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THE SITU KING.
The name King (now in Pekinese King) was not added to Shù till the time of the Han dynasty (began B.C. 202). If Confucius applied it to any of the classical works, it was to the classic of Filial Piety, as will be seen in the Introduction to the translation of that work. The Han scholars, however, when engaged in collecting and digesting the ancient literary monuments of their country, found it convenient to distinguish the most valuable of them, that had been acknowledged by Confucius, as King, meaning what was canonical and of unchallengeable authority.
2. In the Confucian Analects, the sage and one of his disciples quote from the Shů by the simple formula
.. 'The Shù says. In the Great Learning, four The Shd was an existing different books or chapters of the classic, collection of all in it as we have it now, are mentioned, documents
before each by its proper name. Mencius sometimes Confucius. uses the same formula as Confucius, and at other times designates particular books. It is most natural for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the Sha, had in his mind's eye a collection of documents bearing that title.
One passage in Mencius seems to put it beyond a doubt that the Shû existed as such a collection in his time. Having said that it would be better to be without the Shù than to give entire credit to it,' he makes immediate reference to one of the books of our classic by name, and adds, 'In the Completion of the War I select two or three passages only, and believe them?' In Mo-gze, Hsünsze, and other writers of the last two centuries of the Kau dynasty, the Shù is quoted in the same way, and also frequently with the specification of its parts or larger divisions,'The Books of Yü,'' of Hsia,' of Shang,' of Kâu.' And, in fine, in many of the narratives of Zo Khid-ming's commentary on the Spring and Autumn, the Shù is quoted in the same way, even when the narratives are about men and events long anterior to the sage?. All these consi
Mencius, VII, ii, ch. 3. • The first quotation of the Shll in zo is under the sixth year of duke Yin, B.C. 717.
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