THE SHE KING; OR, THE BOOK OF ANCIENT POETRY

10 THE SHE AFTEE CONFUCIUS. THE TEXT OP MAOU. 11
and we are told that all the scholars of Tsfe who got a
name in those days for their acquaintance with the She
sprang from his school. Among his disciples is the well-
known name of Hea-how Ch'e-ch'ang, who communicated
his acquisitions to How Ts'ang, a native of the present
Shan-tung province, and author of two of the Works in
the Han catalogue. How had three disciples of eminence,
Yih Fung, Seaou Wang-che, and K'wang Hang. From
them the Text of Ts'e was transmitted to others, whose
names, with quotations from their writings, are scattered
through the Books of Han. Neither text nor comment
aries, however, had a better fate than the She of Loo.
There is no mention of them in the catalogue of Suy.
They are said to have perished even before the rise of the
Tsin dynasty.
[iii.] The Text of Han was somewhat more fortunate.
The Han catalogue contains the titles of four works, all
The Text of by Han Ying, whose surname is thus perpetu-
Han Ying. ated in the text of the She which emanated
from him. His biography follows that of How Ts'ang.
He was a native, we are told, of the province of Yen, and
a " Great scholar " in the time of the emperor Wan (B.C.
178 156), and on into the reigns of King and Woo.
" He laboured/' it is said, " to unfold the meaning of the
odes, and published an ' Explanation of the Text,' and
' Illustrations of the She/ containing several myriads of
characters. His text was somewhat different from the
texts of the She of Loo and Tsfe, but substantially of the
same meaning." Of course Han founded a school; but
while almost all the writings of his followers soon perished,
both the Works just mentioned continued on through the
various dynasties to the time of Sung. The Suy catalogue
contains the titles of his text and two Works on it; the
T'ang those of his text and his Illustrations; but when
we come to the catalogue of Sung, published in the time
of the Yuen dynasty, we find only the Illustrations, in 10
Books or chapters ; and Gow-yang Sew tells us that in his
time this was all of Han that remained. It continues,
entire or nearly so, to the present day.
4. But while these three different recensions of the
She all disappeared, with the exception of a single frag
ment, 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 our own day in China, than to the
appearance of a fourth Text which displaced them by its
superior correctuess, and the ability with AfourthText-
which it was advocated and commented on. that of Maou.
This was what is called the " Text of Maou." It came
into the field later than the others; but the Han cata
logue contains the She of Maou in 29 chapters, and a
commentary on the text in 30. According to Ch'ing
K'aug-shing, the author of this commentary was a native
of Loo, known as Maou Hang or the Greater Maou, who
was a disciple, we are told by Luh Tih-ming, of Seun
K'ing. The Work is lost. He had communicated his
knowledge of the She, however, to another Maou, Maou
Chang, or the Lesser Maou, who was " a Great scholar"
at the court of king He'en of Ho-keen. 1 This king Heen
was one of the most diligent labourers in the recovery of
the ancient Books, and presented Maou's text and the
Work of Hang at the court of the emperor King, pro
bably in B.C. 129. Chang himself published his "Ex
planations of the She," in 29 chapters, which still re
main ; but it was not till the reign of the emperor P'ing
(A.D. 1 5) that Maou's recension was received into the
imperial college, and took its place along with those of
Loo, Ts'e, and Han.
The Chinese critics have carefully traced the line of
scholars who had charge of Maou's text and explanations
down to the reign of P'ing; Kwan Ch'ang-k'ing, Heae
Yen-neen, and Seu Gaou. To Seu Gaou succeeded Ch'in
Keah, who was in office at the court of the usurper Wang
Mang (A.U. 9 22). He transmitted his treasures to
Seay Man-k'ing, who himself commented on the She;
and from him they passed to the well-known Wei King-
chung or Wei Hwang, of whom I shall have to speak in
the next chapter. From this time the most famous
scholars addicted themselves to Maou's text. Ke'a Kwei
(A.D. 25 101) published a Work on the " Meaning and
Difficulties of Maou's She," having previously compiled a
The petty kingdom of Ho-keen embraced three of the districts in
the present department of the same name in Chih-le, and one of the two
districts of Shin Chow. King He'en's name was Tih.