Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/333

Rh ticularly infuriated the emperor was the following:

明朝期振翮

一舉去清都

At dawn tomorrow bestir your wings

At one flight make for the celestial palace.

This was taken by innuendo to mean:

Arise, all ye of the house of Ming,

With one blow destroy the capital of Ch'ing.

Nor was it difficult, for those so minded, to bring forward other data that seemed to hint covertly at rebellion. Had not Hsü Shu-k'uei given to one of his students, also surnamed Hsü 徐, the personal name Shou-fa 首髮; and did he not thus, by the adroit use of a homonym, advise his pupils and others to "retain (守 shou) their hair"? To another pupil, surnamed Shên 沈, Hsü had given the name Ch'êng-cho 成濯, "became bare", which was taken as a slurring reference to the forced shaving of half the pate in Ch'ing times. Furthermore, there were discovered among Hsü's effects quotations from the works of an earlier and similar offender,.

As a result of the inquisition all the books by Hsü Shu-k'uei, including the wood blocks, were burned. Only one item seems to have survived the holocaust, a copy of the drama 五色石 Wu-sê-shih, in 8 chüan, now preserved in the Library of the South Manchurian Railway at Dairen, but lacking indication of authorship. Sentences on the accused were imposed by imperial consent, January 14, 1779. The corpses of Hsü Shu-k'uei and his son, Huai-tsu, who had printed the work, were dismembered. His grandsons, the afore-mentioned Hsü Shih-t'ien and Hsü Shih-shu 徐食書, were imprisoned to await execution in the following autumn—the sentence of the latter being commuted, however, to slavery among the aborigines of Heilungkiang. The two students mentioned above, whose names appeared in Hsü's works as collators, were also imprisoned to await execution. Officials accused of negligence in conducting the case in its early stages were flogged or banished, or both. Hsieh Ch'i-k'un 謝啟昆, then prefect of Yangchow, was banished. The magistrate, T'u Yüeh-lung, was both flogged and banished. The financial commissioner of Kiangsu, T'ao I 陶易, and one of his secretaries, were sentenced to imprisonment awaiting execution. Shên Tê-ch'ien was posthumously deprived of all honors that the emperor had conferred upon him, for having written the above-mentioned biographical sketch.

[Chang-ku ts'ung-pien (see under nos. 4–9, pp. 1–75; Tung-hua lu, Ch'ien-lung 43:9–10; 文登縣志 Wên-têng hsien chih (1839) 4/8a, 5/14a; 文獻叢編 Wên-hsien ts'ung-pien 15; 景東縣志 Ching-tung hsien-chih (1922), 15/11b.]

2em

 HSÜ Sung 徐松, 1781–1848, Apr. 4, historian, was a native of Ta-hsing (Peking). He took his chü-jên degree in 1800, and became a chin-shih five years later (1805). As a compiler of the Hanlin Academy, he was ordered (1808) to serve in the Imperial Study (see under ). Appointed in 1809 a reviser for the compilation of the Ch'üan T'ang wên (see under ), he had access to many rare books in the Imperial Library. In addition to his regular duties, he copied surreptitiously from the encyclopaedia Yung-lo ta-tien (see under ) several important works which might otherwise have been lost—among them the 宋會要 Sung hui-yao, namely the rules and regulations pertaining to matters of state in the Sung dynasty (960–1279 A.D.). The Sung hui-yao was never printed, except in fragments, although ten successive editions appeared in manuscript during the Sung dynasty. Of these, seven were fortunately copied into the Yung-lo ta-tien in the years 1403–07, although there distributed under various rhymes. Hsü Sung did not complete the rearrangement of the work. After his death his manuscript passed into the hands of dealers, and later was owned by Miao Ch'üan-sun (see under ). The latter presented it to the Kuang-ya Shu-chü in Canton (see under ). In 1915 it came into the possession of the bibliophile, Liu Ch'êng-kan 劉承幹, who had it collated under the title 徐輯宋會要稿本 Hsü chi Sung hui-yao kao pên, 460 chüan. Hsü Sung's original manuscript, which in 1931 was purchased by the Peiping National Library, was in 1935–36 reproduced in facsimile under the title Sung hui-yao kao, 366 chüan, after comparison with the collated edition which so far remains unprinted.

In 1810 Hsü Sung participated in the compilation of the Huang-Ch'ing wên-ying hsü-pien (see under ), and in the same year completed a work on the study of the two capitals (Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang) of the T'ang dynasty, entitled 唐兩京城坊考 T'ang liang-ching 321