Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/94

 (see under ). In 1768 he was invited by Governor-general to Paoting, Chihli, to complete the compilation of a work begun by  and continued by  on the waterways of Chihli province, entitled 直隸河渠水利書 Chih-li ho-ch'ü shui-li shu. His contribution to it seems not to have been very great, for he was occupied with it less than a year. The Governor-general died in September of that year, and because his successor did not pay to Tai due respect we are told that he resigned and left the work unfinished. The manuscript was utilized by a man who published it under his own name, without mentioning the previous labors of Chao, Yü, or Tai (see under ).

In 1769 Tai Chên took the metropolitan examination in Peking, but failed after two earlier (1763, 1766) unsuccessful attempts. Thereupon he went to Taiyuan, Shansi, where was serving as financial commissioner. Later in that year (1769) he was engaged by Sun Ho-hsiang 孫和相, prefect of Fên-chou-fu, to edit the history of that prefecture, Fên-chou fu-chih, 34 chüan, which was completed by Sun late in 1770 and printed in 1771. In the meantime Tai left Shansi to take the metropolitan examination held (1770) in Peking; but, failing for the fourth time to become a chin-shih, he returned to Shansi in 1771 to assist the magistrate of Fên-yang in editing the history of that district, a work completed and printed in 1772, under the title Fên-yang hsien-chih, 14 chüan. Before it was completed he again (1772) went to Peking to take the metropolitan examination, but failed once more. Late in 1772 he went to Chin-hua, Chekiang, where he had charge of the local Academy.

While thus engaged, Tai received in the summer of 1773 an imperial mandate to serve in Peking as one of the compilers of the Imperial Manuscript Library, Ssŭ-k'u ch'üan-shu (see under ). Earlier in that year many officials had been appointed compilers of this project, and now five others, including Tai, were summoned in special recognition of their scholarly achievements. Three of them,, , and , had already become chin-shih, but the other two, Tai Chên and Yang Ch'ang-lin 楊昌霖 , had only the rank of chü-jên.

Tai reached Peking in September 1773 and, together with his four colleagues, began to edit rare works which they extracted from the Yung-lo ta-tien. As a sample of the studies they had made, there was submitted to Emperor Kao-tsung, in October or November of the following year, a copy of the ancient work on waterways, Shui-ching chu (see under ), said to have been collated by Tai Chên on the basis of a superior and hitherto unused text in the Yung-lo ta-tien. The Emperor wrote a poem in praise of Tai's achievement and ordered the text to be printed in the official collectanea, Wu-ying tien chü-chên pan ts'ung-shu (see under ). A long controversy has since taken place on the question whether Tai ever utilized the text in the Yung-lo ta-tien as reported, and the opinion seems now to be unanimous that he did not. , as early as 1841, compared Tai's text with the one in the encyclopaedia, and found no evidence to show that he had made use of that work. Modern scholars, having at their disposal the Yung-lo ta-tien text which was reproduced photographically in 1935, and being thus enabled to make a detailed comparison, have come to the same conclusion. They find, moreover, that in preparing his text of the Shui-ching chu Tai drew heavily on a then unpublished collation of the same work, made by Chao I-ch'ing twenty years earlier (see under ). Letters written by in August and September 1774 make it plain that Tai's text was then a subject of heated criticism, in particular from Li Yu-t'ang (see under ), an associate director of the Ssŭ-k'u ch'üan-shu. They state also that a second collation of the Shui-ching chu was decided upon in the hope of settling the controversy. On October 5 Li was suddenly transferred from the capital to a relatively unimportant educational commissionership in Chekiang and, late in 1777, was permanently cashiered for being involved in the case of. Whether Li was sent qway from Peking to prevent his disclosing to the Emperor irregularities in the Ssŭ-k'u project in general, or the controversy that was raging concerning Tai's part in the Shui-ching chu text in particular, is a matter for conjecture. It seems certain, however, that after the editors had induced the Emperor to give high praise to Tai's effort, it was impossible for them to submit to the throne a better collated text without impugning their judgment and incurring severe penalties. Consequently it was to their interest, as it was to the interest of Tai himself, to maintain silence.

Like a few other scholars of his time (see under ), Tai Chên was interested in the 696