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CHAPTER I.

OF THE CHINESE CLASSICS GENE

SECTION I.

BOOKS INCLUDED UNDER THE NAME OF THE CHI

1. THE Books now recognized as of highe China are comprehended under the denomin five King," and "The four Shoo." The t textile origin, and signifies the warp threads their adjustment. An easy application of what is regular and insures regularity. As u ence to books, it indicates their authority on which they treat. "The five King" are the Works, containing the truth upon the highes the sages of China, and which should be rec all generations. The term shoo simply me books.

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2. The five King are:-the Yih, or, as it l The Book of Changes;" the Shoo, or Th torical Documents;" the She, or "The Bool the Le Ke, or "Record of Rites ;" and the

Spring and Autumn," a chronicle of eve From B.C. 721 to 480. The authorship, or com of all these works is loosely attributed to C nuch of the Le Ke is from later hands. ( Shoo, and the She, it is only in the first additions said to be from the philosopher hape of appendixes. The Ch'un Ts'ew is the

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Doctrine of the Mean," ascribed to K'ung Keih, the grand 1 of Confucius. He is the philosopher of it. The fourt ntains the works of Mencius.

3. This arrangement of the Classical Books, which is nmonly supposed to have originated with the scholars of Sung dynasty, is defective. The Great Learning and → Doctrine of the Mean are both found in the Record of tes, being the forty-second and thirty-first Books respectly of that compilation, according to the usual arrangent of it.

4. The oldest enumerations of the Classical Books specify ly the five King. The Yo Ke, or "Record of Music," the nains of which now form one of the Books in the Le Ke, s sometimes added to those, making with them the six ng. A division was also made into nine King, consisting the Yih, the She, the Shoo, the Chow Le, or "Ritual of Low," the E Le, or " Ceremonial Usages," the Le Ke, and › three annotated editions of the Ch'un Ts'ew, by Tsoew Ming, Kung-yang Kaou, and Kuh-lëang Ch'ih. In e famous compilation of the classical Books, undertaken order of T'ae-tsung, the second emperor of the T'ang nasty (B.c. 627-619), and which appeared in the reign of = successor, there are thirteen King; viz., the Yih, the e, the Shoo, the three editions of the Ch'un Ts'ew, the Ke, the Chow Le, the E Le, the Confucian Analects e Urh Ya, a sort of ancient dictionary, the Heaou King, "Classic of Filial Piety," and the works of Mencius. 5. A distinction, however, was made, as early as the nasty of the Western Han, in our first century, among Works thus comprehended under the same common name d Mencius, the Lun Yu, the Ta Heo, the Chung Yung d the Heaou King were spoken of as the seaou King, or

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