The Shih King | Page 5

a copy for the use of himself and his disciples; but it does not appear that he rejected any pieces which had been previously received into the collection, or admitted any which had not previously found a place in it.
What Confucius did for the Shih.
4. The question now arises of what Confucius did for the Shih, if, indeed, he did anything at all. The only thing from which we can hazard an opinion on the point we have from himself. In the Analects, IX, xiv, he tells us:--'I returned from Wei to L?, and then the music was reformed, and the pieces in
[1. In stating that the odes were 300, Confucius probably preferred to use the round number. There are, as I said in the 'former chapter, altogether 305 pieces, which is the number given by Sze-ma Khien. There are also the titles of six others. It is contended by K? Hs? and many other scholars that these titles were only the names of tunes. More likely is the view that the text of the pieces so styled was lost after Confucius' death.]
the Ya and the Sung received their proper places.' The return from Wei to L? took place only five years before the sage's death. He ceased from that time to take an active part in political affairs, and solaced himself with music, the study of the ancient literature of his nation, the writing of 'the Spring and Autumn,' and familiar intercourse with those of his disciples who still kept around him. He reformed the music,--that to which the pieces of the Shih were sung; but wherein the reformation consisted we cannot tell. And he gave to the pieces of the Ya and the Sung their proper places. The present order of the Books in the Fang, slightly differing from what was common in his boyhood, may have now been determined by him. More than this we cannot say.
While we cannot discover, therefore, any peculiar and important labours of Confucius on the Shih, and we have it now, as will be shown in the next chapter, substantially as he found it already compiled to his hand, the subsequent preservation of it may reasonably be attributed to the admiration which he expressed for it, and the enthusiasm for it with which he sought to inspire his disciples. It was one of the themes on which he delighted to converse with them[1]. He taught that it is from the poems that the mind receives its best stimulus[2]. A man ignorant of them was, in his opinion, like one who stands with his face towards a wall, limited in his view, and unable to advance [3]. Of the two things that his son could specify as enjoined on him by the sage, the first was that he should learn the odes[4]. In this way Confucius, probably, contributed largely to the subsequent preservation of the Shih, the preservation of the tablets on which the odes were inscribed, and the preservation of it in the memory of all who venerated his authority, and looked up to him as their master.
[1. Analects, VII, xvii.
2 Analects, VIII, viii, XVII, ix.
3. Analects, XVII, x.
4. Analects, XVI, xiii.]

CHAPTER III.
THE SHIH FROM THE TIME OF CONFUCIUS TILL THE GENERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE PRESENT TEXT.
From Confucius to rise of the Khin dynasty.
1. Of the attention paid to the study of the Shih from the death of Confucius to the rise -of the Khin dynasty, we have abundant evidence in the writings of his the grandson Dze-sze, of Mencius, and of Hsün Khing. One of the acknowledged distinctions of Mencius is his acquaintance with the odes, his quotations from which are very numerous; and Hsün Khing survived the extinction of the Kau dynasty, and lived on into the times of Khin.
The Shih was all recovered, after the fires of Khin.
2. The Shih shared in the calamity which all the other classical works, excepting the Y?, suffered, when the tyrant of Khin issued his edict for their destruction. But I have shown, in the Introduction to the Sh?, p. 7, that that edict was in force for less than a quarter of a century. The odes were all, or very nearly all[1], recovered; and the reason assigned for this is, that their preservation depended on the memory of scholars more than on their inscription on tablets of bamboo and on silk.
Three different texts.
3. Three different texts of the Shih made their appearance early in the Han dynasty, known as the Shih of L?, of Kh?, and of Han; that is, the Book of Poetry was recovered from three different quarters. Li? Hin's Catalogue of the Books in the Imperial Library of Han (B.C. 6 to 1) commences, on the Shih King, with a collection of the three texts, in twenty-eight chapters.
[1. All,