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 326

INTRODUCTION.
289
portions of the latter, are still extant. After the time of Kăng the other three texts were little heard of, while the name of the commentators on Mao's text speedily becomes legion. It was inscribed, moreover, on the stone tablets of the emperor Ling (A.D. 168 to 189). The grave of Mão Kång is still shown near the village of Zun-fa, in the departmental district of Ho-kien, Kih-lî.
5. Returning now to what I said in the second paragraph, it will be granted that the appearance of three different and
independent texts, soon after the rise of the The different Han dynasty, affords the most satisfactory texts guarantee the genuineness evidence of the recovery of the Book of of the recovered Shih.
te Poetry as it had continued from the time
of Confucius. Unfortunately, only fragments of those texts remain now; but they were, while they were current, diligently compared with one another, and with the fourth text of Mâo, which subsequently got the field to itself. When a collection is made of their peculiar readings, so far as it can now be done, it is clear that their variations from one another and from Mao's text arose from the alleged fact that the preservation of the odes was owing to their being transmitted by recitation. The rhyme helped the memory to retain them, and while wood, bamboo, and silk had all been consumed by the flames of Khin, when the time of repression ceased, scholars would be eager to rehearse their stores. It was inevitable, and more so in China than in a country possessing an alphabet, that the same sounds when taken down by different writers should be represented by different characters.
On the whole, the evidence given above is as full as could be desired in such a case, and leaves no reason for us to hesitate in accepting the present received text of the Shih as a very close approximation to that which was current in the time of Confucius.
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