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Rh to death his two sons. Here certainly was a murder, which ought to have been recorded as such. No doubt, the murderer caused a notification to be sent to other States in the words of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, saying simply that Keun had died, as if the death had been a natural one, and the historiographers had chronicled it in the terms in which it reached them; but ought not Confucius, in such a case especially, to have corrected their entry? To allow so misleading a statement to remain in his text was not the way to make 'rebellious ministers afraid.'

The fourth case relates to the death of the above Wei, also called K‘ëen, the murderer of his king. Twelve years afterwards he himself came to an evil end. In X. xiii. 2 it is said—'In summer, in the 4th month, the Kung-tsze Pe of Ts‘oo returned from Tsin to Ts‘oo, and murdered his ruler K‘ëen in Kan-k‘e.' The real facts were these. Wei or K‘ëen displayed in his brief reign an insatiable ambition, and was guilty of many acts of oppression and cruelty. Having despatched a force to invade Seu, he halted himself at Kan-k‘e to give whatever aid might be required. Certain discontented spirits took the opportunity of his absence from the capital to organize a rebellion, which was headed by three of his brothers, one of whom was the Kung-tsze Pe. This Pe had fled to Tsin when K‘ëen murdered Keun, and was invited by the conspirators from that State back to Ts‘ae in the first place, and forced to take command of the rebel forces. These were greatly successful. They advanced on the capital of Ts‘oo, took possession of it, and put to death the sons of the absent king. The intelligence of these events threw him into the greatest distress and consternation. His army dispersed, and he took refuge with an officer who remained faithful to him, and in his house he strangled himself in the 5th month, unable to endure the disgrace and misery of his condition. What are we to make of such opposite and contradictory methods of describing events? Wei murdered Keun; and the deed is told as if Keun had died a natural death. The same Wei strangled himself, and the deed is told as if it had been a murder done by the Kung-tsze Pe. Pe was led by the device of a brother, K‘e-tsih, to kill himself in the 5th month, perhaps before Wei had committed suicide. The Ch‘un Ts‘ëw says of this event that 'K‘e-tsih put to death—not murdered—the Kung-tsze Pe;' and we may suppose that K‘e-tsih, who became king, sent word round the States that Pe had murdered his predecessor; but surely Confucius ought to have 47]