during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In the editions of the Five
Ching published by them, only the names of the Doctrine of the
Mean and the Great Learning were preserved. No text of these
Books was given, and Hsi-ho tells us that in the reign of Chia-
ching [1], the most flourishing period of the Ming dynasty (A.D.
1522-1566), when Wang Wan-ch'ang [2] published a copy of the
Great Learning, taken from the T'ang edition of the Thirteen
Ching, all the officers and scholars looked at one another in
astonishment, and were inclined to supposed that the Work was a
forgery. Besides adopting the reading of sin for ch'in from the
Ch'ang, and modifying their arrangements of the text, Chu Hsi
made other innovations. He first divided the whole into one
chapter of Classical text, which he assigned to Confucius, and
then chapters of Commentary, which he assigned to the disciple
Tsang. Previous to him, the whole had been published, indeed,
without any specification of chapters and paragraphs. He
undertook, moreover, to supply one whole chapter, which he
supposed, after his master Ch'ang, to be missing.
Since the time of Chu Hsi, many scholars have exercised
their wit on the Great Learning. The work of Mao Hsi-ho contains
four arrangements of the text, proposed respectively by the
scholars Wang Lu-chai [3], Chi P'ang-shan [4], Kao Ching-yi [5],
and Ko Ch'i-chan [6]. The curious student may examine them here.
Under the present dynasty, the tendency has been to
depreciate the labors of Chu Hsi. The integrity of the text of
Chang Hsuan is zealously maintained, and the simpler method of
interpretation employed by him is advocated in preference to the
more refined and ingenious schemes of the Sung scholars. I have
referred several times in the notes to a Work published a few
years ago, under the title of 'The Old Text of the sacred Ching,