Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/64

 That phrase occurs in the second paragraph, in a note to which its origin is explained; but the other name Hsiang Po, which is found in the same paragraph, might with equal appropriateness, or rather inappropriateness, have been adopted for the Treatise.

It is really of the same nature as the preceding, and contains twenty-four paragraphs, all attributed to "the Master," and each of which may be considered to afford a pattern for rulers and their people. It ought to form one Book with XXIX under the title of "Pattern Lessons." I have pointed out in the notes some instances of the agreement in their style and phraseology, and the intelligent reader who consults the translation with reference to the Chinese text will discover more. Lû Teh-ming (early in the Thang dynasty) tells us, on the authority of Liû Hsien, that the Зze Î was made by a Kung-sun Nî-Зze. Liû Hsien was a distinguished scholar of the early Sung dynasty, and died about A.D. 500; but on what evidence he assigned the authorship of the Book to Kung-sun Nî-Зze does not, in the present state of our knowledge, appear. The name of that individual is found twice in Lift Hsin's Catalogfue, as belonging to the learned school, and among "the Miscellaneous writers," with a note that he was "a disciple of the seventy disciples of the Master." The first entry about him precedes that about Mencius, so that he must be referred to the closing period of the Kâu dynasty, the third century B.C. He may, therefore, have been the author of "The Black Robes," and of the preceding Book as well, giving his own views, but attributing them, after the fashion of the time, to Confucius; but, as the commentator Fǎng Î (? Ming dynasty) observes:—"Many passages in the Book are made to resemble the sayings of a sage; but the style is not good and the meaning is inferior."

This Book refers to a special case in connexion with the mourning rites, that of an individual who has been prevented, from taking part with the other relatives in the usual