Text of Confucianism Part 01

SR No.: 007675
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1879
Total Pages: 2829
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 50 MB

Page 322

INTRODUCTION.
285
CHAPTER III. THE SHIH FROM THE TIME OF CONFUCIUS TILL THE GENERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE
PRESENT TEXT.
1. Of the attention paid to the study of the Shih from the death of Confucius to the rise of the Khin dynasty, we From COR
on have abundant evidence in the writings of his facius to the grandson Zze-sze, of Mencius, and of Hsün
rise of the Khin dynasty.
w Khing. One of the acknowledged distinctions
of Mencius is his acquaintance with the odes, his quotations from which are very numerous; and Hsün Khing survived the extinction of the Kâu dynasty, and lived on into the times of Khin.
2. The Shih shared in the calamity which all the other classical works, excepting the Yî, suffered, when the tyrant of Khin issued his edict for their destruction. But I have shown, in the Introduction to the Sho, p. 7, that that edict was in force for less than a quarter of a century. The
odes were all, or very nearly all!, recovered ; The Shih was all recovered and the reason assigned for this is, that their after the fires preservation depended on the memory of of Khin.
scholars more than on their inscription on tablets of bamboo and on silk.
3. Three different texts of the Shih made their appearance early in the Han dynasty, known as the Shih of La, Three different of Khi, and of Han; that is, the Book of
texts. Poetry was recovered from three different quarters. Lid Hin's Catalogue of the Books in the Imperial Library of Han (B. C. 6 to 1) commences, on the Shih King, with a collection of the three texts, in twentyeight chapters.
All, in fact, unless we except the six pieces of Part II, of which we have only the titles. It is contended by KQ Hsi and others that the text of these had been lost before the time of Confucius. It may have been lost, however, after the sage's death; see note on p. 283.
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