Page Text
________________
18
THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
CH, III.
Masters of the Tâo, generally with mystical Peculiar usage
of Thien in appellations in order to set forth his own
Kwang-zze. views. Two instances from Book XI will suffice in illustration of this. In par. 4, Hwang-Tî does reverence to his instructor Kwang Khăng-zze ', saying, 'In Kwang Khăng-zze we have an example of what is called Heaven,' which Mr. Giles renders Kwang Khăng 3ze is surely God. In par. 5, again, the mystical Yûn-kiang is made to say to the equally fabulous and mystical Hungmung, 'O Heaven, have you forgotten me?' and, farther on, 'O Heaven, you have conferred on me (the knowledge of) your operation, and revealed to me the mystery of it ;' in both which passages Mr. Giles renders thien by 'your Holiness'
But Mr. Giles seems to agree with me that the old Tâoists had no idea of a personal God, when they wrote of Mr. Giles's own Thien or Heaven. On his sixty-eighth page,
the near the beginning of Book VI, we meet with meaning of the theo mame od as the following sentence, having every appear
ent of ance of being translated from the Chinese Thien.
. text :-'God is a principle which exists by virtue of its own intrinsicality, and operates without selfmanifestation. By an inadvertence he has introduced his own definition of 'God as if it were Kwang-zze's; and though I can find no characters in the text of which I can suppose that he intends it to be the translation, it is valuable as helping us to understand the meaning to be attached to the Great Name in his volume.
I have referred above (p. 16) to the only passage in Lâo's treatise, where he uses the name Tî or God in its highest
The relation of sense, saying that 'the Tâo might seem to the Tâo to Tî. have been before Him.' He might well say so, for in his first chapter he describes the Tâo,' (conceived of as) having no name, as the Originator of heaven and
1 Kwang Khăng-zze heads the list of characters in Ko Hung's 'History of Spirit-like Immortal
written in our fourth century. He was,' it is said, 'an Immortal of old, who lives on the hill of M'ung-thung in a grotto of rocks.'
Digitized by Google
| 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 |