do this, in the present century. In the preface to his ‘Examination of the text of Tso's Commentary and K‘ung Ying-tah's Annotations on it,’[1] he calls attention to the fact that among the discoveries of old tablets in the wall of Confucius’ house[2] there were those of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. Pan Koo indeed omits to mention them in his appendix to Lëw Hin’s catalogue of the Shoo and Works on it, where he speaks of the Shoo, the Le Ke, the Lun Yu, and the Hëaou King as having been thus found; but Heu Shin, in the preface to his dictionary, the Shwoh Wan, published A.D. 100, adds to the tablets of these Works those of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw.[3] I am willing therefore to believe that it was this copy of the text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw in the ancient character which headed the catalogue of Lëw Hin; and if it were so, all question as to the genuineness of our present Classic may be considered as at an end.
3. There are many of the scholars of China, who would hesitate to concur with me in this view, and prefer to abide by the opinion of which very full expression has been given by Ma Twan-lin. He says, View on the subject of Ma Twan-lin.‘Although there appears in the catalogue of the Han dynasty “The old Text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw,” yet the original text, as corrected by the master, was never discovered; and the old texts compiled in the Han dynasty and subsequently have all been taken from the three commentaries, and called by the name of “The correct text.” But there are many differences in the texts which appear in those commentaries, and it is impossible for the student to decide between them. For instance:—in l. i. 2 Tso gives the meeting between the marquis of Loo and E-foo of Choo as having taken place in Mëeh (蔑), while Kung and Kuh give the name as 眜, so that we cannot tell which of these characters the master wrote. So Mei (郿), in III. xxviii. 4, appears in Kung and Kuh as 微, and Keueh-yin (厥憖), in X. xi. 7, appears in Kung and Kuh as 屈銀. Instances of this kind are innumerable, but they are generally in the names of places and unimportant. In I. iii. 3, however, we have in Tso-she the entry 君氏卒, which would be the notice of the death of Shing Tsze, the mother of duke Yin, whereas in Kung and Kuh we read 尹氏卒, referring to the death of a high minister of Chow; so that we cannot tell whose death it was that the master chronicled as having taken place on
18]
