The Shih King | Page 6

in fact, unless we except the six pieces of

Part II, of which
we have only the titles. It is contended by K? Hs? and others that the text of these had been lost before the time of Confucius. It may have been lost, however, after the sage's death; see note on p. 283.]
The text of L?.
i. Immediately after the mention of the general collection in the Catalogue come the titles of two works of commentary on the text of L?. The former of them was by a Shan Phei of whom we have some account in the Literary Biographies of Han. He was a native of L?, and had received his own knowledge of the odes from a scholar of Kh?, called Fau Khi?-po. He was resorted to by many disciples, whom he taught to repeat the odes. When the first emperor of the Han dynasty was passing through L?, Shan followed him to the capital of that state, and had an interview with him. Subsequently the emperor W? (B.C. 140 to 87), in the beginning of his reign, sent for him to court when he was more than eighty years old; and he appears to have survived a considerable number of years beyond that advanced age. The names of ten of his disciples are given, all of them men of eminence, and among them Khung An-kwo. Rather later, the, most noted adherent of the school of L? was Wei Hsien, who arrived at the dignity of prime minister (from B.C. 71 to 67), and published the Shih of L? in Stanzas and Lines. Up and down in the Books of Han and Wei are to be found quotations of the odes, that must have been taken from the professors of the L? recension; but neither the text nor the writings on it long survived. They are said to have perished during the Kin dynasty (A.D.265 to 419). When the Catalogue of the Sui Library was made, none of them were existing.
The text of Kh?.
ii. The Han Catalogue mentions five different works on the Shih of Kh?. This text was from a Y��an K?, a native of Kh?, about whom we learn, from the same collection of Literary Biographies, that he was one of the great scholars of the court in the time of the emperor King (B.C. 156 to 141),--a favourite with him, and specially distinguished for his knowledge of the odes and his advocacy of orthodox Confucian doctrine. He died in the succeeding reign of W?, more than ninety years old; and we are told that all the scholars of Kh? who got a name in those days for their acquaintance with the Shih sprang from his school. Among his disciple's was the well-known name of Hsia-hau Shih-khang, who communicated his acquisitions to Hau Zhang, a native of the present Shan-tung province, and author of two of the works in the Han Catalogue. Hau had three disciples of note, and by them the Shih of Kh? was transmitted to others, whose names, with quotations from their writings, are scattered through the Books of Han. Neither text nor commentaries, however, had a better fate than the Shih of L?. There is no mention of them in the Catalogue of Sui. They are said to have perished even before the rise of the Kin dynasty.
The text of Han Ying.
iii. The text of Han was somewhat more fortunate. Hin's Catalogue contains the names of four works, all by Han Ying, whose surname is thus perpetuated in the text of the Shih that emanated from him. He was a native, we are told, of Yen, and a great scholar in the time of the emperor Wan (B.C. 179 to 155), and on into the reigns of King, and W?. 'He laboured,' it is said, 'to unfold the meaning of the odes, and published an Explanation of the Text., and Illustrations of the Poems, containing several myriads of characters. His text was somewhat different from the texts of L? and Kh?, but substantially of the same meaning.' Of course, Han founded a school; but while almost all the writings of his followers soon perished, both the works just mentioned continued on through the various dynasties to the time of Sung. The Sui Catalogue contains the titles of his Text and two works on it; the Thang, those of his Text and his Illustrations; but when we come to the Catalogue of Sung, published under the Y��an dynasty, we find only the Illustrations, in ten books or chapters; and ?u-yang Hsi? (A.D. 1017 to 1072) tells us that in his time this was all of Han that remained. It continues entire, or nearly so, to the present day.
A fourth text; that of Mao.
4. But while those three different recensions of the Shih all disappeared, with