Tao Te Ching, Laozi [the gingerbread man read aloud TXT] 📗

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.

In passing on from quotations to the complete text, I will clinch the assertion that Chʽien was well acquainted with our treatise, by a passage from the History of the Former Han Dynasty (BC 206⁠–⁠AD 24), which was begun to be compiled by Pan Ku, who died however in 92, and left a portion to be completed by his sister, the famous Pan Chao. The thirty-second chapter of his “Biographies” is devoted to Ssŭ-ma Chʽien, and towards the end it is said that “on the subject of the Great Tao he preferred Huang and Lao to the six ching.” “Huang and Lao” must there be the writings of Huang Ti and Laozi. The association of the two names also illustrates the antiquity claimed for Taoism, and the subject of endnote 4.

We go on from quotations to complete texts, and turn, first, to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han, as compiled by Liu Hsin, not later than the commencement of our Christian era. There are entered in it Taoist works by thirty-seven different authors, containing in all 993 chapters or sections (pʽien). Yi Yin, the premier of Chʽêng Tʽang (BC 1766), heads the list with fifty-one sections. There are in it four editions of Laozi’s work with commentaries:⁠—by a Mr. Lin, in four sections; a Mr. Fu, in thirty-seven sections; a Mr. Hsü, in six sections; and by Liu Hsiang, Hsin’s own father, in four sections. All these four works have since perished, but there they were in the Imperial Library before our era began. Chuang-tzŭ is in the same list in fifty-two books or sections, the greater part of which have happily escaped the devouring tooth of time.

We turn now to the twentieth chapter of Chʽien’s “Biographies”, in which he gives an account of Yüeh Yi, 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-chu under the kingdom of Chao in BC 279. Among his descendants was a Yüeh Chʽên, who learned in Chʽi “the words,” that is, the Taoistic writings “of Huang Ti and Laozi from an old man who lived on the ho-side.” The origin of this old man was not known, but Yüeh Chʽên taught what he learned from him to a Mr. Ko, who again became preceptor to Tsʽao Tsʽan, the chief minister of Chʽi, and afterwards of the new dynasty of Han, dying in BC 190.

Referring now to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of the dynasty of Sui (AD 502⁠–⁠556), we find that it containd many editions of Lao’s treatise with commentaries. The first mentioned is The Tao Te Ching, with the commentary of the old man of the ho-side, in the time of the emperor Wên of Han (BC 179⁠–⁠142). It is added in a note that the dynasty of Liang (AD 502⁠–⁠556) had possessed the edition of “the old man of the ho-side, of the time of the Warring States; but that with some other texts and commentaries it had disappeared.” I find it difficult to believe that there had been two old men of the ho-side,9 both teachers of Taoism and commentators on our Ching, but I am willing to content myself with the more recent work, and accept the copy that has been current⁠—say from BC 150, when Ssŭ-ma Chʽien could have been little more than a boy. Taoism was a favourite study with many of the Han emperors and their ladies. Huai-nan Tzŭ, of whose many quotations from the text of Lao I have spoken, was an uncle of the emperor Wên. To emperor Ching (BC 156⁠–⁠143), the son of Wên, there is attributed the designation of Lao’s treatise as a ching, 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 Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ. Deeming that the work of Huang-tzŭ and Laozi was of a deeper character than the others, he ordered that it should be called a ching, established a board for the study of Taoism, and issued an edict that the book should be learned and recited at court, and throughout the country.10 Thenceforth it was so styled. We find Huang-fu Mi (AD 215⁠–⁠282) referring to it as the Tao Te Ching.

The second place in the Sui catalogue is given to the text and commentary of Wang Pi or Wang Fu-ssŭ, an extraordinary scholar who died in AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. This work has always been much prized. It was its text which Lu Tê-ming used in his Explanation of the Terms and Phrases of the Classics, in the seventh century. Among the editions of it which I possess is that printed in 1794 with the imperial moveable metal types.

I need not speak of editions or