1. The Shû is the most ancient of the Chinese classical books, and contains historical documents of various kinds, relating to the period from about B.C. 2357-627. The character Shû shows us by its composition that it denotes 'the pencil speaking,' and hence it is often used as a designation of the written characters of the language. This, indeed, was the earliest meaning of it, but from this the transition was easy to its employment in the sense of writings or books, applicable to any consecutive compositions; and we find it further specially employed by Confucius and others to designate the historical remains of antiquity, in distinction from the poems, the accounts of rites, and other monuments of former times. Not that those other monuments might not also be called by the general name of Shû. The peculiar significancy of the term, however, was well established, and is retained to the present day.
The book has come down to us in a mutilated condition; but even as it is said to have existed in the time of Confucius, it did not profess to contain a history of China, and much less, to give the annals of that history. It was simply a collection of historical memorials, extending over a space of about 1700 years, but on no connected method, and with frequent and great gaps between them.
2. In the Confucian Analects, the sage and one disciples quote from the Shû by the simple formula, 'The Shû says.' In the Great Learning, four different books or chapters of the classic, all in it as we have it now, are mentioned, each by its proper name. Mencius sometimes 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 Shû, 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 Shû than to give entire credit to it,' be 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 1.' In Mo-ȝze, Hsün-ȝze, and other writers of the last two centuries of the Kâu dynasty, the Shû is quoted in the same way, and also frequently with the specification of its parts or larger divisions, 'The Books of Yü,' 'of Hsiâ,' 'of Shang,' 'of Kâu.' And, in fine, in many of the narratives of Ȝo Khiû-ming's commentary on the Spring and Autumn, the Shû is quoted in the same way, even when the narratives are about men and events long anterior to the sage 2. All these considerations
3. From the above paragraph it follows that Confucius did not compile the collection of documents that form the Shû. The earliest assertion that he did so we have from Khung An-kwo, his descendant in the eleventh generation, in the second century, B.C. Recounting the labours of his ancestor, An-kwo says, in the Preface to his edition of the Shû, that 'he examined and arranged the old literary monuments and records, deciding to commence with Yâo and Shun, and to come down to the times of Kâu. Of those deserving to be handed down to other ages and to supply permanent lessons, he made in all one hundred books, consisting of canons, counsels, instructions, announcements, speeches, and charges.' The same thing is stated by Sze-mâ Khien in his Historical Records, completed about B.C. 100, but Khien's information was derived from An-Kwo. Such a compilation would have been in harmony with the character which Confucius gave of himself, as 'a transmitter and not a maker, believing and loving the ancients 1,' and with what his grandson says of him in the Doctrine of the Mean, that 'he handed down (the lessons of) Yâo and Shun, as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed those of Wăn and Wû, whom he took for his model 2.'
We have seen, however, that the collection existed in his time and before it. Did it then, as An-kwo says, consist of a hundred books? His authority for saying so was a Preface, which was found along with the old tablets of the Shû that were discovered in his time and deciphered by him, as will be related farther on. He does not say, however, that it was the work of Confucius, though Khien does. It still exists,--a list of eighty-one documents in a hundred books. The prevailing opinion of scholars in China is now, that it was not written by the sage. I entirely
4. It will be well here to devote a paragraph to the sources of the Shû. Have we sufficient proofs of the composition in ancient times of such documents as it contains, and of their preservation, so that they could be collected in a sort of historical canon?
We have. Under the dynasty of Kâu (B.C. 1122-256), at the royal court, and at the courts of the feudal princes on a smaller scale, there were officers styled Sze, which has been translated 'Recorders,' 'Annalists,' 'Historiographers,' and simply 'Clerks.' There were the Grand Recorder, the Assistant Recorder, the Recorder of the Interior, the Recorder of the Exterior, and the Recorder in Attendance on the Sovereign. Among the duties of the Recorder of the Interior were the following:--'In case of any charge given by the king to the prince of a state, or to any other dignitary, he writes it on tablets;' 'In case of any memorials on business coming in from the different quarters of the kingdom, he reads them (to the king);' 'It is his business
These entries show that under the Kâu dynasty there was provision made for the recording and preservation of royal charges and ordinances, of the operations of the general government, and of the histories of the different states; and, moreover, for the preservation and interpretation of documents come down from more ancient times. Confucius himself tells us that in his early days a recorder would leave a blank in his text, rather than enter anything of which he had not sufficient evidence 2. Mencius also mentions three works, the Shăng of Kin, the Thâo-wû of Khû, and the Khun Khiû of Lû, which must have come from the recorders of those states.
Of the existence of a similar class of officers under the previous dynasties of Shang or Yin (B.C. 1766-1123) and Hsiâ (B. C, 2205-1765), we have not such abundant evidence. Chapter 2 in the 10th Book of the 5th Part of our classic, however, seems to speak of them in the time of the former. Wû-ting (B.C. 1324-1264), the twentieth sovereign of it, is described as communicating, in writing, a dream which he had had, to his ministers 3; and fully four hundred years earlier, Î Yin, the chief minister, remonstrates, in writing, with his young and careless sovereign Thâi Kiâ 4 Going back to the dynasty of Hsiâ, we find the prince of Yin, during the reign of Kung Khang (B.C. 2159-2145), in addressing his troops, quotes the Statutes of Government in a manner which makes us conceive of him as referring to a well-known written compilation 5. The grandsons of the great Yü, its founder (B.C. 2205-2196), likewise, make mention, in the Songs of the Five Sons, of his Lessons, in a style that suggests to us the formula that Mencius was
Mâ Twan-lin, the encyclopedist, in his General Examination of Records and Scholars, first published A.D. 1321, says that 'the pencil of the recorders was busy from the time of Hwang Tî (B.C. 2697).' The compilers of the records of the Sui dynasty (A.D. 589-617) say that, 'historical documents began immediately with the invention of written characters.' That invention I must place myself at an earlier date than the time assigned to Hwang Tî. When once the characters were invented, they would come in time to be employed in the writing of history. The early dates alleged for many of the documents in the Shû are no valid reason for rejecting them without further examination. We may rather be surprised that, when the compilation was made, it did not contain many more than a hundred documents.
5. The dynasty of Kâu came to an end in B.C. 256, and after an anarchic interval of thirty-five years, the king of Khin succeeded in uniting all the feudal states under his own sway, and proclaimed himself emperor. Up to this time the Shû had sustained no other damage than all human works are liable to in the course of time; but now it narrowly escaped an entire destruction. An edict went forth from the tyrant in B.C. 213, commanding that all the old classical books should be consigned to the flames, excepting those belonging to the great scholars in the service of the court, and the Yî. His rage was hottest against the Shû and the Shih (the Book of Poetry). Death was the doom of scholars who should be known to meet together and speak of these works, and all who should be discovered having copies of them in their possession, when thirty days had elapsed after the publication of the edict, were to be branded, and sent to labour for four years on the Great Wall, which was then building.
This is not the place to explain the reasons that led to
6. The tyrant, however, died in B.C. 210, within four years from the issuing of his edict. The dynasty which he had sought to establish passed away in B.C. 206. That of Han dates from the year B.C. 202, and in 191 the edict against the ancient books was formally repealed. They had been under the ban for less than a quarter of a century. There would probably have been no difficulty in recovering copies of them, but for the sack of the capital in B.C. 206 by the most formidable opponent of the founder of the House of Han. Then the fires blazed, we are told, for three months among the palaces and public buildings, and proved as destructive to the copies that might have been preserved about the court as the edict of Khin had been to those among the people.
Among the scholars of Khin, however, there had been one, of the surname Fû, who, when the edict was issued, hid his tablets of the Shû in a wall. Returning for them, after the rule of Han was established, he found that many were perished or gone. He recovered only twenty-nine of the documents, containing, according to the division of them that has long been followed, thirty-five books in all. About one of them there is some difficulty, on the discussion of which I need not enter. Fû commenced teaching them, and from all parts scholars resorted to him, and sat at his feet. The emperor Wăn (B.C. 179-155) heard of him, and sent one of the recorders of the court to visit him, and bring the recovered tablets themselves, or a copy of them, to the capital. They were in the form of the character that was prevalent at that time, different from that which had been used in previous centuries, and are known as 'the Shû of the modern text.' The Catalogue of the Imperial Library, prepared by Liû Hin for the emperor Âi (B.C. 6-1), contains an entry of 'the text of the Shû in twenty-nine portions,'--the same, no doubt, which was
2:1 Mencius. VII, ii, ch. 3. 2:2 The first quotation of the Shû in Ȝo is under the sixth year of duke Yin, B.C. 717. 3:1 Analects, VII, i. 3:2 The Doctrine of the Mean, XXX, i. 4:1 Mencius, V, ii, ch. 2. 5:1 See for all these statements the Ritual or Official Book of Kâu, XXXI, 35-42. 5:2 Analects, XV, xxv. 5:3 Part IV, viii, section 1. 5:4 Part IV, v, section 1. 5:5 Part III, iv. 6:1 Part III, iii.
