Ku Hsi, whose own standard work on the Shih appeared in A.D. 1178,
declined to express himself positively on the expurgation of the odes,
but summed up his view of what Confucius did for them in the following
words:--'Royal methods had ceased, and poems were no more collected.
Those which were extant were full of errors, and wanting in arrangement.
When Confucius returned from Wei to Lu, he brought with him the odes
that he had gotten in other states, and digested them, along with those
that were to be found in Lu, into a collection Of 300 pieces.'

View of the author.

I have not been able to find evidence sustaining these representations,
and must adopt the view that, before the birth of Confucius, the Book of
Poetry existed, substantially the same as it was at his death, and that
while he may have somewhat altered the arrangement of its Books and
pieces, the service which he rendered to it was not that of compilation,
but the impulse to study it which he communicated to his disciples.

Groundlessness of Khien's statement.

2. If we place Khien's composition of the memoir of Confucius in B.C.
100, nearly four hundred years will have elapsed between the death of
the sage and any statement to the effect that he expurgated previously
existing poems, or compiled the. collection that we now have; and no
writer in the interval affirmed or implied any such things. The further
statement in the Sui Records about the Music-Master of Lu is also
without any earlier confirmation. But independently of these
considerations, there is ample evidence to prove, first, that the poems
current before Confucius were not by any means so numerous as Khien
says, and, secondly, that the collection of 300 pieces or thereabouts,