Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/496

 in this. All the rest of the treatise, to whomsoever it may be ascribed, from ăng-ze, the immediate disciple of Confucius, down to Liû Hsiang ( 80–9), took its present form in the first century before our Christian era. The reader will fail to see in it a close connexion between the different chapters, and think that the author or authors try to make more of Filial Piety than can be made of it. The whole, however, is a valuable monument of antiquity, and an exhibition of the virtue which Chinese moralists and rulers, from the most ancient times, have delighted to celebrate as the fundamental principle of human virtue, the great source of social happiness, and the bond of national strength and stability.

In preparing the translation of the undefined for the present work, I have made frequent reference to four earlier translations.

Two of them were made by myself;—the one about thirty years ago, simply as an exercise for my own improvement in Chinese; the other four years ago, when I was anxious to understand fully the Confucian teaching on the subject of Filial Piety, but without reference to my earlier version.

The third is a translation in the fourth volume of the Chinese Repository, pp. 345–353 (1835), for the accuracy of which much cannot be said. Very few notes are appended to it. The fourth is in the 'Mémoires concernant les Chinois' (Paris, 1779), being part of a long treatise on the 'Ancient and Modern Doctrine of the Chinese about Filial Piety,' by P. Cibot. In a preliminary notice to his version of our classic, he says:—'P. Noël formerly translated the Hsiâo King into Latin. Our translation will necessarily be different from his. He laboured on the old text, and we on the new, which the scholars of the Imperial College have adopted. Besides this, he has