The Chinese Classics — Prolegomena

This etext was prepared by Rick Davis of Ashigawa, Japan, with
assistance from David Steelman, Taiwan.
A note from the digitizer
This is a text file that can be read on any computer with any Chinese-capable word processor or text editor. If you have the Big 5 character set for Chinese installed, choosing that set from your font menu will display the Chinese characters properly. Even if Chinese is not installed on your computer, the English will be displayed properly, even though the Chinese will appear as garbage characters.
This digitized version preserves the original page breaks. The text of each page is followed by its footnotes. Note reference numbers in the text are enclosed in square brackets. In this text version, all diacriticals have been omitted.
In a few places I have substituted the character forms available in the Big 5 character set for rare or (what are now considered) nonstandard forms used by Legge. Characters not included in the Big 5 character set in any form are described by their constituent elements.
This file contains only the Prolegomena; the other parts of Legge's work are in separate files.
with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes
James Legge
1 五經. 2 四書. 3 易經. 4 書經. 5 詩經. 6 禮記. 7 春秋.
1 四子之書. 2 論語. 3 大學. 4 曾參. 5 中庸. 6 孔伋. 7 樂記. 8 周禮. 9 儀禮. 10 春秋三傳 11 左丘明. 12 公羊高. 13 穀梁赤. 14 爾雅. 15 孝經.
1 For the statements in the two last paragraphs, see 西河合集, 大學 證文, 卷一. 2 前漢書, 本志, 第十卷, 藝文志. 3 仲尼. 4 篇籍, slips and tablets of bamboo, which supplied in those days the place of paper. 5 世界孝武皇帝.