Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/25

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CH. I.

INTRODUCTION.

5

with their functions, was wanting, and the king offered to pay 1000 pieces of gold to any one who should supply the missing tablets, but in vain^[1]. He presented the tablets which he had obtained at the court of his half-brother, the emperor Wû; but the treasure remained uncared for in one of the imperial repositories till the next century; when it came into the chaise of Liû Hsin. Hsin replaced the missing portion from another old work, called Khâo Kung Kî, which Wylie renders by "The Artificers' Record." This has ever since continued to appear as the sixth section of the whole work, for the charge of which Hsin obtained the appointment of a special board of scholars, such as had from the first been entrusted with the care of the Î Lî. The Kâu Lî is a constitutional and not a ritual work. The last entry in Hsin's Catalogue of Lî Books is:—"The Kâu Kwan in six sections; and a treatise on the Kâu Kwan in four sections." That is the proper name for it. It was not called the Kâu Lî till the Thang dynasty^[2].

Formation of
the Lî Kî.

iii. We come to the formation of the text of the Lî Kî, in which we are more particularly interested. We cannot speak of its recovery, for though parts of it had been in existence during the Kâu dynasty, many of its Books cannot claim a higher antiquity than the period of the Han. All that is known about the authorship of them all will be found in the notices which form the last chapter of this Introduction.

After the entry in Liû Hsin's Catalogue about the

↑ This is related in the Catalogue of the Sui dynasty. It could not be in Khien's sixty-first chapter of Biographies, because the Kâu Kwan was not known, or, at least, not made public, in Khien's time. The Sui writers, no doubt, took it from some biography of the Han, which has escaped me.
↑ A complete translation of the Kâu Lî appeared at Paris in 1851, the work of Edward Biot, who had died himself before its publication, before his fiftieth year. According to a note in Gallery's "Memorial des Rites" (p. 191), the labour of its preparation hastened Biot's death. There are some errors in the version, but they are few. I have had occasion to refer to hundreds of passages in it, and always with an increasing admiration of the author's general resources and knowledge of Chinese. His early death was the greatest loss which the cause of sinology has sustained. His labours, chiefly on Chinese subjects, had been incessant from 1835. The perusal of them has often brought to my memory the words of Newton. "If Mr. Cotes had lived, we should have known something." Is there no sinologist who will now undertake a complete translation of the Î Lî?

[1] This is related in the Catalogue of the Sui dynasty. It could not be in Khien's sixty-first chapter of Biographies, because the Kâu Kwan was not known, or, at least, not made public, in Khien's time. The Sui writers, no doubt, took it from some biography of the Han, which has escaped me.

[2] A complete translation of the Kâu Lî appeared at Paris in 1851, the work of Edward Biot, who had died himself before its publication, before his fiftieth year. According to a note in Gallery's "Memorial des Rites" (p. 191), the labour of its preparation hastened Biot's death. There are some errors in the version, but they are few. I have had occasion to refer to hundreds of passages in it, and always with an increasing admiration of the author's general resources and knowledge of Chinese. His early death was the greatest loss which the cause of sinology has sustained. His labours, chiefly on Chinese subjects, had been incessant from 1835. The perusal of them has often brought to my memory the words of Newton. "If Mr. Cotes had lived, we should have known something." Is there no sinologist who will now undertake a complete translation of the Î Lî?

[1]

[2]