Page:Ch'un Ts'ew Pt I.pdf/36

Rh the day Sin-maou of the 4th month of the third year of duke Yin.

‘And not only so. In the 21st year of duke Sëang, both Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang have an entry to the effect that Confucius was then born. But in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw only the births of the heir-sons of the rulers of States were entered, as in II. vi. 5. In other cases, the births even of hereditary nobles, who exercised an all-powerful sway in the government of their States, like the members of the Ke family [in Loo], did not find a place in the tablets; and though the master be the teacher of emperors and kings for myriads of ages, yet at his birth he was only the son of the commandant of the city of Tsow. The historiographers of Loo would not make a record of that event, and to say that he himself afterward entered it in the classic which he prepared, is in the highest degree absurd.

‘Moreover Tso, after the capture of the lin in the 14th year of duke Gae, has further protracted the text to the 4th month of the 16th year, when the death of Chung-ne is recorded;—which even Tso Ching-nan considered to be not far from an act of forgery.

‘Thus there are not only additions in the three commentaries to the proper text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of things which are strange and partly incredible, but the authors of them added [to the text] and suppressed [portions of it] according to their pleasure. In what they write under the 21st year of Sëang, Kung and Kuh added to the text, to do honour to the master from whom they had received it, and Tso made his addition in the 16th year of Gae, to show his grief for the death of the master;—neither addition was in the original text of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw. The three writers made their commentaries according to what was current in men's mouths, and what they heard with their ears, in their time, and each of them thrust in whatever addition he desired to make. Subsequent scholars again have adopted what they found in the three commentaries, one favouring this and another that, and trying to make it clear; but that they have attained to the mind of the sage in the use of his stylus, now writing down and now retrenching, a thousand years before them, is what I am not able to believe.’

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