Xu Bozhen forced himself to remain calm. "Only three sentences were omitted. What is so unusual about that?"
Wang Yang gave an "Oh." "Then, by that reasoning, the Three Concordance Calendar quotes the 'Final Charge and Abundant Punishments Chapter' as saying, 'In the twelfth year, in the sixth month, on the gengwu day when the new moon appeared, the king commanded that the document "Abundant Punishments" be composed.' Yet those sixteen characters are absent from the current Old-Text Book of Documents. Presumably that is another perfectly unremarkable omission?"
Xu Bozhen was instantly at a loss for words.
A Confucian scholar in the audience suddenly cried out indignantly, "Perhaps the Book of Documents quoted in the Three Concordance Calendar was a fake!"
Wang Yang waved his fan and asked, "Do you know who wrote the Three Concordance Calendar?"
The scholar could not answer. Another scholar rose and said in a hostile tone, "Liu Xin of the Western Han. What of it?"
"Liu Xin and his father, Liu Xiang, jointly collated the books held in the Imperial Library. The Separate Records, the catalog they compiled, explicitly recorded 'fifty-eight chapters of the Book of Documents.' That was the genuine Old-Text Book of Documents! Liu Xin also vigorously advocated establishing an official academic chair for the Old-Text Book of Documents! He was a great scholar of the Western Han. Are you saying the version he saw was wrong, while Mei Ze's version, appearing three hundred years later, was right?"
Having said this, Wang Yang turned to Shen Linshi. "You just said, sir, that 'a later work is insufficient as evidence.' Then let me ask you: between the Book of Documents Liu Xin saw and the one Mei Ze saw, which came later?"
Shen Linshi stood tongue-tied, unable to find a word in reply!
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