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_{_8 THE ANALECTS: KNTROI)UCTION.
the old ducal palace, and the newly appointed King of Lu,
desiring to enlarge his premises, ordered its demolition.
In its wall were discovered copies of the Shu, the Ch'un
Ch'iu, the Hsiao Ching, and the Lun Yti. All these
books were iudited in the ancient from of writing known "
as the tadpole _ff _,_ script, a form of writing ah'eady
displaced by that of Han, the square letters which with
modifications have continued to the present day. Hence
this older _cript, even to the ordinary reader of those
times, was already undecipherable.
The King, who was interested in the discovery, immediately
ordered the head of the K'ung family, K'ung An
Kuo _ _ [_l, to decipher them. Thishedid, and moreover
wrote a treatise thereon, part of which is still extant.
The version of the Lun Vti then found set finally at rest all
controversy between the two copies, and became the textus
receptus. The principal difference between tile Li_ text
and that recovered fi'om the Confucian wall was, that the
closing chapter of the Lu formed two in the wall copy which
thus had 2i chapters in all. In the first century B. C. the
rival copies were again carefully compared by Prince
Chang of Anch'ang :_ _ Y_ _ r_, and again in the
second century A. D. by Chang Hsuan k_ _ tile famous
commentator named in Section IV. The difference betw, en
the latter's version and the accepted version of Chutzfl are
few and unimportant, and will be found at the end of this
chapter.
The question now arises how did the Lun Yii originate,who
wrote it ?. Certainly" its author was not Confucius
himself, as a mere surface glance makes plain ; nor is there