Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/51

 165 phien, distributed in six collections. The first of these was the Yo Kî, in 23 phien; the second, the Kî of Wang Yu, in 24 phien. Khung Ying-tâ, deriving his information from a note in Hsin's Catalogue and other sources, sums up what he has to say about this Book in the following way:—On the rise of the Han dynasty, the treatises of former times on music, as well as the practice of the art, were in a state of special dilapidation. In the time of the emperor Wû, his brother Teh, with the help of many scholars, copied out all that remained on the subject of music, and made a Yo Kî, or "Record of Music," in 24 phien or books, which Wang Yü presented to the court in the time of the emperor Khǎng (B.C. 32-7); but it was afterwards hardly heard of. When Liû Hsiang (died B.C. 9) examined the books in the Imperial library, he found a "Record of Music" in 23 phien, different from that which Wang Yü had presented. Our present Yo Kî contains eleven of those phien, arranged with the names of their subjects. The other twelve are lost, though their names remain.

Most of the present text is found in Sze-mâ Khien's Monograph on Music; and as he was so long before Liû Hsiang (Khien died between B.C. 90 and 80), the Khien- lung editors suppose that it is one of the portions of Khien's work, supplied by Khû Shâo-sun, who was a contemporary of Hsiang.

Kû Hsî had a great admiration of many passages in the Yo Kî, and finds in them the germs of the views on the constitution of humanity, and on the action and interaction of principle and passion, reason and force, in the economy of what we call Providence, on which he delighted to dwell in his philosophical speculations. We expect from the title, as Hwang Kan-hsing (Ming dynasty) says, that music will be the chief subject of the Treatise, but everywhere we find ceremonial usages spoken of equally and in their relation to it; for, according to the view of the author, the framework of society is built on the truth