was the duke's proper hwan kwei, which he held in his hands as the evidence of his person and rank in appearing before them. But from p. 8, we should rather conclude that all the articles were proper to

i.e., the writing, was made by the duke of Chow; the priest read this writing to inform the three kings.' In this way theis altogether unaccounted for. Woo Ch'ing would put a comma at, and explains-The historiographer wrote the tablet, and the priest (

read it.' But who does not get the impression that the duke of Chow was himself the only

priest on the occasion ? 爾元孫某

The

came

duke, no doubt, used the name of king Woo.
-Your great-grandson, such an one.'
But in the Chow dynasty, the practice of 'con-
cealing the name,' as it is called (),
into vogue. K'ang-shing supposes that it was
king Ching, who first dropt the name, and sub-
stituted for it, when he found the prayer,

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with,' Wang Kang-tang says: A sage has nothing about him which could bring on sickness, but he may happen to meet with evil malaria in the air :-hence the use of;' see a note in the. We need not lay so 若爾

much stress on the character.

the worship of the three kings. The is¤‡ 29

described as resting on a square base, while outwards it was round like the arch of heaven.

passage has

wonderfully vexed the critics, and the editors of Yung-ching's Shoo say that no one interPp. 5-8. The prayer. 5. pretation of it which has been given should be pertinaciously held to. The view in the trans-, 'the grand historiogra-lation is substantially that of Ts'ae, who says: pher' His services were called in to record -武王為天元子三王當任 祝詞, the 其保護之責于天不可合

=

the prayer. I take as

language of the prayer.' Gan-kwo explains 我死如欲其死則請以旦

the clause:一史為册書祝辭(The

historian wrote for him on a tablet (or tablets) it, 'King Woo is the great

the words of the prayer.' This is the view now

son of Heaven; you three kings ought to have

given in the 'Daily Explanation':- the charge of protecting him in heaven, and should not let him die. If you wish that he should die, pray let me Tan be a substitute for

告三王之神命太史書祝 詞于册若日云云. This, it his person. Feeling that the 于 天 lay loosely

seems to me, must be the meaning of the text.

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on this view in the sentence, he supposed that some characters following have been lost.

公所謂簡書也祝者讀 The interpretations of K'ang-shing and Ying-tö

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能材不神藝能予某天

乃事

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多若乃能多仁之以 神 藝元箏材若身

于鬼不多孫鬼多考○代

6 Tan be a substitute for his person. I have been lovingly obedient to my father; I am possessed of many abilities and arts which fit me to serve spiritual beings. Your chief descendant on the other hand has not so many abilities and arts as I, and is not so 7 capable of serving spiritual beings. And moreover he was appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid to the four quarters of the empire, so that he might establish your descendants in this lower world.

=

and the

would cast out of the text; but though the 'Historical Records' show us the interpretation which their compiler put upon the Shoo, their authority cannot always be pleaded in favour of this or that reading.

may be seen in the Choo He preferred the view of a Chaou E-taou , that 'to require the service of,' and the meaning is-'If God require the services of your eldest son in heaven, let me be a substitute for him.' Maou K'e-ling prefers the view of a Seu Chung-san (D: 惟爾元孫某遘疾若此儻 三王以為此我元孫實| would have to be performed by him after death?

天之大子也其責甚重 可死則旦請代耳

Ts'ae's construction of the sentence is not more objectionable than either of these two. Thus much

is plain:-first, that the duke of Chow offered himself to die in the room of his brother king Woo; and second, that he thought his offer might somehow be accepted through the intervention of the great kings, their progenitors, to whom he addressed himself.

P. 6. Reason why the duke should be taken

We should be glad if we could ascertain from this paragraph what ideas the duke of Chow had about the other world, but his language is too vague to afford us satisfaction. He says he

was better able than his brother to serve spirits;

-did he then expect that some such service

and who was the spirit, or who were the spirits,

to whom the service was to have been rendered ? These questions are suggested by his words; and yet it may be, that all which he meant to say was that he was more religious,-more acquainted with ceremonies, and fonder of sacrificial services,-and therefore was somehow better fitted for admission to the spirit circle. I suppose he did not know his own meaning very clearly.

Chinese critics are concerned to free the duke of Chow from the charge of boasting which may be fixed on him from the paragraph. Tsëang

instead of the lking. 予仁若考-考 Te-shăng (蔣悌生; Ming dyn.) says:一

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"The duke of Chow did not boast of his services, but was the humblest of men;-how is it that

Gan-kwo gives the meaning as I could affec-here he boasts of himself in such a way to the 我仁能順,

tionately obey my father.' Ts'ae takes the

same view, only extending the meaning of

to forefathers' generally. Medhurst translates the clause by- my benevolence is equal to that of my forefathers,' which the language will admit of. Woo Ching, indeed,

spirits of the three kings? On this occasion, his love for his brother prevailed over every so important to his family and the kingdom, other consideration. He had not leisure to consider whether he was boasting or modest. The case is one of those instances in which the virtue of sagely men moves Heaven. Let it not be lightly thought of or spoken about ;'-see the

gives for it-我之仁德如 Still the 集說

other view is to be preferred. The duke would

probably have declined to say that he was more

virtuous than king Woo, though he was con

scious of possessing certain qualities which might render him the better addition of the two to the spirit-world.

Sze-ma Tseen has only 日

15, and on his authority Keang Shing

P. 7. Reason why king Woo should be spared.

乃命于帝庭−the 帝 here is

上帝 or God. Ma Yung says:- E 受命于天帝之庭king Woo

received appointment in the hall of the God of heaven. Medhurst has translated:He has

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