The Shih King | Page 7

the exception of a single treatise of Han Ying, their unhappy fate was owing not more to the convulsions by which the empire was often rent, and the consequent destruction of literary monuments such as we have witnessed in China in our own day, than to the appearance of a fourth text, which displaced them by its superior correctness, and the ability with which it was advocated and commented on. This was what is called the Text of Mao. It came into the field rather later than the others; but the Han Catalogue contains the Shih of Mao, in twenty-nine chapters, and a Commentary on it in thirty-nine. According to Kang Hs��an, the author of this was a native of L?, known as Mao Hang or 'the Greater Mao,' who had been a disciple, we are told by L�� Teh-ming, of Hs��n Khing. The work is lost. He had communicated his knowledge of the Shih, however, to another Mao,--Mao Kang, 'the Lesser Mao,' who was a great scholar, at the court of king Hsien of Ho-kien, a son of the emperor King. King Hsien was one of the most diligent labourers in the recovery of the ancient books, and presented the text and work of Hang at the court of his father,--probably in B.C. 129. Mao Kang published Explanations of the Shih, in twenty-nine chapters,--a work which we still possess; but it was not till the reign of Phing (A.D. 1 to 9) that Mao's recension was received into the Imperial College, and took its place along with those of L?, Kh?, and Han Ying.
The Chinese critics nave carefully traced the line of scholars who had charge of Mao's Text and Explanations down to the reign of Phing. The names of the men and their works are all given. By the end of the first quarter of our first century we find the most famous scholars addicting themselves to Mao's text. The well-known Kia Khwei (A.D. 30 to 101) published a work on the Meaning and Difficulties of Mao's Shih, having previously compiled a digest of the differences between its text and those of the other three recensions, at the command of the emperor Ming (A.D. 58 to 75). The equally celebrated Ma Yung (A.D. 79 to 166) followed with another commentary;--and we arrive at Kang Hs��an or Kang Khang-khang (A.D. 127 to 200), who wrote a Supplementary Commentary to the Shih of Mao, and a Chronological Introduction to the Shih. The former of these two works complete, and portions of the latter, are still extant. After the time of King the other three texts were little heard of, while the name of the commentators on Mao's text speedily becomes legion. It was inscribed, moreover, on the stone tablets of the emperor Ling (A.D. 168 to 189). The grave of Mao Kang is still shown near the village of Zun-f?, in the departmental district of Ho-kien, Kih-l?.
The different texts guarantee the genuineness of the recovered Shih.
5. Returning now to what I said in the second paragraph, it will be granted that the appearance of three different and independent texts, soon after the rise of the Ha dynasty, affords the most satisfactory a evidence of the recovery of the Book of Poetry as it had continued from the time of Confucius. Unfortunately, only fragments of those texts remain now; but they were, while they were current, diligently compared with one another, and with the fourth text of Mao, which subsequently got the field to itself. When a collection is made of their peculiar readings, so far as it can now be done, it is clear that their variations from one another and from Mao's text arose from the alleged fact that the preservation of the odes was owing to their being transmitted by recitation. The rhyme helped the memory to retain them, and while wood, bamboo, and silk had all been consumed by the flames of Khin, when the time of repression ceased, scholars would be eager to rehearse their stores. It was inevitable, and more so in China than in a country possessing an alphabet, that the same sounds when taken down by different writers should be represented by different characters.
On the whole, the evidence given above is as full as could be desired in such a case, and leaves no reason for us to hesitate in accepting the present received text of the Shih as a very close approximation to that which was current in the time of Confucius.

CHAPTER IV.
THE FORMATION OF THE COLLECTION OF THE SHIH HOW IT CAME TO BE SO SMALL AND INCOMPLETE; THE INTERPRETATION AND AUTHORS OF THE PIECES; ONE POINT OF TIME CERTAINLY INDICATED IN IT; AND THE CONFUCIAN PREFACE.
1. It has been shown above, in the second chapter, that the Shih existed as