it was the first to receive the denomination of a King, —
and that from the lips of the sage himself, — if the account
which we have received of the matter is to be relied on.
This little work does not come to us, like the Khxxn Khixx,
as directly from the pencil of Confucius, but in the shape of
conversations between him and his disciple 3ang-jze, put
on record in the first place, probably, by some members of
3ang's school. No portion of the ancient literature has
more exercised the minds and engaged the attention of
many of the emperors of successive dynasties. The Hsiao
seems to me an attempt to construct a religion on the
basis of the cardinal virtue of Filial Piety, and is open
to criticism in many respects. A translation of it is given
in the present volume.
The classical books are often spoken of as being 'the
five King' and 'the four Shu.' The King have all been
separately referred to above; the four Shu is an abbrevia-
tion for the Shu or Books of the four Philosophers. The
first is the Lun Yii, or 'Discourses and Conversations,'
occupied chiefly with sayings of Confucius and conversations
between him and many of his disciples. The second is the
Works of Mencius, perhaps the greatest thinker and writer
of the Confucian school after the Master. I hope to be
able to give both these works. The third of the Shu is
the Ta Hsio, or 'Great Learning,' ascribed, like the Hsiao,
to 3a"g-jze. The fourth is the ^ung Yung, or ' Doctrine
of the Mean,' the production of 3ze-sze, the sage^s grandson.
Both of these treatises, however, are taken from the Li K\.
The whole of the Four Books were translated and published
by me in 1861.
PREFACE. XXI
III. The third Religion in China is what is called Taoism.
It was, like Confucianism, of native origin, and its acknow-
ledged founder was Li R, called also Li Po-yang, and, after
his death, Li Tan. More commonly he is designated Lao-
jze, translated by some ' the Old Philosopher,' and by
others ' the Old Boy' from a fabulous story that his mother
carried him in her womb for seventy-two years, so that
when he was at length cut out of it, his hair was already
white. His birth is referred to the year 604 B. C, so that
he was between fifty and sixty years older than Confu-
cius. There are accounts, hardly reliable, of interviews and
discussions between the two men.
Lao-jze^s system often goes with English writers by the
name of Rationalism ; but if that name be retained, the
term must be taken in quite a peculiar sense. His doc-
trine was that of the Tao, but it is not easy to determine
what English term will best express the meaning of the
Chinese character. The only record which we have of
Lao-jze's views is the Tao-teh King, or ' Classic of Tao
and Virtue,' a treatise of no great length. It was published
at Paris in 1842, with a translation in French, by the late
Stanislas Julien, under the title of ' Le Livre de la Voie
et de la Vertu.' Appealing to the views of i^Twang-jze and
other writers of the Taoist school, M. Julien says that ' Le
Tao est depourvu d'action, de pensee, de jugement, d'intel-
ligence,' and adds that ' it appears impossible therefore to
take it for the primordial reason, the Sublime Intel-
ligence, which created and rules the world.'
A translation in English was published, in 1868, by
the Rev. Dr. Chalmers of Canton, under the title of ' the
Speculations in Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality, of " the
Old Philosopher." ' Dr. Chalmers retains the term Tao
in his English Text, and says, ' I have thought it better
to leave the word Tao untranslated, both because it has
given the name to the sect, — the Taoists, — and because no
English word is its exact equivalent. Three terms suggest
themselves, — the Way, Reason, and the Word ; but they
are all liable to objection. Were we guided by etymology,
" the Way" would come nearest to the original, and in one
XXIV PREFACE.
lators. Could it be that my own view of Ti, as meaning
God, had grown up in the heat of our controversies in
China as to the proper characters to be used for the words
God and Spirit, in translating the Sacred Scriptures?
A reader, confronted everywhere by the word God, might
be led to think more highly of the primitive religion of
China than he ought to think. Should I leave the names
Ti and Shang Ti untranslated ? Or should I give for
them, instead of God, the terms Ruler and Supreme
Ruler? I could not see my way to adopt either of these
courses.
The term Heaven (yC^, pronounced Thien) is used
everywhere in the Chinese Classics for the Supreme Power,
ruling and governing all the affairs of men with an omni-
potent and omniscient righteousness and goodness ; and
this vague term is constantly interchanged in the same
paragraph, not to say the same sentence, with the personal
names Ti and Shang Ti. Thien and Ti in their written
forms are perfectly distinct. Both of them were among
the earliest characters, and enter, though not largely, as
the phonetical element into other characters of later for-
mation. According to the oldest Chinese dictionary, the
Shwo Wan (a. d. ioo), Thien is formed, ' by association of
ideas,' from yi ( — •), 'one,' and ta (y^), 'great,' meaning —
what is one and undivided, and great. Tai Thung, of our
thirteenth century, in his remarkable dictionary, the Liu
Shu Ku, explains the top line of it as indicating 'what
is above,' so that the significance of the character is ' what
is above and great.' In both these dictionaries Ti (ffj) is
derived from -L- or -^ (shang), 'above,' or 'what is
above : ' and they say that the whole character is of pho-
netical formation, in which I am not able to follow them^;
* It is said in the Shwo Wan that the phonetical element in Ti is y(\.; but
this is pronounced 3hze. Neither in form nor sound is there any similitude
between it and Ti. An error, probably, has crept into the text. Dr. Chalmers,
in his treatise on ' the Origin of the Chinese,' attempts (p. 1 2) to analyse the
character into its constituent parts in the following way : — ' The peculiar nature
of the Chinese written language has done good service in stereotyping the primi-
PREFACE. XXV
but Tai Thung gives the following account of its mean-
ing : — 'Ti is the honourable designation of lordship and
rule,' adding, 'Therefore Heaven is called Shang Ti ; the
five Elementary Powers are called the five Ti ; and the
Son of Heaven ^ — that is, the Sovereign — is called Ti.'
Here then is the name Heaven, by which the idea of
Supreme Power in the absolute is vaguely expressed ; and
when the Chinese would speak of it by a personal name,
they use the terms Ti and Shang Ti ; — saying, I believe,
what our early fathers did, when they began to use the
word God. Ti is the name which has been employed in
China for this concept for fully 5000 years. Our word
God fits naturally into every passage where the character
occurs in the old Chinese Classics, save those to which I
referred above on p. xxiii. It never became with the people
a proper name like the Zeus of the Greeks. I can no
more translate Ti or Shang Ti by any other word but God
than I can translate ^•an {/\^) by anything else but man.
The preceding is a brief abstract of the reasoning by
which I was determined to retain the term God for Ti and
Shang Ti in this volume, excepting in the cases that have
called for these observations. But in the account of Ti
which I have adduced from Tai Thung, it is said that 'the
sovereign is also called Ti ;' and most of my readers know
that Hwang Ti (^^ ^*) is the title of the emperor of
China. How did this application of the name arise ? Was
it in the first place a designation of the ruler or emperor ;
and was it then given to the Supreme Power, when the
vague Heaven failed to satisfy the thinker and worshipper,
tive belief in one Supreme Ti (^Rp j, who is ~7r* "great," over, and »
" ruling," heaven ( ' ^ = > — » ) and earth (| | ). ' This is ingenious, but not
entirely satisfactory. The three last steps are so ; but the finding ~^
(great) in the top part of ^fr does not in the same way carry conviction to
the mind.
' Thien 3ze, ' the Son of Heaven,' is a common designation of the sovereign
of China. Originally 3^^ performed in the expression the part of a verb, and
Thien 3ze was equivalent to 'he whom Heaven sons,' that is, considers and
treats as its son. See the second line of the ode, p. 318.
XXVI PREFACE.
and he wished to express his recognition of a personal
Being who was to himself his almighty ruler? If these
questions be answered in the afifirmative, Ti would be a
name applied to the Supreme Being, just as we rise from
the paternal relation among ourselves and call him Father.
Or, on the other hand, was Ti the designation of the
Supreme Lord and Ruler, corresponding to our God, and
was it subsequently applied to the earthly ruler, thereby
deifying him, just as the title Divus was given to a Roman
emperor ? I believe that it was in this latter way that Ti
came to be used of the sovereigns of China ; and therefore
in again publishing a translation of the Shu, I resolved,
that where the appellation is given in it to Yao and Shun,
and it is only to them that it is given, I would retain
the Chinese term instead of rendering it, as formerly, by
' emperor.'
The following are the reasons which weighed with me in
coming to this resolution :
First, the first really historical sovereign of China who
used the title of Hwang Ti was the founder of the AV/in
dynasty ; and he assumed it in B. c. 221, when he had sub-
jugated all the sovereignties into which the feudal kingdom
of KsLU had become divided, and was instituting the
despotic empire that has since subsisted.
The Kau dynasty had continued for 867 years, from
B.C. 1 1 22 to 256, and its rulers had been styled Wang or
kings.
Kau superseded the dynasty of Shang or Yin, that had
endured for 644 years, from B.C. 1766 to 1123; and its
rulers had similarly been styled Wang or kings.
Shang superseded the dynasty of Hsia, which had lasted
for 439 years, from B.C. 2205 to 1767, and its rulers had
been styled Wang, or kings, and Hau, or sovereigns.
Thus, from the great Yu, B.C. 2205 to B.C. 221, that is,
for nearly 2000 years, there was no Ti or emperor in
China. During all that time the people had on the whole
been increasing in numbers, and the nation growing in
territory ; — how did it come to pass, that the higher title, if
it had previously existed, gave place to an inferior one ?
PREFACE, XXVIl
Prior to the dynasty of Hsia, with the exception of the
period of Yao and Shun, the accounts which we have of the
history of China have been, and ought to be, pronounced
' fabulous ' and ' legendary.' The oldest documents that
purport to be historical are the books in the Shu about
Yao and Shun, and even they do not profess to be con-
temporaneous with those personages. The earlier accounts
open with a Phan-ku, in whose time ' heaven and earth
were first separated.' To him succeeded the period of the
San Hwang, or Three August Lines, consisting of twelve
Celestial, eleven Terrestrial, and nine Human Sovereigns,
who ruled together about 50,000 years. After them come a
host of different Lines, till we arrive at the W u T i, or Five
Emperors. The first of these is commonly said to be Fu-
hsi, while he and two others are sometimes put down as
the San Hwang, in order to bring in Yao and Shun as the
last two of the Tis.
I have entered into these details because of the account
which we have of the king of A'/zin's assuming the title of
Hwang Ti. We are told: — 'As soon as the king had
brought the whole countr}^ into subjection, thinking that he
united in himself the virtues of the three Hwangs, and that
his merits exceeded those of the five Tis, he changed his
title into Hwang Ti.' The three Hwangs are entirely fabu-
lous, and the five Tis are, to say the least, legendary.
That there were either Hwangs or Tis ruling in China
before the age of the Hsia dynasty cannot be admitted.
Second, it has been stated above, and is shown in the
Litroduction to the Shu, pp. 13-19, that the books in the
Shu, previous to the Hsia dynasty, are not historical in
the sense of their being contemporaneous documents of the
times about which they speak. They profess to be compi-
lations merely from older documents ; and when they
speak of Yao and Shun as Tis, the title T i precedes the
name or designation, instead of following it, as it ought to
do, according to Chinese usage, if Ti is to be taken in the
sense of emperor. Yao Ti would be 'the emperor Yao,'
but we have Ti Yao, where Ti performs the part of an
adjective. King Wan, the founder of the A'au dynasty, is
XXVlll PREFACE.
invariably mentioned as Wan Wang, ' Wan the king.' To
say Wang Wan would be felt at once by every Chinese
scholar to be inadmissible; and not less so is Ti Yao for
' the emperor Yao.' It was the perception of this violation
of usage in Chinese composition, five years ago, that first
showed me the error of translating Ti Yao and Ti Shun
by 'the emperor Yao' and 'the emperor Shun.' It is true
that in the early books of the Shu, we have Ti used alone,
without the adjunct of Yao or Shun, and referring to those
personages. In those cases it does perform the part of a
substantive, but its meaning depends on that which be-
longed to it as an adjective in the phrases Ti Yao and Ti
Shun. If it be ascertained that in these it means 'the
Deified,' then when used singly as a noun, it will mean
Divus, or the Divine One.
Third, the sovereigns of the Hsia, the Shang, and the
K^.\\ dynasties, it has been seen, were styled Wang and
not Ti. Confucius speaks repeatedly in the Analects of
Yao and Shun, but he never calls either of them by the
title of Ti. Mencius, however, uses it both of the one and
the other, when he is quoting in substance from the
accounts of them in the Shu. This confirms the view that
the early books of the Shu were current after the middle of
the TTau dynasty, very much in the form in which we now
have them ; and the question arises whether we can show
how the application of the title T i as given in them to Yao
and Shun arose. We can.
The fourth Book of the Li K\ is called Yiieh Ling,
' the Monthly Record of the Proceedings of Government.'
In it certain sacrificial observances paid to the five Tis are
distributed through the four seasons. The Tis are Fii-hsi,
Shan-nang, Yu-hsiung or Hsien-yiian, inn-thien, and Kao-
yang, who are styled Thai Hao (the Greatly Resplendent),
Yen Ti (the Blazing Ti), Hwang Ti (the Yellow Ti), Shao
Hao (the Less Resplendent), and /Twan Hsii (the Solely
Correct) ; with each Ti there is associated in the ceremony
a personage of inferior rank, who is styled Shan (|El=a
Spirit). The language descriptive of the ceremony is the
same in all the caseSj with the exception of the names and
PREFACE. XXIX
months. Thus the first entry is : — ' In the first month of
spring, on such and such days, the Ti is Thai Hao, and the
Shan is Kau-mang.' Now this Kau-mang was a son of
Shao Hao, several hundreds of years later than Thai Hao,
so that the associating them together in this ceremony
could only have arisen in later times.
However we explain the ceremony thus curtly described ;
whether we see in it the growing prevalence of nature-
worship, 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 KJikw (^^=ra subject or
minister) stands in to a ruler. Thus it was that, by a process
of deification, the title of Ti came to be given, in the time
of the Kkn dynasty, to the great names, fabulous and
legendary, of antiquity ; and thus it was that it was applied
to the heroes Yao 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 Yao and Shun, I could no longer render it, when
used of them in the Shu, by emperor, and elected to leave
it untranslated in the present volume.
To any unimportant changes of translation it is unneces-
sary 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 Pe-
king, 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 Tzu 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 em-
ployed were made to conform to those in Professor Max
Mijller's Scheme for the Transliteration of Oriental Alpha-
bets. 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 r and ze must be heard before they can be
appreciated.
To call the attention of the reader to passages in the
Shu, embodying, more or less distinctly, religious ideas, an
asterisk (*) will be found appended to them.
J.L.
Oxford,
1 8th April, 1879.
THE SHU KING
OR
BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.
THE SHU KING
OR
BOOK OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Chapter I.
The Nature and History of the Shu.
I. The Shu is the most ancient of the Chinese classical
books, and contains historical documents of various kinds,
relating to the period from about B.C. 2357-637. The
j^ . r character Shu shows us by its composition
the name that it denotes ' the pencil speaking/ and
^"^' 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, applica-
ble 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 Shu. 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 Confu-
cius, 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.
[I] B
THE SHU KING.
The name King (now in Pekinese A'ing) was not added
to Shu 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 Intro-
duction 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 con-
venient 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 Shu by the simple formula —
^, ^, , ' The Shu says.' In the Great Learning, four
TheShiiwas -^ ^ , , .
an existing different books or chapters of the classic,
^d^cuments ^^^ ^" ^^ ^^ ^^^ have it now, are mentioned,
before each by its proper name. Mencius sometimes
Confucius. ,i r 1 r^ c • j a.
uses the same iormula as Coniucius, and at
other times designates particular books. It is most natural
for us to suppose that Confucius, when he spoke of the
Shu, 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 Shu existed as such a collection in his time.
Having said that ' it would be better to be without the
Shu 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, Hsiin-
jze, and other writers of the last two centuries of the ^au
dynasty, the Shu is quoted in the same way, and also fre-
quently with the specification of its parts or larger divisions, —
' The Books of Yu,' ' of Hsia,' ' of Shang,' ' of A^au.' And,
in fine, in many of the narratives of 3o /^/nu-ming's com-
mentary on the Spring and Autumn, the Shu is quoted in
the same way, even when the narratives are about men
and events long anterior to the sage^. All these consi-
* Mencius, VII, ii, ch. 3.
'^ The first quotation of the Shu in 3° is under the sixth year of duke Yin,
B.C. 717.
INTRODUCTION.
derations establish the thesis of this paragraph, that the
Shu 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
Shu. The earliest assertion that he did so we
Confucius did « , ^ ■1 j . •
not compile havc from Khung An-kwo, his descendant m
the Shu. The ^j^^ eleventh generation, in the second century,
number oi .
documents in B. C. Recounting the labours of his ancestor,
The Prefai^' An-kwo says, in the Preface to his edition of
ascribed to the Shu, that ' he examined and arranged the
old literary monuments and records, deciding
to commence with Yao and Shun, and to come down to
the times of A'au. 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 K/iien in his Histo-
rical Records, completed about B.C. loo, but AVnen's
information was derived from An-kwo. Such a compila-
tion 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 V 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 Wu, whom he took for his model ^.'
We have seen, however, that the collection existed in
his time and before it. Did it then, as An-kwo says,
consist of a hundred books ? His authority for saying so
was a Preface, which was found along with the old tablets
of the Shu that were discovered in his time and deciphered
by him, as will be related farther on. He does not say, how-
ever, that it was the work of Confucius, though K/nen does.
It still exists, — a list of eighty-one documents in a hun-
dred books. The prevailing opinion of scholars in China
is now, that it was not written by the sage. I entirely
1 Analects, VII, i. '^ The Doctrine of the Mean, XXX, i.
B 2
4 THE SHtj KING.
agree myself with the judgment of ^hki Khd^rv, the disciple
of K\X Hsi, whose Collected Comments, first published
A. D. I2IO, are now the standard of orthodoxy in the in-
terpretation of the Shu. He says of the document : ' It
sheds light on nothing, and there are things in it at vari-
ance with the text of the classic. On the books that are
lost it is specially servile and brief, affording us not the
slightest help. That it is not the work of Confucius is
exceedingly plain.'
The eighty-one documents mentioned in it, and more,
may have been in the Shu of the time of Confucius.
I think, however, that several of them must have been
lost subsequently, before the rise of the^yrant of Kh'm,