they agreed and differed, and decided between their interpretations by reference to the general scope of the five (great) King. In compendious style, but with extensive examination of the subject, we have made the meaning of the classic clear.'
The emperor says nothing himself about the differences between the ancient and modern texts, though we know that that subject was vehemently agitated among the scholars of his court. The text as commented on by him is in eighteen chapters, which do not include the chapter to which I have referred on p. 455 as having been in the copy of Kang-sun in the first century B.C. It is said, and on sufficient authority, that this chapter was excluded through the influence of the scholar and minister Sze-mâ Kăn. To each of his chapters the emperor prefixed a brief heading or argument, which I have retained in the translation. These headings, probably, were selected by him from a variety proposed by the scholars about the court.
The text employed in this imperial commentary might now be considered as sufficiently secured. It was engraved, in less than a century after, on the stone tablets of Thang, which were completed in the year 837, and set up in Hsî-an, the Thang capital, where they remain, very little damaged, to this day[1]. And not only so. The emperor was so pleased with the commentary which he had made, that he caused the whole of it to be engraved on four large tablets or pillars of stone in 745. They are still to be seen at Hsî-an, in front of the Confucian College.
- ↑ These tablets are commonly said to contain the thirteen classics (Shih-san King). They contained, however, only twelve different works,—the Yî, the Shû, the Shih, the Kâu Lî, the Î Lî, the Lî Kî, and the amplifications of the Khun Khîu,—by Zo Khiû-ming, by Kung-yang, and by Kû-liang. These form 'the nine King.' In addition to these there were the Lun Yü, the Hsiâo King, and the R Yâ. According to Kû Yen-wû (1613–1682), the characters on the tablets were in all 650,252. Mr. T. W. Rhys Davids (Buddhism, p.19) estimates that our English Bible contains between 800,000 and 950,000 words. The first Psalm, in what is called the Delegates' version, very good and concise, contains 100 Chinese characters, and in our English version 130 words. The classics of the Thang tablets, if the translator were a master of both languages, might be rendered in English so as to form a volume not quite so large as our Bible.
