Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/35

 collection, and is a good introduction to the treatises that follow.

Among the Lt books in Lift Hsin's Catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han, is a Treatise in nine chapters (phien), compiled by Hâu Зhang, and called Khü Thâi Kî, or "Record made in the Khü Tower." The Khü Tower was the name of an educational building, where scholars met in the time of the emperor Hsüan to discuss questions about ceremonies and other matters connected with the ancient literature, and Hâu Зhang (mentioned in the preceding chapter) kept a record of their proceedings. I should like to think that our Khü Lî is a portion of that Khü Thâi Kî, and am sorry not to be able to adduce Chinese authorities who take the same view. It would relieve us of the difficulty of accounting for the use of Khü in the title.

The name Than Kung given to this Book is taken from the first paragraph in it, where the gentleman so denominated appears attending the mourning rites for an officer of the state of Lû. Nowhere else in the Treatise, however, is there any mention of him, or reference to him. There can be no reason but this, for calling it after him, that his surname and name occur at the commencement of it. He was a native, it is understood, of Lû; but nothing more is known of him.

The Than Kung, like the Khü Lî, is divided into two Books, which appear in this translation as two Sections of one Book. Each Section is subdivided into three Parts. The whole is chiefly occupied with the observances of the mourning rites. It is valuable because of the information which it gives about them, and the views prevailing at the time on the subject of death. It contains also many historical incidents about Confucius and others, which we are glad to possess. Some of the commentators, and especially the Khien-lung editors, reject many of them