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that this ancient work underwent in his hands can not now be ascertained." One of his commentators gives the following description of the manner in which he used his materials:

"He examined and arranged the grand monuments and records, deciding to commence with Yaou and Shun, and to come down to the times of Chan. When there was perplexity and confusion he removed them. Expressions frothy and unallowable he cut away. What embraced great principles he retained and developed. What were more minute, and yet of importance, he carefully selected. 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.'

How much, therefore, in this venerable work are the genuine remains of remote antiquity, and how much originated with the compiler, we can not know. That the materials which came to his hand were more or less modified by him, is apparent. The' whole cast of the work shows its author to have been more of a philosopher than historian. In reading these fragments in their translation, one can not but exclaim, How very different from the writ

* Chin. Classics, vol. iii. prol. p. 4.

ings of Herodotus, who wrote at nearly the same time!

There is another fact of some importance. Whatever the Shu-king may have been originally, as to faithfully transmitting the early history and chronology of that nation, we now have that work only in mutilated form; and the mutilation is so extensive, and of such a character, as seriously to impair its authority in every particular. All readers of Chinese history are familiar with the burning of the books by the Emperor Chi Hoang-ti, B. C. 213, famed also as being the builder of the Great Wall:

"The vanity of this monarch led him to endeavor to destroy all records written anterior to his own reign, that he might be by posterity regarded as the first emperor of the Chinese race. Orders were issued that every book should be burned, and especially the writings of Confucius and Mencius upon the feudal states of Chan, whose remembrance he wished to blot out. This strange command was executed to such an extent that many of the Chinese literati believe that not a perfect copy of the clas sical works escaped destruction, and the texts were only recovered by rewriting them from the memories of old scholars a mode of reproduction that does not appear so singular to a Chinese as it does to us. destruction was, no doubt, as nearly complete as possible; and not only were many works entirely destroyed, but a

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shade of doubt thereby thrown over the accuracy of others, and the records of the ancient dynasties rendered suspicious as well as incomplete. Not only were the books sought after to be destroyed, but nearly five hundred literati were buried alive, in order that no one might remain to reproach, in their writings, the first emperor with having committed so barbarous and insane an act."

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As to the mode in which the Shu-king was recovered, accounts somewhat differ.. One story is, that about thirty-seven years after the burning, some twenty-eight or twenty-nine chapters were partially restored from the memory of Fuh-Shang, a man then ninety years old. When the Ch'aou Ts'o, or imperial messenger, went to him, Fuh-Shang, being so aged, was unable to speak plainly, and made use of a daughter to repeat what he said; and her dialect being different from Ts'o's, he lost two or three in every ten words, supplying them, as he best could, according to his conception of the meaning. This account, as being more marvelous, has become the accepted history of the manner in which, so many books of the Shu were recovered.

Another story relates that, when the orders were issued for the destruction of the books, the old man. hid his copy in a wall. During the struggle that

* Williams's Mid. Kingdom, vol. ii. pp. 212, 213.

ensued, he was a fugitive in various parts; but when the rule of the Han was established, he went to look for his treasure, but many of the tablets had perished. He recovered only twenty-nine of the books. Forthwith he commenced teaching, making these the basis of his instructions, and from all parts of Shan-tung scholars resorted to him, and sat at his feet.

In all this time no copy had reached the court. The Emperor Wan (B. C. 178-156), after ineffectual attempts to find some scholar who could reproduce it, heard at last of Fuh-Shang, and sent to call him. Fuh was then more than ninety years old, and could not travel, and an officer called Ch'aou Ts'o was sent to receive from him what he had of the Shu. These books appear to have been transcribed in the new form of character introduced under the Tsin dynasty, as they were designated ever after the modern text."

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About forty years later, i. e., seventy-three after the burning, another mutilated copy of the Shu was discovered in the ruined house of Confucius, by one of his descendants. In this copy were found the twenty-nine books already recovered, and some twenty-five or thirty more, making in all fifty-eight of the one hundred of which the work originally consisted.

We' come, then, to the conclusion that there is nothing in the literature or antiquities of China which contravenes or is inconsistent with the Mosaic history. Its most venerable classics, even conceding their genuineness in their present form, afford us no reliable chronology prior to the Chan dynasty (B. C. 1121). Their highest historical date, from which the cycle of sixty is reputed to be reckoned, is B. C. 2637, which is more than five hundred *years subsequent to the flood of Noah, according to the Septuagint chronology. Fuh-hi himself lived only B. C. 2852. (Williams.) We have shown, besides, that exactness of dates in that earlier period can not be affirmed, since neither the Chinese calendar nor the cycle of sixty, which are professedly "the elements of Chinese chronology," can be relied

on as accurate.

Dr. Legge's conclusion on this subject is as follows: "The accession of Yu, the first sovereign of the nation, was probably at some time in the ninėteenth century before Christ; and previous to him there were the chiefs Shun and Yaou. Twenty centuries before our era, the Chinese nation appears beginning to be. To attempt to carry its early history to a higher antiquity is without any historical justification. There may have been such personages as Chinese writers talk of under the appella

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