The study of the novel Hung-lou Meng ( Red Chamber Dream or The Story of the Stone as translated by David Hawkes and John Minford) began in the late eighteenth century. Even before it was set for movable-type printing in 1791, there were a number of transcribed manuscripts in private circulation, on which hand-written marginal and inter-linear notes produced most probably by the relations or close friends of its author, Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in 曹雪芹(1724?-1763?) were found. These commentaries were almost exclusively made by a person styled hih-yen Chai 脂硯齋 (The Studio of Red Inkstone). 　　As the transcribed manuscript-copies of the novel were at first not available for the reading public, and as its 1791 edition was in fact a combination of the original unfinished work of 80 chapters and another 40 chapters penned, or partly fabricated, by Kao E 高鶚 (chin-shih 1721), the nature of the novel has become a source of speculation. During the early Republican Era, Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei 蔡元培 (1868-1940), following the suggestions of a number of Ch'ing scholars, maintaining that many of the descriptions of the novel are reflections of men-of-letters and courtiers or of episodes from their lives in the early Ch'ing. By induction, he came to the conclrsion that the novel is of a political nature. His view were refuted quite convincingly by Hu Shih 胡適 (1891-1962) and others who took a historical and pragmatist's view in this matter. It was Hu Shih who discovered much in detail the background of Ts'ao, a Han-Chinese Bannerman whose grandfather Ts'ao Yin 曹寅 (1658-1712) had been a faithful bond-servant of Emperor K'ang-hsi. However, in the mid-fifties, P'an Ch'ung-kuei 潘重規 echoed Ts'ai's ideas that the work was a political fiction, emphasizing the anti-Manchu sentiments hermeneutic in between the lines. 　　The present writer of this monograph believes that the existing antagonistic view of contemporary scholars may still be compromised, having taken a careful review into the situation. In this monograph he recognizes the facts that the novel does reveal in great length its intimacy with the Ts'ao family as well as is reflecting the customs and milieu of the time which were dominantly Manchu. He cites, however, several incidents from the first 80 chapters of the novel in which the anti-Manchu feelings are more than discernable. Studying also the shih-lu 實錄 (Veritable Records ), the memoir of Schall von Bell 湯若望, the Jesuit astronomer who served at the Ch'ing court, some records entered by a Zen Buddhist Master of the early Ch'ing who gad close relationship with the first Ch'ing emperor (Shun-chih) at Peking, and a diary found in the Songgye chip 松溪集 of Imp'yong Taegun 麟坪大君, a Korean envoy sent to Peking in 1656, the present writer's analysis has reached at an interesting observation that it is highly probable that there had existed an old version bearing some relationship to the amazing love affairs of the young Ch'ing emperor which Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in had made use of, among many other episodes, in reshaping and reconstructing it into a first-class creative work, camouflaging however, some of the gruesome material in the very early version in the couse of production and leaving inadvertently some clues which may not escape scrutiny.