Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/40



wont to employ when referring to the documents acknowledged to be of authority in his day 1

Mâ Twan-lin, the encyclopedist, in his General Examination of Records and Scholars, first published 1321, says that 'the pencil of the recorders was busy from the time of Hwang Tî ( 2697).' The compilers of the records of the Sui dynasty ( 589–617) say that 'historical documents began immediately with the invention of written characters.' That invention I must place myself at an earlier date than the time assigned to Hwang Tî. When once the characters were invented, they would come in time to be employed in the writing of history. The early dates alleged for many of the documents in the Shû are no valid reason for rejecting them without further examination. We may rather be surprised that, when the compilation was made, it did not contain many more than a hundred documents.

The dynasty of Kâu came to an end in 256, and after an anarchic interval of thirty-five years, the king of Khin succeeded in uniting all the feudal states under his own sway, and  proclaimed himself emperor. Up to this time the Shû had sustained no other damage than all human works are liable to in the course of time; but now it narrowly escaped an entire destruction. An edict went forth from the tyrant in 213, commanding that all the old classical books should be consigned to the flames, excepting those belonging to the great scholars in the service of the court, and the Yî. His rage was hottest against the Shû and the Shih (the Book of Poetry). Death was the doom of scholars who should be known to meet together and speak of these works, and all who should be discovered having copies of them in their possession, when thirty days had elapsed after the publication of the edict, were to be branded, and sent to labour for four years on the Great Wall, which was then building.

This is not the place to explain the reasons that led to