________________
280
THE SHIH KING.
CHAPTER II.
THE SHIH BEFORE CONFUCIUS, AND WHAT, IF ANY,
WERE HIS LABOURS UPON IT.
1. Sze-mà Khien, in his memoir of Confucius, says :"The old poems amounted to more than 3000. Confucius removed those which were only repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for the inculca
Statement of tion of propriety and righteousness. AscendSze-må Rhien. ing as high as Hsieh and Hâu-ki, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Kâu to the times of decadence under kings Ya and Lî, he selected in all 305 pieces, which he sang over to his lute, to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the Shâo, the wa, the Yâ, and the Făng.
In the History of the Classical Books in the Records of the Sui Dynasty (A. D. 589 to 618), it is said :-'When royal
The writer of benign rule ceased, and poems were no more the Records of collected, Kih, the Grand Music Master of the Sui Dynasty. La, arranged in order those that were exist. ing, and made a copy of them. Then Confucius expurgated them; and going up to the Shang dynasty, and coming down to the state of La, he compiled altogether 300 pieces.'
Ka Hsî, whose own standard work on the Shih appeared in A. D. 1178, declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes, but summed up his view of . what Confucius did for them in the following words :
Opinion of Royal methods had ceased, and poems were
Ka Hsf. no more collected. Those which were extant were full of errors, and wanting in arrangement. When Confucius returned from Wei to La, he brought with him the odes that he had gotten in other states, and digested them, along with those that were to be found in La, into a collection of 300 pieces.'
I have not been able to find evidence sustaining these
Digitized by Google