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60
THE LÎ ki.
CH. III.
himself could not have seen it. The argument of those editors, therefore, that some scholar, later than the Smaller Tài, must have incorporated it with what we find in the Greater Tâi, adding a beginning and ending of his own, so as to form a Book like one of those of Tai Shăng, and that Kăng thought it worth his while to preserve it as the last portion of Shăng's collection,—this argument is inconclusive. The fragment may originally have formed part of Tai Teh's thirty-ninth Book or of some other, and the whole of this Book have been arranged, as we now have it by Shăng himself, working, as he is reported to have done, on the compilation or digest of his cousin. However this be, the views in the Book are certainly ingenious and deserve to be read with care.
A few lines in Callery's work are sufficient to translate all of the Book which is admitted into the expurgated editions.
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