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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1into China did more than anything else to affect the development of the T4oistic system. As early as the time of Confucius there were recluses in the country, men who had withdrawn from the world, disgusted with its 1 See Mayers’s C. R. Manual, Part I, article 35. CH. V. INTRODUCTION, 43 vanities and in despair from its disorders. Lao would appear to have himself contemplated this course. When their representatives of our early centuries saw the Buddhists among them with their images, monasteries, and nunneries, their ritual and discipline, they proceeded to organise themselves after a similar fashion. They built monasteries and nunneries, framed images, composed liturgies, and adopted a peculiar mode of tying up their hair. The ‘Three Precious Ones’ of Buddhism, emblematic to the initiated of Intelligence personified in Buddha, the Law, and the Community or Church, but to the mass of the worshippers merely three great idols, styled by them Buddha Past, Present, and To Come: these appeared in Taoism as the ‘Three Pure Ones,’ also represented by three great images, each of which receives the title of ‘His Celestial Eminence,’ and is styled the ‘Most High God (Shang Ti). The first of them is a deification of Chaos, the second, of Lao-jze, and the third of I know not whom or what; perhaps of the Tao. But those Three Pure Ones have been very much cast into the shade, as the objects of popular worship and veneration, by Yi Hwang Ti or Yii Hwang Shang Ti. This personage appears to have been a member of the Kang clan, held to be a magician and venerated from the time of the Thang dynasty, but deified in 1116 by the Sung emperor Hui 3ung at the instigation of a charlatan Lin Ling-si, a renegade Buddhist monk. He is the god in the court of heaven to whom the spirits of the body and of the hearth in our treatise proceed at stated times to report for approval or condemnation the conduct of men. Since the first publication of the Kan Ying Phien, the tenets of Buddhism have been still further adopted by the teachers of T4oism, and shaped to suit the nature of their own system. I have observed that the idca of retribution in our treatise does not go beyond the present life; but the manifestoes of Taoism of more recent times are much occupied with descriptions of the courts of purgatory and threatenings of the everlasting misery of hell to those whom their sufferings in those courts 44 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. "CHL.
2"CHL. fail to wean from their wickedness. Those manifestoes are published by the mercy of Yii Hwang Shang Ti that men and women may be led to repent of their faults and make atonement for their crimes. They emanate from the temples of the tutelary deities! which are found throughout the empire, and especially in the walled cities, and are under the charge of Taoist monks. A visitor to one of the larger of these temples may not only see the pictures of the purgatorial courts and other forms of the modern superstitions, but he will find also astrologers, diviners, geomancers, physiognomists, et id genus omne, plying their trades or waiting to be asked to do so, and he will wonder how it has been possible to affiliate such things with the teachings of Lao-;ze. Other manifestoes of a milder form, and more like our tractate, are also continually being issued as from one or other of what are called the state gods, whose temples are all in the charge of the same monks. In the approximation which has thus been going on of Taoism to Buddhism, the requirement of celibacy was long resisted by the professors of the former; but recent editions of the Penal Code? contain sundry regulations framed to enforce celibacy, to bind the monks and nuns of both systems to the observance of the Confucian maxims concerning filial piety, and the sacrificial worship of the dead ; and also to restrict the multiplication of monasteries and nunneries. Neither Lao nor A wang was a celibate or recommended celibacy. The present patriarch, as a married man, would seem to be able still to resist the law. 1 Called KAing Hwang Mido, ‘ Wall and Moat Temples,’ Palladia of the city. 2 See Dr. Eitel’s third edition of his ‘Three Lectures on Buddhism,’ pp. 36-45 (Hongkong: Lane, Crawford & Co., 1884). The edition of the Penal Code to which he refers is of 1879. THE TAO TEH XING, OR THE TAO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS. a THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE. INTRODUCTION. Brier NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT Books. Book I. HsiAo-vAo Yo.
336-45 (Hongkong: Lane, Crawford & Co., 1884). The edition of the Penal Code to which he refers is of 1879. THE TAO TEH XING, OR THE TAO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS. a THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE. INTRODUCTION. Brier NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT Books. Book I. HsiAo-vAo Yo. The three characters which form the title of this Book have all of them the ideagram 7. (Ko), which: gives the idea, as the Shwo W4n explains it, of ‘now walking, now halting. We might render the title by ‘Sauntering or Rambling at Ease;’ but it is the untroubled enjoyment of the mind which the author has in view. And this enjoyment is secured by the Tao, though that character does not once occur in the Book. Awang-jze illustrates his thesis first by the cases of creatures, the largest and the smallest, showing that however different they may be in size, they should not pass judgment on one another, but may equally find their happiness in the Tao. From this he advances to men, and from the cases of Yung-jze and Lieh-jze proceeds to that of one who finds his enjoyment in himself, independent of every other being or instrumentality; and we have the three important definitions of the accomplished Taoist, as ‘the Perfect Man,’ ‘the Spirit-like Man,’ and ‘the Sagely Man.’ Those definitions are then illustrated ;—the third in Yao and Hsii Yd, and the second in the conversation between Kien Wd and Lien Sha. The description given in this conversation of the spiritlike man is very startling, and contains statements that are true only of Him who is a ‘ Spirit,’ ‘the Blessed and only Potentate,’ ‘Who covereth Himself with light as with a garment, Who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, =n = eee eee a em ee ae 128 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. BK. II. Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, Who maketh the clouds His chariot, Who walketh on the wings of the wind,’ ‘Who rideth on a cherub,’ ‘Who inhabiteth eternity. The most imaginative and metaphorical expressions in the T4o Teh Xing about the power of the possessor of the T4o are tame, compared with the language of our author. I call attention to it here,as he often uses the same extravagant style. There follows an illustration of ‘the Perfect Man, which is comparatively feeble, and part of it, so far as I can see, inappropriate, though Lin Hsi-Zung says that all other interpretations of the sentences are ridiculous. In the seventh and last paragraph we have two illustrations that nothing is really useless, if only used Téoistically.; ‘to the same effect, says 3i40 Hung, ‘as Confucius in the Analects, XVII, ii.’ They hang loosely, however, from what precedes. An old view of the Book was that Kwang-3ze intended himself by the great phang, ‘which,’ says LO Shd-Aih, ‘is wide of the mark.’ Book II. Kat WO Lun.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1into China did more than anything else to affect the development of the T4oistic system. As early as the time of Confucius there were recluses in the country, men who had withdrawn from the world, disgusted with its 1 See Mayers’s C. R. Manual, Part I, article 35. CH. V. INTRODUCTION, 43 vanities and in despair from its disorders. Lao would appear to have himself contemplated this course. When their representatives of our early centuries saw the Buddhists among them with their images, monasteries, and nunneries, their ritual and discipline, they proceeded to organise themselves after a similar fashion. They built monasteries and nunneries, framed images, composed liturgies, and adopted a peculiar mode of tying up their hair. The ‘Three Precious Ones’ of Buddhism, emblematic to the initiated of Intelligence personified in Buddha, the Law, and the Community or Church, but to the mass of the worshippers merely three great idols, styled by them Buddha Past, Present, and To Come: these appeared in Taoism as the ‘Three Pure Ones,’ also represented by three great images, each of which receives the title of ‘His Celestial Eminence,’ and is styled the ‘Most High God (Shang Ti). The first of them is a deification of Chaos, the second, of Lao-jze, and the third of I know not whom or what; perhaps of the Tao. But those Three Pure Ones have been very much cast into the shade, as the objects of popular worship and veneration, by Yi Hwang Ti or Yii Hwang Shang Ti. This personage appears to have been a member of the Kang clan, held to be a magician and venerated from the time of the Thang dynasty, but deified in 1116 by the Sung emperor Hui 3ung at the instigation of a charlatan Lin Ling-si, a renegade Buddhist monk. He is the god in the court of heaven to whom the spirits of the body and of the hearth in our treatise proceed at stated times to report for approval or condemnation the conduct of men. Since the first publication of the Kan Ying Phien, the tenets of Buddhism have been still further adopted by the teachers of T4oism, and shaped to suit the nature of their own system. I have observed that the idca of retribution in our treatise does not go beyond the present life; but the manifestoes of Taoism of more recent times are much occupied with descriptions of the courts of purgatory and threatenings of the everlasting misery of hell to those whom their sufferings in those courts 44 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. "CHL.
2"CHL. fail to wean from their wickedness. Those manifestoes are published by the mercy of Yii Hwang Shang Ti that men and women may be led to repent of their faults and make atonement for their crimes. They emanate from the temples of the tutelary deities! which are found throughout the empire, and especially in the walled cities, and are under the charge of Taoist monks. A visitor to one of the larger of these temples may not only see the pictures of the purgatorial courts and other forms of the modern superstitions, but he will find also astrologers, diviners, geomancers, physiognomists, et id genus omne, plying their trades or waiting to be asked to do so, and he will wonder how it has been possible to affiliate such things with the teachings of Lao-;ze. Other manifestoes of a milder form, and more like our tractate, are also continually being issued as from one or other of what are called the state gods, whose temples are all in the charge of the same monks. In the approximation which has thus been going on of Taoism to Buddhism, the requirement of celibacy was long resisted by the professors of the former; but recent editions of the Penal Code? contain sundry regulations framed to enforce celibacy, to bind the monks and nuns of both systems to the observance of the Confucian maxims concerning filial piety, and the sacrificial worship of the dead ; and also to restrict the multiplication of monasteries and nunneries. Neither Lao nor A wang was a celibate or recommended celibacy. The present patriarch, as a married man, would seem to be able still to resist the law. 1 Called KAing Hwang Mido, ‘ Wall and Moat Temples,’ Palladia of the city. 2 See Dr. Eitel’s third edition of his ‘Three Lectures on Buddhism,’ pp. 36-45 (Hongkong: Lane, Crawford & Co., 1884). The edition of the Penal Code to which he refers is of 1879. THE TAO TEH XING, OR THE TAO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS. a THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE. INTRODUCTION. Brier NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT Books. Book I. HsiAo-vAo Yo.
336-45 (Hongkong: Lane, Crawford & Co., 1884). The edition of the Penal Code to which he refers is of 1879. THE TAO TEH XING, OR THE TAO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS. a THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE. INTRODUCTION. Brier NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT Books. Book I. HsiAo-vAo Yo. The three characters which form the title of this Book have all of them the ideagram 7. (Ko), which: gives the idea, as the Shwo W4n explains it, of ‘now walking, now halting. We might render the title by ‘Sauntering or Rambling at Ease;’ but it is the untroubled enjoyment of the mind which the author has in view. And this enjoyment is secured by the Tao, though that character does not once occur in the Book. Awang-jze illustrates his thesis first by the cases of creatures, the largest and the smallest, showing that however different they may be in size, they should not pass judgment on one another, but may equally find their happiness in the Tao. From this he advances to men, and from the cases of Yung-jze and Lieh-jze proceeds to that of one who finds his enjoyment in himself, independent of every other being or instrumentality; and we have the three important definitions of the accomplished Taoist, as ‘the Perfect Man,’ ‘the Spirit-like Man,’ and ‘the Sagely Man.’ Those definitions are then illustrated ;—the third in Yao and Hsii Yd, and the second in the conversation between Kien Wd and Lien Sha. The description given in this conversation of the spiritlike man is very startling, and contains statements that are true only of Him who is a ‘ Spirit,’ ‘the Blessed and only Potentate,’ ‘Who covereth Himself with light as with a garment, Who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, =n = eee eee a em ee ae 128 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. BK. II. Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, Who maketh the clouds His chariot, Who walketh on the wings of the wind,’ ‘Who rideth on a cherub,’ ‘Who inhabiteth eternity. The most imaginative and metaphorical expressions in the T4o Teh Xing about the power of the possessor of the T4o are tame, compared with the language of our author. I call attention to it here,as he often uses the same extravagant style. There follows an illustration of ‘the Perfect Man, which is comparatively feeble, and part of it, so far as I can see, inappropriate, though Lin Hsi-Zung says that all other interpretations of the sentences are ridiculous. In the seventh and last paragraph we have two illustrations that nothing is really useless, if only used Téoistically.; ‘to the same effect, says 3i40 Hung, ‘as Confucius in the Analects, XVII, ii.’ They hang loosely, however, from what precedes. An old view of the Book was that Kwang-3ze intended himself by the great phang, ‘which,’ says LO Shd-Aih, ‘is wide of the mark.’ Book II. Kat WO Lun.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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