1. Notwithstanding the difficulty about one chapter which has been pointed out on p. 455, Hsüan Ȝung's text was generally accepted as the representative of that in modern characters recovered in the second century B. C. There were still those, however, who continued to advocate the claims of 'the old text.' Sze-mâ Kwang, a distinguished minister and scholar of the Sung dynasty (1009-1086), presented to the court in 1054 his 'Explanations of the Hsiâo King according to the Old Text,' arguing, in his preface and in various memorials, for the correctness of that text, as recovered by Liû Hsüan in the sixth century. Fan Ȝû-yü (1041-1098), a scholar of the same century, and in other things a collaborateur of Kwang, produced, towards the end of his life, an 'Exposition of the Hsiâo King according to the Old Text.' He says in his preface:--'Though the agreement between the ancient and modern texts is great, and the difference small, yet the ancient deserves to be preferred, and my labour upon it may not be without some little value 1.'
2. But our classic had still to pass the ordeal of the sceptical criticism that set in during the Sung dynasty. The most notable result of this was 'the Hsiâo King Expurgated,' published by Kû Hsî in 1186. He tells us that when be first saw a statement by Hû Hung (a minister in the reign of Kâo Ȝung, 1127-1162), that the quotations from the Book of Poetry in the Hsiâo were probably of later introduction into the text, he was terror-struck. Prolonged examination, however, satisfied him that there were good grounds for Hû's statement, and that other portions of the text were also open to suspicion. He found, moreover, that another earlier writer, Wang Ying-khăn, in the reign of Hsiâo Ȝung (1163-1189), had come to the conclusion that much of the Hsiâo had been fabricated or interpolated in the Han dynasty. The way was open for him to give expression to his convictions without incurring the charge of being the first to impugn the accepted text.
The fact was, as pointed out by the editors of the Catalogue Raisonné of the Imperial Library of the present dynasty, that Kû had long entertained the views which he indicated in his expurgated edition of the Hsiâo, and his references to Hû and Wang were simply to shield his own boldness. He divided the treatise into one chapter of classical text, and fourteen chapters of illustration and commentary. But both parts were freely expurgated. His classical text embraces the first six chapters in my translation, and is supposed by him to form one continuous discourse by Confucius. The rest of the treatise should not be attributed to the sage at all. The bulk of it may have come from Ȝăng-ȝze, or from members of his school, but large interpolations were made by the Han scholars. Adopting the old text, Kû discarded from it altogether 223 characters.
Attention will be called, under the several chapters, to
Under the Yüan dynasty, Wû Khăng (1249-1333), the greatest of its scholars, followed in the wake of Kû Hsî, yet with the independence characteristic of himself. As Kû had preferred the old text, Wû decided--and, I believe, more correctly--in favour of the modern, arguing that the copy of Khung An-kwo's text and commentary, said to have been recovered and published in the sixth century by Liû Hsüan, was a fabrication. He adopted, therefore, Hsüan Ȝung's text as the basis of his revision, which appeared with the title of 'the Hsiâo King, in paragraphs and sentences 1.' He adopted Kû's division of the treatise into classical text and commentary. The chapter of classical text is the same as Kû's; the chapters of commentary are only twelve. He discarded, of course, the chapter peculiar to the old text, which has been referred to more than once, united Hsüan Ȝung's eleventh chapter with another, and arranged the other chapters differently from Kû. His revision altogether had 246 characters fewer than the old text.
3. Kû Î-tsun gives the titles of nearly 120 works on our classic that appeared after the volume of Wû Khăng, bringing its literary history down to the end of the Ming dynasty. The scholars of the present dynasty have not been less abundant in their labours on it than their predecessors. Among the collected
4. It will have been seen that the two great scholars, Kû Hsî and Wû Khăng, who have taken the greatest liberties with the text of our classic, allow that there is a Confucian element in it, and that more than a fifth part of the whole, containing, even as expurgated by Kû, about 400 characters, may be correctly ascribed to the sage. I agree with them
458:1 In the Hsiâo King, as now frequently published in China, either separately by itself, or bound up with Kû Hsî's Hsiâo Hsio, 'the Teaching for the Young,' we find the old text, without distinction of chapters. The commentaries of Hsüan Ȝung and Sze-mâ Kwang, and the exposition of Fan Ȝû-yü, however, follow one another at the end of the several clauses and paragraphs.
