Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/174

 of the final Tao-kuang edition of the 崔東壁遺書 Ts'ui Tung-pi i-shu. Of this edition there is a copy in the Library of Congress. Ch'ên died leaving an official debt and a son aged five (sui) with no means of returning to the ancestral home in Yunnan. But the prefect of Chin-hua, Chekiang, named Hsiao Yüan-kuei 蕭元桂, a chin-shih of 1808, contrived ways to meet the debt and to convey Chên's dependents back to Yunnan. He and eight fellow-magistrates contributed the sum of six hundred taels and stored the blocks (twenty boxes) of the Ts'ui Tung-pi i-shu in the prefectural school. His preface, recording these details, was added to the Tao-kuang edition in the seventh moon of 1826. Another preface, dated a month later, was written by a sub-director of studies in the Chin-hua Academy, named Yang Tao-shêng 楊道生. Several years earlier a preface had been written for the K'ao-hsin lu by the President of the Board of Ceremonies, Wang T'ing-chên 汪廷珍, one of the very few high officials of the time who expressed written appreciation of Tsui's historical researches. Other men of foresight who encouraged him in early life were Shih I-mu, younger brother of, who examined him for the chü-jên degree in 1762, and the afore-mentioned Wang Shih-han.

For fully a century after Ts'ui Shu's death his writings were strangely neglected. By the time the Tao-kuang edition was printed (1824–25) critical scholarship had gone into a decline from which it began to recover only in the 1890s. The unmistakable decay of the ruling dynasty, devastating internal rebellion, and ominous foreign intervention claimed the attention of both scholars and statesmen. What these men now wanted was consolation, and they found it in the ethics of Sung philosophy. Cold, calculating historical criticism could not answer their needs. Though a number of Tsui's works were printed, only a few scholars—among them Wang Sung 王崧 and —delved into his researches with sufficient penetration to discourse intelligently upon them. Not even one of his classical studies was incorporated in the massive Huang-Ch'ing ching-chieh, printed by in 1829 or in the continuation of that work by Wang Hsien-ch'ien (see under ), printed in 1886–88. A reprint of the Tao-kuang edition appeared in 1875, and fourteen items of it (chiefly the K'ao-hsin lu) were printed in 1879-92 in the 畿輔叢書 Chi-fu ts'ung-shu, a collection of writings by authors of the metropolitan area, arranged by Wang Hao 王灝. This last mentioned source, however, was not generally accessible until 1906. In 1903–04 there was published in Japan a complete reprint of the Tao-kuang edition with added punctuation and with important annotations and summaries by the Japanese scholar, Naka Michiyo (see under ), in four volumes. Though this is an excellent reprint, it attracted little notice in China. Aside from a few scattered articles in journals, such as the Kuo-ts'ui hsüeh-pao (see under ) and brief references in miscellaneous works (some with errors showing only a superficial acquaintance), the significance of Ts'ui Shu did not dawn on modern Chinese historians until 1921, or more specifically in 1923, when Hu Shih 胡適 (b. 1891) published the first parts of a chronological biography, entitled 科學的古史家崔述 K'o-hsüeh ti ku-shih chia Ts'ui Shu ("Ts'ui Shu as a Scientific Historian"), in the 國學季刊 Kuo-hsüeh chi-k'an, volume 1, number 2. Although two other reprints of the Tao-kuang edition were made in 1924 and 1926, full justice was not accorded him until in 1936 there appeared the definitive edition of the Ts'ui Tung-pi i-shu, in eight volumes, repunctuated and edited by Ku Chieh-kang. In addition to reprinting the afore-mentioned chronological biography (carried by Hu Shih to 1796 and by Chao Chên-hsin 趙貞信 to 1825), this edition brings together biographical sketches of all personages concerned, descriptions of almost all known printed portions and manuscript fragments, and the estimates of Chinese (and of some Japanese) scholars, past and present. Included, also, is an index to Ts'ui's writings.

Since 1921 interest in Ts'ui Shu's writings has not abated, though his deficiencies have repeatedly been brought to view. In January of that year Hu Shih wrote, "There is much in the K'ao-hsin lu to make one lose heart...but no one in all our history can compare with him in daring or in pungency of expression." Though Ts'ui Shu devoted his life to pointing out discrepancies in uncanonical literature, and anachronisms in the classics, he never abandoned s conviction that there is in the classics an irreducible minimum of unchallengeable truth beyond which the most rigorous criticism cannot go. This kernel of truth, which the sages transmitted, he believed it was the duty of scholarship 776