This book of the Master's Sayings is believed by the Chinese to have been written by the disciples of Confucius. But there is nothing to prove this, and some passages in the book point the other way. Book viii speaks of the death of Tseng-tzu, who did not die till 437 B.C., forty-two years after the Master. The chief authority for the text as it stands to-day is a manuscript found in the house of Confucius in 150 B.C., hidden there, in all likelihood, between the years 213 and 211 B.C., when the reigning emperor was seeking to destroy every copy of the classics. We find no earlier reference to the book under its present name. But Mencius (372-289 B.C.) quotes seven passages from it, in language all but identical with the present text, as the words of Confucius. No man ever talked the language of these sayings. Such pith and smoothness is only reached by a long process of rounding and polishing. We shall probably come no nearer to the truth than Legge's conclusion that the book was put together by the pupils of the disciples of Confucius, from the words and notebooks of their masters, about the year 400 B.C.