Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/38

 agree myself with the judgment of hâi Khăn, the disciple of Kû Hsî, whose Collected Comments, first published 1210, are now the standard of orthodoxy in the interpretation of the Shû. He says of the document: 'It sheds light on nothing, and there are things in it at variance with the text of the classic. On the books that are lost it is specially servile and brief, affording us not the slightest help. That it is not the work of Confucius is exceedingly plain.'

The eighty-one documents mentioned in it, and more, may have been in the Shû of the time of Confucius. I think, however, that several of them must have been lost subsequently, before the rise of the tyrant of Khin, who doomed the whole collection to the flames. Mencius complains that in his days the feudal princes destroyed many of the records of antiquity that they might the better perpetrate their own usurpations and innovations. Other considerations, on the exhibition of which I need not enter, confirm me in this conclusion.

It will be well here to devote a paragraph to the sources of the Shû. Have we sufficient proofs of the composition in ancient times of such documents as it contains, and of their preservation, so that they could be collected in a sort of historical canon?

We have. Under the dynasty of Kâu ( 1122–256), at the royal court, and at the courts of the feudal princes on a smaller scale, there were officers styled Sze, which has been translated 'Recorders,' 'Annalists,' 'Historiographers,' and simply 'Clerks.' There were the Grand Recorder, the Assistant Recorder, the Recorder of the Interior, the Recorder of the Exterior, and the Recorder in Attendance on the Sovereign. Among the duties of the Recorder of the Interior were the following:—'In case of any charge given by the king to the prince of a state, or to any other dignitary, he writes it on tablets;' 'In case of any memorials on business coming in from the different quarters of the kingdom, he reads them (to the king);' 'It is his business