Page:The works of Li Po - Obata.djvu/239

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NOTES ON THE CHINESE TEXTS

Very shorty after the death of Li Po, Li Yang-ping published a collection in ten books with a preface dated 762, in which he says that the poet had lost a large por- tion of the poems written during his wanderings after the Rebellion of An Lu-shan, and many pieces in the books had been obtained from friends. Under the Sung Dynasty and about the year 1000, Kuo Yo-shih brought out a collection of ten books, which he combined with poems altogether, beside ten books of miscellaneous writings. In 1064 the first two of the three volumes of another collection were discovered, adding 100 new poems. Wei Hao's collection in two books was not brought to light till 1068, which contributed 44 new pieces. Thus the collection grew. In 1080 Sung Ming- chiu published the complete works in thirty books, con- taining nearly 1000 poems and 66 pieces in prose. Under the Ming dynasty and in 1759 Wang Chi brought out the final edition of the complete works in 30 books, with copious annotations and six books of critical, bio- graphical and miscellaneous matter gleaned and gath- ered from all possible sources. This edition was re- printed in 1908 by the Soo Yeh Company of Shanghai.

Besides those enumerated above, there have been pub- lished innumerable editions of complete works and se- lections in past centuries. I have used a modern Jap- anese edition of selected poems, consulted a Chinese edition of the Sung period in the Newberry Library of [213]

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