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Rh 4. The Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo supplied, it seems to me, the materials for the sage’s Work;—if, indeed, he did any thing more than copy out what was ready to his hand. Ho Hëw, the famous Han editor of Kung-yang's commentary on it, in his introductory notes to the first year of duke Yin, quotes from a Min Yin to the effect that Confucius, having received the command of Heaven to make his Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, sent Tsze-hëa and others of his disciples, fourteen men in all, to seek for the historical records of Chow, and that they got the precious books of 120 States, from which he proceeded to make his chronicle. This, however, is one of the wild statements which we find in many writers of the Han and Tsin dynasties. There is nothing in the Work to make it necessary to suppose that any other records were consulted but those of Loo. This is the view almost universally entertained by the scholars and critics of China itself, as in the statement given from Chaou K‘e on p.5. The omission, moreover, of many events which are narrated in the Chuen of Tso-she makes it certain to my mind that Confucius conﬁned himself to the tablets of his native State. Whether any of his disciples were associated with him in the labour of compilation we cannot tell. Pan Koo, in the chapter on the Literary History of the early Han dynasty, says that Tso K‘ëw-ming was so. How this was will be considered when I come to speak of Tso’s commentary. Sze-ma Ts‘ëen’s account would rather incline us to think that the whole was done by Confucius alone, for he says that when the Work was completed and shown to the disciples of Tsze-hëa, they could not improve it in a single character.

5. The Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo then was the source of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Confucius. The chronicles or annals which went by this 9]