Classics which were supposed to have been collected and digested
by him. They were in a more dilapidated condition at the time of
the revivial of the ancient literature under the Han dynasty, and
were then published in three collections, only one of which -- the
Record of Rites -- retains its place among the five Ching.
The Record of Rites consists, according to the ordinary
arrangement, of forty-nine Chapters or Books. Liu Hsiang (see ch.
I. sect. II. 2) took the lead in its formation, and was followed by
the two famous scholars, Tai Teh [1], and his relative, Tai Shang
[2]. The first of these reduced upwards of 200 chapters, collected
by Hsiang, to eighty-nine, and Shang reduced these again to forty-
six. The three other Books were added in the second century of our
era, the Great Learning being one of them, by Ma Yung, mentioned
in the last chapter, section III.2. Since his time, the Work has not
received any further additions.
2. In his note appended to what he calls the chapter of
'Classical Text,' Chu Hsi says that the tablets of the 'old copies'
of the rest of the Great Learning were considerably out of order.
By those old copies, he intends the Work of Chang Hsuan, who
published his commentary on the Classic, soon after it was
completed by the additions of Ma Yung; and t is possible that the
tablets were in confusion, and had not been arranged with
sufficient care; but such a thing does not appear to have been
suspected until the

1 À¹¼w
2 À¹¸t Shang was a second cousin of Teh.


twelfth century, nor can any evidence from ancient monuments be