Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/486



The Hsiâo King suffered, like all the other Confucian books except the Yî, from the fires of Khin. Its subsequent recovery was very like that of the Shû, described on pp. 7, 8. We have in each case a shorter and a longer copy, a modern text and an ancient text.

In the Catalogue of the Imperial Library, prepared by Liû Hin immediately before the commencement of our Christian era, there are two copies of the Hsiâo:—'the old text of the Khung family,' which was in twenty-two chapters, according to a note by Pan Kû (died  92), the compiler of the documents in the records of the western Han; and another copy, which was, according to the same authority, in eighteen chapters, and was subsequently styled 'the modern text.' Immediately following the entry of these two copies, we find 'Expositions of the Hsiâo by four scholars,'—whose surnames were Kang-sun, Kiang, Yî, and Hâu. 'They all,' says Pan Kû, 'had laboured on the shorter text.'

The copy in eighteen chapters therefore, we must presume, had been the first recovered; but of how this came about we have no account till we come to the records of the Sui dynasty. There it is said that, when the Khin edict for the destruction of the books was issued, histhis [sic] copy of the Hsiâo was hidden by a scholar called Yen Kih, a member, doubtless, of the Yen family to which Confucius' favourite disciple Yen Hui had belonged. When the edict was abrogated in a few years, Kăn, a son of Kih, brought the copy from its hiding place. This must have been in the second century, and the copy, transcribed, probably by Kăn, in the form of the characters then used, would pass into the charge of the board of great scholars' appointed to preserve the