THE SHE KING; OR, THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY

THE SHE AFTEE CONFUCIUS. THEEE DIFFERENT TEXTS.
SECTION II.
THE BOOK OF POETET FEOM THE TIME OF CONFUCIUS TILL
THE GENERAL-ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE PEESENT TEXT.
' From confu- ^ v the attention paid to the study of the
cms to the dy- Book of Poetry from the death of Confucius
nasty of Ts'in. , ,1 • rj ,-, m ,. , , ,
to the rise ot the is in dynasty, we have
abundant evidence in the writings of his graudson Tsze-
sze, of Mencius, and of Seun K'ing. One of the acknow
ledged distinctions of Mencius is his acquaintance with
the odes, of which his canon for the study of them pre
fixed to 'my larger volumes is a proof; and Seun K'ing
survived the extinction of the Chow dynasty, and lived on
into the times of Ts'in.
2. The Poems shared in the calamity which all the
other classical Works, excepting the Yih, suffered, when
the tyrant of Tsfin issued his edict for their destruction.
But I have shown, in the prolegomena to vol. I., that only
The Poems a few years elapsed between the execution of
3tSthe fire3 I decree and the establishment of the Han
of Ts'in. dynasty, which distinguished itself by its
labours to restore the monuments of ancient literature.
The odes were all, or very nearly all, recovered; 1 and the
reason assigned for this is, that their preservation de
pended on the memory of scholars more than on their
inscription upon tablets and silk. We shall find reason
to accept this statement.
3. Three different texts of the odes made their appear-
differ- auce early in the Han dynasty, known as the
ent taxts. She of Loo, of Ts'e, and of Han; that is, the
In the last section reference was made to the number of the odes,
given by Confucius himself as 300. He might mention the round number,
not thinking it worth while to say that they were 305 or 311. The
Classic now contains the text of 305 pieces, and the titles of other 6. It
is contended by Choo and many other scholars, that in Confucius' time
the text of those six was already lost, or rather that the titles were names
of tunes only. More likely is the view that the text of these pieces was
lost after Confucius' death.
I
Book of Poetry was recovered from three different
quarters.
[i.] Lew Hin's catalogue 1 of the Works in the imperial
library of the earlier Han dynasty commences, on the She
King, with a Collection of the three Texts in 28 chapters,
which is followed by two Works of commentary on the
Text of Loo. The former of them was by a The Text of
Shin P'ei, of whom we have some account in Lo -
the Literary Biographies of Han. He was a native of
Loo, and had received his own knowledge of the odes from
a scholar of Ts'e, called Fow K'ew-pih. He was resorted
to by many disciples, whom he taught to repeat the odes,
bnt without entering into discussion with them on their
interpretation. When the first emperor of the Han
dynasty was passing through Loo, Shin followed him to
the capital of that State, and had an interview with him.
The emperor Woo, in the beginning of his reign (B.C. 139),
sent for him to court when he was more than 80 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 men of eminence, and
among them K'ung Gan-kwoh. A little later, the most
noted adherent of the school of Loo was a Wei Keen, who
arrived at the dignity of prime minister, and published
" the She of Loo in Stanzas and Lines." Up and down in
the Books of Han and Wei are to be found quotations of
the odes, which must have been taken from the professors
of the Loo recension; but neither the text nor the
writings on it long survived. They are said to have
perished during the Tsin dynasty (A.D. 265 419). When
the catalogue of the Suy library was made, none of them
were existing.
[ii.] The Han catalogue mentions five different works on
the She of Ts'e. This text was from a Yuen Koo, a
native of Tsfe, about whom we learn, from the The Text of
same chapter of Literary Biographies, that he Ts'e-
was one of the Great scholars of the court in the time of
the emperor King (B.C. 155 142), a favourite with him,
and specially distinguished for his knowledge of the odes
and his advocacy of orthodox Confucian doctrine. He
died in the next reign of Woo, more than 90 years old;
1 Proleg., Vol. I. p. 4.