them throw light on each other, and from this time the exhibition of them in paragraphs and clauses was cultivated. Hin preferred Tso to Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang, considering that he agreed in his likings and dislikings with the sage, and that he had himself seen the master,—a very different case from that of Kung and Kuh who were subsequent to the seventy disciples.'[1] The history then relates the disputes between Hin and his father Hëang, who was an adherent of the commentary of Kuh-lëang, and how he made an attempt to get the emperor Gae (B.C. 5–A.D.) to give Tso a place in the imperial college along with Kung and Kuh, which was defeated by the jealousy of their supporters. From this time, however, the advocates of Tso-she became more numerous and determined to have justice done to their master. They were successful for a short time in the reign of the emperor P‘ing (A.D. 1–5), but Tso's Work was again degraded as of less authority than the other two commentaries; and though Këa Kwei[2] presented an argument on forty counts to prove its superiority, which was well received by the emperor Chang (A.D. 76–88), it was not till A.D. 99, under the emperor Ho,[3] that the footing of Tso in the imperial college was finally established. The famous Ch‘ing K‘ang-shing (A.D. 127–199) having replied to three Works of Ho Hëw,[4] the maintainer of the authority of Kung-yang, against Tso and Kuh-lëang, and shown the superiority of Tso, the other two commentaries began from this time to sink into neglect. It is melancholy to read the list of writers on Tso during the second and third dynasties of Han, of whom we have only fragmentary sentences remaining; but in A.D. 280, Too Yu or Too Yuen-k‘ae, a scholar and general at the commencement of the Tsin dynasty,[5] completed a great Work under the title of ‘Collected Explanations of the Text and Commentary of Tso-she on the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, in thirty chapters.'²⁶ This Work still remains, and will ever be a monument of the scholarship and painstaking of the writer.
- ↑ See the 漢書三十六,楚元王,傳第六. I have carefully read over the Work of 劉逢祿 of the present dynasty, included in the 皇淸經解, and called 左氏春秋考證, in which he labours to upset all the testimony about Lëw Hin, but it is quite inconclusive and unsatisfactory.
- ↑ 賈逵.
- ↑ Luh Tih-ming and others say this took place under Ho, in the 11th year of the period 元興. But that period lasted only one year. 元興 must be a mistake for 永元.
- ↑ 何休;—see further on.
- ↑ 春秋左氏經傳集解,三十卷;—by 杜預, styled 元凱. He is also called 征南, from his military operations in the South, as in the quotation from Ma Twan-lin on p. 19. He was born A.D. 222, and died in 281.
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