{"collection":"Taoism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/tao/sbe39/sbe39004.htm","path":"tao/sbe39/sbe39004.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/tao/sbe39/sbe39004.htm","text":"I. 1. I will now state briefly, first, the grounds on which I accept the T\u00e2o Teh King as a genuine production of the age to which it has been assigned, and the truth of its authorship by L\u00e2o-dze to whom it has been ascribed. It would not have been necessary a few years ago to write as if these points could be called in question, but in 1886 Mr. Herbert A. Giles, of Her Majesty's Consular Service in China, and one of the ablest Chinese scholars living, vehemently called them in question in an article in the China Review for the months of March and April. His strictures have been replied to, and I am not going to revive here the controversy which they produced, but only to state a portion of the evidence which satisfies my own mind on the two points just mentioned.\n2. It has been said above that the year B. C. 604 was, probably, that of L\u00e2o-dze's birth. The year of his death is not recorded. Sze-m\u00e2 Khien, the first great Chinese historian,\n| The evidence of Sze-m\u00e2 Khien, the historian. | \nleading from China to the west. There he was recognised by the warden of the pass, Yin Hs\u00ee (often called Kwan Yin), himself a well-known T\u00e2oist, who insisted on his leaving him a writing before he went into seclusion. L\u00e2o-dze then wrote his views on 'The T\u00e2o and its Characteristics,' in two parts or sections, containing more than 5000 characters, gave the manuscript to the warden, and went his way 1; 'nor is it known where he died.' This account is strange enough, and we need not wonder that it was by and by embellished with many marvels. It contains, however, the definite statements that L\u00e2o-dze wrote the T\u00e2o Teh King in two parts, and consisting of more than 5000 characters. And that Khien was himself well acquainted with the treatise is apparent from his quotations from it, with, in almost every case, the specification of the author. He thus adduces part of the first chapter, and a large portion of the last chapter but one. His brief references also to L\u00e2o-dze and his writings are numerous.\n3. But between L\u00e2o-dze and Sze-m\u00e2 Khien there were many T\u00e2oist writers whose works remain. I may specify\n| Lieh-dze, Han Fei-dze, and other T\u00e2oist authors. | \nshows the book beneath his eyes. To show how numerous the quotations by Han Fei and Li\u00fb An are, let it be borne in mind that the T\u00e2o Teh King has come down to us as divided into eighty-one short chapters; and that the whole of it is shorter than the shortest of our Gospels. Of the eighty-one chapters, either the whole or portions of seventy-one are found in those two writers. There are other authors not so decidedly T\u00e2oistic, in whom we find quotations from the little book. These quotations are in general wonderfully correct. Various readings indeed there are; but if we were sure that the writers did trust to memory, their differences would only prove that copies of the text had been multiplied from the very first.\nIn passing on from quotations to the complete text, I will\n| Evidence of Pan K\u00fb | \n4. We go on from quotations to complete texts, and turn, first, to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han, as compiled by Li\u00fb Hsin, not later than the commencement of our Christian era. There are entered in it T\u00e2oist works by\n| Catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han. | \nour era began. Kwang-dze is in the same list in fifty-two books or sections, the greater part of which have happily escaped the devouring tooth of time.\nWe turn now to the twentieth chapter of Khien's Biographies, in which he gives an account of Yo \u00ce, the scion of a distinguished family, and who himself played a famous part, both as a politician and military leader, and became prince of Wang-k\u00fb under the kingdom of K\u00e2o in B. C. 279. Among his descendants was a Yo Kh\u00e4n, who learned in Kh\u00ee 'the words,' that is, the T\u00e2oistic writings 'of Hwang-T\u00ee and L\u00e2o-dze from an old man who lived on the Ho-side.' The origin of this old man was not known, but Yo Kh\u00e4n taught what he learned from him to a Mr. Ko, who again became preceptor to Zh\u00e2o Zhan, the chief minister of Kh\u00ee, and afterwards of the new dynasty of Han, dying in B.C. 190.\n5. Referring now to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of the dynasty of Sui (A. D. 589-6 18), we find that\n| The catalogue of the Sui dynasty. | \nthe text of L\u00e2o I have spoken, was an uncle of the emperor W\u00e4n. To the emperor King (B.C. 156-143), the son of W\u00e4n, there is attributed the designation of L\u00e2o's treatise as a King, a work of standard authority. At the beginning of his reign, we are told, some one was commending to him four works, among which were those of L\u00e2o-dze and Kwang-dze. Deeming that the work of Hwang-dze and L\u00e2o-dze was of a deeper character than the others, he ordered that it should be called a King, established a board for the study of T\u00e2oism, and issued an edict that the book should be learned and recited at court, and throughout the country 1. Thenceforth it was so styled. We find Hwang-f\u00fb M\u00ee (A.D. 215-282) referring to it as the T\u00e2o Teh King.\nThe second place in the Sui catalogue is given to the text and commentary of Wang P\u00ee or Wang F\u00fb-sze, an\n| The work of Wang P\u00ee. | \nI need not speak of editions or commentaries subsequent to Wang P\u00ee's. They soon begin to be many, and are only not so numerous as those of the Confucian Classics.\n6. All the editions of the book are divided into two\n| Divisions into parts, chapters; and number of characters in the text. | \nI referred already to the division of the whole into eighty-one short chapters (37 + 44), which is by common tradition attributed to Ho-shang Kung, or 'The old man of the Ho-side.' Another very early commentator, called Yen Zun or Yen K\u00fcn-phing, made a division into seventy-two chapters (40 + 32), under the influence, no doubt, of some\nmystical considerations. His predecessor, perhaps, had no better reason for his eighty-one; but the names of his chapters were, for the most part, happily chosen, and have been preserved. W\u00fb Kh\u00e4ng arranged the two parts in sixty-seven chapters (31 + 36). It is a mistake, however, to suppose, as even Mr. Wylie with all his general accuracy did 1, that W\u00fb 'curtails the ordinary text to some extent.' He does not curtail, but only re-arranges according to his fashion, uniting some of Ho-shang Kung's chapters in one, and sometimes altering the order of their clauses.\nSze-m\u00e2 Khien tells us that, as the treatise came from L\u00e2o-dze, it contained more than 5000 characters; that is, as one critic says, 'more than 5000 and fewer than 6000.' Ho-shang Kung's text has 5350, and one copy 5590; Wang P\u00ee's, 5683, and one copy 5610. Two other early texts have been counted, giving 5720 and 5635 characters respectively. The brevity arises from the terse conciseness of the style, owing mainly to the absence of the embellishment of particles, which forms so striking a peculiarity in the composition of Mencius and Kwang-dze.\nIn passing on to speak, secondly and more briefly, of the far more voluminous writings of Kwang-dze, I may say that I do not know of any other book of so ancient a date as the T\u00e2o Teh King, of which the authenticity of the origin and genuineness of the text can claim to be so well substantiated.\nII. 7. In the catalogue of the Han Library we have the entry of 'Kwang-dze in fifty-two books or sections.' By\n| The Books of Kwang-dze. | \nany fraud) into Kwo's hands, he altered and completed them as suited his own views, and then gave them to the public. In the short account of Kwo, given in the twentieth chapter of the Biographies of the Zin history, it is said that several tens of commentators had laboured unsatisfactorily on Kwang's writings before Hsiang Hsi\u00fb took them in hand. As the joint result of the labours of the two men, however, we have only thirty-three of the fifty-two sections mentioned in the Han catalogue. It is in vain that I have tried to discover how and when the other nineteen sections were lost. In one of the earliest commentaries on the T\u00e2o Teh King, that by Yen Zun, we have several quotations from Kwang-dze which bear evidently the stamp of his handiwork, and are not in the current Books; but they would not altogether make up a single section. We have only to be thankful that so large a proportion of the original work has been preserved. S\u00fb Shih (Dze-kan, and Tung-pho), it is well known, called in question the genuineness of Books 28 to 31 1. Books 15 and 16 have also been challenged, and a paragraph here and there in one or other of the Books. The various readings, according to a collation given by Zi\u00e2o Hung, are few.\n8. There can be no doubt that the Books of Kwang-dze were hailed by all the friends of T\u00e2oism. It has been\n| Importance to T\u00e2oism of the Books of Kwang-dze. | \nKhang, in the nineteenth chapter of the Biographies of Zin, we have a typical T\u00e2oist brought before us. When grown up, 'he loved L\u00e2o and Kwang;' and a visitor, to produce the most favourable impression on him, says, 'L\u00e2o-dze and Kwang K\u00e2u are my masters.'\n9. The thirty-three Books of Kwang-dze are divided into three Parts, called N\u00eai, or 'the Inner;' W\u00e2i, or 'the Outer;' and Z\u00e2, 'the Miscellaneous.' The first Part\n| Division of the Books into three Parts. | \n10. Kwang-dze's writings have long been current under the name of Nan Hwa Kin King. He was a native of\n| The general title of Kwang-dze's works. | \nbe styled 'The True Man of Nan-hwa,' and his Book, 'The True Book of Nan-hwa 1.' To be 'a True Man' is the highest T\u00e2oistic achievement of a man, and our author thus canonised communicates his glory to his Book.\n4:1 In the present district of Ling-p\u00e2o, Shan K\u00e2u, province of Ho-nan.\n5:1 In an ordinary Student's Manual I find a note with reference to this incident to which it may be worth while to give a place here:--The warden, it is said, set before L\u00e2o-dze a dish of tea; and this was the origin of the custom of tea-drinking between host and guest (see the , ch. 7, on Food and Drink).\n7:1 The earlier old man of the Ho-side is styled in Chinese ; the other ; but the designations have the same meaning. Some critical objections to the genuineness of the latter's commentary on the ground of the style are without foundation.\n8:1 See Zi\u00e2o Hung's Wings or Helps, ch. v, p. 11a.\n9:1 Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 173.\n10:1 A brother of Shih, S\u00fb K\u00eah (Dze-y\u00fb and Ying-pin), wrote a remarkable commentary on the T\u00e2o Teh King; but it was Shih who first discredited those four Books, in his Inscription for the temple of Kwang-dze, prepared in 1078.","title":"Texts of Taoism (SBE 39): Introduction: Chapter II: The T...","type":"page"}