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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1However we explain the ceremony thus curtly described ; whether we see in it the growing prevalence of natureworship, or an illustration of the practice of worshipping ancient heroes and worthies:—Ti appears in the account of it plainly used in the sense of God. In each of the five instances, we have a Ti and a Shan, not an emperor and a spirit, but a God and a Spirit,—a Spirit standing in the same relation to the God, that A#an (Fa=a subject or minister) stands in to a ruler. Thus it was that, bya process of deification, the title of Ti came to be given, in the time of the A4u dynasty, to the great names, fabulous and legendary, of antiquity; and thus it was that it was applied to the heroes Y4o and Shun. It may well be that the title Hwang Ti, used by a Chinese of the present emperor or of any emperor of the past, does not call up to his mind any other idea than that of a human sovereign ; but being satisfied as to the proper signification of Ti as God, and as to the process by which the title came to be applied to the ancient Y4o and Shun, I could no longer render it, when used of them in the Sha, by emperor, and elected to leave it untranslated in the present volume. To any unimportant changes of translation it is unnecessary to refer. The dates B.C. in the introductions and notes are all one year more than in the translations formerly published. They are thus brought into accordance with those of P. Gaubil and the useful Chinese Chronological Tables of the late Mr. Mayers. The changes in the transliteration of Chinese names are very considerable. As foreigners are now resident in Peking, it seemed proper to adopt the pronunciation of the XXX PREFACE. capital as given by Sir T. F. Wade in his Hsin Ching Lu and Tzti Erh Chi. At the same time, in order to secure as near an approach as possible to uniformity in all the volumes of the Sacred Books of the East, the letters employed were made to conform to those in Professor Max Miiller’s Scheme for the Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets. It was not easy at first to do this, for Chinese, having no alphabet, reluctated against being made to appear as if it had; but use has more than reconciled me to the method now employed. It was not possible to introduce into the table all the diphthongs in which Chinese speech is rich. The reader has to be informed that i before another vowel or a diphthong approximates to the sound of y, so that the whole utterance is still monosyllabic. The powers of » and ze must be heard before they can be appreciated. To call the attention of the reader to passages in the Sha, embodying, more or less distinctly, religious ideas, an asterisk (*) will be found appended to them. J. L. Oxrorp, 18th April, 1879. THE SHO KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. Digitized by Google THE SHU KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I, THE NATURE AND HISTORY OF. THE SHO.
2J. L. Oxrorp, 18th April, 1879. THE SHO KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. Digitized by Google THE SHU KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I, THE NATURE AND HISTORY OF. THE SHO. 1. The Sha is the most ancient of the Chinese classical books, and contains historical documents of various kinds, relating to the period from about B.C. 2357-627. The Meaning of Character ShQ shows us by its composition the name that it denotes ‘the pencil speaking,’ and Sha King. hence it is often used as a designation of the written characters of the language. This, indeed, was the earliest meaning of it, but from this the transition was easy to its employment in the sense of writings or books, applicable to any consecutive compositions; and we find it further specially employed by Confucius and others to designate the historical remains of antiquity, in distinction from the poems, the accounts of rites, and other monuments of former times. Not that those other monuments might not also be called by the general name of Shi. The peculiar significancy of the term, however, was well established, and is retained to the present day. The book has come down to us in a mutilated condition ; but even as it is said to have existed in the time of Confucius, it did not profess to contain a history of China, and much less, to give the annals of that history. It was simply a collection of historical memorials, extending over a space of about 1700 years, but on no connected method, and with frequent and great gaps between them. (1) 4 B a 2 THE SHO KING. The name King (now in Pekinese King) was not added to Sha till the time of the Han dynasty (began B.C. 202). If Confucius applied it to any of the classical works, it was to the classic of Filial Piety, as will be seen in the Introduction to the translation of that work. The Han scholars, however, when engaged in collecting and digesting the ancient literary monuments of their country, found it convenient to distinguish the most valuable of them, that had been acknowledged by Confucius, as King, meaning what was canonical and of unchallengeable authority. 2. In the Confucian Analects, the sage and one of his disciples quote from the Sha by the simple formula— The Shi was The Sha says. In the Great Learning, four anexisting different books or chapters of the classic, collection of all in it as we have it now, are mentioned, before each by its proper name. Mencius sometimes Confucius. uses the same formula as Confucius, and at other times designates particular books. It is most natural for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the Sha, had in his mind’s eye a collection of documents bearing that title.
3Mencius sometimes Confucius. uses the same formula as Confucius, and at other times designates particular books. It is most natural for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the Sha, had in his mind’s eye a collection of documents bearing that title. One passage in Mencius seems to put it beyond a doubt that the Shad existed as such a collection in his time. Having said that ‘it would be better to be without the Shd than to give entire credit to it,’ he-makes immediate reference to one of the books of our classic by name, and adds, ‘In the Completion of the War I select two or three passages only, and believe them?’ In Mo-jze, Hsiingze, and other writers of the last two centuries of the Kau dynasty, the Sha is quoted in the same way, and also frequently with the specification of its parts or larger divisions, — ‘The Books of Yii,’ ‘ of Hsia,’ ‘of Shang,’ ‘of Kau.’ And, in fine, in many of the narratives of 30 X%it-ming’s commentary on the Spring and Autumn, the Sha is quoted in the same way, even when the narratives are about men and events long anterior to the sage”. All these consi- 3 Mencius, VII, ii, ch. 3. ® The first quotation of the Shf in 8o is under the sixth year of duke Yin, B.C. 717. INTRODUCTION. 3 derations establish the thesis of this paragraph, that the ShQ was an existing collection of historical documents before Confucius. 3. From the above paragraph it follows that Confucius did not compile the collection of documents that form the Confucius did 2O- The earliest assertion that he did so we not compile have from Khung An-kwo, his descendant in the Shi The the eleventh generation, in the second century, documents in B.C. Recounting the labours of his ancestor, The his time. An-kwo says, in the Preface to his edition of ascribed to the Sha, that ‘he examined and arranged the him. : ° 3: old literary monuments and records, deciding to commence with Y4o and Shun, and to come down to the times of X4u. Of those deserving to be handed down to other ages and to supply permanent lessons, he made in all one hundred books, consisting of canons, counsels, instructions, announcements, speeches, and charges. The same thing is stated by Sze-ma Khien in his Historical Records, completed about B.C. 100, but Kdien’s information was derived from An-kwo. Such a compilation would have been in harmony with the character which Confucius gave of himself, as ‘a transmitter and not a maker, believing and loving the ancients!) and with what his grandson says of him in the Doctrine of the Mean, that ‘he handed down (the lessons of) Yao and Shun, as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed those of Wan and Wai, whom he took for his model?”
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1However we explain the ceremony thus curtly described ; whether we see in it the growing prevalence of natureworship, or an illustration of the practice of worshipping ancient heroes and worthies:—Ti appears in the account of it plainly used in the sense of God. In each of the five instances, we have a Ti and a Shan, not an emperor and a spirit, but a God and a Spirit,—a Spirit standing in the same relation to the God, that A#an (Fa=a subject or minister) stands in to a ruler. Thus it was that, bya process of deification, the title of Ti came to be given, in the time of the A4u dynasty, to the great names, fabulous and legendary, of antiquity; and thus it was that it was applied to the heroes Y4o and Shun. It may well be that the title Hwang Ti, used by a Chinese of the present emperor or of any emperor of the past, does not call up to his mind any other idea than that of a human sovereign ; but being satisfied as to the proper signification of Ti as God, and as to the process by which the title came to be applied to the ancient Y4o and Shun, I could no longer render it, when used of them in the Sha, by emperor, and elected to leave it untranslated in the present volume. To any unimportant changes of translation it is unnecessary to refer. The dates B.C. in the introductions and notes are all one year more than in the translations formerly published. They are thus brought into accordance with those of P. Gaubil and the useful Chinese Chronological Tables of the late Mr. Mayers. The changes in the transliteration of Chinese names are very considerable. As foreigners are now resident in Peking, it seemed proper to adopt the pronunciation of the XXX PREFACE. capital as given by Sir T. F. Wade in his Hsin Ching Lu and Tzti Erh Chi. At the same time, in order to secure as near an approach as possible to uniformity in all the volumes of the Sacred Books of the East, the letters employed were made to conform to those in Professor Max Miiller’s Scheme for the Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets. It was not easy at first to do this, for Chinese, having no alphabet, reluctated against being made to appear as if it had; but use has more than reconciled me to the method now employed. It was not possible to introduce into the table all the diphthongs in which Chinese speech is rich. The reader has to be informed that i before another vowel or a diphthong approximates to the sound of y, so that the whole utterance is still monosyllabic. The powers of » and ze must be heard before they can be appreciated. To call the attention of the reader to passages in the Sha, embodying, more or less distinctly, religious ideas, an asterisk (*) will be found appended to them. J. L. Oxrorp, 18th April, 1879. THE SHO KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. Digitized by Google THE SHU KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I, THE NATURE AND HISTORY OF. THE SHO.
2J. L. Oxrorp, 18th April, 1879. THE SHO KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. Digitized by Google THE SHU KING OR BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I, THE NATURE AND HISTORY OF. THE SHO. 1. The Sha is the most ancient of the Chinese classical books, and contains historical documents of various kinds, relating to the period from about B.C. 2357-627. The Meaning of Character ShQ shows us by its composition the name that it denotes ‘the pencil speaking,’ and Sha King. hence it is often used as a designation of the written characters of the language. This, indeed, was the earliest meaning of it, but from this the transition was easy to its employment in the sense of writings or books, applicable to any consecutive compositions; and we find it further specially employed by Confucius and others to designate the historical remains of antiquity, in distinction from the poems, the accounts of rites, and other monuments of former times. Not that those other monuments might not also be called by the general name of Shi. The peculiar significancy of the term, however, was well established, and is retained to the present day. The book has come down to us in a mutilated condition ; but even as it is said to have existed in the time of Confucius, it did not profess to contain a history of China, and much less, to give the annals of that history. It was simply a collection of historical memorials, extending over a space of about 1700 years, but on no connected method, and with frequent and great gaps between them. (1) 4 B a 2 THE SHO KING. The name King (now in Pekinese King) was not added to Sha till the time of the Han dynasty (began B.C. 202). If Confucius applied it to any of the classical works, it was to the classic of Filial Piety, as will be seen in the Introduction to the translation of that work. The Han scholars, however, when engaged in collecting and digesting the ancient literary monuments of their country, found it convenient to distinguish the most valuable of them, that had been acknowledged by Confucius, as King, meaning what was canonical and of unchallengeable authority. 2. In the Confucian Analects, the sage and one of his disciples quote from the Sha by the simple formula— The Shi was The Sha says. In the Great Learning, four anexisting different books or chapters of the classic, collection of all in it as we have it now, are mentioned, before each by its proper name. Mencius sometimes Confucius. uses the same formula as Confucius, and at other times designates particular books. It is most natural for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the Sha, had in his mind’s eye a collection of documents bearing that title.
3Mencius sometimes Confucius. uses the same formula as Confucius, and at other times designates particular books. It is most natural for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the Sha, had in his mind’s eye a collection of documents bearing that title. One passage in Mencius seems to put it beyond a doubt that the Shad existed as such a collection in his time. Having said that ‘it would be better to be without the Shd than to give entire credit to it,’ he-makes immediate reference to one of the books of our classic by name, and adds, ‘In the Completion of the War I select two or three passages only, and believe them?’ In Mo-jze, Hsiingze, and other writers of the last two centuries of the Kau dynasty, the Sha is quoted in the same way, and also frequently with the specification of its parts or larger divisions, — ‘The Books of Yii,’ ‘ of Hsia,’ ‘of Shang,’ ‘of Kau.’ And, in fine, in many of the narratives of 30 X%it-ming’s commentary on the Spring and Autumn, the Sha is quoted in the same way, even when the narratives are about men and events long anterior to the sage”. All these consi- 3 Mencius, VII, ii, ch. 3. ® The first quotation of the Shf in 8o is under the sixth year of duke Yin, B.C. 717. INTRODUCTION. 3 derations establish the thesis of this paragraph, that the ShQ was an existing collection of historical documents before Confucius. 3. From the above paragraph it follows that Confucius did not compile the collection of documents that form the Confucius did 2O- The earliest assertion that he did so we not compile have from Khung An-kwo, his descendant in the Shi The the eleventh generation, in the second century, documents in B.C. Recounting the labours of his ancestor, The his time. An-kwo says, in the Preface to his edition of ascribed to the Sha, that ‘he examined and arranged the him. : ° 3: old literary monuments and records, deciding to commence with Y4o and Shun, and to come down to the times of X4u. Of those deserving to be handed down to other ages and to supply permanent lessons, he made in all one hundred books, consisting of canons, counsels, instructions, announcements, speeches, and charges. The same thing is stated by Sze-ma Khien in his Historical Records, completed about B.C. 100, but Kdien’s information was derived from An-kwo. Such a compilation would have been in harmony with the character which Confucius gave of himself, as ‘a transmitter and not a maker, believing and loving the ancients!) and with what his grandson says of him in the Doctrine of the Mean, that ‘he handed down (the lessons of) Yao and Shun, as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed those of Wan and Wai, whom he took for his model?”
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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