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Taoist Religion 00 Park
Taoist Religion 00 Park
http://www.archive.org/details/taoistreligionOOpark
:
BY
E. H. PARKER
{Professor of Chinese at the Owens College).
Xonfcon
E. H.^ PARKER
(Professor of Chinese at the Owens College).
Xonfcon
59B278
8 a .54
THE TAOIST RELIGION,
reader what the native story is and they have all inconti-
;
* Pronounced "Loud Sir !" and not " Lay-oa/s," as my first MS. reader
speaks it.
THE TAOIST RELIGION.
nently gone on to say what they themselves think the
native story ought to be. I simply state the facts, so far as
—
content to say with Confucius —
" these dragon flights
are too high for me." I am not going to charge my story
need say no more about it, for every man can understand
it, even if he deride it. But, as civilisation advanced, and
more particularly after the substitution, by a new dynasty in
the twelfth century before Christ, of the feudal system of
r
states undelr"~trie~^fng for the more ancient patriarchal
system of direct submission under the emperor, together
with sundry other social reforms, there grew up political
rivalries between the rival princely courts. The period
B.C. 480 to 230 is usually known to Chinese historians as
the " Fighting State Period," ?>., it was the restless but
active time during which the contending feudal states were
gradually throwing off the control _of .the central kings, and
were aiming at in3epe^ncTent and even dictatorial powers for
themselves: it was during this period of mental tension
that Chinese philosophy attained its greatest heights, or
flights and, curiously enough, this period coincided with
;
himself had not credited the Yellow Emperor with the same
stimulus. I may here state, in order to throw light upon
Chinese nomenclature, that the termination tsz has, in real
effect, almost precisely the same indefinite meaning as the
Latin us, ius, or cms: that is, such Taoist writers as Lich-tsz,
Chwang-tsz, and Hwang-tsz may be fairly Latinised as
Licius, Sancius, and Vancius ;
just as Mencius and Con-
fucius stand for Meng-tsz and K'ung-tsz: the additional
syllable/}/ simply confers a higher degree of moral status,
and we may equally well say Concius for Confucius, Men-
fucius for Mencius, and Laucius for Lao-tsz. As Lao-isz
had already attained "world "-wide celebrity before he wrote
his 5,000 word book at the Pass, we may justly assume that
all his sayings, memorable and otherwise, had enjoyed a
wide publication in book or pamphlet form, not to speak of
oral vogue, long before he was invited by the keeper to jot
down as an aide-memoire the heads of his discourses in the
way they have since come down to us. Thus we find
Lieh-tsz, who lived a century after Lao-tsz, or Lao-tan as he
calls him, giving the " Yellow Emperor's book" as the
authority for passages of his own, which also appear in
1
Lao-tsz's book and Chwang-tsz, who, again a century later,
;
* Not to be confused with Hwang-ti, the title o( " August Emperor," now
still in use ; the initial of which, Fiiumg, differs in some dialects from the
other, Hwang.
THE TAG 1ST RELIGION. 7
one ;
and First Emperor is well known and
as the
clearly have been under pronounced Taoxst
stated to
influence, it is thought possible that Lao-tsz's original
book, or one copy of it, may have been another.
However that may have been, in B.C. 213, the celebrated
massacre of learned men and the destruction of learned
books actually took place, so that whether the original
Lao-tsz, or close copies ofit, survived or not, at any rate it
one beginning with the word Tao, and the other with the
word Teh (efficacy), in common parlance the work, now
styled " Lao-tsz's King," was said to treat of Tao-tch, a dis-
syllable already consecrated by use in the Book of Changes
and the Book of Rites. Hence, the historian, Sz-ma
Ts'ien, says that Lao-tsz cultivated this (already ancient)
Tao and teh and, on invitation
y
to do so, composed his work
in order to discuss their meaning systematically. In
process of time the classic gradually became known as the
Tao-teh-king, and under that name, already in the middle
of the fourth century a.d., a celebrated calligraphist made
a neat transcription of it, which he exchanged with a Taoist
priest for a flock of fine geese in the latter's barn-yard.
Thus, even a thousand years after the work was composed,
and after paper and ink had been invented, we see how
comparatively rare and precious the exclusive possession of
a well-written classic must have been, and how unlikely it
was that many personally-owned copies could have existed
in Lao-tsz'stime ; how
unnecessary, therefore, to be
sceptical, because in Mencius' work, which ignores the
Book of Changes, 7ao\sm is also totally ignored.
Lao-tsz professes himself quite unable to find a word, or
even a circumlocution adequate to define Tao, which he
only calls " the road " as a makeshift consecrated by
;
injunction or command.
2. A man who regulates his conduct by and has faith in
Providence avoids display and self-assertion is humble, ;
simply the " average " of what all translators seem to agree
upon without cavil as being his meaning. I have only two
editions of the Tao-te/i-king myself, and I must confess I find
the book confused and wearisome reading in the extreme ;
be, there a great deal more matter in " Lao-tsz " which
is
years later, sent all the way to Shan Tung to fetch an old
Tao'ist recluse, whose advice on " how to rule the world " he
was most anxious Kublai Khan burnt all the
to obtain.
Taolst books except the " one true one," the Tao-teh-king ;
" I said they were not culled from the pages of the
Tao-teh-king" as to which he gives the supposed opinion
of " native scholars, who one and all regard it as a spurious
"
production of the Han ... to fill the gaps in antiquity
caused by the " Eirst Emperor's" destructive acts. Giles
then follows up the assault by going into a side question :
\
;
that author (he adds) does not discuss the works he used in
compiling his great history but, so far from not having
:
28 THE TAOIST RELIGION.
read Lao-tsz, he, in Chavannes' opinion, had probably read
Chwang-tsz too it is always possible to say what good
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