174
The Shwoh Wan, or Etymologic.m.
APRIL;
as Lá Yúng-ping; so that but for Sú Hiven and his younger brother Sú Kiái, who revised and improved this book, it would have been gradually corrupted and rendered spurious.
Now upon an exainination of the two works, that of the elder brother is found to be the most concise and terse, yet it is sometimes too servile and not free from vulgarisms; that of the younger brother is the most luminous, though many of his expressions are too refined and the style too diffuse. Moreover, the two differ in this, that sometimes where the one is diffuse, the other is concise; or it may be that what is in the one is not in the other; or it may be that a radical has been changed from one place to another, or that an explana- tion is wholly wanting. All these additions and changes I suspect are the work of later writers, or the errors of the copyists and publishers, so that the two original books we now possess, are not the identical old ones prepared by the two brothers. In laboring on the Etymologicon, though each had his favorite study, yet both occasionally were too concise or too diffuse. The elder brother Hiuen, having completed his book subsequently to the other, quoted many explanations from Kiái's work, and as the latter quoted from the classics, Hiuen sometimes seems to have mistaken these for the comments of Hü Shin. In the department of sounds also, as they are indicated by the two brothers, the younger greatly excels the elder. Accordingly the student ought to have recourse to the work of Kiái, “in order to perceive how the forms and sounds of words are derived, and how their sound and sense mu- tually affect each other, so that by these means he may comprehend the five arts, and all the various kinds of historical writings, in the finest style and pro- foundest signification," and thus be able to search out and evolve their true origin.
Now it appears that this original work of Kiái has been very much muti- lated; and although numerous quotations from it, in the Tonic Collection of duke Wáng Cháu, can be adduced as evidence [of its genuineuess], yet this Tonic Collection in its turn has also been subjected to additions and emen- dations by Hiung Chung. For example, in his arrangement of the characters by the sounds, sometimes the same character is quoted from both the brothers, and sometimes an explanation from Kiai is twice given, differing by being in one case concise and in the other diffuse. Consequently, when brought forward and compared with Kiái's book, the discrepancies and errors are found to be numerous.
Last year, the courtier Ki Shun-fú (Kí Tsiuentsáu) of Cháuyáng, a man of very extensive erudition and most thoroughly versed in classical literature, and exceedingly fond of this Etymologicon, was holding the office of literary chancellor in Kiángsú, when he obtained from his friend Kú Tsien-li an exact copy, an edition printed in the time of the Sung dynasty, and also a mutilated copy printed under the same dynasty from blocks in possession of Wang Sz'-tung. Besides these two, he also procured a copy of Kiái's Tonic edition, printed in the chuen character. Having perused these, he directed several literary gentlemen,-Li, Man, Wú, Ching, and biá, to examine the same and point out their errors and defects, and then to prepare a revised