Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/36

 as legendary and fabulous. The whole Book is reduced to very small compass in the expurgated editions of the Lî Kî. We are glad, however, to have the incidents such as they. are. Who would not be sorry to want the account of Confucius' death, which is given in I, ii, 29? We seem, moreover, to understand him better from accounts which the Book contains of his intercourse with his disciples, and of their mourning for him.

Зze-yû an eminent member of his school, appears in the first paragraph much to his credit, and similarly afterwards on several occasions; and this has made the Khien- lung editors throw out the suggestion that the Book was compiled by his disciples. It may have been so.

According to Lû Kih (died A.D. 192) the Wang Kih, or "Royal Regulations," was made by the Great Scholars of the time of the emperor Wǎn (B.C. 179-157), on the requisition of that sovereign. It professes to give the regulations of the early kings on the classes of the feudal nobles and officers and their emoluments, on their sacrifices, and their care for the aged. The emperor ordered it to be compiled after the death of Kiâ Î, a Great scholar and highly esteemed by the sovereign, which event must have taken place about B.C. 170, when Kiâ was only thirty-three. The Book is said to have contained, when it first appeared, an account of the royal progresses and of the altars and ceremonies of investiture, of which we do not now find any trace. Parts of it are taken from Mencius, from the Shû, and from the Commentaries of Kung-yang and Зo on the Khun Kiû; other parts again are not easily reconciled with those authorities.