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THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
CH, II.
shows the book beneath his eyes. To show how numerous the quotations by Han Fei and Liû An are, let it be borne in mind that the Tâo 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 seventyone are found in those two writers. There are other authors not so decidedly Tâoistic, 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.
In passing on from quotations to the complete text, I will Evidence of Pan clinch the assertion that Khien was well
acquainted with our treatise, by a passage from the History of the Former Han Dynasty (B.C. 206– A.D. 24), which was begun to be compiled by Pan Kû, who died however in 92, and left a portion to be completed by his sister, the famous Pan Kâo. The thirty-second chapter of his Biographies is devoted to Sze-mâ Khien, and towards the end it is said that on the subject of the Great Tâo he preferred Hwang and Lào to the six King.' 'Hwang and Lâo' must there be the writings of Hwang-Tî and Lâo-jze. The association of the two names also illustrates the antiquity claimed for Taoism, and the subject of note 1, p. 2.
4. We go on from quotations to complete texts, and turn, first, to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han, as compiled by Liû Hsin, not later than the commencement of our Christian era. There are entered in it Tâoist works by Catalogue of the thirty-seven different authors, containing in all Imperial Library 993 chapters or sections (phien). Î Yin, the of Han.
an. premier of Khăng Thang (B.C. 1766), heads the list with fifty-one sections. There are in it four editions of Lâo-zze's work with commentaries :—by a Mr. Lin, in four sections; a Mr. Fû, in thirty-seven sections ; a Mr. Hsü, in six sections; and by Liû Hsiang, Hsin's own father, in four sections. All these four works have since perished, but there they were in the Imperial Library before
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| SR No. | 007682 |
| Book Title | Questions of King Milinda Part 02 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | T W Rhys Davids |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1894 |
| Total Pages | 2240 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 38 MB |