Satapatha Bramhana Part 02

SR No.: 007678
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Julius Eggeling
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1885
Total Pages: 2521
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 44 MB

Page 573

BK. XVII.
INTRODUCTION.
33
165 phien, distributed in six collections. The first of these was the Yo Ki, in 23 phien; the second, the Ki of Wang Yü?, in 24 phien. Khung Ying-tå, deriving his information from a note in Hsin's Catalogue and other sources, sums up what he has to say about this Book in the following way :-On the rise of the Han dynasty, the treatises of former times on music, as well as the practice of the art, were in a state of special dilapidation. In the time of the emperor Wa, his brother Teh, with the help of many scholars, copied out all that remained on the subject of music, and made a Yo Ki, or Record of Music,' in 24 phien or books, which Wang Yü presented to the court in the time of the emperor Khăng (B. C. 32–7); but it was afterwards hardly heard of. When Liu Hsiang (died B. C. 9) examined the books in the Imperial library, he found a 'Record of Music' in 23 phien, different from that which Wang Yü had presented. Our present Yo Ki contains eleven of those phien, arranged with the names of their subjects. The other twelve are lost, though their names remain.
Most of the present text is found in Sze-mà Khien's Monograph on Music; and as he was so long before Lid Hsiang (Khien died between B.C. 90 and 80), the Khienlung editors suppose that it is one of the portions of Khien's work, supplied by Khu Shâo-sun, who was a contemporary of Hsiang.
KU Hsî had a great admiration of many passages in the Yo Ki, and finds in them the germs of the views on the constitution of humanity, and on the action and interaction of principle and passion, reason and force, in the economy of what we call Providence, on which he delighted to dwell in his philosophical speculations. We expect from the title, as Hwang Kan-hsing (Ming dynasty) says, that music will be the chief subject of the Treatise, but everywhere we find ceremonial usages spoken of equally and in their relation to it; for, according to the view of the author, the framework of society is built on the truth 'I . ' see Wylie's Notes, p. 14.
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