4. Nothing need be said on the history of the commentary of Tso since the beginning of the Han dynasty. Some of the scholars of that age traced it back from Chang Ts‘ang to nearly the time of Confucius, and K‘ung Ying-tah in his preface to Too Yu's Work Attempt to trace Tso's Work nearly to the time of Confucius.quotes the following from a production of Lëw Hëang (B.C. 80–9) which is now lost:—‘Tso K‘ëw-ming delivered his Work to Tsăng Shin. Shin transmitted it to Woo K‘e; Woo K‘e to his son K‘e; K‘e to Toh Tsëaou, a native of Ts‘oo, who copied out selections from it in 8 books; Toh Tsëaou to Yu K‘ing, who made 9 books of selections from it; Yu K‘ing to Seun K‘ing; and Seun K‘ing to Chang Ts‘ang.’[1] I wish we had different and more authority for this statement, as Hëang was not himself an adherent of Tso's Work. In his son Hin’s catalogue which I have already referred to, two Works are mentioned by Toh-she and Yu-she, but there is nothing in their titles to connect them with Tso;[2] and Sze-ma Ts‘ëen says nothing in his memoir of Seun K‘ing about any connexion that he had with the transmission of the commentary.[3] Tsăng Shin was the grandson of Tsăng Sin, one of Confucius’ principal disciples,—the Tsa‘ng Se of Mencius, II. Pt. i. I. 3. Tso's committing his Work to him would agree with what I have said in par. 2, and cast a doubt on his being a contemporary of the sage himself.
5. I have said that generally we have in the Work of Tso the details of the events of which we have but a shadow or the barest intimation in the text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw; The nature of Tso's Work.but we have more than this. Of multitudes of events that during the 242 years of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw period took place in Loo and other States, to which the text makes no allusion, we have from Tso a full account. Where he got his information he does not tell us. Too Yu is probably correct when he says that Tso was himself one of the historiographers of Loo.[4] Whatever of the history of that State was on record he was familiar with. If the records of other States were also collected there, he had studied them equally with those of his own. If he did not find them there, he must
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