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INTRODUCTION.
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2. But our classic had still to pass the ordeal of the scepSceptical criti. tical criticism that set in during the Sung cism. Views dynasty. The most notable result of this
of KQ Hst. was the Hsiao King Expurgated,' published by Ka Hsi in 1186. He tells us that when he first saw a statement by Hu Hung (a minister in the reign of Kao Zung, 1127–1162), that the quotations from the Book of Poetry in the Hsiao were probably of later introduction into the text, he was terror-struck. Prolonged examination, however, satisfied him that there were good grounds for Ha's statement, and that other portions of the text were also open to suspicion. He found, moreover, that another earlier writer, Wang Ying-khăn, in the reign of Hsiao Zung (1163-1189), had come to the conclusion that much of the Hsiao had been fabricated or interpolated in the Han dynasty. The way was open for him to give expression to his convictions, without incurring the charge of being the first to impugn the accepted 'text.
The fact was, as pointed out by the editors of the Catalogue Raisonné ofthe Imperial Library of the present dynasty, that Kû had long entertained the views which he indicated in his expurgated edition of the Hsião, and his references to Hû and Wang were simply to shield his own boldness. He divided the treatise into one chapter of classical text, and fourteen chapters of illustration and commentary. But both parts were freely expurgated. His classical text embraces the first six chapters in my translation, and is supposed by him to form one continuous discourse by Confucius. The rest of the treatise should not be attributed to the sage at all. The bulk of it may have come from Zăng-zze, or from members of his school, but large interpolations were made by the Han scholars. Adopting the old text, Kû discarded from it altogether 223 characters.
Attention will be called, under the several chapters, to
Some portions also are in a different order from the arrangement of Hsuan Zung and Hsing Ping, which I have followed in my translation. As has been already said, the difference between its text and that of the Thang emperor is slight,-hardly greater than the variations in the different recensions of our Gospels and the other books of the New Testament.
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