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THE HŞIÂO KING.
CHAPTER II. THE RECOVERY OF THE HŞIÂO KING UNDER THE HAN DYNASTY, AND ITS PRESERVATION DOWN TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE COMMENTARY OF THE THANG EMPEROR HSÜAN ZUNG.
1. The Hsiảo King suffered, like all the other Confucian books except the Yi, from the fires of Khin. Its subsequent recovery was very like that of the Shů, described on pp. 7, 8. We have in each case a shorter and a longer copy, a modern text and an ancient text.
In the Catalogue of the Imperial Library, prepared by Liù Hin immediately before the commencement of our Recovery of the Christian era, there are two copies of the
Hsiảo King. Hsiảo : the old text of the Khung family, which was in twenty-two chapters, according to a note by Pan Ka (died A. D. 92), the compiler of the documents in the records of the western Han; and another copy, which was, according to the same authority, in eighteen chapters, and was subsequently styled 'the modern text.' Immediately following the entry of these two copies, we find
Expositions of the Hsiao by four scholars,'—whose surnames were Kang-sun, Kiang, Yi, and Hâu. 'They all,' says Pan Ka,'had laboured on the shorter text.
The copy in eighteen chapters therefore, we must preThe shorter or sume, had been the first recovered ; but of
modern text. how this came about we have no account till we come to the records of the Sui dynasty. There it is said that, when the Khin edict for the destruction of the books was issued, his copy of the Hsiao was hidden by a scholar called Yen Kih, a member, doubtless, of the Yen family to which Confucius' favourite disciple Yen Hui had belonged. When the edict was abrogated in a few years, Kăn, a son of Kih, brought the copy from its hidingplace. This must have been in the second century B. C., and the copy, transcribed, probably by Kən, in the form of the characters then used, would pass into the charge of the board of 'great scholars' appointed to preserve the
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