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Rh them throw light on each other, and from this time the exhibition of them in paragraphs and clauses was cultivated. Hin preferred Tso to Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang, considering that he agreed in his likings and dislikings with the sage, and that he had himself seen the master,—a very different case from that of Kung and Kuh who were subsequent to the seventy disciples.' The history then relates the disputes between Hin and his father Hëang, who was an adherent of the commentary of Kuh-lëang, and how he made an attempt to get the emperor Gae (B.C.5–A.D.) to give Tso a place in the imperial college along with Kung and Kuh, which was defeated by the jealousy of their supporters. From this time, however, the advocates of Tso-she became more numerous and determined to have justice done to their master. They were successful for a short time in the reign of the emperor P‘ing (A.D.1–5), but Tso's Work was again degraded as of less authority than the other two commentaries; and though Këa Kwei presented an argument on forty counts to prove its superiority, which was well received by the emperor Chang (A.D.76–88), it was not till A.D.99, under the emperor Ho, that the footing of Tso in the imperial college was finally established. The famous Ch‘ing K‘ang-shing (A.D.127–199) having replied to three Works of Ho Hëw, the maintainer of the authority of Kung-yang, against Tso and Kuh-lëang, and shown the superiority of Tso, the other two commentaries began from this time to sink into neglect. It is melancholy to read the list of writers on Tso during the second and third dynasties of Han, of whom we have only fragmentary sentences remaining; but in A.D.280, Too Yu or Too Yuen-k‘ae, a scholar and general at the commencement of the Tsin dynasty, completed a great Work under the title of ‘Collected Explanations of the Text and Commentary of Tso-she on the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, in thirty chapters.'²⁶ This Work still remains, and will ever be a monument of the scholarship and painstaking of the writer.

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