Chao himself was probably to blame for the fact that the much overworked editors should fail to recognize the many important and original contributions in his book. For neither in his own preface, dated 1754, nor in another by his friend and fellow-worker, Ch'üan Tsu-wang, is there any statement or discussion of the main features of the book—in particular, no mention of its most original and most important contribution in sifting and separating the earlier Shui-ching from Li Tao-yüan's chu—a feat which both Ch'üan Tsu-wang and Chao I-ch'ing had achicved about the year 1751, and which Tai Chên accomplished independently in 1765. The only general guiding principle—Tai developed four—which Chao adopted in his important work of textual emendation is embodied in a thirty-word note on Hu Wei in the Appendix, and another fifteen-word note in chüan 6, page 28, of the Supplement. It is not strange, therefore, that a casual reviewer, unfamiliar with the vast literature on the subject, should fail completely to grasp the signal importance of Chao's great work. It was by sheer luck that it was included in the Ssŭ-k'u ch'üan-shu at all.
We now know that, though Chao I-ch'ing wrote his own preface in 1754, he continued to work on his manuscript for another ten years. It is now definitely established that he died in the spring, or early summer, of 1764. But the Shui-ching chu shih (chüan 24, pp. 25–26) contains his lengthy note giving a summary of a series of five essays which he wrote on his sick bed between March 36 and 31, 1764. This, and other internal evidence, proves beyond doubt that his manuscript was still not quite finished at the time of his death. Statements such as the one made by Wang Kuo-wei (see II, p. 856), that copies of Chao's and Ch'üan Tsu-wang's texts were accessible to Tai Chên, at the office of the Viceroy of Chihl in 1768, are unfounded conjectures.
It was not until about 1772 or 1773 that copies of the final manuscript of Chao's Shui-ching chu shih were made by his family. One copy was sent to Peking by the provincial authorities and was transcribed, as stated above, into the Imperial Manuscript Library. Another copy, slightly defective in transcriptien, was kept by the family, and it was from this copy that the first printed edition was made by his sons in 1786 under the patronage of the scholar-governor, Pi Yüan [q. v.]. This first printed edition is in general similar to the manuscript copy in the Ssŭ-k'u ch'üan-shu and contains not a few minor errors. Shortly after 1786 these errors were corrected on the wood blocks, a few additions and eliminations were made in the Appendices, and scores of new notes were added in the Supplement. A copy of this corrected edition is now in the Library of the University of Chicago. The Library of Congress possesses a copy, printed in 1794 from the same wood blocks but containing a few more corrections.
It is therefore correct to say that, in the years between 1786 and 1794, some learned hand was engaged by the Chao family to make these minor revisions—all in the name of the long deceased Chao I-ch'ing. But all the corrections that were made concerned minute details and were done with a view to making the book more perfect. In all major features, the printed editions of 1786–94 are practically the same as the copy in the Ssŭ-k'u ch'üan-shu, of which there is a complete though imperfect transcript in the Gest Chinese Library, Princeton, N. J.
In a short bibliographical note, Chao I-ch'ing acknowledged his indebtedness to his friend Ch'üan Tsu-wang. "Working during his illness," said Chao, "Mr.
